The First Legendary Beast Master

The two sides crashed in a flurry of blades, and holy light shone from all over the battlefield as the enchanted weapons activated on contact with the undead.

That immediately caught the attention of the Lich Lords, and they began to glow with power as they ordered their troops to adjust and target the Red Dragon Cleric.

But that was not to be.

As soon as the undead horde began to shift attack angles, Hawk and Nachtia descended from the sky to drown the army in fire and a thick black smoke.

The power of the God of Death seemed to call to them, and the undead visible began to disintegrate around the edges under the onslaught, even while the animating magic of the Lich Lords regenerated the damage done to them.

With the two sides now fully engaged, Delta ordered his troops forward, and the team began to circle the battlefield.

"Take the short route and take point. Keep them from casting while we charge." Delta quietly ordered, hoping that Karl wasn't joking about being an anti-magic specialist.

Cara leapt from Karl's shoulder, and Remi moved beside him as Karl used [Gravity Slam] to toss the few intervening Undead out of the way as he approached the Lich Lords.

Unfortunately, one or more of them was aware of the horrors of a Winged Void Badger on a mission, and all five turned their focus to Cara, who was ready to dive at them.

Both Karl and the badger focused their efforts to [Nullify] the spells, while a [Disintegration] based shell around Cara absorbed the worst of the other three attacks.

Nothing hit her hard enough to cause actual damage, but it bought them some time, and before they were ready to cast again, Karl and Remi would be in melee range.

The ground turned marshy under their feet as Remi activated the [Naga Swamp], drawing the attention of the undead leaders only an instant before her Bodyguards appeared behind them.

Then Karl called on the Naga Bodyguards, as well as a pair of Dire Bear golems, to attack from the front as the Delta Team charged through the swamp.

Rather, half of the team charged through the swamp, and the other half simply flew over it, avoiding the delays of the swamp's soft ground.

There didn't appear to be any sort of power difference between the five Lich Lords, which didn't seem right to Karl. Even if they had advanced at the same time, there should be some sort of difference.

So, his first thought when his attack was blocked with a casual wave of the Lich Lord's hand was that they were all sharing a power source.

This wasn't a group of regular Overlords, it was a situation more like his own, where multiple powerful beings were linked together, and the ones that were in the most trouble were able to draw on the reserves of the others to save themselves.

That meant that breaking their barriers would mean breaking all five at once, as trying to target down a single Lich would only result in them using the power of the others to defend, leaving four on the offensive side.

Fortunately, they had an entire team coming to them, and the Lich Lords would all be engaged at once, but the threat of one of them using an overpowered attack and taking out a Demon in a single strike was very real.

Of course, there was a chance that they could also do that to Karl or one of his teammates, but with [Void Body] active on the team, the chances were lower that it would work.

Instead of engaging, Karl stayed back from the battle and let the summons do the heavy work, while he focused on assisting Cara in nullifying any attack that felt like it carried a dangerous level of power.

But with five Lich Lords, and only two of them, it was proving impossible to get them all.

Cara nullified an overpowered fireball, then had to dodge as Karl took out an area spell that was raising skeletal hands from the swamp, but couldn't cast fast enough to deal with the Unholy Fire that another of the undead mages sent her way.

Their casting speed was ridiculously fast to begin with, and for the first few seconds, their barriers were having no issues keeping the melee warriors at bay.

That changed quickly when Delta began to cast some sort of channelled incantation. The barrier around them began to destabilize, first letting bits of attack abilities through, then failing entirely.

The Lich Lords tried desperately to bring it back up, but with Cara and Karl working together, the process was proving impossible.

They had to use all five of them to make it as strong as needed, as the effects of [Rampage] were beginning to stack up, and the damage done by each strike of the Bodyguards was enough to take down a lesser barrier with every blow.

The Naga were fighting seriously, with grim expressions on their serpentine faces, while the Lamia bodyguards that Karl summoned were clearly smirking at the Lich Lords, even as they rapidly hurled spells at them.

They were holding back, limiting their output as the effect of [Rampage] began to near its time-limited peak, and Karl didn't have to guess why. Once the barriers on the Lich Lords fell completely, they would exert as much pressure as they could, and force the undead to buckle so that the Demonic special forces team could finish them off.

Only, the Lich Lords did not appear to be weakening. Like Karl and his team, their mana reserves seemed to be limitless, and while they were taking damage without their primary barrier, they were not showing any signs of reducing their mana usage to conserve energy, even when they were fighting five opponents at a time.

"They have a mana battery here somewhere. It must be in the wagons." Delta shouted to Karl as the battle began to drag on, and the Demons were beginning to reduce the frequency of their attacks to save stamina.

"Go, take care of it. I will hold them here while you deal with whatever traps and trickery they have in store." Karl insisted.

[Hawk, bring Nachtia and find the mana battery that the undead are using. Destroy it if you can, we're having trouble doing any real damage to them. If we can't destroy their power source, they're going to escape once they lose their armies.] Karl quietly instructed.

With five Lich Lords, there was no way that none of them knew [Portal] or a related escape spell.