Azure Scepter

Page 53

As his understanding deepened, the illusory winds of death became increasingly solid, and the knowledge revealed behind them exploded exponentially. The more he knew, the more knowledge this strange phenomenon revealed to him. His knowledge and understanding were like an intertwined double helix. In just a dozen seconds, the white-bearded mage had gained knowledge that completely surpassed the sum of what he had learned in the past ten years.

The joy of his ever-growing talent and power even outweighed the urgency of battle, and he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the pleasure of studying necromancy.

At that moment, he realized that the scene before him was far more complex than any form of constraint, but behind this complexity lay a common law.

"Could someone be casting a spell?!" Suddenly, a terrifying thought inexplicably entered his mind.

The monk quickly observed the first starting point of the net, and then he indeed saw a blurry human figure.

"Are you kidding me?"

His heartbeat nearly stopped for a moment. Suddenly, he had a realization. He knew why he could suddenly see the wind of death after being blinded—it was not an illusion, nor was it an opportunity that fell from the sky. It was because the figure was casting a spell on the undead in the laboratory. When he gripped the lantern that served as the medium for controlling the undead in the laboratory, he formed a connection with the figure due to the effect of the sympathetic law.

Without a doubt, that figure was the old lich who had been hiding in the shadows! At this moment, he was brewing some extremely terrifying and complex spell!

The reason he was suddenly able to intuitively and emotionally grasp the wind of death was that, from the moment he grasped the lantern again, his perception of necromancy was passively and forcibly pulled to the same level as the other party.

The moment he saw the figure, the figure also saw him.

The figure slowly raised its head, and the hazy mist cast into the mind by the fragments of the wind of death vanished completely in that instant.

The two locked eyes! The other's dark eyes pierced his mind like a sharp sword.

It was a man wearing tattered chainmail. The death wind that should have been raging was now swaying like a gentle breeze. A black cloak woven from raven feathers obediently surrounded him. He held a longsword in his right hand, and the Radiant Church's Acanthus emblem was pinned to the chest of his mud-covered chainmail.

"A paladin?" The white-bearded mage was taken aback.

Time seemed to stand still. The bizarre scene before him was like a fireball exploding in his brain, making him feel as if his brain was about to boil. The white-bearded mage simply couldn't connect the seemingly unrelated words—paladin, wind of death, and old lich—together. This absurd and irrelevant spectacle was like a nightmare created by a careless brain haphazardly piecing together a dream.

He even suspected that what he was seeing was a hallucination before his death.

But the next moment, he saw a pure black wind of death, with a paladin at one end and a physically familiar phantom at the other.

Long silver hair, red eyes...

It's that spirit-binding priest!

"This bound spirit can be resurrected!?" The white-bearded mage was shocked.

Suddenly, a chilling yet plausible guess flooded his mind—"This old lich has possessed the body of a paladin!"

"His spellcasting must be interrupted immediately!" This was his second thought.

However, he did not intend to counter the spell, because he could not even identify what spell the other party was casting.

At this moment, he regretted his earlier hesitation; that fleeting moment of hesitation had caused him to miss the best opportunity to launch a sneak attack. However, he still decisively pulled out his spellbook and instinctively cast his most proficient spell: Finger of Death.

Since the other party has possessed a living person's body, the Death Finger technique will inevitably be effective. Since the other party doesn't have a life-saving box, as long as the body they've stolen is killed, the other party will also be severely injured.

However, the lich dressed as a paladin simply raised his palm methodically, as if his spell did not exist at all.

The next moment, the paladin in the mind's eye opened his mouth.

In an instant, indescribable whispers of evil and darkness burst forth along the connection of the mind. The sorcerer could only vaguely understand the last two words. He had only seen those terrifying words in ancient forbidden manuscripts. As for the correct pronunciation and combination, this was the first time in his life that he had heard them.

A strange whisper echoed in the air, the reverberation from an unknown space carrying a disorienting tremor. That tremor seemed to transform into the tentacles of a mind flayer, flowing along his nasal cavity, eye sockets, and ear canals into the ravines of his brain, grasping his soul... He felt a wave of nausea and weakness, and the powerful spell that had just taken shape was extinguished instantly, like a candle squeezed by an iron gauntlet.

He had expected a spell backlash, but the raging winds of death were unusually silent, obediently bound by obscure words, like a silent volcano emitting black smoke before an eruption, or a calm sea before a tsunami.

Although he couldn't understand what was happening before his eyes, the white-bearded wizard knew he had to save himself!

