The Undead Necromancer (I)

Chapter 25: The Undead Necromancer (I)

At noon, the sun should have been shining brightly. But Dawn City was now shrouded beneath an enormous black cloud stretching dozens of kilometers in every direction. The once-green lawns and gardens outside the city had become a withered wasteland, rife with rot and plague. Several Skeleton Soldiers clad in rusted armor and zombies oozing green pus wandered nearby, occasionally throwing back their heads and howling.

Aside from them, Dawn City was utterly lifeless. It had become a land of the dead where no living soul dared venture.

"The stench of necromancy is everywhere. The Undead Necromancer Sand must be in this city!"

The moment Li Wei stepped into the area, he shivered for no apparent reason. He wore a leather jacket beneath metal armor, with plates covering his chest. His strength of 9 kept his muscles taut, accentuating his powerful physique. The Centaur Battle Axe, which had undergone Stacking, was strapped to his back, and a USP Pistol was tucked into his waistband. He was armed from head to toe.

As usual, the Dread Knight was right beside him. His undead warhorse seemed incapable of tiring. It needed neither food nor rest, and like its master, it had been granted eternal life and stamina by necromancy.

"Master, I don't understand why you took in this pack of beasts. They're completely useless. I could deal with them all in five seconds!" Dread Knight Mordel said grimly, looking at the group behind Li Wei.

There stood a band of twelve Orcs. These barbarians, who reeked of beasts, had joined Li Wei of their own accord when he passed a gem mine. Naturally, he had accepted them all.

"Mordel, don't underestimate anyone. Sometimes they can be useful in ways you'd never expect. Besides, they're our companions now." The Dread Knight's arrogance was the only thing Li Wei disliked about him.

It was true that a level-six unit was far stronger than a low-level creature like an Orc. But with the right tactics, Li Wei was confident he could use these twelve Orcs to defeat some high-level units—even something as terrifying as a Dread Knight.

Li Wei paid no further attention to the Dread Knight, whose arrogance was getting out of hand. He summoned the Yellow Paper and checked the strategic map.

The map showed the entire layout of Dawn City. Comparing it with his current location, Li Wei rubbed his chin, which was covered in stubble after several days without a shave.

"The Undead broke through the walls in several places during their attack. We'll enter through the western gate. Uh... first, we'll use a diversion." Li Wei folded the map and beckoned one of the Orcs over.

The muscular fellow stood before him in crude leather armor, holding a brightly polished throwing axe. Each breath brought with it a foul, beastly stench.

Li Wei covered his nose with one hand and gave the Orc its first order.

The Orc nodded as if it understood, then jogged toward the western gate. Watching it go, the Dread Knight was puzzled. In his opinion, they could simply find a weak spot and break into the city. Why go to all this trouble? Li Wei's actions baffled him.

Seeing Mordel's expression, Li Wei knew his plan had confused the knight.

There was no need to explain. How could these fellows understand the strategies of the world he came from? This tactic of "making a noise in the east while attacking in the west" was one of the most common stratagems.

"We'll circle around. Once the Undead guarding this area have been drawn away, we'll use the opportunity to enter the city."

It was only after the Dread Knight saw a large group of Undead soldiers being led away by the clumsy Orc that he began to understand what Li Wei had in mind.

The streets of Dawn City were just as they had been a few days earlier, filled with buildings in the style of knightly culture and Gothic towers. But the once-bustling taverns and gambling houses now stood silent and empty. Every so often, a zombie could be seen lolling its rotting, stiff head as it slumped over a wooden table, drooling dark-green pus.

"I can sense that evil Undead's presence. The wretched coward—I'll cut off his head!" The moment they entered Dawn City, the Dread Knight grew restless. His family's hatred had clearly robbed him of his usual composure.

Li Wei kept his eyes fixed on the furious Dread Knight, but his voice was remarkably calm.

"Mordel, I order you to calm down. You are not to act without my command!"

The master-servant contract in the world of Heroes of Might and Magic could not be broken. Even if the master was weak and the servant overwhelmingly powerful, the servant still had to obey.

So, although Mordel was reluctant, he forced down his anger. Yet the Netherfire in his eyes had deepened in color, betraying the hatred within him.

"The closer you get to your enemy, the more important it is to stay calm. No matter how deep your hatred runs, remember this if you still want revenge!"

Li Wei spoke evenly, but every word rang true. Mordel really did calm down.

Now Li Wei finally looked like a master.

"This time, we have only one target: the wizard Sand. As an Undead Necromancer, he's a master of necromancy and dark magic. We have to finish this quickly and keep him from using his magic to its full effect. Mordel, you'll lead the attack when the time comes!"

Now that they had entered Dawn City, Li Wei found an opportunity to lay out the plan he had devised. He no longer discussed it with the Dread Knight; instead, he issued a direct order. At a critical moment, Li Wei's decisiveness, composure, and grasp of the situation left nothing to chance.

This was an A-rank mission, after all. Its difficulty was obvious: one mistake could ruin everything. Li Wei doubted that even someone as powerful as Zheng Yutong could complete it easily. No—she probably couldn't complete it at all.

But Li Wei still wanted to try.

Holding the strategic map, Li Wei pondered and frowned from time to time. After a long while, he finally put it away.

"Less than a hundred meters southwest of here is a crossroads with a small square. There's a well there. Mordel, take two Orcs and hide there." As he spoke, Li Wei took out several cowhide pouches filled with liquid.

