Undead Lord of Gluttonous Pride

A/N:

This is a redo of a chapter I was unsatisfied with and didn't help a lot plotwise. I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint in any other way and hope you guys enjoy ;]

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The bird hunched its body over, and after giving out one last ear-piercing scream, it dashed towards him, its clawed feet stamping against the ground.

Damien eyes flashed red once more, followed by a repelling red aura that knocked the bird back.

However, it didn't have the overly good effect that he was hoping it would have.

The bird began to take half-steps towards him, intruding into his space.

Since Damien was running on fumes at this point to keep it back, the damage inflicted from the pressure of his aura was almost near to none. However, that didn't mean the pressure was at least slowing it down a bit.

The bird looked down on him with its cracked, glowing eyes, filled with madness. Damien sensed a feeling of loss behind those eyes, as well as the feeling of never-ending hunger.

Its beak neared his body; fortunately, the closer it got, the more resistance it met. It was a miracle that Damien hadn't already run out at this point.

He tried to raise his arms, legs, anything to crawl away and buy him some time for the undead to arrive.

The only response he got from them was a sharp and paralysing pain. His overuse of his core had strained his joints to the point they had shut down.

He then remembered a warning from Howrah:

"Try not to use up all of your soul energy. It is a pain to fix those repulsive cracks later."

Desperation washed over him. He didn't have any other option but to use up all his soul energy.

'Wait... I have other cores!'

At this moment, he remembered he had other cores as well! But the feeling of dread came back as he remembered how hard he had worked even to feel the energy within them.

At this very moment, he was powerless... His battle against the undead horde is several times easier than this. That was because he actually could do something!

But in this one, what can he do?! He's stuck in the same position, watching as the bloody beak of a ravenous and abnormally behaving bird approaches him, having the feeling of knives cutting through his joints constantly ring out inside his mind...

And now... The feeling of weariness soon appeared.

However, that was not the only thing that had appeared.

PSHT!

Damien's eyes watched as an arrow whistled through the air before sinking into the skull of the sporadic bird.

The bird's body leaned to the side due to the force on its head, the blurry pupil in its eyes becoming still before trembling and darting around.

The bird then raised its head to the sky, staring deeply at the moon before letting out a high-pitched scream of pain.

SCREECH!

Damien paid no attention to its cries; instead, he was focused on a skeleton wielding a bow, fast approaching their position.

"What a timing..."

Damien outwardly thought as the sounds of wings flapping made itself apparent in the surroundings. The bird, still having the arrow stuck through its skull and coming out the other side, raised its mighty wings—spanning to a size capable of shadowing Damien.

Blood leaked from the entrance and exit—becoming a stream of red that painted its damp body.

'How... Can it survive such an injury?'

Having brought back his attention to the bird, he couldn't help but believe that this "Bird" wasn't truly a bird like its body showed. Could it be some creature he had yet to encounter taken over its body like a skinwalker?

Unfortunately, he couldn't come to a logical conclusion, for the bird had shot towards the Zasir, who stood his ground on a separate ceiling and aimed his trusty bow at the charging bird that came at him like a mad bull.

He released the arrow nocked into his bow and saw it embed itself into the large body of the bird. The black liquid under its feathers surrounded the wound like leeches feeding off the blood.

This attack of his had unfortunately caused no reaction out of it that could cause it to change its direction of charge. Instead, all it did was piss it off even more, causing it to slam into the skeleton.

Zasir, having raised both its arms into a cross, resisted the blow before being launched back. He would then flawlessly manoeuvre through the air like a veteran gymnastic and land steadily on his feet.

He took a short glance at his arms and noticed a small crack had appeared on its forearm. He would then shake it off and raise his bow once more, completely ignoring the fact that his previous attempt had failed.

The bird landed on the ceiling, scratched at its surface with its talons, and stared down at the skeleton with its glass-cracked eyes. It would then tilt its head side by side, staring curiously at the skeleton—flinging more droplets of its blood into the air.

Does this creature have no sense of pain? Such strange movements it makes caused the arrow lodged inside its head to worsen its life-threatening wound. Well, it would be life-threatening to any other creature, but it seemed like this thing was unfazed by such a "lethal" wound.

The creature then began to take steps towards the skeleton, its body swaying side to side like a drunken man. Zasir narrowed in on the bird and shot another arrow towards it.

The bird shot its beak towards the arrow and snapped it in half—the remnants clattering to the ground. It then stared at the broken arrow before looking back up to find that...

... Zasir had suddenly disappeared.

And replacing him was a zombie with a rusty longsword—it was Grathry. He held the damaged leather hilt of his sword, his eyes filled with conviction to slay the mad beast before him.

The bird stared at him, confused about the skeleton it saw before its sudden transformation into one with flesh. But that confusion lasted as long as its feeling of its hunger being satiated—about half a second.

The bird then made a sprint towards him, its large feet stomping against the ground, causing it to tremble under its weight.

Grathry swung his sword diagonally upwards at the bird.

DING!

The bird parried his strike, causing his sword to swing towards the side, with no way for it to return in time to strike back against the bird. The bird then raised its head back and shot its head out at him like a bullet.

Its sharp beak neared the zombie before coming to a stop just an inch away from his face. Grathry's hand tightly gripped the throat of the bird, pushing back its head.

He stared dangerously at the bird, almost as if mocking its attempt to even think it could stand a chance against him. And just a second later, the rest of the undead, Yuk, Kuy, and Zesir, appeared.

Yuk and Kuy simultaneously appeared at the sides of the bird and stabbed their swords into its side, displaying how in sync their teamwork was.

The bird began to jerk its body around to free itself; luckily or unluckily for it, the weapons in its side had impeded its movement so much so that Zesir was able to retrieve the sword of the sleeping Damien and return to deal with the finishing blow—severing its head off its thick neck...

... Ending its madness and curing it of its hunger...

While all this was happening, however, a group off to the distance from them, clad in black and hidden under their cloak, watched them.

The shine of their weapons, far surpassing the quality of the undead group's weapons by a longshot, was held in their... Fleshy hands that looked much like humans...