Volume 1: Hell-Grade Lord World - Chapter 148: One Side of the Battlefield

Blown to bits just like that?

This turn of events startled Gu Chen as well.

However, the vampires, ghosts, and death knights had all managed to escape. Among the ordinary undead, there were still between one and two thousand survivors. Treading over the corpses of their own kind, they charged head-on toward the Tengguang.

"Huanade!"

At Gu Chen's command, Huanade stepped up immediately.

He directed the guards and troops inside the Tengguang, engaging the undead in direct combat.

Yet, the Tengguang suffered from one major drawback: they lacked high-tier, elite combat units.

No one could block the charge of the death knights.

Huanade could only rack his brains, using scarecrows and straw assassins to stall the death knights.

Death knights were different from ordinary knights; the strength of standard knights lay entirely in their momentum during a charge. When a knight was at a full gallop, they were at their most formidable.

Death knights, on the other hand, focused on dual-phase combat. Their execution strikes were their true source of power.

The assaults of the straw assassins failed to eliminate many death knights; instead, a significant number of the assassins were counterattacked and slain by the death knights.

Fortunately, Gu Chen released the venom-bee flora right at that moment.

Though it was a Level 2 summoning spell, this entity possessed the ability to devour enemies, functioning much like some sort of man-eating plant.

Most importantly, Gu Chen could cast venom-bee flora in vast patches. As long as his mana reserves held out, he could summon as many as he desired.

Just as he released the massive wave of venom-bee flora, the charging vampires crossed paths with them.

Before they even encountered the death knights, the venom-bee flora swallowed the vampires whole. Because the consumption was instantaneous, the vampires lacked even the time to react before being entirely consumed.

At that exact moment, the death knights charged in.

The venom-bee flora, having just devoured the vampires, were temporarily incapable of consuming other life forms and could only spit out venomous bees to attack the enemy.

Yet, the death knights were clad in heavy armor; how could they possibly be harmed by such bees?

Consequently, the death knights lashed out with their blades, cutting down every single stalk of venom-bee flora that blocked their path.

Just as they prepared to resume their charge, Gu Chen cast another spell.

This time, Gu Chen conjured several black holes directly into the ground.

This was the same tactic he had previously used against the dam. Combined with the corpse-eating vines, it could thoroughly devastate the underground terrain.

Gu Chen's expectations were modest: he simply wanted small sinkholes to appear in the earth.

Regardless of their status, death knights were still mounted combatants, and their steeds maintained a ferocious speed during a charge. One could easily imagine the outcome when horses galloping at high velocity plunged suddenly into these small pits.

The death knights, flush with the triumph of cutting down the venom-bee flora, tumbled straight to the ground as they surged forward.

The trailing undead arrived right on their heels, trampling over the bodies of the fallen death knights as they rushed toward the Tengguang.

"Holy Light Magma, deploy!"

At that juncture, Gu Chen released a fresh batch of Holy Light Magma.

The location where they were summoned happened to land precisely upon the fallen death knights, successfully forming a barrier before the advancing undead horde.

"Elven archers, loose!" Observing the battlefield, Huanade issued crisp orders without delay.

The elven archers' arrows arced over the Holy Light Magma, raining down upon the shambling corpses behind them.

The Holy Light Magma clung to the death knights, preventing them from rising to their feet. Stripped of their steeds, death knights retained formidable combat prowess, and the Holy Light Magma was by no means a match for them in single combat. It often required three blobs of Holy Light Magma to bring down a single death knight.

However, Gu Chen's placement of the Holy Light Magma served a purpose beyond merely engaging the death knights.

The intense flames generated by the Holy Light Magma were the true objective.

Upon their destruction, the pools of Holy Light Magma would detonate in a self-destruct sequence. Each explosion blasted nearby undead flying through the air.

The highest casualties among these were, naturally, the death knights.

The two forces clashed fiercely about five hundred meters away from the Tengguang.

Gu Chen and Huanade took turns issuing commands, tightly maintaining control over the situation. Whenever a flaw appeared in one's directives, the other immediately patched the vulnerability.

This cohesion was precisely what the undead lacked.

While those undead possessed a relatively large number of undead heroes, the majority of them lacked the capacity to command large armies.

Hero status notwithstanding, they were essentially little more than slightly stronger ordinary soldiers endowed with a higher degree of independent consciousness.

Faced with such a crisis, even if these heroes wished to organize the undead troops, they would inevitably bicker over who should wield authority over the soldiers.

This was entirely understandable.

There was only one undead city, yet it housed an entire mausoleum of heroes continuously churning out new undead commanders. Every single undead hero yearned to command hundreds or thousands of troops, but where were they to find such vast numbers of undead soldiers?

Furthermore, even if such numbers existed, they lacked the resources to sustain them.

That undead city was merely a Level 5 municipality, and it was hardly renowned for the sheer volume of its undead forces. When factoring in the residential space occupied by the undead heroes themselves, the population of actual undead soldiers shrank even further.

If an individual undead hero managed to command three to five soldiers, it was already considered a generous courtesy.

Exercising genuine control over an undead army was an absolute impossibility.

At present, these undead heroes attempted to exploit the chaos to seize control of the troops. The mere formulation of such an intent provoked immediate intervention from their peers, as none were willing to let anyone else poach their pitifully meager retinues of soldiers.

Consequently, despite encountering such an opportune moment and witnessing the genuine disorder among the undead troops, these undead heroes refrained from deploying forces; instead, they trailed behind the undead horde, joining the frantic charge.

This dynamic granted Gu Chen and Huanade even greater windows of opportunity.

Bit by bit, they mended the breaches in their defense.

Despite the low tier of their troops and the severity of their losses, Gu Chen and his forces managed to hold the line.

Meanwhile, Lister had already closed the distance toward the lich.

The lich had taken note of Lister leading the charge.

A hint of a disdainful smile flickered within his eyes.

Gathering all the venomous clouds and noxious mists previously unleashed upon him by the acolytes, the lich conjured a towering gateway composed of swirling green vapors behind his back.

As this gateway materialized, the lich unhooked a thick, red-leather-bound spellbook from his waist and began to chant.

Sensing the situation, Lister instantly realized that the lich was preparing a major spell. He lunged forward directly, determined to disrupt the ritual.

Yet, at that moment, the acolytes and skeleton archers—having exhausted their utility—served as cannon fodder, throwing themselves directly into the path of Lister's forces.