The Saga of Eden

Chapter 2, part 15

{Curse Barrier}

Without further warnings, Lord Shar begins to cast his first spell. Fortunately, a defensive one.

The three former Imperial officers rush towards the still weakened Lela to finish her off. Lela is still on one knee, her face focused with her dagger in her right hand, ready to defend herself.

The Undead archer releases his arrow straight at her chest, it isn’t too fast but Lela is not in a good position to dodge it. She’s ready to take the hit. Suddenly, the arrow was blocked by a shield. Eden’s shield. Even after being hit by {Energy drain}, he still has enough strength to keep going.

“Are you alright?” Eden turns to Lela and asks. His face is green and pale from sickness and exhaustion, and he’s sweating all over. But he shows genuine concern for Lela.

“I-I’m fine, thanks.” She blushes but quickly tries to get up on two feet.

“Don’t worry Eden! We got your back.” Harmani says as Astraka and he quickly moves in front of Eden, ready to fight the three Undead.

{Summon Ymah} Meanwhile, Lord Shar continues to cast his spell. Creating summons and Undead, or maybe both, is his specialty after all.

The necromancer points his staff forward, and from that spot appears a skeleton wearing black clothes, a black bandana, and an iron quarterstaff. This summoned Undead is notorious for being one of the strongest defensive monsters, as far as I know.

“Protect me.” Lord Shar commands. The Ymah nods and stands in front of him, putting Lord Shar away from him. The Undead holds its staff in a defensive position, ready to protect its master from anything.  

Harmani executes a perfect right hand punch to the Undead rogue’s jaw with his iron glove, and the monster staggers backward. He follows it up with another punch using his left hand to quickly finish his opponent. While staggered, the Undead still manages to anticipate Harmani’s next attack, so it quickly raises its left hand, ready to stab Harmani’s arm with the shortsword in its palm. 

Not fast enough.

The current situation the Undead was put in makes their difference in Levels almost unfair. Certainly, the Undead rogue was fast, but he’s like a turtle compared to Harmani’s reaction. Harmani catches its left hand by the wrist using his right hand, while the punch continues with its momentum.

“Pow!” The hit landed. 

Harmani tries his best to make the punch as hard as possible, and it works. The hit severs its connection to curse magic, and it finally dies. With the momentum, the corpse flies backward while its severed left arm remains on Harmani’s hand. The young man panics and drops the arm as it disintegrates into only bones.

Harmani looks over to his uncle to see how he’s doing. As expected, what he sees is a burned corpse of the former Imperial knight, while Astraka is slowly moving towards the Undead archer, chanting a {Lightning} spell simultaneously. 

The Undead archer slowly moves backward as it shoots one arrow after the other at Astraka, but they all bounce off him harmlessly. The arrows fail to penetrate the barrier Astraka had cast beforehand. 

{...and now, let my enemy turn to ash. Lightning!} 

Astraka finishes his chant just as he gets within touch range of the archer. Similar to how he did it to the Undead doorkeeper, Astraka touches its forehead with his closed index and middle fingers, and a stream of electricity begins to flow through the Undead’s bodies. It screams in pain and within seconds, it also disintegrates, leaving behind only a pile of bones.

Astraka wipes the dust off his robe and looks over to his nephew. Their eyes meet, both are glad that the other is okay. 

“You’re amazing, uncle!” Harmani praises.

“You’re alright, too, Harmani.” Astraka nods. “Now let’s go help the others.”

At the same time, Eden and Lela are idling in front of Nara, they seem to have regained their normal states. 

“Great job, you two!” Eden says happily as he watches Astraka and Harmani. “Now come over here so Nara can cast her spell on us.”

The two men nod and they run over to the rest.

{Bane Undead Series: Curse Magic Immunity} Nara begins to cast. This is the most essential spell to have if one wants to go against a superior necromancer.

“Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking.” Eden begins to tell them quickly in a hushed tone. “This necromancer is absurdly powerful, but he has no experience in close combat. His barrier is surprisingly sturdy, and his defence is pretty good but penetrable. So-”

“Wait, how do you know all that?” Lela suddenly asks.

“I read his postures, of course. So-” Eden quickly answers.

“Read his postures? How the hell do you gather info and come to the conclusion that we can beat him from reading his postures? Are you serious?” Lela asks again.

Eden is right, though. With {Evaluation}, one can gather a lot of information about the others simply by reading their postures, facial expressions, outfits, behaviors, and so on. But knowing how to highlight the crucial info is a different story. It’s like finding a lake and actually catching the biggest fish with your fish hook.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have time for this. So what I’m planning is to temporarily break his barrier and quickly finish him off.” Eden quickly explains, Lord Shar is chanting for a long summoning spell, but they only have a few seconds to spare. “With him dead, the rest will lose their curse magic source and die. To break his barrier...” 

Lela listens to Eden intently, but she glares at him with doubts. Understandably, of course. This is a matter of life and death, after all.

{...For the offerings, I shall give you a part of my soul. Let the macabre feast begin!} Lord Shar has finally finished his chant. Eden and his friends see this and take out their weapons, ready to fight. Astraka also finally pulls out the oak staff hanging from his back. 

