289 Chapter 289: March of the Dead

I shook my head in puzzlement. "Who the hell is Xue Tu?"

"The next leader of the Blood Slaughter Sect," Anastasia explained. Except that it didn't really explain anything. Seeing my bewilderment, Anastasia elaborated. "Um, it's a sect that practices blood magic and necromancy."

"Uh, I see." Actually, I didn't, but obviously there wasn't much else Anastasia could say. I couldn't expect her to give me the full historical background of the Blood Slaughter Sect and a list of its members, after all. "What are they doing here?"

"I don't know." Anastasia peered beyond the barrier, just as perplexed as I was. "But it seems that he intends to assault our position. For what purpose, I have no idea."

Not that it mattered. Anastasia wasted no more time on meaningless explanations. The enemy was here, and we were to drive him and his horde of Bog Ghouls off. She tapped the com bead in her ear and broadcasted across an open channel.

"All Silver Wolves forces, prepare for imminent attack. A horde of Bog Ghouls, led by a member of the Blood Slaughter Sect, approaching from the north marsh. Be advised, Xue Tu is here."

"Roger that, Serpent." Brent's voice crackled over the com bead, using Anastasia's call sign. "We'll be sending Alpha Company to back you up. They'll be there in five minutes."

"Copy that, Eagle," Anastasia affirmed. "We'll hold the fort until then."

Fortunately, given the slow and clumsy movements of the Bog Ghouls, I hardly thought they would be able to reach our position within five minutes. As enthusiastically as Xue Tu was advancing toward the barrier, he had to wait for his Bog Ghouls to shamble through the thick swamp. More than enough for me to finish casting my spells.

Without any hesitation, I was already summoning one of my big guns.

The stamping of feet thundered behind me as soldiers ran toward their positions and took cover behind whatever structures they deemed most appropriate. Unfortunately, an ancient tomb wasn't the best site to fortify and fight in, but being professional mercenaries, they did the best they could with their current situation without any complaint. Which was more than I could say regarding certain people who would rather blame everyone but themselves when things went south.

"Serpent, you have command."

"Roger that, Eagle." Anastasia acknowledged Brent's decision, and then raised her voice. "Take aim! Fire!"

Dozens of cracks resounded across the air as the ninety-odd soldiers of Alpha Company squeezed their triggers. Volleys of ruby las-beams scorched the air with ionizing shrieks before lancing into the heads of the Bog Ghouls. The first row toppled into the marsh like broken toys, disappearing beneath the sludge in huge gray splashes. Not all the mana beams hit, though. Many of the Bog Ghouls staggered as the las-beams left cauterized craters in their bodies or even blew off arms, but true to form, they continued shuffling forward.

Just like zombies from movies, they didn't register any pain from what would be mortal wounds on a normal human being.

Undaunted, Anastasia gave a second order.

"Again!"

The second bombardment saw more of the Bog Ghouls fall, but there were literally hundreds of them. While we were thinning out their numbers, I saw that we wouldn't be able to wipe them out before the zombies hit the barrier.

"Damn it…"

Worse, Vermillion Phoenix had sacrificed himself earlier to save me from the Spirit Devouring Bees, so I couldn't summon him. Otherwise I would have incinerated the entire horde of zombies. Fortunately, I had an alternative.

"White Tiger!"

As the five minute mark arrived, I manifested my Celestial Guardian. A storm of lightning whipped out and fried the approaching Bog Ghouls, causing their blackened, convulsing bodies to topple back into the marsh. Electricity traveled through the gray sludge, temporarily paralyzing several more of the Bog Ghouls that were near the areas that the lethal lightning had struck.

"Good," I murmured, satisfied. At the same time, I wasn't staying idle. I had also summoned Sagittarius and was casting another spell to conjure a flaming arrow.

Fitting Alnasl to the bowstring, I pulled it back and took aim before firing it into a particularly dense cluster of Bog Ghouls. The swamp water vaporized and boiled into grayish steam while throwing up charred corpses and ash into the foggy air.

