The Hundred Reigns 234: The Land of the Warlords (14) (Patreon)

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Simon took flight with his dracozombie under the slime rain.

Branding the Stone Muse had the secondary advantage of providing him with a near-limitless amount of miasma to fuel his abilities with. He could cast as many Edicts as he wished, gained boosts from his Dungeon, and he had plenty of mindless minions to sacrifice to keep Soul Sacrifice going. 

He used Darkbound to enhance his size and that of his mount until they became two enormous calamities. His Dreadful Aura rippled out of him in waves of terror across the battlefield. His subjects weathered it well enough thanks to their equipment, brands, and native immunities, but the mere sight of the Overlord decimated the Musan air force from sheer fear. The remaining airships fell out of the sky and opened up a straight path between him and the Golden Champion, with Louis emerging from one of the wrecks to run towards them on a shield stairway. 

Simon and his dracozombie mount individually both surpassed Vouivre in size, but they barely even reached up to the Golden Champion’s waist. Neither the slime rain nor the sudden growth of miasmic plants halted its progress; both burned against the shroud of flames surrounding the colossus. His forces’ spells fizzled out before they could even reach it, and its torch scepter incinerated anything within reach. The spears and javelins of wyvern riders or flying gargoyles did little more damage than mosquito stings would inflict on a giant. 

Simon immediately attempted to check if high-tier spells could pierce through whatever defense exuded from the Golden Champion. “Darkflare.”

His sorcery fizzled out before it could coalesce and blast the colossus away. 

To Simon’s Dark Visionary sight, it appeared as if a magical dead zone surrounded the Golden Champion and caused his spells to fall apart before they could even take form. The miasma dissipated into inert particles unable to create anything more complex than dust. 

However, the giant golem’s antimagic field didn’t seem to cancel out its own abilities. Simon noticed enormous amounts of mana gathering in its prismatic mirror-face, and swiftly had his Hastened dracozombie veer off to avoid the attack he knew would come.

Seven beams, each a different color of the rainbow, surged from the Golden Champion’s face. They were all charged with a different elemental affinity: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Lightning, Mind, and Corrosion alike were represented in the elemental barrage. The beams annihilated whatever trees and flying monsters they hit while carving lines of magical energy across the landscape. 

The agile Louis managed to avoid them by leaping from one shield to another and countered by throwing supersonic spears adorned with mundane explosives. He targeted the colossus’ joints on its left hand in an attempt to disarm it, but the lacquered plates of gold covering the colossus proved too thick to penetrate with only a single bombardment. The antimagic field stripped the weapons of their enchantments and dulled their strength too much to inflict sufficient damage. 

Simon used Hellfire Gaze to counter some of the beams heading his way, his flames clashing with the magical energies in flashes that illuminated the land. He managed to push back all the way to the deadzone surrounding the giant, at which point his flames fizzled out. 

Simon had the dracozombie use its superior speed to circle behind the Golden Champion’s head, then had it charge in for a fatal strike. He immediately felt the moment he entered the magical deadzone as his mount sharply slowed down and most of his buffs were stripped away. 

Golden Champion’s Antimagic Field suppressed Soul Sacrifice, Clear Eyes, and Regen. Your buffs and magical items’ effects are nullified. 

However, Simon didn’t shrink back to his original size, nor did his dracozombie dissipate into dust. It seemed the antimagic field had a limit on the magical effects it could affect—it didn’t prevent the Edict-powered slime rain from falling on its head, nor cause the undead on the ground to fall back into inanimate corpses. 

And it only suppresses lingering effects rather than utterly negating them outright. It was a clever way to support an army largely reliant on mechanical contraptions rather than spellcasting. Simon attempted to summon a dark eidolon to check on whether they would be affected too, and while he could feel Culebre’s connection, the creature bounced back to the Sanctuary before he could even manifest. Such a devastating ability. 

Thank the Light Simon had been practicing his Techniques. 

The dracozombie flew by the Golden Champion’s head, and Simon raised his mace for a strike. The fearsome flames surrounding the giant flared and melted the surface of his armor. 

Aura of Blazing Fire pierced through Resistance! Medium Fire Damage!

But no fire burned as hard as his resolve. 

“Magic Eraser!”

Simon smashed the back of the Golden Champion’s head and gave it a taste of its own medicine. 

The blow rippled with all of his malice and tore the giant’s golden helmet straight off its shoulders, ripping it apart in a rain of mechanical gears and gilded debris. His immense strength sent it flying across the Darkwood and crashing near the Halls of the Minotaur, its prismatic mirror-face cracking on impact.  

Magic Eraser swiftly shut down the enchantments coursing through the Golden Champion, causing it to freeze in place to the tune of halting gears. The antimagic field also fizzled out, with miasma flowing back into the void that once surrounded the machine and Simon’s own buffs reactivating themselves. 

