“No… is there nothing we can do?” Camilla whispered to herself. Her hands shook as anger and sadness washed over her in neverending waves. Even from the great height she was at, she could see in detail what was happening. 

Those militiamen were volunteers, and although they were technically military, most of them had bonds in the city. Compared to the more free-spirited hunters that sometimes lived nomadic lifestyles, the militiamen were citizens of the city and made their home there. Yet, they were falling by the dozens as time went on and the battle between the city and the undead grew more and more brutal as both sides adapted to each other's habits and styles.

She kept her eyes on Lucienne especially and her fingers twitched each time Lucienne fell in danger, even though not even she could do anything to save Lucienne when the need finally arose. Lucienne was too far away, and it was debatable if Victoria would allow her to help anyway.

Even though Lucienne suffered no lasting injuries, the same could not be sad for many other people. The undead tore off entire arms when they got a hold of someone on the ground, and by the time the man’s comrades managed to pull the undead off, it was too late. The amount of blood that was lost was fatal.

Other times, the unfortunate defender was literally trampled to death beneath the stomping feet of the undead, and Camilla had to press her hands to her lips to stop herself from crying out.

More than a third of the undead army had been wiped out, consisting of both lesser undead and greater undead, but the cost was steep. 

“Is this enough?” she asked, unable to watch any longer. “Is this enough for you? A third, and from the looks of it, they’re too absorbed in the fight to care about anything else. Is this enough death for you, Victoria? Mother?!”

She snarled the last word and Victoria flinched. 

A moment of heavy silence passed and finally, a slight nod of her head. “Yes… let’s go end it all. Follow me.” 

Victoria’s wings stretched wide and she took off with Ismelda right behind her. Biting back a few more choice words, Camilla took Kagriss’s hand and followed after Victoria, heading toward that infamous tower at last.

In total, there were seven of them, and the last three members consisted of Elise and her two guards. Over the course of their flight, Elise’s gaze shifted Victoria to Camilla, and then back again. She picked up speed to whisper into Victoria’s ear.

“What’s going on? Why does it look like your daughter hates your guts?” she asked, unaware that thanks to the wind, Camilla could hear anything. Her covert glance at Camilla was caught and met by Camilla’s angry eyes, and she quickly looked back to beg Victoria for an answer with her eyes.

Victoria sighed. “I did something unforgivable to her, and it’s mostly private so I can’t tell you until it’s all over.” She peeked at Camilla, seemingly aware that Camilla could hear her, but Camilla did not deign to return her gaze, instead staring at the trees passing below.

“Well, okay then.” Surprisingly, Elise didn’t pry too much. “But still, try to make up. Nothing is irreconcilable… well, almost nothing. I hope that what’s between you is not one of those few exceptions.”

Camilla almost scoffed at that. She could ignore what Victoria did and just cut ties on account of what Victoria made possible, but to ask her to reconcile with Victoria was a pipe dream at best.

Kagriss squeezed her fingers, as if warning her to not say something, and Camilla glared at her.

“Just how impulsive do you think I am?” she asked. 

“Normally, not very, but who can be certain this time? Don’t worry. Think on the bright side of this, like how this’ll be all over soon and you’ll never have to think about this again.”

Camilla managed to let out a short “ha” at Kagriss’s joke. “When did you become a comedian?” she asked, and Kagriss shrugged her shoulders.

It didn’t take long to reach the tower, and soon they could see it in the distance. From there, it wasn’t long until Camilla spread her wings right behind Victoria and they let the air drag them to a stop where they hovered over the tower, looking down at the huge amount of undead that encircled the clearing in the forest.

Any assault on foot would have taken an eternity to complete as they fought past the remaining twenty thousand undead that had been missing from the main army. And according to the reports, there were some fifty total greater undead missing as well, and here at the tower was the most likely location for those fifty greaters to be hiding.

As Camilla began to scan those undead below her for unusually large mana signatures while keeping in mind that it was entirely possible for those greater undeads to be hiding themselves as she tended to do, one of the mana signatures on the ground shone as brightly as the midday sun on her senses.

Her entire being screamed to her about the incoming danger, but she had been so absorbed in her sensing that her reaction was a step too slow. 

“Milla, watch out!” Kagriss cried. She twisted her hand and locked onto Camilla’s wrist instead and pulled her to the side just as a huge, but narrow cone of death magic came shooting up beside her, blasting through the spot where she had been.

No— the blast wasn’t directed at her specifically. The cone had been wide enough to catch all seven of them in its radius, but all of them managed to get away in time so no one got hurt.

Camilla quickly shook herself free of her stupor and narrowed her eyes. “That strength… Kagriss, that’s a lord-class skeleton lich, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

At the reply, Camilla pressed her lips together in annoyance. “A lord-class… why now?”

“Enough talk, they’re coming,” Victoria warned. “Spread out a bit.”

Heeding her words, Elise and her subordinates and Ismelda spreaded out. From below them, just over a dozen figures rose up into the sky to meet them. Foremost among them was the signature that Camilla had sensed firing upon them: the lord-class skeleton lich. Behind him were eleven jack-class skeleton liches.

Stuck on the ground with no way to participate in an aerial battle were nine more jack-class skeleton warriors. Camilla ignored them and focused on the incoming threats.

The incoming undead stopped once they reached the same height as Camilla and the others where it looked Camilla over with its glowing eye sockets. Then, it turned its attention over to Victoria and nodded to her.

Camilla’s eyes twitched at that show of disrespect, as if she wasn’t even worth talking to, but she calmed herself down and smothered her anger in her belly, telling herself that it was just a trick to get her angry.

