I Was Called A Demon

Of all the things that Bianca had been expecting when she entered this village, suddenly seeing millions of bodies coming to life, emerging from the earth, as though the very land itself rose against them, definitely wasn’t on the list.

She could hardly be blamed, as she had seen only a tiny fraction of what this world was capable of. Even with greater experience, something like this would have been difficult to imagine out of nowhere, as was obvious from the way that Huang Su, in particular, seemed completely stunned by the sight, her gaze switching between the earth and the necromancer floating in the sky every breath.

“This… how could this be? Song Village has been standing for countless years! Many Sect Masters have gone to this place, how could they not have spotted this?”

“Do you think I’d tell you? Simply submit yourselves and make things simple!”

The countless bodies weren’t acting completely independently, as a large chunk of them were pushed further out of the ground, slowly massing into a massive hand, then an arm, as though the mass grave wasn’t for countless beings, but instead just one enormous mass of flesh.

It moved slowly as it assembled, but the moment that the arm was fully formed, it suddenly turned towards them and slammed down with immense speed, forcing them to dodge – specifically, for Bianca to grab her pet and evade, while the others were able to handle it on their own. The slam seemed like a simple one, yet the force behind it was sufficient to completely pulverise the house they had stood on in an instant.

“Fuck, you weren’t kidding! Any idea on how to defeat it?”

“It must have a-” Huang Su tried to reply, but another arm emerged from the earth beside her, forming in an instant, grabbing at her at the speed of sound.

She was able to just narrowly evade it, but it served to interrupt her – an obviously deliberate action, though whether it was on the part of the man in the sky or the collective consciousness of the corpses was something Bianca couldn’t know.

It hardly mattered, though, as regardless of the source of its intelligence, she had to act before it went to crush all of them. Where the dragon and false phoenix might be able to evade it, and the kitsune had enough tricks to endure regardless, Song Ming lacked the movement skill to do so, meaning that without a better solution, she was practically forced to carry her and ‘blink’ away any time the sea of corpses decided to strike at her.

Having a hot woman’s tits pressed against her own was fantastic, and being able to grope her ass at the same time was also incredible, but of course it wasn’t as important as surviving the onslaught…

So, what could she do?

“Yaling!”

“Yes?”

“Anathema!”

The kitsune raised an eyebrow – at least, it looked like it in the brief second she was able to stand still without the whole of Song Village trying to kill her – but nevertheless, after a moment, the peculiar power of that artefact shard emerged.

It could only reach so far, but in that moment, Bianca let the Weave of the Senses and the Demonic Tyrant guide her senses forth. She needed just the slightest hint, and as the planar energy around a corpse-arm reaching for Bianca faded just a little, she felt it. As that energy receded, more rushed in to fill its place. It travelled along the corpses as though they were the veins of a mortal being, blood rushing to a wound… and it originated from somewhere deep below the earth.

‘Shit. That… makes it difficult.’

Still, she had a rough estimate for the origin of that power, at least, and so she didn’t hesitate to point to the ground above that spot.

“There! Strike there!”

She spoke out loud, obviously alerting the necromancer to her realisation, but it wasn’t simply an oversight on her part… though it would’ve been quite easy to get distracted while Song Ming was still in her arms. Regardless, her purpose was rather simple – if this was a true weakness of Song Village, would it not respond?

Indeed, the instant she pointed it out, although the man seemed completely calm, the mass of corpses moved to intercept, trying to interrupt their attempts to strike. Limbs sacrificed themselves for the protection of their core, as everything from flaming feathers to vast beams of sunlight and Song Ming’s runes were cast upon the spot. It seemed like they had hit the mark… but at the same time, this obvious display did make her worry.

Of course, it would be apt to protect a vital part of a construct as vast as this… but what if this was a ruse, or a distraction that the necromancer permitted while working on some other plan?

‘Well, I know for a fact that energy flowed from there, since it wasn’t my perception, but that of the Weave and the Demonic Tyrant. It could easily not be the only source… or perhaps, in the time that it would take to strike that deep, something else could be prepared…’ Bianca tried to figure out an answer to the problem, but struggled to identify anything obvious.

Still, the fact remained that unless she was deceived entirely, reaching whatever lay beneath the sea of corpses at that spot was guaranteed to hurt this… Song Village.

‘Of all things, I hadn’t expected to be fighting a literal village, but here we are… and I just had to waste a lot of my energy,’ she glanced inwards, at her planar energy pool, or rather at what remained.

