Capítulo 1140: Domain Slash

The rhythm of the battle shifted with the addition of Carnifex, although the horned undead’s fighting style might appear simple at a glance, being a swordsman wielding a cutlass-like blade–In truth, his fighting style was anything but simple, even without using anything too fancy, his most basic way of attacking was problematic.

For he had incorporated his talent in opening rifts at will into his fighting style, he could be anywhere at any time, opening rifts all over the place to trick the living into assuming an attack was coming from a certain place when it really was coming from the opposite direction.

That was without mentioning that the rifts themselves were a dangerous weapon in his arsenal, it stood to reason that if someone was partway in or out of rift as it closed, that whatever piece of them was caught would be instantly sliced apart, but these two aspects weren’t the worst part.

Although it was most common to open rifts that lead to Oblivion, for the it was the main Realm Of Death, rifts could be opened to any of its subordinate or adjacent realms as well, and there were plenty of them to choose from.

This allowed Carnifex to be unpredictable, whenever he opened a realm, at least three different things could be happening: He could simply be travelling through to attack from a blindspot, he could be attempting to sue the opening or closing of a rift to deal damage directly, or he could be opening a rift to one of the many realms of death, unleashing a torrential flood of ectoplasm as soon as the rift was open.

Additionally, he could be doing all three at once if he so desired, it wasn’t like the adverse environment of some of these realms was a problem for an undead like himself.

So despite his incredible power and energy reserves that he was capable of preserving to the best possible capabilities at any given time, Andronicus couldn’t fight as freely as before as he had to pay constant attention to the horned undead and his actions.

All the while Dimios wasn’t just going to stand-by, obviously, the leader of the Verfolger was constantly attacking, even more aggressively than before in fact, trusting his ally to help when necessary.

“How… Bizarre” the human king remained calm despite it all, the abilities and powers of the undeads was a real mystery to him, but one thing he noticed immediately, was that Dimios felt stronger than before in general, when Carnifex had joined in, it was like something had been established, elevating the power of both the corpses.

Andronicus was sensitive to fluctuations in strength and power, but he could not know that this was because Dimios and Carnifex had actually come up with an ‘Orderly Ranks’ specifically for when they fought as a duo.

That was how often they were with one another, although the odds of them fighting as a duo were rather slim on the regular, they had still saw it fit to create this, just in case.

The ruler of the human domain had a keen understanding of what his two opponents were up to, at this point, it was obvious that the so-called undeads were true to their names, they were animated corpses, and thus, they knew no exhaustion whatsoever.

By having Dimios attacking fiercely at all times, and Carnifex pop all over the place as a distraction and severe threat if left unchecked, they were actively trying to force the livings attention into many places at the same time, effectively tiring him out quicker by adding stimuli he had to react to so as to not be put into a bad position or defeated.

The undeads could afford to attack endlessly, Andronicus, as much as his stamina and energy reserves might appear endless, could not do that.

Such was the paradox of livings facing off against undeads.

The corpses had a strong tendency to seek exploitation of the weaknesses of the livings, and as such, their enemies had to make a choice that sounded paradoxical, which was that a living fighting undeads couldn’t afford to fight normally against undeads that were of relative strength to them.

That would just lead to attrition warfare, which was always at the benefit of the corpses, so a living had to actually go all-out and perhaps even beyond that to clutch victory, which would exhaust them anyway.

So, if they failed, they would have essentially shortened the fight for their opponents.

But here, Andronicus wasn’t fighting just one powerful undead, but two, including one who could retreat into another realm entirely if needed, so even if he landed a devastating attacking using most of his fighting spirit, he would probably only manage to take out Dimios, leaving himself easy prey for Carnifex.

“What a conundrum…” muttered the human king beneath his mask as he dodged an attack from Dimios, it left him little choice about what to do if he wanted to win this fight.

A single, high-powered attack would be dodged by Carnifex, expanding energy into taking out Carnifex would be even more tiring as the horned undead was always all over the place, he couldn’t just adjust the power of the attack down as Dimios had proven himself to be resilient and capable of defensive techniques.

So it left only one good option in the eyes of Andronicus, which was a powerful attack that expanded energy over a long duration rather than in a burst.

With his analytical gaze, he could tell that Carnifex was inferior to Dimios in terms of durability, and he had already determined that his attacks could damage Dimios, so the point here wasn’t to obliterate both undeads with a move of immense power, but to rain down strikes upon them to the point that they would be unable to move away or raise up any defence.

And also, such an attack would be far more likely to actually catch the horned skeleton as it would last for a little while.

The human king simply needed to hide the fact that this attack would drain him of his energy reserves in excess, otherwise, Carnifex would just decide to hide in Oblivion until it was over.

But if he didn’t know the cost of the attack, then he would continue to proceed like currently, potentially exposing himself to getting hit…

Andronicus stanced himself as Dimios swung the great flail at him, and from his body, several spirit-like apparitions that were perfect replicas of him made from fighting spirit surged out, each wielding different weapons.

Dozens of them manifested, and at a glance, it seemed like the expenditure needed for the human king to do this was high, but not enormous as he controlled his fighting spirit with such precision so as to hide the true cost of the attack.

Naturally, since Carnifex couldn’t tell that this attack was likely to be the living’s last, he couldn’t just retreat and let Dimios get taken apart.

From the perspective of the undead, it was only acceptable for one of them to fall if it guaranteed that the living was going down as well, otherwise, it would just be allowing the human king to get rid of pressure and perhaps even retreat if he so desired…

Andronicus and his reflections made from energy all surged in different directions.

Dimios was immediately on guard, this attack was reminiscent of the humanoid summons who had wielded the flying swords, and these had been nearly as strong as the human king at the time, now that Andronicus was expanding more energy to empower himself, that was no longer true to say that the humanoid figures were on the same level as him, but the undead was fairly certain these new summons were certainly at least close to the king’s true level of strength.

And indeed, as one wielding a spear closed-in and thrusted with its weapon, the strength behind the blow was easily able to send vibrations through the undead’s entire body, and into the ground.

The many shades of the king spread all over the place, targeting both undeads at the same time, but both Dimios and Carnifex felt that something was wrong, their refined instincts told them that something was off.

And indeed, Dimios soon noticed that the flying swords, which he had previously destroyed, were gone from where they had been.

Moments later, barely enough time for him to silently inform Carnifex, a singular blade, which had definitely not been part of the group of five flying swords, flew through the air so quickly that even the undeads couldn’t react properly.

Carnifex’s right arm was blown off his body, and Dimios was launched through a pillar and against one of the walls of the throne room as he used his flail to block the attack, the blade carrying such power and momentum that he was easily picked off the ground, and the worst part as that the weapon was charged with such an obscene amount of fighting spirit that Dimios was unable to activate any special abilities.

The dire amount of foreign energy, carrying the potent life force of King Andronicus nullified everything.

Carnifex was a bit better off as the energy was being emitted directly into his face, but he was struck nonetheless and for a few moments, he too was unable to do anything, leading to him being pulled out of the rift he was currently in and thrown into the throne room.

The leader of the Verfolger, and leader of the Erado were perfectly lined-up in front of the human king, who recalled the shades and gathered every ounce of fighting spirit he had left, gathering something else alongside with it… It was fighting spirit as well, but it was not his.

It seemed to belong to a collection of people.

He swung his swordstaff, and all of this energy was condensed into a singular attack, and then launched forward.

“See you when The Graveyard brings us back, I guess…”

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