I left the room barely a minute later, the occasion far too important to neglect despite my desire to laze around after such a spectacular occasion of physical exertion. My power might have increased even further with the extra level and the additional divine light tricks, especially against the undead, but the enemy was still strong enough to deserve my full attention.

The delay we suffered as I teased Titania was already pushing the limits.

The first thing that got my attention was the chaos that filled the area in the walls. The town was understandably filled with existential fear, enough to overwhelm their courage developed by their rapidly-increasing levels. Understandable, as while the endless waves of monsters hitting the town were nothing more than a natural disaster.

The undead army that surrounded the town represented a planned action to erase the town. And the undead didn’t get their scary reputation by failing such extermination missions often. Citizens run around in panic, hoping to find a route to escape, fear dominating their minds to understand such implications. It was weird…

Or not, I corrected my thought even as I extended my senses to feel the thin aura of death covering the city. I subconsciously ignored it for a while, because it was not an active spell, but a natural side effect of being surrounded by an army of necromantic constructs, their death energy radiating naturally.

After several times I had invaded their base, I barely registered it. But I was forgetting one thing. I was level thirty-one, most of the citizens were barely level five, and which meant the aura of death was much more domineering.

And the fact that people around Titania didn’t show the same symptoms, her light-natured mana suppressing the effects of the death aura handily in a large circle. I quickly cast a couple of spells to destroy the miasma, radiating from Titania to make it look like she was responsible for casting it.

The more exhausted they assumed Titania to be, the sooner they would react.

When I finally stepped the walls, disguised as a common militia, keeping Titania in my field of vision in case of an emergency. However, she wasn’t my only target to protect. I sneaked through the guards, my Subterfuge combined with my Arcana turning me into a ghost on the battlefield.

It was trivial to sneak into the room that was arranged as a temporary field hospital, piled with medicine and other supplies to help her healing efforts, but empty other than a few civilians wearing white robes, and a familiar curvy blonde with a tense expression.

I cast a spell to distract the civilians as I sneaked behind Marianne —making sure I could still watch Titania from a window through careful positioning, before hugging her waist. She flinched, but her tenseness was short-lived as I whispered into her ear. “How are you doing, my sweet bunny?” I whispered.

“Caesar,” she gasped in a relaxed tone. “You scared me.”

“Sorry, sweet cheeks,” I added with a chuckle even as I kissed her neck, though still watching Titania as she rained orders to the defense team. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, you did,” she answered, trying to sound stern, but with my arms around her waist, she had a markedly difficult time maintaining her angry tone with her body melting against mine. Hugging her from behind, once again feeling her generous curves, was certainly a treat.

“How do you feel about the upcoming battle?”

“I … I don’t know,” Marianne murmured even as her gaze danced in the room. “I’ll probably stay here, healing the more dangerous candidates.”

“I see,” I murmured even as I gently nibbled her ear. “How about joining the battle?” I asked even as I nibbled her ear. “Your new ability would make you shine against the undead?”

“D-do I have to?” she suddenly stammered, tensing despite the hug.

“It’s your call,” I countered after kissing her neck to calm her down. I understood where she was coming from. “You don’t have to put yourself forward unless you don’t want to be famous,” I said. “It’s an opportunity for you to show off, but it’ll also bring a lot of responsibility,” I whispered. Ultimately, I didn’t really care about the limited assistance she would provide. I didn’t teach her to have an additional combatant, but to make sure she could defend herself against a surprise assault.

“I …” she murmured before falling silent for a moment. “I better stay hidden,” she decided even as the explosive flares started to happen outside. “I had watched Cornelia suffer under the expectations of the others, and it certainly didn’t help any. It’s better if I stay hidden.”

“As you wish, love,” I said even as I tightened my hold around her waist, punctuating that with a kiss. “Just don’t risk yourself trying to keep your abilities concealed. I was tempted to slide inside her to help her power up even more, but two things kept me back. First, empowering her wasn’t the smartest thing I could do under the circumstances, when I might need my mana for whatever ploy they had in mind. It was similar for the Divine Spark as well. Unlike Titania’s light magic, the temporary skill she would provide me was not critical enough.

And since she was not a combatant, her achievement wasn’t really critical as well. It could wait a couple of days.

The second reason, the wounded finally started to flow to the infirmary, meaning she was busy trying to heal everyone efficiently.

“I’m going outside,” I said to her before leaving. Slipping out without being noticed was trivial, so was climbing the walls to examine the attacking army.

