The six of them dashed forward towards the endless army of the skeletal undead. From their perspective, it looked like an apocalyptic scene with the three white moons shining brightly, trying to devour the large and ominous purple moon. Making the night so bright that the horror they were about to face looked even more crystal clear.
Axel chuckled towards Sophia, "Who knew one day we would be facing hordes of endless undead like this, in a magical world, on a beautiful night, on an island located in the middle of an ocean, you and I, together side by side."
Sophia’s eyes showed a flicker of warmth and surprise as he answered, "Indeed, what a twist of fate."
Although the others heard their exchange of words, they did not fully understand it and misinterpreted it as the couple trying to encourage each other. But Axel was talking about sothing else entirely. He was talking about how they were both typical high-schoolers back on Earth. And yet here they were, in a place and situation so fantastical that they could never have imagined it in their wildest dreams.
Jaden grunted at their cheesy antics, "You two can flirt in the afterlife."
Axel rely laughed, while Sophia glared at him; she had the urge to impale this insolent bastard for interrupting their sweet talks, but she controlled herself and rely snorted. Heinz added another observation, "The Death Knight, it stopped far in the back, does it deem us too weak to take action?"
Jaden explained with a nod, "From what little we know, Death Knights seem to possess a peculiar kind of prideful nature as they do not first engage with anyone weaker than themselves. Of course, it will still kill anything that provokes it, whether weaker or not."
Axel agreed, "Indeed, it will probably not interfere and let its minions kill us slowly."
He brought out six small, dull-looking earrings and gave out the five to his friends and Sophia, then wore one himself. He explained, "ntal communication artifact."
The others nodded and put it on imdiately.
As only ten ters of distance was left before the six of them clashed with the army of the dead, Sophia jumped high in the sky, a wave of pure darkness ca out of her body and covered the pure white dress, turning it pitch black, even the white glittering diamonds turned black and now reflected a blackish light.
Her jet-black hair, which was tied in a bun, ca undone as it waved smoothly in the wind, as she had jumped high in the sky. She looked nothing short of an ominous black fairy with her red eyes overflowing with the desire to kill. More darkness ca out of her and materialized into a pitch-black sword in her right hand.
As she swung down the sword vertically, A wave of darkness traveled in a straight line of 20 ters, killing more than 30 of the undead in a single strike of her attack. Following right behind her, Axel brought out a runic sword, engraved with three of the sa blue colored pseudo runes of lightning, which were aligned towards the concept of Destruction.
Unfortunately, as it may be, while Axel had plenty of experience by now as a sword wielder, he still had not yet learned any proper technique or foundations. He used his swords more as an artifact, using their power boosts and wielding multiple swords. But that was a highly inefficient use of the sword as a weapon. In simple terms, he was not a proper swordsman as of yet.
And since he would not receive any extra stat boosts from wielding many weapons at once anymore, he decided to use only one sword and try to refine his skills as a swordsman. His runic swordsman skill activated the mont he wielded a sword; this skill also helped him intuitively understand the path of the sword better in the midst of battle. He made a ntal note to focus on the sword path once all this was over, assuming he survives this calamity, that is.
Axel moved his mana through the magic circuit, empowering himself physically. His runic eyes shimred in a golden hue as they identified patterns and thods of taking down the most significant number of the undead with the most excellent efficiency. He slashed horizontally, using an imnse amount of his mana at once.
More than 20 of the dead fell in his strike of blue lightning, crackling with imnse power, fewer than Sophia, but it was still a feat to be praised no less. The others also slashed with their own powerful runic weapons, which Axel made for each of them personally. They all continued to hack away at the endless number of skeletons, bones shattered one after another.
While the skeletals were overflowing with death energy. Sothing which they all had to be careful of. Even though the undead had no visible offensive attacks and were relatively weak against any physical attacks, that would not be all it takes to crush down the skeleton army.
Because the endless number of undead continued to mount on them, no matter how many of them they killed, more and more would converge on them. The worst part was that most of the skeletons were avoiding them and going towards the vast number of students right behind. The six of them could not kill enough numbers to prevent that from happening.
