Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 5

Ludmila cleared a dozen city blocks before she was satisfied that she had achieved a rudimentary grasp on the use of her new equipment. With the power of her magic items, she felt that it was more their quality than her ability that allowed her to steadily work through the masses of Undead – many of which should have given her difficulties when confronting more than one at a time. Still, she was learning how to use everything quickly, and she sensed that she had gained in strength relative to Skeleton Warriors once again.

They searched through the rubble as they waited for her company to finish catching up. After a while, the Sorcerer King teleported back to the Sorcerous Kingdom to see to some daily tasks. Lady Shalltear stayed behind with Ludmila to ensure that the area remained free of potential threats and so she could open a Gate directly to their current point in progress.

As Ludmila sifted through a collapsed building that seemed somewhat more promising than the rest of the ruins around it, Lady Shalltear hovered close to speak to her.

“Ludmila,” she said in a low voice, “I think there’s a problem with our strategy…”

“Our strategy?”

“You know…the romantic river journey…”

The conspiratorial manner in which Lady Shalltear conducted herself caused Ludmila to quickly scan their surroundings before replying.

“Of the past seventy-two, you’ve spent nearly sixty hours as the sole woman by His Majesty’s side. The plan was to give you as much time together with His Majesty as possible, so I would say that it’s been a spectacular success.”

“But?”

“I want to do more. Since I’m His Majesty’s escort, I must remain combat-ready and alert for danger at all times. That means I’m stuck in my armour! I can’t get into anything more interesting to entice him. I thought you might be able to whet his appetite for female companionship and one thing would lead to another, but he’s not taking the bait! Even when you were on the verge of a catastrophic wardrobe malfunction, he didn’t make any moves at all!”

So she was the appetizer. Ludmila would have already been beyond ecstatic to be in Lady Shalltear’s position for the past few days. Could she even help move things in a more favourable direction for her liege? She knew very little about appealing to men. More to the point, she wasn’t sure how one appealed to a skeletal being.

Just how far did Lady Shalltear’s calculations go? Was her new equipment a part of it? The collar and the blindfold and being forced into a state where every fibre of her being was filled with overwhelming lust for the Sorcerer King?

The number of Vampire Brides had doubled, as well. The vessel was filled with sensuous female bodies and efforts to change the atmosphere were made. Truly, the machinations of Lady Shalltear Bloodfallen were beyond Ludmila’s lowly ability to fathom.

“Maybe we’re on the right track,” an article of clothing appeared in Lady Shalltear’s hand. “If violence doesn’t work, more violence is obviously the answer. We should increase the intensity of our attacks.”

Ludmila stared at the piece of cloth dangling from Lady Shalltear’s hand. Despite having Truesight, she rubbed her eyes just in case it was an illusion. Lady Shalltear held it out for her to examine. Ludmila imagined the Sorcerer King’s crimson gaze running over her figure…

“No.”

She shook the image away.

“Yes.”

“No! This is insane – what is it, even? Is it damaged? The cups are missing, and so is the…the…the…the bottom part!”

“Exactly,” Lady Shalltear told her. “Your attack power will go through the roof!”

“I don’t have that kind of attack power! Just what is our objective here, exactly?”

Her liege placed a hand on her belly in response, uttering a single word.

“Victory.”

A wistful expression painted Lady Shalltear’s features. Ludmila frowned in confusion. Lady Shalltear wanted the Sorcerer King’s child? It was natural for a woman to desire a family at some point, but was it natural for Undead women? Could the Undead even have children? At the least, she had never heard of such a thing before.

Lady Shalltear loomed closer, holding up the scandalous bit of red lace in her hands. Ludmila swallowed, preparing herself for the worst.

“Yes, Lord Ainz? R-right away!”

Ludmila heaved a sigh of relief as Lady Shalltear raised a hand to her ear. The item vanished from Lady Shalltear’s hand as she opened a Gate. The Sorcerer King stepped through.

“I’m back…hm? What’s going on here?”

“We were just discussing equipment options, Lord Ainz,” Lady Shalltear smiled.

“I see,” His Majesty said. “Well, I’m glad you’re excited about your new gear, Miss Zahradnik.”

She nodded silently, fervently hoping that he wouldn’t inquire over the specifics of the ‘equipment option’ Lady Shalltear had presented.

“Were you able to find anything of note in these ruins?” The Sorcerer King asked.

“Not yet, Your Majesty,” Ludmila answered. “The buildings in the outskirts are mostly in the same condition as the ruins from yesterday. I’m hoping that there will be more substantial structures further in that were more difficult to destroy.”

“That sounds reasonable enough. Your forces are almost caught up, so we should head out to meet them.”

After experiencing the substantial gap in power between the Undead in her company and the ones that lurked in the ruin, Ludmila’s doubts grew over whether her forces would have any effect at all. As they made their way to the outskirts, she made her concerns known.

