Chapter 59 (Patreon)

Chapter 59

*BOOM*

The door to her left shattered in a cloud of splintered wood, and the roar of battle could be heard  all around her.

Allie ducked and weaved in the dying light of day, shredding a man in a spray of viscera with a black arc of light from her wand.  Granite exploded amidst a hail of holy lightning smites that fractured the building around her, and dozens of skeletons poured forth through the courtyard to meet a charging horde of men and women wielding maces, baseball bats, shields, guns and swords.

Priests in the backlines frantically healed the frontline warriors of the chapel’s defense, using the powers of their newfound holy book to quickly mend the flesh of their comrades in flashes of white light whenever bone claws and teeth tore at their bodies.

She blurred across the far wall of the outer courtyard and into a side building, her hand tearing through the throat of a woman just when she opened the door.  Blood sprayed across the worn paint and Allie launched herself through another window to hit the ground and roll amidst the spray of bullets, taking one of them to the skull where her bone mask deflected it.

Her hand gestures blurred, producing a spell of black and neon teal death energy that crashed into the bloodstained grass in front of her like a freight train.  Forming rapidly, a spire formed from mana ripped out of the ground - unholy symbols etched into its body that radiated a curse to apply a weakening effect on all living creatures within its zone.  The area around them darkened for hundreds of feet in all directions even despite the sun remaining on the horizon.  The men and women fighting her small army noticeably slowed, already exhausted from the drain of the battle, and the undead began to push forward with more brutality.

Out of the alley between buildings behind her, a series of death balls rocketed overhead and slammed into one of the towers overlooking the courtyard.  Screams were heard from overhead, and the tower began to crumble and crash to the ground while more of the undead poured in.

Allie turned and ran over to where the attacks had come from, seeing her subordinates slowly walking towards her.  There were three of them, all souls she’d saved from Chalgathi’s trials, all loyal to her despite not being her minions.  Rather than that, they were all independent undead that had chosen to serve her for the grace she’d shown them.  And in turn, they all had their own minions to add to Allie’s for this assault.

Each was a low level necromancer just like herself, though instead of being vampires like her - one was a ghoul and two of them were called ‘Skresh’.  Each of them also had a different type of necromancer specialty class, which made their inherent pathways to power a lot different than one would think considering they were all necromancers.

As for what Skresh were:  Skresh were a form of living skeleton, though they certainly weren’t mindless like the creatures charging the compound.  They were also a lot thicker in terms of basic body mass when compared to normal skeletons, and were able to modify their own bodies by collecting new materials that made them rather intimidating to look at.  Undead anatomy was a bit complicated, and there were still rules to abide by if one wanted to maintain stability within one’s undead race.  But because these skresh were just now starting to level up and grow after being trapped in a stasis for so long, they hadn’t had the time or power to incorporate anything other than more reinforcing bones along their basic humanoid skeletons.  Each arm and leg had multiple long bones along their shafts, fused together with death mana, and their eyes would start radiating neon teal light whenever they activating their mana channels.  Instead of a hollow interior underneath the rib cage and along the spine, there were interwoven cords of mana strapping a cage of further reinforced bones onto one another as well.

“Mistress…” the hooded ghoul necromancer by the name of Mara bowed at the waist, followed by the other two hooded and more skeletal figures of Nin and Vin.  “We destroyed the messengers sent for aid, the prophet will likely not know of this attack until the morrow.  I have also stationed some of my raven familiars along the rooftops overlooking the more prominent paths through the city, if prophet does manage to send troops we will see them coming.”

Allie silently nodded, examining the ghoul.  Mara was rather pretty, with long raven hair that trailed down her breasts and a patchwork of stitched flesh that melded together from pieces of females they’d killed that Mara found attractive.  Incorporating them into herself and stabilizing it with necromantic powers, Mara had managed to become quite the beauty - with the exception of her dead, milky eyes.  She’d evolved her necromancer class into something called a ‘Novice Black Summoner.’  It allowed Mara to see into the void that permeated reality around them, and she could bind shadow familiars in place of undead creations or even fuse the two types together to create a shadow-undead hybrid - but fusions cost 3 times the normal minion slot requirement so it was reserved only for the personal guards she created.  Of which, two pitch-black skeletons holding long daggers blended in and out of the shadows of another doorway off to her left.

Allie had actually had this class presented to her as an option as well, though she’d opted to take the ‘Novice Swarm Necromancer’ instead that boosted her up to a staggering 200 ‘basic’ undead minion slots, and 2 ‘captain’ undead minion slots.  The ‘captains’, which she hadn’t successfully created just yet, were supposed to be intelligent and could control the other undead she commanded alongside giving her swarm a command stat buff whenever they were nearby.  However, she’d failed every time when trying to create a ‘captain’ type undead, as it required the soul to remain completely intact while simultaneously controlling them.

Allie’s current minions were all just soul shards, rather than entire souls.  They were merely fragments of the souls they’d once been used to manipulate the skeletons she was sending in waves at the chapel ahead of her, and neither she nor any of the other three necromancers she’d befriended had figured out how to completely control an intact soul yet.