Well, not like they were fighting to protect the students behind them, so they didn’t care much about that. Axel warned his friends, noticing another thing,
[Guys, you need to attack its ethereal core. It’s sothing invisible to the eyes and senses. Only a highly compressed elental attack at the correct location would kill it.]
[Otherwise, the skeletals you strike down will co out again from the darkened ground beneath. But if the ethereal cores of the undead are destroyed. They should stay down for good.]
The others nodded in realization; they also noticed that more undead were erging from the ground. Since they were all skeletal remains in a mostly humanoid shape, with an endless number of them, it was hard to identify whether those they killed were indeed the ones erging from beneath.
Following Axel’s advice, they all started to kill more and more, and no more of the undead were coming out of the ground. Not that any of them were necessary in the first place. It seems a certain number of them were keeping the six of them at bay, while most of them still went behind to kill the rest.
Out of nowhere, multiple powerful battle cries resounded behind them, followed by an increasing number of battle cries from all the students, which shook the entire island at once. Axel looked backwards as he saw all the damn cowards had finally made up their minds. By the look on their faces, he judged that these pests had decided to give their all in the battle, even if it ant that they would all die.
A dark smile appeared on his face as he chuckled darkly. The cannon fodders was finally taking their roles seriously. Of course, a ten tis difference in number would not be bridged so smoothly. Not every one of the students was capable of so effortlessly taking down the enemies, like the six of them.
He sent another ssage to his friends,
[Don’t use the active abilities of my rune weapons. And fight while conserving your stamina and mana as much as possible. Also, don’t let even the tiniest fragnt of the death energy enter your system; otherwise, you will be pretty much out of the battle in a few minutes at most.]
[Heinz, use your Sage aspect. Your compound elent of Ash should be able to harm and dull the senses of the undead quite well.]
Although Heinz was initially reluctant to use the Sage aspect, he ultimately decided to trust his friend. Because the warlord aspect wasn’t faring very well against the growing number of undead with death energies at their disposal, he jumped high in the sky and made the switch of his aspect in just a second.
His gray colored eyes beca even more prominent, as they shone in an ashen hue. His presence changed entirely. Just as he was about to mobilize the elent of Ash to attack the ghostly creatures, he heard the voice of his friend resound in his head again.
[Don’t think of your ash elent as sothing normal. It is the remains of the things that once existed, whether they were alive or not. Think of your ash elent as sothing like the last remains of the dead, and now you will use it to fight the undead who the death knight is unjustly controlling.]
[Only then can it be a proper countering tool against the ghostly creatures.]
With that, Heinz closed his eyes and started to feel the elent his Sage aspect was most attuned to. Suppose his ashes were indeed sothing left by the dead. It represents the sacred property of death, a poof of their passing, as it should be.
On the other hand, these skeletal undead of various shapes and sizes are from nurous creatures. They represented the wrongness, sothing that went against the natural order. A soul that should have passed away, a body that should have decayed, devoured by worms, broken down to beco nutrients for the soil. Providing the energy for another green life and being in perfect sync with the cycle of nature. But the existence of these things opposed that very cycle of life, the cycle of nature.
So profound understanding dawned on him as he could visibly feel his control over the elent of Ash increasing trendously. Heinz ford strange hand symbols and chanted in magic language as more and more waves of Gray Ash started to erge out of thin air. This ti, he did not scatter the ashes, filling the area with fog that obscured the vision of both allies and enemies alike.
Instead, the grains of ashes ca together, like tendrils of an octopus, compressing and stretching in a very intuitive manner that Heinz felt was an extension of himself that he had never known existed. Five such tendrils, made of pure ashes, ford around Heinz.
As he hit each of the skeletals one after another. With the tendrils of ash, on each significant impact, the bones of the undead would start to crack and slowly crumble, turning into more Ash, which he could control and add to his existing tendrils. This process continued indefinitely for him nonstop as Heinz continued to take down more and more of the damned undead, endlessly.
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