I became a legion lich

130 Corrupted large scale spells

Athos and Treevor spent the next 5 days in hell. They worked non-stop for a single second. Athos conjured a corrupted barrier and let his body keep it active and robotically corrupted the mithril plates, his mind nearly shutting down at how tedious the task was.

His body would have run out of energy very quickly if not for the vampiric touch draining the mithril’s mana. The metal was rich in world energy, even more so than the corrupted willow sword and 1/10th of the energy was more than enough to fill it.

Treevor was even more efficient than Athos, the corrupted willow conjuring up a great barrier of corrupted mana while his arm continually absorbed vast amounts of world energy corrupted. Athos taught Treevor the vampiric touch and the latter used the skill on the vines, draining several mithril plate at once.

Court mages also crowded into the room, as it was difficult to physically move the mithril without wasting all the work. They worked with precision, timing, and speed that would scare even an elder of the order of magic into every mithril plate.

The biggest difficulty in creating large-scale spells was reconciling the different conflicting energy signatures into a single item. Different mages also had different forms of runesmithing, even though they use the same technique. Each mage was unique and adapted spells to best suit him, even if unconsciously.

Skeletons didn’t have that problem. Their similar energy signatures allowed them to work nonstop and cover each other’s flaws, where they would normally have to stop what they were doing until the mage corrected their mistake, or risk wasting all their work.

Even though the number of mages dwindled, the process flowed so smoothly that the overall result was superior to what originally existed, leaving plenty of energy for one more spell. The mage skeletons split into smaller groups to speed up the process, causing Athos to panic for a second until Treevor reassured him.

“Most of the energy spent when casting spells on a large scale is spent preventing everything from exploding with the conflicting energies, but that’s not an issue here. Most mages barely had time to forge a single rune before the process was over. It’s much more efficient to split them into different teams to get the work done.”

“Usually it would take almost a month to finish the job, but we can finish it in 6 days if we work non-stop.” Treevor spoke in wonder at the timing of the skeletons and the myriad possibilities.

.....

Athos didn’t know this, but the greatest weapon of the realms these days was large-scale spells, as their destructive and defensive power was on another level. If they could get their hands on or create their own large-scale spells with such efficiency, it would be an amazing weapon.

The mages started to run out of mana after some time of non-stop runesmithing so Athos and Treevor directed the energy they were absorbing from the mithril plates to them, refreshing them to the apex without them having to stop working.

A surprising discovery they made was that hive hawks could act as intermediaries, so Athos could transfer world energy to them which would then transfer to court mages or any skeletons within reach.

It couldn’t transfer mana directly between them, as despite the similarities, their signatures still weren’t quite the same, but world energy could be transferred freely between the skeletons now.

The enchantments that court mages were runesmithing were barriers of corrupted mana, air and earth detection spells, forced teleportation, and finally, the field of the dead. Treevor taught the runes to the court mages, who had no problem adding one more large-scale spell now that they had plenty of energy to work with.

Alone, each enchantment would cover at most a few meters, but once they were joined, they could cover the entire fortress and more than 500 meters around it. It would have been impossible to create these enchantments without the right ingredients, but the mithril had already been imbued with all the ingredients beforehand.

As the sun went down on the 5th day, Athos and Treevor finally finished all the mithril slabs, falling backwards as their minds felt like they were going to explode. The court mages were even worse off, but Athos forced them to keep working anyway.

The two remained sprawled on the ground for approximately an hour before the court mages finished their work and rose to their feet, knowing their work was not done yet. They moved to the control room again, where Treevor conjured up a small field of the dead and sealed off the room, draining all energy from the walls and ceiling.

The concrete naturally tried to absorb world energy and absorbed the corrupted energy. He just needed to keep the undead camp active while the court mages worked.

“Couldn’t you have done that from the start with all those mithril slabs, saving us so much headache and whole days of work?” Athos asked suddenly and Treevor froze in place.

“Oh.” was all he said in response, a silent dark tear of frustration running down the black skull, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it sooner.

The truth is that it would be impossible to use the idea of Athos, but tired minds have not realized this fact. Treevor would have to keep an expensive spell like Field of the Dead active for a full 5 days, the time it took for court mages to finish enchanting everything, even working at full speed without pause.

“I swear I’ll kill you for this.” Athos made a promise and watched in silence as the court mages worked. All the court mages worked at the same time this time, the control enchantments were much more difficult than usual.

After the court mages have finally finished their work, Athos can turn off death vision to admire the job well done. The pedestal was rebuilt using earth magic and the stone fragments with mithril dust.

The entire room glows like obsidian, dark runes all over the room. The pedestal was approximately 1.30 meters and was kept as simple as possible, as the mages were in a hurry. The pedestal was enchanted to be the only way to power and control large-scale spells once they were activated.

“Have the skeletons put the death mithril plates back in the order the court mages order. I don’t know if there’s a specific order, but I don’t want the whole thing to go wrong now that we’re so close.” Athos ordered and the skeletons moved to obey his orders.

‘Speaking of which, where is Emilia? I understand her not hanging around when I was just corrupting metals, but it’s weird she hasn’t shown up until now.’ Athos thought suddenly, trying and failing to get in touch with Emilia. She was far enough away that Athos could not feel her.

‘Does anyone know where Emilia is?’ Athos sent a question through the mind link to all the skeletons inside the fortress.

‘While you were busy, flying monsters that we assume to be familiar began to appear and we spotted several scouts approaching the fortress. We imagined that the nearest fortress would be investigating us, so Emilia and Caio pursued them saying that they wanted to have an idea of what was happening and how much time we still have.’ Astrus responded instantly.

‘How long has it been since she left?’ Athos asked worriedly. The loss of Emilia would be a huge blow to him and the entire army, as spies and assassins are in short supply. There are a few scouts and fast-attacking troops, but no one comes close to the power of those two.

‘It’s been two days since she left, but no need to worry, my lord. Emilia continually murdered patrol units and her skeleton soldiers came to the fortress. We have almost 100 new skeleton soldiers and almost the same number of horses.’ Sevenus appeared in the conversation, reassuring Athos.

He had felt the life force building up as he was corrupting the mithril plates, but his mind was practically off and he ignored almost all external stimuli.

‘Well, let’s hope she’s okay and keep getting ready.’ Athos ordered as he watched the skeletons get to work. The skeletons first placed the boards that connected the control room and continued down the floors. Just below the pedestal, there was a hole with the same dimensions as the death mithril plate.

There was a hollow wall underneath the plinth that the skeletons broke while removing the plates and they put the plates back in place. Sevenus and other earth mages conjured the surrounding stone and held the plates together, preventing them from moving while closing the walls.

The same happened underground in all four cardinal directions. The plates were buried 3 meters below the sewers, a real headache for the skeletons who had to excavate all this. The death mithril slabs continued until they reached below the walls, where they rose 90o until reaching a height of 4 meters inside the walls.

The plates formed a perfect circle around the fortress, but one thing was missing for the full-scale spells to be complete. It lacks energy to activate the whole thing. Athos had exhausted almost everything to safely remove the plates and it would take a fresh flush to activate them.

‘All ready?’ Treevor asked inside the control room, the corrupted willow reduced to human size. It took over 3 hours of work to put all the death mithril plates in place and fix the floor and walls.