Child of Destiny

...…

Somewhere within the dense forest of the Frozen Kingdom.

Immortal just finished setting up the formation within the forest and was waiting for the right time to use it.

He got his goal straight. This time, he was not going to fight Shin and the rest of their group without making any preparations. He already learned his lesson from the previous encounters, so would not overestimate his abilities this time.

Moreover, his job in coming here was not only to interrupt Shin and the others from clearing their quest but also to create a hidden teleportation portal that could let the members of the Cult freely enter and exit this region.

This was not a part of the orders that were given to him by the current leader of the cult players, but it would not hurt to have a contingency plan if things didn't go as planned.

If possible, he wanted to go into the deeper parts of the Frozen Kingdom. But unfortunately, he couldn't set up a teleportation formation in there since the mana in that area was a little too chaotic despite its high density.

Aside from that, he would also be targeted by the lord of this region if something went wrong, so it was better to settle in the forest situated at the border of the Kingdom, near the towering wall of ice.

Now that he was done drawing the magic formation, what was left was to set up an altar that could transform this place into a perfect teleportation portal. But that needed to wait until everything was over. After all, their enemies could easily break the altar if they discovered it.

For now, what he needed to do was to hide the magic formation drawn on the ground to make sure that it would be discovered by the opposing side. He even set up a concealment array in the surrounding area to ensure that the place was totally hidden.

He spent quite some time setting up everything. He also exhausted his Mana Pool and concentration during the process, so he needed more time to regain his peak form.

Not long after, Immortal frowned deeply as he felt that there was something wrong. It was not about him, but the current situation that they were in.

The members of Silent Night still hadn't come back after such a long time. They were tasked to clear the area but they were taking too much time than he expected.

He knew that the monsters in this region were powerful, but that was not enough to give the current Silent Night some trouble.

"Something must have happened," he muttered as he stood up and went to look for them.

...

Not long after, Immortal finally found Justin and the rest of his crew. They were in the middle of harvesting the materials from the body of a giant mammoth.

He walked towards them and immediately asked. "What's taking you too long? It is not like the monsters here are troublesome."

Justin gave him a quick glance before sweeping his gaze back at their surroundings. "It is not like that. But we keep getting the feeling that we are being watched by someone or something."

"We can't pinpoint its source since its aura was very faint but its gaze was strong enough to alert our senses," he added with a deep frown.

Everything was going according to plan. But as they were clearly in the area, they suddenly noticed the eyes that were observing them.

And to make it more uncomfortable, the source of this particular 'gaze' was not coming from a single place, but from the whole area around them. It seemed like they were currently being surrounded by a group of invisible enemies.

Now that Justin had mentioned it, Immortal finally noticed why he was feeling odd. These gazes were definitely the source of his uneasiness.

But while looking for its sources, he suddenly felt a sense of familiarity coming from it. He didn't know where it was coming from but he was aware of what they were.

"This must be the gaze of the dead," muttered Immortal with a quiet voice.

But despite how quiet it was, Justin and the rest of the group could clearly hear his voice. They simultaneously turned at him and wanted to ask what he meant by that.

Unfortunately, Immortal ignored the confused look that they were giving him as he was already sweeping his gaze at the surroundings.

It didn't take long for his attention to be caught by the skeletal remains of an animal silently sitting under the tree a few meters away from them.

On the surface, there was nothing strange about it. No one would get suspicious about it since it was common for this kind of setting to have skeletal remains scattered throughout the whole area.

But for someone like Immortal, a Lich and a master of death energy, could see more than what was on the surface. And from his perspective, someone was spying on them using those particular skeletal remains.

"You dare to use such tricks in my presence?" said Immortal as he fired a dark arrow towards that skeletal remain.

Swoosh!

Bang!

The skeletal parts were crushed into small pieces by that dark arrow, scattering them in the air. But aside from that, nothing else happened.

Justin and the rest of the Silent Night were confused by his actions, but none of them questioned him since they knew that Immortal had had a reason for his actions.

On top of that, the feeling of being watched drastically decreased the moment when the skeletal remains were destroyed.

Justin was about to ask what Immortal had discovered when the expression on his face suddenly became alert.

"Scatter!" He then shouted at everyone and jumped away from his current position. Or to be more precise, away from the corpse of the giant mammoth near them.

The members of his team didn't hesitate when they heard him and quickly scattered in every direction.

Boom!

And a second after that, the corpse of the giant mammoth suddenly exploded alongside a huge scorching flame that covered their previous location.

Immortal, who was standing the farthest from it, saw what happened and immediately realized what was going on. He quickly summoned his bone scepter and slammed its bottom on the ground, calling out his minions.

Crack! Crack!

A large number of armored skeleton warriors crawled out from the ground one after another, surrounding Immortal from every direction.

It didn't take long for a skeleton army to be formed.

Each skeleton warrior had a wicked aura surrounding them as a black mist was being released by their armor and weapons.

Immortal immediately gave out a series of commands to his skeleton warriors through a mental link. And it only took him a short time before a fully stabilized battle formation was formed around him despite being inside a dense forest.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

At this moment, two figures rushed towards Immortal before standing in front of him and scanning their surroundings with their sharp gazes.

"Larc, Demien, assist the members of the Silent Night, I can handle this place," said Immortal to his two apostles.

The two hesitated for a moment but still nodded their heads in the end. "Yes, Boss!"

If these enemies who dared to ambush them were the members of the Empyrean Talons, then they had been found much faster than they had expected.

Based on the previous reports that they had got, those guys were supposed to meet the members of Earners first before reaching this place. If the two groups didn't encounter each other, then something went wrong with their plan.

Larc and Demien were reluctant to leave their boss exposed to their enemies since they personally witnessed the strengths of Shin and the others, but since it was an order, they didn't have a choice but to follow it.

When the two left, Immortal quickly cast a mana barrier to protect himself from any ambush.

He fully understood the plan of his opponents. They were obviously planning to separate him from each member of the Silent Night and fight them in isolated battles.

This was the best choice that Immortal could think of since the combined powers of the current Silent Night were much stronger than their individual prowess.

Moreover, Immortal was also aware that the opposing group had a greater number of Godlike Players which was advantageous to them.

Before the opposing side could even execute their plan, he needed the others to immediately regroup and fight a team battle where they had a better chance of winning. And to do that, he needed to make himself bait to lure Shin and the others at targeting him instead of the scattered members of the Silent Night.

With his undead monsters, he could at least hold himself out until the rest of his group regrouped with each other.

On top of that, he also prepared a special item for this situation. He was expecting an ambush like this to happen, so he didn't let his guard down.

With that item in his possession, he was confident that he was not going to die even if he was being besieged by the opposing side from every direction.

Unfortunately, he failed to consider a particular member of Shin's group. Someone who could match his infamous Undying Army on equal footing.

This was going to be a great miscalculation for his plans.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!

All of sudden, the area above Immortal was illuminated by a large number of glowing orbs. And when he cast his cast on them and got a clear look at what they were, he noticed that they were actually the burning skull heads of some strange skeleton soldiers.

They looked down at Immortal and his skeleton warriors with their ember-like eyes while tightly holding their weapons.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Woosh!

Then those skeleton soldiers with burning skulls jumped down from the branch they were standing on.

They were falling like a bunch of mountain monkeys launching an attack on the invaders of their territory.

Immortal glared at them and shouted at the top of his lungs. "Attack!"

...