With the plethora of information scraped from the minds, bodies, and souls of many unfortunate knights, the Adepts gained a pretty good understanding of these sword wielding and horse riding lunatics.
When it came to their minds, all the extracted data painted a clear image of the general thought process and temperaments of the knights. They had grown comfortable with their overwhelming might over the centuries, and as a result, did not like being challenged.
As for their souls, they meant little to the researchers. Most of them didn't have any elementium talent and as a result possessed weak and unimpressive souls. And from the differences observed between that of regular witcher knights and Spellbreakers, advancing in their path didn't do much to change this.
Their souls, though useless, played a part in the countermeasure developed from studying the knights' bodies closely. With how many they'd gained over the course of their stay here, their knowledge, equipment, and ample time, the Adepts had fashioned a horrifying bioweapon specifically keyed to the runic energy of the witcher knights.
All the voodoo beasts were bathed in it. They sweated, spat, and shat it. It was on their claws, in their blood, and on their breath, and they'd been spreading it to the knights with every clash.
In its dormant state, its effects were characterized by rapid necrosis of any sustained wounds and a general weakening of the infected and their bodily systems, a far cry from what they were truly intended for.
To activate it, the injured needed to come into contact with a primer designed by the creators. When the observing Adepts heard the plans of the Radiant knights with their many spying techniques, they promptly unleashed this substance.
They were a group of microorganisms, uncountable in number, and they mixed themselves into the thick fog the combination of night and forest had generated and swam their way into the camp and into the wounds of the infected.
The scene Meusel and the others rushed to see then ensued.
Cracks began to resound in the camp, but they didn't turn their heads to look around. Every uninfected knight's feet stayed rooted to the ground and their eyes remained glued to the spine chilling transformation occurring right before them.
The injured knights at the mercy of the bioweapon, splattered pieces of skin and purple black blood with their maddened scratching, but as though whatever drove them to this insanity was impatient, refused to wait for them to finish.
While their bones cracked and their bodies twisted like caricatures, the pale and ruined epidermises of the knights melted into nothing, leaving fleshy red muscle and connective tissue to feel the poisonous caress of the cold night air.
The red of the exposed flesh faded not long after, a brownish yellow liquid crawling from within their bodies and encasing them as though to take the role of skin.
The observers noted how the mysterious and pungent substance erased the boundaries between the many tissues, dissolving and then melding them together into one uniform whole.
The writhing and howling knights (if they could still be called that) each shrunk in size, becoming nearly skeletal and gaining more than a few inches in height, the power in their muscles and bones compressed to the limit.
Their screams of agony didn't fade at all throughout this extreme shift, becoming less and less human and more like the growls of the common and voodoo beasts as it progressed.
When the disgusting substance evaporated, what remained was a creature with milky white eyes, dagger-like fangs dripping with saliva, long pointed spines running across their backs, and claws that sparked against the rocky ground with every little movement.
All the spectating knights had encountered undead in one situation or the other, but none of them could profess to say they had ever seen a type like this; a ghoul.
While everyone struggled to come to terms to the reality before them, one of the ghouls roared and zeroed its white eyes on the knight closest to it, sensing the rich life force emanating from him.
It coiled its body and kicked with its hind legs, shooting towards the targeted knight like an arrow loosed from a bow. Completely out of it due to the events that led up to this, the knight could only stumble and fall back in fear.
Meusel, who had experienced quite a lot in his long life, pushed through the mire of confusion and shock surrounding him and swung his sword in the path of the approaching beast, the flat side sending it careening into a huge tree.
Another successive round of cracks resounded through the camp as the ghoul went through the tree and snapped it and its own bones in half. It skipped across the ground a few times and came to a stop, the sound of intense battle filling the surroundings as Meusel drew closer to it.
As though its injuries were of no consequence, the ghoul forced its broken body right up, pulled itself along the ground with its one good leg before straightening and leaping again.
Not one to question reality twice, Meusel held his massive longsword by his side and flooded it with his white runic energy before slicing towards his former subordinate, cutting into his open maw and bisecting him from head to tail.
His expression took an immediate downturn when the creature fell down in two halves. 'What was that resistance?' He looked down at the remains. 'Don't tell me…'
He turned around and looked at the battle raging in the camp, charging right back into it. If he, a Second Grade knight, struggled to cut this monster even with the application of runic energy, how would the Spellbreaker and regular knights fair?
It was going to be a bloodbath.
☀☀☀
The knights, mostly Charles, Meusel and the other Radiants, had fought undead numerous times before.
Be it rotten and gangly skeletons, putrid corpses walking about like they were alive, or even the spectres immune to all manner of physical attacks, they had faced and overcome it all.
However, even though they adapted to this never before seen undead and managed to even kill a few, the Radiants were still shaken to their core at just how strong they were and how many knights they killed in just a short fifteen minutes.
Due to their former statuses as knights, these ghouls were even more exceptional, their trained and powerful physiques serving as a potent foundation to support what the Adepts designed them to be.
