Why Did You Summon Me?

A self-respecting warrior would be ashamed to fake their deaths just to escape from their enemies, but to assassins and hitmen, this was just a part of the basics. There were stories of how hitmen loved to lie in coffins and roleplay as a corpse, and when their target’s back was turned, they leap up and take down their target. This was why the Hitman Walker felt incredibly proud of himself at the moment, without any shame.

“Pretending to be dead is a type of undercover technique, right? See! I knew I was talented in assassination!” He murmured to himself and produced a matchbox-sized box, which he proceeded to poke.

Back in the ruins, the three rocks instantly picked up the signal, with the square-shaped rock saying, “The Hitman Walker finally succeeded in fleeing from his enemies. At this moment, he is on his way.”

This little box was a trinket the Engineer Walker had made when he was bored. It could produce hidden magical pulses to be received to another similar box, and through the variances in the frequency and strength of the magical pulses, the boxes could decode the message being transmitted. The Engineer Walker had actually created something after radio waves communication on Earth.

Personally, Baiyi found the invention pretty useless; its efficiency and quality of transferring messages were both inferior to standard communication magic, with its only boon being harder to be detected. Nevertheless, it paled in comparison to the level of secrecy and confidentiality in direct consciousness-communication via the Void, which was why Grand Principal Bai was not the slightest bit interested.

The Blacksmith Walker really liked his friend’s little trinket, especially because it felt like the walkie-talkies on Earth. Hence, he had brought the little boxes with him for his trip this time and even gave every member one of it. Who knew that it would have become so useful?

“Not to demoralize ourselves but, I have a significant level of doubt in our odds of winning, even after factoring Sir Hitman Walker into our variables,” The square-shaped rock warned worriedly. “Do you recall? Our previous encounter with a colossal enemy had only ended in our favor through conjoining a few of us into a single, behemoth-like hammerhead shark.”

“Oh please, this green blot right here is just an undead. He’s far from the Law monster that we fought ten years ago, okay?” The pile of scattered stones retorted in contempt. “Besides, Hope isn’t here. We can’t join together even if we wanted to.”

Just as the two of them were discussing on their next best move, the round boulder suddenly jerked up in the air frantically and cried, “Oh, the Hitman Walker’s almost here! We gotta’ go meet him somewhere else because he might just get us all busted way too soon…”

Her sentence had barely finished when a pile of ashen grey mud inched towards their direction. Sure, the pile of mud looked no similar to the earth around it, but for some reason, anyone could take one look of it and immediately come to the conclusion that this was a person cloaking themselves under an ashen grey cloak crawling through the earth and pretending so hard to be a pile of “inconspicuous” mud.

The Voidwalkers could feel their luck straining to protect them by having the Grandruler’s gaze fixed on the horizon, where the battle was still ongoing, as he discussed their next step in the war with the Revenant King, who had hurried back as soon as possible after finishing his task.

“Zounds, why is he being so lethally direct in his approach?” The square-shaped rock exclaimed, dumbfounded.

“Is everyone alright. Why are you all rocks?! Don’t worry, I’m here now, I will help! ” The Hitman Walker, who was disguised as a mound of ashen grey mud, whispered, crawling over even faster.

At that moment, the three Voidwalkers shared the same thought: ‘ Holy crap, don’t come over here!’

It was right then, and perhaps out of frustration at how the war was turning out, the Revenant King Taamik paced in its spot frantically enough to kick up a single piece of pebble off the ground.

The pebble cruised through the air, and with the divine help from fate, it hit right at that pile of crawling pile of mud, which gave off an unmistakable“clank!” of an armor being hit,

“Something’s not right over there!” The Revenant growled in alarm.

“Show yourself!!” The Grandruler was just as taken aback by the sudden, shrill sound of metal around him. He turned to where it most likely came from and scanned the area for about a second before crying out, “What the hell are you even trying to hide?!”

To illustrate his point, the Grandruler immediately chucked a greenish energy ball right at the spot. Kaboom! it went, and from the ruins, three rocks of different kinds suddenly leaped out: a square-shaped rock, a round boulder, and a pile of scattered stones. Needless to say, the Walkers’ disguise had been exposed.

The Hitman seemed a bit too eager to cast off his disguise too—he wasted no time to stand up, yanked the cloak off his body with one hand impatiently, and then drew out a heavy shield with prongs thrusting out of its surface along with a meteor hammer on his other hand. Heroically, he shouted to his comrades, “Get behind me!”

The Grandruler silently stared at the Revenant King. He said nothing, but it was only because his sentiment did not even need to be said.

“T-that wretched knave faked his own death!” The Revenant King immediately protested. “H-he lied to me! He had smeared my honor as a knight!”

