Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead-Chapter 1234: Playing For An Audience

The prince was somewhat confused. The short, bent-backed, and ugly creature in front of him did not give off any sighs of strength. Be it in its presence or physical appearance–The centipede sensed no higher power from the ghoul, but this thing had just moved with incredible swiftness and pulled him underground in the blink of an eye.

Not anyone could just do this on a whim… Due to being a devourer, the prince was extremely sensitive to strength. He had engaged Doloctkar in battle because it had been clear with just a glance that he had an advantage over the stone bull. Thanks to having acquired great resistance to holy energy from devouring the blind dwarf's arm, he had been confident in taking out the archbishop and devouring him whole.

Alas, Doloctkar's strong defences had done him good. He had held up until the arrival of help–Though the archbishop would have definitely preferred if the reinforcement had not come in the form of the one person he and the other members of the council wanted not just far away from their Hierophant-Queen, but far away from any good reputation he could accumulate with the public at large… 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Regardless, it was just Vwoldtnir and the prince now. The latter could already feel that the rotten dweller of the deep had brought the other people present away as well–All this without the centipede noticing… This was concerning, but the prince remained confident in his strength nonetheless. He was his mother's magnum opus. He wasn't just a prince born to a princess-turned-queen. She had poured far more effort into his conception than normal as well.

She had lived unlike any other queen for months, nurturing only his eggs within her with only a paltry amount of workers and soldiers at her disposal–She had to think smart to achieve him… If need be, he could be even more powerful! His side as a devourer was nothing more than a happy little accident, something his mother had not planned at all.

He simply needed to will it.

The prince attacked with all six of his arms, mixing clawing and punches of various kinds together into a blurry flurry of strikes, each capable of blasting dozens of grown men into red mist.

Vwoldtnir merely stood his ground, intercepting every single attack using only his right hand. Six arms were losing against one–And the one was frail and short to boot.

'...What…'

The prince could hardly believe his eyes. Even now, he couldn't sense anything particular from Vwoldtnir. It was like he was fighting a hallucination, but he definitely was not. The undead was very real. Without the shadow of a doubt. This only meant that the centipede needed to try harder… Much harder.

He suddenly leapt backwards, the Gravelord making no effort to stop or catch up to the living, merely standing in place, with a smile plastered across his face. A most creepy grin purely due to the way Vwoldtnir looked, not due to any intent on his part to look like this.

The prince surged with power that far surpassed what he previously emitted, unleashing the might he had been born with in full–Something his mother had instructed him to keep a secret for as long as possible… His status as a devourer already painted an enormous target on his back, so the idea was to not show off his true, base strength so as not to further ignite attention.

Make it seem as though the devourer was still 'weak' and 'manageable'. It was just bad luck that his restrained strength was still enough to slaughter entire settlements and have an edge over an archbishop of Durter.

The teeth inside of Vwoldtnir's throat ground against one another. This was indeed an impressive level of strength. The devourer had enough strength that many people would consider collapsing the entire place to be a worthy price to pay to just stall him for a little while.

Vwoldtnir was not 'many people', however.

The centipede poised himself as though he was going to lunge, but instead, he spat out his spined tongue toward the undead. The tongue pierced through the air at an impressive speed, but the ghoul lord moved aside at the last moment, before disappearing from the prince's field of view altogether.

'This speed…! He went right!'

The only thing the humanoid insect was able to catch was the general direction the Gravelord took, but with the speed the undead was wielding, a direction did not tell much about where he would end up attacking from–Thus, the prince simply erupted with inner energy. Most of which was holy energy, attacking all directions at once, as this simple action was like the detonation of an explosive, sending ripples through the underground.

Several habitations of the settlement collapsed under the resulting motions of the air, and pieces fell from the walls and ceiling, while the ground within a twenty-five-meter radius around him was basically erased, with the pit going ten meters deep at its lowest.

He dropped down, looking around for any signs of whether or not this blast had caught the undead or not…

He sensed a presence behind his back. The prince flung around, swinging one arm, only to see it stopped with ease.

"Sorry, big guy. But I was only stalling because I was waiting for an audience to get here. I need to let the girl I like see me dealing with you. Don't hold it against me, alright?"

As he said this, he pulled on the front of his suit, opening it to reveal the opening in his chest. He unleashed a bright, white shine that completely burnt away the centipede's compound eyes, leaving him blinded–His eyes didn't regenerate either. They were truly gone, at least for a long while.

When Vwoldtnir wanted someone blinded, they couldn't just get out of their blindness willy-nilly. The loss of sight was a sentence dished out by a Gravelord.

The light also made the prince feel strangely weak, but he didn't have much time to dwell on what was happening. Vwoldtnir's audience had arrived, and as such, the strikes arrived.

The centipede was first struck in the chest, his heavy frame was easily lifted off the ground, placing him in the perfect position for Vwoldtnir to let the attacks rain upon the centipede. He pummelled the insects relentlessly, shattering his carapace and shredding his limbs under the eyes of Artratac Dursol and the council of archbishops.

Within just a few moments, the dreaded devourer was shattered and reduced to a bloody mess. With several more precise strikes, the Gravelord destroyed each and every organ, severed limbs, bisected the creature, and then closed it off by beheading the prince, sending his head rolling into the distance and then down a slope, out of sight.

'There we go'

He acted nonchalantly, not because he wanted to look cool after defeating the devourer–There was nothing to be particularly proud of. The living had been way below him–But simply because he didn't want to appear like he had noticed Artratac and the rest just yet.

It would be awkward if it were obvious that he had been waiting for them to show up before actually doing something. The Hierophant-Queen approached him with a smile on her face.

"Was that the devourer?"

"It was indeed… This prince had been fighting an archbishop, hold on…"

He dived into the ground as if it were water, and soon retrieved all of the people he had pulled underground. Despite having been struck below for a little while, they were all just as fine as before they had been dragged in the hard soil.

"...He got a little hurt in the process"

Doloctkar did not look good at all, but a single healing spell from Artratac was enough to completely restore him like nothing had happened.

Amongst the archbishops, the mood was solemn–But Vwoldtnir could make things even worse.

"Miss Dursol, I was wondering if you would be so kind as to grant me a little bit of your time in the form of a dinner once the situation with the centipedes was dealt with?"

Now, the archbishops had their heart rates increase. They hoped with all of their beings that the Hierophant-Queen wouldn't agree.

"Certainly, I can definitely free up some of my time"

All of the archbishops were now utterly livid. One of them even almost fell backwards from the sheer whiplash. They had done everything in their power to stop such a thing from happening, and their actions had seemingly ended up accelerating things…

Now, they could continue controlling the centipedes and make this issue stretch through time–But they had learned their lesson with the unforeseen appearance of a prince. They had been playing with fire, and bystanders had paid the ultimate price because of that.

From then on, they could only hope that their leader and the Gravelord wouldn't actually mesh that well together. Who knows, maybe their concerns had been unwarranted, and Vwoldtnir wouldn't be able to charm Artratac Dursol.

Maybe, everything would be just fine…