Chapter 436: The Hitman Walker’s Dignity

Although the gigantic hammerhead shark plushie did punch as hard as it had back in Marle, it was able to buy enough time for the Voidwalkers to escape.

The Giant Grandruler let out an angry bellow. It was almost overwhelmed by the desire to crush his enemies, using all his undead creatures. However, it was rational enough to realize that such a move would end up being a grave mistake. Hence, it ordered the undead to go back to capturing the humans’ cities. He remained at the destroyed black castle and summoned his vassals back.

However, only two returned to him.

Szackal, the leader of the zombies, who had been dispatched to finish off the Blacksmith Walker, was the first to return. Since its movement speed was low, it had not entered the Blacksmith Walker’s range when he self-detonated, so it remained alive. The second to arrive was the Grandruler’s strongest vassal, the Revenant Taamik. However, the other vassals did not heed the Grandruler’s call, including the one who had been standing closest to the Grandruler — the Vampire King. He had been MIA since his battle with the Huffing Piggies.

In the vampires’ defense, as creatures that are best known for healing themselves by sucking the blood of their enemies, fighting a bunch of moving suit of armors put them at a disadvantage, right from the start.

A dreadful realization had already dawned on the Grandruler. He quickly tried to sense the positions of his other vassals and found the Skeleton King locked in an endless fight with someone. The Lich King only had a strand of soul left; it would require a very, very long time to recover its peak state. The Grandruler’s most useless subject, Charnal, had been slain by the enemy!

‘The fact that my subjects are this incompetent is just depressing,’ The Grandruler thought in dismay. A question soon crossed its mind: who should act as its on-field general of the undead legion from now onwards?

The reason why this was important was that undead creatures were mentally handicapped. This was true of whoever leads them. It would be fine to have the undead creatures capture human villages and towns through sheer numbers, but that did not guarantee that they won’t fair badly against humans, who were really crafty.

Even the advantage of number possessed by the undead had significantly weakened, and this was the fault of the Grandruler itself.

The Grandruler’s strategy had been to first station different undead armies around the cities and towns of Isythre’s Southern Continent. Only after that would it let Duat merged with Isythre, using the map provided by the skeletal traitor that Baiyi had killed. When the two realms began merging, it would capitalize on the element of surprise to quickly annihilate the cities in Isythre.

Even if a few bigger, more guarded cities remained stubbornly, the eradication of all of the other minor cities and towns would mean that his the number of his undead armies would have increased greatly enough to target the more difficult ones. His would have his vassals surround one city at a time and attack it relentlessly, cutting down as many humans as possible which would weaken the humans’ manpower but increased the number of undead soldiers in the army. Lastly, with the Grandruler’s trump card, even if the humans threw everything they got into their defense, sooner or later they would fall before him too.

After capturing the entire Southern Continent and making it a part of the undead kingdom, the Grandruler would advance upwards to the Northern Continent and capture the rest of the states. In time, the entire Isythre would be his to rule!

It was supposedly a sturdy strategy with no loophole until an anomaly occurred—that human traitor had tried to use the Grandruler himself for the former’s personal vendetta as well as sending out a threat to the humans, causing them to be alerted to his realm and sending out an investigative team. If the team was composed of someone more normal, the Grandruler would not have such a headache, too… The problem was that this investigative team turned out to beso ridiculously powerful!

There were only six men in that team, and yet already two of his vassals were killed, one had been gravely decapacitated, his own base—the black castle—had been destroyed, the steps in his plan completely messed up, and much of the power in his trump card had been depleted. Meanwhile, the only cost the investigative team suffered was just one person who blew himself up—and he even took down another sizeable chunk of his army with it!

The war had just started and the Grandruler had already suffered such an embarrassing defeat. Instead of demoralizing him, however, it only served to infuriate him even more; It was only his own rational thinking that had stopped him from directing all of his armies to those annoying intruders despite his own fury.

After musing a little, the Grandruler finally said, “Szackal, you shall now preside over the frontline as my general. Since we had pulled our troops back to us just now, we had lost our best element of surprise. You should redirect our forces to smaller villages and towns where their defense is weak, so as to create more dead to replenish our army before attempting to conquer more durable cities. As for individual humans on the run… You can ignore them if you deem fit.”

Szackal nodded stiffly and turned towards the direction of the Skeleton King and the Hitman slowly as it dragged its feet.