Victoria nodded back at the lord lich. “You’ve been here a while, haven’t you? You were the one to destroy all my probes.”

“Very easily spotted,” the lord lich said in a raspy voice that was filled with mirth. Camilla swore that it was grinning, though she couldn’t prove it since the lich had no skin or flesh.

“Hmph. If it’s you, then I suppose that such a conclusion is unavoidable. I assume that you’re here to stop us from entering the tower?” Victoria asked as she examined the lord lich, trying to analyze his strength.

Camilla took the time to do the same, scanning the eleven jack liches in front of her. As her gaze and senses swept over one in particular, she felt a pang of familiarity, and she couldn’t help but take a closer look. Her near-eidetic memory did not fail her this time and her eyes widened. “Gulthra!”

The jack lich looked up at the mention of his name and their eyes met. The deathly flames in his eyes flickered with surprise. “You… you’re that newborn warrior from the fortress. When did you…?”

His question trailed off, his surprise and confusion sounding genuine. 

Camilla couldn’t fault him since when they fought, Camilla had just evolved for the first time and was weak, and she didn’t reveal any of her undead abilities in front of him. Now, her strength and status as a lord-class zombie knight was on full display, so it was little surprise that Gulthra was shocked. 

“How did you attain that strength so quickly?!” Gulthra managed to finally choke out.

“What’s wrong, Gulthra? Do you know that woman?”

Gulthra turned and bowed deeply to the lord-class. “Yes, my liege. I first met her a few months ago in the fortress. She had recently evolved, and as we were exterminating an incursion, she interrupted and aided in the deaths of…”

The lord-class lich flicked its hand impatiently and Gulthra bowed lower. “Forgive me. In just a few short months, definitely less than a year, she has evolved from a lesser to a lord, as you can see. She recognized me from our encounter back then.”

At last, the lord-class understood what Gulthra was saying now that he had put it in no uncertain terms. It once again turned its attention on Camilla with newfound interest. “Rapid evolution… she will make good material for your research, won’t it?” 

“Yes, my liege. She and that lich beside her.”

“In that case, obtain them. Eliminate the rest.” The lord-class waved its hand again and the undead sprang into action, spreading out as Camilla’s group had, and magic gathered in their hands.

Victoria gasped. “No way… eliminate the rest? You mean us?” she asked. “Don’t you think you’ve mistaken something?”

“What have I mistaken?”

“Do you really think that just you and eleven lackeys can take on all seven of us?” Victoria burst into laughter despite herself. “You must be dreaming… or has years of staying in that dusty fortress filled your skull cavity with cobwebs?”

The lord-class lich’s eyes glowed brighter as it was getting angry, although its voice indicated no chance in emotion, as raspy as ever. “We will see.”

And with that, it pointed at Victoria, and a ray of black light shot at her, tracing a line through the air in an instant. However, Victoria just snapped her fingers at the same time as the lord-class lich lifted its hands, and by the time the black light reached her, it suddenly bent around her and fired off into another direction.

Battle exploded as the remaining combatants scrambled to find an opponent. Naturally,  Camilla and Kagriss stuck together, and facing them was Gultra and three other skull liches. The mother and daughter pair in the form of Elise and Ismelda took on four other skull liches, and the two Violet Blossom guards that accompanied Elise fought the remaining three.

From afar, the battle looked like a series of red, black, and gold fireworks had just been set off in the sky simultaneously as the air became saturated with exploding magical spells, leaving hazards that everyone must be weary of. 

Of all the battles, however, the most one-sided one was between Victoria and the lord-class lich. As the lord-class continued to launch spell after spell at her, Victoria neutralized them all one after the other almost effortlessly.

When the lord-class finally spoke again, its voice was a lot more strained compared to before. “Brat…” it rasped. “You are skilled. What is your name?”

“What happened to your manners?”

“...I am known as Yazartho…”

“And you may call me Victoria, I suppose.” Victoria flicked her wrist and a massive sphere of undead magic that was launched at her was captured by a blanket of red mist and smothered. The new-red sphere became smaller and smaller until the original magic was completely gone, as if consumed by Victoria’s spell. The red sphere then flung itself toward Yazartho, who dodged it and destroyed it with a series of black needles. 

The explosion of red mist that had the combined power of Victoria’s and Yazartho’s magic pushed it back and sent it flying through the air. Suddenly, it disappeared.

Victoria tilted her head and then raised her left arm, just in time for a black halberd made of magic to crash into a red shield that hovered over the skin of her arm. Red crept down the black halberd and Yazartho had to let go of its weapon and back away.

“Just what are you?” it asked, eyeing Victoria wearily. None of the arrogance that it had spoken with earlier remained, leaving just a flat, raspy voice. “I knew that you were the strongest of the bunch, but for you to be this strong…”

Victoria shrugged. “Just know that I was alive long before you were created. Be careful who you call a brat.” Her eyes narrowed and finally, she went on the offensive, having finished analyzing Yazartho’s strength. She spread her arms and a hundred spears of crystallized blood grew out of thin air in front of her, and then with a flick of her finger, she sent the spears speeding toward the lord-class undead.

It was like the needles that Yazartho had produced earlier, but formed faster, made bigger, and flew quicker. Every aspect of her magic was superior. Her magic was superior.

Although Yazartho tried to counter it like Victoria had once done to its magic, it could not, and it was all it could do to escape toward the ground where there was more cover it could use to avoid those deadly spears that Victoria directed with elegant movements of her hand.