Deacon's hand tightened around Echoform Reliquary, the flames licking hotter, reflecting in his eyes. He brought his thumb and index finger to his lips and let out a shrill, piercing whistle that cut through the battle's roar.
As Deacon kept whistling, the bandages around his neck began to darken, the ointment-soaked puncture wounds had reopened and were now bleeding once again due to the force of his continuous whistling.
Even as hot trickles of blood ran down his neck, he ignored them, pouring everything into forcing more mana into the piercing note to catch the attention of his Party members.
The shrill sound of his whistle knifed through the chaos of battle as though it were an explosive spell cast by a Tier 2 Flame Maestro; completely bypassing the sound of steel clashing onto steel, spells erupting, along with knights and soldiers on both sides shouting.
And considering all of that, for the briefest period, everything seemed to come to a halt. Except for four individuals: Jass, Sam, Esmerelda, and Bonehead, who immediately turned their focus onto Deacon, found the Lieutenant he was signaling about, and burst into action.
His free hand shoved the sun-insignia shield he had picked up into his Spatial Sling Bag as he was now going onto the complete offensive. Echoform Reliquary shifted instantly in his grip, stretching and splintering into its dual short sword form, their edges wreathed in fire as Deacon cast Flame Armament again as he shifted the hilt of the second blade into his left hand.
Catching onto what Deacon planned, alongside seeing where the Lieutenant was, Jass followed up with an immediate shift in her stance to clear the path for Deacon.
As Deacon plunged into the mass of soldiers standing between him and the Lieutenant, his flame-wreathed blades tore through steel blades, flesh, cleaving armor apart as though they were butter. The men didn't even have time to react as they quickly found their blades parried and twisted away before fire-bright steel bit into their throats or sliced through their bodies.
As Deacon was clearing their path towards the Lieutenant, Jass was sprinting just behind him, and only when she'd gathered enough momentum, she cast Earth Wall beneath her feet and launched herself high into the air.
Above, as Jass launched herself into the air, Sam's voice boomed out another incantation that caused tens of earthen spikes to erupt from the churned mud, skewering the charging horses that were attempting to rush Deacon with their riders. Esmerelda's own Gust spell struck Jass and sent her further careening higher up into the air and towards the Lieutenant.
Bonehead, now standing beside Sam and Esmerelda atop a massive boulder that overlooked the battle, hurled bomb after bomb of concentrated miasma around Deacon and explosive ones at the Lieutenant.
When the concentrated miasma bombs landed around Deacon and erupted, they flooded the air around them and entered the lungs of everyone in a thirty-meter radius from him. And within seconds, the human knights and soldiers of the Holy Human Kingdom had their strength leave their muscles and their skin shrivel – something that the undead army took full advantage of, including Deacon, who was immune to the effects of such heavily concentrated miasma due to his bandana.
The bombs that careened towards the Lieutenant landed beside the hooves of the horse he was on, and when they erupted just a few seconds later, the horse did not react to the explosion despite downing several of the other horses and knights nearby.
The horse's barding that carried the Lieutenant covered its entire body and was brightly covered in protective holy power, the very same power that protected the Lieutenant from the bombs, arrows, and spells that were sent his way.
Another explosion shook the ground, forcing knights nearby to scatter and causing their formation to start buckling.
Flicking his gaze up for a brief moment, Deacon saw a massive ball of jagged earth hurtling towards the large patch of knights and soldiers of the Holy Human Kingdom while they were being struck with spells and arrows.
How high is Jass's Affinity for Earth to be able to do that? Deacon mused to himself before focusing back and parrying a holy spear aimed at his head with one flame-wreathed blade and slicing the soldier's head off their shoulders with the other.
Then, just a few seconds later, the massive ball of jagged earth struck the chunk of battlefield in front of Deacon and flattened down the hundreds of soldiers that either did not look up and notice the massive shadow enveloping them or did not make it out in time.
By the time Deacon tore through the last soldier in his path; splitting him from groin to sternum with both blades in a cross-cut, and landed atop the now massive jagged ball of earth alongside Jass they were face to face with the Lieutenant who glared at them with such immense disgust through his visor that they could practically feel his eyes burning holes into their heads.
Deciding to annoy the Lieutenant even more, Deacon spat blood to the side, twin swords still burning bright with bright orange and red flames.
The Lieutenant's armored horse pawed at the ground as it neared Deacon and Jass, as steam was hissing from its nostrils. The Lieutenant lowered his heater shield and hooked it onto the side of his steed before addressing Deacon and Jass.
"Filthy traitors," the Lieutenant growled, voice resonating from behind his visor before he raised a hand and lifted it, revealing the visage of a middle-aged man and not a tuft of hair in sight. "You two will find no mercy by my blade despite your youth. Your deaths will be swift to quell the injustices that you two have caused here on this battlefield."
"Brotha," Deacon said as he wiped the blood trailing down from his neck with the back of his wrist and grinned savagely. "The only unjust thing that has happened was you showing us your face – thank the System you didn't take your helmet off and forced us to look at that bald, ugly mug of yours."
