Heading eas

As the mist arrived before me, it was about to enter my body when it recoiled and evaporated into nothingness. Neptune gaped in shock as the undead glow slowly faded from his eyes.

"You have already surpassed the king level and become a chosen one?"

'My system of evolution is different from your ranking of strength but yes, by your standards I could be considered to have surpassed king level.'

"You said nothing about being a chosen one! Are you perhaps a-"

Without his innate understanding, Neptune turned to dust and scattered into the wind.

I couldn't spare much time to be sad about the world losing a true warrior and me losing a useful innate understanding. While the biggest variable in this battle was eliminated, the allied forces had trouble holding their own against the unit of fake kings.

Most king magi were forced to cope with at least seven cloaked figures pursuing them while attacking madly. Among the chaos, I actually spotted a familiar face. Loki was facing a total of twenty adversaries and handled himself fairly well. Somehow, all the attacks miraculously missed him. Probably due to his powers of change.

I advanced on the group targeting him from behind and started lightning punching them into oblivion. They were all one hits for me and by the time they noticed me, half of them were scattered on the ground. Noticing me also didn't do them much good because as long as my domain of life was contained within my body, they couldn't hurt me at all. I controlled all elements that entered my domain and could reject anything unwanted, including weapons and magic. Only someone stronger than me or with an advantage in elemental effectiveness could penetrate this defense.

This barred me from providing the others with a buff area like before but in return made me a grim reaper among the undead. Forgive the pun.

As the pressure on Loki eased, he went on the offensive. Change was a scary thing! If Loki could get ahold of an undead, he would grab them and turn them right into dust. Unlike me pulverizing them, Loki's method didn't leave any remains that held magic.

"I didn't think you'd be the one rushing to our aid. Now that you've surpassed us all, why bother?"

'I've come to save lives. Not everyone who gains power sees life as insignificant. If these defenses fail, my people will die too, you know.'

"Then we'd better get to work and be done with it!"

'This isn't even the main assault yet. What do you think will happen once the real king magi attack?'

"The real ones?"

'I'll explain later.'

Working together, we slowly cleared out all the cloaked figures and then I proceeded to blast a few lightning arcs into the undead below to easy the situation. With all the king magi and fighters freed, the lower undead were quickly slaughtered.

After ending the battle I was originally planning on collecting the fake king remains and leaving but Loki stopped me.

"You said you were here to save lives and that this wasn't the last of them and now you just want to leave?"

'Look, simply put, of all the opponents you just fought, only one was a true king magus and I disposed of that one in the beginning. The others are all forcefully promoted grand dukes and the enemy main force is probably still out there. I'll push east and see if I can find where they come from and what the source of all this is.'

"Can't you stay and help us defend?"

'I already came here to help you with this assault. The next one may be stronger but you have time to prepare now and I have places to be.'

"But the rewards!"

'Send them to Völsung.'

I said as I flew out of the battlefield. Entering the plane of the dead, I was met with a desolate expanse of reddish stone and a few patches of sparse black vegetation. This place was swarming with undead that were mostly clustered in groups of ten. However, unlike the ones that had been in the assault, these guys here were regular undead, no stronger than an average person.