Throne of Magical Arcana - The Burning Cemetery

The gray owl did not move, but some kind of black gas instantly covered it. The magic missiles strongly disturbed the gas surrounding it.
    

As if the owl just realized that the person who was talking to Kaelyn was an enemy instead of a friend, the owl opened its beak and started to scream, although no sound was produced.
    

All of a sudden, lots of black tentacles crawled out from the carpet. As soon as they touched Lucien’s body, Lucien felt a mix of numbness, weakness and pain.
    

Lucien had never experienced that before. Among all the apprentice spells and first circle spells, he never found anything that had this mixed effects. Even the second circle spell, Ghoul Touch, could only numb and hurt people at the same time to some extent.
    

So Lucien guessed that it was a special necromantic magic.
    

Remaining calm, Lucien activated the bracelet and easily got rid of the tentacles with the spell enchanted within, Flame Shield.
    

Being surrounded by the flame to defend himself from the countless black tentacles, Lucien saw that they were accumulating by the door, making it impossible for him to escape. Changing his mind, he turned himself into a streak of moonlight and rushed at the gray owl with his sword.
    

The owl flew up as Lucien directly broke through the window and started to rapidly fall from that floor. However, instead of heavily hitting the ground, Lucien’s fall slowed down, like that of a feather.
    

First circle magic, Feather Fall.
    

When Lucien was close to land, he heard a crazy laughter coming from the cemetery close by, “Hahaha! I’m almost there! Just one more step! Kaelyn, Kaelyn… where are you?!”
    

As the laughter was getting closer and closer, Lucien saw the creepiest thing that he had ever encountered: Lucien could barely tell from the creature’s face that it had been a human in the past, however, the other parts of its body were just rotten flesh, from which disgusting eyeballs, lips and pale arms were growing out of its body. Furthermore the thing was surrounded by some kind of gray gas that was blighting and killing the plants that it passed by.
    

As soon as the monster noticed Lucien, it released a bitter scream. Those black tentacles grew out again on the ground and crazily reached toward Lucien.
    

Seeing this monster, Lucien almost threw up. He immediately activated Death Resistance, a level two divine spell within Sun’s Corona, and was quickly surrounded by a layer of white light, which could protect him greatly from necromantic power.
    

The black tentacles were frightened, as if they were facing their biggest bane, which bought Lucien some time to safely land and adjust his position to hack at the monster. Lucien was pretty much certain that it was Hunt.
    

What Lucien did not expect was that, as Hunt pointed at his sword Alert, the sword hacked backwards at Lucien and left a deep wound on his shoulder.
    

It was the first circle necromantic spell, Back Bite.
    

Taking a deep breath from the pain, Lucien grabbed the sword again and activated the magic structure in his soul. Instantly, a layer of oil covered Hunt and extended to the ground.
    

First circle spell, Oil.
    

Taking a step ahead, Hunt almost fell over. So he stopped and started to use some ranged spells to attack Lucien.
    

Negative Energy Ray, Shriveling, Chill Touch, Enfeeblement Ray… All these spells were attacking Lucien crazily as if there was no buffering time at all. However, Lucien had learned quite a lot from the tactics that Aaron and Habearo used to fight against a sorcerer. He kept moving around, leaving no chance for Hunt to target him. Although a few times he failed to fully avoid them, the level two spell Death Resistance could still protect him to some degree.
    

Hunt had completely turned into a monster, a monster that did not reason much during a fight. As he was casting the spells one by one without much interval, the eyeballs, lips and arms started to fall from his rotten flesh.
    

The monster got furious. As Hunt released a deafening scream, black waves burst out surrounding him. Third circle necromantic spell, and also an area spell, Negative Energy Explosion.
    

Lucien had nowhere to hide from the black waves. So he had no choice but to use the last chance of activating Flame Shield in Fire Weaver’s Bracelet to resist.
    

Although the flame was as bright as the sun, it was soon eliminated by the black waves. Thanks to Lucien’s another layer of protection, Death Resistance, inside of the shield of flame, Lucien barely survived that ranged attack.
    