“I agree with your assessment,” the Sorcerer King said, “but only if we’re making a basic, direct comparison. First of all, you have two Death Priests at your disposal. Have you employed divine casters in conjunction with your forces before, Miss Zahradnik?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Ludmila replied. “My experience lies mostly with Elder Liches, Death Knights and the Undead that they raise.”

“I see. Well, this should drastically change the way you utilize your forces…or perhaps it will bring things closer to the ideal organization of Human armies.”

As he spoke, the two Undead in question came running from the wharf to join them. It seemed that they had taken the time to brush the mud and silt off of their priestly vestments.

“Death Priests are, as the name implies, Death-series servitors that fill the role of Priest-type divine casters. They are the same level as Death Knights, Death Warriors, and the rest of them. As they are summoned to act as the divine caster in a ‘party’ of Death-series servitors, they have the spells that you might expect, but for a party of Undead.”

“Does that mean that they have the offensive magic of a Priest or Cleric?” Ludmila asked, “Clerics can be excellent front line combatants, as well.”

“That’s right,” the Sorcerer King answered, “but we’ll be restricting them to a support role for the time being since a single one of them could probably clean out this entire city. In addition to their offensive magic, they have various negative energy spells that can heal the Undead and a wide selection of buffs.”

He went on to list out the dozens of spells that Death Priests had available. Many of them were familiar to her, but some were entirely unknown.

“It will probably take you a while to commit their spells to memory,” he told her, “but you should be well-versed in their use by the time we return to the Sorcerous Kingdom. For now, you can stick with what you know.”

“How much mana do they have? I’m afraid I have no way to tell at a glance.”

The Sorcerer King raised a hand, tapping the side of his skull with a slender finger.

“The ear cuff that came with your equipment – activate it.”

She touched the seemingly delicate piece of jewellery: a platinum ornament fashioned into an ivy vine that clung to the outer curve of her ear. Its leaves were inlaid with emeralds, and Ludmila couldn’t even guess at its value. Before understanding the properties of her circlet, she was paranoid that the ear cuff would shatter into countless pieces upon being struck.

When she activated the item, familiar twin auras appeared over every being in her vision.

“This earring has Life Essence and Mana Essence…”

“Umu,” the Sorcerer King nodded. “It’s common for Humans to take up an accessory slot with an item that confers Darkvision, but you don’t need that. This should be an invaluable tool as a commander.”

Being able to note the condition of both enemies and allies at a glance was as much of a boon as the Sorcerer King stated.

“Incidentally,” he went on, “both Life Essence and Mana Essence are divination effects, so certain types of counterdivination will work against them. Your Ring of Non-detection, for instance, blocks it entirely. There are also ways to fool those spells, delivering false information that an enemy may purposely use to mislead you.”

“Will my Truesight be able to defeat those means?”

“…that’s a good question. As you might imagine, how Talents interact with other sensory spells, Skills and Abilities is fairly obscure information. The answer should be simple enough to discover – 「False Data: Life」.”

“Ah, Lord Ainz, you’re such a tease…”

“Ghk–! Ehm…Miss Zahradnik, take a quick peek and tell me what you see. You can look away once you’ve noted any oddities that appear in your vision.”

She stopped and turned around to look at the Sorcerer King. In addition to his overflowing obsidian radiance, there were auras presented to her for both his health and mana. She was aware of another ‘mana aura’ laid over the Sorcerer King but recognized it as a fabrication. Her eyes shifted over to Lady Shalltear beside him: she had significantly more health than the Sorcerer King, while the Sorcerer King had significantly more mana than Lady Shalltear.

Either way, they were both overwhelming. Even the powerful Fiend that she had encountered in the ancient pass over the upper reach was no match. The Death Priests weren’t anywhere close to them. Ludmila felt a familiar and pleasant warmth rise within her, and she turned around again.

“My Talent works against it,” she resumed walking. “I could also see the false information presented by your spell.”

“Hoh…that Talent is quite something. To see all things as they truly are – you’re a walking inconvenience to everyone that relies on supernatural and magical subterfuge.”

They arrived in the space that she had cleared beforehand. Her ad hoc force of Undead troops was beginning to emerge from the river. Ludmila frowned as she compared their meagre health auras to a few Skeleton Warriors barely visible in the mist. Was support from the Death Priests really going to be enough?

Once her company formed up, she mounted her Undead Beast and activated her attack aura. The Skeleton Archers released a volley at the Undead standing along the shore.

Across her vision, the auras displayed by Life Essence depleted in a non-uniform manner, with weak Zombies, Ghouls and Wights taking the brunt of the damage. Skeletons took none at all, and they came running towards her battle line.

A pair of Skeleton Warriors arrived first. Their curved blades sliced into the Undead Beasts.

“Heal them!”

Though she had anticipated it, her orders were still half made out of panic as the health of the Undead Beasts dropped alarmingly upon receiving a single strike. The Death Priests cast their spells and she watched as the health auras returned to fullness, then dropped below half, then went back to full again. She looked over at the Death Priests, watching their mana very slowly, but surely, deplete. If they fought like this for an hour or two, she would burn through an entire day’s worth of mana.