She had thrown out so much energy up to this point that only about a tenth remained, and if she kept throwing out her usual strikes, it wouldn’t be of much use. However, she did have a different option…

‘The Archetype Replicant’s duplication of the Clear Skies skills has expired, which means,’ she looked up to the man in the sky, the necromancer that seemed to just be standing there, ‘I can use alternative means.’

Replicating an archetype did nothing to educate her in all its workings and principles, but that didn’t mean she would be left empty-handed. A lot could be learned simply from the skills and techniques she could pull from the process, and so she made up her mind and pressed a finger against the winged ornament.

In an instant, it lit up with the shades of her energy, and countless faint notions poured into her mind. All kinds of means for skeletal planar constructs, using bone and flesh to enhance them, and even some abstract means of actually raising the dead.

It was incomparable to the experience of the Clear Skies archetype – necromancy seemed to be endlessly vast, endlessly deep, and so intense that she nearly passed out on the spot from the sheer rush of information. The fact that it was only the most surface level of knowledge, only sufficient to know which skills to call upon, made her wonder how people ever managed to master whole archetypes when some of the more fundamental ones were bound to be even more complex.

Nonetheless, she had picked out a time when she wasn’t being targeted by the flesh of Song Village, and thus endured the moment she needed to collect herself.

As she went through the vast sea of info filling her head, she quickly found some relevant pieces. Specifically, an advanced ritual skill involving a lot of cultivators and a absurd number of bodies… Likely, it was either the one that spawned ‘Song Village’ as they now knew it, or some variant or derivation of it.

It was incredibly durable, but it was easy to manipulate by those with the knowledge of the skill. It didn’t belong to any one cultivator – in a sense, it was like a public server. Anyone that knew the password would be able to log in and input commands like an admin, whereas most users would only get to experience the giant, hulking flesh monster… or something like that.

Regardless, she waited for the right moment and then input the password- rather, used the skill, just as the others had readied their biggest strikes. She wouldn’t be able to command this thing for long, especially with someone else competing with her for control, but she could easily manage a moment.

Thus, just as their strikes were about to land, the corpses suddenly parted, getting out of the way, revealing that the layer of bodies went insanely deep, almost two dozen of the animated dead moving out of the way before they revealed something vivid and glowing in the depths, some kind of orb filled with an eerie green light. Whatever it was, it was certainly not meant to take the brunt of so many hits at once, for the moment their hits collided, it shattered.

It was akin to smashing a container of highly compressed fluid, for the instant it broke, all that energy erupted out, bathing the entire village in the same ghostly aura.

“You… you are not a necromancer! How did you…” the man in the sky lost his composure for a moment, though he quickly regained a smile, “No matter! I will only have to accelerate the process!”

She couldn’t even try to ask what he meant – not that he would ever answer – before the earth shook once more. At the outskirts of the village, or what was left of it, vast spires of corpses suddenly rose up, each one dozens of bodies thick, and brimming with the same ghastly energy that had filled that peculiar core of energy beneath the ground.

Each one seemed like it was reaching the sky, a hundred metres tall at least, and while they went straight up at first, they soon curled inwards, and between them a membrane of bodies assembled.

“Okay, this isn’t… what is with you necromancers?! How do your creations keep looking more and more disturbing?”

“If your miniscule, closed-off mind cannot comprehend the true beauty of the human body, it is you that is to blame, not us,” the necromancer in the sky chuckled, seeming to be even more relaxed now that the spires nearly closed off at the top, “But fear not, you will soon be a part of our grander plans. You will not need to doubt our path any longer.”

“Go fuck yourself!” Bianca replied, giving him the middle finger, though that just earned another attack from the mass of corpses below.

It wasn’t immediately obvious how the vast dome of bodies would help, aside from making everything significantly darker, but as the ghastly light continued to fill it, the purpose soon revealed itself.

That deathly green light was suffocating, making it difficult to breathe, and also seemed to be trying to erode her flesh and energy, or perhaps sap them of life. In all likelihood, it was attempting to kill them with minimal damage to their bodies, which explained a lot.

The mass of bodies beneath them could be employed for fighting off fifth realm cultivators easily, the sheer brute force combined with the flexibility meant that it could trap and execute a lone cultivator with a combination of numerous ‘limbs’ acting in perfect unity. Despite that, ‘Song Village’ only ever struck with one limb at a time, giving them enough time to dodge.

“You fuck, you really were distracting us!”

