Acid magic—a branch of necromantic arts under the withering essence discipline—lacked the immediate devastation of fire or lightning, nor did it boast the wide-scale horror of poison or mind-affliction spells. Its true strength lay in persistence. Once it took hold, the magic was nearly impossible to dispel. And then there was the agony.
The pain of flesh dissolving under corrosive enchantments shattered focus, reduced warriors to screaming wrecks. Their cries, their melting faces—these were weapons in themselves, sowing terror in those who witnessed them.
Acid arrows were among the simplest and most practical of low-tier dark spells. Most necromancers conjured the acid into arrow-shaped projectiles before launching them at enemies. Waled, however, had refined the method.
Instead of molding the acid into arrows, he etched corrosive sigils directly onto ordinary shafts. The efficiency was staggering—with the same mana expenditure, a single necromancer could enchant dozens of arrows at once, multiplying the lethality of his skeletal archers.
Clever, the watching vampires murmured.
But Waled's opponent remained defiant.
So what if I lost a few troops? Black Knights will still carve through those brittle spearmen like parchment.
He was wrong.
The skeletal phalanxes held.
Their long pikes formed an unyielding thicket, breaking the Black Knights' charge. True, the front ranks shattered under the impact—but far fewer than expected.
Murmurs rippled through the spectators.
"How? Only five rows lost?"
Black Knights could rout entire human regiments in a single charge. Yet against Waled's formations, their momentum died after mere seconds, leaving them trapped in a forest of spears.
And then the skeletons attacked.
Their pikes couldn't pierce enchanted plate—so they didn't try. Instead, they hooked the curved barbs of their weapons around the legs of the undead steeds. A coordinated wrench—bones snapped. Horses collapsed. Knights crashed to the earth.
Disoriented, surrounded, the Black Knights fought on foot. Their greatswords carved through skeletal soldiers in wide, brutal arcs. A single horizontal slash could cleave three brittle warriors in half—especially when they struck with the flat of the blade, crushing bone rather than cutting it.
Yet for every Knight that rose, a dozen more pikes thrust at them. And then—
A gasp.
A spearpoint punched through black iron plate.
Not deep enough to wound the Knight within—but the fact it pierced at all sent a shock through the onlookers. Three millimeters of spell-reinforced steel, breached by ordinary iron.
Waled's lips curled.
The secret? His necromancers.
While the enemy had focused on flashy destruction, Waled's sorcerers had woven the simplest of enchantments into his troops' weapons: Harden. Sharpen.
Two of the most basic augmentation spells—and yet, layered across hundreds of blades, they became devastating. The pikes that had bent under the Knights' charge now held firm. The spears that had shattered now bit deep.
Most novices ignored support magic. They wanted fireballs, lightning—something visceral, immediate. Waled was no novice.
By the time the last Black Knight fell, the battle's outcome was inevitable. Waled reformed his forces into three compact phalanxes and advanced. His opponent's remaining forces—four hundred Tomb Guards and fifty necromancers—were outnumbered seven to one.
Yet the boy across the table didn't surrender.
Mother said failure after effort is forgivable. But surrender without struggle? Never.
He rallied his troops.
This, at least, would be a fight worth remembering.