Chapter 148: The Dead March

The warning sirens of the Velkrath Imperium shrieked into the night sky.

I stood in the center of the courtyard, the heavy scent of ozone and impending death washing over the towering iron walls. The sky to the East was completely black, choked by a massive, unnatural storm of pure necrotic magic. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Archlich Malacor had arrived.

"Sovereign!" Prime Minister Hardsteel shouted over the deafening sirens. "The borders are completely overrun! The dead are swarming like locusts!"

I did not panic. I looked down at my right hand.

I was still holding the iridescent Royal Core I had ripped from the Hive Empress in Strata 5. It pulsed with a heavy, ancient telepathic frequency.

I squeezed my heavy brass gauntlet.

CRRRRACK.

I crushed the S-Grade core directly in my palm. The ancient biological casing shattered, and the pure, refined telepathic energy violently surged up my arm, flooding directly into my Sovereign System.

DING!

[System Alert: Royal Telepathic Network Established.]

[Administrator Privilege: You may now instantly link minds with all designated Pack members and Vanguard Generals.]

I closed my eyes behind my glowing red visor. I pushed my will outward, anchoring my mind to my commanders.

Hear me, I projected my thoughts. My baritone voice echoed simultaneously inside the minds of Rolf, Kaelith, Lysandra, Nyssa, Anise, Silas, and Hardsteel.

All of them violently flinched.

Rolf grabbed his ears, his golden-amber eyes widening. Hardsteel nearly dropped his broadsword.

"What in the hells..." Silas muttered, looking around the courtyard in confusion.

Do not speak aloud. Think your responses, I commanded through the link.

This is... incredibly jarring, Master, Anise projected back, her mental voice trembling slightly. But the clarity is absolute.

Surprising, but efficient, Silas added, quickly regaining his composure. We no longer need the Arcane Radios.

Nyssa, I isolated my mental frequency to focus solely on the Arcane Overlord Goblin.

Nyssa looked up at me from across the courtyard.

Take the Ancient Bio-Mechanical Core to the central foundry, I ordered through the telepathic link. Power the Absolute Aegis Shield immediately.

Then, melt down the S-Grade Hive Chitin. Fabricate the anti-magic armor for the Pack. We need that advantage to survive Malacor. Do not stop until it is done.

It will be a race against time, Sovereign, Nyssa projected back, her glowing green eyes narrowing with absolute focus. I am moving now!

Nyssa vanished, sprinting toward the underground foundry with the massive progenitor core strapped to her spatial ring.

"To the walls!" I roared aloud, leading the rest of the War Council up the heavy iron stairs.

We reached the highest battlement of the city just in time to see the end of the world.

The Ashfall Marches were entirely gone.

A colossal, towering tsunami of pitch-black necrotic magic was rolling across the plains. It was hundreds of feet high, swallowing the earth, turning the razor-wire trenches and mud into rotting dust. It was moving at terrifying speeds, rushing directly toward our black iron walls.

"It’s a localized death-wave!" Anise screamed over the roaring wind. "If that hits the city, every mortal civilian will rot to the bone in an instant!"

I planted my boots firmly on the metal grating. I did not order an evacuation. I trusted my architect.

Nyssa! I roared through the telepathic network.

Connecting the primary mana conduits now! her frantic voice echoed in my skull.

The black tsunami was only two hundred yards away.

One hundred yards.

Fifty yards.

The sheer necrotic pressure began to violently peel the paint off my Ironclad armor.

Activating Absolute Aegis! Nyssa screamed in my mind.

FWOOSH!

A blinding, radiant pillar of golden-blue energy erupted from the very center of the Velkrath Imperium. The colossal, limitless power of the ancient bio-mechanical core instantly deployed across the city’s perimeter.

Massive, interlocking golden hexagons formed an impenetrable, translucent dome perfectly over the towering iron walls.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The necrotic tsunami violently slammed into the Aegis Shield.

