At times like these, I was glad for my intelligence and perception more than anything, allowing me to assess and process the situation with an unmatched speed. I let a thin layer of my mana spread, reinforced by the light elemental, allowing me to detect everything around.

[-23 Mana]

As the results of the spell reached me a fraction of a second later, my frown did the impossible and got even deeper. The situation was even direr than I had expected. The death knight wasn’t the only one that was attacking. No, he had two of his buddies hiding in a distance, hidden behind several layers of wards —boy, wasn’t I glad for my enhanced detection capabilities— while an impressive number of undead was currently moving away from the city, chasing a huge group of people.

Interestingly, however, the stronger undead, bone dragons, enhanced skeleton warriors, and the majority of the necromancers, still stuck around, despite the fact that, if they had followed the escaping horde of civilians, they could have easily destroyed them. And even more interesting, their positioning and their even distribution suggested that they were ready for an attack from outside.

That answered one question. It was a trap for me. A trap that was designed to take me at my best, with a healthy margin of error.

It was a good trap, I had to admit. With the frequency I had been using my elemental mount, it wasn’t entirely shocking for them to discover that trick. With that, the plan was clear. Have the girls captured, on the edge of death, forcing me to act immediately. I doubted that they were aware that I would feel the attack on the girls —as even for me, that was a surprise— but with the number of spies, it wasn’t difficult to convey.

And with most of the necromancers hurriedly setting up a complicated ward to defend the city from the attackers, half-completed, suggested that they expected me to attack from the outside. It was comparable to the trick they had used against Titania.

Necromancers were not a particularly creative sort.

Unfortunately, lacking in creativity didn’t mean lacking in deadliness, especially when I was far too close to death than I was supposed to.

The only thing that worked in my favor was that they were expecting me to arrive from outside, not to be already inside, an advantage I needed to use to my benefit if I had any chance of surviving.

Luckily, Cornelia’s latest hopeless flame wall gave me the excuse I needed. Just as the death knight pushed through the flaming wall, I cast another spell, this time creating a thick wall of flame behind the death knight, to prevent it from escaping, and to prevent others from peering inside.

[-319 Mana]

Spending a huge chunk of my precious mana to keep a death knight together with me, rather than trying to push him away wasn’t exactly the safest move, but I needed him to be on the same side. Then, just as it could swing its sword to Cornelia, I dashed forward, sliding next to her —and stealing a dagger from her belt as I passed her— before using it to parry the attack of the death knight. My fingers were fast enough to hide that move from both Cornelia, and the opposing death knight.

I parried the attack successfully, and even my weapon stayed intact, but only because the swing of the death knight was much weaker, confirming my earlier assumption. They were trying to capture the girls alive as bait.

“Caesar,” gasped Cornelia even as I pushed forward, leveraging the unbalanced swing of the death knight, charging the dagger with the flame energy as I did so, punishing him with a debilitating wound on its right arm, cutting several tendons, and leaving a smoldering wound behind that started to spread to the rest of the body, though it affected its fighting capability only marginally.

High-level undead wasn’t particularly affected by the condition of their body, as long as the spell that animated them was stable. They weren’t particularly resistant to fire, but not being resistant and being vulnerable were two different deals. If I delivered the same attack with life energy or light energy, I would have probably wounded it significantly, if not outright killed it.

Pity that I couldn’t use anything but fire magic to enhance the attack.

“Take care of Helga,” I said to Cornelia even as I swung the dagger, hoping to deliver another deadly wound before it could react. Unfortunately, it reacted faster than I expected. I still left another wound, but unfortunately, it was weaker than I expected.

Facing a death knight was a difficult task. I had previously slain five of them together, of course, not to mention that I had done that when I was weaker, but only with exploding an impressive number of magical traps that were initially designed to destroy a large swathe of the undead army.

Currently, I didn’t even have underwear.

I swung my dagger again even as the flame forced into its structure, threatening to destroy it completely. The death knight dodged, but surprisingly, rather than attacking me directly, it pulled back, even it put it dangerously close to the wall of flame.

I realized the reason a second later, barely holding back a burst of laughter. It was scared of the pieces of aether that were still stuck on my skin, evaporating slowly —though not damaging, as, without the dangerous flow, I was able to use just a simple arcana spell to push them away.

Death knights were excellent warriors, but they were not experts of magic.