However, he was ultimately a step too late.

"Stab!"

Chapter 98 Wood Thorn

— Three minutes ago.

"Clap!"

The long-handled axe made of ash wood slammed down on the mummy's skull, and the long-weathered head exploded like a shattered crystal bowl.

Just as the goblin Yole was about to give chase, a shadow suddenly emerged from the darkness on his right. He instinctively looked up and saw an undead that looked completely different from the mummified corpse.

The undead appeared to be some kind of ghoul, tall and with a haggard, pale face. If it weren't for the cold, ghostly blue flames burning in its eye sockets, the earth gnome Yorle would have almost thought that this suddenly appearing monster was not a dehydrated, shriveled ghoul, but a mutated vampire.

The ghoul stood ramrod straight, looking like a silent, expressionless ice sculpture. It walked leisurely toward Yorle, its unhurried pace even reminding the goblin of the strange dance performed by the human nobles of the Kingdom of Orko at their ballroom dances.

Even more bizarrely, the corpse demon's armor seemed to change color as it moved. With each dance step, the chainmail made of a strange material would change as if it were a dance partner. At times, the chainmail was as white as early winter snow, and at other times as black as a ghostly shadow. The shadows and light falling on it were like moonlight falling into a lake, turning into nothingness in the shimmering waves.

This corpse demon seemed to blend almost seamlessly into its surroundings.

"What the hell is this?" The goblin gasped, suppressing the fear welling up inside him, and bravely raised his axe to meet it.

For safety's sake, he didn't rush into the range of the opponent's weapon. The goblin decided to make the most of his attack range advantage. He gripped the end of the long-handled axe with one hand and swung it diagonally like a flail.

"With a difference of five body lengths, he can't possibly launch a counterattack," the goblin Yorle thought. "Let's test this thing's capabilities first."

The corpse demon silently leveled the blade. The blade was not made of metal; the translucent blade seemed to be shrouded in a hazy spell. If it weren't for the eerie, ghostly green light surrounding the hilt, this crystal-thin blade would be almost undetectable.

The next instant, the corpse demon stopped with remarkable elegance. The sharp axe blade, carrying a fierce wind, grazed its face almost perfectly! As soon as it dodged the slash, it glided forward silently like a dancer, then suddenly accelerated!

A long, dark green sword pierced through the air and struck!

The goblin Yole's pupils contracted sharply. He hadn't expected the ghoul to conceal its speed. It took a deep breath and immediately turned its axe handle to strike the sword blade—a common technique for polearms. By deflecting the attack, one can use the opponent's force to quickly turn the axe blade and then slice off the opponent's head in one blow.

The mountain ash lightly tapped against the blade, and the earth spirit Yorle was overjoyed. He was about to use it for leverage, but in the instant the sparks flew, a high-pitched and sharp sound suddenly rang out. The sound was almost at the limit of the hearing of all humanoid creatures, like the dying wail of a rotting animal, or like sharp fingernails scratching a blackboard.

A chill followed the sound, and the next moment, the mountain ash, which should have been resilient, instantly shattered into countless fragments. The wood fragments scattered like a rainstorm, and the splinters pierced the hands, neck, and eyes of the earth spirit Yorle.

The goblin remained silent. He abruptly threw away his long-handled axe, but the eerie green blade didn't stop after shattering it. Amidst the flying debris, the icy blade sliced ​​across the goblin's chest and lumbar spine. Frost, billowing white mist, crawled like mold over the iron rings of his chainmail. Blood was frozen solid before it could flow, and the bloody ice shards spread with the frost.

Yoler remained silent. He seized the moment when the ghoul sheathed his sword, grabbed the dagger from behind his boot, and just as his hand touched the hilt, the eerie green blade came again—this time it was a slash, and the eerie green reflection suddenly magnified in the goblin's vision!

"It's over!" he thought in despair.

However, the next moment, a donkey suddenly crashed into the corpse demon from the side, and the corpse demon was knocked down instantly because it could not dodge in time.

"Ugh, ugh, ugh!" The donkey, transformed from the judge, stomped on the corpse demon's head and then roared anxiously.

The goblin had just escaped death and hadn't even had a chance to catch his breath when he was shocked to discover that countless eerie corpses were slowly approaching from the shadows behind the donkey.

In just a fleeting glimpse, he saw at least twenty, while in the darkness beyond the reach of the rainbow stone, several times more bizarre corpse demons moved forward silently, like drowned spirits in the deep sea. He saw several corpse demons even walking steadily on the wall like spiders, and one was hanging upside down from the ceiling in a gravity-defying manner.

