Chapter 96: Don't Worry Captain, I'll Heal Them to Death!

The moment that golden barrage of death whistled through the air, even a high-ranking Death Lord like Mogras felt a chill seep into the very marrow of his bones. He had seen with his own eyes how that strange, radiant power had “purified” over a hundred of his elite minions into ash in a matter of seconds.

But the dignity of a lord would not permit him to turn and flee like a common soldier.

“Mere parlor tricks!” Mogras roared, channeling the vast reserves of death energy within his body. A thick, dark green shield of necrotic power suddenly materialized around him.

Anti-Magic Shield!

The other two were not nearly as stubborn.

Ghost Blade’s figure dissolved into a wisp of black smoke, melting into the shadows so quickly he left only a fleeting afterimage. The Witherer, with the briefest of incantations, tore open a pitch-black portal, stepping through it to reappear dozens of meters away.

The iron triangle, a unit renowned for its seamless coordination, had its formation shattered in an instant by a human priest, barely over level twenty, wielding a bizarrely shaped “staff.”

However, the stubborn Mogras came to regret his decision the very next second.

The golden barrage collided with his Anti-Magic Shield, but it neither deflected nor was it neutralized. The impact felt like a red-hot branding iron being pressed into a block of grease.

Sizzle, sizzle!

His shield, the bulwark he took such pride in, was rapidly melting away, vaporizing under the onslaught. He could feel his precious death energy draining away at an unmatched, horrifying speed. This attack might not have been lethal to him, but the insult it carried was deep.

And… it was a massive drain on his power.

“Damn it!” Mogras cursed aloud. The few seconds he had spent maintaining his defense had consumed more death energy than his entire half-day battle against Eldara.

Finally unable to bear the terrifying consumption, he frantically spurred his Skeleton Warhorse, dodging to the side.

On the entire battlefield, there was one person who never dodged.

Eldara.

She even stood there composedly, sheathing her longsword with a calm, deliberate motion.

Of course she was calm—she had clearly seen how her apprentices, bathed in this very same golden “attack,” had remained brimming with vitality.

‘This human… is a good person,’ Eldara concluded in her heart, allowing the golden barrage to completely engulf her slender figure.

Seeing this, the three undead lords, though they had half-expected it, still stared intently at the area shrouded in golden light, desperate to witness her fate.

There were no screams.

No struggle.

The golden barrage, like the gentlest spring rain, simply merged into Eldara’s body. The power of the Holy Light cleverly bypassed the death-infused shell of her armor and acted directly upon her flesh and blood.

A warm, pure power surged through her limbs and bones. The grievous wounds left on her body by Ghost Blade and The Witherer began to squirm as flesh knitted itself back together at an astonishing speed. The deep muscle soreness and lingering fatigue from the prolonged battle were washed away completely, purged by this radiant energy.

In just a few seconds, Eldara’s condition went from exhausted and heavily injured directly to her absolute peak.

Of course, this recovery was limited to her physical body. She could feel that the source of her power as a Death Knight—that cold, potent death energy—had not received any replenishment.

Health bar full, mana bar empty.

The sensation was incredibly strange.

“Don’t worry, Captain! I’ll heal you!”

Celeste’s energetic voice echoed from afar, snapping Eldara back to her senses.

Eldara remained silent.

‘I wasn’t worried,’she thought.’Also, what does “heal” mean?’

Questions aside, her instincts as a warrior would not allow her to waste this fleeting opportunity.

In the split second that Mogras and the others were frozen in shock, Eldara moved. Her figure erupted forward, transforming into a bolt of black lightning that was even faster and sharper than before.

Her first target was the mage who had just stabilized himself after teleporting—The Witherer.

“Oh no!”

A fatal premonition seized The Witherer. He tried to teleport again, but the lingering stiffness from the previous spell made him a fraction of a second too slow.

Eldara’s figure vanished from his field of vision. When she reappeared, she was already directly in front of him.

A cold, pure, and effortless silver sword light flashed into existence.

The Witherer only had time to raise the human-skin spellbook, holding it horizontally across his chest. It was his last and only barrier.

Pfft!

The silver sword edge sliced clean through the evil tome bound to his very soul, and through the hands The Witherer was using to hold it.

