I became a legion lich

134 War preparations

“That aside, what did you think of Guild Master Florence’s quest?” The black fang asked, ignoring their leader’s idiot grin.

“Murder or let Colonel Orus Mifar die. I don’t feel very comfortable killing someone for no reason.” The blue fang spoke as it clicked its tongue in disgust. Being a hired assassin didn’t suit him, but breaking a direct order from the guildmaster would have consequences he didn’t know he was willing to carry out.

“You did this on purpose, didn’t you? Place yourself away from the colonel on the battlefield to have a plausible excuse to decline the mission. You really don’t change, brother.” The black fang spoke smiling, easily reading the blue fang’s plan. The assassin removed the black hood, revealing his face.

His face was identical to the blue fang. The same short black hair, the same slightly droopy blue eyes, slightly disproportionate cheekbones and thick eyebrows. They were identical twin brothers, even their height and voice tones were similar.

They were in the habit of switching places whenever necessary, as they possessed the characteristic of duality. It was an incredibly rare trait, as was the mana body, where twins were born with the same energy signature and opposing elements.

Where the blue fang had an affinity for water and earth, the black fang had an affinity for air and fire. It wasn’t as powerful a trait as the mana body, but it was incredibly versatile as the twins didn’t need to hold back when fighting together.

“You found me, little brother. Now let’s get some more food and meet up with the rest of the group, we still have a few days of marching to go.” The blue fang pulled its brother into a hug and dragged him to where the rest of the group was.

“Don’t be smug, you’re only 5 minutes older.” The black fang spoke with false anger, but could not resist and followed.

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In the fortress of the platinum fist, a few hours before.

“What happened here?” Emilia asked after returning to the fortress only to find Athos and Treevor lying on the ground.

‘We spent the last few hours in constant cycles of feeding the large-scale spells and stopping to recover energy. We’re exhausted to a degree I thought the undead were incapable of staying.’ Treevor responded without moving an inch, grateful that the mental link allowed him to communicate without having to move.

Treevor was not able to recover energy at the same speed as Athos, although the yggdrasil arm able to absorb corrupted world energy puts it ahead of any average mage in terms of mana regeneration.

‘How long before the large-scale spells are fully charged?’ Gaius asked, heading straight for the control room to feed the large-scale spells.

“The barrier and the spell that forces teleport outside the wall are already in full working order, the two detection spells and the undead field are missing. But I’m not sure that will be enough for a victory guaranteed.” Athos spoke, recovered enough to move without his head throbbing in pain.

“Any idea what we’re up against? You went out hunting the scouts, did you find anything useful?” Athos asked as he and Emilia headed for the control room. The line of undead that was here has visibly dwindled, most returning to their jobs, such as forging weapons, building barricades in the inner area of the fortress, and keeping the prisoners Athos took alive.

Athos knew it would be impossible to keep an invading army outside the city, so the skeletons were building barricades and roadblocks between the few buildings outside in preparation for urban warfare.

The prisoners were being kept alive in cells as Athos was too busy to deal with them, but before long he could finally experiment with them. Seeing the court mages working in sync as if they were a single being inspired him greatly and he couldn’t wait to begin testing.

“All the scouts knew was that the army might take a little over a week to reach the stronghold, but the size of the army and the different troops are still a mystery. The kingdom doesn’t allow low-ranking troops access to this type of information, to avoid information leakage.” Emilia spoke, pulling Athos out of his reverie.

“Then we only have one more week to prepare, as it will still take a day to finish feeding the large-scale spells.” Athos began to think about countermeasures as Emilia entered the control room.

“Master, I have an idea that might help, but I’m going to need almost every hive hawk for that.” Emilia spoke from inside the control room and Athos signaled for her to continue. The hive hawks were an invaluable tool to him, so it would take a great plan to make Athos yield them.

Emilia’s idea was simple. She wanted hive hawks to fly high in the sky and attract storm clouds. This region didn’t snow because they were very close to the center of the continent and the clouds hardly passed through the mountains, but the queen could use wind magic to attract the clouds to the fortress.

It would take less than 12 hours for the hive hawks to reach the nearest mountain and a few days to lure the clouds to the fortress. Hawks could carry the cloud during this time, turning it into a storm cloud.

The idea seemed incredible, especially since there were few ways to defend against it. The clouds would be too high for the mages to do anything about and the few air-affinity mages wouldn’t be able to cover the entire army. Spells and magic items that allowed flight were expensive in mana, so they wouldn’t do either. But there was a problem.

“How can we guarantee that the lightning won’t hit our own soldiers?” Athos asked. The idea sounded a little suicidal and unpredictable to him. Although it was exactly the kind of plan he would suggest.

“That would be true if we attracted an already charged cloud. What we’re going to do instead is use magic to charge a cloud from the start with our mana so the lightning charges our energy signature. It’s like mixing your mana with an element pre-existing to control it.” Emilia explained, convincing Athos.

“This is amazing! How did you think of that?” Athos asked after trying and finding no major flaws in Emilia’s plan. Mages could still cast a large-scale spell to defend themselves, but it would still serve to keep most enemy mages busy and for a long time, as the lightning would not disperse after a single shot.

“I would love to take credit for the idea, but I didn’t think of it. It was a strategy used by the wind elder. He is very active in the kingdom of Tivan, in the far north of the continent. He besieged and destroyed a city of beast people. using this tactic.” Emilia explained where the idea came from.

“I see. It’s going to be a really awesome weapon when the battle starts.” Athos gave the go-ahead for her plan and asked through the link, ‘Does anyone else have any idea how to face the enemy army?

A new weapon would be awesome, but two would be even better.

‘I have, boss. Could you give me some of those corpses you brought with you? I could create massive amounts of parasitic venom out of it and bathe weapons in poison. Most of the human army are ordinary soldiers and a single splash of my poison would be a very painful death sentence.’ Treevor spoke, still lying on the ground despite having recovered enough to move.

He feared that approaching Athos, the latter would find another task for him to do.

The corpses had been heaped in a corner of the fortress and a coffin of death spell was cast on them. A gigantic cover of black ice froze the accumulated corpses, preventing them from decomposing.

The darkness also preserved the corpses, so an ice mage only needed to renew the layer of ice and the corpses would remain fresh.

‘I still haven’t been able to practice necromancy, so corpses are useless for now. Take as many as you need. How long is your poison able to last before it loses its effectiveness?’ Athos agreed with his idea.

‘I haven’t had time to test all the changes on the willow yet, but I assume it’s a day before it loses effectiveness. I will prepare the poison when the army starts to approach, as it is enough to pile all the corpses in one place and pour a drop of the poison and it would devour everything. Try to separate at least 100 corpses by then, boss.’

‘I will send some of the skeletons to separate their corpses.’ Athos spoke. ‘Now stop pretending you’re still in pain and join us.’

‘How do you know?’ Treevor asked in horror, but his body rose anyway.

‘We spent the last few hours working ourselves to exhaustion together, only to recover and start all over again. I’ve already calculated how fast your mana regenerates.’ Athos replied.

“You already know everything that needs to be done and you don’t need me here anymore. Even if I keep regenerating my mana and feeding the control room, it won’t make much difference in the end.” Athos spoke up after Treevor joined them.

“What do you plan on doing then?” Emilia asked confused. There wasn’t much to do in the fortress, after all.

“I’m going to do some experiments on the live prisoners and the corpses that Treevor won’t use. I have some macabre ideas I want to put into practice.” Athos grinned evilly, his black teeth looking like black pearls and causing the undead they saw to shiver, though they should have been incapable of shivering.

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