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[NR] Now I'm Next To You - Chapter 687
🕑 Added 2025-03-19 11:02:21 +0000 UTCOut on the wall, Siegfried is in the middle of a massive fight facing the strongest undead in the field. There are others close to it, but nothing quite matches the Leng ghast he is fighting. It was honestly a bad matchup for him as the ghast was a caster.
Not that Siegfried couldn’t fight a caster, but on a chaotic battlefield where he had to avoid his allies and his enemy didn’t have to worry about it? Well, that added a bunch of nasty twists to the fight. Twists which are tying his hands and preventing this from being a quick fight.
Siegfried ended up spending more time standing with his arms crossed. More of a threat to keep his opponent from tossing around area of effect wounding spells willy nilly. Which had been working, but the fight was getting into the end game.
The undead aren’t outright losing, but that did seem to be the trend and the Leng ghast is a commander of some ability. It could see what was happening. The biggest question isn’t whether it noticed, but rather what its orders were.
The two leaders stand across from each other. Siegfried with his hand on his weapon. The ghast with magic at their fingertips. There wasn’t any retreat for the undead, at least not alive.
This didn’t bother the undead. Either they didn’t have any self-preservation instincts or had some sort of promise of revival. That or maybe they’d prefer the oblivion of death compared to what their masters promised them for failure. Well, for the undead with enough of a mind for any of this to matter.
The two are standing there in clear view of everyone.
Siegfried is behind the Leng ghast, a sword cleaved through flesh, but stopped by supernaturally tough bones.
The ghast is now off to the side, a black ball of mist crashing against Siegfried’s shield. Siegfried slices out. Their sword makes a clean cut across the ghast’s burial shroud. Magic blazes to stop the sword from going deeper.
Siegfried’s shield bashes through the magic barrier as the undead attempts to back away. Except, Siegfried’s sword had pierced their foot through and they stumble.
The Leng ghast uses magic to pull themselves off the sword, but not for long. Other parts of the fight have begun to wrap up and there are now mages available to counter spell such things. The ghast crashes down on the ground, their foot not even partially healed.
Siegfried is next to them, slicing down at them, but the ghast rolls out of the way. Even without magic, the monster still has an undead’s unnatural strength. Then Siegfried’s sword accelerates even more as it releases a silvery yellow glow.
The sword slices off a hand in passing.
The Leng ghast scampers away on all fours, using the wrist stump even if a little unstable. It hisses, “You stand, but how long?”
Siegfried ignores the monster’s words and takes another swing. Though the ghast easily dodges this time. Except for one detail.
Another combatant had finished up their fight in victory. So as the Leng ghast dodges the sword, it takes an arrow to the hip. Holy silver hisses as the arrow head remains stuck in the flesh.
The ghast partially collapses as their hip corroded under the holy power. Siegfried, however, doesn’t leave things to that. Instead, they proceed to hack at the undead monster. This isn’t an easy win as the monster remains stubborn and wriggles around in a hectic attempt to dodge the attacks.
Yeah, that doesn’t work. With the backup of someone near his own level of power, Siegfried can now finish the fight. Which turned into a snowball towards victory. With each high-level combatant freed from their duel was another combatant could help the next.
From there, the town was quickly cleaned up of the undead. In particular, once the town’s high level mages are free the soul shards got swept up with ease. All it took was a very large scale, but low damage spell.
Which, admittedly, lower-level mages could have accomplished. The catch being that lower-level mages wouldn’t be able to control the spell well enough to prevent damage to infrastructure. Not that they didn’t know the spells, but to limit what would be affected takes more power.
Of course, just because they “know” the settlement is clear of the undead, doesn’t mean it was confirmed. So while Siegfried wants to go check on the bunker and civilians, he instead spends the next hour in charge of a settlement-wide search.
All the while, Jason remains in the bunker with the five defenders. This is partly because he is being healed, but mostly to keep an eye on the civilians. After all, if they sent one attacker, the undead might have another one skulking around, waiting for the town to let their guard down.
Though he is soon joined by Rosha, Courtney, and Lily. So it wasn’t lonely. Not that the five defenders were poor company. Just that they didn’t have much in common with Jason.
After all, they had already adventured and gotten tired of it. They were in this town as a form of retirement. Exciting retirement, sure, but the excitement came to them with long periods of comfy boredom in-between.
On the other hand, Jason is an active adventurer. He was out in the Deep Wilds, homesteading. And before that? His group was wandering around from kingdom to kingdom.
Oh sure, the five guards could talk about their past, but they’d rather not, especially right now. Too much excitement already for old war tales.
So yeah, Jason was relieved when the others arrived. They didn’t exactly start chatting about exciting events past and present. Just that they had things in common to talk about.
Oh, and Lily. She did a good job of settling Jason down. He isn’t exactly stressed now that the fight was over. However, he isn’t exactly calm either. Which was easily fixed with a petting session.
