My Servant System

1272  Chapter 1271: In The Thick Of It

The lower the sun got, the more palpable this negative feeling was, forcing us to heighten our guard as we looked around for whatever was causing us to become so wary; it wasn't just the carnage that we were standing in, nor was it the eery nature of such a place, but something else entirely.

At first the cause was quite easy to miss; the twitching of one of the corpses fingers, the long, quiet inhale, the creaking of bones knitting back together or flesh growing back to recuperate the wounds they had sustained.

We missed all of that at first, but when the first corpse let out a sharp gasp before jolting upwards, it was no longer something that we could miss; we also couldn't miss how that person so easily stood up, scooped up their weapon and looked around before finding someone with the different heraldry to stab in the back of the skull.

More and more of them were beginning to awaken, and that scene repeated itself each and every single time that these people jolted back to life, making it clear that the hatred they had for one another apparently surpassed death and reanimation.

At first it just seemed like they weren't aware that they had died, or that they had been reanimated in some hidden kind of way, but then they began to kick, growl or hiss at the bodies that they were stabbing in a way that could only be taken as them lording their earlier awakening over the others.

They knew that they were being reanimated, and that was why they were so quick to begin stabbing whoever was on the other side that was still asleep; it took them a few moments to realize that we were standing in the middle of all of them, and when they did...

A wide array of people were looking at us, ranging from dark skinned humans to pale, ethereal Elves, from muscular Orcs clad in heavy armor to Beastkin donning leathers; there were so many different people that were united in this hatred for one another staring straight at us, and that hatred took a momentary pause as they appraised this new addition to their war.

Some of them murmured to one another, some continued on with the stabbings, and some began to approach, their blood soaked weapons beginning to glow with various kinds of mana as they made it clear they were looking at some very stab-able people.

Instantly we decided to go on the offensive, with Mom's gigantic Claymore singing a deadly song as she clad it in flames and sheared through armor, flesh and bone like it was nothing while Anput let loose a rain of metal arrows that peppered these reanimated soldiers with holes.

A couple of these soldiers let out surprised sounds when they saw the flaming sword and metal arrows, their eyes going wide with disbelief that only deepened when Leone summoned a wall of fire behind us that was fueled by my winds, after which I began to add to Anput's ranged attacks with my own icicles that crashed down amongst the soldiers.

They seemed so shocked that we had magic like this, and at first I thought it was because they were all using raw mana so they were confused on what we were doing, but then I noticed that those soldiers in the sinister red were quick to activate their own elements, surrounding their weapons in a single elemental magic that hummed with power.

Then the orange and sand colored robed soldiers sheathed their weapons in dual elemental magic, making a clear distinction between themselves and the red clothed soldiers; one side relied on a single, pure element while the other mixed two elements to create something new.

The only reason I noticed was because of a dual sword wielding soldier sprinting at us with lightning sheathed blades that got suddenly impaled by a flaming spear; than one of those red soldiers swung a rock clad blade at someone only to have a thick root smack against their sword and shatter the rock before sending them flying.

All around us angry soldiers wielding powerful magics began to descend into madness as they began to murder one another, shouting war cries and what sounded like obscenities at one another in a language we couldn't understand.

More and more of them were beginning to focus on us as we grouped together, our magic tearing through them as we began to overlap our attacks to create a defensive position in the middle of this sea of bodies, using our different magics to increase our chances of survival.

Seeing the Metal, Ice and Fire Magics being used together to support one another apparently infuriated the soldiers who were looking, causing them to let loose various war cries as they charged straight at us, uncaring of whoever they had been fighting a moment before.

Impaling a Dogkin with an icicle, I began to weave together some wider area of effect spells while Anput stabilized the ground we were on and raised battlements for us to shelter behind; Leone slung dozens of fireballs that exploded amongst the sea of soldiers while Mom kept them at bay with her Claymore, letting loose gouts of flame whenever she swung it.

Whenever they witnessed either Anput or I utilizing combination magic before seeing Mom or Leone sling pure Fire Magic at them they got extremely angry, and that caused them to make many mistakes that we took advantage of.

I began to make use of shattered ice to spread frost around as best I could, slowing them down so that whenever Mom swung at them they couldn't avoid it, and soon after Anput resumed raining metal arrows down on everyone while also taking her metal rods and transforming them into a heavy spear, stabbing at anyone who looked too dangerous.

Leone's flames were even hotter than I remembered, with the Vampire keeping a curtain of them around our backside while slinging smaller, compact and explosive fireballs into the horde of soldiers with incredible speeds, melting anyone idiotic enough to continue rushing at us.

Going from a still, putrid expanse of corpses to fighting for our lives against those corpses was certainly peculiar and not what I was expecting, but I had little time to think on it as we instead continued to cut down any who approached us while waiting to see if there really were tens of thousands of soldiers in this desert...

Because if there were, we really needed to escape from here whenever we possibly could, especially if these soldiers were in a reanimation loop and fueled with a desire to murder each other for infinity.

Whew~

Ketsueki_Hasu