The green smoke quickly overtook the running zombies toward Zarba's group like a living thing, its edges curling unnaturally like a group of coiling vipers, but Xin didn't waver in the slightest from the incoming spell that the necromancer unleashed upon them. Her hand holding steady around the golden staff, its purple crystals flaring as she swung it in a wide, horizontal arc as the magic circle materialized in front of her.
"Begone." She uttered a single word before a powerful gale erupted from the magic circle, howling like a great beast as the conjured wind hit the smoke head-on, blowing everything away in its path and scattering the green smoke into the jungle canopy as the leaves and tree branches visible dried up after the green smoke came in contact with them.
The zombies inside the smoke faltered, their feet skidding backward as the force of the gust sent them tumbling like discarded ragdolls. One particularly skinny zombified mercenary even flew away and hit a tree trunk so hard his arm snapped at the elbow—not that it was going to slow him down or anything.
And just from a single spell, Xin has effectively countered the necromancer's spell and stopped the zombies' charge for a moment.
Zarba didn't waste the time Xin had bought for him as he summoned more soldiers to hold the line in front of the zombies as fifty legionaries materialized before they quickly moved into a three-line formation on the road between Zarba's group and the zombie horde, their shields locking together as they pulled out their javelins.
"Hold!" Zarba ordered his summons out loud as he saw the zombies quickly recover and continue charging at them with screeching roars.
"Now!" When the zombies had grouped up enough, Zarba immediately signaled his summons to throw their javelins at the incoming zombie horde.
Fifty javelins get thrown as they cut through the air and fly towards the zombies that run face-first into the projectiles without any fear, and the javelins end up hitting more than dozens of them at once, reducing the zombies' momentum down significantly.
The legionary soldiers didn't even get pushback when the first wave of the zombies finally slammed into their shields, but with more and more zombies joining behind the first wave, the summoned units also started to get pushed back.
The red shield of the summoned units cracked as the zombies' weapons hit and scrabbled against the legionaries' first line with their full human potential strength that they were finally able to unleash after becoming undead. One undead mercenary even managed to wedge its head between two shields—only for a legionary soldier to pierce its eye socket with his short sword before he twisted the blade with brutal efficiency.
But the zombies weren't being called zombies for nothing, as the zombie was still moving even if a blade was shoved inside its eye socket; some of them were even trying to crawl under the shields, their teeth gnashing inches from the legionaries' greaves, but they got rewarded with a stomp to the head.
The zombies were very ferocious as they were banging on the shields and trying to climb over, but the legionaries' swords were hacking and stabbing at them and keeping them from breaching the formation for now.
The line was holding currently as the two sides locked in a game of reverse tug-of-war until Xin's staff pulsed and glowed with magic light again.
"Burn!" She uttered after casting a spell with her golden staff that was pointing in front of her as an orange magic circle materialized over the heads of the legionary soldiers holding the line against the zombies.
The orange magic circle then shoots out five bolts of flame that spread themselves horizontally towards the back line area of the zombies.
The firebolt spell wasn't quite as flashy as Xin's first spell, but its trajectory was precise, and its lethality was high as it exploded upon impact against the target zombies, igniting the necrotic flesh and the grease in their guts before an explosion erupted violently out of their torsos in flames and bone fragments like shrapnel.
The nearby zombies barely had time to react before the fire spread out quickly from the exploded zombies between them like a wildfire, their undead flesh proving excellent kindling, and within seconds, the front line became a writhing bonfire, their moans and screeching drowned by the crackle of flame.
If the summoned legionary soldiers were human, then it might prove difficult to hold the line of burning zombies back, but since they aren't, the heat from the flame is not going to faze them as they start hacking the zombies with their short swords.
Meanwhile, with a loud bang, the undead chimera on their left finally crashed into the legionaries' formation, its elongated arms smacking four summoned units away before the rest tightened their shield wall around the undead, forcing the monstrosity back through sheer weight of numbers, but the chimera pushed back while grabbing one of the summons and biting his head off as the summon burst into shimmering particles and faded away in the undead monster's hand.
