Chapter 981: Possession
Sam's undead which dodged the undead creatures of Tamas and let them pass through, even though he looked like he was at a disadvantage, didn't go towards Tamas as expected.
Because they focused on the dead bodies on Tamas'side. They threw the smaller bodies towards Sam and the larger bodies were being destroyed by them. Tamas was baffled for a second before he came out of that shock.
Sam didn't go after the necromancer directly, instead, he focused on the one thing the necromancer cannot afford to lose no matter what. The source of the undead.
Tamas immediately made a move, he created the shadow undead out of the bodies that are on verge of collapse from Sam's undead to preserve something. And then made these shadow undead to kill Sam's undead.
By now the original undead that he sent out almost reached Sam. Tamas didn't take the same approach as Sam to destroy the dead bodies since his undead already reached the main target. But before the undead could even attack Sam, four shadows came out of Sam's shadow and severed the legs of this undead.
The first goal is to make them unable to move and then they focused on the hands which could also be used as support to move and then the head.
The sudden appearance of the shadows surprised everyone as no one noticed when he performed that.
Now Tamas realized why Sam delayed in the start.
It is because he was extracting shadows from the four undead creatures he made before converting the dead bodies into normal undead.
That is why he looked like he was late in creating undead and slow in his actions.
But he was just being discreet.
Now Sam already gained the upper hand. But that was just the initial move. Both of them knew that the real battle is just starting now and death energy started emerging from their body. Sam's vampire bloodline was not suppressed anymore and his skin became paler than ever.
The blood-red hue on his hair, the increased length of his nails which turned to claws, and the canine teeth turning into fangs.
The team was stunned to see this change, but Tamas was amused and the smile on his face is the biggest indication of how excited he was to see this change in Sam.
His body also started changing and it is very similar to Sam's, but his hair completely turned red, unlike Sam whose hair only turned slightly red with hue.
Both of them covered all the corpses within their range with the death energy as started creating undead.
On Tamas's side the first thing that rose from that curtain of death energy are the shadow undead and then the normal undead as for the soul undead, they turned into flashes and disappeared into the air.
He might have set them for the traps.
But on Sam's side, things are a bit different. Sam's curtain is much denser than that tamas' and it is also completely blocking any vision or spiritual sense to penetrate it. And when the curtain cleared all they could see are the normal undead that started running towards Tamas and his undead.
Tamas has the edge on number from the looks, but Sam has an advantage in tactics. His undead didn't charge randomly, they charged in a battle formation.
Even though other elements are not allowed in the battle, arranging the undead in an efficient way to battle is not exactly out of bounds.
He didn't go on the full offensive and focused more on blocking the undead creatures of Tamas.
Tamas used this chance to let the shadow undead clash with the normal undead. The advantage of the shadow undead is that the shadow undead can survive and revive as long as the connection between the necromancer and the undead is not severed and the necromancer has enough energy.
But normal undead would be useless once their physical bodies are destroyed to a certain extent.
So in a clash between the normal undead and the shadow undead, the latter with be able to win.
The physical undead moved past them and charged towards Sam.
Tamas is half expecting the shadow undead to emerge from Sam's shadow once again and block the undead, but to his surprise, Sam started dodging. The undead is slow compared to him even if he didn't use any form of elemental energy or technique.
He didn't attack them or defend them. But just dodged using the surroundings to his advantage.
Tamas and Sam's team were surprised as they couldn't understand where the shadow undead is doing.
As all the focus was placed on Sam and Tamas was trying hard to make sense of the situation, he suddenly felt a jolt in his soul.
He looked at the shadow undead that is clashing with Sam's normal undead, but one of the shadow undead is dissipating into nothingness.
A soul is visible to the naked eye as it severed the connection between Tamas and his shadow undead and went to another shadow to sever that connection too.
Tamas suddenly became anxious and let two souls appear. These are part of the bunch of souls he hid and he sent them to clash with the soul of Sam's undead.
But he was a bit late as the second shadow was also gone and when the two souls came to clash against Sam's soul, Sam's undead suddenly glowed and souls came from them and destroyed the two souls immediately with numbers and went to severe the rest of the shadows.
This caught Tamas off guard and he couldn't help but take out the rest of the souls. But once again his action was too late. Almost all the shadows were severed from his link which made him curse under his breath.
Even though these shadows destroyed half of Sam's undead, it was still a great loss.
At this moment, the normal undead of Sam became free as the soul crash was going on and they attacked Tamas's normal undead from the rear.
But still, Tamas is not worried as he outnumbered them, but to his surprise, from within the shadows of Sam's undead, the shadow undead emerged and clashed against the normal undead.
Now the number doesn't matter anymore. Sam is dominating the clash.
Tamas didn't expect such cunning from Sam. The attacks were pre-planned and executed properly. Tamas never thought that his moves were this predictable. He couldn't even display his strength properly and tactics in a direct clash against Sam.
He shook his head in helplessness for a second and made some hand signs.
All of a sudden, the undead that is chasing after Sam and clashing against Sam's undead returned back and the souls that are clashing with Sam's souls also retreated.
As they all aligned, the souls forcefully entered the undead bodies and their movements suddenly changed. Their strength increased by many folds, they are beyond the realms of normal undead.
"I hope you don't mind. This is one of the oldest techniques I recreated after a lot of research. Forcefully merging of the undead with its own soul to give a temporary consciousness."
The battle immediately turned tables. The shadow undead, normal undead, and soul undead. All of these are completely helpless against this new undead.
Sam was completely surprised. He never explored necromancy more. He does consider it as an art, but his research is more towards the spirit enchantment and even the shadow undead, he cared more about the quality over his trained shadows than the quantity.
But this is way beyond what he could even imagine.
The numbers are becoming less and less significant as they are reduced.
And the first thing that merged undead did was actually go after the souls. Even when Sam tried to hide the souls as he did before, they are being spotted and taken care of. Soul necromancy is not really is his forte anyway.
So, he shifted to the shadow necromancy.
The shadows hid in the shadows of the undead and started doing sneak attacks while the normal undead tried to hold the merged undead down.
The shadow undead also didn't focus on completely destroying the undead, instead, they made them immobile.
But in the process, Sam almost lost all of his undead and only a bunch of shadow undead remained.
Now his shadow undead and Tamas' soul undead. Two slightly similar but vastly different undead creatures remained.
Sam was at a disadvantage here. Since these shadows are just made out of whim and not something he trained, he couldn't keep that strong connection between them, and the soul undead could sever the connection between them.
But Sam couldn't find a way to use the shadow undead to sever the connection between the souls and Tamas which made him feel a bit frustrated.
After some failed attempts and losing a bunch of shadow undead with only three left remaining and Tamas having around eight souls remaining, Sam decided to use one particular advanced necromancy technique he is familiar with.
He recalled two out of three undead towards his body and made them guard him before he sat down and closed his eyes.
The third shadow undead which is a shadow of the barbarian suddenly had glowing eyes.
The Shadow possession. One of the advanced shadow techniques and as soon as a soul tried to attack that shadow, the shadow's arm glowed with death energy and caught the soul in one hand before using the other to sever the connection and destroying the soul with tyrannical energy rush.