Chapter 2: New Century (Epilogue)
**Chapter 294: Undead Siege**
Amidst extreme physical and mental agony, Shirina was transformed by Angus into a special type of undead: a Priest of Suffering.
A malevolent undead being born from intense pain and overwhelming hatred. When death stilled Shirina’s heart and extinguished her life force, her soul, lost and bewildered, was summoned by Angus and returned in an undead form.
Priests of Suffering retain their memories from life and are driven by their former consciousness. They obey the commands of any dark entity that transformed them into an undead.
It is worth noting that a Priest of Suffering possesses a unique trait: the more pain they experience, the more potent their necromantic power becomes.
For it is known that:
Undead do not feel physical pain.
Undead without memories rarely experience mental anguish.
Angus precisely exploited this.
He deceived Shirina, destroying everything she held dear.
Finally, he sought to enslave Shirina, making her continue to harm living beings for him. This would inflict profound, soul-deep torment upon the conscious Shirina.
However, she could not escape Angus’s control. The more living beings she harmed, the greater her suffering; the greater her suffering, the more powerful and invincible she became, forming a vicious cycle that ultimately benefited Angus entirely.
“A perfect creation~”
Angus looked with satisfaction at the young girl in front of him, who was weeping, covering her face. Her skin, once radiant, had turned a deathly, ashen-gray. Her hair, no longer soft and smooth, was dry and brittle like straw.
The girl’s beauty was also gone.
Her features were corrupted by plague, and what she wept was foul pus, not tears.
This appearance, terrifying to normal humans, was considered quite striking by the undead.
“Now you’ve become even more beautiful, Shirina…”
Angus reached out and pulled down the girl’s hands from her face. The loose skin peeled away with a gentle tug along her wrist, revealing crimson muscle fibers and withered blood vessels.
“Wuuuuu…”
Priest of Suffering Shirina could only weep.
Her pitch-black eye sockets were empty, showing no eyeballs, only pus and blood trickling down her cheeks. Even without seeing her eyes, Angus could feel the intense hatred radiating from her, and this hatred was continuously strengthening Shirina’s undead power.
“That’s it, Shirina. Maintain your hatred for me. Look at this city… look at these undead… Keke…”
Not a single ray of light could be seen on the horizon.
A deathly shadow cloud had obscured the sun.
In the dark city, only the anguished whimpers of the dead could be heard, along with pairs of soul flames flickering like ghostly fires.
Witnessing this scene, Shirina’s face contorted further, her resentment soaring.
“Next, we attack the Karari Royal Capital…”
Angus produced a very detailed map and studied it carefully.
This map was drawn by Shirina. It not only clearly marked the specific route to the Karari Royal Capital but also indicated the small towns and villages along the way. Beneath these towns and villages, written in delicate script, were notes on local customs, culture, and delicacies.
It was evident that she had genuinely wished to travel many roads and taste much delicious food with Angus, growing old together.
However, all of that had now turned to dust.
And this detailed map had become Angus’s final gift for his invasion of the Karari Empire.
He transformed into a colossal Ghost Dragon, its tattered wings beating once before it soared into the sky, letting out a hoarse, evil roar.
In Triumph City’s reservoir, a small piece of Ghost Dragon toe bone, drawn by some unknown force, shot up into the sky and flew towards the distance.
In a farm field in Starfall City, a bone ring surrounded by undead also floated up, trailing a grayish-green aura of undeath…
…
These mediums, left behind by Angus to transmit the aura of undeath, all returned to their designated locations at this time.
Simultaneously, they attracted all the undead from the five major cities.
Ultimately, a vast Undead Legion was formed.
This Undead Legion primarily consisted of Plague Demons and Zombies.
Certain beings, bitten and torn apart by the undead on their invasion route, were transformed into terrifying Ghouls. Slain knights and warriors became Undead Warriors, while a few bitten mages became Liches capable of summoning Skeleton Soldiers…
In the first year of the Winter Reign.
Less than a day after King of Winter led his army to repel the elves and their Empress, fulfilling their agreement and securing Emerald Fortress,
the Undead Legion suddenly attacked Karari City.
The portion of King of Winter’s soldiers left in Karari by Xi Wei, along with the entire garrison of the Karari Royal Capital, found themselves in a desperate struggle against the onslaught of the Undead Calamity.
The undead attacked the Karari Royal Capital at night.
Beneath the city walls of moderate height, countless Skeleton Soldiers erupted from the ground.
This was the first wave of the Undead Legion’s assault.
The endless Skeleton Soldiers emerged from the earth before the Karari Royal Capital, comprised of those who had died and been buried there over the past thousand years.
Under Angus’s power, these skeletal remains rose again and launched suicidal attacks against Karari’s laughable city walls.
The pitch-black night was starless and moonless, but the densely packed, eerie Undead Ghost Fires beneath the city walls sent shivers down the spines of the garrison.
The creaking of bone against bone created a constant sound, more pervasive than the chirping of frogs in a pond during summer.
On the city wall.
Clemon, stationed in Anlius, solemnly handed a letter to a Griffin Knight.
This letter was a plea for reinforcements to King of Winter.
As a Champion Knight,
Clemon had a vague premonition that the origin of this undead force was not simple.
Even though these Skeleton Warriors were merely the lowest-level undead units, capable of being fought two-to-one by any adult human, the existence that could revive such a massive number of Skeleton Warriors at once could not be a mere undead mage or a great Lich.
At the edge of the night sky in the distance, a deathly shadow cloud, darker than the inky blackness of night, was already covering the entire horizon.
That was the main force of this undead army.
The mastermind behind it was likely hidden within that deathly shadow cloud.
An Undead Calamity of this scale was even more terrifying than the one encountered previously at Dragonflame City.
Three separate batches of the plea for help were dispatched.
Two were carried by Griffin Knights, and one by a Great Knight riding a Dragon Blood warhorse.
To ensure foolproof success,
Clemon also instructed the several Star Maguses remaining in Karari City to begin constructing a positioning spell array and a communication array, although this would take some time.
He was never one to boast or act recklessly.
When faced with such a situation, his first thought was to immediately seek aid from King of Winter.
The Karari Royal Capital must be defended.
If the undead were to occupy the main city, leveraging the defensive advantage and using Karari City as a center to spread outwards, then the entire North Continent would be engulfed in war. Countless lives would be lost to the tide of undeath, and the Undead Legion would grow ever stronger.
