Elsewhere

With a simple flex of his Ability, Duke appeared in the air some two hundred meters above and away from the city gates. Gates that were sealed and reinforced, well-prepared for an assault by a conventional army like the Legion appeared to be. Duke could see thousands of undead and other things manning the walls. The other things were a horrifying mixture of human, insect, and arachnids. The majority of the disgusting creatures maintained enough human features to be disturbing but some were just so warped it was difficult to even look at them. Most of the undead were skeletal with different colors of fire flickering in their eye sockets.

Duke announced his presence, pouring his Psyche into his words to amplify their effect as much as possible. “King Chopie, you have failed your people and your kingdom. You have committed atrocities against the people you were sworn to protect all in the name of pettiness and the pursuit of power. I have come to call you to account and remove you from your throne. Come forth and stand judgement!”

From the top of the castle tower, a magically amplified voice responded. “Nay, it is you, the presumptive Duke and child of Anomy that stand judgement before the great god, Ghastul! You have come to make demands of me, the Highest of his High Priests. I shall teach you the folly of your arrogance!” The voice was being projected from a black-robed figure that Duke could see, but whose features were obscured. As Duke tried to penetrate the gloom of the figure’s hood, it made one final announcement before slipping back into the shadows of the castle’s tower. “On the authority of the king, kill him and bring me his corpse!”

Several things happened at once. Duke increased the OVERCHANNELING of his SPELL RESISTANCE and ARMOR SKIN Abilities. Due to his repeated use of ARMOR SKIN this way, it had become something he could do unconsciously so there was only a modicum of concentration required to maintain the SPELL RESISTANCE Ability. Both Abilities proved to be worth the effort as magical and mundane attacks erupted from the city.

The first thing Duke noticed was that a vast array of runes embedded both in the walls of the city and on stones placed around it lit up with a cerulean glow. He would not have paid significant attention to the runes had he not immediately received a notification related to one of his primary abilities.

*** A runic array has been activated that suppresses all spacial magic. As a result, your TELEPORTATION Ability has been suppressed from Adept 100, to Untrained 6. Your INVENTORY has been similarly suppressed. ***

Duke had anticipated something like this, but the suppression field was stronger than he had expected. His TELEPORTATION range had just been reduced from over four hundred kilometers to around thirty meters. Still, he reacted by using the Ability just the same, moving repeatedly diagonally upwards in a stuttered zig-zag pattern to avoid some of the incoming fire.

Dozens of dark-robed figures stepped out from behind crenelations to launch beams of necrotic energy at Duke, most aiming for where he had just been, but he was still struck by a number of the beams. A rain of arrows, ballista bolts, and even stones launched by catapults blazed through the area he had been. Fire, acid, cold, and poison attacks were launched by the skeletal figures, chasing Duke as he moved in full evasion using TELEPORTATION and FLIGHT to keep moving out of the line of most attacks. Still, he was hit with countless attacks. The vast majority did not affect him individually as his ARMOR SKIN and SPELL RESISTANCE were easily able to handle most attacks. There were some, however, that were particularly strong, and Duke had found himself harder and harder pressed as damaging effects began to stack. He poured even more Mana into his ARMOR SKIN and SPELL RESISTANCE, watching his Mana drop precipitously.

The attacks focused on Duke continued with abandon. Seeing a singular target and having been given a single order, all the undead forces focused entirely on Duke. They did not notice over the cacophony of explosions of spells, the whoosh of projectiles, and the raw howling of their fellow undead a sound that Duke had been waiting for. The ants broke through the ground and started boiling up the walls. Being aging stacked and mortared stone, the city’s walls offered countless footholds for the ants, and they rapidly ascended up the walls at the jogging pace of a normal human.

Even if Duke could not see them though the barrage of attacks he was doing his best to dodge, he knew the moment when the ants crested the walls. Attacks coming his way nearly ceased entirely and he finally had a respite to assess his own condition.

Duke’s Health and Mana were both down below half and the number of status conditions affecting him was somewhat alarming. Among the most prominent were some sort of necrotic acid eating into his left arm, poison that was literally dripping off his shredded clothes, and his entire lower body was on fire. He activated CLEANSE and RESTORE which remarkably removed nearly all the external effects. He was still fighting off a number of effects internally, but his REGENERATION was keeping the worst of the issues at bay for now and his Mana was ticking back up now that he could pull back on his OVERCHANNELING.

He watched as the ants surged over the walls and attacked everything they could get their pincers on. The hundreds of mage skeletons were crushed under the press of ants, virtually clearing them from the walls in a matter of seconds. The black-robed figures had disappeared at some point that Duke hadn’t noticed and the horrors fought back, chiton ringing against chiton. Duke recovered as he watched the carnage.

***

In the caverns below the city, Aurelia stood ready with the Legion, tension overflowing her mind, but her limbs held steady through sheer force of will.

General, the fighting has begun. Shall we start the Legion’s charge?”

Not yet. We need the enemy to fully commit before we attack. Keep me apprised of the battle’s progress.” She fervently hoped this was the right decision and Duke was not in way over his head while she sat still, waiting. The waiting was the absolutely worst part of the battle for her. She could handle death and dying all around her – that was what happened to an army when the real fighting started. But waiting and hoping that the plan was working was torturous.

