Chương 526: AF Chapter 500 – Nuhmudira Runs

500 Chapters is here! Didn't think I'd make it when I started, but so much to get done... As always, a short call to pay back the author if you like the story. Reviews and Ratings are the way we get compensated if you don't support us on Patreon or similar channels. With a QL of 4. 81, I would note that it takes a 5-star and approval of the story to count as an Upvote here. Also, if you have left a Rating or Review, I'd ask that you take a few minutes and give a broken-down review.

As it stands, I think only one or two people broke down their Review, and they didn't exactly like the story. So, I have a 4. 81 Quality level, but the breakdown Ratings are basically a bunch of 3-stars? It looks... really weird. 18 more Chapters to go, and then we are on to BECMI! ================== Weeks pass… The assault was sudden, overwhelming, and fast.

The undead who got in our way didn't live more than a few seconds, regardless of how powerful they were, and seemed plenty surprised when they died en vivus so shockingly fast. Master Oswald had finally tracked Nuhmudira to the Black Hills where she'd taken shelter, ostensibly working with a group of Dark Falatacot sisters who seemed to find her mastery of Void and Blood magic worthy of some consideration, and were likely unaware of her rampant racism and lack of trust of Empyreans.

Well, the woman was always practical. She also bailed the instant she heard the temple within the Hill was under attack. We blew through the defenses there explosively, only to find the apartments for important guests already abandoned. The Falatacot put on a heck of a defense of the temple, drawing on the energy of a Blood Crystal there to bolster the senior Sisters who commanded the temple.

They were not happy when Briggs cracked it with three solid hits and Princess Kristie split it open, and, welp, then the Wolfpacks tore apart the undead with levels of martial prowess they just didn't want to believe were possible. I just pointed, and Ten preceded me through the doors at the temple while screaming seven-foot undead Falatacot priestesses in bright red died in unwhite and black wrathfires, Master Ben's students behind and around me as they pursued the Blood Mage.

Doors were thrown open, to small shrines, robing chambers, storage chambers, what had once been a Portal Chamber, and then a long deep pit going down into the darkness at the very back of the hallway.

"That woman is slipperier than a barrel of eels," swore Master Oswald as he faded into visibility right next to me.

"She and her daughter are both gone this way."

"After you," I said without batting an eye. His bright green eyes gleaming, he leapt without any hesitation, and I followed right after. Ben Ten and his students were right behind me.

The pit turned into a chute, which emptied into a large square room, all of us rolling out of the way of those coming in behind with practiced ease. Master Oswald barely waited for Neskai, the last of us, to slide into the room before loping out the room, his green eyes sweeping back and forth and missing nothing.

He pointed out six different pressure plates within a hundred feet, and I Shaped them into uselessness, while Regrets plunged through spell emitters and stabbed through stone to cut pulley systems for spike traps, or to sever chains to mechanisms for closing walls. The Golums of finely wrought Empyrean armor were more problematic in their delays, but Ten's students had dove into the Wolfpack training with great enthusiasm, and were very experienced paramounts regardless.

Multiple Elemental attacks rapidly identified the Armor Golum's weakness as Acid attacks, and then Acidphasing Weapons ripped through the sets of them that swung out into our way, while I dropped Acid Vulns on them in pairs. Rolling sets of swordsmen dashed from one pair of defenders to the next, and I proceeded at almost a walk forward. Master Oswald was watching wear patterns on the ground, and directed us left instead of straight forwards through the labyrinth, on the hunt and his eyes glinting for a kill.

There was an explosion ahead of us, bloody shadows rippling through the darkness. Everyone swore, and I followed Oswald in racing ahead, while hacking Blades sheared through the Golums and dropped collapsing sheets of armor to the floor in hissing puddles as the Hands of Ben Ten raced after us. We burst into what was obviously another former Portal Room, the dais for it now blasted apart and smoldering with black and bloody flames.

"Trace her!" he said urgently, my hands already in motion as I gathered the magic to track the bending of extra-dimensional spaces before the traces completely faded away. Direction was THAT WAY… and the trace blew apart before I could get the distance. I brought up the map of Dereth, and oriented the line of spatial distortion from our position along it, even as the warriors pounded up behind me and gathered around.

"Along this line, somewhere." It extended from our location in the Black Hills to the northeast, up through the Crater. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Not the Crater," Master Oswald said immediately, his eyes narrowed in rapid thought, flicking to the wall.

"It was an existing Portal. To another undead holding? There could be another one hidden along that arc, but… ah." He reached out and tapped a point on the Holo, north of Neydissa Castle and the Crater.

"The Mage Academy. It is one of Lord Rytheran's holdings, and he might have returned to it since he has left the graveyard."

"That sounds very much like an ambush situation," I stated calmly, cocking an ear as I heard the heavy clanking of armored people not trying to be too silent coming this way at enhanced speed.

"Shifting from the Dark Falatacot to the Wind? She's opportunistic as Hell," Kris spoke up, abruptly in our circle and making some of the swordsmen blink in surprise at how smoothly she'd inserted herself there.

"I'm game. Do we have a ride there?"

"I've a Teleport trail there, and the Magos can track me." Master Oswald held out Regret, and I tapped it with Crown, establishing a lock.

"Two hundred meter displacement, minimum," I warned him. He paused, considered that, and nodded.

"I'll make it a half-mile." His bright red Dagger flared, ruby light pulsed out, and he vanished in an implosion of subdued crimson. His dot of reference placed itself to the right of that line, far to the north.

