Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead
Chapter 870 - 870: Snap

The clashing of steel was loud, sounding out amidst flesh tearing, bones breaking and disturbingly warped barks and howls.

Robert was far from being amongst the strongest undeads of the vanguard at the moment, his martial skills were good, but his base physical attributes were nothing more than average, and his mana reinforcement below that- He made up for it with battle arts, and most importantly, with his hounds.

They were the entire reason why he, a prowling shadow without much distinguishing skills otherwise, had been sent out alone, using hounds was one of the core techniques used by members of his caste, it did not seem like much when compared to the abilities of their sister caste, the Nightbirds, but it was a very versatile skill.

And the livings were realising that it was a troublesome thing to deal with indeed, as despite having hacked up and torn apart many of them already, not even a single corpse was left inert on the ground, for the hounds were not real undeads, they had the appearances of corpses but they were closer to being golems or spirits, meaning that Robert could not run out of them as whenever he whistled, he did not call, he summoned.

Other prowling shadows would use an art to do so, but for him, only the whistling portion was an art, Loimos had indeed seen potential in him…

"Magical arts are pretty nice, aren't they? Being able to cast spells at a fraction of the energy cost, or even no cost at all! But they tend to take longer to pull off, basically impossible to use when having to constantly defend" Robert remarked as he ceaselessly swung at Eppie, having forced the quartet to split their attention after summoning different sorts of hounds back to back.

Eppie frowned, pushing back against his blade with her staff before stepping and sending a small wave of fire at the undead, which he blocked by using the same art that caused his blade to faintly shine, clearly, when it come to close-quarter combat, this particular battle art was his trump card, seemingly allowing him to reduce the strength of anything that entered into contact with his sword, Eppie found it strange how easily and swiftly he always activated it, not believing that such a powerful art could be activated with so little cost repeatedly.

She wouldn't have questioned it if it was Lady Syklon doing it, but Robert was clearly not what one would call a talent in the domain of battle arts, the few other arts he had shown so far had required obvious requirements to be activated, and hadn't even been that great.

Moreover, something else was worrying her, although she sensed the traces of an art being activated whenever he whistled, Eppie was definitely not sensing even a smidgen of art from the hounds themselves, which, to her, meant that they weren't actually created through an art at all.

"Hey, I thought your innate ability was just to share in the senses of your hounds, since when did that change into this?" she asked, since Robert seemed fond of running his mouth, the living thought that she might as well take advantage of it.

"Did I not mention it? Lord Loimos saw my buried potential, turns out my innate ability was far more than what I had thought! Instead of merely having to do with real canines, it could allow me to manifest my own and control many things about them! Just like how Lady Syklon saw your four's unused potential in battle arts…" bringing his blade down upon the Bo staff again, he rapidly backed off as a pillar of flame nearly erupted from below him.

For a moment, he stopped and stared at Eppie.

"I take it that so far, my attempts at using reason have not bore any fruit, that is a shame… Do remember that I tried to go peacefully about it" his stance changed completely, and the living sensed an impressive amount of arts coursing into his legs, a powerful, or a set of battle arts were being activated as a result of his changing his posture, and as lunged forward with a kick, the living instinctively focused on defence, the flat sole of his foot crashing right into her Bo staff, slamming it against her chest as the woman was thrown right against a tree.

'Ah shit… I think something broke somewhere…' making an ugly face, she moved aside as another kick came her way, the tree taking the hit for her and the poor thing partly exploding into a shower of splinters.

Rapidly manifested a fireball with mana alone, she launched it at the undead using her weapon like a bat, and Robert, whose foot had stayed stuck in the trunk for longer than expected, was forced to take it head-on by using his blade art to disperse the power of spell.

"Huh…" a gleam shone in the living's eyes.

"I see how it is"

The flames only burnt a little bit of the undead's dark attire, but it did not matter much, for she understood something valuable.

Which was only further confirmed as she saw her opponent assume the same stance as he did before once again.

"Robert, perhaps you should remember your roots and pay more attention to what your hounds are seeing?" she taunted him.

"I know very well that plenty are still kicking-" he was struck right in the neck by Cassi's Kanabo, sending him rolling onto the ground in a most disgraceful manner.

To share in the senses of his hounds, Robert needed to deprived himself of his own senses, so naturally, whilst fighting, he had not done so as even though he was no an undead, this part of his ability had not changed, and would render him without a single clue what was going on around him unless one of his hounds could actually see what was going on.

As such, whilst focused on trying to take out Eppie, he had not realised that the three other women had herded his hounds to focus on Tahnee and Lynn whilst Cassi slipped away for a stealth attack.

Robert's skull hung loosely, his neck had been completely shattered by that blow, and the only reason his head wasn't on the ground right now was solely because the shirt of his attire and mask were so closely put together.

"Oh wow, I didn't expect you to actually be giving me genuine advice" he said.

"Dear gods, that crap can't possibly be fair, why can't he just croak from that like a normal person?" Cassi clicked her tongue.

"Undead power, baby" he chuckled, just before finally pulling his left arm from below his cloak.

"Let's try this…"

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