Chapter 167 - Necromancer
Dry grass, dying bushes, and withered flowers were all that\'s left to show that this place once sustained life. She was unable to identify the style of the buildings of the town since most only had walls showing that earlier there were structures that stood here.
Most doors of the already ruined buildings were either completely gone or mere remnants of rotten wood and rusty metal. The open doorways looked eerie as only darkness showed within. Dry rot, vines, and other undesired vegetation had taken the place of paint on the structures and created a creepy decoration.
"Whoosh!"
Suddenly, a tearing sound filled the air, stopping Maria from looking at the ghost town.
She dodged right away, and the next moment, an arrow passed right where once her head was. She felt chills seeing the arrow passing above her. If she had gotten even a second late, it would have pierced her head and ended her journey in the event.
"O fratrus oswolem!"
The next moment, a chant in a strange language echoed as several magic circles appeared in the town.
The next moment, with angry roars, several creatures appeared in the town. After emerging, their cries turned even louder as they could feel the sense of danger their master had felt a moment earlier.
All the creatures belonged to different races, but there were two things similar for every undead, they had black eyes, and there was a mark of a sword on the area between the eyebrows.
It was the insignia of Maria\'s family, and she imprinted the same mark on her undead soldiers.
It may have looked like much time had passed, but only a second had passed since Maria dodged from the arrow. She then made a shield around herself with the leaders of the blue dungeons and sent other creatures to search for the enemy.
Surrounded by tens of leaders of the blue dungeon gave some sense of security to her. She knew that she wasn\'t secure with only this many beings in a white dungeon since she could feel the danger in the air. After she had dodged the arrow, the air in the dungeon had turned threatening to her.
She then sat in a meditative pose and closed her eyes. She had the skill to change her point of view to any of the undead soldiers in her army.
She had only closed her eyes for a moment when she suddenly opened her eyes and summoned a new group of creatures. These were the last group of the leaders of the blue dungeon she had killed.
She then ordered them to go two hundred meters in the north direction since she had found her enemy. It was a Preta.
Preta belonged to the group of the ghost race. They had similar body structures as humans, but they didn\'t have a physical body. They only had a soul form. White eyes, white hair, and white skin without even a hint of blemish were their recognizing traits.
Pretas weren\'t an overly powerful race in the Primal dimension. They had similar stature as Elves, but unlike Elves, they weren\'t popular despite being a beautiful race.
They weren\'t very popular because beneath their beautiful disguise was one of the cruelest races of the Primal dimension. In history, they had never killed a single person who hadn\'t pleaded to get killed.
Seeing the Preta through her now dead soldier, Maria couldn\'t help but frown since the Ghost race neither belonged to the dead nor living. They were between the two, so even if she killed them, they still wouldn\'t die and get assimilated to the world, and she wouldn\'t get any new soldiers from them, and she also couldn\'t revive her dead soldiers as Pretas take away the souls of the creatures they kill, and without souls, even undead can\'t survive.
If Maria had a choice, she never would\'ve come here, but since she didn\'t have a choice, she took a deep breath and ordered her new summons to kill her. Even if she didn\'t get any new soldiers, at least she would get an increase in her power.
In the group she had sent, one of the being belonged to the Moya race. Since Preta only had soul form, Moya had an advantage over them due to being born from the soul stones, the purest form of soul energy.
Maria knew the Moya would help her in this dungeon the most, so she ordered it to stay behind and attack from there while the others would face the Preta.
As she had expected a few moments later, a white stream of light came at her. She refused it and sent it to the Moya soldier since it would be her biggest advantage over the Pretas.
Time flew by, and days passed in the dungeon. Maria had lost more than 200,000 undead soldiers during these last days, and out of which, two were the leaders of the blue dungeon.
She and her army had killed more than 8847 Pretas during the hunt, but she hadn\'t gotten even a little bit stronger than her previous self since she sent all the gains toward her Moya soldier.
Until now, this dungeon had only proved to be a loss maker since she had not acquired a new soldier or increased her power but instead had lost many of her soldiers.
Time flew by. Nine months had passed since Maria entered the dungeon.
She had already lost 95% of her army during this time, and currently, she was in a fight against the leader of the dungeon.
It was a male Preta and looked to be ten times the size of a regular Preta. All the remaining undead soldiers had surrounded the Preta, which numbered in thousands.
Maria stayed behind during this battle as she was only equivalent to an ordinary creature of the white dungeon since she hadn\'t gained a single stream of light during the hunts in the past months.
All the leaders of the blue dungeon she had, took the lead, while the Moya soldier took the lead of the entire undead army.
Instead of becoming worried, the Preta smirked after he got surrounded by so many soldiers.
The Preta extended his hands and the next moment closed it into a fist as if he was crushing something.
"Aagh!"
The next moment, painful screams echoed out from the midst of the undead army, and soldiers after soldiers started crashing to the ground.
Maria\'s face turned grave, seeing her soldiers crashing down the ground one by one. Only from a single attack, the Preta killed 70% of the soldiers that had surrounded him. It even took away the lives of three leaders of the blue dungeon.
"Make a move!" She ordered the Moya. She decided to make it a one on one battle between the Moya and the Preta, while other soldiers would play the supporting role from behind.
The Moya\'s black eyes turned even darker after getting the order from its master. It then started chanting in some strange language, and the next moment, white light surrounded every leader of the blue dungeon and Maria.
The Moya did this to protect the leaders from any kind of similar situation arising. Maria couldn\'t help but click her tongue, seeing the protection surrounding her.
She knew she had committed a mistake. If she had ordered her before starting the fight, she wouldn\'t have lost three of her strongest soldiers.
Since she didn\'t have time to ponder over this mistake, she stopped thinking about it and instead focused on the battle.
She ordered the Moya to activate the skill, Soul Crush. The next moment, the Moya activated the skill. The Preta didn\'t just stand there and let Maria attack him.
He activated an offensive skill instead of a defensive skill. There was no defense better than pure offense, so why use a defensive skill?
The next moment, energy started gathering above his head while a purple magic circle had appeared surrounding the Moya.
Seeing an opportunity, the other undead soldiers rushed to attack the Preta. However, as soon as they reached the distance of two steps from him, they found themselves suddenly getting engulfed in fire.
Painful screams echoed the next moment as it was the soul fire and directly burning their soul. As soon as a soldier reached two steps away from him, the soul fire burned not only their soul but their physical body to ashes.
The energy ball had completely formed while a purple soul form of the Moya had appeared.
Both the Preta and the Moya activated the attack, the next moment, the soul form clashed with the energy ball, and an explosion occurred.
The next moment, the energy ball disintegrated into nothingness since the purple soul form had the power to negate any kind of soul energy, but the soul form also lost all its energy in obliterating the attack.
Time passed, and the battle between the Moya and Preta lasted for days.
Finally, after battling continuously for three days, the Moya finally won, but Maria lost every undead soldier she had during the battle.
Only her and the Moya were left after the battle ended.
After the Preta died, a stream of white light came toward Maria. Unlike the last time, she didn\'t refuse it and let it engulf her.
The next moment, her entire body got filled with a strange yet familiar form of energy. It took more than a minute to stop evolving Maria\'s body since it was only a body worthy of the leader of the blue dungeon.
After the feeling of getting stronger ended, Maria focused on the red egg that had appeared in place of the Preta.