Shades of the New World

Chapter 159: Chance at survival

From what she could understand, the undead did not kill a certain group of magicians. They would kill the common people without squat, but they would gather the Hex and Magi and make them perform their magic. The ones who could use their souls were gathered and sent somewhere, while the rest would be killed.

'This is my only chance at survival...' she thought as she looked at the horizon. At last, the moment of reckoning came. Evin could see the ragged undying army of about five hundred slowly appear on the horizon. At its helm, a man wearing a small golden crown on his head stood tall, his impassive eyes coldly judging the city. 

"They're here!" someone shouted below and everyone began to shove into the gates. At this point, the guards were not able to hold the mad crowd in check, but obviously, the city could not let these unlucky people ruin its defenses.

A magi came out on one of the watchtowers and cast his spell. The crowd who were trying to flood through the gates below began to gag violently and some of them began to vomit out their bloody innards in an almost exaggerated manner.

"Leave," the magi's words resounded clearly in the surroundings. 

The rest of the crowd, looking at what happened, just stood silently, not knowing what to do. Evin supposed it was the first time they seen people get slaughtered like that.

'Well, it doesn't matter much, since there's no way the army would let anyone go at this point,' she thought with sigh.

The man with the golden crown in the helm raised his hand and Evin could see a huge golden barrier taking form above everyone's head and then engulfing everything in the visible vicinity. An impossible amount of Divine Essence oozed from its thick walls.

"So, it begins," Evin muttered as the army began to casually march towards the city.

Weirdly, she was abnormally calm at this moment. Perhaps because of the many times she witnessed the same slaughter, and maybe because of the personality from the memories that haunted her.

"What will you do?" the Magi from before had floated next to her and asked. Evin also noticed that a dozen other rather eccentric men and women had appeared on the other watchtowers as well.

"Hmm?" Evin looked back, a bit confused. 

"Will you fight, or will you just stand there?" 

'Oh,' Evin thought, and confused asked.

"Do you not see this barrier around us?" Evin asked, wondering if this mage was someone so powerful to not feel any fear from seeing the huge spell made of Divine essence.

But it really did seem like the man just didn't see it, as he looked around the area with a confused face. Seeing it, Evin decided to give him some friendly advice, knowing full well that he wouldn't follow it.

"I suggest you kill yourself to save yourself from the torture," she said suddenly, shocking the mages around. But the awkward silenve was broken by the magi's loud laughter.

"Everything okay with you, my dear hex?" the magi laughed with a scoff.

"See that man with the golden crown? That's one of the kings of the Nosk Empire, Lan the only magi in the World who was able to solve the secrets of Space," Evin explained softly before adding: "Though, he is an undead now"

The magi laughed, amused by the idea. Evin could see the other Divine Essence users looking at her with some mockery as well.

"Hah, one of the leaders of the Empire, turned into an undead and sent to slaughter a town of four thousand people. Ha-ha-ha, don't scare yourself too hard, woman. Think rationally," the Magi said.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you" Evin murmured as she jumped down from the watchtower. 

"And if he is the man you speak to be? What are you going to do alone, jumping down to the battlefield like that?" the man's laughter echoed behind Evin. She just shrugged and shook her head with an almost dead smile. 

She didn't blame the man for not believing. This was the reason why she didn't want to bother saying anything to the crowd that was scattering around behind her. It was just a waste of breath for Evin. 

These people were doomed to die and Evin made her peace with that. 

She just hoped he wouldn't try to cast his spell against her back at this point. It didn't seem likely as the Essence users of the town were severely underestimating the opposing army, considering their tattered looks and pale complexions. One more weak looking Hex wouldn't make much of a difference in their eyes.

She slowly walked towards the approaching army, focusing inwardly and bringing out a tiny part of her soul out of her body after a bit of a struggle. Magic and Divine Essence wasn't something so easy to work with. Most of her time as a hex was spent on her trying to make Divine essence take notice of her. After that point, it got a bit easy, but the level of difficulty was different for everyone. 

It wasn't like everyone could perform the same things. It was mostly dependent on what the Divine essence had in store for you. In the past, Evin always felt like she got the short end of the straw and received a shitty soul related ability. Aside from her ability to leave parts of her soul in places and see what they were seeing, she could only directly attack another's soul, which debilitated or knocked them out, depending on how much they've trained their souls.

In any case, looking at some of the undead mages on the other side stop looking like they were about to blast Evin away after seeing her use soul magic, the stone inside her heart settled. 

After a few minutes of walking, Evin was only a few steps away from the undead. Then the approaching army split up slightly to leave Evin some space to walk up to the undead at the top of the hill. While passing through, Evin noticed that an unbelievably foul stench of rotting came from the members of the army. Well, she supposed it was inevitable, as some parts of their body had either been ripped open, or just damaged beyond repair. 

How were these people even walking, Evin had no idea. But since she knew that what they were going to do to that town's people weren't any less terrible than how they looked, she could only forget about the matter and walk towards the man with the crown. Upon closer look, Evin found that Lan was in a much better situation than the others. Sure, his skin had paled and he was missing his eyes, but he at least looked like someone alive. Mostly.

"Heh, so you're the one who kept eyeing on us lately... a great honor to finally meet you," a raspy voice came from Lan's mouth. The tone and words could almost be considered friendly, but Evin felt no emotion from the sentence.

Evin didn't bother to reply.

"Anyone inside that town who has a similar talent to yours?"

"None that I know of. I've just come here three days ago," Evin replied truthfully.

"Pity, guess we have to do it the hard way again. You stay next to me," Lan shook his head and watched his army slowly creep up on the town's walls. 

A stray spell or two came at their way, but they were easily taken care of by the members of the army made of Divine essence users. 

At this point, Evin could almost see the confusion and disbelief appear inside the eyes of the guards and the city's residents. 'They can't possibly all be magi?' they were probably thinking. 

But the surprises weren't done yet, as another thing happened that caught the attention of everyone. The people that tried to flee away had seemingly run into an invisible wall. At first, they were confused, wondering what the hell they had just bumped into. But slowly, fear began to grasp their hearts, as they madly searched for some way around those invisible walls. 

The army did not bother with those people and simply continued their march towards the city's walls. The attacks and spells from the city guards intensified, but all it did was reaffirm their fears and worries that the army consisted of only magi and hexes. At this point, the confusion and worry they had turned completely into fear and panic.

When the army reached a certain distance towards the town, its members began to send their own spells against the town gates and countless grey orbs of Divine Essence took air. This was another weird feature of the army of undead. Aside from a few notable ones like Lan here, they could all perform the same spells as each other. And none of these ragged people looked like a proper mage, which always lead to mages who didn't know of them to underestimate them. Even upon closer look, Evin couldn't feel a smidge of Essence residue on the mages.

The people on the watchtowers seemed to be shocked, but Evin didn't care.

'I just want to live.'

She looked away, tired of seeing the things that would follow afterwards. But the expected loud explosion of Divine essence did not enter her ears, as an eerie silence ensued in the area.

Evin looked back to see a beautiful woman with shining silver hair floating in front of the city. She seemed to have stopped all of the attacks that came from the 500 or so mages, as she coolly eyed the army of undead.

Confused, Evin looked at Lan to see him smiling back uncannily.

"Dragon"

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Author's notes(Jan 19): Today and tomorrow I can only publish one chapter each, because I'm getting confused by the powerlevels in the novel. Again.

So, I need some time to flesh out some things properly.