The man in the sky didn’t reply, but Shiyi didn’t seem surprised.

“I had a feeling. These attacks were too simple, too weak, and while that weakness was, presumably, unveiled by you, the fact that he did nothing to stop us destroying it showed that it wasn’t vital,” the dragon analysed the situation calmly, “Still… it wasn’t part of his plans. If his words weren’t simply meant to deceive, then… There must be a weakness in the dome formed of Song Village. Even if not, escaping this place is far more likely than destroying every last core.”

“Then let’s go!” Bianca wasn’t about to wait a moment longer than necessary, and joined the dragon and the others in sprinting towards the nearest edge of the dome.

With her durable constitution and aggressive energy, it would be a long while until she was seriously harmed, but Song Ming lacked that same benefit. Apart from her physique energy, she was practically an ordinary third realm cultivator, only nearing the brink of the fourth realm.

Against a ritual skill of the fifth or sixth realm, it was certain to harm her before too long, and Bianca would not allow that.

Song Ming was her pet, her property, and anyone that dared to touch her must pay!

“Mistress…”

“Shh, just focus on protecting yourself. We’ll get out of here, then I’ll fill your pussy up as a reward, ‘kay?”

“Mistress~!” her pet’s eyes gleamed at the thought, making her promptly agree and focus on surrounding herself with planar energy to ward off the effects of the corpse dome.

She really was a wonderful pet…

But with Song Ming guarded for the moment, Bianca was able to direct her full attention to the flesh guarding her path. Despite it seeming like the ‘membrane’ was made purely of corpses, there was also some substance in between, perhaps congealed blood or some such, which blocked the path to the outside. Her movement skill was unable to pierce through it, and that was what mattered most.

“Shiyi, do you think you can punch through?”

“I doubt it. Whatever this is, it’s channelling the power of a peak sixth realm cultivator through it. Furthermore, that’s when it is spread throughout the whole dome…”

“In all likelihood, it can be concentrated on any spot as needed, energy moving in an instant, and… well, there is no need to speculate. Allow me, Mistress,” Huang Su raised a hand, and countless flaming feathers emerged from this air, soaring into the membrane.

Although they all collided at once, the full brunt of the sixth realm hitting it, it was as though the flames just scattered.

“Indeed, it is as I thought.”

“My… abilities won’t help much either,” Bianca put a finger on the Archetype Replicant, though she moved them away quickly as to not expose its value, “And my own energy is limited.”

The dragon simply raised a hand, countless shards of metal emerging from all around what remained of Song Village. Their power in the prior battle had been more than obvious, and yet each one simply bounced off against the flesh and blood of the countless corpses.

“Necromancers… You’ve planned for everything, didn’t you? The reason the reapers sought your demise wasn’t merely some overeager zealotry – they were aware of your ambitions, and we ignored them, fearing our own lives would be drawn to a close…” Shiyi turned and faced the man floating in the sky, “Pathetic.”

“Us… or you, dragon that refuses to die, now turned into a simple human’s toy?”

“Both of us. We are both pathetic relics that refused to die. However… do you believe that this will go unnoticed? The Exarch no longer has me to fear. It can go after any force that threatens it… and a group of monsters seeking to raise the dead and wield them for their own devices will be high on that list.”

“Nobody will know what happened here, and in time, you yourself will come forward to disprove the things you say. Our methods are nearly perfected, a little more time and-”

A sudden burst of grim light shone behind them, behind that membrane of corpses, and then the barrier of bodies was torn, a single shadowed figure piercing through, a sharpened blade gleaming.

No, not just a blade… a scythe.

“The Compact of Life and Death has been betrayed by your kind, necromancer. As the last inheritor of Reaper’s Grave, I will ensure your plans fail!” Shouge Zhe spoke firmly, confidently, her voice seeming to boom all across Song Village even as she kept it down.

She looked much like how Bianca remembered her, except her scythe was completely coated with that ghastly green energy that seemed to permeate Song Village, a sharp contrast to the usual light and shadow of her technique.

“Your cultivation is insufficient, reaper!”

“Mine doesn’t matter,” bringing her scythe low, she swept it across, like cutting grass on a field.

However, what surged out was that same ghastly light, and every corpse that it touched suddenly stopped moving, the light from it being absorbed and added to the vast mist that grew and grew.

“That… is not a reaper’s skill!”

“It is. It is merely an evolution,” Shouge Zhe raised her scythe again, “Now, meet your end!”