I became a legion lich

154 Cleaning the surroundings

Its colossal size and ghastly appearance sent shivers down even the bravest of men in the throne room, the most cowardly nearly pissing themselves with fear.

None of them had ever seen a bone chimera in their lives, so their amazement and disbelief was natural.

Before any of the nobles could recover from the shock, the abominations ran at breakneck speed, their heavy footsteps tearing up the earth and leaving deep holes in their wake.

Athos had closely watched the bone abomination’s first battle, and was shocked by its burst of speed. He noticed that the burst of speed was caused by the use of mana and ordered all abominations to circulate mana to the maximum to observe the phenomenon closely.

What Athos observed is that the main core draws energy from all the auxiliary cores, before releasing all the energy at once. This caused an effect similar to a large-scale spell, where multiple cores worked together to cast something that would be impossible for a single.

“This is amazing!” Athos shouted excitedly, having to grab Hecatonchires’ shoulder to keep from being thrown away. Even Athos was having a hard time keeping up with their movement speed, needing to use his cold mind skill to see more than a blur in front of him.

From the fleeing army’s point of view on the other hand, it looked like the monstrosities had gained wings and would reach their position in a matter of seconds.

Any order or discipline vanished from their minds as everyone began to run for their lives, trampling over anyone too slow to flee.

“Hey, mage, take command of the troops and order them to retreat! If the soldiers continue to flee in a disorganized manner, the undead will easily slaughter them. We need someone to protect the rear so that the others can get away safely.” The supreme commander shouted at the shocked mage, but it had the opposite effect.

.....

The mage finally recovered from the shock and let the cube fall to the ground, before turning and running as fast as he could.

Unfortunately for them, abominations were several times faster than warhorses and didn’t need to slow down to kill, just trampling them was enough. The first to be hit were the heavy infantry, or what was left of them.

The abominations ran through the fleeing army, but they didn’t bother to kill all the surrounding soldiers. Their targets were the fastest knights and mages who had enough power to injure them, though it was questionable whether they could kill them.

‘Scatter out and slaughter them. Whoever kills the most humans will receive an upgrade.’ Athos spoke through the mind link to make sure everyone would hear, receiving a chorus of happy grunts in response.

The abominations fanned out to kill as many as possible and ensure they would be victorious. They doubled their bodies and ran on all sixes, using their upper arms to crush everyone within reach.

Athos didn’t stay put on the shoulder of the Hecatonchires, leaping towards the first group of desperate mages. The mages were still divided into five different groups, as they would have a better chance of surviving if they fought together.

The mages paid no attention to Athos until he jumped, considering him just an appendage or bones out of place.

His flesh was retracted at the moment and even though he was wearing armor, the dark color of the metal didn’t stand out on the black bones, so he would hardly stand out while on the shoulder of an abomination.

Those closest were startled by the skeleton detaching itself from the abomination, but they didn’t consider it much of a threat and just cast simple spells against it, their entire focus on the abomination, the biggest threat in their eyes.

A big mistake they made.

Athos used lightning impulse and sensory field at the same time with his body, dodging most spells and relying on his equipment’s magical dispersion to resist the rest. The mages were surprised by Athos’ shocking speed and activated the barriers on their cloaks, but to no avail.

Athos activated the sword’s enchantment, improving its strength and sharpness before slashing, its blade cutting through the barrier and the mage behind as if it were made of paper. As expected from an item made of magic wood and enchanted by Treevor, the corrupted willow sword could cut through an ordinary mana barrier easily.

He didn’t stop to check the body after slashing it, immediately attacking the next mage. The surrounding mages cast lightning, ice spikes and stone bullets at him, but Athos felt the attacks approaching from a distance thanks to the sensory field.

Athos had evolved rapidly since becoming an undead and his abilities had evolved along with him. His sensory field now expanded to almost 20 meters around him, so he could clearly feel the attack the moment it was cast.

With a wave of his hand, a wall of black fire appeared and blocked the mages’ vision, so they spread out their attacks so that at least one hit him. Athos ran towards the spikes of ice, certain that the combination of the wall of fire and the magic dispersion of his armor would be enough for him to escape unharmed.

“Shit, don’t come closer!” One of the mages screamed desperately, hurling lightning at Athos as he passed through the wall of fire. Athos did the same, the black lighting meeting the enemy lighting midway and almost immediately overpowering it.

Athos’ core was much more powerful than the mage’s core and black lightning could absorb enemy energy, so the result couldn’t be different.

The mage was hit by the black lightning and fell to the ground convulsing.

There were too many around him, so Athos didn’t have time to kill each one of them, all he could do was make sure they were unconscious before moving on to the next target.

While Athos was busy killing the soldiers one by one, Hecatonchires had thought of a much more creative way to eliminate the little humans.

The bone abomination curled into a ball, placing their skulls in the middle and curling around it protectively, before kicking the ground and starting to roll. Whenever its bones touched the ground, Hecatonchires used them to propel themselves forward, constantly increasing its speed.

Unlike his brethren, Hecatonchires had watched Athos and the skeleton mages work using the bone crafter spell on all the abominations. He realized that he could change into forms other than just disassembling and reassembling the way Athos had shaped him.

The hecatonchires rolled non-stop, trampling all the soldiers and wizards they passed, killing them horribly. Most of the first group’s mages were aiming their spells at him, but he just took the damage without caring.

He repositioned his bones whenever they were cracked, keeping their surface always intact.

“Pfft, hahaha! Since when does he know how to do that?” Athos started to laugh seeing the Hecatonchires roll at high speed and trample the humans. “I better speed up if I don’t want to run out of targets.”

The mages around him had become scarce, so Athos quickly finished off the few that were still alive and cast mass raise undead on all the corpses.

“Slaughter everyone around.” Athos ordered, before looking for the next group of mages. They were the only ones who posed any danger to him and the abominations, so they were the priority.

***********

“Fuck! What the hell are we supposed to do in this situation?” The captain of the 4th sent mage slayers said, watching the abominations slaughter the fleeing army.

Less than 15 minutes had passed since the abominations exited the gate, but more than half of the fleeing army had already been killed or lay dying on the ground with gruesome injuries.

The abominations cut through the army in a straight line, splitting the fleeing humans into two different groups before killing all riders running ahead and turning on those they had left behind.

Not only had the fleeing army been split in two, their escape route had been cut off, forcing them to flee left and right, but the captain knew that this would only delay the inevitable.

But the reason why the captain was angry was another. Three of the five mage slayer teams had breached the fortress before the field of the dead was activated and the teams outside were unable to make contact with them.

As the teams entered from different locations, they also entered at different times, as they needed to exploit the gaps in the skeletons’ defense in order to invade. They all had enchantments on their suits that made them invisible, but undead capable of controlling mana could use their corrupted version of mana vision and possibly see through their disguise.

None of them were sure, as these skeletons were a new species, but the mage slayers weren’t willing to risk their lives in uncertainty, so they waited for a breach in their defenses. The 4th was about to invade when the curtains were lowered and he hurriedly ordered them back.

The captain had no way of confirming the situation inside the fortress, but seeing as no other humans left and unknown undead were chasing what was left of the fleeing army, it was almost certain that all humans inside were dead.