"I'll go to take care of that monster." Seeing that the legionary soldiers will not be enough to deal with it, Zarba then quickly said to Xin as he gave her a pat on the shoulder. "You deal with the necromancer."
"Be careful, my husband." Xin nodded as the reincarnated prince got off the skeleton horse, already summoning a fresh battalion of legionaries to reinforce the dwindling shield wall.
Then Zarba pulled his black hood up and summoned ten Zar-Bros around him as he blended in completely with them before they moved towards the undead chimera with the white bows in their hands.
The moment her husband went to reinforce their left flank, Xin immediately felt the air shift—that telltale sign of mana gathering in one place for spellcasting.
Xin's amber eyes gleamed with magic light as she turned toward the treeline in the distance behind the burning zombies, where the witch's laughter could be heard between the trees.
"When are you going to actually do something, I wonder?" Xin called out her hidden foe, tracing her golden staff with her finger and a small smile on her lips, and then the magic staff flared in her hand briefly as she casually dispelled a surprise curse spell attempt on her from the necromancer with a snort.
"Hahaha, you are quite a capable one, aren't you?" The old witch finally responded as her cackle seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time until shadowy figures moved unnaturally out of the treelines before coalescing into the hunched figure of the old witch, her little bird skulls orbiting her head like satellites as her one green eye stared at the half-elf without blinking.
"Such talent, a little half-blood girl—how unusual," the necromancer mused to herself. She could feel that Xin is not some riffraff magician and might even be the Great One, but the slave tattoos prominently displayed on Xin's forehead and on her chest make the old witch feel regretful for the half-elf. "All that potential but still a slave? What a waste indeed."
"Hmph, you better be careful of your word," Xin huffs as she feels annoyed that the necromancer acts like she is a pitiful girl in a golden cage or something.
Xin has never felt her slave status as an inconvenience or anything bad since she even gave all of her existence to Zarba when he took her in from the darkness that was about to consume her and later on bound their souls together in an unbreakable vow that she will be with him forever, even in death.
"Open your ears and listen well, necromancer; I am not just any slave, I am the slave-wife of Zarba Altra Zigma!" Xin announced her slave-wife status with a proud expression before she waved her staff to her right as five different colored magic circles materialized in a cross formation on her right in the air.
The necromancer witch cocked her head slightly, her bird skulls swirling faster around her as she chuckled slightly; her cheap taunt seemed to not be very effective against Xin, who thinks her slavery was just a more special marriage between her and Zarba.
"Oh-ho, how touching, what a bond—the little girl has fallen hopelessly in love with the prince, has she? Hahaha, but let's see how deep your love is after I peel your soul from your flesh and bones!" The old witch said with a grin as her little bird skulls and her one eye glowed bright green.
Xin didn't waste breath replying anymore as the five magic circles pulsed and overlapped into each other before they spun into a kaleidoscope of one magic circle, and then she whipped her staff forward towards the old necromancer before, seconds later, a thin beam of light shot out suddenly from the five combined magic circles. The magic beam was going so fast that the air itself was screaming as the bright, concentrated light tore up a path in the air toward the visibly surprised witch.
Despite the speed of the beam, the necromancer's gnarled fingers twitched by reflex as her orbiting skulls flared, immediately forming a transparent magic barrier in front of her in time for Xin's magic beam to crash into the barrier and make it buckle violently as the concentrated light beam drained the mana of the old witch that she used to maintain the barrier very fast.
"Hmph, what a powerful spell…" The old witch staggered back slightly as she felt her mana go down quite a bit just from defense against Xin's seemingly casual spell.
"But this is not enough to defeat me…!" The old witch decided to avoid tanking Xin's spell as the barrier fizzled out like cotton candy in the water before the beam continued moving towards the necromancer unimpeded, only for the necromancer to vanish in a burst of black smoke, which coalesced into her solid physical form in another location.
"Tsk, hiding again?" Xin clicked her tongue as the old witch just vanished from her sight while she cancelled her magic beam spell that ate almost all of her extra mana.
'This is going to be quite annoying…,' Xin thought as she quickly cast some scrying around to locate her slippery enemy for the general location that the old hag might be hiding…