I scanned the plains that surrounded the city —and the army that blackened the grassy fields that were already drenched in endless monster blood. I examined carefully to notice anything out of order, but even with my perception, I failed to notice anything other than endless low-level zombies and skeletons, and the occasional necromancers to direct them. Using my light detection abilities were out as well, not unless I risked being noticed.

I was confident in hiding the detection trick from weaker necromancers, but not from the higher level liches. Certainly not from Zokras the Eternal.

So, I watched as the endless weak monsters crashed against the walls, again and again, my frown deepening. They were wasting too many zombies, too many even to flush out Titania unless they had a very dangerous plan in mind. The more undead got destroyed, the more I started to worry…

“Honey, start showing your abilities,” I whispered to Titania, using a simple Arcana spell to transfer my voice.

“Shouldn’t I wait for more, they won’t expect me to actually intervene yet.”

“I know, but I have a bad feeling. Let’s make them think that you’re trying to intimidate them with your magic. I’m curious how they would react,” I explained.

It was a credit just how much she started to trust me when she followed my request without any additional question despite the fact that the defense of the town was in line. She started glowing as she raised her hand, and large streaks of light started to rain from the sky, demolishing large swathes of undead whenever her magic touched.

She was a sight to behold when she wasn’t already impaired by a deadly trap, even when she barely committed a quarter of her mana reserves.

Her spell had decimated large swathes of the skeleton army, reducing them from a real threat to target practice, achieving something in minutes where the rest of the army might have failed completely. She was a true undead killer.

Despite the impressive showing, the remaining dregs of the undead army gathering for another attack, proving that they had many other trump cards as I suspected. They simply wanted to extend more of their abilities.

Titania prepared to wait after that spell, but I sent her another message. “Repeat the same spell, and finish the army,” I suggested. She followed my suggestion, and actually did so. It wasn’t a logical thing that I asked her to, essentially removing a card to force them to act earlier. Now, they just need to reveal their next card a touch earlier to force us to reveal a secret. So, we would either reveal that Titania had more mana than we were trying to convince them, or I had to reveal myself.

But with the sudden worry gnawing my heart, I decided to trust my instincts.

It didn’t take long for the next attack to occur, from a direction I wasn’t expecting. Sudden darkness covered the skies. I looked up, only to see a veritable regiment of bone dragons falling from the sky, previously using a cloud to stay concealed.

Smart, much smarter than I expected them to, coming from the sky rather than the underground, which was their whole defensive structure.

So, I stretched my mana into the earth, not exactly caring about being caught at this point. My detection magic cut through the wards, only to notice a wild amount of earth mana being used, no doubt to rapidly create a tunnel where they could use to enter the town.

A pincer attack from both up and down. It was a good plan. The sky ambush to distract the defenders, while the land attack presented the real threat. Combined with the zombie attack outside, it would have been absolutely deadly. Of course, committing that many resources to a single town were absolute madness.

Unless they were launching their final assault, and throwing all they had desperately. But I had seen their armies, and what was assaulting us was around half of their whole remaining forces.

With the remaining half of the army, it was impossible to actually take down the Silver Spires before the reinforcements arrived unless the Princess betrayed the school… Certainly not impossible… Maybe it was what my worry was about…

Or maybe not, I suddenly realized when a sharp flare of panic bloomed in my soul, coming from the soul space. I turned inward, only to realize that sheer panic was coming from my permanent connections.

Cornelia and Helga!

“Fuck you, you moldy bag of bones,” I murmured even as I realized the problem. With both Helga and Cornelia defending the town —one an expert of destructive area spells, the other expert on warding, both with impressive stats after my latest assistance, along with a whole town to help them— they were almost impossible to be threatened.

Unless the rest of the undead army was there, or a dangerously high-level combatant was involved. And considering I could feel their panic from miles away, it was urgent… The kind of urgent that would force me to dump half of my mana to an elemental mount just to be on time.

But doing so would leave Titania alone for the danger that was coming. I trusted her to handle the pincer attack safely, but I had no idea what they had planned the next. She might take down one of Zokras’ death knights from her advantageous position, but certainly not Zokras himself, nor any assassin from Eternals.

My strength had made me too arrogant, I realized with sudden bitterness, even as I tried to make a decision, my thoughts flying with the speed of light…

[Level: 31 Experience: 489893 / 496000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 58

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6324 / 6324 Mana: 7595 / 7595 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

Expert Craft [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (1/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia – Level 21/25]

[Helga – Level 17/21]