"When Sand gets there, pour this over the Undead Necromancer. Don't miss!" After speaking, Li Wei handed the pouches to the two Orcs.

"Master, what's in those? They make me feel very uneasy. And what's the point of waiting there? Sand won't go there!" The Dread Knight was deeply puzzled, and curious about the items Li Wei had taken out.

Li Wei told him that it was a secret, then led the remaining nine Orcs off in secret. He wasn't worried about the Dread Knight. What he and his group had to do was more important.

Once they reached a deserted spot, Li Wei glanced at the nine Orcs behind him, held out his hand, and began to use the Art of Stacking.

The skill worked on both objects and living creatures. A flash of light bound the nine Orcs together, then fused them into one. When the glow faded, only a single Orc stood before Li Wei.

Its attributes, however, had changed considerably. Its number now read ×9, and it possessed the combined attack power and health of all nine Orcs. Of course, whenever it took damage and its number fell by one, its attack power would decrease accordingly.

This was the unit-stacking feature from Heroes of Might and Magic. Li Wei would have bet that he was the only person in this world capable of doing it.

Taking the Venomous Centaur Battle Axe in hand, Li Wei set off for the center of Dawn City with the Orc whose numbers had been stacked. Every hundred meters, he scattered some black powder on the ground before continuing onward. Strangely, the wandering Undead avoided the places where he had scattered it. What was more, the low-level Undead nearby instinctively kept their distance from Li Wei.

Anyone who noticed this would have been astonished. How could Undead that usually went berserk at the smell of the living behave like this? Even low-level Undead shouldn't act this way.

In fact, the powder in Li Wei's hand was nothing magical. He had made it using some of Dread Knight Mordel's blood and a special medicinal powder. The powder carried the scent of a level-six Undead creature, a Dread Knight. The low-level Undead naturally treated any area with that scent as Mordel's territory and didn't dare cross it.

Li Wei had also sprinkled himself with powder carrying the Dread Knight's scent to cover his own. That way, the Undead couldn't smell him.

Taking advantage of the Undead's strict sense of hierarchy, Li Wei managed something an ordinary person could never have done: he slipped into the heart of Dawn City, the City Hall.

Even from a distance, he could see the Undead army surrounding the City Hall. It ranged from level-one Skeleton Soldiers to high-level Vampires. Li Wei even saw a huge Bone Dragon flying overhead.

"If we were discovered now, even a god couldn't save us." After muttering to himself, Li Wei cautiously ducked into a nearby building.

It had once been a private residence. Its simple decorations couldn't disguise how tidy it was inside; the place had a warm, homely feel. The owner must have enjoyed a comfortable life. But blood splattered across the room had left the once-neat interior filthy. Li Wei sat down on a wooden chair and closed his eyes to rest.

At Li Wei's command, the Orc sat obediently on the ground, idly playing with the wool rug with its rough fingers.

Li Wei waited.

He was waiting for the sun to set. That was when the Undead went out, and he knew that after sunset the Undead Necromancer Sand would leave the City Hall and resume laying his necromantic spells across Dawn City.

Ever since he had seen the black clouds circling over Dawn City, Li Wei had been using the Eye of Perception to study everything in sight. The terrifying necromancy that had plunged Dawn City into this state could only have come from one source.

Black Cloud Cover and Plague Land were both high-level necromantic spells. They created an environment suitable for Undead creatures while shutting out all life. But the Eye of Perception had revealed something that interested Li Wei.

These necromantic spells weren't permanent. They had to be cast once every twenty-four hours. The only person capable of casting spells this powerful here was the Undead Necromancer Sand.

So Li Wei had set a trap, one aimed at Sand.

The place where he had told the Dread Knight and the two Orcs to hide was an area he had chosen carefully. There were escape routes in every direction, and the dry well in particular contained a secret passage leading outside the city. It was the best place in all of Dawn City for a duel, with an escape route ready in case anything went wrong.

As for those cowhide pouches, they held the bane of Undead creatures.

From the very beginning, Li Wei had been considering how he could close the gap between himself and the Undead Necromancer. They were worlds apart in both the number of troops—Li Wei had practically none—and their individual strength. The gap was so great that he had no chance of winning in a frontal assault, or even an ambush.

But nothing was absolute. Everyone had a weakness. The weaknesses of Undead creatures were light magic and life magic—a truth everyone knew. So when Li Wei discovered that the Ring of Life contained life magic, he decided to make full use of it.

He ground the ring into powder, then mixed it into pure water he had obtained in the forest, hoping to infuse the water with life magic. Things went just as he had expected: the water mixed with the ring powder had taken on a faint trace of life magic.

That was enough. He had "accidentally" spilled a drop of the life-magic water onto Mordel's armor. It had eaten a shallow groove into the armor like sulfuric acid, making the Dread Knight cry out. That proved the water worked.

Once he poured it over Sand, it might not kill him, but it would certainly weaken him to some degree. Then, with Li Wei and the Dread Knight attacking together, they might be able to kill Sand.

Of course, that depended on successfully luring Sand alone into the trap Li Wei had prepared.

Time passed slowly. Four hours later, darkness had completely swallowed the area outside. All Li Wei could hear were the howls of Undead creatures. Suddenly, he sensed a powerful presence emerge from the City Hall.

He hurried to the window and peered outside. Sure enough, a figure in a black-and-red robe had walked out of the City Hall.

"The main event's here!"