Chapter 235: (6/9): A Goal Unreached

“They’re coming!” 

The three beasts came toward Camilla and Kagriss and the first of them reached them in under a second. The first among them was Gultra, whom Camilla blocked with her sword, the beast’s claws scraping against the edge of her blade. She had to brace her sword with her free hand to stop it, and as is, the force knocked her backwards through the air.

“He’s strong… but was it worth it? Can you even hear me?” She started out talking to herself, but she soon asked the monster a question. Gulthra didn’t reply and merely snarled his frustration at being unable to reach her. 

He jutted forward his head, neck extending, and tried to bite her over her sword, but with a grunt, Camilla kicked him backwards, right into the way of one of the other two monsters that had arrived slightly later.

The other monster flew unimpeded past her toward Kagriss, but Camilla turned and grabbed the monster’s trailing feet before swinging it like a hammer at the other two monsters that had been mashed together previously and were in the middle of untangling themselves. 

The addition of one more totally destroyed the three monsters’ balance and ability to fly, and they began to fall down toward the ground.

“The ground is not advantageous for us. There are other jack-classes there…”

“We’ll have to get through them anyway if we want to get into the tower,” Kagriss pointed out.

“True.” The entrance to the tower was at ground level, a magnificent arch on the side of the tower, with a set of steps leading up to top of the tower’s foundations. On those steps were the jack-classes in question, nine pairs of flaming eyes staring up at their battle in the sky. “In that case, let’s take care of them then.”

Kagriss nodded and threw her hands out in front of her. Chains show out of a few formations and wrap around the tangle of falling monster limbs and wings, bundlings them up in a tight ball and halting their descent.

“Can you destroy them just like that?”

“I can try…” Kagriss closed her hands into fists and the chain ball tightened with clinks.

The writhing of the monsters grew stronger and an aura of black mist rose up around it, almost hiding them entirely behind the mist cover. Kagriss scowled, and clenched her fist while gritting her teeth, hissing while she was at it, and with a wet crunch, the chains tightened enough to cut through flesh and sever that ball of monster into chunks that fell into the forest.

Seeing the outcome, Kagriss relaxed and the empty, ooze-covered chains disappeared into black smoke. However, she did not look happy. “I broke them apart, but…”

“Yeah, they’re still not dead.” Camilla sighed. “Given their similarities to the monstrosities, I should’ve known, but I guess I was holding out for the hope that they’d be easier to kill.”

“You can do it, Milla!” Kagriss waved her fist in encouragement, and with another sigh, Camilla dove down toward the ground. “I’ll keep watch for you, but be careful about the other jacks on the ground!”

Just as Camilla disappeared among the evergreen needles, Kagriss looked up just in time to see that lord-class skull lich dive down into the trees with Victoria in hot pursuit. As if following their leader, the other skull liches descended as well. Elise, Ismelda, and the other two guards followed after their respective marks, until there was no one else left in the sky.

“Is it just a coincidence…?” she muttered to herself. “No, definitely not. For one, there’s backup from the warriors, and there’s a reason we approached from the sky.”

She quickly let Camilla know about the change in situation and then descended into the trees herself, chasing after Camilla. At the same time, she let her senses spread so that she could keep track of all the other combatants in this battlefield. 

Six allies, one of them Camilla…

And twenty-one enemies that could possibly threaten though, although that number has dropped to nineteen after Ismelda and her mother defeated one, and after the self-destruction from using that gem.

The six of the nine skull warriors guarding the door dutifully stayed where they were, while six of them ran to support their leader that was currently being harried by Victoria. “For all his talk, he wasn’t much, was he?” Kagriss asked. 

“No, he wasn’t. Anything headed my way?” Camilla asked. 

“Not right now. How are things?”

There was a moment of hesitation, which was slightly alarming, and then Camilla shared an instant of what she saw: the rapid generation of the monsters. The individual pieces of the monsters crawled toward each other as if the little pieces of “flesh” had minds of their own.

