As soon as the Grand Duchess of the Duchy of Helon had departed, the previously dissipating fog slowly gathered again. The sunny sky was shrouded in an inky mist, so black you couldn't see your own fingers. The Helon soldiers who had been pushing the cannons so hard were so frightened they couldn't help screaming.
A shadow moved erratically in the pitch-black darkness. Terrible, desperate screams echoed from the places where the shadow had passed. These shrill cries would rise briefly before being abruptly cut off. The soldiers had fought on the edge of death many times in their lives, so they quickly understood what it meant when the sounds came to an abrupt end.
The screams of those who had not come to terms with their fate were isolated by the darkness. The thick, dark fog hid the brutal slaughter that was taking place. When it finally cleared, more than forty bodies lay on the ground. Each had died with a sharp weapon piercing their neck.
Six crystal cannons, each five metres high and six metres long, glowed in vivid colours as the fog lifted. The crystal cannons were made of magical silver and a variety of other exotic metals. Their barrels were engraved with obscure, microscopic magical patterns. The silver-grey crystal cannons were so heavy that they couldn't be moved easily.
Shiny black dots sparkled like stars that appeared with the sunlight. Along with the shining, ephemeral glow, stiff and heavy bodies appeared out of nowhere next to the crystal cannons. Sixty or so zombie warriors carefully controlled the crystal cannons. Divided into six teams, they began to push the cannons down the bald mountain.
The magic crystal cannons had been made in an ancient style, which made them sturdy and heavy. It was quite difficult to drag them up the mountain, so it didn't take much effort to push them down. With the combined efforts of sixty zombie warriors, the six magic crystal cannons were pushed down to the bottom of the mountain in less than a tenth of the time.
Of course, these extremely large and expensive crystal cannons weren't only protected by these dozens of soldiers. The guards protecting them from afar were still trapped in the dark mist. When the more than a thousand Helon soldiers at the foot of the mountain saw the magic crystal cannons they'd just pushed up with great difficulty roll down quickly with the help of their opponents, they knew immediately that there was a problem.
Without waiting for the thousand or more soldiers to react, the ground at the base of the mountain suddenly split open, forming a gorge with a loud rumbling sound. The six expensive magic crystal cannons rolled down one by one. The gorge was very deep and narrow. Even after waiting for some time, there was no sound of the heavy cannons hitting the ground.
Mission accomplished, the sixty zombie warriors vanished one by one into a black shimmer under the stunned gazes of the soldiers at the foot of the mountain. Only the deep marks left by the rolling of the magic crystal cannons proved that they had indeed existed.
"Sir Lieutenant, what... what do we do?" A captain looked at his lieutenant, asking helplessly as he glanced at the rapidly closing canyon.
"Inform His Lordship the Duke! The six magic crystal cannons are worth six hundred thousand gold coins. Our lives are over if we can't find them!" The lieutenant looked terrified. He had originally planned to ignore everything and run away. But when he thought of the cruelty the Grand Duke was capable of, as well as his parents in Helon City, he secretly prepared to die instead.
As the two of them talked, the gorge on the ground miraculously closed after swallowing the six hundred thousand gold coins worth of the Magic Crystal Cannon. This incredible scene unfolding in front of their eyes, as if everything was returning to normal, was both shocking and somewhat comforting, actually dissolving some of their inner fear.
In the sky above the mountain, Helen Tina returned to Benedict Sackville's side with empty hands. The feathers of the Fire Phoenix danced, adding to Helen's dazzling beauty as she rode in on the phoenix.
"What happened? Nothing out of the ordinary, right?" Benedict asked indulgently as he gazed at perhaps the most difficult prey he'd encountered in his life. Although Benedict was already middle-aged, his elegant and noble intellectual temperament, coupled with the charisma of a mature man, was a fatal attraction to countless ordinary women.
"He ran away. It was an evil necromancer." Helen Tina's face relaxed into a subtle smile. She didn't hold back her smile, her tone slow and gentle.
"So it was just a cowardly necromancer. Hahaha, a minor character, nothing to do with the big picture, he shouldn't have any influence on our plan." Benedict secretly weighed the information and didn't say much. He asked casually, "When will the magic crystal cannons arrive? I really want to see those despicable invaders blown to bits under their bombardment."