However, the lack of an experience rush told Simon this was nowhere near the end.

A pulse of mana that flared from the Golden Champion’s body soon confirmed his suspicions. Simon’s Dark Visionary sight focused on miasma first and foremost, but enough of it had seeped into the mechanical colossus that Simon could see how it moved within its confines. Conduits carried magical energies to six manalith cores spread across its body; one for each limb, and two in the torso. No doubt the head had housed a seventh. 

Of course something so large would need redundant fuel sources to quickly carry energy throughout its enormous body. The headless Golden Champion began to move again by swinging its burning scepter and forcing Simon back. Flames surged again from its body, and the antimagic field began to slowly reestablish itself. 

It was then, at this very moment, that Simon realized he needed to consume the Crafter’s Crestone. 

The Golden Champion wasn’t as powerful as the comet-enhanced Nodens had been, nor as devious and inventive, but its destructive potential dwarfed that of airships. Its mere ability to cancel magic on such a large scale made it a devastatingly useful weapon, and Endymion had the wealth to build more than one. A small set of them could trample cities to dust and mayhaps bring down an empowered Zodiac Fiend. 

Gargauth had been right. The Crafter combined with Devil Forgemaster would let an Overlord build anything. 

“Do you see any vulnerabilities, brother?” Louis asked after joining him, the Warrior keeping himself afloat by constantly hopping on shields that appeared and disappeared in the blink of an eye. 

“This thing has multiple manalith cores fueling each limb,” Simon warned Louis. “The two in the chest coordinate them, but they also have the best shielding.”

“I will open up a path for you then.” 

Louis didn’t wait for Simon to answer him before charging at the giant on a falling shield stairway. He simply expected his sibling to capitalize on the opportunity he would inevitably create. Simon followed after him at full speed while ordering the Stone Muse to assist them.

The Golden Champion’s lack of head did not prevent it from sensing its enemies’ presence, for it seized its scepter with both hands and pointed it at them. A massive stream of alchemical flames erupted from its tip, the combination of the antimagic field cancelling out protective effects and its ability to ignore Fire Resistance turning it into a deadly attack. 

Simon was forced to dodge to avoid being incinerated, with the blaze scorching his dracozombie’s side and exposing its ribs, but Louis? Louis simply cut the flames in two with a claymore as he continued to charge forwards. The fire cleaved into neatly separated halves thanks to whatever Technique the Warrior used. 

The Stone Muse’s black roots erupted from the ground at this moment and grabbed the Golden Champion by the ankles. They powered through the pain of the flames devouring their tips to throw the titan off-balance and create an opening in its defense. 

Louis reached the Golden Champion first due to moving in a straight line. He activated Spaceslash, split the scepter in two, and then struck the machine’s chest in a horizontal line. His reach with his weapon was limited, but his claymore split both flames and gold alike deep enough to leave an enormous wound in its wake. Twin-cores made of fire manaliths each the size of a house were now exposed, their heat and energies dispersed across the colossus’ body by a nightmarishly complex mechanism of pumps and gears. 

I still have so much to learn, Simon thought as he had his damaged dracozombie rushed towards the Champion’s exposed chest, even as the flames began to consume his mount. But I’m catching up. 

His Deathmace smashed into the exposed cores with all the might of his Magic Eraser.  

The Technique’s power was proportional to the number of effects it stripped, and countless enchantments were woven into the manaliths. The sheer power of the impact shattered them both in a mighty explosion that incinerated Simon’s dracozombie and pelted him with molten gold burning hotter than a volcano’s heart. 

Heavy Fire and Metal damage!

The blow started a chain reaction across the Golden Champion. The destroyed cores caused its internal mechanisms to break down and overheat until the very metal forming the colossus began to melt away. Its frame collapsed on itself to the tune of explosions and scalding steam. 

Simon couldn’t tell whether it was an intentional trap or a faulty design flaw, but the results were the same: the Golden Champion melted into a humongous tide of searing gold. 

He himself barely managed to fly out of the way with Darkflight, but many of his troops on the ground weren’t so lucky. The flood of molten gold swallowed the Stone Muse’s roots, the nearby trees, and every soldier or undead it could catch. Their screams reached all the way to the sky.

Simon shared their pain through the brands he had bound them with. He felt the experience flow through him from this glorious victory, so great it would have once brought him to new heights. 

Yet… it didn’t.

He could see the top of the hill and the summit he needed to reach. It was within reach of his hand, so close and still so far. 

“It wasn’t enough…” Simon muttered to himself in frustration while Louis rejoined him in the sky. His hands shook with rage and frustration. “All of this destruction, all this chaos… and it’s still not enough for a level-up.”

“I share your frustration, brother, more than you know.” Louis sounded almost… sympathetic to Simon’s plight. “But the wait makes the rush all the sweeter, don’t you think?”

