Chapter 306: Magic crystal cannons
As soon as the grand duchess of Helon Duchy had departed, the previously dispersing fog slowly gathered once again. The sunny sky was shrouded by an inky cloak so black that one couldn’t see their own fingers. The Helon soldiers who’d been rigorously pushing the cannons, were so scared that they couldn’t help but shriek.
A shadow dashed erratically back and forth within the pitch black darkness. Terrifying, desolate screams echoed from the places where the shadow had glided past. These shrill screams would start up briefly before being abruptly cut off. The soldiers had been fought on the edge of death many times in their lives, so they quickly understood what it meant for the sounds to come to an abrupt end.
The screams of those not reconciled to their fate were isolated by the darkness. The thick dark fog hid the brutal slaughter that was happening. When it completely dispersed, more than forty bodies lay on the ground. Each had died with their neck pierced through by a sharp weapon.
Six crystal cannons, each five meters tall and six meters long, displayed vivid colors after the fog had cleared. The crystal cannons were refined from magic silver and a variety of other exotic metals. Their barrels were engraved with obscure, microscopic magical arrays. The silver-gray crystal cannons were so heavy that they couldn’t be moved easily.
Black glossy spots sparkled like stars that were appearing together with the sunlight. Along with the glossy ephemeral sheen, stiff and heavy bodies appeared one by one out of thin air next to the crystal cannons. Sixty some zombie warriors took careful control of the crystal cannons. Divided into six teams, they began to push the cannons down the bald mountain.
The magic crystal cannons had been created in an ancient style, making them sturdy and heavy. Hauling them up the mountain was quite difficult, so it naturally didn’t take much effort to push them down. The six magic crystal cannons were now pushed back down to the mountain’s foot using less than a tenth of the time through the combined efforts of sixty zombie warriors.
Of course, these extremely large and expensive magic crystal cannons weren’t protected only by those dozens of toiling soldiers. The guards who protected them from a further distance were still trapped within the dark fog. When the thousand plus Helon soldiers at the mountain’s foot saw the magic crystal cannons that they’d just pushed up with much effort quickly roll downwards with the help of their adversaries, they immediately knew that there was a problem.
Not waiting for the thousand plus soldiers to react, the ground at the mountain’s foot suddenly split open, forming a gully with a large rumbling sound. The six expensive magic crystal cannons rolled downwards one by one. The gully was very deep and narrow. Even after waiting some time, no sounds of the heavy cannons hitting the bottom could be heard from the gully.
Mission accomplished, the sixty zombie warriors vanished one by one amidst a black shimmer under the dumbfounded gazes of the soldiers at the mountain’s foot. Only the deep tracks left by the rolling of the magic crystal cannons proved that they had indeed existed.
“Sir lieutenant, what… what do we do?” A captain looked helplessly at his lieutenant, asking helplessly as he glanced at the gully that was quickly closing up.
“Inform Her Lordship the Duke! The six magic crystal cannons are worth six hundred thousand gold coins. Our lives are finished if we can’t find it!” The lieutenant looked terrified. He had initially planned on ignoring everything to run away. However, thinking of the cruelty that the grand duke was capable of as well as his parents in Helon City, he secretly prepared for his death instead.
As the two talked, the gully on the ground miraculously closed up after swallowing the six hundred thousand gold coins worth of magic crystal cannon. This incredible scene happening right before their eyes, as if everything was returning to normal, was both shocking and slightly calming, actually dissolving some of their inner fear.
In the sky above the mountain, Helen Tina returned to Benedict Sackville’s side with empty hands. The feathers of the Fire Phoenix danced, offsetting Helen’s dazzling beauty even more as she rode in on the phoenix.
“What happened? Nothing out of your expectations, right?” Benedict asked indulgently as he gazed at perhaps the most difficult prey he’d encountered in his life. Even though Benedict was already middle aged, his elegant and noble intellectual temperament, coupled with the charisma of a mature man, were a fatal attraction for countless normal women.
“He ran away. It was an evil necromancer.” Helen Tina relaxed her face into a subtle smile. She didn’t hold back her smiling countenance, her tone slow and gentle.
“So it was just a cowardly necromancer. Hehe, a minor character unrelated to the big picture, he shouldn’t have any impact to our plan.” Benedict secretly weighed the information and didn’t comment much on the matter. He casually asked, “When will the magic crystal cannons arrive? I really want to see these despicable invaders blown to bits under their bombardment.”
