Chương 233: Chapter : 233

"Do not hurt them fatally!" Iris commanded.

"They are not our enemies! They are victims! Disable them, do not destroy them!" That made everything ten times harder. The tribesmen were trying to kill them. The girls were trying not to kill the tribesmen. It was an unfair fight in the worst way. Ken stumbled backward through the chaos. A tribesman with an axe swung at him. He ducked with an undignified yelp and scrambled away on his hands and knees.

"Help! Somebody! Anybody!" he cried out. Naomi was already there. She cut the axe handle in half with a spinning slash of her daggers, then kicked the tribesman in the stomach. She grabbed Ken by the collar and hauled him behind her.

"Stay close to me," she said firmly. Her wind magic swirled around her, pushing back the next wave of attackers.

"Do not move from this spot."

"Right here? You want me to stand right here?" Ken asked, ducking as a thrown spear flew over his head.

"Right here!" Naomi snapped. She deflected another attack and countered with the hilt of her dagger. The tribesman crumpled. The battle raged across the clearing. Dust and smoke filled the air. Purple eyes glowed everywhere in the chaos. The silence of the attackers made it all feel like a nightmare. And somewhere in the village, whatever was controlling these people waited in the shadows, watching the 13th Unit fight for their lives against friends they could not save.

The battle was not going well. The 13th Unit was holding their own, but only just. Every tribesman they disabled was replaced by two more. Every gap they opened in the attackers' ranks was filled instantly. The purple-eyed villagers came in waves, silent and relentless, their faces blank and their movements mechanical. Laxmi was breathing hard. Her flames had dimmed to a dull orange, and her knuckles were raw from punching. She had disabled at least a dozen tribesmen, but they kept getting back up.

The mind control forced their bodies to move even when their muscles should have given out.

"They do not stay down!" Laxmi shouted, sweeping a tribesman's legs with a low kick.

"I hit this one three times already!" Zinia raised another earth wall, but a group of tribesmen simply climbed over it, their hands and feet finding holds that no normal person could manage. The Black Magic controlling them had turned them into something more than human. Something tireless and fearless and utterly without mercy. Sayma's barriers were holding, but she was being forced to spread them thinner and thinner. She had the children secured behind one wall, Iris behind another, and herself behind a third.

Three barriers at once was pushing her limit, and sweat was pouring down her face. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Ira's water whip cracked and snapped, disarming and disabling with surgical precision. But even her perfect efficiency had limits. For every attacker she neutralized, another took his place. Her water supply was not infinite.

She was drawing moisture from the air and the ground, but the jungle was vast and the attackers kept coming. Naomi stood in front of Ken like a red-haired wall of steel and wind. Her twin daggers were a blur of motion, deflecting spears, parrying axes, and knocking away the crude blades that the tribesmen swung at her. She was cut in three places already, shallow wounds on her arms and shoulder, but she did not step back. Not even once.

"How long can you keep this up?" Ken asked from behind her. He was crouching low, his hands over his head, his expression one of exaggerated terror.

"Longer than you can hide," Naomi shot back. She caught a spear shaft on her crossed daggers and shoved the attacker away.

"But not forever. Whatever is controlling them, it needs to stop." Princess Iris was thinking the same thing. She had been watching the battle from behind Sayma's barrier, her sharp mind analyzing every detail. The tribesmen were not acting on their own. They were puppets, their strings pulled by something else. If they could find the source of the control and destroy it, the villagers would be free.

"The skeleton!" Iris called out over the chaos.

"The skeleton warrior is the source! Look at the purple fire in its eye sockets. It matches the glow in the villagers' eyes. If we destroy the skeleton, the mind control should break!" Every member of the unit heard her. The skeleton warrior stood on the far side of the village, a towering monstrosity of black bone and dark magic. It was twice the height of a man, with massive arms that ended in clawed hands and a skull that burned with purple fire.

It had not moved from its position since the battle began, content to watch its enslaved army do the fighting.

"I see it," Laxmi growled. She gathered a massive ball of flame in both hands and hurled it at the skeleton. The fireball streaked across the clearing like a comet, trailing sparks and smoke. The skeleton raised one arm. A shield of dark purple energy appeared in front of it. Laxmi's fireball struck the shield and exploded, but the shield did not even crack. The flames washed around it harmlessly, scorching the ground on either side.

"Of course it has a shield," Laxmi muttered.

"Why wouldn't it have a shield?" Zinia tried next. She slammed both hands into the ground and sent a ridge of stone shooting toward the skeleton like a massive fist. The ridge struck the same purple shield and shattered into pebbles. The skeleton did not even flinch.

"It is too strong," Sayma reported, her voice strained from maintaining her barriers.

"The skeleton's defensive magic is tied to the altar. As long as the altar exists, the shield cannot be broken by conventional attacks." That was the problem. The altar was on the other side of the village, past the sea of enslaved tribesmen and the skeleton warrior that guarded it. Getting to it would require fighting through the entire tribe and then defeating an indestructible skeleton. It was impossible. Iris clenched her fists.

"There has to be a way. Think, everyone. What do we know about this kind of magic?" Sayma thought fast.

"Black Magic that controls minds requires a constant flow of mana from the source to the victims. The skeleton is the source, and it is channeling dark mana from the altar. If we can disrupt that channel, even for a moment, the control will falter."

"How do we disrupt it?" Iris asked.

"A powerful burst of purifying energy," Sayma said.

"Light magic, holy mana, or any force that opposes dark magic. My barriers can block dark magic, but they cannot purify it. We would need something much stronger." The unit fell silent for a moment, even as the battle continued around them. Nobody had that kind of power. They were a vanguard unit, trained for combat and reconnaissance, not purification rituals. They did not have a priest or a holy mage among them. And then Ken spoke up.