And that fact was underlined further by a tendril of arcana that appeared through it, mixed with necrotic energy, but still carrying the basic structure of a communication spell. Interfering with it without him being aware was almost trivial. It pulled to a defensive stance as it waited for an answer.

Pity that giving a fake response was much harder than actually blocking it. Giving it false information would

[-7 Mana]

Since each second meant more mana for me, I decided to allow its defensive stance. “So, how does it feel to fight someone in your own size,” I commented lazily even as I swung my dagger once more. He parried, putting my dagger dangerously close to shattering.

The death knight didn’t answer, lacking the personality to actually enter into a debate. They were sapient and acted independently from their creator, but their personality was completely erased.

I continued to attack it, but allowed it to dodge. Even as it did so, I started infusing a subtle structure of life energy into the dagger, mixing it with the fire energy, enchanting the dagger in real-time.

Craft was turning out to be more useful than I expected.

[-149 Mana]

It wasn’t a perfect dagger, of course. It would be a miracle if it could reach double-digit hits, but that was more than enough to kill the death knight, as long as I channeled life energy through it generously.

However, doing so would drain my already limited reserves even further. Moreover, hiding the destruction of a death knight wasn’t the same as blocking a simple message spell. Not only I had to block the flare of necrotic energy freed from keeping it mobile, which required an investment of mana I wasn’t prepared to invest, but also I needed to copy the connection with Zokras to fake it.

So, I let the death knight stay defensive as I made a few casual attacks, weak enough not to hurt the integrity of my newly-crafted weapon, but strong enough not to make the death knight realize I was the one playing for time.

I liked that, especially with every second helping me regenerate mana. With three instances of the mana regeneration active, my regeneration was very significant.

“So, where is your boss,” I said. “I’m really bored to wait for him to appear,” I commented even as I waved my hand, sending a line of healing energy toward Helga, too weak to be noticed through the interference of the flame wall, but enough to stabilize her and wake her up.

[-45 Mana]

The girls started talking heatedly behind me, but I focused on the death knights, stretching my subterfuge to the limits to give the impression that I was very comfortable with the current balance of the situation. With all the mana I spent to create the defensive wall and other tricks, my mana was even lower than when I appeared. And since I appeared, barely fifteen seconds had passed.

[Mana: 1083 / 7595]

Each second was precious.

Unfortunately, while the death knights lacked emotions, that didn’t make them stupid. They still had an impressive combat intelligence, and the only reason I was able to fool it into inactivity for about fifteen seconds was my extremely complicated set of abilities, forcing him to think that they were currently suffering through a counter-ambush.

Unfortunately, that assumption didn’t mean it would stay obediently defensive and wait for me to recover. It soon realized that its magical communication efforts didn’t reach their target, and rushed toward me with a furious assault.

It was a feint, of course. Despite its skills, I was able to read it, and with some decent effort, I could have prevented it from pulling back. But why should I stop it when he was willing to push through a wall of crackling magical flame to warn his allies, especially when they were probably already getting suspicious.

The death knight attacked me, forcing me to raise my dagger to parry, though I made sure to react a touch too slow when he suddenly threw himself back into the fire, pushing through despite the damage it would receive.

Admittedly, the wall of fire looked more impressive compared to its damage, allowing the death knight to retreat through the fire with little damage.

Or, more accurately, it would have been the case, if I hadn’t chosen that moment to inject some light-natured mana into the flames, letting out a chaotic explosion.

[-419 Mana]

The flames turned white, their height rose several times, expanding both inward and outward dangerously. I could still feel the death knight escaping through the fires, though not without significant damage. And more importantly, perfectly primed to deliver some misleading information to the rest of the army.

The flames expanded both inward and outward as the additional light forced it to consume all the infused mana immediately, forcing me to dash back next to Cornelia and Helga, establishing a strong shield to protect them from the backlash of the flames, but I get signed during the retreat, depleting my already limited HP even further.

[-281 HP]

[-243 Mana]

“So, how are you girls since our last meeting?” I said with an intentional levity, hoping to prevent them from panicking, even as my mind was on how to save myself from the growing undead base around me, my only advantage being the orientation of the defenses, facing outward rather than inward. Considering my mana was almost completely depleted, it wasn’t exactly a huge advantage.

And I still didn’t know the location of Zokras the Eternal, whether he was hoping to use the trap to kill me, or hoping to take down Titania in my absence…

[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: 1898 / 6324 Mana: 513 / 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]