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1201. Whip Tongue
🕑 Added 2024-10-27 16:42:59 +0000 UTCNatina used <Whip Tongue of Kali> a few more times, before she realized, that she could beat the tree like this. Kalzemir's decaying breath also showed only a temporary effect. As for Diromold, the Koor Worm couldn't show his potential unless the barrier fell.
Natina's strategy hinged on two factors. The first was her divine skill. Kali represented death, but unlike other gods of death who reigned over something like a realm of the dead, Kali represented the cycle of life and time. Over time, everything had to do and make space for something new.
The skill the necromancer wanted to rely on for her strategy was <Wheel of Time>, which allowed her to rapidly age the opponent. Since the skill was extremely taxing even to just use on a weaker humanoid opponent, she had devised a strategy to strengthen this skill with a formation set up in Delta.
However, Trees didn't age like other living beings. Just time was not enough to kill them. Seeing how quickly the tree lapped up her army as if to mock her guardian goddess, the tree also wouldn't die from lack of nutrients if it experienced rapid aging at this moment.
This was where Diromold came into play. The skill <Rotten Well> it had learned when becoming an undead legend could literally poison the wells. A single attack could taint the very groundwater itself and make plant life impossible.
The skills alone were probably not enough, but together, she could have the tree experience centuries of living in this kind of polluted environment. She couldn't imagine anything surviving that. The only drawback was that the attack had to hit the ground and the hole in the barrier was blocked by the mass of tree.
She could only buy time for the special ops to set up the preparations for her plan. Once that was done, Delta would watch this tree shrivel away as quickly as it grew! At least, this was the plan until she felt a sudden tuck at the edge of her consciousness.
Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong with Faffi.
....
On the mountain slopes below Delta, laid the legendary undead hydra, wrestled to the ground by two dozen colossi. The crypt guards Evee had stolen from the colossal dungeon were a massive power, but one she could barely control, so she could only take out a few at a time, especially while maintaining her troops on Delta's walls.
Each giant humanoid was hard pressed pushing one head to the ground, as Evee was busy preparing a vast spell, by spreading a field of daffodils across the mountain slope. Why was she doing something like this when there was a war raging on above?
<Holy Quest: Mirror of the Underworld- “Everything where it belongs.“
The Hydra is a beast of Olympian lore. Your guardian Persephone thinks it would look much better as part of your entourage.
Requirement: Steal the Undead Hydra 0/1
Quest Reward: Unlock a new Skill>
In the middle of battle, a quest notification had suddenly appeared in her face. The quest was actually the sub-quest of the holy quest “Mirror of the Underworld” Evee had received during her visit to the temple of Persephone.
The main quest was about turning her undead army into a mirror image of Hades, as in the underworld, by collecting undead fitting the beasts and heroes of Olympian lore that found their eternal rest in Hades. As a reward, her death-set would be blessed and she would receive a fitting skill.
After getting the quest update, she had left command of her undead on the walls to Commander Garroun, before searching the Hydra. Although the immortal witch was not overly confident, she was sure Persephone would not give her an impossible quest. She wasn't that kind of goddess.
After Ceres left, she used the chance while the hydra was paralyzed, to summon the colossi and make sure it stayed down. Intricate patterns created by tufts of black daffodils formed a massive magic circuit.
<Spring of Darkness>
Evee finally activated her divine skill. At her command, the lines of flowers started blooming all around the Hydra. Intricate patterns created by the black daffodils activated the magic circuits. As they opened their blossoms, they shone in a bright blue light, reminiscent of Seth's spirit flame.
Matching the flowers covering the mountain slope, the undead hydra also shone in an aura of blue light. <Spring of Darkness> was a skill that connected the dead to her own pseudo-Hades, where she could store her troops.
This allowed her to take control of corpses, natural undead, or even wrestle away their control of them by cutting the connection to their master. However, the target and its master in this case were special.
As the chosen of Persephone, she was the champion of the Queen of the Olympian Underworld. On top of that, she wore the Death-Set, made of <Enriched Necron> and partially blessed by Styx, as well as Acheron's Finger, a legendary pendant blessed by the Acheron.
But her target was a legendary undead Hydra, created by the Chosen of Kali. Evee could only imagine what Natina had done to convert the beast into an undead, but it felt more like a lich than a corpse that was reanimated. A forced lichification?
It seemed that the soul of the beast was ripped out of and resealed into its immortal head, bound by powerful black magic to allow the necromancer to control it. This was not the usually deep connection between a necromancer and their summon, but Evee understood the obvious advantage of this technique.
The colossi she controlled were far from being legends, but it took a very high control stat and a lot of mental power to control them properly. A legend had to be several magnitudes above one of them. Based on her expertise as an immortal witch, this lichification technically allowed any specified individual to control the undead, while the necromancer only needed to use a superficial spell to improve the function of the seal.
While this made the cost to maintain control over the legend almost non-existent, this also meant that the actual link between the undead and Natina was only superficial. She just needed to neutralize the binding magic weaved in the lich seal, to take control of the Hydra.
The explanation of this realization is long, but for Evee this came instinctively thanks to her skills and experience. Following her instinct, he began casting spells to undo the black magic shackles of the Hydra, while maintaining the <Spring of Darkness> to immediately take control once the curse was lifted.
Her actions were not without reaction, while the Hydra's struggle to resist became stronger, the power flowing through the connection between the legend and its master also grew. Natina had noticed that someone was messing with her summon.
But could she stop it, just because she noticed? The Chosen of Kali was far away, but Evee was right here. It was easy for her to block the opponent's attempt to take control with the <Spring of Darkness> she had prepared.
“Halt!”
Only the hydra's instinctive thrashing, as Evee started tucking at the strings binding its souls, could get in her way. On the last stretch, when the beats became so violent even the colossi couldn't resist its might and were about to be thrown around, she used the skill of her legendary pendant.
<Decree of Acheron> could paralyze any undead that heard her shout. Even the legendary beats could not resist as Evee unwound the last string of the binding spells, momentarily turning the Hydra into a free undead, just before the <Spring of Darkness> rushed in to fulfill its original purpose.
<Ding! You have fulfilled the requirements for “Everything where it belongs.“ You have unlocked the skill <Lore Master lv.1>! >
<Lore Master lv.1(Passive Skill)
The requirements to control undead who match the Lore of Hades are lowered by 10%.
The stats of undead that match the Lore of Hades are improved by 20%>
“Finally...” Evee mumbled before she lost consciousness.
