Summoned Again?

“Oh, it's on!” Farrah's voice said and two glowing hands appeared out of nowhere before two of the undead clerics had their heads beat in. An invisible sword lopped both heads off, then the arms and legs were removed from their corpses. A white glow appeared from somewhere and the light hit the undead cleric's body. Nothing happened.

“We'll try cleansing them later!” Ksenya's voice said and another undead cleric's head disappeared as a large invisible hammer smashed the skull into pulp. “I love my hammer!”

Another undead cleric's head flew off as if it didn't want to be attached to the body anymore, then it was squished by an invisible boot.

“Damn, they're like paper or something.” Anthony said and cast another Sever spell. An undead cleric was split at the waist as if a giant blade had sliced him in half. His upper torso fell to the ground in one direction, and his hands and lower body fell in another. It was hit with another blast of white fire and nothing happened. “Our main spells really aren't affecting them.”

“Just slaughter them all!” Ksenya said and beheaded six more undead clerics. After a few minutes, they had removed nearly half of the undead cleric's numbers, before that red energy started to build up again. “No! We're so close!”

“We have to run!” Farrah said and picked one of the undead clerics up and threw him as hard as she could at the others, then she turned around and ran as fast as she could. She was smart and didn't run in a straight line as she veered off and ran in another direction, hopefully away from wherever the wave was aimed.

The red wave finished forming and it looked like part of a magical barrier. Ksenya had known that she would never be able to run away, since she was right in the middle of the undead clerics, so she smashed as many heads as she could before the wave hit her and sent her sprawling. The obscuring and stealth spells faded with her unconscious and the undead clerics didn't rush over to her.

None of the heroes or Holy Clerics knew why, until the horde of undead around them started to shift their walking paths to fill in the huge gaps in their formation that the Holy Cleansing Fire had cleared away. That wasn't the worrying part for them, though. It was the unholy chill that ran down their spines. Anthony, Farrah, and the ten Holy Clerics stared with open mouths as black mana rolled over the area where the heroes had slaughtered so many undead clerics.

The black mana seeped into the squished and dismembered bodies and they shook. After a few seconds, the bodies started to stand up. In some cases, the torsos floated up into the air at the right height if it had legs. Missing parts and limbs quickly flew into them, as if being sucked into a vaccum, and the parts that had been destroyed regrew out to be replaced as if they had suffered no damage whatsoever.

“We are soooo fucked.” Farrah whispered.

Every single one of the undead clerics turned towards her and for some reason, now it didn't matter if she was invisible. They had heard her and that was all they needed to locate her as another red barrier started to form.

“I don't want to die.” Farrah said, not bothering to conceal her voice.

*

“Ughhh.” I groaned slightly and opened my eyes to see nothing above me. A flash of white cleansing fire passed over me and I looked for the source. I couldn't see it, then Lady Matricia ended the concealing spells and knelt beside me.

“Damon, there's no time to rest.” Lady Matricia said and cast Minor Healing on me, I assumed for a second time. “The undead clerics are resurrecting and healing.”

“Wha... what?” I shook my head and blinked my eyes.

“Look.” Lady Matricia said and used the Holy Cleansing Fire spell, then spread her hands apart as she used the flames like flamethrowers to clear the view. I saw the corpses reassembling and thought Plan D was going to fail if I didn't do something about it.

“I don't want to die.” Farrah said from nearby.

I stood up and stored my armor, because I couldn't do what I was going to do with it on. “Give me a few seconds.” I flew up into the air, made sure the undead were outside my time dilation range, then took out one of the FBI's guns I had stolen. I was actually surprised that it had worked and it wasn't greyed out. I had to let my skills and stats take over and used both my maxed Intelligence and Wisdom to familiarize myself with the gun and how it worked.

____

You have gained the skill ????. You can now use ???? as if it was a normal weapon.

Companion skills for ranged weapons have been converted for use with ????.

____

I felt something click inside my mind and I knew how to use the gun at a very basic level. I immediately opened my skills list and dropped 99 points into the second skill I had that was named as only ????. I took in a deep breath and let all the knowledge of how to expertly use a gun fill my mind.

Then I had a neat idea.

I took out one of the engraving tools I used back on Earth and quickly scraped and carved the fire enchantment into the gun's barrel. This is exactly what I needed. I thought and carefully aimed. If Holy spells won't work, let's see if just Fire will work. I started shooting and aimed for the tops of the heads of the clerics that were just outside my dilated time range. I could see the red barrier was still forming, so I made sure to shoot every single undead cleric without fail.

Bullets moved fast. Very, very fast. In fact, a 9 mm bullet can travel at about 1500 feet per second. My time dilation area was about 300 feet and I was only about 400 feet above the undead clerics. To say my attack happened instantly was an understatement.

According to Lady Matricia's version of the story, that she would tell me back at the temple later, every single one of the undead clerics had their heads burst open, a stream of fire sliced through them from head to crotch, then they burst into flames all at the same time.

On my end, I went through a lot of bullets. I had fifteen guns and three times that many clips, each with 12 bullets in them. That was 540 bullets, minus several that I had shot the secret service agent's dead body with. When I was done shooting and saw candle-like flames appear below me, I counted them and there were 245 of them.

