I could sense the movement outside the barrier getting more intense as a significant part of the Undead Forces started focusing on my little ‘rebellion’ rather than the ongoing siege.
I was confident in meeting their charge, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t turn my nose down to some extra insurance. After a quick calculation, I started feeding my Stats with more Divine Spark, and soon, I felt the familiar and welcome burst of energy filling my body and soul.
{-6083 Purified Spark}
{+3 Strength}
{+3 Precision}
{+3 Agility}
{+3 Speed}
{+3 Perception}
{+3 Intelligence}
{+3 Wisdom}
And, as an added benefit, the improvements helped me to handle the technique I had used prematurely, finally feeling like I could cut loose without risking the destruction of my soul. The improvement wasn’t as intense as the Endurance, but under the circumstances, it was still welcome.
This time, I needed to give an explosive display.
And, while the state of the Aether dimension, slowly filling to the brim with Necrotic mana, was horrible news, it did give an excuse about how a previously unknown lich among them could explode with such explosiveness.
I wanted to leverage the opportunity as much as possible, displaying greater competence than the other necromancers to destroy them, and then hopefully writing it off as some kind of accidental display of capability.
Just to make it more convincing, I started building a horrible, butchered version of a teleportation ward, one that would just create a temporary breach between Aether and Physical planes, one that would flood this side with intense Necrotic mana.
Of course, there was a reason most didn’t do such a silly thing, because aether particles that weren’t broken down into mana were very dangerous. There were ways of pushing them back to Aether Dimension, but it was enough to occupy a qualified mage for a decent time.
A rather explosive method, but considering I could even deal with Primordial Aether, hardly a scary proposition.
Soon, I turned my attention toward the next stage, and started transforming the wards, which were already buckling under the constant attacks of the elite. “Oh, they are strong,” I murmured as I took note of the intensity of the attacks, glad that I didn’t confront them directly.
Their empowered state was no joke. Even with the God Forest constantly filling me with mana, I doubted that I could win against them.
That made me change my mind about the nature of the attack. It might have been a bit more suspicious than I preferred, but I started using my crafting to create a huge number of earthen arrows, easily shattered, each holding a small flicker of light mana combined with Proto-HP inside.
Despite its low mana requirement, I wasn’t able to create a lot, as the little amount of Light Spark I had showed its limits even with the perfectly purified mana I was feeding to quicken the process. I barely managed to concoct a hundred of them before the wards finally reached their limits.
The moment the first ward shattered, it triggered an explosive reaction that spread through the undead forces, and I used the chaos to target several stronger death knights among them, hoping that it would slow them enough, while their relative lack of magical capability would cause them to miss the trick.
I wasn’t afraid of the liches noticing my trick, not from a distance while all that chaos was going on. In this particular case, the influx of necrotic mana actually worked against them, easily destroying the light mana before they could start assessing the reason for their death knights’ intense injuries.
Of course, they rushed forward, racing to destroy me before taking back all the Divine Spark crystals I had gathered, unaware that they had been long absorbed and turned into my stats.
There, the second part of my plan started. I triggered the ward I had prepared, and the wall between Aether and Physical weakened, a veritable flood of Necrotic mana and unbroken Aether hitting the arena.
The telltale sign of a suicide attack. The fastest ones found themself in the Aether dimension, before I could even steal their Divine Spark. I used the opportunity to change my disguise and teleport.
Just like that, I was in the middle of the undead horde … while they were blinded by the necrotic mana. The intensity of Necrotic mana was supposed to help them, but such an intense amount was enough to blind them.
I set up a ward around myself to protect myself, then I started dashing among them, a huge sword of necrotic energy in my hand, every swing taking down a death knight or a lich.
Of course, there was no way pure necrotic mana could kill them easily. It was just a bridge for me to hide the flow of Tantric mana, rapidly draining their Spark for my purposes, the numbers rising more and more.
With their own spark and the crystals they had carried with them, it was an incredible harvest.
{+2040 Purified Spark}
{+3153 Nature Spark, God Forest}
Not a bad harvest, and it was just starting. As more and more leaders among the undead fell, it left their horde without a controller, and the flood of necrotic energy didn’t make things any easier — especially with occasional Aether particles preventing them from making easy use of that mess.
I was about to continue making use of the chaos, when a bone dragon rushed forward toward us from the back of the line, already casting spells, and the breach I had created started to close down.
A familiar face, I realized — well, metaphorically, as liches hardly had any identifying features in their actual faces.
It was the lich I had seen when I first arrived, the one that had closed the breach at the outer wards. The speed at the breach closed despite the pressure off the flow showed that he was not a weakling. Ordinarily, the smart thing was to pull back and disappear while the strong lich dealt with the troublesome breach.
Unfortunately, his appearance meant that he would soon join the main attack, and considering I was the one that was handling the defense until Seldanna could wake up from her Apothesis, it was better to deal with him.
The question was, how.
I thought about challenging him as another lich, an extension of my current ploy, but after some consideration, I removed that. It was believable to have a rogue, overlooked lich could make an arrogant move to kill the rest, but there were limits to his abilities.
I had already faked the death of a lich, and if I appeared again, not only I would reveal the death was fake, but also I would have burst with enough power to overcome a top-tier lich.
Especially since I didn’t know I could actually take him down while acting as a lich. Using necrotic mana was not a simple thing. Even now, I could feel the strain of the cursed effect of wielding the energy anathema to life, and that was only when I used it for effects of trickery.
Facing a strong lich in a direct duel was not a challenge I was confident while restricting myself to necromancy.
Especially that, against a competent caster, I couldn’t easily slip tricks like my disguised light arrows. He would notice that immediately. And, a necromancer that could use the light magic was too much of a curiosity, possibly enough to inform the Eternals — especially if the extent of their cooperation was as intense as I suspected — ruining all the effort I had put into disguising myself.
Luckily, that was not my only option. I didn’t need to stay limited to necrotic magic … not with the convenient presence of a huge avatar. I focused on my connection with the God Forest, which had been recently beefed up by our connection.
As I tried to indirectly cast a complicated spell, another death knight attacked me at the same time with three skeletons, realizing that the ward around me marked me as a point of suspicion — that, or trying to score some easy Divine Spark in the chaos. I absentmindedly dodged it and counter-attacked, my retaliation dealing with him.
{+33 Purified Spark}
Not a huge reward, but better than nothing.
Before another death knight could notice me, a huge root suddenly burst out of the ground, and a huge flower exploded from its center, spreading hundreds of seeds, and the moment they touched the ground, they started turning into a small horde of treants, attacking against the horde.
The god forest had supplied them with a great amount of nature mana, but with every inch of air filled with necrotic mana, that would be only enough to keep them alive for a few moments.
Not that I cared as I stepped on top of the root and changed my disguise once more, once again donning the outlook of the nature god.
After all, what was absurd about an actual god taking down a lich, no matter how strong.
{Strength: 19 Charisma: 22
Precision: 19 Perception: 19
Agility: 19 Manipulation: 22
Speed: 19 Intelligence: 19
Endurance: 24 Wisdom: 19}
{Purified Divine Spark: 2465}
{Pseudo-HP: 5800 Mana: 15000}
{ADDITIONAL SPARKS
Light - Chosen 7.4
Necrotic - Chosen 99
Nature - Chosen 10}
{MINIONS
Guardian God Forest - 26458}
Elven Priestess - XXXX}
[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]