Polymath Redux

Chapter 26//Assault on Drakenholdt (3)

‘Irina Sinclair’, she was the princess of the Golden Dragon tribe, and was said to be an exemplar of what it meant to be a golden dragon. Though she was the offspring of the result of the alliance with the Red Dragon tribe, her heart was firmly of Gold. Above all else, she believed wholeheartedly in the notion of Dragon supremacy. There was no race that was greater and stronger, so it was up to them to lead the world. Everything she did was for the sake of that mission; once she took the golden throne, she would thrust her plans into motion even at her father’s protest.

Receiving the message that an unusual undead walked into their territory and killed draconian soldiers, she flew out of the palace to engage. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she was livid. ‘Killed by undead?!’ she wanted to scream at the incompetent fools who let themselves be killed by a mere undead. It took her no more than ten minutes to reach the outer outpost where the incident was said to have taken place. There, she saw a mountain of draconian corpses along with one she immediately recognized.

“Shuri!” she shouted as she slammed onto the ground and rushed to her friend’s body. She wanted to believe it was a lie. There was no way someone of Shuri’s capabilities could’ve been killed by the undead. She was one of her most talented subordinates! However, the moment she touched her cold, unmoving body she realized it was all real. “How…?”

While she was mourning the loss of her friend, her keen sense alerted her to an oncoming attack. She dodged just in time as a sinister black beam rushed past her and punctured a large hole in the outpost’s wall. She quickly turned back to see the undead that was mentioned in the reports. A daunting black figure with hazy emerald flames behind its hollow sockets. Its armour was sturdier and of better quality than the ones issued to most draconian guards. Even then, it was a little too unreasonable to think this single undead took out so many draconians on its own. However, her eyes told no lies, and she had to swallow it as truth.

It didn’t wait for her to get a proper grasp of the situation and immediately attacked again. Another black beam shot out towards her, but she elegantly manoeuvred around and closed the distance between them. She quickly drew the sword from her waist without making a single sound whilst simultaneously enchanting the edge of her blade with an advanced tier ‘blade sharpening’ enchantment. She dodged a few more attacks from the black skeleton and when she found the opportunity, she cleanly decapitated its hideous skull from its shoulders.

She took a glance at her sword. “Hmm,” even after all that there was a small chip in her blade. However, she couldn’t dwell on that issue anymore as she heard the cries of her fellow draconian soldiers in the distance. Sheathing her sword, she rushed towards the origin of the distress.

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It was a roaring, thunderous march made in impossibly perfect unison. With every step the ground was made to submit and tremble in awe. Lines and lines- legions- of black skeletal soldiers stormed through the Drakenholdt front with very little difficulties. Unlike conventional armies the skeletons required no rest, only to march ever forwards onto the enemy as everything around them died from their influence. Trees were made deciduous and eventually petrified, centuries old boulders crumbled into sand and the very air became noxious.

Drakenholdt was already known too many as a harsh climate, but these sun-bleached mountainsides were now stained in an inerasable black. ‘Death’ was too kind a word for what these skeletons did; everything was ‘rotting’.

Commanding this vast army of the dead from the skies, upon an ornate black stone throne, was a little girl who looked onto them in puzzlement. There was something she wanted to say about these dark figures ominous glowing with an emerald flame. “Hmm, wait, didn’t he say something about not choosing green for their soul colouration?” It was a minor detail, but their summoners could determine the hue of the souls of the undead- provided the summoner was of an adequate level as it took more mana to set this configuration. Of course, there was no real benefit from doing this aside from an aesthetic one, and the default red wasn’t bad either. Yet, Morialia chose green just to spite her master when he said not to do exactly that. “I think it had to do with copyright? Whatever that is… oh, and war hammers? Seriously, half the things that comes out of his mouth is so cryptic. Ah, I should’ve gone with metal skeletons too, shouldn’t I?”

If there was one thing about leading an army, it was that they were, “so slow!” Morialia complained as she collapsed onto her throne and let out a long sigh. ‘How much longer until the fighting starts?’ she wondered to herself. Sending a few individual skeletons forward took little time but to move an entire mass of black skeletons was a tedious task. It wasn’t difficult, just long and boring. “You know what? You guys just get there when you can, I’ll go ahead,” she told her skeleton legion, though they weren’t intelligent enough to identify that kind of sarcastic order.

“Though, I admit, he was totally right about the chair thing,” she giggled to herself as she laid back on her throne. It was an evil-looking, ornate black stone throne encrusted with many precious metals and jewellery- exactly her cup of tea. The chair itself possessed an auto-flight feature and she only needed add a small amount of mana and direction to propel it, but it was much easier and more comfortable than utilizing her own flight spells. “All evil monarchs need a flying chair. Right, he said something to that effect too, didn’t he? Something about a ‘fridge’? No, that wasn’t it… ‘cooler’? No… that doesn’t sound right either,” she dug her brain but couldn’t come up with a suitable answer until she arrived at the front gates of the City of Drakenholdt.

