Bro, I'm not an Undead!
Chapter 1556: A Mortal Dictates The Course (1)

Chapter 1556: A Mortal Dictates The Course (1)

’I see...’

Only Sila was truly capable of following what Kintar was doing.

Despite what she showed, she was several steps ahead, communicating and performing several layers of trial and error. All of it was connected to the former Tower General.

Before Kintar had launched her blast of compound essences against the ghost of the masked man, he had felt a tug at his vermillion core. Kintar siphoned a large amount of mana from it while sending signals to Sila. She wanted him on Rias when the time was right.

When exactly was this right time?

Well...

Kintar’s punch against Rias did more than shock Sila; it was the signal indeed, but there was something else.

Kintar shouldn’t have been able to hurt Rias even with a punch applying her full empowered strength, but she did. Vermillion quality mana gushed through her arm and gave her hit substance. After all, vermillion mana had a special property which both Kintar and Sila recognised for the first time right then.

Genuine Divine energy – not Nitros or Primus – sparked when Kintar made contact with Rias. The spark was modest and short-lived – likely because Kintar wasn’t siphoning enough of it and with the best control she could manage (since it was from an external source), but it was enough. It crashed against Rias’ guard, sending a pulse of damage up his chin.

Sila had zoomed towards Rias while he was still dazed. He was far faster than Kintar in raw physicals. Uyuniya followed after him.

The Tower General charged Null Life Essence into his fist and aimed for Rias’ chest, delivering a one-inch punch that could have opened up Aigas’ canvas like a flower. As the force pushed Rias back, made his chest cave inward, collecting his organs around his spine, Uyuniya used Sila as a step ladder and slashed with her greatsword laterally against Rias’ neck. She wanted his head.

...But Rias’ eyes shone gold behind the mask and in the nick of time, he pulled his head back just enough to where only his Adam’s apple became a victim.

...But then Sila had seized his left arm, and Kintar his right, allowing Uyuniya to take another shot. The alien did, indeed.

Her blade left an arc, seamlessly following the failed lateral slash with a downward one poised to cleave Rias in two.

"Don’t underestimate me, ignorant peasants."

Rias was stubborn. His body flared with flame-like Undeath energy. There was a purpose and ferocity to it. It forced Uyuniya to a sudden halt.

"I’ll die when I want to."

...!!!

Right then, the will of the ghost of the masked man flared. He had activated his Undeath Concept, Reverent Soul Undeath.

The unique utilisation of Undeath energy was introduced by Actuass to give his band of necromancers different and convenient expressions of Undeath – hence the name Undeath Concept. His own allowed him to subjugate weaker souls into Undeath at once, making them subservient to him. In even rarer cases, he could obtain the powers of these subjugated souls.

In this case, however, Rias, the ghost of Actuass, couldn’t catch a suitable prey among the enemies.

Uyuniya was a Voided Death User and a Divine.

Sila was a Divine-level combatant and he had no soul.

BZZZT!!!

Kintar was grinning as the influence of the Undeath Concept attempted to seize her. It blew at her like a hurricane, and made every attempt to pierce her, but failed. It also failed where Gerriey and the other Stark Troops were concerned.

The Stark Constellation on their foreheads was designed to combat these exact types of powers. Earlier, it had even managed to resist the Undeath energy Somanda himself poured from Skullius’ body.

Rias was unfazed by the fruitless result, though.

He had only used Reverent Soul Undeath to buy time.

Above him, a truly hideous creature appeared after Undeath energy coalesced and refined into concentrated swathes.

It was a deer head, but unlike before, it looked anything but ordinary. Two huge sets of antlers, barbed and black, sat on each side of its head, golden bangles sitting around them. Four yellow eyes with four pupils staring in different directions sat on its face, bulged and bleeding. It was a mess with the shaggy, black furs the deer spotted. Its mouth was wide open, revealing large, molars that could have done with a brush.

It was the Undead aesthetic.

This creature was indeed a conduit for Rias’ powers, a seamless combination between the Imagining Technique and Undeath. At this current point, it was already a Second Sage Tier Andori!

The instant it appeared, roaring frighteningly, Uyuniya, Sila and Kintar were blasted away from Rias.

The ghost of the masked man was vindictive, though.

Before Kintar could sweep too far, he grabbed her by the hair, pulled her back and dealt her a personal punch to the gut. The blow blew through Kintar’s armour. Blood and entrails exploded out of her back in messy tendrils.

However...

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" An annoying, chittering laugh sprang out of Kintar as her grin grew more inhuman – more psychotic. Her eyes thinned with her smile such that you’d have though she had none. "YOU PUNCH LIKE A GIRL!"

Rias was taken aback... especially when Kintar countered with a left hook livid with vermillion quality mana. A spark of light – Divine energy – flashed when the fist made contact with the masked man and a harsh blow rang through his skull. Kintar followed up with a knee into Rias’ chest, her guts flowing as a nasty cape behind her.

"DICKHEAD!"

But the masked man sent her flying with a swift, harsh, forward kick.

As soon as Kintar was a distance away from him, though, she turned into a pillar of light that soared upward while Sila and Uyuniya rushed after Rias again.

The masked man scoffed, lifting his hand towards the conduit above him. What looked like a common double-edged sword fell from it into his hands just in time for him to parry Uyuniya’s attack, and a common shield caught into his grip, allowing him to block Sila’s forceful straight punch.

The three remained in the pushing match for a little while. As they did, Kintar coalesced from the mass of energy into her human form, restored. She was standing beside Gerriey, who gave her a tense look.

The women of the Order of the Trodden Rose and the Stark troops weren’t capable of following most of what had just happened. They had been stunned, for the most part. Even Nigerra was finding it difficult to keep up.

"You snitched on me to master. That, I’ll forgive. Your whole argument was that you wanted to be useful in some capacity, after all." said Kintar to Gerriey, but she was hardly looking at the Stark Troop. She was looking at Rias, licking her lips. "Now, I’m giving you an objective. You better do it right, or I’ll feed you somewhere even master won’t be able to retrieve you from."

Before Gerriey could say anything in response, Kintar waved a hand to her left, and a gravitational sphere similar to the one she’d made before popped into existence. It sucked the Stark Troops and the members of the Order of the Trodden Rose towards it sharply before...

OOOOOM!

Runes... rather, Rule Runes, whipped about it just as everyone was spinning around the gravity sphere and a hard crust of earth was forged around it, trapping the combatants.

Indeed, Kintar had isolated the obsolete combatants on the battlefield into a small world – a fitting stage for their calibre.

Oddly though, she didn’t know what kind of runes she’d just used. To her, she just could and she did, and thus everything else was irrelevant.