About twenty meters above them, an anthracite sphere began to form, with black lightning crackling around it. The air near it warped, twisting into small tornadoes that were sucked into its center.
The sphere emitted a dark light that dimmed any surface it touched, instantly dulling colors as if it were sucking the life out of them.
The sensation of the light falling on one's skin was indescribable. As if someone had grabbed every hair on your skin and decided to slowly start plucking them out.
Stas immediately understood that this strange technique was affecting the flow of prana within them, deteriorating their control over it and gradually siphoning it away.
Fortunately, with his control, there wasn't much to worry about. How could you make worse what was almost non-existent?
Stas paid no attention to his surroundings. His concern at the moment was only the shuffling corpse inching toward him. Or rather, half of a corpse.
The zombie hadn't released the weapon from its grasp, so even in its halved state, it posed a serious threat, if only because its speed and strength noticeably exceeded human parameters.
However, Stas had something the zombie didn't - brains.
"Here, catch this," Stas grunted as he lifted and threw the zombie's legs at the crawling dead, which were still twitching a bit.
The enemy's katana whistled through the air and then got stuck somewhere in the hip joint. The lower half of the corpse had not yet lost its magical durability.
But Ordyntsev was right there in an instant. While the lying corpse was trying to pull out the sword stuck in its own body, Stas, having charged his hands with prana, forcefully brought the blade down, aiming for the elbow joint.
The sword in the earthling's hands let out a long ring but still cut into the arm, severing multiple muscles and forcing the zombie to finally drop the weapon.
Yet the job was far from finished.
It took Stas three more strikes to completely sever the damaged limb and another eight to mangle the other one.
The whole situation reminded him of Sarah Connor, using her last bit of strength to fight the Terminator, who had lost its legs and one arm. It was the same situation where one single grab could entirely decide the outcome of the confrontation.
Now, the zombie could only helplessly drag itself across the grass with its dry stumps, which couldn't properly grip anything, and click its twitching jaw.
Stas forcefully wiped the sweat, blinding his eyes. Constantly dodging the deadly fingers of the dead and repeatedly charging his muscles with prana was by no means an easy task, especially while someone's spinning technique tormented him from above.
The man quickly surveyed the area, trying to understand what was happening around him.
As it turned out, he and Jishin, who had prudently hidden behind a tree, were on the very edge of the battle, which was a relief.
Kensei, at that moment, had thrown himself back into the thick of the fight. His previous opponent had been chopped into small pieces scattered here and there.
But the situation for the warmasters was not so optimistic.
As Stas understood, the black sphere technique effect grew stronger in proportion to the amount of prana in a person's body. The ronin and Stas got off with minimal effects, while the other warmasters, except for the Deathbringers, suffered greatly.
Their forced movements made it clear that the situation was dire.
And this could not but lead to disastrous consequences. Haru, the shadow controlling fire, distracted by three zombies surrounding him, simply failed to react to Koruga appearing at his side.
Stas saw clearly as the Deathbringer's hand turned utterly black, and familiar small black lightning crackled near it, the same kind that the technique in the sky delighted them with.
As soon as the enemy's hand touched the shadow, the latter stiffened and fell as if struck by a powerful electric shock. Meanwhile, the bent-over Koruga started to strongly resemble a blood-lapping scavenger.
"Stone Strike!" Kusa's technique, bursting from the ground, hit the Deathbringer's side, even though he had shielded himself with Haru's body.
The Deathbringer, spinning in the air, managed to land on his feet, but his hood was knocked off.
Stas's gaze literally clung to him - so drastic were the changes.
The Deathbringer didn't resemble his former self. The gray, sagging, wrinkled skin was gone. In its place was normal flesh and skin. Clumps of hair hadn't disappeared, but alongside them, new black hair had sprouted.
Even Koruga's gaze had changed. Now, it held much more power.
'They're bloody energy vampires,' concluded Ordyntsev, looking at their techniques anew. 'However, judging by their initially sorry state, there are serious downsides to this kind of life. Ordinary people probably don't suit them. Otherwise, nothing would stop these freaks from draining a couple of villages to refresh themselves. This means that the crucial role in the process takes not life energy but rather prana, which is abundant in warmasters, while ordinary people have almost none.'
The battle, which seemed to freeze for a second, resumed with even greater ferocity. Only now, the rejuvenated Koruga moved much faster and hit harder.
'I'd bet that this rejuvenation is temporary. If things were otherwise, I highly doubt the attackers would dare to assault the prince while being old men. Most likely, they now have to constantly use forbidden techniques just to keep living. An unfortunate fate. But what potential. I wonder, can this art be refined? This world is truly rich in ways to achieve immortality.'
The battle, however, was unfolding according to a very grim script.
Kusa, enraged, almost completely abandoned his own defense and focused solely on earth techniques in a mad desire to avenge his friend.
Stone spikes, earth traps, and crushing waves of soil - the art of destruction showed its worth. The surrounding trees had long turned to dust, mixing with the earth and grass.
