Badge in Azure

There were many terrible consequences of magic counter-reacting. The collapse of magic chords was the best that one could hope for, while elemental chaos, elemental disintegration, and burning of mental strength would all be fatal.

That mage was no exception. His mental strength began to burn and two balls of flame danced in his eye sockets while the elements around him formed an insignificant elemental storm.

Despite its insignificance, there were signs of the mage’s skin cracking under his white magic robe.

When the winged skeleton saw this, he twisted his body in mid-air and swung the giant axe behind him, cutting more than ten soldiers behind him into two. As for the mage, he had already been scared to death by the winged skeleton’s attack.

As a spirit of the dead that possessed intelligence, he looked down on mages like that. He could not help but recall how Saleen would cast his spells. No matter who the enemy was, how dangerous the circumstances might be, or even if the enemy’s weapon had pierced through his body, Saleen would still continue to prepare for the next spell quietly.

Both of them were mages, but the differences between them went beyond just grades.

The mage had been the biggest threat to the spirits, but because he was dead, the campsite was torn into pieces by the spirits of the dead. The spirits were not of high grades. Aside from the death knights, the rest of the spirits, including the berserk undead soldiers, were merely grade-3 and below.

When the winged skeleton noticed the copy of the mechanical soul standing still and not doing anything, he used his giant axe to knock its skull and said, “Go and create undead soldiers. You can consume half of them.”

Creak…

The copy acknowledged him with a high-pitched sound and immediately charged forward to infect the Cloudflow foot soldiers. There was a large amount of undead fluid stored in its body, so it was able to create undead soldiers tens of times faster than the winged skeleton.

Blood was flowing everywhere. When the knights on both flanks finally realized that the foot soldiers’ campsite was under attack, they quickly drew closer to the middle, but what awaited them was the first batch of undead soldiers that had been created, along with the bone arrows of the skeleton archers.

The winged skeleton had left all the high-level spirits of the dead back in the bone castle in case it was attacked by the enemy. As such, he did not have too many powerful spirits by his side at the time. The only one that he could depend on was the copy of the mechanical soul.

Fortunately, the winged skeleton had advanced, so he could summon more than tens of thousands of low-level spirits. Although low-level spirits might have poor combat abilities, they were not afraid of swords or knives on the battlefield and were also much stronger than human soldiers. On top of that, the mechanical soul had begun to create undead soldiers. Once they had joined in the battle, the foot soldiers’ campsite looked like it had just been attacked by a swarm of locusts.

The battle there had attracted the attention of the Cloudflow army. Just ahead was an even bigger campsite with a Cloudflow battalion commander. Once he knew about the appearance of a large number of spirits of the dead, he immediately gave the order for mages and foot soldiers with shields to defend the ground before sending messengers to seek reinforcements from the main force.

How could there be reinforcements? Over at the arrow towers on top of the city wall, the moment the Bitter Water Prefecture mages realized that there was chaos at the enemy’s rear, they immediately reported it to Lex. She quickly gave the order for the heavy-armored knights and heavy-armored magic foot soldiers to charge out from the city to join in the attack. At the same time, she began to support the ongoing battle outside the city with her spells.

On top of the seven-story magic tower, the light of magic never stopped shining. A gigantic phoenix glided across the sky and swooped at the Cloudflow forces outside the city. Casting spells from the magic tower allowed Lex to use fewer magic chords, recover them more quickly, and make use of the magic arrays in the magic tower to amplify the power of her spells.

There were many spirits of the dead in the city that had already participated in the battles outside the city a few times. The mages were summoning about for-thousand spirits of the dead to join Lex’s main force in charging out of the city.

When the heavy-armored knights left the city, the arrow towers on top of the city wall began to suppress the Cloudflow forces by unleashing a rain of arrows at the same time. The rain of arrows landed accurately on the knights on both flanks, while the path ahead of them was a clear target for the catapults. The catapults in the city were no longer worried about exposing their location since the enemy had already lost so many of their own catapults. They could no longer attempt to destroy the heavy-armored weapons in the city.

The Cloudflow army’s attack was not going well. Although they managed to claim the city wall a few times, they never managed to overcome the second layer of the city wall. Cloudflow was not well-prepared or more, in their rush, they did not replenish the equipment that the winged skeleton had managed to destroy.

When the army of Daliang City retaliated aggressively, the tempo of the battle changed quickly and exposed the Cloudflow army’s weaknesses. The soldiers who were attacking the city wall began to turn back and pursue the Daliang City army that charged past them, thereby exposing their backs to the archers. Once both flanks had been suppressed by the alchemy crossbow arrows shot from the arrow towers, Cloudflow failed to deploy a ballista there to counter the attack. Instead, they retreated even further away.

It was common knowledge that even though arrow towers could cause a lot of damage, they did not last long. Cloudflow had planned to attack from the flanks again once the arrow towers stopped.

To the Qin generals, commanding one’s army in that way was quite stupid.

Heavy-armored magic foot soldiers followed behind the heavy-armored knights charging out of the city. They quickly filled up both flanks before another huge group of heavy-armored knights left the city with a mixture of death knights in the center.

