"Is it stuck? Why won't this magic array stop?"
At the edge of the battlefield on the East Prussian frontier, in a large cemetery outside the ruins of a destroyed town, the students had gathered after defeating the gnoll necromancers in a fierce battle.
The physical-class players were still holding off attacks from the newly risen skeleton army around the perimeter, while the spellcasters stood in the center of the cemetery, staring blankly at the magic array the gnoll necromancers had left behind.
Before Cheche and Good Pigeon was a necromantic summoning circle that was clearly still active. The gnolls had set it up with evil psychic skulls, innocent blood, and all kinds of strange candles made from rotting corpses.
The runes around it glimmered with a chilling light, their patterns unlike anything they had ever seen. The underworld aura gathered there was rapidly swelling, like an invisible living creature that had existed for ages.
Each time it "breathed," several coffins in the cemetery stirred.
Because of the Ten-Year War, the number of soldiers and other dead buried in this cemetery and the ones nearby was horrifyingly large. If Cheche and Good Pigeon couldn't stop the ritual before it reached its final stage, then even if they and the garrison had crushed the gnoll necromancers tonight, the constantly awakening undead would still scour the surrounding area, driven by their hatred of the living.
The gnoll necromancers were being hunted down one after another by the Torrent Knights, and the threat posed by those bastards had been reduced. But the skeleton army wouldn't simply disappear once its masters were gone. Without anyone controlling them, they had instead entered an even more dangerous "wandering mode."
"Holy crap, there are at least four thousand undead roaming around this pretty small battlefield!"
Cheche clutched