Chapter 558: Encounter [3] (Last Day of the Month!!! Requesting for votes!!!!)
Chapter 558: Encounter [3] (Last Day of the Month!!! Requesting for votes!!!!)
The teacher’s surprise deepened into something else.
"They’re fighting like mid Rank Two monsters," he murmured, eyes narrowing.
He’d graded thousands of skirmishes. Power revealed itself in little betrayals. These undead checked every box he used to measure a solid mid-thirties Awakener—Level 35 to 40. For one unit, that was notable. For seven at once?
"That’s enough to walk sideways through this phase," he said under his breath.
None of these undead looked weaker than the last, making the teacher recall Michael had revealed twenty when he’d first arrived.
"Are they all at least thirty-five?" The idea landed like a stone.
The teacher paused when the projection showed a lone figure slipping off Castle 37’s wall and vanishing into the trees like a streak of dusk.
"So—leaving your post?" he murmured. "What are you up to now, Level 40?"
His gaze flicked to the keep’s pillar. Five silhouettes held station there. The previous ten were moving in a loose arrowhead well ahead of Michael.
"How are you talking to them so cleanly from that far?" The teacher wondered.
Even for a necromancer, command fidelity degraded with distance. The way those undead adjusted speed and spacing on microscopic cues suggested near-real-time control.
On the island, Michael bled speed near a weathered spur and settled.
The teacher’s lips parted as realisation set in. "Ah."
It clicked. Michael hadn’t abandoned his castle; he’d moved his center to a spot roughly ten kilometers off his pillar, where his sense-net still kissed Castle 37 behind him and stretched another ten forward, with side spill to either flank. A cruciform of coverage. With himself as the hinge, he doubled his live awareness without forfeiting home-field sight.
"Cautious," the teacher said, a hint of approval leaking through. "Good."
Michael turned his head slowly until his gaze fixed down the same bearing the seven routed from. His posture shifted with satisfaction. The teacher didn’t need a mind-link to know what that meant.
Target castle was within the new net.
There was no shouted order. The ten undead on point simply accelerated—three Rock-Steel Scorpions lowering their tails like lances, seven Goliaths hunkering into impact frames, with the water shaman drifting behind.
[Slight mistake from previous Chapters. There are no orcs and only Goliaths. Goliaths are three star rare rank creatures with a potential limit of level 42.]
Michael stayed behind and commanded his undead from afar.
A few minutes earlier...
Eight figures loitered on the ramparts and inner ward, split into uneasy knots of two and three. Their voices were low, edged with the kind of bravado that grows in the absence of a real enemy.
"The seven of them should be back soon," a shield-bearer muttered, rolling his shoulders. "Bank a hundred points and we turtle here till the end of this round. Easy."
"Unless they picked the wrong keep," an archer said.
"Quit it," snapped a robed boy chalking sigils along the stairwell. "If you jinx us, I’ll—"
He stopped. Across all eight awakeners, quest panels flickered—then updated with a cold, unfeeling chime.
[Castle Roster: 15 → 8]
No one spoke for a heartbeat.
"What..?!"
The shield-bearer’s face went tight. "Seven out, just like that."
Curses hissed through teeth. Panic prowled the wall..
"Lock it down," A black robed boy said, already moving again. "Double the alarm webs. If they come, we make them bleed from afar first."
They all got busy. Chalk burned into stone. Spare javelins thumped into racks. The wind-mage of the eight climbed to the south turret.
However, they had only just started moving when a shirt while later, their earliest alarms rang kff.
"Already?!" the archer breathed.
"Positions!" the shield-bearer barked, planting his boots at the top of the main ramp and setting his tower shield like a door.
They had time to see the dust first—the crawling plume of it as ten shapes came on without subtlety.
"Monsters," someone whispered.
Not monsters. Not exactly.
Three Rock-Steel Scorpions hammered the lane, tails lowered like rams. Behind and around them pounded seven Goliaths—gray-skinned colossi.
The scorpions hit the outer tripline first. Runes flared; earth-spikes spat up—then shattered under chitin and mass.
"Archers! Now!" the shield-bearer roared.
There were two archers among the eight.
Two bows thrummed.
The first shaft struck a scorpion’s eye ridge and skittered off in a spray of sparks. The second buried to the fletch in a Goliath’s trapezius. He grunted, snapped the shaft with two fingers, and kept running.
"Layer two!" someone yelled, slapping a rune. A seam of slate flipped upright along the lane, a waist-high wall angling their approach.
The left scorpion shouldered into it instead of climbing. Stone cracked along a faultline the defender hadn’t seen.
The center scorpion poured through the gap as it opened, tail leveled like a spear.
"Brace!" the shield-bearer bellowed, meeting it at the broken seam. His tower shield caught the thrust with a teeth-on-tin squeal. The force slid him back a full meter, boots cutting twin trenches through dust and shattered slate. He shoved up and across, rolling the tail aside.
The right scorpion vaulted the low wall, eight legs drumming. It clipped an archer’s perch with a claw; the parapet spat chips and threw her to one knee. She shot anyway. The arrow vanished into a joint; the scorpion twitched, then ripped the shaft free with a wet crack and kept coming.
The right scorpion vaulted the low wall, eight legs drumming. It clipped an archer’s perch with a claw; the parapet spat chips and threw her to one knee. She shot anyway. The arrow vanished into a joint; the scorpion twitched, then ripped the shaft free with a wet crack and kept coming.
"Pin the tails!" the shield-bearer barked, sliding to centerline. He slammed his tower shield into the middle scorpion’s barb and rode the shove, skidding backward until his heel caught a step. He pivoted off it and chopped a short sword across the tail’s underside. Sparks jumped.
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Thanks for reading and sorry for the earlier mistakes. Hope you enjoy the Chapter.