Before Duke Avaritan has time to give another order, Foof lowers his hand to cast the spell.
"Brace yourselves!" The Duke screams. The Purple magic circle expands to encompass the whole area and shines down on the land below. Like they've already seen twice before, the magic circle begins descending toward the ground. "Dodge it. Get out of the way!"
The massive magic circle collides with the forest floor only a few moments later. Everyone flinches as it passes through them.
"Is that it?" one soldier asks.
"Don't be stupid. I'm sure it just has a delayed effect of some sort." Everyone looks left and right to try and figure out what happened, but no one seems injured.
"Maybe he missed?"
"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard! It literally passed right through us!" The ground starts shaking as the Duke shouts.
"I thought you said it was Soul magic!" a nearby captain complains.
"It was, I don't–" A bony hand bursts out of the soil to interrupt the noble. "Necromancy! This son of a bitch would resort to Necromancy?!"
One by one, beastial skeletons rise from the ground. Several millennia of life and death begin growing out of the soil.
"Stop standing around! Kill those undead bastards!"
A primal rage drives the Duke's forces to fight against the growing Necropolis. A denial of death. These two forces are fundamentally opposed, opposites that will destroy each other on sight. The grotesque corpses of Griffiths and Equuivores tear at the humans. Even soldiers killed earlier in the battle are risen to fight their companions. While the humans are distracted by the living dead, the remnants of the fairy forces counterattack as best they can.
""Explosion!"" Two fairies work together to cast a single spell. They may be weak singlehandedly but the havoc they can wreck together is nothing to sneeze at. Several people are torn asunder by the force of the explosion. Their corpses are still warm when the effects of Foof's spell take hold, and they rise to fight again.
"Fourth gate: Open!" Kobayashi shouts in desperation. By opening four Mana gateways, he can drastically increase his strength, speed, and stamina; but the excess force on his body begins tearing him apart from the inside. The super-powered samurai flies around the battlefield, dispatching the dead in the blink of an eye. "Don't let anyone die! Every casualty is a new opponent! We must do everything we can to stay alive, if not for ourselves, then for the safety of our companions!"
'Shiing!'
The skeleton of a Metapardus crumples to the ground after receiving a swing from his katana. Kobayashi smiles to distract himself from his shaking legs.
"Just focus on staying alive. I'll deal with these pathetic bags of bones!"
The Duke's forces are relieved to hear that one of their superiors will solve this deadly problem, but he's also on a timer. The muscles in his legs are already hemorrhaging from the abuse they've endured so far. Kobayashi dashes around madly, swinging his blade.
'Ching!'
'Shiing!'
Over one hundred skeletons have already returned to the soil by the lone samurai.
Foof, still hanging in the air after casting the wide-area spell, falls lightly to the ground. Having expended every last ounce of energy to defend his comrades, he peacefully relaxes his eyes as he lies down.
"That's it, right?" the Duke sneers. "No more explosions, no more lava snakes. You're done, right?"
Foof doesn't even bother lifting his head to look at the enemy standing before him.
"That's what I thought." Duke Avaritan swings his swords and easily decapitates the half-dead fairy. A peaceful smile hangs on his face as his head rolls through the grass. "What the fuck are you smiling about?"
Duke Avaritan stomps on the fairy's small body to prevent it from reanimating. Fairy corpses aren't conducive to Soul magic, but better safe than sorry. The pride of a hard-fought victory fills the Duke's chest. With the death of the lava fairy and the angel of death incapacitated, it's only a matter of time before they secure the forest. If they're lucky, they might be able to clear the dungeon before the end of the day.
Avaritan scours the battlefield to check the state of his forces. Even at a glance, it's clear that his troops have the situation under control. After the initial shock of being attacked by the undead, his Captains have quickly rallied the disparate forces into compact groups, rotating fighters in and out of combat. By whittling down the skeleton army in shifts, they can win the war without sustaining any additional casualties.
"I gotta hand it to you; you tiny fucks really made us work for it," he says to the Lava Fairy's corpse. "We would have been toast if we hadn't been so well prepared. That being said, you all knew this was inevitable. Even if we lost, another task force would be sent out to cleanse the Argon Forest at some point in the future, and then another one, and another one. Say what you want about us, but there's a reason we stand at the top of the food chain. It's our indefatigable ambition. No matter how hard you fought, it was always meaningless."
Duke Avaritan sheathes his sword and begins walking toward the center of his forces when he hears the bushes rattling.
"What? More fairies? You're a little late. It doesn't matter how many more flies show up. The battle is already over."
'Foosh!'
Nothing bursts forth from the foliage. Specks of blood fall from no one and soak the ground. Nothing stands there for a moment before running toward the center of the human forces. A speck of blood lands on the Duke's shoulder.
"What the hell?" he says as he sniffs the blood. Is there some unseen creature that frequents the forest? And if so, why is it bleeding?
'OOKYAKYAKYA!'
The piercing cry of a Manka cuts through the air.
"Oh, no." A thought occurs to the Duke. "No, no, no."
What if one of the Mankas were to get wrapped up in the fighting?
"No…" Or what if someone dragged them into the fight? "Noo!"
His cries are drowned out by the approaching cacophony. Hundreds of Mankas descend upon the Duke and his men.
"NOOO!!"