The city gate closed quickly. Cloudflow did not even manage to grasp the opportunity to spring a counter-attack when the city gate was opened.

After the knights left the city, they did not charge at the main forces of Cloudflow because a mile away there were low metal fences that were covered in spikes. No matter how foolish Cloudflow might be, they would never allow their knights to charge through their formation so easily.

The winged skeleton put away his giant axe. There were regrets in his heart as he wished that his weapon had not been destroyed by the sorcerer. Both sides of the giant axe were able to store a high-level death magic spell each, so he could have saved on so much trouble.

He took out a magic staff. The soul flames in his eyes danced aggressively as a low voice spoke in spirit language that rang around every corner of his head. Gigantic bone walls rose around the winged skeleton. He raised his magic staff into the air and the surrounding spirit energy quickly rose. The spirits of the dead nearby all drew closer to him while the corpses on the ground also began to crawl towards the white bone wall.

“Since ancient times, spirits of the dead have always co-existed with the living. Death also means eternity…” The winged skeleton began to chant things that resembled the prayers of divine spells.

“There are no inferior souls, only fallen flesh and bodies. When death calls, everything is equal!” The winged skeleton’s voice became louder. The knights that were charging on both flanks heard what he said. Although they did not understand the meaning of the spirit language that he spoke in, all of them felt as if death was about to take them.

“The fury of the dead arises from the sins of the living. Powerful beings of the death dimension, obey my summoning and give me the power for revenge. I shall offer all the living creatures here as sacrifices to you!”

When the winged skeleton’s voice stopped, there appeared a gigantic black swirl in the sky where his staff was pointed. Within the black swirl came a deafening howl that could be heard tens of miles away. The Cloudflow knights nearby even fell off their warhorses. Their warhorses also collapsed in convulsion and fainted.

The moon in the sky flashed and while the deafening howl in the black swirl did not stop, a stream of blood shot up into the sky from the eight yard wide swirl.

The stream of blood shot up to hundreds of yards in the sky without stopping, until it was close to a thousand yards. That was when it began to spin and coagulate together. Looking up from the ground, it was as if a blood-red moon had appeared in the sky, giving it a sinister appearance.

The fresh blood of the blood river continued to gather in the sky. It seemed that the winged skeleton had no intentions of stopping the death magic spell until half a minute later when he could persist no further. The magic staff in his hands suddenly broke into pieces.

The black swirl shrunk quickly until it vanished, but the howl persisted. Within half a minute, the blood in the sky had spread to an area of more than a thousand yards.

“Night of the Dead Spirits – Rain of Blood!” The winged skeleton shouted.

After the winged skeleton concluded the spell, a light tremor appeared between every foot of the blood clouds in the sky. Blood expanded with every tremor, covering up an even larger area of the sky.

Forbidden spells existed on the death dimension as well, but they were not the same as the humans’ forbidden curses. Forbidden spells were extremely powerful, but in exchange, some souls would vanish forever. The Priests of the Caucasus people could destroy souls or even shred them into pieces, but they did not have the ability to turn soul strength into nothingness. Some death magic spells could only be cast if the energy of the souls had been completely used up.

The souls of the Myers Mainland dimension would not suffice. Only the souls of the death dimension would allow for the full power of the forbidden spells to be unleashed.

Night of the Dead Spirits – Rain of Blood was one such spell. The winged skeleton had no choice but to utilize the real summoning technique of his dimension at the same time by borrowing the powers of the Kings of the death dimension to bring out the blood river and set up this spell properly.

The surface area of this spell was so huge that people that were eight miles away in Daliang City could see it very clearly.

Lex could not help but walk to the window of the magic tower. As she looked at the blood clouds underneath the moon, she could not help but think to herself, “It has been a thousand years… Ever since the rise of Qin, no one has ever seen such powerful death magic spells. I suppose the winged skeleton has advanced?”

After completing the spell, the winged skeleton was greatly weakened. He had no choice but to take out a few dead soul flames for consumption in order to regain his energy.

Casting this type of spell on his own was really risky. Fortunately, his body was resilient enough. The thing within the swirl did not dare to try and snatch it. If it had been his original body, not only would it fail to exude the level of power of a spirit king, there might even have been a counter-reaction.

The Cloudflow soldiers were so terrified that even the generals failed to calm them down. The funniest thing was that the mages were the first to flee. Those that were not able to fly quickly snatched the warhorses and escape towards the south.

As the rain of blood fell from the clouds, it felt as if there were gigantic mouths hidden within the blood clouds that were vomiting the rain of blood. The rain of blood fell onto the heads and bodies of the Cloudflow soldiers. It penetrated through their armor and entered their bodies.

Screams of madness quickly spread throughout the Cloudflow soldiers. Once the rain of blood entered their bodies, the howling within the black swirl could be heard in their brains. It was deafening, leaving them with no choice but to scream along as well. Their eyes quickly dimmed and almost immediately, their eyeballs began to rot.

Soul flames lit up in the empty eye sockets as these soldiers quickly transformed into spirits of the dead.