The Grandruler facepalmed, produced the Law Fragment in his hand and sent Szackal away through it. If the Grandruler let it move on its own pace, who knew how many years would it take to finally reach its destination…

Then, the Grandruler turned to the Zombie King—who was staring at him with a senile, droopy, sluggish look—and commanded, “Taamik, you are to join Galthran as quickly as possible. Finish that intruder and return to me at once, as your most important objective is to protect me. By then, have Galthran lead the skeleton dragons to scout and destroy the rest of the intruders.”

Taamik drew out its snowy white saber and bowed respectfully.

The Grandruler sent him away via the power of the Fragment. Now, once again alone and aidless, the Grandruler remained in its gigantic form as a safety measure, standing tall and gazing into the horizon like a colossal watching over a skirmish from far.

It was then, not far from where the Grandruler was, a round boulder suddenly rolled over to another piece of rock. “Hey, check that out!” It suddenly cried. “You guys saw that thing in his hand?”

“Yes. A shallow observation suggests that it may be a Law Fragment, although I suggest so with a caveat of uncertainty. My confidence in my hypothesis is only bolstered by how heedful he wields and stores this particular object. Perhaps this is how our enemy managed to transport us right among of our adversaries?” A square-shaped rock replied. “Wresting it from him may be the key to return Hope to us.”

“Do we always have to bring the Fifth Walker into everything? We can solve this ourselves!” A pile of little stones nearby rebutted. “As soon as the Hitman sees our distress signal and hurries to join us, our powers alone should be enough to annihilate him.”

“Oh, you act like you’re some destructive force not to be reckoned with back during the simulation fight with the First Walker, but now look who’s hiding?” The round debris retorted indignantly. “What happened to that gigantic reaper, huh? Why did it change into some raggedy hammerhead shark plushie?”

The pile of stones replied quite exasperatedly, “Listen, missy. If your man is affected by a severe power limiter, what makes you think I don’t ?”

“Please, desist your juvenile in-fighting at once. Can you recall our enemy’s commands? He planned to capture human cities—exactly as I’d deduced, our enemy had employed an unknown method to directly conjoin this realm and Isythre. At this point of time, we are in both realms simultaneously,” the square-shaped rock quickly butted in, eager to stop them from their quarrel.

“Then there’s only one thing to do—we gotta’ stop it!” The round boulder declared. “If he succeeded in conquering Isythre, all of our work would be for nothing!”

“Hee hee, maybe that’s a pretty sweet dream come true?” The pile of scattered stones chuckled in an evil manner. “Of course, I was joking.”

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“Your sense of humor is appalling to all but yourself,” The square-shaped rock retorted.

By this point, it was quite clear that these three different rocks were the gathered and in-disguise Huffing Piggy, the Scholar Walker, and the Lich Walker.

The Lich Walker had surmised that the Grandruler sensed his enemies by using undead energy in the stead of psychic energy the living used, which was why normal concealment techniques were ineffective, hence it took to itself to design a territory to disrupt undead energy, combined with the Scholar’s very own disguising magic and Lady Assassin Walker’s concealment techniques, the three of them successfully hid themselves as rocks, rolling and crawling back to where the Grandruler was. It was then when they overheard the Grandruler’s conversation with the two of his vassals, therefore becoming privy to their enemies’ plans.

Thanks to the three’s combined effort, the Grandruler suspected nothing—he treated them as run-of-the-mill rocks among the rubbles.

“Look at him, defenseless… This is our chance, right?” The round boulder said a little excitedly.

“Don’t! Neither of us possesses any mean to truly hurt him; The body I inhabit now and its conditions mean I can’t fight him head-on,” The pile of scattered stones warned. “The best bet we have is to cast a large-scale devastating Forbidden Spell-type magic on him.”

The square-shaped rock could almost feel a tangible poke on the neck as the two other rocks immediately turned to stare at the former intently. “P-please, avert your gaze! I may know a few Forbidden Spells or two, but my specific ability to cast them is sorely undermined without the Book of Servitude! What are the odds that any of you had brought the necessary materials for such an exercise?”

“I did bring something that might fit your requirement, all borrowed from Hope’s Magus Lab,” the pile of scattered stones answered, chucking a piece of pebble to the square-shaped rock. Curiously, the pebble vanished completely when it came near the square-shaped rock as if it had sunken into the water.

“Very well, let me have a gander… Zounds! I did not expect rare materials to be available as well…!” The square-shaped rock cried out in shock. “Without fear of exaggeration—did you plunder Hope’s Magus Lab? Have you no concern that your deed would compel him to expose you to the Void for a month?”