Even as I began to conjure a second arrow, I could her Anastasia shouting instructions. Her poison techniques were ineffective against the undead – like me, the Bog Ghouls were immune to toxins. Unlike me, it was because they were already dead, so whatever venom Anastasia employed wouldn't work on their nervous systems or stop their hearts from beating. If anything, their hearts weren't beating and their blood was hardly circulating in the first place. These foul creatures were powered solely by necromantic energies and black magic.

Not that I had anything against necromancy and zombies. I could see their use, and if I hadn't chosen the constellation route, I might have become a necromancer instead. Perhaps in my next life, after I died and reincarnated in another world, I might summon zombies. Who knows? For now, however, I was very contented with my choice of Constellation magic. Maybe I'll work one of my previous stories, The Golden Gravekeeper into this story one day as a sequel and become a summoner of zombies, but I'll worry about that when the time comes.

For now, I focused on exterminating the Bog Ghouls in front of me.

"…hmm?"

I blinked for a moment after decimating another horde of Bog Ghouls, something gnawing at the back of my mind as I lowered my bow. For some reason, I felt like I was forgetting something. Sure, we were making good progress with the Bog Ghouls, but they shouldn't be the only threat.

Oh, right. I had forgotten about Xue Tu.

"Where's Xue Tu?" I asked, spinning around and asking Anastasia, who had borrowed a rifle and was taking potshots. With her poison abilities rendered ineffective by the nature of our undead foes, she had chosen to take up a gun instead. I was impressed by her accuracy – evidently, Anastasia had learned how to handle a gun as part of her Assassin training. She didn't even pause in firing as she tossed an answer to my question.

"I don't know. I haven't seen him for a while now." She lowered the scope from her eye, looking grim. "He's the summoner of these Bog Ghouls, and that means he's the primary threat. Richard, you have those hi-tech glasses. Use them to find him."

"Roger."

I began sweeping the area with my glasses, using its advanced suite of sensors to scan the swamp for the only living human amidst the Bog Ghouls. Switching to infrared, my vision blurred into a mosaic of colors, red, orange and yellow standing out in stark contrast against hues of blue, black and gray. The Bog Ghouls gave off no heat, their bodies as cold as…well, a corpse. Thanks to that, I should be able to locate Xue Tu relatively quickly.

In theory, anyway. In actuality, I couldn't find him.

"He's…gone?!"

It didn't matter much. A spike in mana signature alerted me to a specific quadrant, and I was already shouting out the coordinates before I turned toward it.

"Sector 7! To our left!"

Even as I adjusted my glasses back to normal view, I spotted an eruption of red curling above a horde of Bog Ghouls. Xue Tu was standing there, raising a hand as he cast his blood spells. The guy was forming a blood barrier to protect his Bog Ghouls from the rain of las-fire that the Silver Wolves mercenaries were delivering.

Glaring at us, Xue Tu clenched his hand into a fist. One of the blood barriers broke off and turned into a tide that surged toward the barrier like a trident, its tip splitting into three sharp points. Shifting my aim, I blew the huge blood trident up with a flaming arrow.

"Tsk!" Xue Tu clicked his tongue in annoyance, but he didn't withdraw. Instead, with a few choice gestures, he manipulated the blood around him and turned them into countless spheres before firing them forward like a buckshot blast from a shotgun. By now I had finished casting the summoning spell for Black Tortoise and was able to conjure a water barrier just in time before the numerous blood pellets smashed through the barrier of the spirit array formation.

This might sound counterintuitive, but the water barrier of Black Tortoise was stronger because I focused it on a much smaller area. The principle of diffusion might be helpful in explaining it. Say it takes x amount of mana to conjure a barrier. A barrier that covers an area of y would be thinner and weaker than a barrier that covers an area that was a tenth of y. The latter would be a lot stronger and denser.

