I became a legion lich

153 Large scale skill

The mages in the control room had activated the fortress’s latest enchantment, conjuring a gigantic field of the dead throughout the fortress.

Whether soldiers, adventurers or crusaders, everyone was temporarily blinded and unable to breathe. Those capable of circulating mana managed to prevent the corrupted world energy from corroding their skin, but it didn’t do much to improve the overall situation.

Screams of pain and panic from soldiers trying to talk to each other were heard, but all were silenced by the sounds of buildings being crushed and bones creaking.

The bone abominations destroyed the buildings they were in to break free, roaring in happiness. They didn’t like to be disassembled after their master had finally assembled them into a proper shape.

The closest soldiers were shocked by the sounds of destruction, but the bone abomination trampled them all and ran towards the gate, just as its master had ordered.

Athos would be upset if he couldn’t see the humans’ reaction to his new toy. No human could see into the field of the dead, so Athos couldn’t take advantage of their reactions.

“Get out of the holes and kill them all!” Athos shouted excitedly as he leapt from the fortress walls and landed on the shoulder of the hecatonchires, the first bone abomination he created.

All the skeletons hiding inside buildings or behind roadblocks to defend against the crusader invasion rushed furiously to kill all the humans suffocating on the ground.

They would still die after a few minutes at most, but Athos wanted them dead ASAP.

.....

The soldiers lying on the ground couldn’t resist for long as the skeletons attacked them. All they could do was wave their hands wildly in hopes of driving the undead away, but the skeletons were relentless.

“Shit! We have to get out of here, we can’t save anyone else!” Roy yelled, dragging his brother as he plunged Olivia into the shadows. Unlike other humans, he could see into the field of the dead, but he preferred not to.

The undead were going crazy and killing everyone around. All he could do was save his brother and his teammate, and even that would be an uphill task.

Before heading for the walls, Treevor had warned that he had a human who could see and that they should be careful with him.

This made the skeletons concentrate their efforts on Ruy and Roy, the only ones who were running straight towards the gate.

‘Fuck. The gate is too far away and it’s going to be difficult to keep going. We have to find a way to get there before we run out of breath.’ Roy thought desperately as he slashed a skeleton with his spare sword. Despite being able to see, he and Ruy still couldn’t breathe with the air becoming toxic.

They had barely advanced 100 meters and both were starting to run out of breath. His brother was following behind him and killing skeletons nonstop, but his movements were getting slower and slower and his face was already red from the effort of holding his breath.

“Caution!” Ruy suddenly shouted, pointing forward. Roy was distracted for a second as he checked on his brother and one of the bone abominations running towards the gate turned and tried to squash him.

Before Roy could do anything, Ruy took a deep breath and jumped, piercing the skull on the chest of the bone abomination with his spear and jumped back, letting the abomination fall to the ground. Unlike his brother, he was completely blind, but he knew a skill similar to echolocation, so he could fight one way or another.

“Don’t get distracted! We need to get away at once-cough!” Ruy couldn’t finish the sentence, his lungs burning as the toxic air corroded his lungs. He fell to the ground while coughing up blood, only for the bone abomination to punch him and crush him to the ground.

Athos had taught the bone abomination to play dead when the chest skull was destroyed and attack the moment the enemy turned his back or let his guard down.

“Brother!” Roy screamed desperately, but the undead’s fist suddenly exploded. Ruy was much more powerful than the abomination, so he managed to withstand the blow despite the difference in mass between them.

But he didn’t escape unscathed. The sheer brute strength of the abomination had broken several of its bones while its left arm that had taken the direct hit was twisted at an unnatural angle.

He was leaning on the spear as he panted heavily, no longer caring if the air was poisonous or not.

The Abomination didn’t care about his pain and attacked him with its three remaining limbs.

“ROAR!” Ruy spat out a mouthful of blood and roared like a wounded beast, before darting under the abomination’s legs and breaking his right knee and leaping to the cluster of skulls at the base of the neck just as he began to fall.

Ruy used the multi-strike skill, destroying more than half of the skulls in a second and leaping back just as the abomination’s heavy fist approached, causing him to slam into himself.

The bone abomination didn’t give up the attack and tried to slash him with its claws while Ruy was in the air. He managed to use the spear to block the abomination’s left claw, but the right still hit him and left 5 deep cuts on his side and threw him to the ground.

The undead tried to finish him off, but Roy grabbed his brother’s body and ran as fast as he could. He was using short breaths to ingest as little poison as possible.

Unfortunately for him, the bone abomination was faster than expected. For the first time since the fight began, the abomination began circulating mana through its body. The energy of over fifty cores working together created the closest thing to a large-scale skill that ever existed.

It was a complete coincidence even for Athos, his creator, but it was even more so for Roy who was being chased by him.

‘How can something so big move so fast?!’ Roy thought desperately, seeing the creature practically teleport from where he was and crash into the building next to him. The abomination itself had never used mana in its short life, so what should have been a simple step became a full force charge.

None of the hive minds could react to their own speed and all they saw was a blur. Several of his bones were broken in the charge, but he attacked again as soon as his vision adjusted.

The abomination didn’t make the same mistake twice and this time, it threw itself at Roy correctly, opening all its arms as wide as possible so that the human couldn’t dodge.

All Roy could do was throw his brother out of the way before the abomination struck with the force of a freight train and crushed him.

Roy’s death caused his familiar to disappear as well and Olivia to be cast out of his shadow. The bone abomination was surprised by the appearance of a new human, but just silently killed her while she tried to resist.

“Fuck...” Was all Ruy the blue fang said before the excessive bleeding caused him to lose consciousness. The abomination quickly killed him and returned to the gate, where his brothers had already passed.

Treevor had already killed all the light infantry and mercenaries near the gate, so there was nothing to stop them.

**********

A few kilometers away from the fortress, on a plain of dry grass.

The mage in charge of recording the entire battle was stationary from the start of the battle and continued recording even after the fortress went dark. To say that the assembled nobles were shocked by what they saw was an understatement.

From the gigantic storm, the arrows with some kind of acid that melted people with a scratch, the slaughter of soldiers caused by less than 50 demihumans, the appearance of Treevor and his demonstration of power, as well as the giant black dome.

All of this happened in less than two hours, but it felt like minutes to the nobles watching.

The nobles in the throne room had been shouting nonsense for some time now, much to the unfortunate mage’s misfortune. They shouted irrational things like ordering him to come closer so they could get a better view or running to help them.

Obviously, he rejected all unreasonable orders, but for some time now, the orders had changed to threats and name-calling, some of them even threatening his family if he continued to disobey.

The common soldiers that had been massacred at the opposite gate were retreating with all the survivors, as well as the mana-less mages and siege weapons, as they would be difficult to move inside the fortress, with all those blocks and holes all over the place.

Mana regeneration potions were handed to the mages, who drank them as if their lives depended on it, but none of them raised their voices to say that they should step forward to help those still trapped inside the fortress.

“Hey, there’s something coming out the gate!” The supreme commander shouted, temporarily silencing all the nobles as they carefully watched the gate. Unfortunately for them, what came out was far from human.

The bone abominations exited one by one, their massive bodies having to bend to pass through the narrow gap of the gate.