Chapter 393: The battle because of Eldrian's shenanigans.

Eldrian woke a few minutes later, on the other side of the wall with the sounds of war in the air. A moderate headache kept him from moving fast, but it wasn't anything he hadn't dealt with many times before. Though the throbbing pain on the forehead was new. 

'Oh... Right, that was dumb.' Eldrian mumbled as he struggled to his feat and realized what had happened. He did his best to push down his embarrassment and turned to observe the battle instead.

Multiple holes were now in the wall, a few of the 'towers' were also destroyed. However, it seemed like things were under control. 

The mages whose wooden structures ('towers') had not been destroyed were focusing on crowd control. Spreading fires to limit the undead's paths and strengthening other parts of the wall to stop more holes from appearing. The soldiers instead filled the gaps that were already there.

Reinforcements were also arriving disorganizedly, but constantly. 

'XP!' Eldrian thought, pushed himself closer, and started to throw out simple Tier 1 spells. Mostly healing or rejuvenation spells, getting him the participation XP which wasn't all that much. However, as the minutes continued to grow it became a good amount. 

He didn't rush forward for two reasons. Firstly and most importantly, no one he knew was here nor did it seem like anyone was in great danger. When someone received a serious wound they would filter themselves out, if they are unable to those behind them would remove them from the fight. 

This was the advantage of having a wall. Even if it didn't fully stop the undead, it allowed a formation to be made and maintained with ease. Though having a few gates to sally out from might be a good addition (especially for centaurs), however, they had been pressed for time. 

The second reason he did not rush forward was exactly due to how in control the soldiers were. Eldrian knew that he didn't work well in a formation. He had no idea how to fight in one and would just cause friction that might lead to more trouble.

He also did not have much interest in trying to learn that skill. He already had far too many things on his plate. Just dreaming of someday again trying to learn blacksmithing made it clear how little he had to spare. 

So, instead of moving in close, Eldrian maintained his distance and kept helping out how he could. As the undead became less, Eldrian started using Thora (The decomposition spell) more and more.

He had focused his healing on those who had received wounds and now there were almost no new injuries. So he took the time to get used to the spell, killing two birds with one spell. 

'Alright, 10 meter (33ft) range.' Eldrian noted first, noticing that past that he couldn't really affect the undead. Activating mana sense however was not a good idea. The area was absolutely filled with a storm of all elements. Making it impossible to track his own spell and also nearly blinding him. 

Thus he had to, for now, tell himself to not dwell on why and just move on.

'The damage is amazing though.' Eldrian noted next, given how little mana the spell took this was actually shocking. He had wondered why the tree had turned to ash so easily, and now he started to realize just how amazing the spell was. He also realized he hadn't tried to observe the tree's mana, 'Which I should certainly do next.' He noted between casts. 

The undead before him were filled with mana, so naturally, as it is their lifeblood, it would limit how effective the spell was. Thus he couldn't turn them to ash with just one cast. 

However, considering the actual description of the damage, what it did to the undead was insane and almost made no sense.

[Thora - Tier 1 - Rank 1]

[Cost: 12MP]

[Damage (Baseline): 10]

{Damage modified by intelligence, then race bonus, then vulnerability (Vulnerability differs from undead to undead - up to 5x). The undead here have no armor/resistance against this type of spell.}

[Affect: A spell aimed at accelerating the decompositions of compost. However, it was found that it was highly effective against certain undead. However, this effectiveness is reliant on them being decomposable/decomposing. The spell will drastically lose effectiveness on stronger undead.]

While the stated damage was 10, what was happening to the undead was not even close to so little damage. Each time Eldrian used Thora, zombies would take up to 180 damage, with the lowest having been 120. Skeletons instead would take anywhere from 50 to 90.

What this meant was that to kill one of the strongest zombies (Tier 4), Eldrian just needed to use Thora 4 times. That was not hard at all, Tier 1 spells were almost no effort for him. He could cast Thora 4 times in 4 or 2 seconds. Depending on if he was just casting or casting and moving/fighting. 

Naturally, Eldrian's affinity with nature magic massively increased his damage. The 60% bonus basically doubled his damage compared to the other mages. His casting it through his own way also allowed him to cast it without a cooldown. The other mages in the fight had to wait 3 to 5 seconds depending on their Tier. As all of them were below Tier 5. 

When it was all said and done, Eldrian actually had the highest amount of kills. Though no one was keeping track of that. Still, a few people took note of how many of the undead Eldrian was looking at would fall apart seconds after. It was actually quite terrifying. 

Just as the battle was settling down, Eldrians suddenly got chills throughout his body. Jumping into the mess of undead, Eldrian tried not to breathe as the stench of rotting flesh overwhelmed him. Yet, he did not stop. He kept moving deeper into the horde, receiving more than one attempted grab and bite.

As he had gotten his chills, a shadow flame had appeared just a few meters behind him. A figure coming out and throwing a small knife. 

Where he had been, four undead were now pinned together by this small knife. Their bones crushed and their meat squished. 

'How did he know!' The assassin roared internally as he summoned his flames again and retreated just as the dwarves were about to stop him. Unfortunately, no one was looking at the cause of the disturbance. This allowed the assassin to escape without anyone but the dwarves seeing him, it also allowed the dwarves to stay hidden. 

'He's still after me!?" Eldrian's question was multipart. The first and most pressing matter was if he could stop hiding behind the undead, it was quickly becoming difficult to slip past them. Especially as more and more undead came to realize that someone was in their midst. 

The other part of the question was a statement, confirming that the quest stating that he was still a target meant he truly was. 

Luckily, before things could escalate anymore the undead all suddenly stopped moving, turning to ash not long after.

Everyone was stunned when they saw an elf trying to hide behind the undead. If not for many having seen him helping them and also having been there when he ran into the wall, they would have thought he was with the undead.