“Halt!” someone called out. Looking down, there were several dozen armed soldiers preparing for war and even more were converging on their location. Morialia had little information on these ‘draconians’, safe for the fact that they’d bleed the same as those humans they were so terribly fond of looking down on. It was rather amusing; from her distance in the air they looked just like humans, perhaps with extra parts like horns and whatnot, but still generally the same shape.

“Hmm,” she met the eyes of the supposed leader of this gathering force. He was well-built, tall and confidence with a nice, chiselled jawline. Yet, despite how many years must’ve gone into crafting his body into the perfect soldier, these draconians were weak enough to be outdone by a single black skeleton scout. Even the weakest minions she had under her employ in her previous world could at least take out a dozen black skeletons before going down. Sudden doubts filled her head: even as cannon fodder, did she need them?

“Who are you?! You do not have permission to enter Drakenholdt!” he continued to shout, but she only observed them silently from the sky.

“Hey! Are you listening?! Come down here!” the guardsman yelled at her once more while gesturing his fletchers to take aim. “I will give you until the count of ten. If you refuse to cooperate, I will be forced to take you down with force!”

No response. Morialia merely continued to study them.

“One… Two…” the guardsman started to count.

“Oh!” Morialia jumped up. “It was Fr**za! Right, that’s the one that used flying chairs!” she inexplicably spouted out gibberish and happily breathed out an epic sigh of relief as if a major burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

The draconians, however, took this as an attempt on her part to fight back and immediately ordered to shoot her floating throne down. “Take her down!” A volley of missile flew straight for her with deadly accuracy. Had it been a normal opponent they would’ve been riddled with holes, but unfortunately for them, this was the Demon Lord. With an unconcerned look, Morialia waved her hand and summoned three great and aureate decorated mirrors that protected her from all angles the missiles were flying at her from. The Grandmaster tier Holy Magic: ‘Heavenly Mirror’. It was an unfair spell that absorbed all incoming projectiles and reflected them back to the attackers at 300% effectiveness. Those arrows flew into the mirror without resistance and disappeared for a brief moment.

“W- what?”

“What was that? What’s she doing?” the guardsman asked around but knew better than to stand around with a blank expression. He ordered his soldiers around so the shield bearers would come to the front row and defend them from whatever was obviously going to come. It was as he expected, but he had underestimated the potency of what exactly would come. The arrows shot out of the mirror as though they were fired from a rifle and pierced through the thick shields and plated armours of the draconian soldiers, killing them almost instantly- if not badly wounding them. Hearts were pierced, heads were blown off and limbs were detached with great and visceral gore.

The moans of wounded were ghastlier than those of the shambling dead.

“Hmm? Wait, what happened, I wasn’t paying attention… huh?!” a searing burst of white lightning zapped at her, tearing a small chunk off her black throne. These kinds of magical attacks were not technically classified as projectile attacks and therefore could not be absorbed by the mirror. Being caught off guard she had to rely on her innate magical defences. The result of the continuous series of lightning strikes was a bit of her front hair being charred off. “What the hell man?!” she retorted angrily.

“M- Monster! Shoot! Shoot! Kill that monster!” the guardsman ordered his men. They were at least smart enough to switch from projectile missiles to magic attacks. A combined barrage of fire and lightning gathered at her location, however she erected a Master tier Holy Barrier in time to block all their efforts.

When the draconians saw that none of their attacks were working, they ceased and gazed at her with awe. Morialia, on the other hand, had different ideas and crashed her black throne right atop of the draconian leader; like crushing an ant with a rock.

Splat.

With a gruesome splatter of blood and guts smeared across her black throne, she did as they initially asked and came down to their level. Onlookers immediately went pale seeing their commanding officer be taken out like a bug. This misfortune for the draconians did not stop there. Morialia motioned her hands and hundreds black orbs floated out from the ground and fixed themselves in the air: Grandmaster tier Necromancy, ‘Black Needle’. The black spheres morphed into tiny needle-like objects and, at the flick of a finger, blasted all over the soldiers like a shotgun blast.

A rain of blood splashed all over. People were torn apart in the most gruesome way imaginable; skeletons exposed, head cracked open, organs flailing out in the open. And Morialia was enjoying every moment of it. A smile etched over her face as she took int a deep breath of the air smelling faintly of rusted metal. She snapped her fingers again, and this time the corpses contorted and moved erratically before forming into black skeleton soldiers. The survivors, or what was left of them, tried to crawl away but could only scream aloud when they noticed half their body was missing from the initial attack.

She no longer cared about the dragons. They were far too weak to be of any use, and their corpses were better utilized as stronger, permanent black skeletons. Though, there was still a part of her that was reluctant to kill all of them. Perhaps she’d only wipe out about 40% and have the remaining ones as servants.

“Well then, let the war games begin.”