Revenge of the Sorcerer King 3 - 22

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Chapter 22

Alessa

Setting Jade down carefully, I called for some of my vampires. It took only a few seconds before they appeared from the shadows, completely covered in blood. They were doing their part to end this quickly. Oberon had already stated that he didn’t care for prisoners.
Down on the ground, that was made evident by the amount of screaming emanating from the city. I could almost picture it as zombies, skeletons, death knights, undead mages, and many more made their way without mercy through the city. It also struck home more how little I cared than the fact that I didn’t care for them at all. It looked like I was firmly on the side of evil at this point.
I tossed those thoughts aside and checked Jade. Her injuries weren’t anything compared to the ones I’d inflicted on her the other day. She was just in shock from the foreign mana flowing through her veins. Once her body got rid of it, she would be fine.
“Take her out of the city. The mages have finally got their shit together.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
I closed my eyes and sent my mind out. All my girls were in one piece. Only a few had received injuries, and those were mainly from their own foolish actions. The outer districts of the city had been captured by this point, but it looked like the loss of their leadership has been taken care of. Oberon removed the palace, but someone must have enough reputation to take control of the remaining forces in the city to have organized them.
I quickly sent a message to my girls that they must have a member that can use magic in their group. With the mages back in play, this night would get much harder. If they regrouped with the churches, we might even be pushed back.
Almost as if response to my thought, a pillar of darkness rose from the outskirts of the town before it fell, quite literally cutting the city in half. Any thing not undead or of the dark in its path started to wither and die while the undead grew stronger. I shook my head at the ridiculousness of Oberon’s power. Was there no limit to it?
I flexed my wings then with a burst of strength, I took off aiming for the source of the spell that nearly took Jade out. After all the devastation I’d caused earlier, my mana pool was over half depleted, but I quickly solved that by diving and snatching a person up in my talons. With a toss, I threw them into my beck and drained them of their blood before dropping them back to the surface.
Another blast came flying at me, but I was ready and dodged the spell. Locking onto the target, I angled and flew with malice on my wings. A group of men and women stood on the roof of a tall building and were throwing spells across the city. A device appeared to be pulling mana from somewhere nearby to power their consistent high level spells.
I channeled my mana and created several dozen magic missiles that were coated in my black flames. The projectiles exploded against a barrier that formed around them, but with the improvements that Oberon had taught me, they began to drill through the barrier. I aimed for a section that was cracking from my missiles and slammed into it with my talons.
It almost sounded like shattering glass as I broke through it and landed in the center of the group. My wingspan nearly the same size as the top of the building. Spells landed on me left and right, but barely left a mark as I swiped and pecked. By beck large enough to engulf a person completely.
“Its just a magical beast! Take it down!” an older man shouted gesturing at me angrily.
I swung around and ripped a man into three pieces with my talons coating everyone nearby in blood. A few more spells slammed into me, but I barely felt their impacts let alone any pain from them.
“Everything is just bouncing off it!” A young man shouted over the screams of his dying compatriots. With each move I made, someone died after all.
“We need more mana! Ah!” The old man shouted just as I sliced him in half. I drank his blood and allowed my mana to recover. Not that I’d used much of it.
A lance made from light burst through my wing, actually injuring me for the first time. Of the group of nearly forty mages, only about ten remained. A woman laid on her back with her hand pointing at me still trailing holy mana from using the spell. I turned and walked over to her as horror filled her eyes.
I grabbed her with my talons then tossed her into my mouth. Her screams died as she reached my stomach. Got to love my giant monster transformations. I suddenly felt a hunger awaken and narrowed my eyes. I could feel… something inside me trying to take the riengs from me.
“Back off! This is my body!” I growled flaring my mana. The presence shrank back but I could still feel it there. Just waiting for its chance. I thoroughly ignored it turning back to the fight happening outside my body, but found that the roof was a sea of flames. Thinking back, when I flared my mana the flames that made up my body burst out as well.
I shook my head then looked over the device. Oberon said that he had destroyed all the linked lay-line arrays so it shouldn’t be that. That didn’t mean they couldn’t rig something up in time for the attack. Looking the scorched device over, I found a link heading down into the building. I dismissed my transformation then found the stairs heading down into the building.

