[Bone Dragon - Level 60 Undead
HP: 4,568/13,200 MP: 7,126/10,680]
[Mikey - Level 49 Undead
HP: 9,850/11,024 MP: 3,987/6,566]
[Joneson - Level 49 Undead
HP: 9,521/11,024 MP: 1,209/6,566]
[Gunner - Level 20 Vanguard
HP: 450/600 MP: 230/700]
[Bone Golem - Level 43 Undead
HP: 839/2,154 MP: 234/450]
As the battle raged on for more than 10 minutes, the various parties could feel their powers declining. The Bone Dragon had nearly fallen to a third of its health, and was only supported by its willingness to cast Restore Undead on itself even though it also healed Mikey and Joneson.
This was no different from quenching one's thirst with poison, but it had no choice. Realizing the severe threat to its life, it had even thrown away its facade of being a mindless undead and revealed its trump card, a Master-stage ability!
It was the type of spell that one could cast only a limited amount of times before the backlash would be too much for the caster. At the start of the day it had only three uses left, yet two of those had been used up in an attempt to harm the undead duo so severely that Darius got frightened.
It was a Wind element attack called Cyclone, which created a literal windstorm right in the middle of the battlefield. Because Mikey and Joneson had wanted to prevent the Bone Dragon from targeting the weaker human Adept stage experts, they had ended up moving their battle a significant distance away.
As such, the aftereffects of the powerful spell had not affected the battlefield of the living too much, but all fights had temporarily stopped as the various parties were forced to cling to whatever they could hold in order to prevent themselves from being sucked into that vortex of death.
Many Journeymen who had been assisting the Adept were easily swallowed in without resistance. They were two stages lower than this attack, not nearly enough to resist it. Not even a Heal would have been able to save them.
Not that Darius had time to that. As an actual Amateur, he had also easily been sucked in and should have died, but obviously, he had a way out.
He kept rapidly blinking, so his form would only be sucked forward for the 0.3-second interval before he would re-appear exactly where he stood before.
He had made sure to set his and Gunner's weight to 25% higher, and the large lad had used Earthen Punch to dig his hands into the ground and braced himself. As for the Bone Golem he had been fighting, the undead got pulled into the vortex and got shredded to bits.
Still, Mikey and Joneson definitely got the worst of the lot. The two vampires had quite literally been caught in the eye of the storm. They had been quickly overwhelmed by the attack which dealt egregious amounts of damage each second to all those trapped within.
It was mostly two things that had kept the duo alive. The first was their Magic Immunity trait that reduced elemental damage from spells and abilities greatly. The second was their overpowered Damage Ward which spawned a barrier with their total HP and various resistances that reformed 1 hour after being shattered.
This meant that in order to end the vampires, you technically had to 'kill' them twice. What would previously have been enough to vanquish them would have to be redone in the exact same manner in order to truly finish them.
As such, the duo of undead had been able to survive the first use of this overpowered ability with half their lives after their shields got shattered. Because of this, they changed their fighting style to a conservative one because they did not know how many times the Bone Dragon could use that spell again.
This was why the battle had lasted 10 minutes up until now. As for the second time the spell had been used, the duo quickly fled as they had been ready for it. Darius was tempted to heal the duo, but was worried that it would have a countereffect.
It was fine if it worked and everyone could pretend like this was how it should have been, but if it failed and backfired, allowing the Bone Dragon to capitalize on it, Darius would be crowned an idiot by all onlookers.
Luckily, the undead duo benefited from the Bone Dragon's healing of its own wounds over time. Joneson especially faced pressure in healing Mikey and fighting, as the Demonic Spear was truly consistent with its draining.
At this point, the last 10 Adept undead had been killed. The humans had regrouped and were resting slightly before planning to assist the two vampires head-on and end this battle as quickly as possible.
Darius freely passed out stamina potions and health potions that he had accumulated. No matter how many he transmuted, he felt like he would always have a large stockpile of such potions since they dropped from nearly every foe he killed.
After 2 minutes, the various human Adepts stage experts with their remaining Journeymen were ready to go. Once they entered the battlefield and assisted the duo of vampire, the Bone Dragon was quickly overwhelmed.
In desperation, it attempted to use its last cast of Cyclone, but Darius was waiting for this. Despite knowing it would do practically no damage considering the Bone Dragon's large HP pool, he still cast his Heal at it.
Something Darius had discovered while fighting the undead casters was that using the Heal spell on them while they were casting interrupted them. Not because of the damage, but because Heal struck from within them, messing up their flow of mana that was normally used to initiate spells.
Darius had not cast it before because he did not want to attract the attention of the Bone Dragon. After all, every time he used Heal on undead, it terrified them and made them flee, so he was unsure if this would make the Bone Dragon flee, rather than chase him down to squash this threat.
With his timely intervention, a disaster was avoided and the Bone Dragon's death throes became more and more pathetic. With almost heroic bearing, Mikey and Joneson attacked together as they slew the Dragon, which dispersed its Death Energy and made its withered bones turn to ash.