"They are halfway up the mountain and will appear soon. I've spent a lot of money to buy these six magic crystal cannons from the Brut Merchant Alliance thousands of miles away. Their power has been tested, you'll definitely see blood blooming like roses." After destroying an entire small forest with a single test shot, Helen Tina could see the scene of her enemies' flesh and blood spewing in her mind. She was so full of expectation after going through all that fire and blood to get to this point.
Lord, Lord Duke, it's bad, it's very bad!" The captain from the foot of the mountain hurriedly crawled over and shouted his report loudly with a terrified face.
"What happened?" Helen Tina frowned, extremely unhappy in her heart. She shouted at the lesser captain who'd disturbed her good mood.
"The six magic crystal cannons have all disappeared!" The captain was horrified, but his fear had forced him to speak the truth.
"Wha... what?" Helen Tina was momentarily stunned as her mood plummeted from the pinnacle of satisfaction to the bottom of a deep abyss. She couldn't adjust to such a sudden reversal of fortune. As a result, she didn't notice that her usual graceful voice had become shrill.
"Some zombies pushed the six cannons down from the mountain, then a crack appeared on the ground and swallowed them all. Then the crack closed and the ground returned to normal. This is the truth!" The captain's head hung as he quickly described the sequence of events. He didn't even dare raise his head to look into Helen Tina's eyes.
A huge ball of fire shot out and consumed the captain. Helen Tina's face was covered in a layer of frost as she screamed tragically. She rode the Fire Phoenix to the back of the mountain, her fury billowing into the sky. The phoenix flew quickly, surrounded by dancing embers. Benedict was certain that the soldiers responsible for the transportation would suffer greatly.
"Lord Duke, what shall we do now? Do we still have to defend this small mountain?" After Helen Tina had left the bald mountain, a soldier standing tall beside Benedict with a straight posture and a dark face asked in a low voice.
Benedict Sackville shook his head and the elegant and relaxed expression on his face disappeared. His face turned stern as he barked, "This battle is a waste of troops without the magic crystal cannons. With no reward to speak of, of course we won't engage in this confrontation anymore. Let's go, we'll leave this mountain immediately. You just need to inform Kabbah of the Duchy of Helon, I think he'll know what to do.
Nodding, the soldier said goodbye without another word and gave the order to withdraw to senior officers.
While Benedict Sackville was certainly pursuing Helen Tina, he was also plotting to swallow up the Duchy of Helon. By nature, Benedict Sackville was a duke interested only in profit. He wouldn't spend his own power in the pursuit of romance.
With Narsen Duchyl's retreat and Helen Tina's departure, the Helon soldiers seemed to realise that things weren't looking good. After some parlaying, the commander of the Helon army gave the order to retreat. The soldiers of the two duchies defending the mountain valley retreated as fast as they could under a hail of arrows.
The fierce battle was over as quickly as it'd been ignited. Three thousand corpses had been left on the bald mountain after the battle. The two enemy duchies, who had been waiting for the Helon army to leave their city, saw their chance as the soldiers retreated cleanly. Their leaders immediately ordered the troops to go around the mountain and pursue the armies of the Duchies of Narsen and Helon.
Only three hundred soldiers from the Duchies of Edmond and Bonton were left to clean up and scavenge the remains of the battlefield on the mountain.
Most of the troops had retreated after half an hour. The three hundred soldiers cleaning up the battlefield suddenly felt day turn to night, as the sky gradually became covered with a thick layer of black clouds. As they gathered items from the corpses, the soldiers looked up at the green-black cloud layer in the sky, their heads filled with confusion.
The three hundred soldiers had just finished cleaning up and had gathered all the weapons and armour into five large piles when, to their horror, the previously dead soldiers began to slowly writhe and stand up in grotesque postures.
Three thousand corpses stood up and immediately surrounded the three hundred soldiers cleaning up the battlefield. Under the canopy of necromancy, the three thousand corpses didn't take too long to turn the three hundred soldiers into more of their own.
With over three thousand stiff Reanimated Corpses now properly lined up in formation under Han Shuo's evil manipulations, the undead army advanced towards the Duchy of Helon. Han Shuo arrived at the exact spot where Benedict Sackville had stood. According to Troda's memories, Han Shuo successfully dug his way underground and found the riches Troda had prepared for his children and mistress.