CHAPTER 75

  A SPECTRE OF VENGEANCE

  When Hans was trying his best to think of a way to wiggle out of the conundrum, Homar and his Griffin Order were facing their former king in the form of an undead. Those green-lit eyes and hoarse, inaudible voice were sending shivers throughout the legion.

  But the undead king wasn’t alone; the twelve captains of Eclipse were mixed in between. “You are a pain even in your death, Samson,” Homar spat the blood. He had just managed to barely dodge the Big Dipper attack from the undead Samson, but it still left a mark on him.

  “Goddamn it!” Homar cursed, his eyes darting at the unrecognisable figure standing at the walls of Thaloria. “Xandor, you son of a bitch,” he fumed. “How can you use the man whom you worshipped?”

  “He betrayed me first. He let the people whom I had sworn to kill live. I have no compassion left for the imperial bloodline.” Xandor finally answered. “Join me, Homar. It doesn’t have to end this way. You know you can’t defeat him. No one can. Join us—”

  “Join you!” Homar scoffed. “For what reasons? Half of your ragtags are criminals on the run. Your company, I abhor much more than I disliked Samson. Your goose chase for Utopia… the fable of the Chalice of Memories…”

  “You can mock me as much as you want, Homar. But you know the nation we served is not what it used to be. It is filled with hypocrisy, sabotage, and corruption. I will reset it. I will rewrite the whole thing. Join me.” Xandor opened his palm, a shiny ring resting on it.

  “No way…” Homar cursed. “You completed that thing?”

  “Not yet, but this is enough to turn this tide.” Xandor raised his hand, gifting the half-complete ring of chaos to Undead Samson.

  Homar threw every kind of attack he could to stop the ring from coming back to Samson, but as if the undead had read his intensions. He quickly became full-on defensive and the ring finally met its owner, resting on his index finger as it used to be.

  “Thunder… fire…dark.” The undead recounted the gems. “It’s…not…enough… but it will do….”

  The undead Samson was way different from what Homar had heard from Arat when he resurfaced in Grimgar. This one lacked intelligence and was following orders blindly. The main distinctive thing was that he was silent until he wore the incomplete ring.

  His eyes flared with new vigour, and everyone having the three mana types etched into the ring felt powerless in an instant. Thankfully, Homar fell into the wind category so he was spared from control.

  But it was enough to stagger the golden griffins; Samson instantly closed the distance, appearing right in front of Homar. But as fast as he came, Homar leapt the distance back, leaving him a surprise in his undead hands.

  “Boom!” An explosion happened right away, sending the undead king to shreds. It was a candela bomb made of sunstone and light mana stones. The bane of all undeads, and Samson wasn’t an exception.

  But he was an exception to many different things, and dying not easily was one of them. The undead body instantly reconstructed itself.

  Homar didn’t wait but bombard one arrow after another, not at Samson but at the Eclipse forces. His every arrow met the perfect mark, killing every few in seconds. “I came prepared. Xandor. I have enough candela to burn you all.”

  “How about we add another imperial bloodline to the game? Adrian.” Xandor commanded, and the fourth-ranked knight appeared right beside Undead Samson. “This one is immune to the candela bomb, Homar.” Xandor mused.

  Homar was searching for any ideas. The undead Samson was something he could contend against, but not when he was aided by another ranked knight. He said to himself, “Facing them now means I’ve got to fight two warlords at the same time. I’m not crazy enough.”

  He sighed and inhaled hard, shouting, “Griffin knights. Let’s take this battle to the skies. Airborne now.” He commanded, and the order which was fighting on the ground quickly appeared in the sky.

  “Now the odds are even.” His own Golden Griffin roared, and the rest followed. “We are not here to die in this foreign soil. We are here to cull the traitors. Reduce their numbers. I’ll stop these ex-imperials.”

  Stormad Battlegrounds

  “One problem at a time. Let’s see what ancients do after I annihilate this… whatever this joke on living-dead is?” Hans looked at the complete skinless ghost, now perfectly visible.

  A sudden thought hit him. “I can’t believe I was thinking of leveraging myself for others. Guess, there are some things you can’t control in your life.”

  Hans dismissed the thoughts; he was in the heart of Caesar’s sanctuary, so other thoughts were merely distractions.

  He had no clue how the enemy’s sanctuary functioned or what its flaws were, but he knew if he failed here, then him dying alone would actually be fortunate. “No physical attacks, right?” He mumbled, confirming.

  He had no plan on how to pursue this situation, and Caesar wasn’t the one going to wait.

  “Fuck!” Hans instantly closed his eyes as he felt something ominous trying to pop them. However, he wasn’t able to avoid his hair turning into crawling tentacles, coiling around him. With his mind’s eyes, Hans could feel everything in the region turning upside down as if the reality was shifting at Caesar’s will.

  The monochrome sanctuary of this ghostly figure had already turned the colourful world into black and white.

