I became a legion lich

248 First win

Louis jumped onto the back of the zombie drake and they charged towards the front lines, the zombies and lichs splitting left and right to clear a path.

The masters of magic glared at each other in a confused second, but nodded and deactivated the barrier.

The evolved demihumans stormed in as soon as the barrier fell, but the drake had already reached the front of the zombie army and was taking deep breaths, accumulating world energy in his lungs.

Drakes possessed dragon breath and their power was second only to true dragons.

When the drake released the dragon breath, the black flames grew until they were almost the same size as the drake and the drake swung its neck like a fan, spreading the breath against all the demihumans.

The first demihumans were completely destroyed no matter what they did, while only the strongest behind survived.

Goblins were vaporized without a chance to resist and the orcs were left with only charred corpses. Trolls and ogres managed to survive, but there were rotten burns all over their bodies.

The ogres also expended all the light element in their bodies to survive, shrinking to a size of 50 feet with the loss of energy. Without the light element, they would be unable to regenerate and would have no light to defend against the effects of dark magic.

The trolls began absorbing the earth below to regenerate, but Louis didn’t allow it.

.....

“You seem to be able to infinitely regenerate while touching the earth, but what happens if I inject my mana into the earth?” Louis spoke with a cruel smile, casting his groundeath spell.

Black-orange light spilled out from his staff and spread across the ground, painting the land black as if it spilled black ink across miles of darkness.

The trolls that were starting to regenerate suddenly screamed in unison in pain, the black earth fusing with their bodies and the darkness the elder creeping over their flesh and rotting their entire body.

To make matters worse, there was nothing the trolls could do but circulate mana to maximum and clench their teeth to endure the pain. Their regeneration was as natural and uncontrollable as their heartbeats and they were unable to control it.

“Hold the lizard and kill the weak human first!” One of the ogres screamed and tried to punch the drake in the face, but the last one just opened its jaws and bit down on the ogre’s arm, taking the limb off at the elbow.

The drake broken at the ogre’s right knee with one paw and slashed at his shoulder with the other claw and knocked him to the ground, biting his throat to kill him.

The remaining ogres and trolls surrounded the drake and grabbed its body, using their brute strength to knock it to the ground and seal its movements. The drake tried to fight off the annoying demihumans, but there were just too many to get rid of.

“Stay away, annoying things.” Louis said in disgust, seeing the demihumans try to smash him from the drake’s back and cast his second diamond spear spell.

Stone spikes rose from the ground, impaling the demihumans or pushing them away. The spears were hardened by Louis’s mana and the darkness from his previous spell mixed into the stone spears, further weakening the evolved demihumans.

“Dark firefly.” Louis cast his third spell, hundreds of tiny sparks of darkness appearing around him. Each spark was no more than an inch long, but it contained a darkness so dense that it distorted the light around it.

“Fire.” Louis ordered and all hundreds of sparks of darkness shot out in all directions, hitting all the evolved demihumans around them. The sparks of darkness hit their targets in less than a second, giving the demihumans no time to react.

The sparks pierced the demihumans’ bodies and exploded, tearing large chunks of flesh and spreading darkness into the wounds. Louis mixed pure mana with darkness, giving tangibility and accelerating the spell’s speed.

“Finish killing them now.” Louis ordered the drake, who went into a rage now that he was freed and began to slaughter seriously injured demihumans.

Despite the fact that defeat was already a given, no demi-human backed down or even hesitated for a second to continue fighting, preferring death to the shame of running from a fight.

The giant blood flowing through their veins screamed for them to fight to the death and they all fought to the bitter end.

Louis kept his guard up until the last of the demihumans fell dead to the ground and only then did he allow himself to pant with exhaustion. Louis needed to command the entire army and the only way to do that is to use his mana to transmit his orders.

His spells also cost a lot of mana and although his core wasn’t completely empty yet, it was close to being so.

“I think I overdid it trying to show off, controlling so many zombies and lichs at the same time is too exhausting. Ending the battle by fighting in person and casting so many powerful spells in a row didn’t help either.” Louis muttered between gasps.

He took a deep breath to regain his composure and ordered the drake back. Louis would love to add some of these evolved demihumans to his army, but the order would never allow him to get his hands on corpses, not while he was a prisoner of war.

**********

“It seems that the first battle was a victory for mankind.” Canan spoke in celebration of the victory and all the angels joined in the celebration, with the exception of Eishin, who remained silent from beginning to end.

“I know you hate them and have their traumas, but can’t you even crack a smile when you see them dying so horribly?” Canan asked to try to get a reaction from Eishin, but the latter just sighed.

“I would have if we had eliminated powerful enemies, but I don’t see the fun in seeing the weak ones get killed.” Eishin looked despondent and unimpressed with the battle they saw.

“What are you talking about? We’ve all seen the strength of the evolved demihumans and even though they weren’t on the same level as our champions yet, they were still powerful as an army and a threat to the human realms.” Eirin spoke through Canan’s mouth, but Eishin shook his head.

“That’s not even close to the power level of a giant and these demihumans were just the trash of the continent. None of them had much fighting skill or were used to fighting with their new bodies and their power was very low.” Eishin said, pointing out all the oddities he noticed.

“Eirin, order the mages on the battlefield to investigate the corpses of the demihumans to find out what layer of life they’re in. We can get a good idea of ??whether these enemies really are the enemy vanguard or just the junk they sent to test our defenses and responses.”

Eirin did as suggested and ordered the mages to investigate the corpses, receiving a response in less than five minutes. It was possible to find out which life layer a fresh corpse was in by measuring how concentrated the body’s remaining mana was.

Even though a demihuman had a much larger core than an ordinary human, the layers were the same for all species.

“Supreme Elder, most of these corpses are between the second and fourth tier, while a few were in the fifth tier. We’ll keep looking, but I think it’s hard for us to find anyone who has broken through the first barrier of development.” The master of magic replied with a pale face, sensing his superiors’ concern.

“Understood. I’ll send some mages out soon to collect the corpses, so just wait for now. And stay alert with the prisoner, we don’t know what he might do if he thinks he has a chance to escape.” Eirin ordered, unaware that Louis planned to regain his position as dark elder.

“Looks like I’m right. These demihumans are just the scum of the Doravon continent, none of them had even crossed the first barrier of progression and even so an elder giving the order spent a lot of energy and resources to be able to kill them.” Eishin looked pessimistic and all the excitement for the first victory disappeared from the room and everyone became despondent as if they had lost the battle.

“If we’re going to use the strength of this invading army as a measure, what are the chances that the cities the church defends can successfully resist?” Canan asked with a mixture of concern and curiosity, wondering about the order’s own chances of withstanding the attack.

“I would say that cities defended by saints of the church can withstand the battle with the help of priests and paladins, but strongholds without saints will probably fall and even if they win, they will still suffer heavy losses.” Eishin replied after thinking for some time.

The saints of the church were its best warriors, priests or magicians who helped to develop research related to the light element and expand its boundaries.