Chapter 528: Cost

Sage didn’t bother replying to the crazy woman, the only response she got was another flurry of bolts flying in her direction. She still looked like she was trying to finish absorbing the green ghost, so Sage went back on the offensive. Since she’d arrogantly thrown aside her staff, she no longer had a weapon in hand to block the flying projectiles. Sage didn’t fall for any of her baiting, nor was he interested in letting her finish whatever sort of powering up she was doing. He maintained the stranglehold of the Law of Corruption upon her strange aura to keep it from spreading while shooting at her incessantly.

Hei Bai screeched at the incoming crossbow bolts and then batted aside the molten bolt tips with her hands. Her skin sizzled where the molten materials struck it, and little droplets made it through her blocking and left burning gouges on the surface of her skin. After screaming a third time, she grit her teeth and a wavy bladed dagger appeared in her hand. She used the kris to slice open her palm and blood started dripping onto the ground. At the same time a huge pile of bones appeared in front of her and Sage’s crossbow bolts buried themselves ineffectually into the bone mound. Many of them were shattered or broken by the empowered bolts, but the pile did its job in protecting Hei Bai for a while.

Sage started to circle around the woman again to give him an angle without the bones in the way, but as he was moving he saw the result of her actions. Somehow the blood she spilled seemed attractive to spirits. Within moments hundreds of tiny wisps and small ghostly beings rose from the ground. They flew towards her, wailing and moaning. They swirled around her, looking like they wanted to consume her, but somehow they couldn’t approach any closer than a few yards from her. It was like she had an invisible force field that kept them all perfectly at bay.

By the time Sage lined up another clear shot, he was already retreating again. The spirits that Hei Bai had summoned had been put to use. She chanted some strange words and then she slapped the bone pile and the cloud of spirit beings flew into it. There was a low rumbling and then the clatter of many bones knocking against each other. Like a macabre xylophone or wind chime they made some very spooky noises while the pile of bones transformed into a small army of unusual monsters. The pile was extremely haphazard, as were the collection of spirits that had been pushed to inhabit it. The resulting monsters were equally odd and mish-mashed.

Dozens of skeletal monsters were formed and each looked like a person had merely started picking up random bones and gluing them together until they vaguely took on the shape of a humanoid, two arms, two legs, a torso and a head; or a quadruped walking on four legs instead. A human spine and ribs yet with the skull of a wolf and the limbs from a big cat walking on all fours. There was another with the arms and legs of a human, yet with the skull, spine and ribcage of an oxen. Yet, those were only some of the most complete. Most of them had bones from dozens of animals, none of them looking to be a match at all, not even between their own limbs.

Well, at least they don’t have three heads and six arms at a time.

Sage had retreated merely so he could put the Blacksilver Pawns between himself and the horde of skeletons. Unfortunately, those monsters also made for an effective barrier for his firing and Hei Bai bought herself a few minutes of time and ruined his interruption plan, at least not without him revealing more of his tricks.

Since she wanted to mess around and buy time, then he let her. He was never afraid of a battle of attrition. While Hei Bai was over there finishing her absorption of the ghost, Sage started pulling out some of the tricks she had already seen him use in the past. Since she knew of them already, he didn’t feel worried showing them off again. He was only careful to keep the new ones in reserve. He pulled out a large wide mouthed cannon and started launching Formation Plates into the distance, creating a perimeter around the area to cripple her ability to run away. He also shot a few nets onto the crowd of skeletons to give his Blacksilver Pawns a large advantage.

Then a yellow light came from his hand and the ground beneath him started to shift and rumble. With his coaxing, a pillar of earth formed beneath him and he rose slowly into the air. Once he was brought a dozen yards into the air, he pulled out the crossbow again and started firing down at Hei Bai from his improved vantage point. She sneered at him and a half dozen of the skeletons hugged each other and piled up in front of her to act as a shield. With his new view, Sage saw that Hei Bai was now sitting down on the ground with her legs crossed. She had a look of concentration on her face and had to constantly fight the anger back to stay focused.

Sage harassed her for a few more minutes before he suddenly remembered something and then leapt off the pillar of earth he’d used the Sovereign Stone to create. He stomped on empty air and used Cosmic Traction to solidify the space. With the expenditure of Qi he ran on the air, ascending to a position directly above Hei Bai and staying well away from the terrible aura she was emitting. Sage revealed a devilish smile down at the focused necromancer below him.

Then a huge boulder appeared. It was dozens of feet wide, in a sort of flat plate-like shape.

Sage didn’t taunt her verbally, nor was he foolish enough to announce his intentions. Instead he just went directly to a vicious assault. Just like the last time they’d fought, Sage had smashed her body into a pulp beneath a giant boulder. Now that he was facing her again, he repeated the same tactic. He didn’t expect it to be very successful, but it would definitely rile her up. And from the way she was trying to control her emotions at the moment, Sage would love to interrupt whatever process she was in the middle of. He’d already failed with purely physical interruptions, but how about mental ones?

Just as he was hoping, the sight of a giant rock falling upon her made her cough up a bit of blood. Her anger couldn’t be suppressed and she screeched at him. Her body shook from the fierce energy she was channeling. Her scream was many times hotter than previously and the stone falling towards her was quickly converted into flowing lava. The burning lava fell onto her like a spilled floodwater, splashing onto the ground and flowing outward in all directions. The lava spread outwards and Hei Bai was still standing in the same spot, looking to be in roughly the same shape. Her black robes were sizzling, releasing a bit of smoke in places, but she looked largely unharmed. There was blood standing her lips and chin, but that had happened before the lava hit her.

Even if the stone itself didn’t hurt her, if the energy she expended to stop it wore her down, it was a win in Sage’s mind. He hopped back and forth in the air, and summoned out another giant stone from his Inner World to drop on her.

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