An outburst of applause and laughter suddenly broke out from the Voidwalkers.

“Whooaaa! Hitman Senpai, you finally fool one person with your techniques! Congratulations!”

“Well done. It pleases us all to see ten years worth of training to yield such an outstanding result!”

“Uh. Undead creatures… Probably the only species that will ever be thick enough to get fooled by him.”

“Th-thank you. Thank you all; you’re far too kind,” The Hitman Walker hurriedly replied, his tone sincere and grateful.

The Grandruler could no longer contain himself from watching an impromptu congratulatory party, so he bolted up suddenly and swung a single punch to the direction of the Walkers. His fist was so large, it could neatly cover all of the four!

To that attack, the Hitman Walker only snorted. “Hmph!”

He raised his heavy shield up to his face, his body bending a little while his legs assumed a horse-riding stance. He was planning to brace this single punch — which was capable of pulverizing him into Hitman Walker Powder — head-on!

This knocked the Hitman Walker knocked off his feet and sent him careening through the air.

The other Voidwalkers shot each other a glance before looking in the direction opposite the Grandruler… and began running as fast as they could.

“G-guys? Is it just me, or are we kinda embarrassing the name of the Voidwalkers a lil’ bit ?” Lady Assassin Walker, who was also fleeing, blurted out. Then, turning back to see the Revenant King hot in pursuit, its speed greatly increased with the help of its skeletal horse, she suddenly morphed into the Warrior fashioning a bow out of her own combat chi. The Fairy Walker came out afterward, shooting out an arrow towards the Revenant King before switching places with Lady Assassin Walker, who ran even faster to make up for the speed reduction that the switch had caused.

Back in reality, Baiyi paused the flashback for a while and stared at the four. “Seriously, none of you thought it was embarrassing?”

“I’ll say it simply cannot be helped. Among the five of us, the one capable of inflicting the heaviest damage would be you, something I assume you have already noticed. You  were absent the whole time. Besides, our enemy is a ruler with direct power over the entire undead realm, allowing him a limitless supply of undead energy at his disposal all the while the four of us, unlike you, cannot draw out the power of Void Energy. If we were to fight with sheer number and strength, the Grandruler would crush us without a doubt. In other words. The only time we could ever fight him head-on would be if you were actually with us,” The Lich Walker explained matter-of-factly, raising its arms and trying to shrug like humans.

“So, our most respectful Fifth Walker, before you start to wag your fingers at our action and calling us an embarrassment, may I ask where have you, our main firepower, been? ” The Lich finished flatly.

Baiyi found himself speechless. In fact, if compared timelines, Baiyi was pretty sure that this was around the time when he had just captured his second loli and was probably poking their cheeks and fooling around…

Back in the flashback, the Lich was crossing its arms before its chest and observing the Grandruler, who also started to pursue them with its mighty, colossal steps.

Amazingly, the Lich managed to maintain its fleeing speed while calmly analyzing the Walkers’ battle options to the others, “That monstrous green giant is an amalgamation of an enormous amount of undead energy. Aesthetically and technique-wise, I shall award it a low rating; However, I should also credit it for being remarkably foolproof as well. The only way to fight it is to fight head-on, which is far from my expertise… Hmm. I guess I don’t have any more tricks in my sleeves now.”

“We need an opening for Sir Scholar to level him with Forbidden Spells.” The soulflames in the Lich’s socket danced wildly as it looked at the Grandruler drawing nearer and nearer towards them.

Up to this point, one may start to wonder how anyone could maintain their speed running to one direction while also turning their face towards the other direction. The reason the Lich managed to do that, of course, was because it top half was facing completely opposite to where its lower half was facing—its feet were still running away from the enemies, but its torso was turning towards the enemies. It was strange and really surreal.

“Don’t you find your position a little painful?” The Hitman, who had recovered from that one hit from earlier and was now joining them in running, remarked in concern.

“Ah? Please. Back when I was alive, I ran away from you humans in this position all the time! I’m pretty used to it by now,” the Lich replied while tossing a few green energy balls at the enemies to obstruct them.

However, the enemies were like a tank powering through its obstacles without a shred of reservation—they completely ignored the Lich’s attacks and shot forward. Even when the Lich had once again summoned its hammerhead shark reaper to drag the enemies down, the Revenant King merely yanked its horse upward into a high jump before swinging its snowy white saber downward, cleaving the reaper into halves.

“Tsk tsk. And now even the Void’s mascot, the mighty hammerhead shark, K.O. after a single attack,” the Hitman lamented.

“Since when have we agreed on a mascot, you oaf? I thought we were above taking a serious matter with unwarranted jocularity!” The Scholar finally snapped. “More pressingly, can you not use your shield to buy me a few more minutes?”