Oberon

Fulfilling the role of commander and lich, I stood at the rear of the battle and constantly sent commands and enchantments to the undead throughout the battlefield. I spent a fair chunk of mana to enable Helena to fight the church magics. Before, the holy magic would burn her body horribly even with how high level she was, now she stood on even ground.
I was also taking this chance to practice a bit more of necromancy spells. While much of it revolves around raising a dead body, I could use it to reinforce undead as well. Then I could completely change the goal of the spell and use it to turn living people into not so living people.
“The battle is going well,” Lenora commented and I nodded.
“We should be done before sun rise. Xeria is doing some good work.”
It wouldn’t be good for her level to fall behind, with Lenora and Yunio here, I didn’t have to worry about my safety. Even without them, I likely didn’t have to worry about my safety. Still, I would rather protect myself from all manner of threats this time around. Rather than the battlefield, it was in my council chambers that the threat was greatest. That was what I learned in my last life.
“I wish I could help master,” Maya said looking at the burning city with real envy in her eyes.
“Maybe when you’re older,” I replied with a chuckle. “For now, we’ll let the ones that need to make themselves useful to me, deal with it.”
“If master says so,” she said with a sigh.
I shook my head looking at girl but turned back to the battle. I estimated roughly eighty percent of the city’s population had been eliminated with over half the city itself being reduced to little more than rubble. My undead were already working through the remaining last stands that dotted the city while Helena and my Icon were dealing with the churches.
Alessa had encountered a group of mages but had crushed them without aid. A battle shouldn’t be so overwhelmingly in the fair of one side. I felt something was bound to happen, but with the initial leadership crushed by my Grand magic, they just never had a chance to fight back.
While we watched, I spotted Ted and Irgire walking over to us. “The rest of the world will know after this,” Ted said once they reached us.
“Good. I don’t like hiding anyways,” I replied. Before I wanted to wait until I gathered my strength, but after this battle, I knew I was able to hold my own in this changed world. Better even, given the knowledge I possessed from before. It didn’t matter who knew I was back, this time I was sure I could make the world mine.
The next few hours passed almost sluggishly, as I was getting bored. That was until Alessa sent me a message. She wanted me to see something in the city. From her mental tone, I knew it would be worth the trip. What had the mortals done this time that she uncovered?
“Rachel, watch Maya. I’ll be back soon. Lenora, Yunio, with me.”
The two women moved next to me and I grabbed their shoulders before teleporting us as close as I could to Alessa’s location. The echoed screams that I was barely hearing on the outskirts of the city went up several degrees in volume, while the smell of blood, death, and flames whafted around us. I found that I quite enjoyed it.
I focused on my mental link with Alessa and followed it to a large building. While the top half of it was destroyed, seemingly from some powerful flames, likely the girl’s, the rest of the building was intact. I blasted the door open and made my way inside. Blood and gore covered all the walls, as it appeared Alessa took care of the inhabitants already.
While we made our way through the building, I started sensing a strange mana fluctuation in the air. It was so rough, that it took me a moment to realize it was mana conduit. A type of magic that allowed the transfer of the energy from one place to another. This was the first time since my return that I had found one outside of Fallen Haven. Needless to say, my curiosity was peaked.
A wall exploded outward and Alessa stepped through the debris. “Over here.”
“I must say you certainly did a number on the place.”
“It wasn’t me. You think I would waste all that nice blood.”
“Now that you mention it. Was it infighting?”
“Something like that. They were all dead by the time I got this far.”
I knelt next to the nearest body and looked it over with all my senses. After studying it for a while, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. “If I’m not looking at this wrong, these people exploded from their own mana.”
“Is that possible?” Alessa asked. “I thought a denotated pool caused much more destruction than this.”
“Certainly, unless its nearly empty.” I stood up, since I don’t have enough information to go on, it would be pointless to look at it any longer.
“Okay. Follow me, that might make more sense than.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but followed along. She brought us to the center of the building where a large construct stood. Metal with magical sigils and runes engraved where placed around a sphere of glass that contained even more engravings. It was quite the find and made my desire for magical knowledge shiver to find out what this does.
“What do we have here,” I mumbled walking around the structure.
“This the main body of the device. There is a metal rod that extends most of the height of the building.”
“Taking into consideration the mana conduits throughout the building and the exploded bodies, I’d wager this is some sort of mana distribution machine. A high level mage could use the mana of hundreds of low levels to make a stand against a overwhelming threat.”
“Like us?”
I grinned and nodded. “Like us. Something appears to have caused it to go into a feedback loop. However, since a large portion of the low-level mages were already empty, the overall power was only enough to cause the bodies to explode.”
“Maybe it was my battle on the roof. I did cause the mages up there to die rather violently.”
“That is as good a reason as any.” I placed a hand on the device and admired it. Someone had truly put their best foot forward to create this. Even if Alessa had crushed it singlehandedly. It showed that someone had tried to finally push the boundary of the magic that was taught by the system.
“What do you want to do with it?” Alessa asked tapping it with a knuckle. “If this got into the hands of someone a bit more powerful, it could be a very real threat to us.”
“You’re right. I will dismantle it before we head to the Wandering dungeon.” This device could open a lot of doors for me. One of the drawbacks of mercy was that the lay-lines were like rivers. There were areas in the world that were dry. There might still be mana in the air, but for the most part you had to rely on your own reserves. Heaven and Hell were such places.
“Couldn’t we just destroy it?”
“I don’t blame you for thinking short term,” I said with a chuckle. “But, this little beauty is going to make a lot of people mad in the future.”
“If you say so. I’m going to head back out. There are still a few pockets of resistance remaining.”
I barely nodded as I studied the device. “Have fun.”

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