Apparently, Haru was indeed dear to him, as Shin, unlike him, took the death of his subordinate much more lightly.
Nonetheless, Naito's ever-smiling son was forced to protect Kusa. Otherwise, the latter would have simply perished, swept away by the wave of zombies, albeit a thinned one.
Shin was armed with enlarged and elongated kunai, a kind of short swords. And he moved them very skillfully and quickly. It turned out he mastered an earth technique that allowed him to grow stone blades on the weapons, which could suddenly extend, piercing an enemy in front of him or break off to serve as long-range projectiles.
Thus, spinning in a combat dance, Shin swiftly wielded the blades with ever-changing length, cutting the zombies to pieces.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Katashi, being the main target of the attackers, fended off six zombies. His spear kept blurring in the air, even for Stas's prana-enhanced senses, indicating that such a level of fighting was beyond his level. And it's worth remembering that both Katashi and Aoi were significantly drained by previous encounters and the relentless chase.
Finally, Aoi was locked in a death battle with the second Deathbringer and his support in the form of two zombies.
Notably, his fighting style was quite diverse. As it turned out, mastery of swords and water techniques was not the only thing this warrior was good at.
Boom!
Clumps of earth scattered in all directions, leaving another relatively shallow crater in the clearing. It would have been enough to ensure a certain death for a regular human.
"And that's all the brother of the Mizuno clan head can do?" taunted the Deathbringer again, who had dodged another attack. Unlike Koruga, he kept breaking the distance, attacking with dark techniques based on the same black lightning.
"Forbidden Technique! Dark Whips!" Once again, Aoi had to spin in the air, slipping between the deadly streams of magic. Then, with a flick of his hand, he sent metal plates flying at the Deathbringer.
On each of these plates, circles of hieroglyphs were engraved.
The warmaster's fingers snapped, and the characters immediately glowed to ignite a moment later, causing another series of powerful explosions.
It didn't take much to recognize such a rare and valuable art of seals in this world.
The problem was that although each activation required far less prana than a full-fledged technique, considering the near total absence of energy, Aoi was visibly quivering.
"Useless," smirked the Deathbringer, again breaking the distance. "A bit more, and you'll simply collapse. I expected something more from the Water Strangler."
"And you're not mistaken," Mizuno sneered back, then snapped his fingers demonstratively. The Deathbringer opened his empty eyes widely, then jerked in an attempt to flee, but it was too late.
A massive explosion lifted hundreds of kilograms of soil into the air in a black pillar, stunning those fighting with its deafening roar. Remnants of the Deathbringer who thought too highly of himself showered the earth with a bloody rain and smoking chunks of flesh.
As it turned out, all this time, Aoi had been detonating only some of his metal plates embedded in the ground.
Initially, he planned to lure the enemy onto one of the seals, but then changed his mind when Kusa intervened. Pretending to be weak after using another technique, Sumada secretly sunk several of Aoi's seals into the ground and then moved them into the path of the retreating Deathbringer.
Aoi, feeling his prana in the moving seals, just waited for the right moment.
The heads of the Sumada and Mizuno clans would have had a stroke had they known how well their clansmen worked together.
But the abrupt activation of so many seals finally did Mizuno in. Wincing, he clutched at the place where his prana core and heart were and fell to one knee, trying to breathe.
And if the Deathbringer was, paradoxically, dead, then his minions were not.
The two zombies who rushed at the nearly fallen warmaster had no intention of giving him even a shadow of a chance to survive.
"No!" Katashi cried out in desperation, seeing the last seconds of his uncle's life fading before his eyes.
Blurring in the air, the heir hurled his only weapon, piercing the zombie standing before him and tearing through one of the zombies about to strike Aoi.
But there was still the second one, and its blow reached the target. With his last strength, Katashi's uncle managed to shift slightly off the trajectory of the attack, but it was not enough.
The steel-clad claws of the corpse plunged deep into his thigh and continued their bloody path lower down the leg, tearing flesh and vessels.
With a muffled groan, Aoi fell to the ground, trying to stem the gushing blood from his thigh. The experienced warrior understood the danger of such a wound. If he couldn't stop the bleeding, he wouldn't live long.
The zombie was about to swing again, but its head was severed and sent flying by a powerful blow from Katashi, who had almost teleported to him.
The prince's eyes burned with fury.
The Mizuno heir pulled a scroll from the pouch on his belt. Hieroglyphs on it flared up, the scroll burned, and a new spear appeared in the lad's hands, which he used to meet the zombies rushing at him.
'Damn it all!' Stas could see clearly that Aoi's condition was rapidly deteriorating. The warmaster had managed to compress his thigh with his hands, preventing the blood from leaking quickly, but his strength was not infinite.
'To risk or not to risk?' Stas frantically pondered the thought that had come to him. The tantalizing opportunity was at odds with the commonplace desire to survive. However, the earthling wouldn't have achieved so much if he couldn't assess risks.