The horse reared back in response as the Lieutenant pulled back its reins. As its hooves came crashing down, the Lieutenant leveled his golden, glowing longsword at Deacon's head and charged.
Deacon leapt forward to meet him head-on, with his dual flame-wreathed short swords flashing like streaks of fire behind him before converging into one and becoming a broadsword.
The sight of Deacon's blades becoming one caused the eyes of the Lieutenant to widen in both surprise and shock as he was underprepared for clashing against a single blade, a far heavier one at that.
Upon their swords clashing against each other, the air struck between them cracked like thunder. Sparks rained as flaming steel slammed against the Lieutenant's glowing blade and unhorsed him and sent him tumbling through the air for a moment before he righted himself back onto his feet.
But upon righting himself back onto his feet, he was met with an unrelenting flurry of slashes and stabs from Deacon and the flame-wreathed dual short swords he was now wielding.
Jass struck from the side, her glaive arcing low for the horse's legs. But the horse suddenly dodged away and raised its neck and head, and began twitching erratically before in its place was the upper torso of a bare woman.
"The fuck?" Jass practically shouted in shock at the sight of the horse suddenly transforming into a centaur.
The centaur barreled sideways, reaching for a spear that was embedded in the mud beside a fallen soldier and barely blocking a strike from Jass before slamming her right hoof harshly against Jass's midsection.
As this was happening, the Lieutenant swung his longsword in a blazing arc, causing Deacon to duck under the swing and feel the holy light sear the air inches above his head. Immediately after the blade passed by his head, he then lashed upward with both blades, striking against shield and sword in rapid succession.
The duel's intensity drew attention immediately.
Soldiers from the Holy Human Kingdom tried to rush in and surround Deacon and Jass, but before they could close in, arrows and bolts of ice shrieked down from above. Esmerelda's spells boomed across the battlefield, her wand glowing with a cold fury as another wave of Ice Spears skewered would-be human reinforcements as she, Sam, and Bonehead now stood above the battlefield on a dense platform of mana seconds before Sam leaped off of it.
Landing onto the battlefield with enough knee pain to last him for three generations, he slammed his staff against the mud as jagged walls of stone and mud erupted in a circle, cutting off all knights and soldiers from trying to interfere and assist their Lieutenant.
"The Bright Radiance of Dawn, Azul!" the Lieutenant shouted to the sun above as he found himself on the backend, as he hurriedly blocked a flurry of strikes from Deacon. "Please grant this pitiful one the power to destroy these heretics!"
As they attempted to climb or barge their way inside, Sam reacted quickly by casting Earth Spear and conjuring spears of earth to jut upward, impaling horses from attempting to break through the wall and piercing through the ones attempting to climb the walls.
On the other side, undead soldiers clawed and hacked into the human knights who tried to intervene, dragging them down into bloody heaps. Some managed to break through, but Bonehead's bombs rained down before they could even reach their Lieutenant. Acid burst across armored bodies, eating through steel like rot, while volatile explosions shredded ranks and turned the mud into steaming craters.
Suddenly, holy light erupted from the Lieutenant's body and enveloped his form, "… It seems the Pontiff sees to bless me, you traitorous filth," he muttered seconds before he practically teleported in front of Deacon and bombarded him with a flurry of swift and powerful strikes.
Gritting his teeth, Deacon met each strike of the Lieutenant's blade with his flaming swords, every clash jarring his arms as if he were parrying a massive warhammer rather than steel.
"Jass!" Deacon barked, and she answered without hesitation, lunging away from the centaur as she sliced off its hind leg and towards him.
Her glaive's curved blade hooked the rim of the Lieutenant's shield and wrenched it aside just enough for Deacon to press on and stab his right short sword into the Lieutenant's liver.
The Lieutenant, with a roar, bashed his head against Deacon's and let loose his shield in order to slash his blade at her head. But before his blade could greet her neck, Jass's right boot stomped against the side of his knee. However, this did not deter the Lieutenant as, upon contact with her boot, a blast of holy power erupted from his armor and pushed her onto her back.
Darting forward, the Lieutenant's blade came down toward her exposed neck, ready to skewer her neck –only for Deacon to intercept, twin swords locking against the glowing edge, fire and light erupting between them.
With a burst of speed, Deacon's right blade scraped the length of the Lieutenant's longsword and sliced through the armor of flesh of his neck in one fell swoop.
Deacon staggered back just in time as Jass drove her left leg into the beheaded Lieutenant's torso, booting the still-standing corpse off her. It toppled into the mud with a wet splash, blood spilling from its severed neck to seep into the mire—only for Esmerelda and Bonehead to land atop the body a heartbeat later, having leapt from the mana platform they'd been on seconds before.
Letting out a chuckle, Deacon turned around to see Sam making his way over to them while downing a Mana Potion.
Glancing over at the corner of his vision, Deacon finally looked at the fifty-four System Notifications that he'd missed.
*[Human Lv 11] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
***
*[Centaur Lv 13] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
*[Human – Lieutenant Lv 13] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
*Your Class has reached Lv 12 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
*Your Class has reached Lv 13 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
*Holy Lieutenant Talaris has been slain by the Ravenlight Party *