“Bah, I think he knows better than to harp on something trivial like this, especially when all that is just a small portion of his hoard,” The pile of scattered stones replied. “Are you really that unaware of how silk-stocking he is now? Do you really think he chooses his sponsored students by the measure of money alone? Nah, money isn’t the only payment he accepts…”

“Mm, touche. Regardless, with these necessary materials, the probability of delivering these Forbidden Spells ameliorates greatly,” The square-shaped rock replied. “However, its success also hinges on the variable of time and sufficient cover on my activity.”

“Well, that won’t be a problem if the Hitman could just come over here already! Seriously, what is taking that fella so long?!” The round boulder exclaimed, puzzled.

The Hitman Walker was still embroiled in an incredibly frustrating fight with the Galthran the Skeleton King. It was not that the fight itself was practically hard to win, nor was the Skeleton King some worthy opponent with incredible strength or skills or techniques—the reason why it was such a pain to the Hitman Walker was that the Skeleton King just would not stay dead. The Hitman had disassembled it into a pile of broken bones numerous times, and yet it always found a way to reinstall itself…

The Hitman Walker had even tried melting the Skeleton King completely with intense combat chi, yet the crud always managed to nab some poor skeleton expendable nearby and resurrect itself through that soldier’s body. In fact, it was getting more and more obvious that the Skeleton King’s only real strategy was to die, rise, and repeat; The sole purpose seemed to be to trap the Hitman in this fight forever!

The Hitman Walker was, as expected, fed up. He was even more impatient since receiving his comrades’ distress signal a while ago because he thought it meant they were in grave danger and desperately in need of his assistance. Under the influence of both impatience and concern, he started to fight more and more rashly, which left enough openings for the Skeleton King to wound him twice.

“Hee hee hee, you are fast and you fit hard, Intruder. Your moves are flawless and exquisite, too. In so many other duels I’ve ever been, I can make sense and predict every single one of my enemies’ tactics and techniques by my third resurrection at most—but you! You bewilder me even now, Intruder. You’re an impeccable warrior!” The Skeleton King exclaimed, being one who loved to give credits when they were due.

“Seriously, do you even understand human language anymore? I! Am! An! Assassin — and a f***ing good one at that!” The Hitman Walker snapped, and in that burst of frustration, he smashed the Skeleton King into smithereens with his dual-wielding axes.

He turned to a direction to a distance and ran, hoping that that move would finally buy him enough time. Yet, even after using his concealment technique, he did not manage to flee long enough before the Skeleton King blocked him on his way.

“What a pain in my a**!” The Hitman Walker — who was not known for being patient — growled under his breath. He was about to vaporize his opponent with pure combat chi when he felt a sudden sting of danger coming from behind.

He ducked to a side, and narrowly evaded the blade of a saber springing behind him suddenly,

“Taamik? Why are you here?!” Galthran muttered crossly when its eyes caught the sight of the Revenant King behind the Hitman.

“I’ll handle him, fool. The Grandruler wants you to look for the other intruders,” The Revenant King replied with a cold, sinister voice. Due to the heavy-duty helmet it was wearing, it also sounded a little muffled.

The soul flames within the Skeleton King’s sockets blazed brightly for a while as if it was debating with itself. Then, it swung its sword at the Hitman, gotten itself severed completely into halves instead, and had its severed torso complained, “Why can’t that be delegated to the others? Why appoint me, specifically?”

“Dead,” the Revenant King answered curtly.

“I hark to my lord’s command, Taamik, but you know not who you’re dealing with. I don’t even think you can —” The Skeleton King collapsed onto the ground, its finger already pointing at the Hitman.

“Hmph!” The Revenant sneered coldly and leaped forward. Abruptly, a skeleton horse suddenly charged out from Taamik’s own shadow such that the latter landed right on its back.

With its horse, the Revenant’s speed improved greatly. In a flash, it caught up with the Hitman—who was just about to flee with his concealment technique again—and decapitated the latter.

It was such a swift blow, the Hitman did not even seem to have predicted it. On cue, his head popped out of his neck and soared into the air.

“Weakling,” the Revenant King halted its horse and sheathed its saber, watching the headless armor collapsing slowly onto the ground. Then, with a turn, it rode away.

It was a while after that when the headless body suddenly jerked up from the ground, its arms flailing around before grabbing the severed head and placing it back on top of the shoulders.

The Hitman made sure his head was secured in place and started sprinting.