'Ah, here goes nothing!' The deciding factor was that, by that moment, fewer than ten active zombies were left. And although Koruga was still alive, several people were opposing him on the warmasters' side.
The second reason was that this same person had, no joke, saved his life a few minutes ago. Stas was accustomed to repaying his debts.
Ignoring the indignant look from Sumada, who had just opened his mouth to say something, Stas grabbed his bag and dashed straight toward the lying Aoi and the standing Katashi, who acted like a Jedi knight wielding a double-bladed lightsaber. That is, frantically spinning his spear and fending off monster strikes around him.
As Stas ran, he braced for a fatal blow every second. Be it a zombie's paw tearing his guts or the dark magic of the Deathbringer.
Fortunately, no one took an interest in him.
When Stas was almost upon the backs of the zombies, he yelled at Katashi with all his might.
"I'm a healer! Help me get through!" The Mizuno heir, casting a heavy look from under his bangs, nodded quickly and, with an upward thrust of his spear, knocked one of the dead up, giving Stas a passage, which the earthling did not disdain to dive into.
"Damn you, Sumada!" bellowed Koruga, retreating under a barrage of strikes from Shin, Kusa, and Kensei. Almost none of his dead minions were left to defend him.
Having said this, the Deathbringer decisively ran away. The zombies, having received instructions, immediately followed him. Some of them slowed down, intending to cut off the chase following their master, but seeing that no one was pursuing the Deathbringer, they rushed after.
The battlefield was left to the heavily breathing and exhausted warmasters. The black sphere technique had faded midway through the battle when a blade that had come off Kensei's odachi finally penetrated the sphere's defense.
The ability to destroy warmasters' techniques was what samurai were renowned for.
"Can you heal him?" Katashi bent over the pale Aoi, covering the wounded man with his shadow.
"If you want your uncle to survive, please don't block the light for me," Stas muttered indifferently, hastily opening his bag and beginning to lay out his tools on a spare piece of clothing.
For some reason, at that moment, he wasn't particularly concerned that the person standing next to him, even almost without prana, was still the elite of the warmasters. In other words, one of the deadliest beings of all.
"Oh," the heir muttered, surprisingly, not getting angry but instead looking embarrassed and immediately stepping back to give Stas a clear view.
"Please hold your leg, I'm going to apply a tourniquet," Stas advised Aoi.
"I know that myself," the Mizuno didn't appreciate the advice. "Do your job, Sumada."
"I'm not Sumada," responded Ordyntsev calmly, applying a tourniquet near the base of the leg. By the color of the blood, the earthling determined that it was indeed an artery that was damaged. "I'm just accompanying and treating Sumada on their journey."
Interestingly, medics advise that in the case of severe bleeding, always apply a tourniquet at the base of the limb, despite the fact that civil defense and emergency courses teach trying to distinguish between venous and arterial bleeding.
In other words, where to apply the tourniquet, above the wound or below, depends on that.
The problem is that in a difficult situation, the "non-medic" can spend precious seconds on senseless reflections and doubts.
It's similar to how, in the event of a serious leak in the plumbing, no one will attempt to determine which pipe leads where; instead, they will simply shut off the main water supply valve.
Judging by Aoi's distrustful look, he didn't quite believe Stas's words but still stopped distracting the earthling with grumbling through his teeth.
"Let go," Ordyntsev nodded to the man and finally began to inspect the work ahead. Surprisingly, the wound was almost clean. The zombie's claws had cut through the skin and the top layer of flesh with almost surgical precision.
Still, some pieces of tissue and dirt needed to be removed.
"Could you wash my hands with a small amount of water?" he turned to the anxious and fidgeting Katashi. The killing machine had vanished, and now, standing next to Stas was just a regular lad, fearful for the life of a dear relative.
This crazy idea came to Stas instinctively. If locals use magic so freely, why not use it for something good?
"My hands are dirty. I can't touch an open wound with them."
"Of course!" replied the prince enthusiastically, and a thin but intense stream of water shot from his finger, which was even a bit painful for the earthling's hands. But Ordyntsev didn't complain.
After thoroughly washing his hands and nodding gratefully to the heir, Stas took out a pre-prepared bottle of alcohol, carefully unscrewed the cap, and poured it over his hands, rubbing it in well.
Next came the preparation of the tools and their treatment with the same alcohol. A spool of thread and a curved needle, a sharp little knife, and "forceps."
Taking a deep breath and exhaling to calm down a bit, Stas got to work.
Adrenaline hammers pounded in his head. The fight with the undead, running under enemy sights, and finally, an immediate operation.
Even for the thick-skinned Ordyntsev, this was too much.
But he had to stop right away. In the heat of all this hellish chaos, Stas managed to forget that his patient was fully conscious and felt everything!
This became clear by the distinct crunch of Aoi's teeth, who was barely holding back a roar.