Another undead unleashed a ring of fire that forced his opponents to step back and used that opening to lunge at Quylla. Friya pushed her away in the nick of time, taking the hit in her stead.
The longsword pierced her chest until the hilt struck her bosom and produced a silvery sound when hitting the Orichalcum of her boosted Skinwalker armor.
A less skilled opponent would have rejoiced to see the blade protruding from her back in its full length, but the Mage Slayer shivered in fear instead.
It had been too easy.
The lunge had encountered no resistance passing through the Orichalcum, flesh, and bones. It didn’t make sense, especially the fact that not a single inch of the blade was covered in blood nor inside her body.
The undead knew his weapon like the back of his hand and couldn’t miss that too many things didn’t add up. He tried to pull the blade out, but it was too late. The dimensional fissure created in front of Friya that led to her back closed, breaking the weapon in half.
The Mage Slayer shrieked in pain as he used all of his might to regenerate the blade before it was too late. His efforts made the heart brim with mana, revealing its position and allowing Friya to turn the undead into ashes with a flick of her rapier.
“That’s one.” Friya bolted forward while the golden sparkles of Dimensional Ruler coated her weapon.
She unleashed a volley of Plague Arrows, uncaring of the mage soldiers that the undead used to cover her line of fire like meat shields.
The Mage Slayers shrugged and performed the sword movements required to conjure a fireball. The explosion would hurt their companions since feeding upon undead magic was akin to poison, but they couldn’t let her get close.
Suddenly the Plague Arrows and the soldiers Switched, forcing the Mage Slayers to focus on dodging them or becoming swiss cheese.
Friya Blinked between two of them, knowing that her own mana couldn’t hurt her.
“Two and three.” She slashed at her enemies who instinctively blocked, only for the golden aura surrounding the rapier to cut the space and leave an unstable fissure in front of them.
The explosion hit them from the front and the Arrows from behind, while Friya Blinked back beside Quylla, unscathed. Dimensional Ruler was mana expensive, but as long as it was active, all of her dimensional spells had no casting time.
The Mage Slayer that was about to attack Quylla stopped abruptly and focused on Friya so much that she didn’t notice Quylla’s silver string hitting her blade until it was too late.
The other Mage Slayers didn’t like how things were going and since the Prospectors had already revealed the secret of their blades through the communication amulets, the undead considered the battle to be lost.
The Mage Slayers tapped the walls with the hilt of their weapons, signaling their allies to come and rescue them. The Ghouls arrived, but not the way the Mage Slayers were expecting.
While weaving the Life Sensing array, the world in front of Phloria’s eyes had changed. Everything had turned into shades of grey, even the sky. The only colors she could see came from her own equipment, her soldiers, and some humanoid blots in the stone wall in front of her.
“Fire at will!” Phloria said after using first magic to imitate the effects of the array and marking the enemies’ position with wisps of light.
She stabbed at the closest enemy with her estoc, piercing through the solid rock as if it was paper and unleashing the spells stored within the Reaver.
Orion had enchanted her estoc with the ability to hold spells on its own. Reaver relieved Phloria from the mental burden of keeping several spells at the ready required and prevented them from fading in the case she lost her focus.
Unlike a magic holding ring, the estoc couldn’t hold spells indefinitely, but only for a short while. Yet battles would rarely last long and having the temporary equivalent of several magic holding rings of all tiers had countless applications.
The good thing about hiding inside the ground was that it concealed the Ghouls from sight and no normal weapon nor element could affect them. On the other hand, however, once they were discovered, they were sitting ducks.
Swimming through the ground made them slow compared to someone that could walk or run and also made them extremely vulnerable to earth magic. Phloria’s Reaver made the rock surrounding one of the Ghouls implode on him, killing him on the spot.
The soldiers followed her lead, using earth magic wands to smoke out the other Ghouls and shatter their bodies. The broken forms of the shocked undead crawled like worms, trying to buy enough time to heal.
A Ghoul’s regenerative abilities were on par with trolls, allowing their injuries to mend a split second after they were opened. On top of that, Ghouls could use the darkness element in its true magic form like most undead and the earth element due to their natural affinity with it.
Fake or true, however, all spells needed to be cast. The undead had at the ready only support spells and the means for sneak attacks since they were supposed to be invisible.
The sudden turn of events left them with nothing but their unnatural physical prowess and first magic. The former wasn’t worth much due to their multiple fractures while the latter couldn’t do much against the powerful tier three darkness spells stored inside the Alchemical tools.
“Seal earth magic and none of them will escape!” Phloria ordered the Prospectors that were doing their best to not get in the way of the reinforcements and to support them however they could.
The Prospectors nodded and started to chant in unison, greatly shortening the array’s casting time. Phloria smirked seeing the panicked expression on the Mage Slayers’ faces as they realized they were on a ticking clock.
To make matters worse for them, without the Ghouls using their willpower to block all forms of earth magic from inside the caves, the Prospectors were now free to use simple spells to open holes into the ceiling and the walls to let the sunlight in.
It created safe areas where the undead couldn’t step in and greatly limited their movements.
Phloria ignored the weak darkness spell the hapless Ghoul threw at her, letting it crash against her armor, and pierced his chest with the Reaver, unleashing a darkness blast that turned it into ashes.
The limbs and the head were still alive, a clear sign that she had missed the heart, allowing the Ghoul to regenerate the missing torso at a speed visible at the naked eye.
“I suck at lotteries.” Phloria used a simple air spell to send the five body parts rolling on a sunny area, where they caught fire as if she had thrown them inside a furnace.
By the time the Ghoul was burned to cinders, however, the others had already recuperated and were now fighting side by side with the Mage Slayers.
An undead swordmaster lunged at Phloria to keep her from casting any more spells and put her on the defense. He was shocked by the strength with which she easily parried the attack, changing the path of the blade and ruining the spell he had been weaving to complement the follow-up.
