Chapter 186: Concussion.

[Your Undead Has Fallen]

[Your Undead Has Fallen]

[Your Undead Has Fallen]!!!

The notifications kept appearing in Damien’s vision, each one confirming another loss among his undead forces. He had barely managed to catch his breath before another message arrived, and the repeated warnings were becoming an unpleasant reminder of just how badly the battle was going.

Damien summoned the undead Eidolon Priest, using its heavy body to stabilize himself as he climbed back onto the nape of the Storm Blizzard God.

"We don’t have the railgun. All we can do is fight as hard as possible. I refuse to believe this god won’t fall by our hands."

Andrea tightened her grip on her sword. It was a Vestige, an extraordinary weapon in its own right, but it was obviously not as powerful as her white sword, the one capable of amplifying pain. Against an opponent like this, the difference between the two weapons could mean everything.

"I have a trick up my sleeve, but there’s a chance I might kill everyone weaker than me if I use it."

Damien glanced at her, uncertain about what she had in mind. Whatever the trick was, it sounded dangerous enough that she was reluctant to use it even with a god threatening their lives.

He was confident that he could withstand whatever she unleashed, but the same could not be said for Elias, Ryan, Yuri, or the other humans still fighting for survival. They were already struggling to endure the conditions surrounding the Storm Blizzard God, and an indiscriminate attack from Andrea could finish off the very people they were trying to protect.

Still, the situation was not entirely hopeless. The real problem was that the battlefield itself was giving the god an enormous advantage. They were fighting within a settlement filled with people and structures that could be destroyed with every movement of its colossal body. Even if they found a way to hurt it, they could not unleash everything they had without risking countless additional deaths.

Damien waved his hand, and the undead Lich materialized beside him, still holding the Tome of Avarice. Its familiar presence offered little reassurance, but he needed every available resource if they were going to survive this encounter. He looked toward Andrea, then back at the direction the god was heading.

"Let’s guide the god out of the settlement, then we will come up with a plan of attack. Also..."

His words trailed off before he could finish.

Damien felt a knot of guilt settle in his chest. Andrea had tried to warn him earlier, but he had not listened, and now the destruction unfolding around them was impossible to ignore. He could not help feeling that some part of this disaster rested on his shoulders. Perhaps things would have been different if he had taken her warning seriously, but there was no way to change what had already happened.

Andrea did not wait for him to finish. She shot toward the god’s head, accelerating across its thick fur as she made her decision.

"I will destroy its eyes and make it follow me out of the city. Back me up!"

Damien blinked twice, momentarily caught off guard by how quickly she had acted. Destroying the eyes of a creature like this sounded considerably easier than actually accomplishing it.

He moved after her with his undead army, trying to keep up as she advanced across the god’s enormous head.

Andrea summersaulted off its hairy head and bounced off its nose, using the movement to propel herself toward its eyes. Without a word of warning, she swung her blade and struck directly at them.

Crisp cracking sounds echoed loudly through the air.

For an instant, Damien thought she might have succeeded. Then the blade shattered into a thousand fragments, scattering from the point of impact. The sound of breaking metal reached him almost as clearly as the sight of the fragments flying away, and he stared in disbelief. Andrea, however, was even more stunned. Her attack had failed so completely that the weapon itself had not survived the attempt.

She immediately tried to retreat, but the Storm Blizzard God’s pupils were already staring directly at her. There was no confusion in its gaze now, no indication that it had mistaken her for something insignificant. Its pupils narrowed, and a devastating beam of frost energy erupted toward her.

Andrea was far too close.

The attack arrived before she could move beyond its path, and the freezing light swallowed the space in front of her. Her shattered weapon offered no protection, while the distance between her and the god left her with almost no room to evade.

Damien reacted before he could properly consider what he was doing. He used the Therizon to fuse into space, forcing himself through the distance between them, and managed to grab Andrea by the wrist just in time. The two of them escaped by the narrowest of margins, leaving the frost beam to tear through the space they had occupied moments earlier.

The Storm Blizzard God did not stop to acknowledge their survival. It did not even bother to follow their movements with any further attention, simply continuing forward as though every living being in sight were nothing more than pests beneath its notice.

That indifference was almost more disturbing than its attack. Damien had just watched Andrea’s blade shatter against its eyes, and the god had barely needed to do anything to nearly kill her in return. Whatever damage they hoped to inflict, they were dealing with an opponent whose defenses and offensive power were on an entirely different level.

Meanwhile, Damien and Andrea were sent plummeting toward the ground. The Therizon struggled to keep itself suspended with both of their weights, and their combined momentum made the descent even harder to control. Damien had no intention of sacrificing his Awakened rank undead creature unnecessarily.

He dismissed the Therizon just as they collided with the ground, saving it from the freezing cold that threatened to engulf everything around them.

The impact left Damien sprawled against the frozen surface, his body jolting as he struggled to recover from the fall. He sprayed the frozen water droplets from his mouth, grimacing at the bitter cold.

"Remind me never to lock eyes with a god again."

Andrea rubbed her head, struggling to shake off the slight concussion she had suffered during the fall. "I’m not so sure I will be remembering much after all this."