"Some weird stuff in the lab," sighed the goblin Yorle.

At this moment, the earth spirit Yorle suddenly calmed down. The fear and cowardice that should have spread like wildfire in the wilderness seemed to be blown away by the cold wind in an instant. He felt a strange sense of calm. He knew that dying here today was his destiny.

At this moment, his dream of saving his family, his hatred for necromancers, and his intense desire to survive all vanished. Now, all he wanted was to make the most of his life's knowledge in the short time he had left.

Suddenly, Jorre remembered his kin having told him, by the campfire on nights as dark and cold as this one, the legends that had circulated among the earth spirits for millennia. The legends said that the warlike and steadfast god Gaya would send his messengers to the mortal battlefields, and these messengers would choose fallen warriors to go to the golden halls of Shahri. There would be no more humiliating enslavement, no more eerie rituals that turned the living into black magic stones; there, the warriors' spirits would revel in an endless feast, in exhilarating battles.

He gripped the dagger tightly, a smile spreading across his lips, which were studded with blood-stained wooden thorns.

However, the next moment, the judge, who had been turned into a donkey by the trap, suddenly sat down on the ground. Due to inertia, a small broken soul stone and two unbroken storage stones fell to the ground from the bag next to his buttocks.

The judge grabbed a storage stone and then crushed it with his teeth.

Amidst the yellow magical aura representing change, the sound of flesh writhing and shattering rang out once more. The earth gnome, Yole, was astonished to discover that the Inquisitor's target was not the ever-approaching ghoul, but himself.

It also stores malicious polymorphism.

But why?

A pungent, bloody stench burst forth instantly, and the towering donkey transformed into a tiny frog in the warm, damp air of blood.

"Croak!" The Judge leaped onto the magic storage stone, then abruptly looked up at the earth goblin Yole. Yole read the anxiety in the Judge's eyes. The Judge's meaning was clear: crush the magic storage stone.

Chapter 99 Hanged Corpse

The goblin stared at the black magic storage stone, the familiar nausea and dizziness returning, but this time, he gripped the cold crystal tightly and then crushed it.

He felt that he wasn't crushing a crystal, but rather a piercing scream that lingered in his heart and wouldn't go away.

"Crack!"

The moment he crushed the magic-storing stone, he realized that it contained "spell-breaking magic".

The next instant, a crackling sound like exploding sparks came from the frog's body, and the judge suddenly grew larger. In a few breaths, the tall, bald judge returned to human form.

The goblin Yoller suddenly realized something—the knowledge and techniques contained in the malicious polymorph stored in the trap were too profound to be removed by simply using the dispelling spell. Therefore, he needed to first use a inferior version of the malicious polymorph to cover up the effect of the former, and then use the dispelling spell to remove the polymorph.

“Radiance, you are finally free.” The judge’s pale blue eyes were fixed on the distant corpse demon. He grinned, revealing sharp canine teeth like those of a shark.

He picked up the invisible longsword from the ground and casually twirled it: "That Malicious Polymorph spell was really powerful. Are you alright, goblin?"

The earth gnome, Yorle, did not answer, for at that moment, he was astonished to discover that the corpse, which had been bound in the coffin by chains and hooks, had opened its eyes. Although the corpse had eyelids, beneath the shriveled eyelids were empty eye sockets, and the faintly flickering azure icy flames within those sockets stared directly at the judge, radiating an undisguised malice as viscous as black slime.

The earth gnome Yole suddenly shuddered. For some reason, alarm bells rang in his mind. A sense of fear, like a frog seeing a giant snake, rose up along with cold sweat and goosebumps, and instantly took over his will.

He had once seen a bone dragon controlled by a necromancer at the goblin farm, and the fear of its brutal, all-consuming power reminded him of the dragon's might—but the awe he felt now was far greater than before.

Disorientation, nausea, trembling...

Suddenly, a pair of cold, rough hands landed on the goblin's shoulders; it was the Inquisitor.

“This is a hanged corpse, Jörg, it’s horrible,” the judge’s voice came from behind. “We must act quickly.”

"I see you, my blood..." the hanged corpse murmured, its voice seemingly composed of the voices of vengeful spirits, filled with unsettling, discordant vibrations, "Blood, blood, blood!"

Nausea turned into stomach cramps, trembling into terror, and disorientation into dizziness.

