Great Archmage of Undead

The Dragon Slaying Halberd scraped across the ground, sending sparks flying. Amid the piercing screech, its spearhead swept upward from the lower right toward the Templar Knight's thigh.

A sharp clang rang out as the Dragon Slaying Halberd left a shallow white mark on the Templar Knight's greaves.

The broad sword gleaming with golden light came slashing down. Allen sidestepped it, then repeated the same move, swinging the Dragon Slaying Halberd upward again.

Just like before, the Templar Knight's crotch was left with a shallow white mark.

The Full Body Armor specially crafted by the Hall of Valor of the Church was practically protected from every angle except the eyes. Even the crotch was shielded by a thick steel plate.

"Are you a Templar Knight or a Crotch Knight?" After his two attacks failed, Allen could only retreat rapidly. The lingering shadow from that broadsword strike had truly frightened him.

The Dragon Slaying Halberd had been forged from the finest steel of several hundred scimitars, repeatedly compressed with Battle Aura by Rockhammer, making it incomparably sharp.

Unfortunately, it wasn't the goods themselves that mattered, but what they were compared against.

The Dragon Slaying Halberd forged by some half-baked blacksmith from Outpost County had met the Church's divine Full Body Armor and was completely useless.

The Templar Knight raised his Meteor Hammer in his left hand and smashed it down. Though Allen barely dodged by retreating, the shattered stones blasted from the ground still struck him painfully.

"Divine Art: Binding!" the Templar Knight roared again.

This time, Allen saw it clearly. A faint golden light shot from the hilt of the Templar Knight's broadsword. It was simply too fast for him to dodge.

"How underhanded! I thought it was some strange thing, but it was just a thread." Like Sali before him, Allen twisted his body desperately, yet he could not move at all.

"Have you no shame? A sneak attack is a sneak attack, but you even put on such a convincing act. Divine Art: Binding, my ass!" The Dragon Slaying Halberd slipped quietly from Allen's grasp. As he struggled, the fine threads binding his body tightened further and further.

The Templar Knight let out a cold laugh beneath his visor, raised his broadsword, and slashed through the air once more.

A slow-moving sword shadow swept toward the helpless Allen.

Just as Dina and Sakre were about to rush over to save him, an icy gale blew from the direction of the Old Castle's gate behind them.

The group instinctively turned around. Once they saw the sight before them, every one of them gasped.

Xiulunte and the two ascetics outside the Old Castle changed expression at once.

The disciplined soldiers of the Earth Dragon Legion erupted into startled cries.

The solid wooden gates of the Old Castle had somehow been thrown wide open. The frames once engraved with the family crest were now covered in horrifying skulls, each one emitting a scalp-numbing, eerie cackle.

The gates no longer seemed to lead into the Old Castle's hall. Looking inside, one saw heaps of white bones and sickly green flames filling the air, as if they opened into another world at the end of days.

The Old Butler beside the gates was pale as a sheet, barely supporting himself with his staff. It was obvious that all the mana in his body had been drained, merely to summon this Otherworld Gate.

Karmet cried out, "An otherworld summoning?"

As soon as he spoke, countless fist-sized green Will-o'-the-wisps flew from the gates. As though conscious, they passed over Sakre and the others, attaching themselves to the countless corpses outside the Old Castle.

Whether they had been beaten to death by Allen or burned alive by flames, not a single corpse escaped.

Amid sounds like water balloons suddenly bursting, the flesh on the corpses covered in green fire gradually fell away. Skeletons burst from within them one after another, their hollow eyes terrifying to behold.

Several hundred skeletons rose to their feet, and Dina's hair stood on end.

"Great Archmage of Undead?!" With his exceptional eyesight, Xiulunte glared bitterly at Old Laixi inside the Old Castle.

The Old Butler waved his staff again. A gigantic black scythe extended from the Otherworld Gate, followed by an enormous black-robed skeleton that gripped the gateframe with both hands and struggled its way out.

The skeleton wielding the massive black scythe wore a tattered black cloak. Its lower body was shrouded in black mist, while crimson light flickered in its eyes.

Allen had just felt his scalp tingle when he turned his head and jumped in fright. A Giant Skeleton had flown directly over his head, slashing its scythe into the golden sword shadow.

The sword shadow shattered under the scythe, and Allen finally escaped disaster.

