The Land Of Death

In war, if you have timely stratagems, troop morale, and a superb general, you can guarantee a ninety-percent chance of victory.

But from the side getting hit, it may be unfair, yet sometimes beings appear that ignore all stratagems and strategies.

Just as the flawless calculations laid out by the hero of the age, Cao Cao, after conferring with the genius strategist Guo Jia and countless strategists under him—his perfect strategy, overwhelming forces, and the valiant generals beneath him—were miserably shattered by a single warrior, such things do happen.

―The muttering of some user who got flamed for bad controls in a 5:5 AOS match.

Beautiful flowers bloom in profusion and dance this way and that with the movement of the wind.

In the middle of a garden in full bloom with flowers so colorful you wonder if such blossoms even exist, a beautiful woman is drinking tea with graceful poise.

“Have you finally gone crazy?”

The other woman, who seemed to spring up from the tea table, speaks with an air full of sneer. No, she looks displeased and impatient.

“…slurp.”

“Grr!!”

“……”

“Aetas!!”

“Shut up, Mors.”

Crack—! Crash!!

At the tiny murmur, not even a battle cry, the tea table, teapot, and teacups all shatter to pieces and scatter.

The clash of aura between Aetas and Mors, the closest aides of the Creator, is no trivial matter.

Everything except the chair Aetas is sitting on has been destroyed.

“You crazy bitch. You’d get bewitched by a man and sell out a representative!”

“Mors, do my words to shut up sound funny to you? You’ve gotten big, haven’t you?”

Kukwakwakwakwa—!!

The fact that they can devastate their surroundings just by releasing their aura shows they really are gods. Strong ones, too.

“Why did you come to someone else’s shelter in your true body just to pick a fight?”

Aetas’s voice is cold. Feeling that Aetas means it, Mors steps back.

For some reason, Aetas is extremely angry right now. No, ever since the five-year mark began, she had always been angry.

But Mors was the same; she was extremely anxious right now.

“…Damn it. We should’ve stopped Kim Han!”

“You crazy bitch. Why are you blaming me? Why didn’t you try stopping him yourself?”

“I had no idea Kim Han, that crazy bastard, would go to the Land of Death!”

Mors screamed as if struggling with all her might, pointing at the screen projected in midair as she shouted.

“How would I have known?”

“Aaaagh!! So annoying!!”

At Aetas’s perfectly reasonable remark, Mors gets even more heated, grabbing at her own hair and kicking at the air.

Watching Mors blankly, Aetas asks in a sulky voice.

“Why the hell are you making such a fuss? Your representative has the ‘Immortality’ talent anyway.”

“…No.”

“What?”

“I said it won’t work.”

“What won’t?”

“If they’re killed by undead, the talent ‘Immortality’ won’t activate!! If it were ‘Immortality’ maybe, but… damn it!”

“What?”

Aetas violently pushes aside the chair that alone survived despite all the furniture being smashed, and leaps to her feet.

Aetas’s gaze fixed on the same stretch of empty space as Mors’s, and where her eyes were directed, Lee Hyo-ju lay collapsed, with Kim Han standing beside her.

They were undead, and most of their forces were high zombies, but the pressure of their numbers was immense.

Besides, even ten thousand ordinary zombies would be enough to make one sick of them, but these were high zombies, known to be faster and stronger than ordinary zombies. Zombies capable of handling weapons skillfully.

There were countless death knights and liches, including those high zombies.

“Whew, that’s a lot… Hey, boss, boss! If I clear all of them out, how strong will I get? Hm? Boss?”

Naruan’s tinkling voice, utterly out of place with the atmosphere, passes through the members and reaches me.

Whether she meant to or not, the tense atmosphere among the group was broken.

“Hmm. If you came at me together with Proy, maybe enough to land a solid hit on me?”

“Really?!”

Naruan immediately turns her back, as if the undead are no longer even in her eyes, and looks at me.

Her eyes were shining brightly, like a child listening to a fairy tale and spreading the wings of imagination.

“Yes, probably.”

As if she somehow heard my quiet reply, she snaps her head toward Proy this time.

“Proy, did you hear that?!”

“I heard you, kid.”

Proy seems fired up too, banging his fists together again and again as he grinds his teeth. The fact that his voice is lowered probably isn’t for any other reason.

“Heehee, heeheeheehee. Good, good. Freeze-tag… is unconscious, huh. Hazel, when do we attack?”

Naruan asks Hazel, hopping in place with excitement.

Hazel gazes at Arun with a faint smile.

The muttering of Arun and the surrounding mages came to an end. Arun, who had unusually kept his eyes closed, opened them and wore a faintly sinister smile.

“Kheh-heh-heh. Weather Control, Advanced Conversion, Attribute Conversion!! Holy!”

“Weather Control!”

“Weather……!”

“Weather……!”

“Weather……!”

In an instant, the sky begins to fill with dark clouds. Then rain starts to fall.

White rain—no, it only looks white; it is actually beams of holy light.

“This?”

Each raindrop is like holy water.

