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Chapter 227: (5/21): A More Formidable Enemy

“Three jack-classes. Stay on your guard!” Lavitte shouted as the nearing zombie warriors finally came close enough that everyone on the team could pick up the vast mana signatures they gave off. “Act according to plan!”

“Yessir!”

In the moments that they waited for the three jack-class warriors, they had been preparing and planning, and in that time they came up with what they all agreed to be the best plan they had on such a short notice. First, Duura and Justin each let loose with the most powerful spells they could muster, and two enormous explosions echoed into the forest. Two explosions that broke into columns almost as the tall of the giant trees surrounding them rose into the sky, and in its wake, the three disruptors lowered their guards to see undead that they had been holding off incinerated and reduced to ashes.

That magic had taken out dozens of undead in one go, and although that was a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things, that gave Lucienne and the vampire twins precious time to breathe.

Quickly dispatching the undead in front of them that the explosions did not reach, they charged backwards before the undead could fill in the gap that had opened up.

Leaderless, the undead were reduced to shambling, yet deadly, moving corpses, but that was much too slow to catch up. In comparison, the three jack-classes were much faster and in a flash, they were upon them.

“Go, Celaen!”

“Got it!”

Unleashing dozens of arrows in rapid succession in a circle around Lucienne, Eva, and Marion, plants began to grow with startling speed. Lucienne turned just in time to block a heavy blow from the zombie warrior that engaged her, while Eva and Marion each took on another, their weapons locked together.

“Ready!”

“Ready for what?!” the zombie warrior in front of Lucienne hissed. 

Lucienne blinked at the warrior’s sudden words, but she quickly regained focus and shoved him back. “None of your business.”

Behind them, the two elven rangers closed their eyes and molded their magic into a formation for a spell. Suddenly, the already fast-growing plants from the circle of arrows around the six close-ranged combatants surged upwards, crossing each other and thickening until there was a sturdy, open-top arena enclosing them.

Just as they could not easily escape, the lesser undead outside could not easily get in.

Lucienne grinned. “Now you’re trapped.”

“Who’s trapped with who?” the zombie warrior asked, and swung his sword. 

Lucienne knocked it aside with her shield and countered with her own weapon, only for the zombie warrior to mirror her movement and block her attack. Her eyes narrowed in concentration. Unlike the lich from before that turned out to be helpless the moment she closed the distance, this zombie warrior was going to be a handful.

However, she was never one to turn from a challenge she knew she had a chance to beat.

Charging her shield with holy energy, she stepped forward and slammed her shield forward. The undead raised his own shield to block, but the resulting explosion of holy power sent him stumbling back. Taking advantage of the opening, Lucienne stabbed with her sword, only for the falling warrior to kick up and knock her weapon away.

“You…!” for a moment, Lucienne didn’t know what to say. She didn’t expect an undead to adapt so quickly, and so creatively. A sword to parry her own, sure, but to kick her sword… “Not back for a bag of flesh…” 

“Hmph. As if something that simple will do me in…” the undead shot back. 

In that brief exchange, Lucienne realized that the difference between this undead and the lich she decapitated was huge. This undead knew life— he was just like Camilla and Kagriss. It was just a shame that they were on different sides of the war.

As they exchanged blows, Lucienne spared some attention for the vampire twins and their enemies. Compared to the life-like opponent she was fighting, the other two zombie warriors were much more silent. Unlike the zombie warrior she fought who had expression aplenty, the other two warriors had frozen faces.

There was a world of difference in their fighting style too. The other two zombie warriors fought mechanically, more like well-built puppets than a truly living fighter. When Eva and Marion fought together, making up for each other’s weaknesses and enhancing each other’s strengths, they overwhelmed their opponents.

The warrior’s spirit in Lucienne told her to be happy that this warrior was the one she faced, for this zombie warrior also had a spirit. Her full attention was the least she could give him. She snapped her gaze back to him. “Your head is mine!”

“Come and take it!”

The zombie warrior lowered his center of gravity and raised his shield, slowly stepping closer. Each step was careful and calculated, leaving no room for surprise attacks on him, magic or otherwise. Even if Lucienne tried to repeat her shield bash from before, the warrior will likely keep his balance and it’ll just be a waste of mana.

Lucienne backed up one step, two steps, three steps, but on the third, she suddenly lunged forward. At the last moment before they collided, she pivoted and slid toward the zombie’s right where there was no shield, and as he turned to face her, she changed directions as fast as she could to the left that was now wide open.

“There!”

The shield slammed forward, crashing into the edge of the zombie’s shield and knocking it aside. The huge and sudden force from an unexpected direction moved the zombie off balance and sent it stumbling once again.

However, instead of pressing the attack, Lucienne ran for the other fight after one last look at the zombie warrior’s dark violet eyes that reminded her so much of Kagriss. Even if a duel was meant to be one-on-one, she was not currently fighting a duel. She was fighting a war.

Before the zombie warrior could recover, she was already beside one of the other two warriors that were still fighting the vampire siblings, slashing with her sword at the warrior’s neck.

With blinding speed, the warrior raised its shield and blocked her attack, as mechanical as always, but that merely left it open for Eva to leave a long, wide line on its shoulder, severing several tendons.