This was also why she’d been unable to save Jose.  The day he’d died, she’d tried to keep his soul here in the physical realm - but it’d slipped through her fingers despite all the power and knowledge she’d acquired.  He’d died bleeding out in her arms as she wept uncontrollably, and she’d vowed vengeance on the people who’d so eagerly cut him down just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For not wanting to accept their bogus new religion.

“Good job on hunting down their messengers.”  Allie gave an approving node as Mara smiled brightly up at her with her milky white eyes.  “Nin?  Vin?  Did you plant the bombs?”

Each of the skeletal skresh cackled delightedly, eagerly nodding with Nin on the right side rubbing his boney hands together.  “It is done!  Time to rake in more bodies and materials for us to use!”

Allie grinned maliciously underneath the skull mask she wore.  Nin and Vin were actually brothers in their past lives who’d ended up learning a bit of necromancy before they’d died, though they’d progressed far further following her than they’d done before their first deaths.  They followed each other’s footsteps and path to power to the T, basically copying one another as long as the system would allow it, and were both a type of necromancer that specialized in plagues.  They were called ‘Novice Deathbringers’, which severely limited the amount of undead they could have but enabled them to imbue their minions with various types of plague resonating with death magic.  One of their abilities, called ‘Corpse Bomb’, allowed them to create zombies with built-in bombs.  They were essentially suicide bombers, and when triggered, they’d blast an area with death mana and simultaneously release a wave of cursed plague that spread many times farther than the actual blast radius did.  It rapidly caused people to decay and necrose, resulting in a painful and horrible death, and would literally peel flesh off of bone.  The plague was contagious as well, though it often killed people far too fast to spread much.

And as of right now, those suicide zombies were positioned along the perimeter of the opposite side of the chapel where more of Allie’s minions stood in hiding.  Now, with the front of the chapel and courtyard under heavy siege, it was time to come in through the back.  They’d piled bodies upon bodies in various positions around the chapel in preparation for the siege and with each new minion cut down by the prophet’s forces, more of them were raised up and sent in.  In total Allie and her three subordinates had collected well over a thousand bodies in nearby buildings along the ruined city, meaning that the chapel defenders - which only numbered in the couple hundred - would each need to do some heavy lifting in order to offset the number disadvantage.

Allie gave an affirmative nod, clasped her hands behind her back, and waited for it to begin.  Within ten seconds a flare of holy light enveloped the chapel, likely a reaction to the subsequent blasts of black and teal mana that rocked the ground she stood on.  Screams from within the chapel echoed out amidst the clatter of weapons and battle within, and the holy shield abruptly shattered when three more blasts ripped through the stone walls on the opposite side.

With a mental command, the shrieks and clattering of undead rose like a hurricane and her minions rushed in through the back of the compound.  With the majority of the defenders at the front end and those akin to civilians in the back, her creations tore through them like a wrecking ball.  The flank had been incorporated spectacularly, and soon the primary fighters would be pinched on two sides.

The battle was over, and Allie had won.

***

The words of warning from Negrada haunted Riven’s sleep that night as he slept in the makeshift bunker he and his two demonic minions had created earlier that week as a safe haven.  It was located in one of the cellars of the ruins, but this would likely be the very last night he slept here.

He’d be hunted just for what he was?

Because he was a vampire now?

Then again, he’d murdered Ben in cold blood without even realizing what he was doing until it was already too late.  His insane hunger and crazed state of mind had led him to literally eat the poor guy in a disgusting act of cruelty, and the knowledge of this was gnawing at Riven’s guilty conscience at a constant rate.

But he couldn’t just avoid human society.  It simply wasn’t an option for him.  Allie, his little sister, and his best friend Jose were both human.  As long as they’d all survived, they’d probably be waiting for him.  The system had told him right before starting Chalgathi’s trials that he’d have the opportunity to make it back to them as long as he survived.  There was no way he could drag them into a den of creatures like himself.

And he wasn’t even going to entertain the thought of how they possibly could have died.  No, that wasn’t an option.  They were alive, and he needed to get back to them soon.

The small rectangular room was devoid of all light, with wreckage from an age past piled in front of the door as he hid in a closet in the back corner with the sack of Jalel’s old belongings being used as a pillow.  He tossed and turned as the howls of demons and undead alike echoed through the ancient hellscape, and even after waking up the next morning he still found himself mentally exhausted with little appreciation for the minimal sleep that he had managed to get.

He stared at the ceiling for a few hours, listening to the echoing cries throughout the city until his minions eventually appeared another 8 hours later after he’d woken up.

“WE WERE WATCHING THE ENTIRE THING FROM THE NETHER REALMS!  THAT WAS SO BRUTAL!!!” Athela squealed with excitement as the arachnid promptly exited her portal from the nether realm and rushed over to his side.  She began violently and excitedly whacking his forehead as he blankly stared back at her, and her giddy, chittering laugh echoed throughout the room as Azmoth stepped through a fiery portal of his own.  “Oh my GAWDDD!!! RIVEN YOU BEAST YOU!!!  Why didn’t you TELL me you had an ancient vampiric bloodline!?  Oh MUR GAWD you’re so buff now too!  And handsome!  Riven, you should have stayed ugly.  Now I’m going to have to fight off all the succubi who want to contact you for a new contract.”