— Your Excellency, are you sure it was worth using this scum so wastefully?
— You just don't know Dukon, Captain. He's quite a weakling, and while it's easy for him to squash a single man like a fly, killing a couple of thousand people isn't something he can do so easily. So let the herbivores die, but their deaths won't be in vain. This pitiful creature, who came here for my position, will be morally crushed, and we will finish him off. He won't resist. And when there is only one archmage left in Elur, in the spring we can set any terms to the king; the little squirt will have to accept them.
After such a speech, there was nothing to do but watch as the crowd of convicts ran into the "poisonous rain," their bodies starting to decay under the spell's effects. The death of thousands of people continued for nearly a minute before the magically altered water completely consumed their bodies.
Even watching it was terrifying, and one could only guess how the person who created such a thing felt. The few convicts who weren't affected by the spell fled in horror, running away from both the fortress and the camp they had intended to massacre just moments before.
Archmage Elos nodded in satisfaction as he watched.
"Good. Send in the assassin!"
A specially chosen convict, who had undergone a subjugation ritual and was equipped with a special artifact, was to sneak into the camp and kill Archmage Dukon, thus putting a decisive end to this foolish rebellion. The weapon given to the assassin represented the quintessence of decades of research in the magic of Light, with nothing to counter it. The Lord of Zalona had no doubt about the success of this plan.
The area seized by the vampires was expanding at the pace of nightly marches from settlement to settlement. New provinces and countries were being drawn into it. The most terrifying aspect was the relentless pace at which new settlements found themselves inside the territories captured by the bloodsuckers.
Stopping this advance was impossible. Feudal troops, city militias, armies, and mercenaries were powerless against the vampires. At best, they managed to destroy only one of the vampire squads, and at worst, they themselves joined the enemy's ranks. But besides the creatures grouped into squads, there were also loners who did not recognize anyone's authority and sought to stay away from the areas marked in dark colors on all the kingdoms' maps.
And the dark spots kept growing larger, with emptiness within them. Empty villages and thousands of corpses of people and animals rotting right in the streets. The vampires were driven forward not by a hunter's instinct or innate aggressiveness. They moved forward in search of food. There was no more food behind them.
The new Supreme Vampire had a personal force of just two thousand soldiers. They could not boast of training, discipline, or skill, but they were richly dressed and equipped. The best clothing, weapons, and armor. The most lavishly outfitted army of the last century. Their leader could not look at his troops without tears, but at this moment, far more important thoughts were running through his mind. In his previous life, he had been a full-fledged master and had ruled a city with a population of almost fifty thousand.
A wealthy trading city on the border with Toshal had been depopulated overnight. Its ruler had been turned not to bolster the army or replace fallen soldiers. The previous head of the squad had simply wanted a former mage he could torment day in and day out. The man had miscalculated, and soon the personal jester had replaced his master on the throne.
And when news of the Supreme Vampire's army's destruction, along with his own death, became known, he declared himself the successor. Of course, a few other commanders had done the same, but by this time, only he remained alive. He didn't even respond to his old name. For the past twenty days, he had been addressed only as "Supreme." And now the Supreme was considering the future route for his squad.
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