Clever. He makes it rain with weather-control magic, then converts the attribute to divinity at that moment.

It sounds easy, but this must clearly be a difficult spell—especially one of this scale, affecting such a wide area.

But Arun’s magic was not finished.

“…Mana Recovery!! Divine Punishment!!”

As always, rain clouds bring lightning. He infused divinity into lightning imbued with the power that destroys evil. Brilliant, pure-white clusters of lightning strike the undead.

Crack-crack-crack!! Rumble— Kaboom! Kaboom!!

Starting with the sound of dry bamboo splitting, the rumble of clouds and thunderous booms come one after another.

Are the undead screaming too? I can’t hear it, but somehow it feels like they are.

Not only were the undead at the rear and middle ranks of the horde struck directly by the randomly falling holy lightning, but everything around them also turned to dust and vanished without a trace.

The undead in the back are liches and specters. High-ranking undead that use magic, and undead with outstanding magic resistance.

Those undead were directly hit by Arun and the mages’ spells and disappeared.

“Ugh… I’m dying.”

As Arun collapses to the ground, the other mages also sit down and guzzle divine power potions like water.

Unlike the concentrated, high-quality potions I have, it would take a long time to replenish divine power with the potions distributed to the members, but they keep forcing them down without seeming to care how hard it is.

Probably to return to the battlefield quickly.

Even though they had already dealt with enough liches, who are considered elite forces, there didn’t seem to be a single mage thinking of sitting down to rest.

“Will Arun finally start acting like a proper person now…?”

After getting beaten so hard by Talis on a rainy day that he was literally kicked up in the dust, he finally awakened a talent.

The talent ‘Battle Magic.’ According to the description, it allows spellcasting to continue uninterrupted even while moving or taking hits, and speeds up spellcasting.

On top of that, Arun’s innately high agility makes him quite formidable as a battle mage.

Especially when he was slathered in all sorts of support magic and defeated a warrior-type member in close combat, he even gave people the mistaken impression that someone other than Arun was wearing Arun’s skin.

While the mages were resting, the assault unit ‘Dragon Fang’ had already set out.

And unexpectedly, the member appointed as the leader of Dragon Fang was the priestess Apher.

No one in Dragon Fang objected to Lee Hyo-ju’s decision. Because over the past three days, Lee Hyo-ju’s orders had always been right.

And once again, Lee Hyo-ju’s judgment was correct.

“We advance toward the north-northwest. Movement speed: quick march. Formation: wedge. The spearhead will be Meo and Michel. Behind them, Proy and Naruan. Behind them again, Kitas and Joel. I’ll take the center. The distance between each of us must be no more than five paces. Absolutely no more than that.”

Apher made a calm and rational judgment, to the point that it was hard to believe she had only been quietly following the group until now.

At first glance, it might seem better to put Proy or Naruan at the front, but Meo and Mishel, who are built for both offense and defense, drop to less than half their power the moment the two are separated. Whether attacking or defending.

Then there was the formation of placing the two speed-type warriors, Kitas of Swift Venom and Joel of Lightning Flash, at the very rear so they could catch up with the group at any time and finish off enemies Naruan or Proy had beaten to a pulp.

“Impressive?”

As expected, amazing. The stat increases are dazzling too. The reason her agility rose the most may be because she always fought as if she were a martial artist.

And then there’s that terrifyingly named skill, ‘Faith of the Heretic Inquisitor [Ex].’

It’s nothing special. It just… deals extra damage to beings with corrupted divine power, like undead or demonic beasts, and boosts divine power for a certain amount of time once per day.

It really isn’t that big a dea…l!

“It’s broken.”

Anyway, Dragon Fang began its charge. True to the name “Dragon Fang,” it sweeps over the vanguard of the undead army, who are scrambling under the magic attacks.

KWAANG—!!

Meo and Michel.

The two of them weren’t even siblings, and had nothing to do with each other until entering the Battlefield of the Gods, yet after meeting they displayed fusion techniques superior even to twins in just five years.

Four swords filled to the brim with divine power. The two pairs of twin blades are swung in a raging sweep like excavators digging into the ground, heralding an easy breakthrough.

The four swords wielded by the two serve simultaneously as shields that prevent any attack from approaching and spears that crush anything in their path.

Two swords engulfed in flame and two swords dripping with cold. The two attributes, which seem like they should never go together, unleash their power without awkwardness or resistance.

A transcendent’s skill bearing Gemini’s name. No, the skills of transcendent beings. The fusion technique casually created by two transcendent beings who were close friends is Gemini’s Flame and Frost.

They may have made it casually, but it was still created by transcendent beings. Its effects and functions could not possibly be a joke.

As the time spent mastering the two skills increased, Meo and Mishel’s fusion became more natural and smooth. So much so that you couldn’t confidently say one person alone could do it this well.

“Mimi (Meo, Mishel)! Toward one o’clock!!”

At Apher’s words, the two turned naturally and advanced as if they had exchanged conversation, as if it were a rehearsed spar.

Dragon Fang was living up to its name.