Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice spent a bit of time showing off his colossal powers, which were mostly just light shows. He used up most of his mana though, and let it seem as if that had knocked him out.

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!

Only a minute after I fell to the ground I felt myself being lifted up. Two guards had come out to ferry me back into the city.

I waited through the their haphazard attempts at making me comfortable, and only stirred when I got into the city.

I looked at one of the two.

“Argh! Did I get them!?”

I grabbed the guard as I shouted.

The guard instantly started shaking his head vigorously. “Yes sir! You wiped out the entire undead army.” He had a look of reverence on his face.

I nodded me head. “Good. Let me down though. I appreciate you two helping me back, but I don’t want the people of this city seeing Mar’s chosen being held like an infant.”

As the guard that held me let me down, I asked, “Where’s my staff?”

The other guard handed it to me. I used it to ‘assist’ in my walking.

“Everything has been settled for tonight. But be prepared for tomorrow. Those undead were too easy to kill. They were probably just a vanguard.”

When we arrived at the second arc of the city walls, I dismissed the guards back to their posts. My mana regenerated very quickly, so I was basically back at full already.

I used my wind mana to throw myself into the air, and fly back to the castle. When I reached there I buffed myself in order to ‘not look like I was tired’.

Most of the regular citizens wouldn’t realize, but the mages that could see that kind of thing would. The point of this was to start some rumors spreading. Of course I was going to help them along. I wanted the people to think that the show just now had taken a lot out of me.

As I floated past the entrance of the castle, I used my mana to speak through the PA system.

“People! Together, we have defeated the enemy! Tonight you will stay here, but tomorrow go out and live you lives!”

Cheers began to sound, but I had to put them down.

“Yes, it is good we didn’t lose anyone, but tomorrow night you must again come here. For I fear another attack! But I need rest. The guards will explain everything to you.”

I gave a few of my guards some instructions and set them to work. They were going to make sure everyone came back here tomorrow.

I also sent a message with one guard. The message was sent to the mages, and asked them for assistance to protect the city.

After that was done I went to my mana purifier area. When I got closer, I clearly sensed a life force in the room. The only other person that knew about this area was EDI, if it was her that would be ok, but if it wasn’t I’d have to kill them.

When I got there, I stealthily snuck close enough to use inspect on the person.

“So Voice, what was that about?” EDI was using a bit of a condescending tone. She was sitting in a pose as if meditating. Her eyes were closed, and she held her open palms above her crossed knees. She was sitting in the darkness mana purifier.

I cleared my throat. “*Ahem. I don’t know what you mean. The undead? I just wiped them out.”

She opened her eyes then, and looked me over. “Is that right? Then why was it Kretchof that was the one doing the summoning? And what was all that about? Trying to pretend to be weak? You weren’t so hurt that you had to buff yourself.”

“How the hell did you even know that!?”

She wasn’t there, so it was impossible she knew all of that without cheating. EDITOR might have been helping her.

She smiled, as she stood up from the circle. “I have my ways, hehe.” She looked at me seriously, “And they don’t include EDITOR.”

She left the circle, and the room, without saying anything more.

“Wait were are you going?” I asked. This was the first time I had seen her in a while. I at least wanted to talk or something.

She didn’t respond, and instead just walked out. I turned around not even a second after she left, but she had disappeared. Literally. She made herself invisible again.

Whatever. I’m just going to purify my mana and get ready for tomorrow.

Although the rune crafting had been seriously nerfed, the fact that EDITOR had left me the runes I’d already crafted was a blessing. With that my purifier circles wouldn’t be less potent.

I sat down on the light mana purifier. I was going to need a lot of light mana for what I was going to do. The better the purity, the less mana I’d need to do my job.

While I was purifying my light and darkness mana types, I had a sudden idea.

Using a simple darkness spell, I summoned a basic skeleton. The results of my experiment made smile wickedly.

Ha, I might have just found another game breaker, hehe

I had thrown the skeleton into the darkness mana purifier, while I used the light mana purifier. The skeleton stood there, and the darkness mana started coating its body.

After twenty minutes of purifying my light mana, the most time I could do at that point, I looked over and used inspect on the skeleton.

“Hehehe. This has to be the best thing.”

The mana purifier had strengthened the skeleton! Skeletons had VERY basic stats, only about 20 or so in every category but int and wisdom, 1 in each of those.

Every singe stat had at least doubled! Even int and wisdom were both at five now. The other stats were at 40.

Oh Gods. If it works with skeletons…

“SOL!”

The light and darkness mana purifiers were close, but in different locations. All of the purifiers were in different areas, but you had to go through one specific room to get to any of them.

“Yes master? Didyoucallmeforsomething? Didyouneed something? Whatcanihelpyouwith?”

