"What should we do?" Even though both bloodlines running through her body were top-tier, her willpower was formidable, and her training in tracking and counter-tracking was superb, Natasha still had a healthy sense of caution when facing an unknown species of high-level undead creature in this extradimensional space where spiritual power and willpower were suppressed. She turned to Lucian for his opinion.
In matters of auxiliary support, Arcane Magicians had always been renowned for the sheer diversity and specificity of their spells — far superior to knights and clergy in this regard.
Lucian pulled out a monocle and fitted it over his left eye, concealing it. Then, strange images bloomed within his left pupil — magnetic fields swirling, electrical currents spawning — as waves of electromagnetic radiation pulsed outward from his eye and body in every direction, occasional signals bouncing back.
Having cast the fifth-tier spell "Eye of Lightning," Lucian now functioned as a walking radar.
"Beyond three hundred meters, the electromagnetic feedback becomes chaotic and weak. So this is the peculiar suppression of this world? It almost feels like electromagnetic interference." Lucian said to Natasha through their mental link. "But never mind — we keep moving forward. You maintain the appearance of being on alert and searching, but finding nothing. Let it follow us closer. We don't have much time."
"Understood." Natasha responded softly, gripping Pale Justice at her side as she angled toward the forest along the mountain path, alternating her feet in quick, steady strides.
After casting "True Knowledge" on his own right eye and on Natasha as well, Lucian pretended to cast spells at random in a seemingly aimless search.
After more than a minute of rapid movement, Lucian and Natasha locked eyes, exchanged a slight nod, then suddenly surged forward. Long afterimages trailed behind them as they arrived at the end of the mountain path in a whoosh, preparing to turn left.
Abruptly, Lucian halted without warning, his right hand pointing at the ground — sixth-tier spell, "Earthquake"!
The terrain within a hundred meters lurched violently, undulating ripples spreading outward as tree after tree swayed and tilted.
High in the dense, verdant canopy of one enormous tree, a figure wreathed in black light was caught completely off guard and tumbled down.
The black luminescence surrounding its body seemed capable of absorbing most electromagnetic waves, including visible light, creating a peculiar form of invisibility. Had Lucian not cast True Knowledge on both of them, they would likely have neither seen nor sensed it even now.
Natasha lunged forward in a single great step, crossing dozens of meters in an instant. Pale Justice swept upward in a devastating rising slash.
The dark figure was a humanoid monster with a white tiger's head, radiating an aura of profoundly malevolent death energy, as though it could directly command lower and mid-level undead.
It was remarkably agile. Midair, it twisted into a roll to evade Natasha's slash. Black claws sprouted from its hands like daggers, slashing toward Natasha, while spatial fluctuations shimmered around it — it was on the verge of activating a spell-like ability.
But then its rolling motion suddenly distorted. Its entire body plummeted downward, as if throwing itself directly onto Natasha's blade.
Against such an evil creature, Pale Justice operated at the level of a legendary weapon. The mere thrust of its tip, combined with the creature's own downward momentum, pierced it clean through. The black light shattered instantaneously, and its body began rapidly decomposing.
"It's a high-level evil beast spirit — specialized in concealment, tracking, and assassination," Natasha said through the mental link as she withdrew her sword. "Did you invent this spell yourself? I've never heard of any high-level spell capable of interfering with gravity to such a degree."
"Yes — an astrology spell of my own design, 'Gravity Disruption.'" This was a spell Lucian had stumbled upon while organizing his knowledge and independently deriving special and general relativity over that long process, a means of manipulating gravitational forces.
Natasha had merely been curious and didn't press further. "Let's get out of here quickly. If we get entangled by one of Kongs's high-level undead servants again, we may very well end up facing a legendary mage. Watch out!"
Before she finished speaking, a massive boulder came hurtling out of the forest — a full size larger than the one that had crushed the mud house back in the village — whipping up violent winds and carrying terrifying force.
Natasha stepped forward with her left foot, twisted at the waist, and swung Pale Justice in a lateral strike against the side of the boulder, deflecting it slightly off course and slowing it just enough. In that same moment, Lucian freed his hand and fired a beam of eerie green light that struck the boulder.
The ray and the boulder were mismatched like a toothpick against a tabletop, yet the boulder violently disintegrated, dissolving into countless motes of sickly green light.
"Woooo!" From deep within the forest rose a wail of absolute anguish and suffering so profound it made the soul tremble and the mind reel.
Natasha held Pale Justice upright before her as a shield. The dread-inducing, soul-affecting death cry split around them like a tide parting on either side, bypassing her and Lucian entirely. The wild beasts caught in its periphery collapsed into panicked trembling.
A giant crashing through the trees — standing a full five meters tall — smashed through trunk after trunk, carving a path through what had been solid forest.
It was a death giant with skin of dark gray bordering on black, a pair of sinister orange-yellow eyes, a bald head with pointed ears standing upright, and filthy nails on both hands that glowed with that same orange-yellow hue. Most distinctive of all was the cloud of swirling souls that orbited its body — it was from their mouths that the wail, nearly matching the power of a banshee's shriek, had erupted.
"At least seventh-tier — a Death Giant!" Lucian's encyclopedic knowledge of monsters allowed him to identify this non-undead servant. "The souls around him are of two kinds. One type is harvested from slain enemies — Pale Justice can counter those. But the other type is the Guardian Spirit that each Death Giant becomes after death, passed down through generations. They don't belong to the category of evil undead, so Pale Justice likely won't perform at legendary level against them. Moreover, they can't be directly killed or purified — the only way to destroy them is to kill the Death Giant itself."
"Be careful of its Shadow Strike and Flame Strike."
Through the mental link, he rapidly conveyed the Death Giant's general condition to Natasha.
Natasha gripped her sword tightly. "Can you suppress it somehow, so I can attack its body directly and end this fight quickly?"
After so many years of development and with the aid of equipment, knights and mages held an overwhelming advantage against monsters of the same tier. So even though the Death Giant's strength far exceeded Natasha's — even with Pale Justice in hand — she felt not the slightest fear. She only worried about losing time.
"I'll use Undead Demise to suppress the Guardian Spirits." Although several other spells could achieve the same effect, Lucian opted for the Corona of the Sun. When you have the right tool, you use it!
In the span of a single second, the two had finished communicating. Natasha arched her back like a crouching panther, coiled and ready to strike.
But at that very moment, a layer of silent, frozen black-and-white-gray shimmered over Lucian's body, leaving him rigid and rooted to the spot.
"Damn it — now, of all times!" Natasha couldn't help but curse under her breath. She shot forward, positioning herself to block the Death Giant. If she still couldn't prioritize correctly at a moment like this — helping Lucian recover instead of engaging the enemy — she wouldn't deserve to call herself a knight.