Feicui Long quickly grabs Irina by the arm, while taking out his telekinetic daggers and running with his beasts to the top of the hill. Then, in an exaggeratedly fast movement, he pulls out his fragmented formation, to which the remaining 5 shadow ghouls try to run, but it's too late.
Feicui Long throws the formation, covering the entire entrance of the hill and part of the climb. The formation immediately activates, and the ghouls can only retreat to wait for their reinforcements… and right after that, from the forest emerge more than 300 undead, among zombies, skeletons with empty eyes and soul-blue flames glowing, and other types of undead.
Then he looks at Irina, who is still a bit dazed, and is forced to shake her. Although she was very helpful during the battle against the ghouls, since she helped him several times avoid greater damage, he has realized that she is too pensive and scared.
So, grabbing her by the shoulders, he says: "Irina, you have to wake up. I don't know what happened in your past, but I need you to react, take the fragmented formation I gave you and the spare one and place them on the left side next to the entrance and the back left. The hill has steep walls, but there are many enemies, and with this number, they will be able to climb the walls if they stack on top of each other."
Irina, who realizes this, still with her heart scared by something she cannot explain, nods and, taking the fragmented formations, goes to place them in the indicated places.
Feicui Long then looks at Surinbit and Kagetsume: "Surinbit, take my spare formation and the large version. Place them on the right flank next to the entrance and the back right. Kagetsume, help her with the second one."
Surinbit, using her telekinetic powers, takes the formations and starts dragging her slime body at quite a high speed. Kagetsume helps her. Both understand the gravity of the situation, as one is a civilized-type and Surinbit is a leader-type.
Feicui Long then takes the other two fragmented formations he possesses. They are the first two he made: the first one that protected his tent and the large version he created to protect a greater number of people and also to have privacy with Isabella when he traveled with her and her group.
But at this point, the undead are approaching, many of them, so to buy time he uses 5 fireball scrolls, which, gathering mana from the surroundings, form 5 fireballs that slow down the advance of the army. A moment he takes advantage of to place the two formations at the entrance with his telekinesis.
Feicui Long lets out a sigh of relief… but deep down he knows all of this is too temporary. His current formations can kill between 100 to 150 cultivators or half that number if they are peak ascending realm cultivators before collapsing due to quantity and saturation. But the fragmented formations also have a barrier function against attacks, which means that if they receive many ranged attacks, they can collapse more quickly.
And that's only the new ones. The first two only endure those 50 to 75 at the peak of the mystic realm and can collapse much more easily. And although fragmented formations are very good, they have their disadvantages like everything. The main one is that, unlike fixed and complete ones on terrain or artifacts, they are not good at withstanding pressure…
Because the pressure in a complete one tends to spread and disperse through the entire formation, while the fragmented ones cannot do that because they are divided into small pieces. And although this can be reduced with talent and inscription ability or by eliminating poor distribution like Feicui Long did, the materials used and the number of formations placed also affect… which are not exactly very good in the case of the first ones he made. He made them using mortal steel, while the newer ones are made of black iron, a mortal grade 1 quality material.
Even so, Feicui Long has no other option at the moment, so he can only give the order to Perla to attack by launching her scales. Meanwhile, he summons the four floating watchers, one especially to see how his back wound is doing.
He can see the marks of the 5 claws. Luckily, they haven't pierced all the way into his back to touch the bone, but they still managed to slightly damage the muscle. So he pulls out a specialized ointment to stop the bleeding and begins to apply it carefully. Although he would like to suture the wound, he doesn't have much time. The priority is to stop the bleeding and halt the poison from his other wounds. He will ask Irina for help later.
The poison comes from the purple shadow ghoul. To stop it, he takes three pills of the black iron arrow herb. At first, he thinks it won't be effective, but the result surprises him. The poison retreats back to the wounds. A shame that he only has three pills or that they are only grade 6. If he had a grade 7 or higher one, he would already be cured. So he carefully seals the wounds and temporarily traps the poison in those areas.
Irina and Surinbit return after he finishes, but Irina, embarrassed, says: "Young master… I'm sorry..."
Feicui Long shakes his head and says: "It's fine, it's nothing. Now is not the time for that. I want you to stay here with me. We have to reduce the numbers as much as possible. Luckily, many of the undead are only in the elemental realm."
Feicui Long then looks at Surinbit and Kagetsume: "You two will take the watchers to support you, Kagetsume and Perla will go to the left flank, Surinbit I will leave you two of the support rock golems and you will go to the right flank."
While this is happening the sound of bones clashing against each other can be heard clackclack along with the moans of the zombies unable to speak, the undead army clearly continues in a formation showing they are not just mindless savages.
This begins the formal attack of the undead army that finally reaches the formation, and while the first ones who jump die in seconds, the army halts for a moment as the undead mages and elementalists begin launching energy attacks, while the archers and those carrying energy rifles fire at full power.
But that only causes the barrier to show itself blocking the attacks as if it's nothing, the undead army halts completely again, confused, but when Irina, Feicui Long and the others start attacking from a distance and begin killing undead, the army then charges at the formations at the same time as they attack from a distance.
The sound of bones cracking and crushing fills the area, while the first formation in the uphill path to the hill finally begins to show signs of fracture cracks, but it has killed at least 75 undead, Irina upon seeing this looks happy and says: "Young master I think we'll make it!"
Feicui Long on the other hand is not so happy, he has already deduced that these undead cannot be natural undead and that the creator of these undead does not possess the necromancy skill, but rather one of the other paths to create and control undead, particularly due to the aura they emanate and the cores they possess, and although undead created through those other methods tend to be weaker and have other disadvantages, they can create greater quantities. These 300 undead are nothing, they are probably just the scouting force.