“Were you asleep when I first did that against the big guy? I got smacked out of my feet, man! I can’t beat the big guy! But… maybe the horse guy is easier to take down,” The Hitman said.

“Oh, yea? Then let’s take that small guy out!” Lady Assassin exclaimed, slowing down a little to store some energy in her two legs. “I need to get higher!”

The Hitman understood her immediately. Pulling out a single zweihander, he placed the blade horizontally before his chest and allowed Lady Assassin to jump onto the blade skillfully.

“Go!” He bellowed, heaving the sword upward and flinging the girl high up into the air.

She morphed into the Fairy in midair, pulling the bowstring of her icy-blue longbow, and fired five arrows at the Revenant King.

“Foolish weakling!’ The Grandruler muttered under his breath and grabbed onto the arrows, crushing them and absorbing the ensuing explosion within his gigantic palm. Just as the Lich had predicted, the Grandruler possess so much undead energy that he could mitigate most small-scale attacks with pure energy alone.

However, this time, the Fairy’s main trick was never on the five icy-blue arrows. Hidden among them was a lone black arrow flying at a way higher speed than the others enough to escape the Grandruler’s grasp and attention like a fine ray of light. It brushed past the Grandruler’s body, stabbed right through the Revenant King’s helmet, and pierced into the soul flame in its left eye socket.

“Gaaahhhh!’ The Revenant King let out a spine-tingling shriek. It instinctively cupped its wounded left eye with one hand and flung its saber at the figure in the sky with its other hand.

Lady Assassin, despite being in midair and without any aid to act as her springboard, managed to contort her tiny frame forcefully to evade the flying saber (which could have cleaved her into half), followed by landing her feet gracefully on the blade and using it to spring herself away from the Grandruler’s punch.

She leaped farther away, putting in as much distance between herself and the enemies, before landing back onto the ground dandily.

“This arrow… is poisonous! It’s coated with a very strange venom!” The Revenant King, still cupping on its left eye, froze in midpursuit. Its body and soul were relatively fine—certainly not enough to stop him from moving—yet aforementioned poison was seeping into its helmet and through its armor, causing the entire armor to become as dense as a boulder. Slowly but surely, it had become so heavy that the Revenant King was trapped in its own armor!

Even Baiyi was completely stumped by this scene. Poisons worked on the living, yes, but they could not possibly work on what was already dead!

A long time ago, before Lady Assassin had completed her transformation into a dumb, whimsical, adorable genki girl, she had once suggested creating a poison that could work on soul armatures. Back then, Baiyi had thrown himself into a burst of laughter while mocking her.

Who would have known that it came the day when she did manage to invent such a thing?

“Bah, you must not have been a science-stream student back when you were alive, were you?” The Alchemist interjected. “Poisons, as we know them, are only effective to living creatures, but if you think of it from another angle—aren’t acid, which corrodes metals, essentially poisons to creatures that rely on armors?”

{To Zee: Ahahaha “you must not have been a science-stream student”! That extends to you too, Author-san. This shade is alchemically fine!}

“You see, Sir Assassin had brought her idea to me, asking if alchemy could produce a specific kind of poison that only works on armor. We discussed it at length and determined that a set of armor, despite its weight and rigidity, does not restrict movement because of its loose, flexible joints. Naturally, if I disrupt the joints, the armor becomes a metallic coffin,” The Alchemist explained proudly, pulling out a black vial as he did.

Then, after popping the cork out, he instantly drenched it all over the Bard sitting next to him.

In a flash, the Bard’s handsome, cool, skillfully-crafted armor—with a triple-whammy combo of noble, literary genius, and Byronic aura—instantly blackened with rust, turning it into an armor no different from an old, rickety hands-me-down.

“Observe! Do you think anyone could still move around in an armor like this?” The Alchemist asked loudly, rattling the vial in his hand for dramatic effect.

“Observe a m*********r, you mean! What have I ever done to you to become your f***ing experiment, you f***ing c***? This beautiful armor was a gift from an adorable little girl who had to save up on her allowance just to buy me this thing!!” The Bard shrieked in rage. “You son of b****, I’m gonna f***ing kill you!”

Baiyi casually waved at the Caveman and signaled the Void bouncer to take the Bard away before he could create a scene. Secretly, however, the Fifth Walker spat in his mind, STFU, Bard. I am the Grand Principal of the school and yet no adorable little girl ever thought of gifting me an armor!

He continued the flashback.

Now, trapped under his own armor, the Revenant King found himself in an awkward situation—without help from anyone, he could not escape from his own cage!

“Oh, not bad at all,” The Lich praised with a twinge of twisted delight as it watched the helpless Revenant King.

Then, It raised its green staff and started to chant an incantation towards this unmovable target.