Boom!
The courtyard was still in a standstill between Felix and the S-Ranks, who were too scared to take the first step, and Aaron, who was about to make his appearance. The roof of the palace suddenly blew open, and a dark ball of compressed darkness—the same one Felix had witnessed in the boss room—ascended from the opening.
It instantly threw the courtyard into darkness, followed by the entire city. Lucy's holy radiance was no match for it and was swallowed by the darkness. Lucy forcefully spat out black blood like she'd been poisoned, and fell from the height where she flew down to the city before anyone could register what was happening. She landed on the roof of a building, which gave in to her weight.
"Lucy!" Chelsey screamed in shock and was just about to run to her aid, when another figure rose from the opening of the blown-off palace roof. Lady Morwen ascended, following closely below the ball of pure darkness and clutching in her palm, with a passive expression on her face, Athenae's bloodied neck and half-limp body.
Everyone was stunned and frozen in place as they stared at Lady Morwen's levitating figure like a deer in headlights. But Lady Morwen didn't spare any of them a glance, as she saw they were too weak to grab her attention, but strong enough to be Generals of her undead empire.
She smiled sinisterly as she wondered if their class systems would accompany them to the afterlife as well and enable them to grow infinitely by killing everything that had life in it and contributing immensely to the army of the underworld. This would be a great fit that would ensure her a high position by the side of the Dark Lord in the underworld.
The Sages would learn they made a huge mistake by sending their disciples to her.
Lady Morwen had indeed been scared when she heard Sages had arrived at the city with all those she had given Sahuagins for safekeeping—vital ingredients for the blood ritual. Not one, but eight of them, which surprised her as Sages moved and worked alone. This made her realize this was that time of the year when young candidates were chosen from the other world to train to be Sages, and these were probably part of a field training with one or two Sage instructors.
But then, she was even more surprised after seeing out of all of the otherworlders present, the highest level individual with them was just at Lv3? Could that be the Sage instructor? No. It was impossible for a Sage to spend over a decade in Vastoria and still be at Level 3. The weakest Sage should be no less than a Level 5. Now that only meant that out of the eight of them, there were no Sage instructors. Just a bunch of Sage candidates who seemed to have turned against themselves.
"What a joke." Lady Morwen scoffed in disbelief and looked above at the full moon now visible in the sky but partly covered by the dark clouds of the night. It was time. She carelessly dropped the half-dead body of the Sage candidate she was holding onto and stuck her hand into the blob of darkness from below to pull out a black short sword as dark as the night with a black hilt. The sword seemed to have the same effects as the ball of darkness—absorbing the light around it—and if one stared at it for too long, they'd start to feel lightheaded. Any more, and they would lose consciousness.
She grabbed the hilt with both hands in a reverse grip and raised it before her with the tip pointing at her chest. Then she began muttering the incantations for the first part of the blood ritual.
[Ding! You have been afflicted with fear!]
Felix watched all this in silence as his mind ran on overdrive. Thankfully, Athenae had taken out all the Lich Knights before Lady Morwen had got to her, but the city has been plunged into darkness and the undead army has been set free to roam the city and inevitably come at them.
Felix didn't mind the undead army coming at him as they'd only be falling to their deaths if they got too close or attacked. But he was more interested in what Lady Morwen was doing holding the sword to her chest. Was she planning on plunging it into her heart to kill herself? Then somehow resurrect as an undead—which would make much sense for her to have to be an undead type to be capable of performing a necromancy ritual of such a level capable of turning an entire city into an undead army.
Felix could feel his heart beating loudly now against his chest. Not from the Fear debuff, but from just the thought of Lady Morwen transforming herself into an undead, which would subject her to the **[Life Surge]** skill bug. As long as she was within range, her health would inevitably plummet to replenish his until she dropped dead.
At that moment, a torrent of sword beams flew towards Lady Morwen just as Aaron teleported to the far end of the palace roof and performed a unique sword technique. He didn't stop there. He took out his gun as well and fired multiple bullets at once which began replicating themselves infinitely till they resembled a swarm of mosquitoes following closely behind the torrent of sword beams.
The other candidates were all slack-jawed as they watched in awe as bullets and beams soared the sky and quickly closed the distance to shred Lady Morwen to pieces—or so they thought.
Dark tendrils suddenly began shooting out of the ball of darkness. As many as was the number of the mosquito swarm-like hail of bullets and torrents of sword beams, to intercept each and every one of them. As soon as the tendrils made contact with the bullets and beams, they were harmlessly absorbed by them, until every single one of Aaron's attacks was gone from the sky.
Everyone was dumbstruck watching the attack that even Felix wasn't so sure he could dodge, or worse, survive, effortlessly taken out by the ball of darkness with its ominous tendrils. Then they looked from that to Aaron to see his reaction to his attacks getting nullified.
Felix was also looking at Aaron to see what next he might have up his sleeve, and Aaron indeed looked like he had a few more tricks up his sleeves when his stunned expression transitioned to a smirk. Just that. The next moment Lady Morwen screamed in pain as three bullets pierced her back and seemed to have hit vital organs.
The ball of darkness with its tendrils seemed to share her feelings and emotions as they shook violently and spat out the hail of bullets and sword beams they had absorbed. But what everyone didn't understand was why out of the four-digit numbers of bullets and sword beams the tendrils had absorbed, it was only a few bullets and eight sword beams that had been shot back out to the target.
Aaron laughed amusingly as he saw this and teleported out of the way of his reflected attacks to the courtyard grounds. "The ball of darkness is only a superior version to that of Sekolah The Maw Crusher that has no offensive attributes, except this one absorbs and reflects our attacks." Aaron said to the hearing of everyone.
"B—But… your attacks?" Chelsey asked in confusion.
"Illusions. Laced with a little bit of magic to make them seem real." Aaron explained. "I only shot eight bullets and eight sword beams. Five of the bullets were replicated into multiple illusions to hide the invisible three with homing capabilities targeted for her vitals." He smirked as he basked in the expressions of awe and praise the S-Ranks showered him with.
Then Aaron turned to see what Felix's face was like, when he noticed that Felix was no longer in the courtyard and was long gone while everyone was distracted. Just like Aaron had disappeared during the battle with the soldiers at the gate.