Ludmila sent her Ghasts around, ordering them to ignore the weaker Undead to swarm the Skeleton Warriors. When the clash reached its conclusion, she let out a weary breath. With the assistance of the Death Priests, none of her forces had been lost, but watching health auras go up and down was stressful. She wasn’t even the one trying to keep them alive.

If three Skeleton Warriors came – or worse, some mix of Skeleton Warriors and Blood Meat Hulks – the Death Priests would not be able to keep up. She glanced up to where the Sorcerer King and Lady Shalltear were spectating over the battlefield, but they seemed intent on observing her.

She mulled over her dilemma. While she did so, her wandering gaze came across a strange sight.

Dozens of Undead had flopped their way out of the water. They were mostly fish, though there were some eels and a handful of tortoises and crabs. All were either skeletal or zombified. A few of them were about as strong as a Silver-ranked Adventurer, but their movements were so awkward that they didn’t seem like much of a threat. Their mindless nature simply drove them to attack what had drawn their attention, no matter how difficult it might be to reach their respective targets.

“I guess aquatic species have to deal with Undead as well.”

“Oh yes,” the Sorcerer King said. “There are a number of powerful Undead that can only be found underwater. The river is quite broad, so we may have missed some interesting specimens. These, however, are simply Skeletons and Zombies of different types.”

She directed her Skeleton Archers to pepper the slowly advancing swarm of Undead marine creatures. Once the Zombies were destroyed, she sent in her Undead Beasts to clean up the rest. A few of them managed to take damage when the skeletal fish flopped up and bit them. After they completed their task, she reorganized the ranks of her company and marched them away from the river.

Her new formation stacked the Undead Beasts three deep. Unlike conventional infantry ranks, a gap lay between the front rank and the two rear ranks. As her front line was reduced to a third of its former coverage, she would need to use her mobile force of Ghasts to intercept any enemies that spilt around the flanks.

With everything in place, she initiated her next assault. A furrow creased her brow as four Skeleton Warriors came charging in to put her idea to the test.

Ludmila worried whether the mindless Undead Beasts would be capable of carrying out the instructions she had left with them. As the Skeleton Warriors hacked at her front line, however, it appeared that the instructions had been simple enough to carry out.

If they received more than half of their health in damage, the Undead Beasts were to withdraw to the rear ranks. The other Undead Beasts would doggedly attack the nearest Skeleton Warrior, keeping them from finishing off their target while a fresh Undead Beast stepped up to fill the hole in the line.

The somewhat chaotic and uncertain melee took on the semblance of order and stability. A Skeleton Warrior could take apart an Undead Beast in two good hits, but dealing with nine that took turns taking damage made their progress almost seem slow. When the two rear ranks were about to be filled with damaged Undead Beasts…

“Mass Inflict Wounds!” Ludmila called out.

A Death Priest raised its flail, casting the spell at her order. Twenty-four Undead Beasts were restored to full health, and the cycle continued.

Ludmila nodded to herself, systematically sweeping her opponents from the field. She had double the number of Skeleton Warriors attacking her this time, but the new formation made things infinitely more manageable. There was little sense of risk to her troops and the mana consumption of the Death Priests was a tiny fraction of the previous fight.

“Excellent work,” the Sorcerer King called out as he flew down to land in front of her. “Did you learn about that from somewhere?”

She tightly clutched the bit of happiness that rose at his praise. The feeling wasn’t something that she wanted to stamp out, but at the same time, she couldn’t let it fly out of control.

“No, Your Majesty,” she replied. “Simply healing a single Undead Beast as it tried to withstand the attacks of a Skeleton Warrior was too unstable. Doing so was also consuming mana at an alarming rate. I had to devise a way to slow things down and improve healer endurance.”

“And you came up with that after a single skirmish…your tactical acumen is even keener than Shalltear claims. Do you understand the full implications of that formation?”

Her mind went from the inception of the tactic, working backwards from the result and exploring its possibilities.

She had come up with it in a desperate attempt to have her Undead Beasts survive the far more powerful Skeleton Warriors. Their large, Zombie-like health pools allowed her to pull it off, but if she replaced them with Skeleton Warriors, she could steadily trample almost everything she had seen in the ruins. Commanding as many Death Knights as she had members of her current company would probably be overkill wherever she went, but it would still make them that much more difficult to deal with.

Ludmila continued to consider what the Sorcerer King meant, and she swallowed as another thought came to her.

“This formation,” she said. “This tactic. I separated the first rank from the rest to keep the area healing spell from healing my enemies as well. Against anyone else, I could close the ranks, making them more resistant to enemy pressure and switching out injured soldiers more smoothly. And when the call for healing goes out…”

“That’s right,” the Sorcerer King’s voice was grim. “The mass healing spells that you are using channel negative energy. When they are cast on your infantry ranks, not only will they heal the Undead, but they will decimate any of the living within the area of effect as well.”

Beside the Sorcerer King, Lady Shalltear sported a wicked smile.

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