Even though the spirit formation array used several times the amount mana that I had, the area it had to cover was a few dozen, if not hundred times the area I directed my barrier to protect. That was why Black Tortoise's water barrier was seemingly stronger than such an enormous spell – not because Black Tortoise and I were somehow more powerful than spirit arrays, but because of diffusion and the difference in the size of the place we had to cover.

"Take care of the Bog Ghouls. I'll handle Xue Tu."

Seeing an opponent that her poison skills might have effect against, Anastasia tossed her rifle to me. I caught it while dismissing my bow. Admittedly, an actual weapon was more mana efficient and cost effective than my Constellation weapons, which consumed large amounts of my energy. Considering that the number of Bog Ghouls had thinned out considerably, and that there was the possibility that a bigger threat might emerge later – I sort of regretted not forcibly dismissing Vermillion Phoenix and allowing him to supernova himself earlier – I decided to save my mana and switched tactics.

Peering through the scope, I rested my cheek on the rifle stock, took a deep breath, held it there, and squeezed the trigger. My military training in my previous life was paying dividends now. While I was no sharpshooter, I could at least hit half of my targets. The rest of my rounds went wide, sadly, but that was fine. This was why my arrows emphasized more on power or volume than accuracy. I was never a good shot and I tended to miss half the time. To make up for my lack of precision, I made it such that my terrible accuracy didn't matter. After all, why would I need to hit a particular target when I could blow the entire area up with a missile-like arrow? What did accuracy matter when I could nuke the entire site from orbit?

It was the only way to be sure.

Fortunately, 55% accuracy was better than 0%. I had barely passed my marksmanship test back during the military, but whatever. That was a two-year mandatory service and I wasn't cut out to make a career out of being a soldier (kind of ironic when you consider that I planned to be a mage mercenary like Dad). Fortunately, I was better at magic than I was at handling a rifle. I was a passable soldier, at least. Or so I would like to think.

Admittedly, it felt good to score headshots, and this was providing me ample opportunity to practice and improve my aim.

"!!!"

While I was blowing the heads off individual Bog Ghouls, Anastasia was engaging their summoner. Xue Tu had thrown several blood appendages at her, the fluid-like extensions morphing into blades, scythes and other sharp weapons. Making use of her incredible agility, Anastasia twisted and turned, evading their merciless slashes and weaving through their attacks to close in on the furious Xue Tu. Snarling, he threw out another hand and fired several blood spheres at her again, almost like a shotgun blast.

Instinctively realizing the danger, Anastasia flipped backward gracefully, sailing above the bloody shotgun blast. Spinning in midair, she avoided a blood spear that sort to lance through her body, and lashed out with a poisoned dagger. Despite the venom making contact with the blood, it seemed that the blood used to craft those magic weapons wasn't going to return to circulate back in Xue Tu's body, so he wasn't the least affected by Anastasia's specialty.

Anastasia realized that too, and understood she had to get closer if she wanted her poison magic to work. Diving under another snaking pair of bloody scythes, she rolled and threw a dagger at Xue Tu. He merely stood there calmly, conjuring a blood shield to deflect the poisoned knife.

"Poison magic, huh?" Xue Tu murmured when he observed the blood darkening after coming into contact with the toxic blade. Even I was disturbed by how black the blood had become. Whatever Anastasia was using, it seemed pretty potent. Xue Tu also comprehended the danger she posed, and he narrowed his eyes. "A Veneneum Sect Assassin? Since when did Henry Porter begin hiring professional killers from the Assassins Guild?"

"I'm no longer an Assassin," Anastasia replied as she straightened up, deflecting a bloody blade with her daggers. Taking a deep breath, she watched her opponent. "And I would like to ask you as well. Why is your Blood Slaughter Sect attacking us?"

"Blood Slaughter Sect?" Xue Tu scoffed. "No, the Blood Slaughter Sect isn't here. This has nothing to do with them. I'm here on my own private business."

"Oh?" Anastasia lifted an eyebrow skeptically. "And what business is that?"

"That's between me and Henry Porter," Xue Tu replied before he lunged forward to attack her.