Ep. 397 Captain's War Part 7 (Patreon)

Nived says "You are making a wall of one skulled ettins to slow the rest down!"

"Yeah, or at least I am trying out the idea."

Nived says "That will only slow them down though."

"I know. How is your magic?"

Nived says "I've got a decent amount of mana left. Why?"

"Would it be enough to blast a trench around the town?"

Nived says "No! Not even close!"

"Then what about a trench across the road?"

Nived says "That I can probably do!"

"Okay, run ahead and find the best spot you can. Make the trench as deep and as wide as you can."

Nived says "Got it!"

As he runs off I continue shooting the crossbow, only targeting the ettins that have both skulls. The ettins with only one skull move at about half the speed, so if this works it should take them four hours to reach town. I just have to hope that is enough time for Raindrop to find Zimmy and for them to get back to town.

I continue to slowly back up as I reload and fire again and again until I run out of crossbow bolts. By the time I run out there are almost fifty ettin skeletons that only have one skull. The entire line of ettins has slowed down to half their original speed.

Out of curiosity I move off to the side of the road, but the ettins ignore me and just keep moving forward. Normally the undead would chase after me, the fact that they don't means something is controlling them. So I start running away from town, I want to see if I can find what is controlling them.

It takes me a few minutes, even at a run, to find the back end of the line of ettins. Raindrop was right, there are thousands of these things, this is not going to be easy. An army of undead is always a problem because they don't get tired or scared.

An army under someone's control is even worse, to stand a chance I need to kill the controller. Although the mage knight's diary didn't mention anything about undead, I wonder if I caused this. Have my actions in working against the invasion ahead of time caused the invasion to become stronger?

If so that means the test is adaptive and everything I have done has only made the test harder for myself. If I had just stayed quiet and waited patiently then I could probably have defeated the invading army by myself. Well, too late to worry about it now, I'll just have to deal with things as best as I can.

Ahead I finally spot something that isn't an ettin skeleton, but as I get closer I can see it is living ettins. However, when they spot me they all turn and run away, guess they remember me. Them running away reveals an armored figure on a skeletal horse who I am guessing is the controller.

It ignores the fleeing ettins and turns its attention to me and I can feel its gaze. It turns its skeletal horse off the road and starts charging towards me. As I draw my sword and wait for it to come to me I can see the twin cold blue lights inside the helmet.

Its aura is pure black and at least twice the size of its actual body, probably a death knight. Which means while it might be in control of the army it probably didn't raise the army. So it must be an intelligent servant of whatever created the army, but killing it will still weaken the army.

As it charges at me the death knight draws a greatsword off of its back. Its first swing makes me almost lay down to avoid it, but I still manage to cut the horse's legs out from under it. As the horse crashes down the death knight jumps free, lands on its feet, and turns and slashes.

The entire process is smooth and almost catches me off guard, it is skilled. As I lean back slightly to avoid the slash I can feel a cold burning sensation on my chest. Even though I dodged the slash by a couple of inches I can still feel the power of the sword.

After the miss the sword loops around and comes at me again and again without a break. This is definitely the most skilled opponent I have faced inside the test so far. When I finally bring my sword up and parry a swing instead of dodging my feet slide back a few inches.

While it might not be as strong as I am, the death knight is at least as strong as a bear. It makes me wonder if one day Bones will become this strong. When I finally see an opening and counter attack my sword cuts through the death knight's armor.

It is only when the death knight lets out an unearthly shriek that I remember my sword does extra damage to undead. In the distance I see about twenty of the ettin skeletons stop and turn around. As the death knight swings at me again I see the ettins start running in our direction.

It seems that since I was able to hurt him he now sees me as an opponent that he needs help with. Fighting him and a bunch of ettins at the same time is obviously not a good idea so I start attacking more. Each time I hit him he lets out another shriek which really hurts my ears.

As pieces of its armor fall away I can see that inside is just a human skeleton. That surprises me since with its strength I was expecting it to be a monster not a human. Then again I guess the undead have rules of their own so I can't judge them based on normal rules.

Either way I keep attacking and hacking away at the thing, but I don't manage to kill it before the ettins arrive. Instead of just attacking me they spread out and surround me first. The death knight breaks away from me and moves out of the circle before ordering the ettins to attack me.

Dodging the ettin's attacks isn't too hard but as I do I can see the death knight's armor repairing itself. If it takes me too long to deal with the ettins the death knight will be back to full strength. The main thing that makes the ettins hard to deal with is the fact that I have to jump up to reach their skulls.

By the time I have destroyed half of the ettins the death knight is fully recovered and has even healed its mount. Rather than joining in on the fight it just mounts up and sits watching. It probably plans to wait until I have finished off the ettins, then once I am tired it will attack me again.