Chapter 158: Light in the Dark

Chapter 158: Light in the Dark

Rosa grit her teeth as she watched her second wave get torn to pieces by the hive. Her zombies and ghouls were barely slowing those creatures down. She could practically feel the malice on her skin as she watched the display.

Yes her second wave was meant to be used as chaff to wear down the enemy but it seems to her these creatures were not feeling the attrition at all. Their movements were both eerily graceful yet brutally feral at the same time. Their four insectoid legs twitch and writhe with unsettling fluidity as they clambered over the corpses of her soldiers in a white tide.

Their serrated blades rent the necrotic flesh of her ghouls to pieces. She turned to another monitor and saw one ghoul being dragged into the sea of white. She watched as the monsters started ripping it limb from limb, the ghouls black blood spraying out onto their white hides. Yet their white hides were so smooth the black blood just slid off their carapace.

Rosa hasn’t seen something like this in a long time. The creatures of the hive were some macabre mix of insect and nightmare. She knew why she was here. Rosa was no fool, she knew she couldn’t fight the likes of the Great Beast. She has lived since the Firstborn walked the world, granted she was still a High Elf back then but she remembered the fear they inspired.

Her mind went back to when the Firstborn known as The Wraith suddenly shimmered into existence in the middle of the Ancient Woods. There were screams of terror as mothers grabbed their children and fled. The elders all came but they did not draw their weapons, they just fell to their knees and brought their foreheads to the dirt.

It was the first time Rosa saw what true power could give, she always saw her elders as wise and powerful but right then she saw nothing but worms in the dirt. That was all they were before the might of the Firstborn.

One particularly grief stricken woman ran up to The Wraith and started hysterically screaming at it. Rosa remembers the fear being thick in the air from her outburst. The Wraith just looked at her in amusement before glancing at the elders as if seeing if they were going to do anything.

The woman was a widow, her husband died in one of the Firstborn’s wars of entertainment. A hive attacked the Ancient Woods for no other reason than the Firstborn being bored and though the attack was repelled the elves still took heavy casualties.

Rosa remembers her screaming on and on about how she was going to raise her two children without him. How her children were going to grow up without a father and other useless things. Then she screamed over and over again at The Wraith at how her children were going to grow up without a father.

Eventually, The Wraith grew bored at her outburst.

So The Wraith turned her children into orphans...

Quick as lightning it slammed its hand on top of her as if it was squishing some common insect. As far as Rosa could tell the widow did indeed squish like any other common insect.

In Rosa’s eyes that was an eye opening moment. It was proof of how the world worked, power meant everything. That moment was what started Rosa on this path, it wasn’t the pivotal moment. That came a few thousand years later but it was the first moment she acknowledged the truth.

The strong take what they will and the weak suffer what they must.

“Pull them back.” Rosa said with a sigh.

“Finally clued in have you?” Ordias said bluntly from the side.

“Shut. Up.” Rosa seethed as she watched her second wave retreat in poor order, the white wave of monsters continuing to tear into them as the wave retreated.Fiind updated novels at novelhall.com

I watched as the bats started popping like firecrackers, their limp bodies falling out of the sky like sacks of potatoes. I loved these locusts, they were so cost-effective and they basically necessitated area-of-effect spells to deal with and that was a great way to waste their precious resources. When the bodies fell my soldiers quickly recovered the bodies, yes it was dead flesh, but dead flesh was still usable. It was just a lower yield and you just had to process it a little more. Plus I wanted Malegaros to have a look at these bodies, apparently, he doesn’t have much experience with necromancy so I wanted him to learn. I could tell he felt that necromancy was a rather crude type of magic and honestly it was true to an extent. Necromancy was vastly inferior to Flesh Crafting but still there might be something worth learning.

It didn’t take long before the bats retreated, just a few minutes into the clash the retreat was immediately called. However, I wasn’t going to let them get away scot free and Nafas knew that. She ordered the pursuit and by the time the bats managed to get clear of the combat zone the vampires had lost almost half of their bats.

The next thing I saw them do was to fan out to flanks, so it looks like they would be trying to flank my army.

Several groups of the bats broke off completely and started to try to circle around. At the same time the ground army started to pick up the pace. It looks like they were trying to hit us in multiple directions at once. It won’t work of course but it would buy the bats more room to maneuver. Given the circumstances it was probably their best move given that they had no idea where my hive was buried.

At the very least the bats would pull my troops away from the main force. I would have no choice but to pursue and destroy the bats because they might get to the artillery if I left them alone for too long. Well that was if the forces I had at my disposal were slow...

One quick order later, I saw phoenixes descend onto the swarms of bats. Each phoenix dove right into the mass and detonated a wave of searing ether from their bodies. Entire swarms of bats were blown out of the sky, their bodies turned to burning masses of flesh plummeting out of the sky.

I heard the Imperial soldiers cheer at the sight, from their perspective they saw the blazing bodies of the phoenixes decimating the flyers of the vampires. The very bats that caused so many casualties to the Zarimans have just been swatted out of the sky like flies.

The swarms were rather large so it took multiple phoenixes to down the entire swarm. However, there was one particular swarm that was pulling ahead of the pack. It looked like this one was making a beeline right for the artillery. This one however, ended up being pounced on by none other than Azatherine herself. Her white form dived down from above, the ether blazing from her body made her descent accompanied by a screaming wail as her body tore through the air.

Her white form plunged into the mass of bats, there was a flash of light then the cracking sound of an explosion tearing the air. I could even feel some of the wind from where I’m at. The bats didn’t fall in flames this time, they were just reduced to ash from her searing flames. The ones closest to her were actually vaporized from the heat. With my modifications to Azatherine she was now far more powerful as compared to when she first met me.

Azatherine the army could use a morale boost, put on a bit of a show

I said into the hive mind and Azatherine returned a slightly annoyed affirmation. I knew she didn’t like humanoids, couldn’t stand them in fact. I could read her thoughts, she felt that anything that needed a morale boost was just weak-minded.

But regardless she let out a great cry and her voice carried across the sands in a challenge to the enemy. Then she opened her maw and fired a white hot beam. The crackling white beam raked over the army of the dead, incinerating thousands of the lesser zombies with a single wide sweep.

The vampires didn’t take lightly to my provocation and the army of the dead picked up the pace. Well I can’t let that massive blob hit my shiny imperial army so I got to blunt the charge at least.

I ordered Nafas to engage and immediately a hundred thousand of my soldiers appeared out of the sand.

Alright let see how Nafas does...

Nafas...

Sic em...