“Ahhh!”

The Witherer let out a scream of excruciating pain as filthy black blood gushed from his severed wrists. That spellbook was the source of all his power; its destruction inflicted a wound upon his soul far more severe than the loss of his hands.

Eldara’s assault did not stop there. She spun, landing a vicious whip kick that connected precisely with The Witherer’s chest.

Crack!

The sound of shattering bones pierced the air.

The Witherer was folded in half by the blow, sent flying backward like a broken doll. He slammed heavily into the ground in the distance, twitching incessantly, utterly unable to rise.

“Damn it!” Mogras and Ghost Blade roared in unison, charging from the left and right in a desperate pincer attack to force Eldara back.

But at this moment, Eldara’s physical state was at its zenith, and her combat skills and experience had always crushed these monsters who relied on raw power alone.

She didn’t even turn to face Ghost Blade, who was closing in from behind. Instead, she reached out with her left hand, grabbing at the empty air and draining the last dregs of death energy from her body.

“Grasp of Winter!”

A freezing cold necrotic energy condensed out of thin air, forming an invisible giant hand that clamped down hard on Ghost Blade’s body. The assassin’s ghostly speed came to an immediate, jarring halt.

At the same time, Eldara turned, her sword blade sweeping upward in a perfect arc to meet Mogras’s mountain-splitting giant axe.

CLANG!

The collision of sword and axe sent a sonic wave rippling through the air, making the surrounding bones tremble.

This time, it was not Eldara who was forced back.

It was Mogras.

“How… how could your power have recovered?!” Mogras’s voice was laced with shock and disbelief. The Skeleton Warhorse beneath him was even knocked back half a step by the immense force of the impact.

Eldara’s cold voice calmly stated a fact. “Because the path I walk is the correct one.”

Her wrist flicked, and the sword blade traced a deep, elegant arc, completely neutralizing the brute force behind the axe.

“And you are merely a pitiful worm, dominated by power.”

Just as the two were locked in a stalemate, a familiar sound ripped across the battlefield.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

That deadly gunfire echoed once again.

Celeste’s muzzle had long since locked onto the two most vulnerable targets: Ghost Blade, still trapped by the Grasp of Winter, and The Witherer, clinging to life on the ground.

The golden, holy rain of death poured down once more.

Ghost Blade and The Witherer were terrified, desperately draining the last of their energy to throw up thin, wavering Anti-Magic Shields.

“Ahhhh!”

If bathing in that light was like a gentle spring breeze for Eldara, for them, it was the cruelest purgatory of fire. Every Holy Light bullet that struck their shields produced a sizzling sound of corrosion; that was their death energy being forcibly vaporized. Every impact was a burning, tearing agony that seared them at the soul level.

Mogras’s so-called “immortal body” seemed laughably pale and ridiculous in the face of such an unreasonable purification power. They could indeed use death energy to heal their wounds, but that required one simple prerequisite: they had to have energy to use.

Celeste’s Holy Light bullets weren’t just shattering their bodies; they were consuming the very source of their power.

Ghost Blade let out an unwilling roar, suddenly detonating a portion of his own power. He finally broke free from the shackles of the Grasp of Winter, rolling away and scrambling into the shadows of the battlefield in a pathetic retreat.

The Witherer was in an even more miserable state. He had just caught his breath from the excruciating pain of his severed wrists and shattered bones when the barrage hit him full-on. He could only roll on the ground while maintaining his crumbling shield, his dodging posture unsightly and pathetic.

Although the two were not purified on the spot, they were forced to scramble for their lives, looking utterly wretched.

Counterattack? They couldn’t even maintain the last shred of dignity befitting their station.

“Bastards!” Mogras’s eyes were nearly splitting with rage, but he was tightly entangled by Eldara’s flawless swordplay, completely unable to break away to rescue his comrades.

The scales of battle were no longer just tipping.

They were collapsing.

An Eldara with full stamina was suppressing the strongest of them, Mogras, head-on.

An absurd priest holding an AK-47 was providing relentless fire coverage from afar.

The other two so-called bosses were like mice being toyed with by a playful cat, left with no choice but to scurry away in terror.

This battle was already unwinnable.

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]