"Charge the circles!" I ordered everyone who was racing in after us. A sweeper team with archivists would be coming in after us to handle the looting and detail work, such as it was. Everyone looked down, found the Circles already in place underneath them, and began dumping mana into the interlinked effort.

Thirty seconds later, I reached out to that end point, and the dimensions slid smoothly by us, bringing the Skeeters, the Roachers, the Hands, and the Cloaks from Stonehold, a mix of Briggs' boys and Master Oswald's students, after the master assassin.

"Looks like they are expecting trouble," Master Oswald grinned, as we all considered the hundreds of undead who had come flooding out of the Mage Academy and were still doing so. All of them were elites, and with easily twice the number of noble commanders as normal.

"I imagine my popping up in the middle of them would not have been good for my health." I was concentrating on the area around the arrival point.

"There's no sign of Blood Magic there. This was indeed a trap." Master Oswald looked at me sharply, then rolled his eyes.

"That woman is a true irritation. It's like she wants to live, or something," Kris ventured, amused at the situation.

"Why don't you inform Lord Rytheran of the situation, although I'm sure that he knows something is up." I lifted an eyebrow, then shrugged.

"To the defenders of the Mage Academy," I said in Magevoice and Necrus, and we watched all of the undead start looking around wildly, raising their weapons and gathering mana for spells.

"We have no quarrel with you, but it seems the Lady Nuhmudira wanted to lure us to your Academy here and start something. We are chasing her and she planted a false positive in this location. In the interests of repaying her sly hand, might you know where she has gone?" The undead milled around, looking for signs of us, and not knowing what to do.

Given that they needed something to focus on, I flitted a hundred yards away from everyone else, and reappeared down their hill in their line of sight, my Wings out and showing burning suns inside them the undead did not want to look at. There was a quickly aborted rush in my direction, hurriedly called back by commanders who didn't want to risk my ire and were more prudent about my reputation.

There was a milling around the entrance to the subterranean Academy that Rytheran had been the administrator of for millennia, and the undead there quickly and precisely parted to let the Dean of the Mage Academy through. It was my first time seeing him.

He was half a head taller than most Empyreans, in a Robe of a gray and purple pattern I couldn't remember any other undead daring to wear, a pyreal Circlet of some power resting on the rotting flesh of his head, and his eyes were the glowing red of most undead Empyreans.

He was one of the true elders, the first generation of undead, those who had led the way for all the others and eventually corrupted the nobility of Dericost, spreading their beliefs to the Falatacot and then into open conflict with the Yalain and Haebreans. He was at least twenty thousand years old, possibly twice that, and one of the foundations of the Filinuvekta, the Wind Faction of the undead under Prince Geraine.

Supposedly his time was consumed with trying to find who had finally managed to kill Lady Aerefalle, by rumor his lover and peer. She had been the guiding hand of the Wind, and been taken out by Princess Kristie through methods the master revenant would not believe we were capable of. Even if he believed we were capable of it as a group, it would have taken time and there would have been traces, remnants, spirits that could have been questioned, or a conspicuous lack of them.

There had been nothing, just Aerefalle dying and any clues or hints buried in lava, no destruction of her servants, and we had still been in the Crater of Tenkarrdun at the time, nowhere near the castle at any point, such facts reported by dozens of her underlings.

"You are the Lady Magos of Freehold, who is claimed to hold great power against the Eternal Winds," his ancient voice carried to me in his original tongue, a mild test for me.

"I am," I conceded in Necrus, letting his own eyes flare as he tried to recognize the language I was speaking, which he somehow understood perfectly.

"The Blood Witch plays with powers she does not understand, in the now or the implications in the future." He paused slightly.

"Was it you who sent the olthoi home?" It was a layered question, as doing so admitted that I could do so, and that I could reach other worlds, considered the absolute height of Empyrean magic!

"It was I," I admitted calmly.

"There are no olthoi queens left upon Auberean, Lord Rytheran." He was visibly taken aback by that statement, because it also meant I had been off the island to the continents, and returned. His informants had no knowledge of how I had done that or when, only that I'd been occupied with various projects I hadn't told anyone of. The Portals for the other, lesser Olthoi Matrons had been anticlimactic. The olthoi themselves had made sure nothing, ah, bugged me as I put them up.

They were fully assembled and ready to depart immediately when I finished erecting the Pyramids, and left our world without muss or fuss. All that had remained was for me to use Nature Elementals and Earth Elementals to start wiping away the ecology that they'd left behind. One of the amusing things that had resulted from the olthoi leaving was the grievvers. It turned out that the grievvers actually needed the olthoi ecology to survive, and weren't really capable of keeping it in place for themselves. It meant…

I had gone back to the Pyramids later, and found them literally covered with hundreds, if not thousands, of grievvers carpeting them, trying to get back home, trying to follow their olthoi prey. Not wanting magical pseudo-spiders hanging around here who had followed the olthoi here, I had opened the Portal back to the Hive World, and the grievvers had happily skittered right on through after their prey, a rather surreal sight.

So, I had to check on the Pyramids regularly to send any of the spider-things on their way, too! That included the one on Olthoi Island. Grievvers had found the olthoi tunnel underground from the mainland, followed after them, and ended up crawling all over the damn Pyramid, as if trying to get my attention.

I didn't know if the Mother Queen liked me sending hundreds of grievvers after her, but in the end I doubted it much mattered to her, given the numbers of olthoi she was in charge of, and how many others had come through. After all, the grievvers weren't supposed to be here, either.