***

In less than a minute, the undead and horrors had been cleared from the outer walls of the city and the ants were busy destroying the siege engines while spreading out over the entire city wall structure. It had cost nearly half of the ant soldiers but they ultimately were expendable. Duke smiled as he felt the suppression of his TELEPORTATION fail. The ant soldiers had torn many of the stones carrying runes from the wall. A smile started to creep across his face as he saw his plans coming to fruition. This is what he had been waiting for, had the Legion training for all this time. At last, he would remove Chopie and be able to start setting to rights all the thing the insane monarch had set wrong.

Duke’s COMBAT SENSE activated his TELEPORTATION before he had a chance to register that something had gone horribly wrong. His first sensation was pain as, once again, his Abilities saved him from certain death. The entire city wall had erupted with flame so hot, the very stones of the wall exploded, incinerating everything in its vicinity. The flash of heat was directed outwards, expanding over everything for hundreds of meters. Duke could only register what happened from his extra senses. His eyes and much of the front of his body had been horribly burned and were just gone. Pain overwhelmed his senses for long seconds as Duke struggled to even sense where he was, let alone what had happened. He would have clenched his teeth, but they were already shattered.

When Duke’s REGENERATION repaired his eyes a full thirty seconds later, it was hard for him to process what had happened. The city walls were simply gone. There was a scattering of debris for nearly a kilometer around the city, mostly in the form of stretched globs of volcanic obsidian glass and similarly melted stone. None of the debris was larger than his head. There was no sign of the ants at all.

“You thought you could take me on? With ants? You are more the fool than ever I thought. Not just some upstart trying to make a name for yourself, but a child clumsily swinging a blade in the dark. What are you going to do now that your army of insects is destroyed? Make more rude gestures?” This voice rang out from the castle’s tower again but it was different from the first. This one belonged to the king himself. When Duke eyes finally healed enough to focus on the figure, he saw that it resembled Chopie but far more skeletal. Blue flames burned in the king’s eye sockets and the skin hung limply on his bones. The man’s transformation into a lich was truly complete.

Duke taunted back. “So, you killed my army. Where’s yours? Oh, right, I killed them already. Guess that makes us even.”

“Ever the fool. Behold my army!” Chopie spread his arms wide and the gates to the castle burst open to usher out a torrent of undead. Duke quickly IDENTIFIED as many types as he could, finding that the majority were of some greater variety or other. He spied ghouls, ghasts, wraiths, even some bodaks and a scattering of greater zombie variants. The torrent were led by a dozen black-robed figures that stepped aside to allow the masses to erupt onto the field. Duke estimated that there might be as many as fifty thousand undead.

Chopie continued and Duke was happy to allow him to do so. Every second Chopie spoke restored more and more of Duke’s Health and Mana. “You may have defeated the scraps I sent out into the world, but you assuredly have never met my army! Now, I am a generous ruler. Surrender and become my minion and I will leave your people huddled in the depths unharmed to go their way. Refuse, and I will kill them all only to raise their souls in my service. I do think the golden blonde one will make a fine addition to my concubines.”

Duke’s blood turned to ice as he realized what Chopie was saying. I’ve got to warn Aurelia but I can’t use the Jewel – he’ll see that. Duke’s mind scrambled and came upon an outlandish idea but it might just work. He focused on pieces of debris near where the undead were forming into ranks that was out of Chopie’s line of sight. With a flare of TELEPORTATION focused on the debris, he sent dozens of stones to Aurelia, hoping she would receive and understand the message.

Duke spoke, knowing that there was limited time to negotiate before things erupted again into violence. He poured as much derision and sarcasm as he could into his voice. “Oh, no. You have more undead. What ever will I do? I singlehandedly erased your first undead army. What makes you think that this little patch of darkness on the front lawn is going to pose any more threat than the last? It’s like you have absolutely no idea what I’m capable of.”

“I know you have LIGHTNING and TELEPORTATION Magics. You are no great mystery to me. And with a Grandmaster mage at my disposal, I have numerus ways to shut those magics down.” He produced a device that looked very similar to the one Grat had produced for the activation of the Inn’s magical defenses and inserted a gem. Duke immediately received a notification.

*** A runic array has been activated that suppresses all spacial magic. As a result, your TELEPORTATION and LIGHTNING Abilities have been completely suppressed ***

Duke stared intensely at Chopie who cackled in response. “You are a child playing at adult games! Now surrender and face your punishment. I will not ask again.”

Duke hung his head and began to slowly fly towards Chopie. Through his XENOGLOSSIA, he could see the delight on the king’s otherwise expressionless face. Duke kept his facial expression hidden. As he got close, about 20 meters away, he flashed skyward, spinning and releasing the nearly two hundred bombs Baslin had made for him in as wide a pattern as he could.

Chopie responded before the first bomb could land, flashing a barrier into place over the castle while screaming, “Kill them all!” The undead army tore hidden coverings from the ground and moved to charge down their concealed tunnels to surprise the Legion. Before more than the first wave made the tunnels, the bombs impacted and bedlam broke out.