Bro, I'm not an Undead!-Chapter 1633: Liches, Gods and Deviants! (4)

Souran hadn’t been defeated by Skullius’ three-pronged attack, but she’d suffered severe damage.

Skullius had seen the future. Instead of destroying her with the attack, (which was impossible) his aim had been to see just how Liches were so powerful. How exactly would an Undead master of Souran’s rank recover from his vicious attacks?

Just as Ferex weaved between the rallying ranks of Soizar’s Death Knights and Doom Knights to become Skullius’ steed once more, the horrid powers of the Arch-Lich were expelled with great atrocity.

Souran’s shattered skull, spine and arms were restored so abruptly that it looked like she’d simply hopped back in time – to before she’d taken the attack.

But Skullius had seen and felt the true nature of her recovery.

’Her soul...!’ he thought, eyes gleaming.

In that instant when the Arch-Lich healed, he noticed how immense and complicated her soul was. It wasn’t a simple, singular unit, but instead a vast, concentrated mass with powerful and weak bits stitched together – all of them forced to attract one another. The soul unit was so vast when exposed that it might have been a third of Aigas’ size.

The core principle behind souls and bodies, Skullius recalled, was that the body learned from the soul and the soul learned from the body. Usually, it took either some time before they completely assimilated the traits of the other, but in practice, it was different from Liches. They accelerated the process, changing the composition of their souls in order to change their bodies briskly.

That was how Souran healed.

...And as it happened, Ferex was learning to do this too. His knowledge of the soul was quickly approaching that of the older masked man – Actuass.

’No wonder it’s so difficult to put them down,’ Skullius thought. ’However...’

He didn’t finish the thought.

Sobbo and the three Doom Knights that had been on Soizar’s ship attacked him at the same time.

Despite seeing the future, Skullius wasn’t able to dodge the first attack fast enough. Two of the Doom Knights coordinated expertly. One was suddenly lathered by a brown haze, a Realm rank Exotic Parlous Nature. Without warning, it turned and sent a violent punch straight into the Doom Knight next to it. It was bizarre, but it worked to confuse Skullius.

BANG!

A vicious blunt force blasted into his chest instead of the Doom Knight that had been struck. If he wasn’t currently being shielded by the Amras from several Deities, he was sure he would have sustained fatal damage.

’They are aware,’ thought the Sovereign of Refined Anarchy. The third Doom Knight had already made its move while he was stunned by the blow. As its Amras surged, an Andori was activated. It too was bizarre. ’They know they can’t hurt me with long-ranged attack; so they are using complicated alternatives.’

The Doom Knight charged towards Skullius predictably... but then its cuirass opened wide, revealing not the flesh of the Undead Deity below, but the sneaky figure of the Lich Sobbo.

Hundreds of Death Knights were converging all around Skullius as the Lich, socket flames flaring, reached out with a bony hand that seemed to snake forth flexible as rope. Skullius’ first instinct was to grab it, but he stopped himself at the last second. He slashed at the arm several times, severing it to many pieces with his sword.

’Damn...’

Each of the severed pieces swelled up like balloons. It would have been impossible to imagine that they were bones at all. The pieces of soul within them were swiftly transfigured into dagger-like shapes and in turn the bones they inhabited. Sobbo was proud of himself. It was a devious move. Each of the daggers flew at terrible speeds, eager to penetrate the Nullinity’s Herald from all blind spots. Such a precarious attack at such a short range was sure to work.

"You have a very funny definition of long ranged attacks, don’t you?" Sobbo cried jubilantly.

At the same time, the Doom Knights used all manners of Andori to enhance their speeds within the shattered sky. They lunged, dozens of times quicker than light and drew Treasures and activated Andori. The Death Knights around them were summoning Mirrors – siphoning off the residuals of life energy on Aigas to forge humanoid monstrosities driven by violence. It was a masterful pincer attack. With Souran protecting all these minions with her massive well of Undeath energy, Skullius couldn’t simply wipe them out with his Secondary assault functions.

...But all this wasn’t enough to crush him.

His hands whipped around gracefully, leaving shocking white trails. He stowed away his bow and first countered the offense with his wakizashi. In frightening decimals of time, he had swatted away Sobbo’s daggers, sending them flying off into the distance.

...But then they vanished into the future.

Indeed, the long range attacks targeted by Deific Usurper’s Secondary assault function were as the name suggested: long range. However, the function also targeted long range attacks Skullius used against his enemies as well; hence how the Sovereign had made Sobbo’s daggers his own long-ranged attack.

But also...

The Sovereign threw into his gladius into the distance and it too disappeared into the future.

Sobbo and Souran noticed, but there was nothing they could do about it.

The same could be said about the next attack Skullius came up with.

’I did think that looked like something above the normal plane,’ thought Souran with interest.

She was referring to Skullius’ chausses. The glittering bone matter that made up the spine winding around his waist and his legs while he was in this form. Indeed, it was material of a higher dimension, and it was the source of his next attack.

The bone winding around his pelvis suddenly moved as though it were living. Part of it ripped off from the whole and chiseled itself a detailed head – the head of a dragon, with eyes and nostrils livid with Ju`wtte. The head wound behind Skullius, loosened a thunderous roar... and discharged a devastating beam of golden white Ju`wtte!

There was something phenomenal about the beam, something beyond the crackling noise and distortions it expelled. The bone dragon turned its head swiftly, catching all the enemies in the attack. It might have been laser with how it ripped through Souran’s protection, but it wasn’t only destruction that it brought forth.

Indeed, over half of the Death Knights and their Mirrors were obliterated immediately upon contact – body and then soul and then Broader Existence – but the Doom Knights met something different. Their readied Andori and Exotic Parlous came into contact with the bright Ju`wtte – with Enlightened Ju`wtte... and were transformed.

An Andori meant to turn any organic material into a weapon laced with any one of the user’s mastered Exotic Parlous Natures... became instead an Andori that weaponized the user’s internal organs against them.

An Andori that increased the user’s speed by as many times as there were stars above them at any given time... became instead an Andori that forcibly froze all the Amras coursing through their body, paralysing them for a full second.

There were several other Andori at play, all of them turned against their users, but Skullius was already on the next phase of his offense. He targeted the Doom Knight that had been frozen by its own Amras. It was, after all, the same one with Sobbo sticking out of its chest.

Leaping off Ferex, Benighted Ju`wtte, dark and threatening, sprung out of one of Skullius’ Ju`wtta and swam through his arm like a cantankerous black liquid.

This... earned him a frown from both Sobbo and Souran.

It was, after all, a true dire threat.

Sobbo couldn’t stop it.

Before he knew it, Skullius’ fist was an inch from his face.

There was no physical impact, though. The two never met.

Instead, a small, black star violently spraying out bolts of lightning seemed to repel Skullius from Sobbo. Or was it the other way around?

It didn’t really matter.

The result was horrifying all the same.