Sam was next to him in a second, but before he could strike, one of the large skeletons placed itself in his way, using its body to absorb his attack. Sam snarled and struck again, blasting the monster out of the way. He kept finding more and more of the monsters standing in his way, and all the while Reaper was getting further and further away.
Eventually, the man recovered enough mana to create a pair of ectoplasmic wings on his back, allowing him to flap away to safety Sam was now stuck in the very center of the enemy army, without any sort of support. Smiling, he got to work, pulverizing bone with every strike. This was not a chore or a danger to him, rather it was an opportunity for him to level up more. The monsters here were higher level on average to the grunts of the army, meaning that he could actually gain levels from them.
It took him a few minutes to even deal with a hundred of the larger skeletons, but the amount of essence that they gave him was far more than the weaker ones. In addition, there were quite a few less of them as well, perhaps one per every hundred of the weak skeletons.
Reaper was still in the fight, and he was now consciously controlling the skeletons around him, using them as pawns on his giant chess board to attack Sam. They moved in concert, far more intelligently than any undead had a right to, and this made it harder for Sam to defeat them than it should have been. However, he was simply too strong to be bogged down for long, and he eventually broke his way out of the morass, finding himself in an area of the weaker skeletons once more.
Sam had leveled up by this point, and his mana and stamina were full once more. Luckily the System seemed to count taking even a minute of a break from a battle as a way to make it seem like one was out of the fight. Seeing as none of the monsters had been able to break through his armor, it had worked out. It seemed unfair, but perhaps this was the System’s way of protecting its interests, in the form of those who were strong enough to battle entire armies on their own.
Sam banished the useless thoughts and kept at it, eventually breaking out of the central part of the skeletal army and heading straight towards Reaper. The man was the key to this entire army, and if Sam was able to kill him, then it would all be over. Then they could get to the main threat, which was the Legion. He had seen the Legion command post that had launched a few artillery strikes earlier in the battle get destroyed by the Crystalline Devastator, which had been far more powerful than Sam had been expecting. However, he doubted that was the extent of the Legion’s might. Even its leader himself, Hugo Mar, was akin to a walking weapon in his own right. Add to that millions of high G Rank fighters that were a significant cut above the skeletons, then it would cause some serious trouble, even to Sam and his forces.
Sam raced across the battlefield like an implacable comet, battering aside everything that got in his way. The gap that he left quickly filled up, but he paid it no heed. There was only so far that Reaper could get away until his mana ran out. Sam could run faster than the man could fly, and he soon caught up, keeping pace with the flying Reaper.
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Reaper looked down with a gaze of cold disdain, and banished his wings, falling down like a dark meteor, wreathed in ectoplasmic energy. Sam grinned at him, and started to charge up the most powerful attack that he could on such short notice. As Reaper neared the ground, Sam cocked back his hammer, which by now looked like a nova of reddish light. He knew that this would end Reaper once and for all.
As his hammer was about to connect however, he felt a gust of wind rush by him, and a moment later, Reaper was gone. Sam’s hammer passed through empty space and discharged its tumultuous load into the ground, launching tons of earth and rock high into the air. He seized control of his weapon a second later, staring blankly at the place where Reaper had been. He quickly ran through his memories with his advanced Intelligence stat, spotting something amiss within them. There had been a flash of darkness next to Reaper a moment before the man had disappeared, and it had almost looked like a hand. The rest of the body moved too quickly for him to make out, but it definitely had been someone, and someone who had been powerful enough to move much faster than he could easily see.
Something was amiss here, as there shouldn’t have been anyone of that power on the planet, or even in this universe for that matter. It was a problem for later however, as Reaper’s disappearance had severely weakened the skeletons, leaving them vulnerable to attack. They were still able to move, but they were little more than shambling wrecks now, unable to coordinate themselves. With a rage filled howl, Sam launched himself into the monsters’ ranks, tearing through them like a scythe through wheat.
It took hours to finally finish off all the skeletons, even with their uncoordinated state. At this point, they were more like sacks of bones than anything else, and they only proved to be troublesome in their sheer number. By the end of the battle, Sam had actually leveled up from his kills, even though the skeletons were providing him with minimal amounts of essence. In any case, it was over now, and the real battle would be coming soon.
The artillery briefly fell silent within the city as the defenders ran back towards the gates. Half of the automatons had been destroyed, and a few of the captains were injured, but nobody of consequence had died.
They quickly entered the city before any more enemies could attack, and ran towards the top of the walls. Sam took his place there, watching the sky in the direction that the missile strikes from earlier had come from. Sure enough, now that the skeletons were all gone, another missile could be seen streaking across the sky like a spear of heavenly light, heading straight for the city. He had no idea where the Legion had gotten such powerful weapons from, but he would be happy if he could get his hands on them.
The problem was that one of those same weapons was pointed their way right now. However, the Superior Mana cannon had recharged by now, and it blasted its ball of condensed energy into the sky, on a collision course with the missile. It almost missed, but the superhuman stats and skills of its operators were more than enough to ensure that it landed right on target eventually. The bomb exploded, and the shockwave destroyed much of the forest, revealing the part of the wood close to the canyon far in the distance. Even further back, Sam could just about make out a shadowy line of shapes behind the canyon, so far away that they were likely in the ocean, over a thousand miles away. For them to be visible from here, they were at least the size of mountains. Hugo Mar had really pulled out all the stops in his quest to vanquish Sam and his allies.