Chapter 145

145 The force of storm

‘Have you prepared your poison? How much were you able to prepare?’ Athos asked to try to get Treevor focused again, as he seemed lost in his own thoughts.

’65 barrels of pure poison. They are currently scattered around the wall and I intend for the archers to fire poison arrows when the fight begins. It is far more effective than bathing swords and spears in poison.’ Treevor replied, still half lost in his own thoughts.

Even if the poison arrows just graze it, it would still be a death sentence for anyone unable to use mana. Even mana users would only be able to slow the effects of the parasitic venom.

To make matters worse for victims, the parasitic venom could freely change between a liquid form and an airborne parasite form.

‘Great, focus the poisoned arrows on the poorly equipped enemy soldiers around the fortress. They will hardly be able to defend themselves being so poorly equipped.’ Athos spoke, but a light shining from outside the gate interrupted him.

The priests and mages had finished casting the large-scale spell and a gigantic dome made of pure light surrounded the crusaders, blocking their view. The dome of light was nothing Athos or any of the skeletons had ever seen before.

Instead of a standard spherical barrier, there were thousands of light shields with a hexagon pattern perfectly connected to each other. Each shield of light was the size of a tower shield and over two feet thick.

The biggest advantage of this barrier with hexagon patterns is that the bishop could freely control them and stack them to defend against more powerful attacks, although this created gaps in his defense.

The hexagonal barrier moved slowly as the army advanced, the crusader, wizards and siege weapons taking care to keep up with the marching speed of the priests.

.....

‘Raise the barrier and start shooting lightning. I want this barrier in the ground and the priests who control it dead.’ Athos ordered, making mental notes to steal the secret of these barriers.

The skeleton mage inside the control room nodded and touched the pedestal, activating the corrupted mana barrier. The black barrier rose in an instant, scaring all the soldiers around who had no knowledge of magic and did not expect such powerful magic from the undead.

But it was the swirling black clouds that really terrified them.

Ever since Athos ordered the queen to prepare, the whirlpool began to spin faster and faster, the thick clouds at the center of the whirlpool becoming more and more sparse until they disappeared completely, creating a vacuum at its center. The whirlpool now looked more like a ring of black clouds, dark lightning flowing through the ring constantly.

The hive hawks that acted as lightning rods were rotating at high speed in the same direction as the clouds, evenly spaced from each other and attracting the lightning to move the cloud faster and faster. The hawks were releasing a minimal amount of mana, but it was enough to draw black lightning to their bodies.

Athos and all the skeleton mages with an affinity for air or water had emptied their cores in the previous days to create this cloud and make it charged, so the hawks hardly needed to spend energy now, all the energy was already around them and they they only used a fraction of their energy to attract lightning.

The black lightning would flow through your bones without doing any damage, before the next hawk released energy and drew the lightning into a full circle, the movement increasing its charge with each cycle. The louder and louder sounds of thunder would have burst the birds’ eardrums if they still had one, while the air around them crackled with energy.

The cycle continued until the rays moved so fast that the hawks had trouble keeping up, then they mentally signaled the queen that they were ready.

The queen stood in the center of the ring of clouds, lazily flapping her wings as she watched the hawks gather energy. The moment the males of the pride said they were ready, the queen charged the air around her positively with energy in the same way that Athos had taught her, drawing all the rays around her towards her.

Lightning came from all directions, forming a pattern like a spider’s web of pure electricity. The queen almost lost control of so much energy, but the other hawks helped her to control the energy, despite being far away from each other.

Unable to keep the energy contained for more than a few seconds, the queen fired the contained electricity at the dome of light. A single bolt of lightning as thick as a pillar descended against the ground, cutting the distance between the clouds and the hexagonal barrier in seconds.

On the ground, Bishop panicked at the sight of energy in a spider’s web pattern in the sky. He immediately focused the shields of light towards the sky, the pillar of black lightning striking the shields a few seconds later.

A burst of energy happened at the moment of impact, its glow spreading throughout the fortress and its surroundings. A deafening sound like a dragon’s roar deafened the church forces and the mages beneath the barrier, their eardrums bursting as blood poured from their ears.

The shock wave knocked the reserve troops behind the Crusaders to the ground and caused the corrupted barrier to shake, deeply shocking Athos and the other skeletons. They had only tried shooting ordinary lightning so far and although they had tested the cloud ring, they hadn’t fired their lightning at full force to save energy.

Emilia had explained about the energy ring and although she didn’t know how it worked, she was sure she could concentrate all the storm’s energy into one super strong attack. Although no one expected his power to be so absurd.

“Wow. That was amazing, Emilia.” Athos congratulated her in a daze, seeing the corrupted barrier shake just from the incoming shock wave. It suffered no damage, but it said a lot about the magnitude of the attack.

“It was amazing for sure, but not enough.” Emilia spoke with a little regret. The glare of light had diminished and although the humans still had to adjust after nearly going blind and deaf, but the skeletons only needed a small pulse of darkness to restore their senses.

They saw that even though more than a hundred light shields had been completely destroyed and even more were heavily cracked, the humans below only suffered the aftereffects of the explosion, but none of them had died. To make matters worse, more than half of the large-scale spells were still working.

With the exception of a team of mages who reacted late and had their eardrums burst, the other teams had activated the defensive enchantments on their cloaks and protected themselves from the aftereffects of the explosion. They were still hearing a loud humming, but they managed to stay steady enough to keep control of the spells.

The army’s advance temporarily stopped, but Athos noticed that the bishop was shouting orders while sweating profusely. It was likely that many priests had fallen to the ground and lost control of the barrier, adding to the bishop’s burden.

‘Prepare the next attack, queen. It will take some time to conjure another lightning bolt this strong, so rain lightning down on them. Aim at the mages and prevent them from hitting the barrier with their spells.’ Athos ordered and the queen obeyed.

The hive hawks again began to spin, and the rays that had disappeared slowly began to accumulate again. Seeing this, the bishop on the ground screamed even more, trying to wake up the stunned priests.

“All of you wake up!! Resume your positions immediately, the enemy will attack again soon! We need to invade them before then!” The bishop screamed as he sweated profusely, blood running from his nose in an effort to keep the shields of light with only half the priests.

“Paladins, heal as many as you can and resume the advance!” With that order, paladins who were not deafened cast area healing spells, saving as many people as possible. pulses of light spread from the paladins, healing everyone they reached.

The area healing spell healed anyone injured within a certain distance around the caster until the mana contained in the spell ran out. It was a very useful spell for healers in an army, but it ran the risk of healing someone with crooked or poorly healed bones, as it was something done automatically.

The nearby priests and adventurers finally regained their hearing, staring in horror at the still crumbling shields of light and the occasional lightning bolt in the sky. The priests immediately focused on regenerating the light shields still standing.

Before the priests could regenerate shields or the paladins heal the deaf crusaders, the first black bolts hit one of the mage units, the electricity bypassing magical wards and electrocuting their bodies as darkness spread through their bodies.

The shields of light were still concentrated where the pillar of electricity hit in the middle of the Crusader formation. Most of the army was unprotected at the moment and this unit of mages was particularly far from the shields, so the bishop couldn’t protect them in time.

All the mages hit were badly injured, but it was the ill-timed healing that killed them. The paladins hurriedly cast healing spells in the hope that they could regain control of the large-scale spell, but that was a serious mistake.

The mages’ flesh was charred and smoking, at least what the darkness did not devour. The cure drained what little vitality they had left and killed them, passing out the few survivors.