The judge scoffed, "You old, bloodsucking bastard, even after being turned into a hanged corpse, you still want to disgust people. You want blood? Fine, come and try."

He raised his left hand and beckoned with his finger in a provocative gesture.

"Pfft."

Cold, fresh blood sprayed freely onto Jörg's face, and the stench of the dead crawled into Jörg's nostrils like maggots.

He blinked, and after a moment of confusion, he realized that the judge was now only half there. The tall judge had been cut in half at the waist in an instant, and his fingers hadn't even had time to come down.

The hanged corpse didn't seem to move at all; the iron hook piercing it was now hanging from the judge's lower body, while the judge's upper body screamed in agony as the undead opened its mouth and greedily bit into the flesh.

Jorle had never seen such an exaggerated sight. As a skilled warrior, he had always admired the Inquisitor's fighting prowess. But now, the Inquisitor, who was powerful enough to fight against the necromancers in the farm, had lost his fighting ability in an instant!

He didn't even know how the hanging corpse managed to do it.

"Blood...blood...blood..."

Amidst the insane whispers of madness, the horde of monstrous corpses steadily drew closer. The earth gnome Yorle swallowed hard, then couldn't help but laugh.

"What a rollercoaster ride!"

The judge's lips moved slightly, as if he wanted to answer, but the next moment, a soft white flash disappeared from the corner of Jörg's eye.

In a split second, the soft flash suddenly expanded into a dazzling ball of light that almost filled the entire corridor. The omnipresent light pierced his optic nerve bundle like a knife, and an unbearable heat suddenly struck!

He even felt like he was seeing the sun.

"Sunfire Burst?!" The judge's face was covered in hot blisters, but he still roared in disbelief, "I saw it! It's High Priest Noi! Radiance! We're saved!"

The goblin Joel squinted, straining to see the dimly lit origin point, where he could vaguely make out a figure dressed in a priest's robe.

"The high-level spellcaster is truly saved! Galbee will pull through! The Radiant Cult is truly reliable!" A smile involuntarily appeared on Joler's face, but then his pupils suddenly contracted—he was astonished to find that the high-level priest, who had descended almost like a wandering angel, had actually burst into flames during her own divine spell, and then, within a few breaths, turned into ashes along with countless undead around her...

The scorching ashes fell like snowflakes, and the horde of corpse demons that had been steadily approaching stopped moving as if their strings had been cut.

"Crack." Amidst the buzzing sound of the Yangyan Explosion, a crisp metallic sound made him shudder. He looked in the direction of the sound and saw that the hanged corpse had silently stood up from the coffin!

The Yangyan Blast seemed to have no effect on the monster; in fact, it didn't even have a scratch on its body.

"Blood...blood...blood..."

The earth gnome Yorle and the hanging corpse locked eyes!

Without a word, he gripped the long-handled axe tightly, then gritted his teeth and charged towards the monster. The hanged corpse, its mouth covered in blood and flesh, stretched out a contemptuous smile in a very human-like manner.

Sudden--

"Stab!"

A piercing sound, like silk being torn apart, rang out. The next instant, an almost unbearable stench of decay suddenly struck the head of the earth gnome Yoller like an iron ball. He turned around in horror and saw a wall of deathly black gas, almost solidified into a black wall, rushing towards him like a tidal wave!

"What is this stuff!?"

The black tide resembled the spell a necromancer used to create a storage stone, as brutal as a butcher's cleaver. Jorler watched helplessly as the ghoul hanging from the ceiling was swept away by the black tide and slammed to the ground, its eerie blue flames representing "life" extinguished in an instant; the powerful ghoul horde vanished like a tsunami swallowed by the tide; and the once incomparably powerful hanging corpse stood frozen like a statue, completely devoid of consciousness.

"Boom!" The terrifying black tide slammed into Jörg's nose. The stinging sensation and excruciating pain rushed up his nose and straight to his forehead. He was bruised and swollen and staggered to the ground.

It seems this black tide is specifically targeting the undead in the laboratory?

He blinked, and everything before him was shrouded in terrifying double images. Amidst the overlapping images, a human clad in tattered chainmail slowly emerged from the shadows. Jorle strained to see clearly, and then made out the glowing holy emblem stained with blood on the human's chest.

Paladins? Why would there be paladins here?

The next moment, the paladin-clad figure slowly raised his left hand, as if pulling on the reins of something, and the undead, washed away by the black tide, rose again like puppets. However, there was no longer a trace of the flame of their souls in their eye sockets…