Damn, I used up nearly half of my ammo. I thought and stored the gun, then equipped my armor again. I cast the main attack spell as I took out my sword to get the armor to copy it again, then built the spell up more, and more, and more. I burned through half of my remaining boosted mana as I cast Holy Cleanse on the blades to make them glow white as well.

I focused the attack into a half dome shape and focused the blades to spreading out and hit as many undead as possible within that ten mile wide circle. I had to fly up a little higher for it to work and then I let it go. Once again, for me it looked like a normal attack. From the outside, it happened in an instant.

Millions of undead perished and disintegrated with my completely outrageous attack and millions more were grazed and partially destroyed. I cleared out a massive amount of undead from the entire circle, which was the point. I felt my armor drain away along with my own mana, so I cast Mana Restoration on myself.

I also tried to cast it on the armor and it wouldn't work and guessed that it would have to build up on its own again. It was pretty powerful, now that it had been restored to full functionality, so it wasn't going to take long for another attack to be possible.

I flew back down to the others and took out one of the enchanter's containers as I quickly gathered up the still burning remains of the undead clerics. I tossed them into the 'trap' and the container closed and mulched them as it shrank. It hadn't taken me any time at all to disable the 'shrink the contents' part of the enchantment to make them work like I wanted.

Let's see them resurrect from mulch. I thought and went over to Farrah as I lifted my helmet visor. She was on her knees and shaking. “Hey, you did good.” I said and gave her a hug as I cast Minor Healing and Mana Restoration on her.

“This... this isn't fun anymore.” Farrah said.

“Are you kidding? This is a blast.” I said and she looked surprised. “How many people can say they helped fight against an army of undead?”

Farrah couldn't respond and only shook her head. I let her go and went over to where Ksenya was. She was bleeding from her nose and ears, so I used several diagnostic spells on her to assess her damage, some of it from being walked on by fifty or so undead, then I cast several Major Healing spells on her to get her healthy. We couldn't wait for her to wake up, so I put one of my Clarity necklaces on her.

“Ooowwww.” Ksenya groaned as she woke up.

“Getting hit dead on hurts like hell, doesn't it?” I asked her.

“Damon? What... how long...” Ksenya sat up and looked around. “Where are all the undead?”

“Culled from the area for now.” I said and helped her stand up. “We need to regroup and...”

“Screw that!” Anthony said and faded into existence as Lady Matricia came over to us with the other clerics. “We need to retreat and try to come up with another way to deal with this!”

“We are dealing with it.” I said and waved around. “With just a bit more work...”

“You can do that by yourself.” Anthony said. “Go ahead and do that white glowing sword trick again and take out the rest of them.”

“I need to wait for my armor to recharge itself.” I said. “I told you before. When I pump excessive amounts of mana through it...”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure.” Anthony said. “Why didn't you just cast smaller spells?”

“Because the undead would recover before I could cast the next spell. It had to be overwhelming or it wouldn't work.” I said. “We've all been expending our mana in the same way.”

“Damon.” Lady Matricia said and I nodded as I went to each of the clerics and diagnosed them, then healed them and cast Mana Regeneration on them. “Thank you.”

“We need to get to the center of this place and the possible source.” I told her, just as a massive wave of cold air and shivers went down everyone's spines.

“Who dares disrupt my symphony of death?” A menacing voice asked.

I saw all of the clerics faces turn completely white as all the blood drained from their faces, then I felt a very powerful presence approach.

I had a flash of Divine Sight and I was surrounded by undead corpses as they walked in an endless circular path. Familiar and marred faces were there, Lady Matricia, the other clerics, and the three heroes. It didn't bother me seeing them half rotted or being surrounded by them and countless undead, because it felt good to be there in my armor and I felt quite safe... because I was just as undead as them.

When the vision ended, I immediately knew I had to do something drastic and it was something that I never thought I would ever do. I had been to three different worlds now and it never crossed my mind to do it. Not once.

I really hope this works. I thought and created a large Focus Push spell and shoved everyone away from me for a couple hundred feet to get them far enough away from the immediate area, then I turned around to face my fate and the eight foot tall mass of black mana that was floating towards me.

“Are you going to sacrifice yourself for your friends to give them a chance to escape?” The mass of black mana asked with a laugh. “Go ahead. Cast your last ditch spell. Let me see the mettle of what god has brought against me. I want to know if it will be as pathetic as I believe it's going to be.”

I stared into the black mass and knew that this was it. This was what I had to do. “You asked for this.” I said and put down my helmet visor, then I stored the helmet, the shoulder pieces, the gauntlets, the arms, the chest piece, and so on and so on until I replaced my armored boots with normal ones.

There were a few inarticulate shouts and yells that I ignored as I left myself in just normal clothing.

“Why would you remove such powerful armor? Are you going to blow yourself up with a mana overload or something?” The black mass asked, sounding quite amused. “Well, go ahead. I'm waiting. I won't even defend myself or erect a magical barrier to contain whatever you do.”

I nodded as I breathed deep, then I placed a hand over my heart and knelt on one knee. “I surrender.”