  VeganBind

  He summoned his best-of-class vines to shred the black cocoon, but since they were dark in colour too, they instantly started Caesar’s bidding.

  “Oh man! This one too. Damn it, he controls everything which is dark…shadows.” Hans mumbled, coming to a realisation that the caster had absolute authority over every black thing that existed in his sanctuary. Even his hairs and eyes had fallen victim.

  “Then I should avoid giving him any more advantage.” He released a hard breath, cocooned inside his own hairs. “I should start with my best, then.”

  Photonise

  “Zwoom!Zwoom!” Small light particles started converging at Hans’s cocoon, and soon the black thing covering him lit up, freeing himself from Caesar’s control.

  “I expected this to be not so easy.” Caesar chuckled like a madman, “You don’t disappoint, Hans of Parv.”

  But, Hans had no interest in his inner thoughts. “Don’t dilly-dally, man, kill him instantly.” He convinced himself.

  Elderfo—

  “Shuck!” The spell was interrupted. Hans looked below. His belly was pierced by something sharp, a black spear made from shadows which had protruded itself. It wasn’t the end but the start. One after another, the shadow spears shot out of nowhere, piercing his torso from every side.

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  “What the, bleh!” He bled profusely. He even vomited a mouthful of blood.

  “Did you think if you just shined, my shadows wouldn’t be able to approach you?” Caesar chuckled again. “It wasn’t you that destroyed the hair cocoon. I simply undid it so you could fall for my trap, right there. Haha! Hans of Parv, I’m going to torture the life out of you. So, call your father. Summon that bastard with your cries.”

  He retrieved the shadows back to the ground. “Now heal you, bastard. I know you can.” Caesar urged, but it wasn’t like Hans could ignore himself bleeding.

  But just as he healed himself, the scene of him being porcupined by Caesar repeated.

  His cries and Caesar’s maddening laugh were the only things echoing in the south.

  Caesar was taking his sweet time torturing Hans. His cries were too much for Rudolf and others to hear, but they were powerless against the pressure of the Ancients. There was a reason why they were called half-gods, and common sense didn’t work on them.

  However, Sierra had a suicidal attack that could even kill an ancient, and she was going to use it. Amid the enormous pressure pushing her down, her closed fist started glowing gold. She whispered to Rudolf, “I’ll take one with me. So, do your best in escaping with the children—”

  “Sierra.” Rudolf quickly interjected. “I too can’t bear seeing the boy screaming, but don’t be rash. We are still alive…Maybe they are waiting for something. They could snap our necks like nothing, but they aren’t doing it. So, just wait a bit. Have some faith in our boy.”

  Rudolf was shackled by hope, that somehow Hans would pull something out. When Caesar mentioned the ring of chaos being with him, he started to see some chances of them surviving. “Come on, brat. Show me, please, I beg you. I can’t lose anyone here, do something.”

  And as if Hans had heard Rudolf’s pleas, instead of summoning the paradise garden to heal himself, he cried out.

  “ElderForm, you fucker.”

  Instead of taking a humanoid form, he was fragmented, his existence in shards covering all of the sanctuary. Elderwood was dark green, and inside the monochromatic world, it easily fell under the category of being controlled by Caesar.

  However, Hans did the transformation knowing that well. “Even if it’s dark, you can’t just possibly control thousands of fragments.” His heavy voice echoed from all over. “Try me, I’ll give you a fucking brain tumour, you ghost.”

  “Then what?” Caesar questioned, “You can’t touch me, and I’ll eventually destroy every bit of you.”

  “I don’t have anything to throw at him. I should’ve brought some sunstones.” Various thoughts ran amok inside Hans as Caesar kept destroying his shattered existence one by one.

  But in the moment of extreme crisis, one begins to see the ways.

  VoidZone

  Everything paused and became still, even the horrendous pressure that pinned down Rudolf and others gave them some breathing room. In elder form, his control reached extremes, but that still couldn’t hold the ethereal Caesar.

  “I got one chance,” he mumbled. He knew he had to first get rid of this sanctuary, but even under VoidZone, the sanctuary persisted. “Do not worry. Void Zone is just a start, not the end.” He assured himself and transformed into the gigantic figure he was known in elder form. He cried in a monstrous voice.

  Sunfield sanctuary

  With a wide flash, the small area around Caesar and Hans became charred, and there wasn’t a speck of shadow or black there. He himself was lit bright, and so was the place he stood with Caesar.

  However, even with Sunfield Sanctuary burning everything, Caesar was still seen smiling when the bright flash vanished.

  “You can’t hurt me.” Caesar retorted, “Now it’s my—”

  “Thud!” Hans stomped his left foot hard. It looked like he was pulling something heavy from his right hand, and before Caesar could realise, Hans shouted. “Fuck off, you bastard—”

  ManaStorm

  He called, but it wasn’t a simple mana storm. There was no modification of mana storm in the Book of Power, which formed by combining two books. Since it was too self-harming of a thing for one to wield, Samson didn’t dwell on it.