By the time Camilla arrived, one of them was already whole while the others were still in the middle of pulling themselves together.

“I’ll be right there,” Kagriss said. Camilla nodded and that thought of agreement traveled over their bond. 

While she was waiting, she already went to work with her sword. She dashed around Gulthra and cleaved down toward the still helpless monsters. “If magic of the same type won’t kill you, then how about holy magic?”

Against pure undead, holy magic was still the most effective weapon. If this lands, it’ll delay the monster’s regeneration.

Clank! Her sword stopped as smoking black claws gripped its cutting edge. Camilla glared at the monster that had turned and protected its brethren. “Gulthra…” She empowered the magic reinforcing her body and increased her downward force, only for the powerful monster to slowly push her blade back up. “Such strength…”

Before her very eyes, one more monster pieced itself back together and lurched to its feet, turning its pitch black eyes on her. With a helpless sigh, Camilla jumped back to open up the distance, pivoted, then dashed to the side, looking for an opening. The eyes of the two beasts followed her without failing, and the third one stood up as well before tearing over the earth trying to get to her.

“Immense strength at the cost of a loss of magic…” she muttered.

“Could it be that all of their magic was dedicated to recovery and body reinforcement? Turning themselves into a pseudo lord-class warrior…” Kagriss suggested.

“Maybe. It comes at the cost of their intelligence as well, it seems. Are you ready?”

“Almost… they don’t seem to have noticed.”

“A fault of their missing intelligence. I’ll continue being a distraction then. Whenever you’re ready… It’s difficult to fight all of them at once.”

Camilla grimaced, parrying another swipe of the monster’s claws, wincing as her arm almost dislocated from the blow. The monster fell aside, but Camilla had no time to breathe as another monster jumped at her, previously hidden by the first. Her eyes widened and she held her sword up, blocking the ripping claws.

The force pushed her backwards until she slammed into a tree and broke through, tumbling through the splinters. Coughing from having all the air crushed out of her lungs from the impact, she rolled to her feet and oriented herself just in time to dodge the body of the third monster slamming into the ground.

Instead of continuing to back off in a straight line, she led the monsters in a small circle, always on the retreat. The battle fell trees until the whole circle became a small clearing. The destruction was made worse when Camilla realized that the undead had planted traps in the form of well hidden formations, and she almost stepped into a few several times, realizing only when Kagriss warned her. 

Finally, the long awaited signal came. “Ready.”

“Finally…” Camilla sighed in relief, turned, and ran with the three monsters hot in pursuit. Their pounces easily knocked over trees, but at the very least it slowed them down a bit. Camilla didn’t have to run long, and soon the area that Kagriss had prepared came into view: several spires and chains interweaved between them in a complicated pattern. At the center of it, protected by the whole formation, was Kagriss.

Camilla spared one last glance back behind her before plunging into the spires, jumping over and ducking over the chains made of magic.

The monsters jumped in headfirst without any hesitation, but they quickly tripped over the chains and ran into them, stopping their progress short. Snarling in frustration, they clawed at it, only to realize that the chains were not breaking. Instead, the chains slowly sapped the magic from their body that then flowed back into Kagriss’s body, and then fed back into the spires that reinforced the whole trap.

Camilla laughed at their struggles. “Good work, Kagriss!”

“It’s nice that we had a chance to use it, right?” Kagriss replied, and Camilla nodded. This was a trap for dealing with powerful magic beasts that they couldn’t subdue with Camilla’s brute force alone. However, it was unexpectedly useful here, because these liches had turned into mindless monsters that lacked even the animalistic instincts that would otherwise tell them to flee.

Instead, they tried to get at Camilla no matter what it took, especially when she taunted them and led them around the spires, letting them get caught up by loose chains hanging all over the place. 

The monsters struggled through the web of chains, deeper and deeper, not even realizing that the chains were slowly coming together to trap them. The gaps in the chains grew smaller until, deep between the spires, none of the three monsters could take another step. Their legs were tangled and locked in place by intersecting chains, and the most they could do was twist their limbs and head. 

