Bro, I'm not an Undead!

1309  Giving Peace (1)

'Feral friend…?'

The word made Elita stop. For a single moment, it seemed as though she forgot where she was.

There was only one person the individual behind the netted orifice could have been referring to. To Elita, she might have been dead. She cared for this person's fate – deeply – but probability and possibility had muddled her hope. Somehow, she felt ashamed, half because she hadn't come here for Revia's sake, and the rest because…

'She's really here?' Elita asked herself.

Skullius noticed the look on her face. He had heard what the old fossil behind the net had said. Common sense told him that the individual referred to was someone Elita loved; he imagined it was the 'sister' she mentioned.

"Elita…" He said. His voice brought the former Paladin Champion to her senses.

Elita put on her resolve.

"Sorry," she said and gripped tight her two swords as she looked at the approaching Paladin Champions. "Please, Skullius. Would you allow me to take care of them myself? I… I want them to bring them peace with my own blade. I'm sure they never agreed to their corpses being used like this."

"I understand," Skullius said and he drew back. He folded all four of his arms behind the lead grey nimbus he wore. He doubted that Elita would need his help at all.

He instead focused on the old geezer. He could see his figure well enough even if he couldn't quite sense the life from it. Rather, the life energy was very thin. The old geezer also seemed very weak. He kept coughing nastily and an affliction was on his skin; it all made Skullius suspicious.

'It seems Elita was spot-on, after all,' he thought.

This whole time, he had been itching to use his [Legion Eyes] to get to the bottom of everything happening. He wanted to use the Andori on the old man too, but he felt he should leave him to Elita as well.

To Skullius' surprise, Elita did not seem to intend to use her Voided Death Essence in this battle. The golden light of her Divine Blessing, Peerless Spirit, consumed her body as she readied herself.

 The Blessing allowed her to reinforce her strength threefold, to heal others and to expel foul sources of contamination from herself and external targets.

The effect of the Blessing almost seemed visible on the current Elita as her body bulged slightly in her dark armour.

Before she was whisked away to the great void, Elita had been a Master with a purple core – quite a powerful expert. However, while her Stage and mana core remained the same on her journey off-world, her physical stats had grown staggeringly and she had acquired a massive number of skills.

Quite like how mana and souls were universal concepts that went beyond a singular world's power system, so was the fact that repetition led to mastery.

Through rigorous experiences, a body could learn new abilities and grow. Skullius, for instance, had learned [Mana Sense] in Deadmanland just because he had been infatuated with the idea of mana.

In any case, the current Elita was comparable to a peak Transcendent Stager in terms of physicality.

Elita gazed at one of the reanimated Paladin Champions. She was a tall woman with a rather muscular body. Boils of a greenish-red hue climbed onto her skin and thickened. They spread grotesquely, dancing their way even through her eyes.

They did the same for the rotund Champion beside her. He was shorter than her, with slicked back white hair that gave him a considerable amount of distinction, but the boils took away that attractive trait.

'Both their Divine Blessings are problematic, but I better deal with her first,' Elita thought and… BOOOM!

In an instant, she had smashed the tall woman back into the wall. She then followed a fraction of a micro-moment later with the swipe of her sword to behead her.

The head came off clean right as the edge of the Realm rank Prime katana Elita had bit into it.

"Hahahahaha! Struggle false Champion!" the geezer screamed with a horrendous cough.

Elita frowned. After slaying the first Champion she was already heading for the second, but…

'Damn it!'

She was paralysed. Her body had simply stopped moving. The other Paladin Champion rushed her with incredible speed right then. His figure billowed with mana, then Aura, then…

…!!!

Skullius frowned.

A cloud of some diseased, genuine Divine energy pooled out of the Champion right when he manifested a great warhammer of pure energy in his hands and smashed it into Elita. There was resounding crash that made the triangular room jump.

Elita was sent flying. She knocked into the wall hard, still paralysed. The rotund Champion was on her almost as soon as she was planted into the wall, his warhammer turned to a flail. He was fast, faster than the Master Elita had known him to be months ago!

She didn't allow herself to receive a second hard blow, however. Even if she couldn't move…

Silver Perfect Aura rose from her body and fashioned itself into an intricate figure before the flail knocked into her. It formed a Genuine Incarnation shaped exactly like Elita herself with impeccable detail!

A kick to the rotund Champion's wrist killed the momentum of his attack and an overhead punch from the Incarnation sent him flying down to the floor.

Skullius was surprised. The way Elita reacted just now despite being unable to move…

'She's used to fighting opponents who can suddenly split into two – soul and body – when cornered. Divines. Even though it's just a Genuine Incarnation, she's mastered using it like a projected soul,' he thought and then chuckled inwardly. 'Or is it perhaps that Quintess, Listafelle and Suzamete copied the mechanic of the Broader Existence and applied it to Aigas' power system?'

The rotund Champion landed with grace right before the beheaded body of the Fourth ranked Champion.

Elita narrowed her eyes as her Incarnation floated to the floor. She watched the disembodied corpse. Its middle and index fingers were coiled around each other. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Elita cursed.

The corpse was using its Divine Blessing, Divine Hand. The gesture it was making was the requirement for one of its abilities, she knew. With the gesture made, the Champion could restrict the movements of any one person in a hundred-meter radius completely. However, while this ability was in use, the Champion couldn't use any other ability of the Blessing or even her skills.

Skullius noticed the correlation between the finger gesture and Elita's condition too.

He was… amused.

'What a coincidence. It works like my technique in the War Body,' he thought.

The corpse of the Fourth Paladin Champion suddenly pushed itself out of the wall and collected its head. Boils rose from the stump of its neck and eagerly connected to its head, connecting the two seamlessly.

'I should have known,' Elita thought and she glanced at Skullius. 'But I'll end this soon enough.'