“They are halfway up the mountain and will soon appear. I’ve spent a lot of money to buy these six magic crystal cannons from the Brut Merchant Alliance thousands of miles away. Their power has been tested, you’ll definitely see blood blooming like roses.” Having destroyed an entire small forest in one test shot, Helen Tina could imagine the scene of her enemies’ flesh and blood spewing messily in her head. She was so full of expectations after having gone through all this fire and blood to reach this point.
“Lord, Lord Duke, it’s bad, things are very bad!” The captain from the mountain’s foot hurriedly scrambled over and shouted his report loudly with a terrified face.
“What happened?” Helen Tina frowned, extremely displeased in her heart. She shouted at the lesser captain who’d disturbed her good mood.
“The six magic crystal cannons have all disappeared!” The captain was extremely horrified but had resigned himself to articulating the truth in fear.
“Wha… what?” Helen Tina was momentarily stunned as her spirits tumbled from the peak of satisfaction to the bottom of a deep abyss. She couldn’t adapt to this kind of sudden reversal in fortune. As a result, she didn’t realize that her usual graceful voice had become shrill.
“Some zombies pushed the six cannons down from the hillside, then a crack appeared on the ground and swallowed them all. The crack then closed up and the ground returned to normal. This is the truth!” The captain hung his head as he quickly described the sequence of events. He didn’t even dare lift his head to look at Helen Tina’s eyes right now.
An enormous fireball shot out, violently consuming the captain. Helen Tina’s face was covered in a layer of frost as she screamed tragically. She rode the fire phoenix to the back of the mountain, her fury billowing to the skies. The phoenix flew quickly, surrounded by dancing embers. Benedict was certain that the soldiers responsible for transportation would face great suffering.
“Lord Duke, what should we do now? Do we still need to defend this small mountain?” After Helen Tina left the bald mountain, a soldier standing tall next to Benedict with a straight posture and darkened face asked in a low voice.
Shaking his head, the elegant and relaxed expression on Benedict Sackville’s face vanished. His face turned stern as he barked, “This battle is purely a waste of troops without the magic crystal cannons. With no rewards to speak of, we naturally won’t be engaging in this confrontation anymore. Let’s go, we will immediately withdraw from this mountain. You only need to inform Kabbah of Helon Duchy, I think he’ll know what to do.”
Nodding, the soldier took his leave without another word and issued orders to retreat to high ranked officers.
While Benedict Sackville was certainly pursuing Helen Tina, he was also scheming to swallow the Helon Duchy at the same time. By nature, Benedict Sackville was a duke interested in nothing but profit. He wouldn’t expend his own power solely in the pursuit of romance.
With the withdrawal of Narsen Duchyl in addition to Helen Tina’s departure, the Helon soldiers also seemed to realize that the situation wasn’t looking good. After some parlaying, the commander of the Helon army decisively issued a retreat order. The soldiers from the two duchies defending the mountain valley withdrew as quickly as they could under a rain of arrows.
The blazing fight had fizzled out as quickly as it’d been ignited. Three thousand corpses had remained behind on the bald mountain after the battle stopped. The two enemy duchies who had painstakingly waited for the Helon army to emerge from their city, now saw their chance as the soldiers cleanly withdrew. Their leaders instantly commanded the troops to go around the mountain and chase down the armies of the Narsen and Helon duchies.
There were only three hundred soldiers from the Edmond and Bonton duchies left to clean up and scavenge the remnants of the battlefield on the mountain.
The majority of troops had withdrawn after half an hour. The three hundred soldiers cleaning the battlefield suddenly felt day turn into night as the sky was gradually covered by a thick layer of black clouds. As they gathered items off the corpses, the soldiers looked up at the green-black cloud layer in the sky with a head full of befuddlement.
The three hundred soldiers had only just completed the cleanup and collected all of the weapons and armor into five big piles when, much to their terror, the previously dead soldiers started to slowly writhe and stand up in grotesque postures.
Three thousand corpses all over the place stood up and immediately surrounded the three hundred soldiers cleaning up the battlefield. Under the Canopy of Necromancy, the three thousand corpses didn’t spend too much time to turn the three hundred soldiers into more of their own.
With now over three thousand stiff, resurrected corpses properly lined up in formation under Han Shuo’s evil manipulations, the undead army advanced towards Helon Duchy. Han Shuo arrived at the exact place where Benedict Sackville had been standing. According to Troda’s memories, Han Shuo successfully dug his way underground and found the wealth that Troda had prepared for his children and mistress.