NOVEL NEXT Chapter 164: Lesser
But it wasn't enough.
The battlefield was collapsing.
Everywhere Damien looked, Chinese elites were falling.
Lin Guang, the lightning-speaker of the East, had her throat torn out by a European flame-sprinter before she could even activate her second sigil.
General Zhao Heng, whose defensive walls of fire had held entire districts against the awakened beasts, was overwhelmed by a coordinated trio.
One broke his shield, the second crushed his ribs, and the third decapitated him with a slice of cutting wind.
Eleven had already died. Thirteen if the two "traitors" were counted. Reduced to corpses in less than ten minutes.
Damien barely managed to keep track.
He saw Riki bleeding heavily from a gash in his side. Maru's hammer was cracked. The air stank of burning flesh, broken mana, and charred uniforms.
The Europeans were ruthless. Efficient. Relentless. There were twenty-four of them left now, and every one of them moved like they had tasted victory.
Their coordination was perfect. Their attacks came without pause.
The Chinese were down to eight, and by the looks of it… They would go down to one very soon.
It was a slaughter!
Damien felt the pressure building in his chest, the weight of it bearing down harder with every second.
He lashed out with a mana-enhanced kick that shattered a nearby attacker's jaw, then finished him with a clean horizontal cut. Blood sprayed, and Damien turned immediately, already facing the next threat.
He had lost count of how many he had killed.
Beasts. Soldiers. Elites.
It didn't matter. His blade had never stopped moving since the hill tests. Since the mecha battles. Since the war had begun.
And then something clicked.
Like a gear deep in his soul had finally aligned.
Time seemed to slow. Mana stilled around him.
A cold pulse rippled through his core, dark and steady, and the world seemed to tilt for just a moment. A quiet chime echoed in the back of his mind, soft and surreal.
Then…
[Congratulations.]
[You have successfully killed 5000 living beings.]
[New Necromancer Skill Unlocked.]
[Lesser Revive – Resurrect one lifeform with 50% of its original power and intelligence.]
Damien inhaled once. The air smelled different now… richer, heavier.
Sixteen S-Rankers lay dead across the battlefield. Each one a titan in their own right.
His mana surged like a river finally unblocked. His eyes pulsed with violet light. He didn't need time to think. The decision came as naturally as breathing.
Damien raised one hand, his fingers curling like he was gripping the soul of the battlefield itself.
"Arise."
Black light erupted beneath the corpses.
Every fallen S-Ranker twitched. Then convulsed. Then rose.
Their eyes burned faintly, subdued, distant, but alive. Their bodies were still bloody, but the energy pulsing within them was real. Their aura… half what it once was, but still terrifying.
The Europeans hesitated.
That was their first mistake.
The revived S Rankers howled and surged forward without hesitation, reflecting the fury that was in Damien's heart with passionate zeal. What they lacked in brilliance, they made up for in unity. There was no more exhaustion. No fear. Only vengeance.
General Qin Hui—the God of Iron—now dead and reborn, slammed into the enemy line with a war cry Damien had only read about in military textbooks.
His hammer cleaved a French mind-breaker in half. General Zhao Heng, his eyes still fogged from the veil of death, conjured a flaming rod and slammed it through an enemy's ribcage like a battering ram.
Chaos erupted.
The tide turned in a flash of steel and shadow.
Damien moved with them. Fought beside his resurrected allies like he had known them his whole life. They didn't speak. They didn't question. They just killed.
Within minutes, the air was filled with the sound of European S-Rankers screaming, retreating, dying.
Twenty-four became twenty. Then fourteen. Then nine.
The last tried to flee.
None made it far.
When the final body fell, skull split open by General Riki's flaming punch, silence reclaimed the field.
Blackthorn was quiet again.
The ruins that had once echoed with flame and steel now lay silent beneath a sky smudged in ash and blood. Bodies, whole and broken, littered the streets like forgotten statues, and the air no longer vibrated with the screech of spells or the thunder of clashing elites.
Only the breathing remained.
Eight Chinese S-Rankers stood at the heart of it all.
Barely.
General Riki had collapsed onto one knee, flames flickering weakly around his scorched armor, one eye swollen shut.
General Maru sat heavily against a broken wall, his hammer resting across his lap, blood running in dark trails from a gash at his collarbone. Around them, the others, burned, bloodied, gasping, leaned against rubble, unmoving except for their rising chests.
But they were alive.
They were breathing.
That was more than they had expected.
Damien stood in the center of the battlefield, legs stiff, arms heavy.
Blood slicked his blade, sticky and beginning to dry. Dark mana curled lazily beneath his boots, tendrils of it brushing the stone like something still hungry.
He didn't feel triumphant.
He felt drained… Cold to the core.
But alive.
Very, very alive.
His breath came slow and shallow, and every part of him ached not from wounds, but from sheer emptiness.
His mana reserves were gone, completely hollowed out. Whatever force had surged through him during the resurrection had vanished the moment the spell was complete.
And yet, beneath the exhaustion, something stirred.
Every cell in his body thrummed with energy.
His death mana flowed cleaner, faster, more precise.
His power spiked and became far more responsive and obedient. Like something had finally aligned.
And the result…
Sixteen S-Rankers…
Damien blinked, still half-dazed.
He'd done that.
He hadn't even channeled an incantation.
The skill had activated the moment he wanted it to, pouring from his core like it had always been waiting. His vision had blurred. The world had dimmed. And then… Light.
Sixteen dead, returned to the battlefield. Not mindless. Not monstrous. Their movements had been slower, their spells imperfect, but they remembered enough to fight. To kill.
It was terrifying.
And it was beautiful.
Lesser Revive.
That was what the system had called it.
Even at only half their original strength, they had turned the tide in seconds. He had commanded a dead army, and for those few minutes, it had obeyed him like an extension of his will.
This power…