Liza, even though momentarily awe struck by the appearance of Rudra, came to her senses just after a few seconds and freaked out.
"W-Who are you?!"
She immediately took her little sister into her arms and started backing away from Rudra and Elsabeth.
Rudra said, "Wait, we do not mean any harm to you", while raising his hands in the air. But Liza was not in a state to listen, She attempted to flee from there.
'It is going to take a while to explain that we are not her enemies. We neither have time to explain nor she is in any state to listen. Fine, I will just use force.' thought Rudra
Rudra released just a bit of his aura and "STOP". Mere pressure from his fraction of aura made Liza fall on to her knees. It made her despair. She felt more fear than the fear of death.
He gave her a green potion but Liza seemed reluctant to drink. With a glare from Rudra, she drank it all.
She widened her eyes, and said "OH my! What is this? I feel so good." while checking her body with her arms. It completely healed her wound in the back. The potion made her feel healthier than she was ever in her life.
"Give this one to the little girl." Rudra said and tossed another similar potion.
"Thank you for saving me and my sister! We are indebted to you for this life." LIza said while prostrating, then made her sister drink the potion who was still unconscious.
All the minor wounds on the little healed and she woke up, "Riza! You woke up, thank goodness, are you alright?" Liza said with happy tears while meticulously checking her little sister, Riza's body.
"I am fine, sister." said Riza
Rudra after confirming both sisters were well, he entered into the village.
"[Death Ray] is one of my favorite spells but it kills the opponents instantly. But we need to find more about these knights. Let's try another spell."
Rudra saw a knight at the entrance of the village, "Hey, try not to die instantly, [Dark Lance]." A black spear materialized out of thin air in front of Rudra, then shot towards the knight. The spear pierced through the knight as a sheet of paper and went through a few more trees before stopping and disappeared.
"What? They are too weak." Rudra contemplated how to accurately judge the levels of knights.
"[Arise: Shadow Soldier]" chanted Rudra pointing at the now killed knight, then a dark shadowy figure emerged from the knight. It was similar in shape and size with the knight but it was fully black in color with purple light emitting from its eyes.
The spell just used was similar to undead summoning spells but this spell took control of the spirit of the dead instead of the corpse. Unlike some undead, Shadow Soldiers could think creatively and retain techniques from when it was alive while still being loyal. And they would not die until the caster was dead.
But it also had its flaws. One could not extract a Shadow Soldier from a dead person if he was dead for more than a day. It would heal itself for any wounds by draining the magic from the caster. The spell might not work if the dead person was stronger than the caster. This spell could be only 3 times on the same corpse. The extracted Shadow Soldier would always be slightly weaker than when it was alive.
Rudra observed the Shadow Soldier he extracted from the knight for a while, then spoke, "Its level is just 13. Even if you would maximize the amount of levels it lost after extracting, the knight would be still less than level 20. Elsabeth, just kill all the knights."
Rudra undid the spell and the Shadow Soldier faded away into nothing.
Probably because of the noise, the group of knights attacking the village had noticed the presence of both Rudra and Elsabeth. There were more than fifty knights in the village, who gathered around two of them and started asking them questions.
"Who are you two?"
"Did you two kill our guys?"
Elsabeth, who was in full body crimson armor, trembled a little bit before saying, "How dare you speak like that to us, you insolent species!?" with clear killing intent. He blew away all of the knights by just bursting a bit of her mana.
Elsabeth pointed her hand towards a knight, then the knight glowed with red for a moment before all of his blood left his body leaving behind a dried up corpse.
The knight blood floated at hand of Elsabeth before changing its shape into a sword, blood also hardened after changing its shape creating a solid sharp sword.
"To kill filth like you, I do not need to draw my weapon." said Elsabeth menacingly.
"Captain, she seems to know magic. What do we do?" a knight asked another knight, who seemed like their captain.
"Retreat! She is too strong for us." Captain immediately gave orders for retreat. But Elsabeth already cut three of their knights with one swing.
"Where do you think you are going?"
"S-Stop her, no, no, defend me!" Captain became flustered after sensing the danger of his life. "I-I cannot die here, someone stop her, buy me some time to escape."
He climbed on a horse and started escaping. He looked back to see Elsabeth killing his men at such a speed that he could even see her appearance.
As soon as he turned to see in front, Elsabeth flashed before him. She drove her hand into his chest and pinned him to the ground. She sliced all of his limbs. He cried and wailed because of the pain, he wanted death to come soon so he did not have to endure this agonizing pain, while crawling around with just his torso.
But his demise did not come that quickly, he realized that she was taking pleasure in his despair. "You look like a worm, pathetic." Elsabeth coldly spoke as she finally killed him.
Rudra said, "Good work, Elsabeth, but stop, they are too weak for you to personally handle them. Some other knights are still remaining, I will let a summon deal with them."
"Understood." Elsabeth replied with a gentle tone which was a stark contrast to her earlier behaviour.
"[Summon middle tier undead- Death knight]" Rudra used the corpse of a knight as a catalyst for this spell. He could summon the Death Knight without any corpse but it would vanish after a certain period of time. If he used a corpse then there would be no such time limits.
The corpse trembled for a bit before black liquid came out of its mouth covering its entire body then it transformed in to a Death Knight. The Death Knight was over 2 meters tall and a bulky frame. It was armed with jet black armor, a black great sword and a towering shield. It wore a helmet that revealed its face which was decayed and no eyes in its sockets.