“You! Don’t ignore me!” the zombie warrior behind Lucienne shouted, charging toward her, but a fireball that exploded between them sent him reeling back. He looked up with glaring eyes at the source, only to see two staves and two bows trained on him from high above. While he had been fighting with Lucienne, the four ranged members of the Fleeting Leaves had gained height on the pine tree, allowing them to fire freely into the open-top arena.

Before he could let out another word of protest, several arrows landed by his feet, beautifully dodged, but that wasn’t enough. Roots surged from the ground, grasping at him, even as fireball after fireball soared toward him, splashing on the ground and forming an inferno.

Flaming plant tendrils swept at him, but no matter how much he cut, he could not destroy them all, until finally one managed to curl around his leg.

Thunk.

And in a split second, it was over as the tendrils curled around his limbs, pinning him to the ground. A column of golden light descended from the sky, and that was the last thing the zombie warrior saw before he returned to eternal darkness, leaving nothing behind but his half-charred body, tied to the ground by the ashes of thick plant roots.

Three on two, no matter how fast and efficiently the remaining zombie warriors fought, they could not win, and soon the last one fell. Three swings of the sword later, three more heads went into the bags slung over Lucienne, Eva, and Marion’s shoulders.

With all the threats neutralized, Lucienne looked up at their four supports. “So we just climb out now?”

“No, don’t. We’ll blast a hole into the wall along with the zombies around there. You’ve been surrounded.”

“…yeah, I thought as much,” Lucienne muttered. She considered her mana reserves that were running a bit low, and then shrugged, lowering her shield. She had more than enough for a few more charges. “Stand behind me and follow me out.”

“Thanks, Lucy~” Eva said, patting her on the shoulder. 

Marion nodded at her before joining his sister behind Lucienne.

After a moment, a combined magic of holy light and fire blasted a hole in the plant wall opposite of where Lucienne was standing, and even before the dust faded, Lucienne started her charge.

“Retreat!”

“Let’s go!”

Amidst shouts, she broke out of the remaining undead encirclement with Eva and Marion close behind her. Lavitte and Celaen jumped down, nimble as cats, while Duura grabbed Justin and simply thumped down on the ground with a grunt. The undead rushed to get at them, but despite having dispatched three jack-class undeads, none of them forgot their jobs.

Lucienne, Eva, and Marion stepped forward between the undead swarm and their four back-liners, defending them as they regained their balance.

“That’s it, everyone. Time to leave,” Lavitte shouted.

“Alright!”

With a few more blasts of magic and a few more arrows for good measure to impede the undead swarm, the Fleeting Leaves beat a hasty retreat, charging at full speed back in the direction of the city. 

As they ran, right on the edge of her senses, Lucienne detected yet another new signature, this time far more powerful than any other undead she had ever sensed before, and a shiver ran down her spine. “Lord-class incoming!” she shouted.

“What?! Are you serious? There’s what… nine total in the entire army and one of them decides to come for us?” Lavitte asked in disbelief.

“Without a doubt. Justin?”

Although Lucienne hoped that she was wrong, Justin just nodded, dashing her hopes. “That seems like a lord-class all right…”

Lavitte fell silent as he began to think. A moment later, with the lord-class getting closer and closer, he snapped his fingers. “Change course. Let’s see if we can rendezvous with another party. Do you detect anyone nearby, Duura? Justin?”

Duura nodded and pointed in a direction left of their current path. “There’s another group retreating in that direction. Three teams of three to five, a total of eleven of them.”

“Perfect. Let’s go! Move, move!” Lavitte shouted. “I don’t think we can take on a lord-class by ourselves just yet, but if we work together with eleven other people…” He grinned. “Ten thousand, split among eighteen people.”

With the plan set, Duura picked up Justin once again, much to his annoyance, and they changed courses, moving toward the other retreating party. The party ahead of them must’ve detected them and the lord-class as well, because they slowed down to let the Fleeting Leaves catch up.

The lord-class chased for a bit longer, but when the party ahead of the Fleeting Leaves came into view, the lord-class finally decided to turn back, probably deciding that it could not defeat all of them at once.

Despite Lavitte’s confident words before, they could not help but sigh in relief. None of them could guarantee that they wouldn’t lose anyone if they truly clashed with the lord-class, and if the lord-class decided to stall them and let another pursuing party catch up, then that’ll truly be the end.

When they caught up with the other party, the two parties just nodded to each other and stuck together all the way back just to be safe, only parting when they entered the safety of the city walls.

After exchanging the heads of the jack-class undeads at the guild and reporting their findings, including the lord-class undead that briefly pursued them, the Fleeting Leaves returned to their house and the four waiting children, completely exhausted.

Patting Sariel and Ariel on the head, Lucienne collapsed into her bed. 

“By the time I wake up… there probably won’t be any time left for another hunting trip, right?” she muttered to herself as she stared up at the blank ceiling, sleep slowly overtaking her.

Even if there was time, a second hunt was probably a bad idea.  They’d caught the undead off guard the first time, but now, the undead will definitely be ready for them. To go again would suicide.

Knowing that she had to rest to prepare for the upcoming siege, Lucienne closed her eyes and fell asleep.