Novel Full Chapter 1564 Jokester
Chapter 1564 Jokester
Lilith saw her across the field and the world went white.
Morgana stood beside the Primordial Villain with her head hanging at an angle that living necks didn’t hold. Blood ran from her mouth in a continuous stream that pooled at her boots. Her robes were soaked from collar to hem in a red so dark it looked black, and the stab wound in her chest still wept where healing had been interrupted. Her arms dangled at her sides. Her eyes were open and empty, the cycling elements that had defined her for five hundred years replaced by a flat, vacant glow that held no recognition.
She looked like a corpse that someone had forgotten to lay down.
“Sister!”
Lilith’s scream tore over the battlefield and her spellblade erupted with white fire. She abandoned the measured exchanges, abandoned the careful footwork, abandoned centuries of discipline and drove into Scar.
“Scar, I must get through!”
“Over my dead body.”
Scar caught the first strike on both daggers crossed and the impact launched her backward. Her boots carved trenches in the earth before she found footing, and Lilith was already on top of her, the second swing coming down in an overhead arc that split the air.
The third strike nearly took Scar’s head.
Scar deflected it, barely, and the force of the parry drove one dagger from her grip. She rolled sideways and came up bleeding from a fresh gash on her forearm. Blue-tinged blood ran down her wrist and dripped from her fingers.
She looked at it.
“Well, I’m already dead…” She tilted her head. “You get what I meant.”
Lilith didn’t laugh. “When did you become a damned jokester, huh?!” Her grip shifted on the spellblade and her next swing drove Scar back three more steps, the white fire scorching the air between them.
“Maybe Master’s attitude is rubbing off on me…?” Scar pondered out loud then shrugged with amusement flickering in her eyes. “Hm. I don’t know how to feel about that…”
Lilith gritted her teeth and pressed harder, knowing that Scar wasn’t serious. This woman dared to enjoy herself right now…? The dutiful assassin who accompanied Lilith for centuries was having fun in her own little way, clearly enjoying what her Master was doing at this very moment.
“Oh wait, I got it. Saying ‘you must get through’ is your way of apologizing before you cut me down.”
Lilith’s teeth clenched until the tendons in her neck stood out.
“I’m sorry, Scar.”
The words came out ragged. The kind of apology you gave when you meant it with everything you had and knew it wouldn’t change a single thing about what came next.
Scar’s eyes narrowed behind the mask.
“Come, Lilith Ravenshade.”
She settled into her stance, daggers raised, bleeding from three wounds that would have killed a living woman, and the calm behind those eyes was absolute.
“Do your worst.”
Maybe Scar was on to something about Quinlan’s attitude rubbing off on her, because she had absolutely no intention of fighting fair.
“Defensive ranks to me!” Her voice snapped through the soul army’s lines as she fell back from Lilith’s reach. “Close around the Scarlet Lilies! Do not let them through!”
Soul soldiers surged from the flanks. Tankers locked shields and slid into the gap between Scar and Lilith, three rows deep. Mages wove barriers that shimmered blue in the smoke-choked air. Fighters moved to intercept Jallen’s spear and Bronnya’s shield advance on the right, cutting the Scarlet Lilies off from their leader.
“Master is handling the enemy leaders right now. Our job is to make sure nobody interrupts him.”
Voices answered from the ranks, alive with an energy that had no business existing in the dead.
“You’re seeing what I’m seeing, right?!” A soul fighter locked his shield against the tanker beside him and his spectral eyes burned brighter. “He’s puppeting a Level 74! That’s our Master!”
“Not just any level 74!”
“He’s controlling Queen Morgana herself!”
The buzz spread through the ranks like wildfire. A soul mage in the second row laughed as she wove a barrier, spectral light dancing between her fingers. “The strongest elementalist on the continent has been dethroned!”
“Did you see that wind and lightning combo?” An archer nocked an arrow without looking away from the distant spectacle. “We’re watching history being written in real time, boys.”
The soul army was electric. Every soldier on that line could feel what was happening behind them through the connection to [Soul Reaper] and Quinlan himself, could sense their Master’s mana threading through two sets of channels at once, and the pride rolling through the ranks was so thick it changed the way they fought.
Shields locked tighter and blades swung harder. The dead held their ground with the fervor of soldiers who believed.
“Shut it!”
Lilith’s spellblade blazed into a pillar of white fire that scorched the air for ten meters in every direction. She hit the shield wall with the fury of a woman who had just listened to an army of corpses celebrate while her sister bled out on her feet, and the first two tankers disintegrated on contact.
Jallen’s spear punched through a fighter’s guard on the right flank. Bronnya’s tower shield caught a mage volley meant for Void, the impact driving the massive woman back three steps while Void’s return fire erased half a dozen soldiers in a pulse of dark energy.
The Scarlet Lilies hit the line together.
…
Twenty meters from the Primordial Villain, the healer hadn’t moved.
She knelt in the dirt with a gash above her eye and her staff lying beside her, and she stared at the image that would follow her into whatever afterlife the Goddess had planned.
The Primordial Villain next to Morgana Ravenshade, both hemorrhaging, standing in a pool of their own blood.
Then he spoke.
“What are you waiting for, Healer?” Quinlan asked. “Your queen is still alive. You swore an oath to keep her that way. So do your job.”
Her hands shook.
“Heal her.”
She knew she had to resist. This was obvious. He was the enemy.
But…
‘I took my sacred oath to protect Her Majesty no matter what. If I don’t heal her, she’ll die…’
The Healer-classed woman picked up her staff. Her fingers closed around the wood and the mana answered, flowing through the focus the way it always did, steady and warm. She pointed the staff at Morgana from where she knelt and the chant left her mouth in a low, rapid cadence that she could have spoken in her sleep.
The healing light hit Morgana’s chest and the tissue began knitting. Bone fragments shifted back toward alignment. The collapsed lung inflated one agonizing centimeter at a time.
While her heart was in a crippling disarray, she did not stop casting.
Alexios Valorian crossed the distance.
Nine centuries on a throne had not dulled him. The golden longsword in his two-handed grip hummed with power as he closed on Quinlan’s position, and the fury rolling off him bent the air.
Myrasyn’s barrier flickered into his path.
“Out of my way, elf,” he growled.
“I refuse~” Myrasyn’s voice was full of playfulness. Just like how the soul soldiers loved the situation, so did the queen of the elven people.
Alexios wasn’t a man who’d cry in outrage and demand justice. His longsword was already moving.
“[Severance]!”