  So it was all Hans’s sole creation. Under the photonisation state, the ravaging mana turned extremely hot. His green, gigantic hand itself was disintegrating while constantly regenerating under the solar energy he was absorbing. It was an equivalent state of damage and regeneration.

  The ravaging power of mana storm and extreme burning power of Sunfield Sanctuary combined into one and brought down a molecular level of destruction upon Caesar.

  “Boom!” Like a world-destroying cannon was shot. The dematterisation damage went in a straight line up to several kilometres.

  And Hans fell on his back, his flesh hugging the bones tight as if someone had sucked him dry of water. He was gasping, struggling to get a single drop of something while Ancient cursed. “Damn that ghost. He should’ve told us the extracting method.”

  Hans wanted to respond, give some excuse that Caesar was lying, that there was someone else who had the ring of chaos. But he couldn’t speak a word as he was not mentally there.

  He was in some dark space where he was stared down by two big, yellow, slitted reptilian eyes and a mouth that was saying, “Come find me.”

  As he heard those words, he was jolted back to reality. There wasn’t a single muscle giving him any energy. “Damn, that was really something,” he looked at his family. Making a sanctuary makes you a sitting duck. He had forced Caesar to confront him from a distance.

  “Thank god they are safe. Now,” he barely mustered to control some of the mana around and conjured a little creeper that was steadily crawling towards Rudolf and others. “I don’t care if you call me blood sucker, just give me some damn water.”

  “Crush” his hopes of rejuvenating got crushed as his little creeper of ‘SugarDrain’

  Hans put his every bit of remaining energy and said in a parched voice, “You promised to let us go. You’ve put your honour in the line—”

  “Honour” the greedy ancient, inquired, genuinely looking curious, “what’s that? Can you eat it?”

  “Let’s just kill the bastard ourselves.” The perverted ancient suggested as he retrieved the pressure he used to kill the little creeper.

  “Hmm.” The greedy one added, “screw the others, if we can hold the ring of chaos. No one will question us. Maybe, the ring will re-surface if we kill the bastard—”

  “THAT’S A VERY BAD IDEA. Swoosh!” The pressure they were giving to others came pinning down to them and they easily formed craters of several feet deep.

  “What now?” Hans cried in frustration as another existence, and this time someone who was capable of punching ancients down to the ground joined the party.

  “Haa! Whose face I saw when I opened my eyes today, damn it.” He cried inside and turned his head.

  “What the?” He couldn’t help but be mesmerised. A familiar figure whom he had seen once in his dream, with fluttering black hair, fair skin with ruby eyes and elvish ears.

  “Just die.” She flicked and the two ancients turned into a pool of blood. Rudolf and others were still under the pressure but it was bearable now. They were looking at awe at the black-haired elf who had shown up and killed two ancients like some sort of insects.

  “Wait a minute.” She blew her nails, “I failed to ask them something— come back.” She flicked again and as if the time had turned back, the ancients reversed from a pool of blood to their bodies.

  “Hey, Jackasses. I told you to stay put in Madaruka. Do my words mean garbage to you.— Blow!” One of the ancients this time exploded like a balloon. “Tsk! My temper. Come back.”

  As she said, the perverted-looking ancient reversed back instantly. And this time, he looked quite afraid. Hans and Chris totally understood the feeling; the same had happened to them for almost an hour. The feeling of dying and coming back to life was quite scary.

  “She is the Parvian god.” Chris mumbled.

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Delimira cursed. “It was her first time meeting her, but she was feeling quite the animosity against her.”

  Meanwhile, Sierra was quite shocked; she had always denied any godly existence other than Yudwin, but there she was, a god revered by her birthplace, playing with life and death as she wished.

  The ancients understood the situation quite well; they both bowed to her, pleading. But the Parvian god remained impervious. “Quite bold to plead for your life. Haan! But you came after my thing —Blow!”

  “Oh! Damn. I can’t control this when I wake up — come back. You people are quite fragile, aren’t you? You die only because I think once. Who does that? Don’t you have manners?” She finally turned to the only elf who remained frozen in his place. “Hmm… you carry Aerandir’s blood, right?” She stoically asked. “Come here.”

  Instantly, Lord of Aerandir appeared before the black-haired elf god. “A drop of your blood, please.” She politely asked, and even if he wanted to not move, Aerandir’s hand moved on its own.

  “Thank you.” The elf god smiled. The charm carried by those curled lips was too mesmerising for anyone to turn away from her.

  “I sense a lot of causality broken by your hands, Aerandir’s child.” She explained. “That’s why I’m erasing your bloodline — pssh!”

  She spoke so happily as she erased a great house of Elves like nothing. “Now, for some serious matters.” Her gaze finally set on Hans. “Haa… here we go again. It’s nice to finally meet you. Contractor.”