When Feicui Long kills a mage with his energy rifle, that is when a large number of shadows descend from the sky and crash suicidally against the formation breaking it to pieces.
Now with one less formation there are 6 left, Feicui Long looks at the sky and frowns slightly saying: "I didn't think anyone would ever use such a tactic, imagine turning hundreds of common birds into undead, it's obvious that this is definitely not someone with the necromancy skill."
Irina raises her head and says: "You're right, it's the first time I see such a strange tactic, but how do you know they don't have the necromancy skill?"
Feicui Long replies: "I had already deduced it before because of the aura and because of the cores which are a bit different, but this confirms it since no one would waste their slots like this, even though common animals and regular people don't take full slots and you can raise many more, it's a waste to spend a single slot on 10 or 20 of these mortals if they're all going to be in elemental realm grade 1 beginner stage."
Irina looks at him a bit hopeful and says: "Young master, then what are we going to do?"
Feicui Long sighs and begins thinking about everything he currently has at hand. Not much can attack at long distances, maybe he should summon… but the summoning skill consumes a lot of energy, that's why he only uses it to create contracts, although if he summoned something weak it would consume little energy, but it can't be excessively weak and it must have the ability to kill multiple enemies quickly.
Then the image of a beast known as one of the most annoying to deal with for beginners in the early grades of the elemental realm in the fortress city of Vienna comes to his mind. It is a beast with multiple spikes and thorns, blood-red in color, able to launch hundreds to thousands and for prolonged times… the beast is called bloodspike porcupine.
He quickly summons 10 of these beasts, all in elemental realm grade 3, and orders them to attack the undead birds in the air. Irina, who sees the beasts very confused, asks: "Why did you summon such weak beasts?"
Feicui Long smiles a bit, confident for the first time, and says: "Certainly they are, but in the fortress city of Vienna and its surroundings it is considered one of the greatest nuisances for low-level cultivators. The beast itself has weak combat power, so much so that just 5 mortal cultivators are enough to kill it and each spine's attack is weak."
Irina is even more confused by this nonsense: "But what's the point of summoning it if it's weak? Are you going to sacrifice it?"
Feicui Long shakes his head: "Its advantage lies in those spines and its diet, this beast can fire between 100 to 1000 spines, an attack that consumes very little energy since most comes from its blood, and that's where its diet comes in, its favorite food is blood grass, the main ingredient of the blood recovery pill, so this beast although weak can sustain the firing of its spines for prolonged times including recorded cases of up to 72 hours, and although it's weak, it's perfect for dealing with annoying things in large numbers like these birds."
That's when from behind two very loud explosions are heard that force Feicui Long and Irina to turn around momentarily, and what they see opens their eyes wide. There are more birds… if before the ones that attacked were a large number, around 2 to 3 thousand, behind there are about 7 thousand more, and the worst thing is that some have spells imbued in them.
Feicui Long, very angry, says: "Whoever made these undead killed more than 10 thousand common birds and even enhanced them with the frost explosion spell… fine, if that's how you want to play, don't blame me for being unfair."
Feicui Long then gives all his bloodspike porcupines 3 energy recovery pills, 3 blood recovery pills, one resistance talisman, one swift spirit talisman, and one energy gathering talisman. The pills will help them shoot more spines, the resistance ones will make the spines stronger and tougher, the swift spirit ones will make them faster, with better reaction and attack speed, while the gathering ones will improve the speed to gather energy for launching attacks.
Then Feicui Long sends 6 of his porcupines to the back to deal with the birds, while the other four focus on those in the front. Everything happens very fast, each volley from the beasts takes down hundreds of undead birds that are directly blown to pieces.
Until the birds are reduced to half and retreat to a range far from the beasts, then Feicui Long directs his gaze to the forest and about two to three thousand skeletons with yellowish bones come out, all of them are elemental realm grade 1 to 3.
Irina then lets out a snort: "Where the hell did he get all these bones!?"
Feicui Long frowns: "They must be from those who died in the war against the naga and lamia thousand poisons sect."
Irina asks him: "But didn't the union of mortal races purify and recover all their bodies?"
Feicui Long explains to her: "They tried, and although they were able to recover most, it doesn't mean they could recover all. Maybe a village or a small ruined city inside the Leechwald forest was left unrecovered, besides purification only prevents undead from rising naturally."
Irina then worriedly says to him: "So what will we do? With this quantity and the suicidal undead birds, I don't think the formation can hold more than two or three hours."
Feicui Long sighs and says: "I'll have to use one of my trump cards."
Irina looks at him confused and Feicui Long brings out his golems and undead from his internal dimension, since the construction of the village is already complete, all the main workshops are done and only minor things are missing, he was able to bring half of his golems, while his undead, who only guarded, are no longer that necessary after his troops established contracts with the support creatures. By the way, thanks to those contracts he had to create more golems and undead but that's not a problem for him.
In total, out of the 90 golems he has now thanks to reaching the peak of the elemental realm, he brought 45, while the 350 undead are with him. With this, the hill feels much more protected. Still, Feicui Long doesn't stop there. He takes out all his talismans and scrolls prepared beforehand for emergencies and gives half to Irina.
Then Feicui Long says to her: "I hope you're ready for tonight Irina, I trust you."
Feicui Long then begins activating in succession 10 fireball scrolls and stands at the edge of the third formation, knowing that tonight is going to be a very long night…