Simon very much disagreed. “How do you deal with it?”

“With unrelenting slaughter, without guilt or compromise, until you can breathe the carnage and swim in the blood.” Louis’ faint, soulless smile sent chills down Simon’s spine. “It’s a beautiful view atop the hill of corpses. Remember that, my brother.”

Simon couldn’t quite put his finger on why that comment disturbed him to his core. Maybe it was the enormity of its statement, or the cold, clinical insanity in his sibling’s eyes reflecting his own yearning for ever greater heights of power. He was staring into the darkest possible mirror and at the most terrible thing he could become.

He didn’t like what he saw one bit. 

Simon forced himself to focus on the battle at hand. The Golden Champion’s demise had transformed a good sixth of the Darkwood into a lake of fumes and molten gold, but the Stone Muse and their troops had taken the cliffs. Flying monsters and frontliners under his retainers’ command would soon storm the city itself. 

“What’s the situation on the ground?” Simon inquired telepathically. 

“Horrifying,” Leonard replied, his tone full of fear and unease. “Your Majesty’s slimes… transforms people.”

Simon flew closer to the cliffs to witness the horrors he had unleashed for himself. 

He had believed that the slimes summoned by his rain would simply spread various ailments to unprotected individuals, and he was right… but he hadn’t quite grasped what kind of plague he had unleashed until he flew over the former Musan positions. Monstrous, creeping oozes of various colors lurked among the ruins of barricades and abandoned cannons. The creatures ignored Simon’s own forces to instead shamble their way to the water and the city. 

They all looked so… humanoid.

It didn’t take long for Simon to realize what had just happened. The creatures displayed horrific hints of the people they used to be, from the outline of faces on their slimy heads, to the remains of bones floating inside their body as they lumbered across the landscape. Other Musan citizens were in the middle of the transformation when Simon and Louis flew over them, the slimes falling from the sky seeping into their wounds to turn their blood into acid and their muscles into gelatinous toxins.  

The disease and poison carried by the rain turned those it touched into ooze-like abominations. Classed individuals might endure the contamination long enough to naturally shrug off the infection or receive healing, but civilians wouldn’t be so lucky. They would transform into monsters roaming the countryside, spread like a cancer upon the land, and pollute more of the republic’s waterways. 

Lampwick’s lagoon had already become a pond of pollution greener than spring leaves, and Simon could see slimes rampaging in the harbor. The Stone Muse’s roots had reached the city to smother its buildings in thorny vines, crushing smaller houses under their weight and denying the locals any reprieve from the rain. Soon all souls in this port would become festering thralls to their new Duchess of the Darkwood. 

“What a beautiful land you have given me!” the mad dryad sang with gleeful cruelty in the back of his head. “What an hour of joy!”

It was then, when the sheer scale of the vicious curse he had unleashed upon Muse became obvious to him, that Simon finally received the rush of a new level.

Level 78 Overlord Perk: Devil Brand VIII (Passive): Your connection to your thralls has strengthened. Your branded followers receive a Stat bonus based on the Brand applied (+6 STR for Wrath, +6 AGI for Lust, +6 VIT for Gluttony, +6 PER for Envy, +6 MAG for Sloth, +6 INT for Greed, +6 CHA for Pride, and +6 LCK if they bear all seven Devil Brands). 

Is this what it will take to save the world? Simon wondered, the thrill of a level-up replaced with the irritation of a dash of sorrow, guilt, and gnawing doubt. One slaughter after another, until the dead remind the living of their folly? 

“I had to do it,” Simon tried to tell himself. “They declared war first, and it was the lesser evil. I wanted peace, but they would rather fight. I had no choice.”

Louis denied him that mercy. “Of course you chose this, Simon… and this is why we will always win. Because we tread where the weak do not dare to step.”

It was Louis’ best quality that he was above lying, even to himself, but Simon wasn’t sure they could call this strength. 

It’s just this reign, Simon continued to tell himself. I messed up, but I will do better next time. The Abyss will wash it all away in the end. A few thousands’ deaths will pay for the safety of millions. None of this will happen in my final reign. It’ll be perfect.

A peaceful future would excuse this graveyard of sorrowful pasts. 

“I see we have new candidates to the slaughter, brother,” Louis warned him. 

Simon followed his gaze to the horizon, and he spotted them in the distance: two towering figures striding across the land towards Lampwick’s outskirts. They were too far away for Simon to see much of them, but the fact he could see their outlines at all from so far away suggested they were of immense size. 

Muse had built more than one Champion to welcome them.

Why won’t they just stop and negotiate? Simon wondered as he spotted something glittering at the top of the Crafter’s Tower miles in the distance. How many more of them must I kill before they list—

The projectile hit him square in the head and silenced his thoughts.

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