Miss Witch’s Devotion Has Gone… Twisted

”Don’t go near the shore, wait for them to come up.”

”I recognized their weapons, those are the spines taken from the Shadow-Spine Lionfish. In the sea those spines boost speed, so even relatively weak undead can unleash such powerful attacks.”

The Shadow-Spine Lionfish is a deep-sea monster, and among the many demons and fiends of the abyss, it at least looked somewhat ordinary.

In appearance it was basically an oversized lionfish, entirely black, with faint blue glowing rings on its spines. Thanks to those spines it moved through the water with extreme speed, and the spines were laced with deadly poison.

But obviously it was not suited for fighting the undead. It soon died at the hands of those corpses, and its spines were torn off and turned into their weapons.

”On land, their aggression will drop sharply. We’ll just hold the coastal areas.”

There were quite a few coastal regions, and the Wind Messengers hovered high above, watching the shoreline; if anything happened others could rush there immediately.

The remaining forces spread out to ensure that, when the undead attacked from different directions, they could be stopped at once.

Most of the civilians had already evacuated; their job now was to minimize the damage the undead could do.

Night fell gradually, and a crimson moon hung high in the sky.The blood moon didn’t grant any power boost to the undead. Fundamentally, the blood moon only meant the authority of the night had been stolen.

Loren held the hilt of Requiem, sitting upright in the main seat. The only Fifth-tier mage stood behind him as guard, and Wind Messengers kept watch in the sky.

Mages clustered around Loren, while the witches withdrew to the rear.

Loren suddenly felt a surreal déjà vu, as if he were a ghost-hunter from old movies — after all, dealing with the undead felt pretty similar.

Requiem’s properties had a restraining effect on the undead. Undead creatures weren’t very afraid of having their bodies destroyed, but Requiem could cut souls directly.

”They’re coming.”

Loren’s intuition warned him again. The ocean suddenly began to churn unnaturally. Under the authority of the God of Vows and Wind, the sea had been calm until now.

Seeing the tide of corpses swelling from the shore, Loren tensed. He hadn’t expected there to be so many undead.

According to that necromancer’s plan, he would slowly assault the Kingdom of Anselm, using the attacks to accumulate power while plunging Anselm into panic, and then seize a chance to strike a decisive blow.

Admittedly, without Loren’s sabotage, the plan would have caused serious damage to Anselm. But the necromancer had badly underestimated the gods.

At that scale, angels would inevitably descend, and any force at the angel level would make these numbers meaningless.

”The path to slay gods is long and hard...”

Loren rose and drew his blade from its scabbard.

He planned to display a bit of his strength, only showing off technique — it would be reasonable for the erudite Master Mentor to have top-tier techniques, right?

Mostly, this was a good grinding opportunity, and Loren wasn’t about to pass it up.

Facing the charging corpses, Loren remained calm. Requiem sliced precisely across a corpse’s neck; the half-rotted head fell cleanly to the ground. Loren didn’t even feel the cut.

This was his first time using Requiem in combat, and he still wasn’t used to its extreme sharpness.

”Continue.”

One corpse only yielded a tiny amount of experience, but accumulation mattered. Loren twirled his blade in a flourish, got a feel for it, and plunged into the mass of corpses.

Those bodies could not stop Requiem for a moment. Loren didn’t even need to carefully adjust his angles; every slash split them cleanly.

And Loren didn’t worry about damaging the sword — the demon blade could repair itself.

Loren charging into the heap of corpses was like a tiger entering a flock of sheep; Requiem kept reaping through them as Loren even dodged splattering blood with spare energy.

Soon Loren reached level 25, and at the same time a tornado rose beside him. Nearby corpses were pulled in and shredded by the gale.

Pure blade-clearing was still slower; it couldn’t match these Wind-sequence magics from the Wind Messengers.

These low-tier undead could not harm Loren, nor could they touch the Wind Messengers. Loren knew the real killing move was still coming.

So far, he still hadn’t seen the spines ripped from the Shadow-Spine Lionfish.

”Careful, the real killer move hasn’t come yet!”

Loren warned the others. This time he didn’t charge in boldly; he stayed on the edge to pick off lone corpses.

A single area spell tossed by a Wind Messenger could clear a whole stretch of corpses, yet the undead still crawled endlessly from the sea.

”How much stockpile did that guy hoard...”

Loren muttered as he put extra attribute points into stamina.

Anselm wasn’t a large kingdom. Otherwise its top combatant wouldn’t be only a Fifth-tier mage, and the population wouldn’t be so small. In principle, there shouldn’t be so many corpses.

But when Loren saw a half-eaten plum blossom mark on one corpse, gnawed by maggots, he understood: there was the Plague Church’s hand behind this.

”Why is the God of Plague so malicious?”

Even as he said it, Loren knew the God of Plague was trapped between extremes.

The God of Plague had already angered the neighboring gods; if the Divine War began, it would be the first to die.

So to survive it would try to weaken other gods as much as possible, but in doing so it would offend them further.

Loren’s pace of killing slowed, and he gradually concealed himself among the crowd. Even that Fourth-tier mage was killing more than Loren.

Other areas weren’t being attacked. The necromancer had concentrated his forces in one spot, even choosing the most heavily defended place. That proved he wasn’t trying to invade the city, he wanted to kill them here.

That was why Loren’s tactics had suddenly become sneaky. Later he simply fell back behind the others, occasionally throwing one- or two-tier Abundant Magic spells for support.

”Ugh...”

Loren heard a muffled grunt. A dead servant sprouted octopus-like tentacles that pierced the chest of the Fifth-tier mage.

Until then the corpse had shown no sign of anything unusual, lurking with the other bodies before suddenly striking at the Fifth-tier mage’s side.

This was the first casualty on Anselm’s side, and the first to fall was its strongest ordinary person. The necromancer hiding offscreen was cunning.

”A special individual has appeared!”

Loren shouted while releasing an Abundant Magic spell. Thick vines burst from the ground and quickly wrapped around the corpse. Loren precisely controlled the vines to lock its joints; even the extended tentacles were bound.

The Wind Messenger did not hesitate. It dove down, its long blade already aimed at the corpse.

Right then, Loren’s intuition sent another warning.