Sol’s incessant yammering never ceased to annoy me.

I smiled gently though. “Sol, I think I found a way to make you even more powerful!”

Sol shrugged. “Idon’tneedtobepowerful. Aslongasimhelpfulimfine.”

I inwardly sighed. Just cause Sol was a light fairy didn’t mean the damn thing needed to act so good all of the time.

“Think about it Sol! If you are more powerful you’ll be able to help more. Even Mar would like it if you had enough power to rid her of Davros!”

Sol’s eyes lit up at that. The thought of being helpful to me, but especially Mar, was too much for Sol to pass up.

I put the fairy in the light mana purifier.

Sol didn’t seem uncomfortable, so I left the annoyance there. I wanted to test the theory with Sol first. If I could empower my fairies using that method, imagine how powerful they’d be!

After a very short while, I looked over Sol. Nothing noticeably had happened.

So I asked Sol if anything felt different.

“Ifeelgood! ItslikeiaminMarsembrace!”

So basically it just felt nice. I guess that was a dud.

It was still worth a shot though. Anything I could think of that would make me more powerful would be ok.

I decided to also try one more thing.

Next I directed Sol to stand in the purifier that had water mana. Obviously I had Tear there as well, to protect Sol from the massive amount of liquid build-up.

Sol instantly began shuddering.

“Master! Itttt feelssss sssoooo cooollldd.”

Wow, the little shit is talking slowly. It must really freeze for the poor bugger.

I tried to act like I felt bad. “I know, but if you just wait there for a bit, you’ll be able to get more powerful! Trust me.”

I went back to the light mana purifier, the purity and amount of light mana was insane! That day I decided to try some other experiments on the purifiers.

It turned out that the fairies could exist in any purifier except their opposite. When I put Drake in the water mana purifier, the fire wisp almost instantly died. I had to pull it out right away.

That’s interesting, but not helpful right now!

Although it did give me an idea of an actual defense method. If I could throw down giant purifiers around the city, all of them on top of each other, then everything based on mana would feel really good, but also instantly die.

At least theoretically. Since the level of water mana would be so high, things that required fire mana would just crumble to death.

Unless of course, they would all just cancel out. Then it’d be completely pointless.

It was a risk, one that I didn’t know if I wanted to take. I did put it on hold though.

But I had a huge spike in light and darkness mana by forcing Kretchof to go into the earth mana purifier. The earth mana purifier didn’t cause him any harm because I had siphoned off all of the earth mana, beforehand. I didn’t use it to purify, because that would have taken too long.

With the help of my fairies, although they felt incredibly weak while it was going on, I was able to increase both purities by 10 points!

Time passed too quickly for my taste. Kretchof let me know when it was time for the second act.

I dismissed all of my fairies, and prepared for the upcoming battle.

This time I had planned a bit of something different.

Before getting ready for the second battle, I asked Chao about how the third and fourth battles were shaping up. Chao responded that the gathering of the ‘material’ was slightly ahead of schedule.

So I started he second night of the ‘War on Death’. It was much the same as the first night. An undead army began to come from the ground.

I had already prepared for it, so it went by quickly this time. Since it was already known throughout the town that I was preparing for the night-raid, I didn’t have to make it seem like it took too much out of me.

Kretchof used a huge amount of mana to summon up large clouds of miasma. The miasma was an enormous debuff cloud.

The gas began by coming from different locations around the city. When it got into close proximity to the large light mana circles, it simply began to dissipate.

After a few minutes, the light mana circles began to flicker and soon went out of power. By the time they did, I was already on my way.

The undead were again coming out of the ground. This time there was easily five times as much as the last.

I simply pumped out a huge amount of flashy light mana, and eradicated the entire force. Kretchof took away the mana supply in huge waves.

The entire battle took less than a minute.

I flew back to the castle after casting a huge magic circle using darkness and light mana. I had already perfected the circle, so it went out without a hitch. It was only a few yards in diameter, so I had to throw down a large number of them.

It wasn’t especially powerful since the patch, but it was basically a huge doorbell. If an actual undead came anywhere near them, Kretchof would be notified instantly.

Since Kretchof had the power to steal undead from other necromancers, it would allow us to nip that problem in the bud.

The note I had sent the mages let them know I would provide a special service for them in exchange for them pumping mana into the circles for the city’s defense.

The exchange I would give them is specially enchanting a single room for them. I told them I would give them basically any enchantment they would want, but it would be a low quality one since it ‘wasn’t my forte’.

The ‘War on Death’ wasn’t concluded with just a couple of undead battles though. That was just the start.

The next attack had been brewing for over a week.