To see such powerful monsters in such a state was sobering, especially when one of them was Gulthra who proclaimed to have been the one behind the gem, the thing that started Camilla’s journey.

“Is this how that particular part of that story ends? How anti-climatic.”

“What are you talking about?” Kagriss asked. She pulled the chains even tighter, stopping just short of dismembering the monsters again to avoid giving them the chance to escape again.

“Well, you know… waking up in that mine, and that gem…”

She had already told Kagriss the story and Kagriss nodded in understanding. “In that case, you should go ahead and end it then. An end is an end, no matter how much of a disappointment it is.”

“Yeah.”

Camilla slowly made her way through the chains and ignited her sword with holy light. As she loaded the sword with more and more mana, the golden flames turned white at the center, the part closest to the blade. The tough armor covering the monster easily parted under her sword, and the ooze began to burn, almost as if it was flammable.

The flame consumed the monster until all that was left was a charred skeletal frame, warped beyond recognition that it had ever been human. A blackened sphere at the center of the rib cage cracked and fell to the ground. Camilla stared at the remains of the undead core, and then the frame, for a moment. 

Undead themselves were already something unnatural, and she had made her peace with that, but this kind of magic was somehow even worse. With a shiver, she approached the second monster and dispatched that one too while it snarled at her.

Finally, she came to the monster that was once Gulthra. Compared to the other undead that continued to snarl and struggle against the chains until their unlife finally winked out, Gulthra had become still, watching her every move with its black eyes.

Camilla stared back.

“Was it worth it to obtain this power? Becoming a mindless monster…” she asked as she raised her sword, preparing to stab it into the monster’s head, when the monster’s mouth parted and a rasp escaped.

“Not…”

The sword stopped. “What?”

“Not… mind…lessss.”

Camilla narrowed her eyes, waiting for the monster to say more when Kagriss suddenly yanked the chains tighter. “Hurry up and kill him! It’s escaping!”

“I’m not mindless! I am in control!” the monster howled, drowning out Kagriss’s voice. “I have succeeded!” Gulthra lunged forward, a dim purple flaming burning in his pitch black eyes. The chains straightened as he strained it to its limit before it finally broke under the sudden burst of strength.

Camilla stumbled back in surprise and Gulthra pounced at her. Camilla could only brace herself and thrust forward with her blazing sword while making herself as small a target as possible. Claws raked her shoulders on both sides, easily ripping through her armor, and the huge weight crushed onto her as she pressed up into Gulthra’s chest, the sword piercing deep into the monster’s body and out its back.

Gritting her teeth, she twisted the sword as the monster pushed her against the chains holding her up. Pouring her mana into the sword, the flames exploded into an inferno that blasted out the monster’s back and burned through the chains behind him.

“Not…”

The voice of the monster faded into a gurgle. With a crack, the core embedded deep in the monster’s chest shattered, and the ooze burned off, leaving just a charred frame behind that rest on top of Camilla.

She pushed the frame off in silence, and at the slightest touch, the skeletal frame fell apart into a pile on the floor.

The chains and spires, or at least what remained of it after Camilla’s final spell, turned into smoke and returned into Kagriss’s hands. She landed on the ground and walked up next to Camilla to look down at Gulthra’s remains.

“He was so close, too.”

Camilla nodded before she kicked the bones out of her way. “It’s good he never truly succeeded. How are the others doing?”

Her senses were nowhere as accurate as Kagriss’s were. Kagriss closed her eyes. “One… two… no, just two. We were the last one to finish. They’re already fighting the jack-classes at the gate.”

“The last ones…” She sighed. “It can’t be helped since they are so much more experienced.” Putting the flames on her blade out, Camilla stepped over the bones on the ground and headed toward the entrance of the tower. “I think we might’ve taken a bit too long. Let’s hurry.”