Unlike a Shadow Soldier, the level of the Death Knight did not depend on the corpse but rather on the caster. Middle tier was between level 30-70. Death Knight was a below average middle tier undead, so its range would be 35-45, according to class and level of the caster Death Knight level would be decided. Because of the class Rudra, Death Knights summoned by Rudra were all stronger than standard Death Knights.
"Death Knight, kill the knights but keep any three of them alive." Rudra ordered the Death Knight.
"UUUU AHHH!" Death knight roared and stormed into the village.
"Are you going to use those three for interrogation, master?" Elsabeth asked Rudra in a respectful tone.
"Yes, You are right."
"I think Death Knight will take care of this task. Then, master, would you like to spend more time here? Although I am happy to stand by your side,..right, m-maybe we could take a stroll in the woods."
A date with the master in the woods! Thought Elsabeth and hopefully looking forward to it.
"Although I would love to explore this place leisurely, it is not time for that. Even though enemies are not strong ,as Death Knight seemed to have no problem with them, we should not let our guard down."
"...Y-Yes, that's right…" Elsabeth sounded disappointed.
Although Rudra noticed it, he decided to ignore it, because he had no idea how to respond to her feelings.
Scene-2:
"OOOOAAAHHHH!" a mighty roar was heard by everyone in the village.
The knights had cornered all the surviving villagers in the square at the center of the village. The knights were around twenty and villagers were roughly 120.
All knights and villagers were startled by the roar. Knights formed battle positions to confront the source of the source while villagers hid in any place they could possibly find.
Followed by metallic sounds, Death Knight stormed into the square with speed that was far beyond anyone's expectations despite being its body was twice as large as a human body.
Everyone there never saw that type of monster before but it reminded them about a monster they heard in legends. Nevertheless they knew that they could not win against it.
The knights that were huddled together echoed panicked squeals through the air. One of the men among them could not bear the oppressive terror and fled with a scream.
The fleeing man only took three steps before the death knight reached out to him like black death gale. Just as he was about to take the fourth step, his body was cleaved in two. The two halves of his body collapsed in opposite directions. His pink internal organs gave away a sour stench.
"GOOAAAAHHHH!" the blood covered Death Knight roared as it swung its sword. It was a roar of joy. It savored the despair of the pitiful humans who could not even survive one of its blows.
Anyone who was about to flee stopped in their tracks after witnessing the scene.
Some of the knights gritted through the fear and attacked the death knight. A few blades that managed to touch the death knight were ineffective against its armor. The death knight retaliated with a shield bash which did not have enough force to kill.
But when another one tried to run, it chopped off his limbs, followed by his head.
It was clearly toying with them. It wanted to see the dying struggles of humans and it was obvious to anyone who was watching the scene.
After seeing two deaths, no other knights dared to flee.
Their attacks were ineffective and they would be killed if they tried to run. All they could do was wait for their turn to be tortured to death. These men, who once oppressed the weak, now were on the receiving end of it.
"Oh god, someone save me…"
"This is the end!"
Some of them were praying to the god and others were yelling about their fate. One thing was true for all of them, that it was truly a nightmare before them.
To make things matter worse, the victims who fell to the sword of the Death Knight started twitching. Except the headless ones, all the dead bodies started moving.
"They are turning into zombies. So, that means t-this monster… is…"
"It is a Death Knight!"
"What! How could such a thing even be here!"
They heard about an undead monster in legends which wore black knight armor, strength beyond that of a human and could turn slain into undead slaves. It was called a Death Knight.
It was said that it was powerful enough to bring down towns all by itself. But they only heard about it in stories, in fact for more than a century no one had seen a Death Knight. To them it was a mere legend, that was true until now.
All of them started to panic and Death Knight killed whoever moved. So more than a handful of them died at that time.
"I am going to die anyway. I will atleast let others know, maybe they could defeat this thing." a knight who retained his rationality in this predicament, blew the horn which was a signal to the reinforcements, who were far stronger than them.
He was killed as soon as blew the horn. The last emotion he had was hope, a hope that his comrades would avenge his death.
Both Rudra and Elsabeth who were in the sky, watching the whole situation from above, also heard the knight.
Elsabeth, who was flying using her bat-like red wings, asked Rudra, who was flying with magic even though he could also manifest as he was a demon, but chose not to do so, "Master, it seems the horn was a signal for the reinforcements."
"Yes, but it seems the reinforcements are quite far away. So it will take some time to arrive here. In the meantime, we should make proper contact with the village. Elsabeth, go bring those two human girls to their village."
"Excuse my rudeness, master, but why do we have to conduct talkings with such an inferior race?"
"Do you hate humans?"
"I detest them. Humans are weak and inferior lifeforms. They would look pretty if I squashed them like bugs."
Elsabeth's voice was very sweet but her words were very cruel.
Rudra resisted the urge to sigh, "Elsabeth, we had already rescued them from a life threatening situation. So it would be quite easy to form an amicable relationship. With that relationship we could obtain information or any other things that may be necessary for surviving in this world. So, Elsabeth, atleast for now I hope you control yourself."
Elsabeth nodded energetically and flew towards the sisters they first met in the forest while Rudra descended towards the village.