I went to sleep as soon as I got back. I could stay up for long periods, but then I’d have to sleep for long periods as well. So now was my sleeping time.

I slept all the way until the next night, when I had a guard wake me up. The citizens were told they could sleep in their houses, since the problem had been ‘dealt with’.

When I woke up, I thanked the guard, and got into my armor. I grabbed my staff, and propelled myself into the sky. While in the air, I looked around. I didn’t see anything suspicious, even though I knew basically where exactly all of tonight’s prey were.

At least they seem like professionals.

I went back into the castle, and waited. The attack would happen whenever they were ready. I’d have to count on the city guard to make sure we weren’t ran through before we realized what was happening.

I had NightmareWing send out one of his birds, and contact a special group with a letter. The letter was monitored by Chao. All of the follow up was done by him as well. I gave the group convoluted instructions on how to reach him, and Chao took care of the rest.

This group was a high level bandit group. It was player run, with no NPCs. It was the main reason I had hired them. Of course I only sent them ¼ of the money. The agreement was that they would get the rest when Chao had proof that the city lay in ruins.

They were camped out somewhere in the forest surrounding the city, but hadn’t done anything yet. They only arrived the day after the second attack, so they were probably getting ready.

So was I. I knew the easiest methods for them to do anything, so I was preparing for them.

I was in the dark cave that held the darkness mana purifier. It was completely sealed off since I covered the entrance using reinforced earth mana. It looked like a stone wall.

I had Kretchof raise a zombie. I had other plans originally, but I decided to alter them a bit since I had figured out the bit about purifying the skeleton.

After Kretchof had summoned the zombie, I lifted up my hand towards it. I narrowed my fingers a bit, and ripped out both its eyes. I had Kretchof continue to hold the animation on the undead. I needed the thing to be functioning to use it.

I spent about half an hour to create the perfect scalpel, and harden the two eyes slightly. If the eyes were too soft I would easily cut too deeply, or too widely. With the hardening buff, an earth buff that only had 2% earth mana.

I also spent about five minutes creating a few ice lenses that would work as a magnifying glass. They let me zoom in a bit more than I could on my own.

I enhanced my vision using buffs, and used inspect to look at the eyes closely. Along with the lenses, I could see minute details on the eyes.

I created a long series of runes, that culminated on the pupil of the eyes. The runes essentially infused the eyes with wind mana, and allowed them to fly. The mana required to fly wasn’t much, so it was easy to make it so they could siphon off that amount from the atmosphere.

But a flying eyeball wasn’t the greatest idea in the world. What made the eyes special was the other ability I had imbued them with.

Like the recording on the rocks, I decided to try to record light as well. The wind mana changes were a lot easier to do.

The first set of eyes didn’t function at all.

I had Kretchof release the summoning, and summon another.

I continued these experiments for several hours. Anytime I made something even slightly working, I put it aside, and referred to it in the later experiments.

The failed products soon lined the floor. Piles of eyeballs rolled around lifelessly. Within a few hours time I had something resembling a working product.

A single eyeball laid flat in my hand. After I charged it with mana, 1000 was the most it could handle, it began to tremble.

The trembling quickly turned to rocking. The rocking turned into rolling. The next instant the rolling stopped.

Another failure?

The eye wobbled unsteadily and lifted itself into the air. I smiled, and began to clean up the other eyes for a bit.

After a small amount of time I had recalled the eye by siphoning off a small chunk of mana. The eye was ‘programmed’ to come back to Kretchof when it reached a certain amount of mana.

“Well that’s about as far as the other best one got.”

I then put in the exact darkness and light mana amounts to hit the ‘play’ function of the eye.

It showed a blurry, but recognizable image. The image of me cleaning up a few eyes that laid on the floor.

After the image played once, it instantly erased itself.

“FINALLY!”

I would have jumped with joy if I didn’t think I’d end up making a bunch of eye gore.

“Finally I can start phase 2! Geez that took a while.”

The eyes each took about two minutes to inscribe, but it would basically show itself to be a failure after a few seconds of activation. It was gratifying to finally see something that worked.

After the eye proved itself to work, I started on phase two of the defense system.

Making a device to communicate with the eyes, and store the information. Like a database. One that only I’d have access to.

I used a large pane of glass that I had requisitioned, to show the images. I made an earthen pedestal in an area I hollowed out in the same cave as the darkness purifier.

The pedestal was engraved with more runes than any other thing I had made before. It went off the same technology as the sound system I installed in the castle, only it received information instead of sending it.

The eyes each worked as the big rock I talked into for the sound transfer to work.

In the next 12 hours I finished the pedestal, after testing it relentlessly, and created dozens of the eyes. I had basically made a mobile camera security system.

“Let’s see if I can’t destroy the bandits now.”