“Wow, this is…” Seldanna’s avatar gasped as she took the view in.
Her shock was understandable. The plane was filled with undead as far as the eye could see. I had often referred to the undead as endless, but only now, I realized just how inadequate that description was. I hadn’t dared to explore the plane directly, afraid of being caught and ruining the surprise.
Looking at their numbers, I was glad that I didn’t try to go with the alternative of letting the planes collide and defend the invasion. With those numbers, I would have had to pull all the stops to have a hope of defeating them, serving my secrets to Eternals on a plate while also dealing with devastation that would have been far deeper than the previous undead invasion.
Sometimes, fortune really favored the brave.
“Do you think we can win,” Seldanna asked.
“Probably. And it’s not like it matters even if we lose,” I answered with a shrug. I might have warned her about army morale and being confident, but that was not exactly a concern while leading an army of wooden constructs. “You’re only here as an avatar, and I’m confident that I can escape with most of our Divine Spark. At a minimum, we would destroy a majority of their army.”
As I said that, the Ark finally landed on the ground with a devastating crash, the collusion enough to destroy the zombies in its immediate surroundings. Then, the wards that were holding back millions of nature mana cracked, creating a thick wave to collide against the suffocating necrotic mana — enough that, if I had landed on this plane just after my accidental exile, I probably would have died in seconds.
How much difference does a few months make, I thought even as I watched ten thousand wooden giants leave the Ark along with the mana wave, attacking the undead army before they could react, each greedily pulling the surrounding necrotic mana to convert into nature mana.
After all, they were essentially a singular unit. Another god forest that was connected by fully melded Divine Spark, giving them an incredible efficiency advantage. I even made sure to give them a very old look, making them look like an ancient legion my fake personality had created long ago.
I wanted to intimidate the Eternals, not send them to send to a blind panic. And, while an intimidating wooden giant army that a nature god could wield as a weapon was scary, it was nowhere near scary as a god that could create such an army once a month.
Making them believe that the former was the case was to my benefit … especially considering my other trick would make them panic enough — preferably somewhere away from here.
“Impressive, isn’t it,” I commented while I controlled the treant army to destroy the undead army with shocking efficiency. Seldanna just nodded, fascinated by the speed the endless legion dwindled.
Admittedly, while it was an impressive sight, the achievement of destroying the first section of the army was hardly a challenge. Mostly because none of the army in front of us actually had Divine Spark in them to counter the spells I had been constantly casting through the treants — their nature making it very easy to channel the same spell through all of them at the same time.
It was the benefit of an ambush. There were no death knights or liches to counter my spells to give a fighting chance to the zombies, and there were no skeletal dragons in the mix to tussle directly with the treants. I had no doubt that they had such members, but they were probably somewhere nearer to the center.
After all, why bother commanding an army that was happy enough to just wait without doing anything. Add in the fact that zombies were best when their numbers could spread along a huge line endlessly to hunt the peasants and strain the supply lines rather than fighting against elite forces.
Especially elite forces like ours that had no mind to be intimidated, and no muscles to get tired.
Worse, we had one more decisive advantage. The sudden clash of two huge waves of opposing mana was overwhelming enough to extend into the connection between the material and the Aether. Unless they were to lose the majority of their commanders to the violent Aether waves, they couldn’t just teleport nearby, leaving only an ordinary method.
At a distance, I noticed a bone dragon, mounted by a lich. My dragon construct made a gesture, and a giant bolt of nature mana flew toward it, obliterating it with one hit.
Leaving a lingering cloud of Necrotic Spark behind.
“My opponent is about to battle is about to get fun. Take over the army,” I said to Seldanna.
“Are you sure you want to take that directly? Maybe I should be the one. I’m just an avatar—“ she said as she watched that mist created by Necrotic Spark growing wildly, but I silenced her with a gesture.
“No, we talked about this, take over the treants,” I ordered. She sighed as she jumped down, floating on top of the biggest one. At the same time, the army paused for a second, giving the zombies a chance to counter-attack. It would have been devastating if our army had any physical weakness…
But they didn’t, so it only meant a monetary dip in their destruction.
She didn’t have my tactical acumen, but she was better at using Nature Spark as a conduit. She was not as good at casting offensive magic, but she was far better at cleansing the land and creating a thick forest that could support the battle, so the combat efficiency of the treants stayed roughly the same, just with a more defensive focus than offensive.
Pity she was only there as an avatar and this wasn’t her Divine Domain. I would have loved to see just how strong she was when she truly cut loose.
I still could have watched her for hours … but, unfortunately, I had something else to pay attention to.
My opponent.
I rushed forward on my dragon, though I let a layer of wood cover me, hiding my real body to make him believe I was here as a dragon avatar.
He had already managed to push enough Divine Spark to create an avatar before I could arrive, which was a part of my plan. After all, it was far easier to steal from his Avatar than his real body — which was doubtlessly rushing forward as well.
“You dare invade my domain!” the necrotic god shouted, his voice exploding with a wave of necrotic mana, every undead that it touched empowered significantly. And, if we had an ordinary army, most of it would have been already dead with that one spell.
Enough to show that, fighting a god in his domain was no joke. If it wasn’t for the other part of my plan, I would have been already planning to escape after stealing as much as Divine Spark to turn it into deadly guerrilla warfare even with my advantage.
Instead, I responded in kind. “Do you think I would let you invade my Domain without a consequence, you upstart dog!” my dragon shouted back, while I used it to pull the same trick.
The last time I had used that trick, it had left me damaged and injured, my body unable to handle the intensity. Luckily, since that time, my Endurance had increased several times, making that a momentary discomfort even as I channeled almost a million mana without a ward to assist me.
It destroyed another chunk of his army while countering his trick. “You dare challenge me!” he shouted as he cast a spell, and the destroyed zombies started floating up and merging, soon turning into a huge dragon, even bigger than mine.
Since I was playing the role of a narcissistic god, I decided to act true to that personality, and channeled mana into the dragon avatar, making it grow even bigger, using the nature mana to its best advantage.
However, just because I was acting like a narcissistic moron didn’t mean I had to be one. I used the incredible mana flare to conceal several other spells, the most important being a subtle detection ward to detect mana types, one that I cast into the Aether dimension to make its detection even more impossible.
Searching for anything other than necrotic.
I wanted to find out if there was an Eternal base here, one that could be conveniently destroyed during the battle, with all the information conveniently getting lost in the explosion.
However, even with my abilities, casting a detection ward that would search a whole planar fragment was not an instant task, especially when I was trying to keep its existence hidden.
I let my dragon rush toward the undead one, and they started the most pointless melee battle of all time, endlessly regenerating wood against endlessly recovering undead flesh.
Luckily, I had my complicated magic to keep me entertained…
—
{Strength: 45 Charisma: 45
Precision: 45 Perception: 45
Agility: 45 Manipulation: 45
Speed: 45 Intelligence: 62
Endurance: 73 Wisdom: 45}
{Purified Divine Spark: 58,410}
{ADDITIONAL SPARKS
Light - Chosen 7.4
Nature - Chosen 10
Knowledge - Chosen 10}
{MINIONS
GODDESSES
Elven Goddess
Goddess of Knowledge}