{Ultimate: Everlasting death} Lord Shar shouts.

“Agh!” Suddenly, Lord Shar screams in agony.

From his wide opened mouth, a white ghost escapes out. It has no physical substances, thin like a staff, only has a horrid face resembling Lord Shar at the top, and as white as it can be. That is indeed a part of Lord Shar’s soul.

“Aghhh!” The ghost wails as it quickly leaves the necromancer and dives straight into the ground and disappears.

Suddenly, the four piles of bones from the Undead that Fingers just defeated, begin to break apart into multiple pieces. From each of those pieces, bones and flesh begin to form around it with astonishing speed. Before they know it, in front of these suicidal Bounty Hunters are dozens of Undead, exactly like the ones they just killed. 

“Alright, we need to cut through them. Let’s go!” Eden shouts and charges at the horde of Undead. His teammates quickly follow him.

With his shield up front, Eden slams into the Undead knight right in front of him with the force of a charging bull. The collision sends that rotten meat bag falling to the ground, pushing another Undead replica right behind down as well, as a bonus. Eden wastes no time and steps on their bodies to get through them, ignoring them entirely. His gaze is at Lord Shar, the Undead horde he just summoned is not Eden’s priority right now. 

An Undead rogue quickly steps in between Eden’s path, trying to buy time for his master. Eden reacts by raising his sword high, ready to s***h the monster, and it is ready to take the hit. But suddenly, Eden flips his wrist mid-swing and hits the Undead on the cheek with his sword pommel instead, sending it flying out of the way, but still living. 

Behind Eden, his teammates match his speed while protecting him from the rear. Astraka casts simple electric spells from his staff without chanting, hurling them at one Undead after the other. Nara chants as she goes, buffing her team one after the other to counter the effects of the Undead. Lela runs near Astraka and Nara while keeping an eye on them. As soon as any Undead approaches or attacks her backlines, she would intervene with her trusty dagger that can deflect even magic rays and arrows.

Harmani follows closely behind Eden. Seeing his friend slamming two Undead knights to the ground, Harmani quickly makes use of this moment and punches them as hard as possible in the face with his hands, hoping to finish them off. His punches are so powerful, he sends their heads flying.      

“Harmani, no!” Astraka shouts the moment he sees what his nephew just did, but it was too late. 

Harmani is about to move on to the next Undead when he hears sizzling noises coming from the four body parts he just created. The two heads quickly form bodies of their own, while the two bodies start regrowing their heads. Within a blink of an eye, there are now four full-strength Undead knights in front of Harmani, much to his horror.

There are a few common knowledge all adventurers and monster hunters need to know before facing their enemies. Like how you never cut off the head of a hydra because two heads will grow back; like how you always bring fire and acid to fight a troll; like how you never, EVER, chase after retreating goblins into any unknown places because most of the time it’s a trap (especially female combatants, no joke, I have seen some… disturbing stuff). When fighting a necromancer, you don’t kill an Undead summoned by an Ultimate. Killing one will spread curse magic into multiple parts, forming multiple more summons. 

The best way to deal with these summons is to kill, or at least chase away, their master. Other than that, incapacitating the summoned Undead, but not killing them. On the bright side though, the Undead, mindless as they are, have a very strong desire to live, so their master cannot command them to kill themselves or one another, otherwise many nations would have collapsed overnight already. 

One of the newly formed Undead knights swings her mace at Harmani while he is still shocked. Luckily, Lela lunges forward and pulls him out of the way just before the hit lands. She pushes Harmani back to Nara and Astraka.

“Watch and learn, kiddo,” Lela addresses Harmani and turns her attention to the four Undead knights in front of her. 

One of the knights charges at Lela straight away, while she just stands there, ready to counter. As soon as the knight gets close enough, Lela makes a jump and swings her legs backward. Her feet move in a clockwise circle, with her torso as the center. With that circle kick, Lela’s ankle hits the knight hard in the head, but not hard enough to kill her. Such amazing control of power! That kick faceplants the knight into the ground. Lela lifts her right leg up high and gives the knight another downward kick in the head, making sure she will not get up in a while. 

With the first one taken care of, Lela takes out her dagger and charges at the other three knights. They react quickly by charging back at her. This time she doesn’t hold back, Lela deftly dodges their attacks by slicing through their arms and legs, limb by limb, like a hot knife through butter. Lela is surprised she can pull this off herself, but she quickly adjusts to this strategy after realizing how weak they are compared to her. Now, before Lela are three harmless and limbless Undead knights. Such a pitiful sight for someone who used to be so powerful and admirable. 

“You know what to do now?” Lela turns back to Harmani and asks, who is looking at her in astonishment.

“I-I think I get it now, thanks Lela,” Harmani nods back at her, trying to compose himself.

“U-uhm, guys? This is not good, what should we do?” Nara suddenly says. 

“Nara, honey. I love you, but you gotta let me have my moment once in a whi-” Lela says while turning her attention towards what Nara is looking at. She stops between her tracks, her face is horrified when she sees the Undead are... 

...killing each other?

Okay, ignore everything I said about Undead. Apparently, rules don't apply to Legendaries.