The Giant Skeleton that had shattered the sword shadow did not pause in the slightest. Its massive body slammed into the Templar Knight.

The staggering Templar Knight swung his Meteor Hammer straight into the Giant Skeleton's head.

Like a furious wife about to claw the mistress's face apart, the Giant Skeleton hacked its scythe into the Templar Knight's shoulder, then pressed forward again. Its thick, bony claws had nails more than ten inches long, and it raked one directly at the Templar Knight's face.

As if a horn of battle had sounded, countless skeleton soldiers outside the Old Castle charged at Xiulunte.

Dina and Sakre ran to Allen's side and helped him up.

"Easy! Cut the golden threads around me!" Bound painfully by the golden threads, Allen howled in agony.

Sakre stared closely at them, then muttered to himself, "This is a divine art?"

"How would I know?" With Dina's help, Allen broke free of his restraints. He drew the dagger from Sakre's waist, helped the half-dead Sali up from the ground, and spent a long while cutting before finally severing those nearly invisible threads.

Rockhammer pinched the thread between his thick fingers and muttered, "The spine of a high-level magical beast, a Golden Line Snake?"

Allen did not understand a word. He picked up the Dragon Slaying Halberd and charged after the Skeleton Army toward Xiulunte.

The cavalry, already in formation, launched a charge at the Skeleton Army.

Unfortunately, the bones of these skeletons transformed by the green light were extraordinarily tough. Unless they were smashed into scattered pieces across the ground, they would not lose their ability to move. They also knew neither exhaustion nor pain.

The Skeleton Army had only one purpose: slaughter, slaughtering every living creature of flesh and blood before them.

The legion cavalrymen, who had fought countless savage enemies, felt their scalps go numb. It was their first time fighting Undead Creatures.

Xiulunte galloped wildly on horseback and shouted, "Use Divine Art: Holy Word to purify these evil undead!" With that, he cleaved a skeleton blocking his path in two.

The two ascetics exchanged bitter smiles. Purify them with Holy Word? There were at least several hundred skeletons packed together as far as the eye could see. Never mind whether they had enough mana to sustain hundreds of high-level divine arts—how long would it take to purify them one by one?

Xiulunte's mouth also twisted bitterly. The green Will-o'-the-wisps flying from the Otherworld Gate clearly needed to attach themselves to corpses before transforming them into skeletons. Had he known, he would never have sent so many infantrymen to their deaths as cannon fodder. He had truly shot himself in the foot.

When Allen charged toward him, Xiulunte no longer wished to waste time. The situation was slipping further and further out of his control. The messenger from outside Outpost County had just informed him that the border troops of the Kingdom of Locke's First Legion, led by the Grand Duke of the Kingdom of Locke, were about to arrive. He had originally thought a single Templar Knight would be enough to deal with everyone in the Old Castle. Instead, complication after complication arose. That unremarkable Old Butler was actually an Undead Archmage.

The Giant Skeleton with a Death God Appearance that had emerged from the Otherworld Gate was clearly a creature from the undead world with its own consciousness. The transformed Skeleton Army could only slaughter mindlessly and possessed no independent awareness. Given enough time, they could be wiped out completely. But if that Giant Skeleton escaped, the consequences would be unthinkable.

Though Necromancy was despised by every legitimate mage on the continent, and any practitioner encountered would be killed, that depended on their rank. The Old Butler had at least reached the level of an Archmage.

Even setting aside whether he practiced Necromancy, the words "Archmage" alone meant he could swagger through ninety percent of the continent.

An Archmage of Necromancy, a Child of Chaos.

Xiulunte felt that Outpost County had gone mad. Either one of these two alone would have been enough of a headache, yet they had somehow ended up together.

What the hell was this? A Great Archmage of Undead serving as butler to a Child of Chaos, while the Child of Chaos's maid was an awakened bearer of the Titan Bloodline.

If these three escaped Outpost County and joined forces with the Church's enemies, the Great Pope would probably have nightmares every night.

Xiulunte could no longer afford to hide his strength. Battle Aura surged throughout his body. As a Martial King on the verge of Fourth Tier, he was not someone a Third Tier clown like Sakre could compare with.

Mounted on his enormous horse, Xiulunte held his aura-infused sword horizontally and pointed it at Allen, attempting to take his head in one stroke.