The entire city violently shuddered beneath our feet. The sheer kinetic and magical force of the wave was apocalyptic. The black sludge washed completely over the golden-blue dome, completely blotting out our vision of the outside world.

But the shield held perfectly.

The ancient core’s energy density was absolutely flawless. The necrotic magic hissed and burned against the golden hexagons, sliding harmlessly down the sides of the dome and pooling into the dead earth outside.

As the black sludge slowly cleared from the transparent shield, the true horror of the Zenith Academy was finally revealed.

The "graves of the old world" had truly opened.

The sky was no longer empty. Dozens of colossal, rotting Undead Bone-Dragons shrieked in the clouds, their skeletal wings dripping with dark magic.

On the ground, towering Skeletal Behemoths lumbered through the ruined Ashfall Marches. They were massive, stitched-together abominations made from the bones of ancient titans, carrying heavy iron siege towers on their rotting backs.

And marching perfectly in front of them was an endless, silent legion.

They were Starmetal Death Knights. They wore jagged, rusted armor forged from fallen meteors. They rode heavily armored nightmare-steeds, their eyes burning with identical, terrifying green soul-fire.

Archlich Malacor had brought a calamity to my doorstep.

Suddenly, the ambient temperature around the shield plummeted to absolute zero.

A colossal, suffocating aura of pure, concentrated death completely blanketed the battlefield. The undead dragons stopped shrieking. The behemoths halted. The Death Knights bowed their heads in absolute silence.

From the center of the undead legion, a single figure slowly floated into the air.

It was Archlich Malacor.

He was not a rotting corpse. His skeletal frame was forged from flawless, pitch-black starmetal. A jagged crown of floating shadows hovered above his skull. His eye sockets were not filled with fire; they were endless voids of absolute nothingness.

He did not fly fast. He drifted upward with the terrifying, inevitable patience of death itself.

He floated right up to the golden-blue energy shield, stopping mere inches from the magical barrier, hovering perfectly level with my position on the high wall.

The sheer density of his aura caused the Aegis Shield to hum violently, struggling to repel his sheer existence.

He was a menace. He was the absolute apex of the continent.

Malacor slowly turned his void-like eyes to look directly into my glowing red visor.

"You wield the conceptual fire that burned my apprentice," Malacor spoke.

His voice did not just bypass my helmet; it bypassed the telepathic network entirely. It vibrated directly against my soul. It sounded like grinding tectonic plates and dying stars.

"I am the Sovereign," I rumbled back, crossing my heavy brass arms over my chest plate.

"You are a primitive beast hiding behind a borrowed shield," Malacor corrected coldly. "But you possess a spark. A conceptual anomaly. Lower this barrier, offer me your spark for my phylactery, and I will grant your soul the mercy of oblivion."

I stared into the endless voids of his eyes. I felt no fear. I felt my Fire of Rage burning hotly in my core.

Nyssa, I projected mentally, keeping my physical eyes locked on the Archlich. Status.

The S-Grade Chitin is highly resistant to the forge’s heat! Nyssa replied frantically. I am shaping the breastplates now! Three minutes, Sovereign! I just need three minutes!

I smiled a dark, jagged smile beneath my visor.

I needed to buy time. And I knew exactly how to do it.

"You want my spark, Malacor?" I projected my heavy, baritone voice aloud, letting the external speakers broadcast my voice through the shield to the entire undead army.

I uncrossed my arms and rested my heavy brass gauntlet on the hilt of my combat knife.

"You came all this way," I mocked, staring down the ancient ruler of death. "You woke up your dusty dragons. You pulled your rusted knights out of the dirt. Just to float outside my window and beg?"

Malacor did not move. His void-like eyes narrowed infinitesimally.

"I am not giving you my spark," I growled, unleashing my Domination Aura to violently push back against his aura of death. "If you want it, dead man... you are going to have to break my wall and take it."

The standoff reached an absolute, boiling point. The war for the continent was about to begin.