The witcher knights fell in droves, their thick armor unable to withstand the claws of these elite undead and fleshy bodies proving no resistance to their deadly jaws and steel-crushing bite forces.
Strips and bowl sized chunks of flesh came away with every attack on a witcher knight who didn't react or trigger the enchantments on their swords fast enough.
Without engulfing their blades in flames or pure runic energy, their swords bounced off the creatures, leaving shallow, inconsequential cuts on their pale, water-wrinkled skin.
Nevertheless, the presence of the Radiant knights naturally allowed them to regain the advantage, keeping the fresh casualties slightly below fifty, though that wasn't saying much. That was nearly half of the remaining able bodied knights.
Fifteen minutes had been enough for their former brothers… these monsters, to fill their camp with the eviscerated remains of their own colleagues, their own friends. Most of the sights in the camp blurred uncontrollably, even those of the Radiant knights.
But like their reputation repeatedly suggested, Adepts were a special kind of evil.
Loud rumbling reached the ears of the knights and was felt by each one as the voodoo beasts that retreated earlier surged into the camp like an unstoppable tide.
"ARGHHH!" Meusel screamed and stepped forward, slashing and sending a red flame crescent into the tide in a specific direction. It sliced through and lit aflame every voodoo beast and tree in its path, exploding into a small mushroom cloud when it reached its farthest point.
Meusel strode forward and was about to shout an order for the knights to go for their steeds, only to find all the colts dead on the ground in pools of purple black blood.
His bloodshot eyes went even redder and he screamed at the top of his lungs, attacking the voodoo beasts in a maddened frenzy. "ADEPTS! I WILL KILL YOU ALL"
☀☀☀
Spider Valley.
It used to be the home of many spiders, their homes being the dense and thick stretches of the white webs clinging to and weaving through the many trees that dotted it.
As the one who hunted down and captured most of the forest creatures, Greem was obviously the one who cleared this valley of all the large, vehicle sized arachnids that used to call it home.
Immediately he stepped through the entrance to this place, he immediately noticed the others. Marionette, Phantom, and lastly, Boss Hyde, the one who invited him to this meeting.
He already knew Marionette and was familiar with Phantom, so he only gave them a cursory glance and shifted his curious gaze over to the self proclaimed "Boss" Hyde.
He was big, almost matching him in size. Yet the thing that caught his attention and probably that of everyone who saw him was the bronze sheen of his limbs, the machine in place of one of his eyes and the patches of machinery affixed to various points on his body.
Boss Hyde was a rare Mechanical Adept, one of the more powerful but rarely tread upon paths in the world of Adepts. Mechanical Adepts, as their names suggested, sought to control their own fate by replacing their weak, fleshy bits with carefully constructed magic infused machinery.
Like the main advantages of every path, undergoing such modifications allowed the adepts of thi path to handle and output much more energy than their counterparts could.
Unlike elementium and body refining adepts who needed to moderate the potency of their own spells and attacks so as to not injure or outright kill themselves, mechanical adepts with the right modifications didn't need to worry about this.
Their specially constructed body parts could easily withstand the corrosion of excess elementium since they weren't biological. Such a precedent also meant they didn't need to hold back when it came to spells. It was all a matter of how strong their mechanical parts were.
Moreover, their mechanical parts could be directly enchanted with effects such as Hardening and the like, and they'd remain in effect for as long as the mechanical adept lived. However, despite these awesome advantages, the disadvantages were just as glaring.
The rampant and extensive replacement of all that made an Adept human (at least physically) meant that mechanical adepts lost the ability to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh entirely.
And while more than a few of them, especially those just starting on the path, would see nothing wrong with it, Greem wondered how they'd survive as unfeeling statues for centuries and millennia.
He couldn't see himself doing that. 'Hundreds of years and no pleasure? No sex? Might as well just kill me…'
Perhaps he stared at the Adept too long, but after a while under Greem's inquisitive gaze, Hyde's shiny left arm emitted a low hum and an unusual forcefield appeared around him.
Greem smiled at this and moved his gaze away, walking to a spot that put sufficient distance between him and the others so he could join them in waiting. If Hyde thought that forcefield was going to stop Meat Vision, Greem was going to let him think that.
The wait wasn't long, the sky rumbling not a few minutes later.
Above them, Adept Thunderbird, the one who found each of them and delivered the invitations, materialized from a bolt of blue lightning and descended to join them.
A stark contrast to the loud, bright blue flash of his arrival, a line of red zipped out of the forest and stopped near Greem, revealing Mary, her movements making nary a sound nor kicking up the slightest dust.
Appearing in a similar silent manner, an adept in dark robe stepped out of the shadows of one of the trees and strode forward to join their little gathering.
Hyde's mechanical and organic eye trailed over everyone present and he nodded subtly, clearing his throat with a cough. "Everyone, thank you for coming. I invited you here for one single purpose… the radiant knights. We can't let them break the encirclement, else all our sacrifice and hard work will be for nothing."
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Author's note:
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