After casting this powerful spell, Hunt was temporarily still from the overconsumption of his power. He needed some time to recover.
    

At this time, Lucien cast Oil again, covering Hunt and the place he stood with a second layer of oil.
    

However, when Lucien was about to attack Hunt again, three magic missiles flew directly at him.
    

It was the gray owl. While its owner could not cast any spell, Hunt’s summoned familiar distracted Lucien.
    

Dodging aside swiftly, Lucien avoided the missiles, however, he didn’t dare to stop moving. Lucien had no idea what spell was useful right now to kill this filthy thing up in the sky except Magic Missile, but as the owl was flying around, it was also not easy for Lucien to target it. Besides, the owl was protected by Death Shield, and Lucien would have to hit it several times with his missiles to break it down.
    

“I should’ve learned how to summon a flying familiar as well…” Lucien thought to himself when he was moving around, trying to break the owl’s magic shield with magic missiles.
    

When Lucien was about to throw his dagger toward this filthy evil bird when its shield was almost gone, Hunt started to move again.
    

“Damn it!” Lucien burst out a swear when he saw that, as the rotten chunks of flesh started to fall from Hunt’s body again, on the other side, there were bodies climbing out of the graves. Some of them were skeletons, while others were partially rotten… All of them were waking up and dragging themselves out of the black soil. Furthermore, there were even several revenants floating in the air.
    

Lucien was their target. Like a tsunami, they were coming at him.
    

Lucien’s heart was beating fiercely. He did not know what to do for a second — should he kill the owl first, or deal with the army of bodies and revenants?
    

Suddenly, an arrow shining green light shot fiercely out of the castle and directly punched a hole through the owl’s eye.
    

It was Betty, followed by Joanna and Simon. After beating all the husks, they found two precious standard bows in the castle. When they rushed to come to help Lucien, they saw the big crowd of walking corpses surrounding Lucien, and a creepy dead owl flying around and attacking him.
    

The owl started to scream, and it switched its target to Betty. At the same time, Joanna shot another arrow that went directly through the owl’s other eye.
    

With the owl no longer interrupting him, Lucien cast Oil for the third time and activated Sun’s Corona to face the approaching corpses.
    

White holy light burst out from Lucien’s body and extended in all directions. The light was so bright that half of the night sky was lit up.
    

Like mighty surging waves, the holy light overwhelmed the skeletons, the rotten bodies, and the revenants. Being washed out by the white light, they started to collapse, turning into piles of bones and flesh. The scene was literally shocking.
    

“Mr. Evans… Mr. Evans is a Saint Knight!” Betty cried out, “That’s his power!”
    

There were only a few zombies and skeletons still struggling and screaming on the ground, but Hunt had already recovered some of his power. The monster opened his mouth again and was ready to cast another Negative Energy Explosion. However, that was too late for Hunt.
    

“Hunt!!” It was Kaelyn’s voice. She was screaming at the top of her lungs.
    

Simon got her, pretending that he was about to throw her out of the window.
    

Hearing the familiar voice, Hunt slightly turned his head to the side and stared at Kaelyn, although most of his consciousness was already gone.
    

Seizing the chance, Lucien threw the big fireball summoned directly toward the monster.
    

“Bang!!!” The sound of explosion was deafening. Being covered with oil, Hunt instantly blew apart and his rotten flesh, eyeballs, and arms fell all over, making disgusting, sticky, jelly-like sound.
    

The remaining major part of Hunt was still writhing on the ground like a moving torch. The burning parts that flew out of his body ignited the other bodies and bones on the ground. The whole cemetery ended up in a horrible fire.
    

Betty, Simon and Joanna were totally shocked.
    

Turning around, Lucien directly threw his dagger at the owl and the weapon pierced through its head.
    

The owl fell to the ground and could not move anymore.
    

“Hunt!!!” Kaelyn screamed her husband’s name and struggled to free herself from Simon’s control. She jumped right through the window and fell hard on the ground.
    

Dragging her legs, Kaelyn slowly crawled toward the fire with all her effort.