Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Skullius had long sensed that his Graceful Monolith was under attack by the swarms that had stolen the mana from roughly eight million Sif by now. The number seemed immense – and it was – but when considering only the statistical value, the toll was barely a single percentage of the total population of Sif on Opungale. That said, more were losing consciousness by the millisecond.

Given this threat and its speed when it came to reaping the mana bodies – as Skullius called them – from the residents of this land, the Hybrid Luman had been confident that the Preeminent Attegoth could hold out for a while.

While it wasn't exactly a living target, it did possess a vast mana signature, probably the largest individual one on the whole continent. As such, it had been a target for twenty percent of the entire swarm of the summoned, winged monsters since the very beginning.

At first, the 700,000 [Beads of Malevolence] around it, which were ridiculously fast and sturdy on top of being reinforced individually by a generous amount of purple quality mana, were able to shred the vast swarm of enemies as they flew by at supersonic speeds and higher. Through the independent effort of the Attegoth, they were able to kill tens of thousands of the huddled-up creatures every second.

The winged seahorses weren't all that strong, durable or fast.

The Attegoth had demonstrated the validity of the first two aforementioned assessments, and Skullius had demonstrated the third by being able to react to the creatures' offensive dives fairly casually.

The creatures had two truly devastating weapons.

One was their ability to immobilize the target when they released their light flakes and drew upon their concentrated pure mana.

Second, was their numbers.

As time had passed, the Preeminent Attegoth had begun facing difficulty in defending itself without expending more mana for greater attack skills. The ten percent of winged seahorses that attacked it remained constant, by it also swelled.

It was just as Ashema had said.

The creatures continued pouring from the Summoners' gaping portals endlessly.

'The optimal option would be to kill those Summoners and shut off their portals,' Skullius thought as he swiftly flashed about with Ashema. 'If this continues, all the work I've done so far will be for nothing. Though, I'm not sure killing the Summoners will be easy. If they are indeed the lynchpin of the Maqians' operation, then they must have some assurance against being targeted.'

Skullius would rather not attack, fail, and have his enemies bolster their defenses as a result. From the look of it, most of the Maqians had stopped the raiding and were now fixed in that strange stance; the unknown technique they were using to ward away the winged seahorses. This meant that they wouldn't be defending the Summoners, but still, that didn't mean the Summoners needed them.

Skullius grinned.

'No matter. I'm just about to make a few offensive upgrades. One of them ought to work and solve this whole damn thing.'

Soon, Skullius reached the base of the Attegoth after exploiting a decent opening in the endless swarms of enemies that circled it, the majority of them being obliterated every second.

The noisy hum one would hear when so close to a large swarm of these monsters was irritating.

Skullius took a few moments to get used to it, as did Ashema who he dropped by his side.

"What now? You want that lesson on darkness right here?" the Carven asked sarcastically.

To his surprise…

"Yes. I'll give you an ear while I work," Skullius said sternly, and then he began.

***

Somewhere below Opungale…

An astoundingly beautiful man with very long, pointed ears waited patiently, his eyes closed. His thickets of royal clothing, embroidered and encrusted with gold string and precious multi-colored gems hid his figure from below the chin. Without being able to see the motions of his torso, it almost seemed as though only the man's head was the living part of him.

This man stood in a decrepit hall that, at first glance, seemed unbefitting of his status. He was the King after all.

However, he would have said the opposite.

Despite how the underground hall looked, it was the centre of all Sif tradition, culture and religion.

To the Royal Family, it was, in a way, more precious than the Luminants' Shrine guarded within the Oath of Mourning.

Of course, what made the hall important, wasn't the bricks used to make it. 

It was the great bundle growing out of its floor.

Nine large daffodils of varying hues tied together by six Mythical grade tethers that resembled black, shriveled vines, could be seen.

They were so large that their stems looked like the trunks to ancient, magical trees of legend, their still petals, lightly aglow with different serene lights that strangely didn't reflect upon anything in the silent, dim hall looking as though they were viable places to live in.

The King felt a great connection to this bundle, which was known to the High Family as the Deathly Ruse. The two other individuals in the hall with him, seated on the ground closer to the bundle than he was, felt the same.

Not only did they have the same expression on their face as the King, they had similar details to their facial features as him as well, with the only difference being vague hints at the disparity in age.

All three Sif expressed reverence to the Deathly Ruse in their own way.

It was a gift from nature to the Sif, after all, arguably the best one.

With it, came some of the greatest secrets of the Sif that no one knew, one of which being their absolute mechanism for preservation.

"She is ready, father," one of the two seated Sif said to the King with a feminine voice.

The King nodded.

As had been directed by his wife, Queen Embrell, he had gotten the Deathly Ruse ready.

Only his two eldest children, El Sif purer than him and his wife, purer than Darwel, could hear and speak with it clearly, giving it commands and enacting its needs. 

Ever since news of the Maqian army's mobilization had come, these two had rushed down to this hall in order to prepare.

It was already clear that Maqi would overpower the entire nation's military might even with only 1,000 combatants, as long as the Ode and a Shamanic Mage was among them. And thus, the High Family's strategy had always hinged upon defense more than it did offense.

"Do it. We can't have more of our people die," the King commanded, and the Deathly Ruse churned.