Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Using everything he had, the captain of the guards blocked an attack from the dark-cloaked assassin, feeling his body going numb as the rippling force of the strike echoed throughout his entire body, every single bone holding him up feeling utterly jittery.

'That's not normal strength, is she even human?' the captain had jumped into the fray nearly just as Maliah had knocked down many of his men onto their asses with the corpses of one of their fellow, still, not even trying anything like before, she just began swinging wildly, her movement impossible to follow as she carved her way through the armoured masses, no amount of group battle arts or coordination could help them.

"Ah, the big fish has finally shown up! Let me peel off those scales!" he attempted to use a sword art, but she spun right around him, killing guards as he went before kicking him in the back of his knee.

He felt utterly helpless in this situation, only able to throw himself away from the murderous shadow thanks to the intervention of a mage, who shot a mana bullet at the assassin, his reward, receiving his spell right back to his face, blowing it to pieces.

Stepping away, the captain shouted an order.

"Everybody, retreat!" contrary to his expectations, The Death Dealer didn't try anything to stop them, smiling at him in a derisory way, like 'you think you did something there?', but he didn't allow her to destabilise him, throwing his sword at her like it was a discus, he rushed forward.

"Oh, I see, mister is actually a pugilist!" dodging his first few punches, she hid her dagger behind her cloak, putting it away as she put up her own unarmed stance, raising her eyebrows repeatedly, obnoxiously.

Infusing his body to the brim with mana, his armour cracked as it couldn't support his unleashed might in spite of having been made with this purpose.

"Vertex!" he couldn't help but say aloud, causing the assassin to start laughing once more, she liked hearing that word.

"You better amount to something nameless man! No one is going to leave this city, I'll fillet them all! I'll stomp on the newborns on the filthy ground, I'll gut parents right in front of their children, pull the eyes out and make them choke on it! Watch as they gargle on their own blood after I puncture both their lungs! You hear me you fucking idiot? I am feeling it today!

I am killing every single person in this city!" diverting one punch, she slammed her elbow onto his nose before pushing him away.

Just waiting for him to try again, and again, and again.

"You can surely land one hit? Half a hit perhaps? A quarter? Maybe you could do something if you stopped hitting like a slug in a salt storm!"

As the maniacal laughter of Maliah seeped into his ears, the captain could only think about one thing.

'What is Sir Yriel doing?' indeed, the captain didn't fancy his chances very much, despite not having much of a powerful build, the woman before him was simply supernaturally strong, was she concealing her reinforcement immaculately even then? He couldn't believe it, but it had to be true, how could one easily deflect his strikes otherwise, strikes that could send even minotaurs reeling.

He could concede that perhaps her daggers were perfectioned tools of murder, but he was only going up against her own self right now.

'Simply impossible!'

As the captain fought with everything he had, Yriel was currently standing opposite to Loimos, in the hallway leading up to the meeting room of the council, bodies of many assistants had been covering the ground just recently, but they deteriorated until nothing remained in a mere instant.

With all of the more competent forces having gone to intercept Maliah, Yriel was planning on cowardly slip away, knowing very well that he would mean nothing as a variable against The Death Dealer, he knew very well that she didn't play by the rules he had learned, she was a freak of nature, and only another of such existences could possibly matter in such a fight.

"Who might you be? I would like to let it be known that a frenzied assassin is within the city as we are speaking…" he didn't know why Maliah had suddenly decided to go for the mass murder route when it shouldn't have been part of her current mission.

He tried to reason with Loimos, but it was no use, he dropped what looked like a white fragment and as it hit the ground, the small shard was enveloped in rot, before forming into a swarm of decaying rats.

If anyone would be capable of escaping the city right now, it would be Yriel, so the undead had intercepted him, sending forth his creations, legitimate undead creatures carrying the undead's own death force and unbreakable will.

Yriel tried to raise a wall of earth, seal off the rats and their owner away from him, but he was made to forcefully halt and hesitate.

"Stop" he couldn't understand the words spoken with the death tongue, and frankly, Loimos could have said anything to the same effect, already terrified beyond belief by Maliah, it was certain to get him to the full extent.

One rat broke out from the group, accelerating and jumping up on the man's ankle, before suddenly expanding and bursting into an explosion of black blood and bone shrapnel.

The pain jolted the mage back to his full senses.

'That thing, it's eating away at my mana and multiplying?!' he didn't recognise the force as death force but he definitely acknowledged the danger, though he missed the blighted blood crawling into the nasty wound he had just received.

Manifesting earthen spikes, he collapsed the floor to stop the other rats from reaching him, preparing another one to aim right at their summoner.

"Wait!" the undead had punched before the ground gave in beneath his feet, and he was plunging straight at the mage, slamming both of his fists onto the mage's faulty defence, his half-assed reinforcement not holding a candle to the undead's that had been fully prepared a while ago.

And his weak mage arms weren't going to help him either, his back slammed against the ground with the added weight of the skeleton bearing down on him.

'I can still get him!' ignoring the rats that were going to take him apart bit by bit, he focused on trying to take out Loimos, it was only natural to aim for the one responsible for bringing the beasts into existence.

But it was always best to be calm when casting a spell, and honestly, whilst Yriel may be talented, the very fact that he had remained within Weafewand, the city prodigies were supposed to leave to go to the academy, go study under powerful mages or to become their own legends, it was a proof that even whilst his talent may be good, he lacked the mentality to ever amount to something truly important.

Loimos grabbed one of his thumbs and cracked it like a celery stick, completely reducing his efforts of spellcasting to nothing as he dropped the mana weaving entirely, allowing Loimos to start whaling on the defenceless mage, punching him in the throat and face until he couldn't even try to mitigate the damage with mana, the rats began biting and tearing him apart, opening wounds and crawling into them.

The undead finished the job by stabbing him in the head with his bone claws.

Now to the main objective.