Chapter 70

70 Invasion

The room the mage slayers left Caio was adjacent to the one Athos used to use, so the wall was the same. Caio donned his own mage slayers outfit and took all 5 bags inside the wall, along with the other two outfits.

“I’m going now, be prepared because the attack is going to start any moment now.” Athos spoke, picking up some of the alchemical items before jumping out the window in the direction the birds pointed, casting his most destructive spell.

‘Sevenus, I managed to eliminate one of the mage slayers in the city, his skeleton will meet you as soon as you invade the city. There are two more, one in the warehouses and one in the town square, all the others are dead. I want you to cooperate with him and kill what’s in the town square, leave what’s in the warehouses to me.’ Athos sent a message through the rats, receiving a reply a few seconds later.

‘As expected of my lord! But are you sure you don’t need any help? The two groups of undead are far from your position, but I can order the mage skeleton to help you.’ Sevenus sent it back, his fanaticism and adoration clear in his voice. Unlike the physical body, he had no difficulty communicating mentally.

‘It’s the man who killed my teacher. I don’t care about others, but he I will personally kill. This fight is personal.’ Athos replied, the anger in his mind being conveyed through the message.

‘Then all I can do is my job, my lord. I wish you luck.’ Feeling the anger of Athos, Sevenus did not press the matter further and focused on his goal. If he killed the enemy quickly, maybe it would be possible to help him with the excuse that they had already finished. Satisfied with this plan, Sevenus ordered the undead to accelerate towards the city.

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Outside the city, the gatekeepers finally noticed the undead approaching, but it was too late. The gates were already locked for the time and the only guards at the gates were those in a small guardhouse adjacent to the gate, where the guards took people they considered suspicious for an inspection.

They were too busy playing cards to notice the hard-to-see undead in the dark, and since the guards didn’t ring the bells, they were completely relaxed. The doormen only noticed the undead because one of them went out to piss and noticed what looked like shadows approaching.

.....

“Hey, what are those things??” The doorman who noticed the undead emptied his bladder in fear, screaming in panic at the top of his lungs. The undead had already approached a few hundred meters from the city and would reach the gates in less than two minutes.

His companions left after hearing his scream and had similar reactions, only less wet.

“What are the guards doing?? Someone will tell them to ring the bell quickly, we’re under attack!!” A sergeant in charge of the gate shouted, causing the men to calm down a bit. One of the porters quickly ran out and opened the inner door of the guardhouse, the one that led to the city, but a sword stabbed him in the belly.

“Wha-” The stabbed doorman tried to say something, but the black skeleton twisted the sword and pulled, sending blood and guts spilling onto the floor. The black skeleton entered looking for its next victim, followed quickly by others.

A small-scale battle began inside the guardhouse. The guard skeletons followed the orders received and threw themselves at the guards, exploiting surprise and shock to press them against the wall. The porters were armed with spears, but they were unsuitable for an enclosed space, so they decided to use the daggers and daggers they carried at their waists.

Even so, the skeletons had the upper hand. The daggers and daggers were too short and the gatekeepers too weak to cut through the bones of skeletons, while their swords cut through the flesh with ease. The guards fell one by one, until only the sergeant was left standing.

He tried to retreat, but the skeletons surrounded him and stabbed him from all sides. The skeletons suffered bone splinters and weapons, with one of them having lost a rib, but that was the full extent of the damage suffered.

They opened the doors leading in and out of the city, before dragging the corpses and their weapons into the city.

Inside the gate, the ape skeletons were massacring a small patrol unit that was near the gate. The patrol consisted of only six men, so the 10+ skeleton apes had an easy time against them.

After killing them, the apes removed the lock on the gate and opened it to the limit, hailing the invading skeleton army. The mage who accompanied them didn’t bother to help in the fight, knowing the monkeys would win. Instead, he waved his wand, releasing a wave of darkness that turned the corpses into more undead. He did the same with the corpses that the skeletons in the guardhouse had brought up.

The few people around had already fled, but that didn’t matter anymore. An army of over 1000 undead broke through the open gates, running as fast as they could. About 600 undead ran straight down the main street towards the town square, while 200 of them moved north and south, killing as many as they could.

Sevenus was among the skeletons advancing towards the square, taking great care not to be noticed. The citizens desperately fled from the skeletons, but some were too slow to flee and were caught by the undead. Skeletons threw themselves at anyone who got too close, knocking them to the ground before other undead used whatever they could get their hands on to beat them to death. They ignored the bodies as soon as they died and ran to their next victim.

A skeleton wearing the white mage slayer attire came out of one of the alleys as soon as people were out of sight, quickly catching up to Sevenus and handing him several bags of alchemical items.

“Don’t join the fight. Wait for an opportunity and kill the enemy magekiller.” Sevenus ordered, before picking up the bags and resuming the race. Caio also waved at him before disappearing into the alleys again. Sevenus shared the bags with some skeletons around and ordered them to spread out and toss the items when he asked.

As the skeletons advanced, the bodies disappeared from view of the fleeing survivors and Sevenus and the other skeleton mage caught up with them, quickly turning them into skeletons and increasing their your own numbers. They slaughtered the humans on the way, quickly reaching the central square, where they finally met resistance.

The city guard and the bandits of the red dagger gang have joined together to form a barrier to stop the advance of the undead. The guards used wooden crates or whatever they could find as makeshift shields, while the armed bandits behind them would attack the undead when they were stopped.

...Or at least that’s what should happen.

‘Now.’ Sevenus mentally ordered the skeletons to hurl the bags of brown powder across the barrier of guards. The brown dust released a blast of brown energy, causing a small-scale earthquake, just enough to throw the guards off balance and trip them up.

The closest skeletons also fell to the ground, but smaller skeletons advanced in their place, throwing themselves between the gaps in the guards’ line of defense and detonating the very core, generating an explosion of darkness and bone shards. The smaller skeletons belonged to the children of the villages that Athos decimated.

Sevenus deemed them too weak to be useful, so he discarded them as suicide soldiers. Blasts of darkness hit the guards and fallen bandits, sapping their strength and rotting wherever they touched. The darkness didn’t quickly disappear, obscuring the view of the people in the undead army square.

‘Kill them.’ Sevenus mentally ordered, starting the massacre. The black skeletons rushed into the curtain of darkness without hesitation, finishing off the already weakened guards. Their energy signatures were similar, so they wouldn’t take damage from the darkness.

Sevenus pointed his wand at the curtain of darkness, injecting his own corrupted life force and taking control of it, before accumulating them in the bodies on the ground, casting the spell to raise undead en masse. He used the darkness in the air to save his own mana and get dozens of undead at no additional cost.

Whether it was the terrified citizens in the square, the captain of the guard, or Emilia hiding in the crowd, they all panicked as the curtain of darkness disappeared and the corpses turned to black skeletons.

The hitherto silent skeletons began screaming loudly and ran towards the citizens, killing anyone who came into their field of vision. People began to run desperately, with a few trying to take up arms to fight.

Sevenus was trying to draw as much attention to himself as possible, to ensure that the mage slayer in the square didn’t get in the way of his lord’s fight.

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