Mid Boss? Item!.

The clanging sound of armor colliding is drawing closer and closer. And not just one or two people. The shouts and screams that had been ringing out noisily are no longer heard.

Count Ruben, commander of the Royal Guard Knights, who had been kneeling on one knee before the emperor with his head bowed, slowly rises.

The doors to the main hall are wrenched open, and dozens of people burst in.

“You tyrant!!”

A man charges like a howling beast, wielding a greatsword caked with blood. Whatever color his rough leather armor may once have been, it is now dark red, dripping blood.

BOOM—

The owner of the sword that blocks the greatsword filled with divine power is Count Ruben. He is the commander of the Royal Guard Knights.

“Ruben!!”

“…Yuhan, this isn’t what we agreed on.”

Count Ruben, the head of the Royal Guard Knights, mentions an ‘agreement’ with the leader of the rebels, Yuhan.

Another man cuts in before the emperor even has time to be surprised. It is Zimont Leopold, the 78th head of the Leopold family, the archmage who was believed to be dead.

“This isn’t the time for us to fight among ourselves. It’s enough if we drive out that tyrant first. And Yuhan, calm down.”

“…Heh, heh-heh-heh. Hahahahaha! Hehehehehehehe. Kwahahahahahaha!”

The emperor, who had looked as if he had seen a ghost, suddenly bursts into insane laughter. He laughs without even noticing the crown falling from his head.

The three men who had first been watching him also spot the crown rolling on the floor and their eyes gleam. Eyes shining with greed, that is.

“So it was you lot, then. Kwahaha! I see, I see. I knew it was too fast. Then I won’t have to feel even the slightest guilt about using this either.”

Seeing the emperor’s eyes gleaming with madness, the three men rushed at him all at once.

Magic circles activated almost simultaneously.

That day, the imperial capital turned into a land of death.

The first being to appear in Jule’s space is a skeleton.

But its appearance is somehow different from a normal skeleton.

First, height. If an ordinary skeleton is a little smaller than an adult man, Jule’s skeleton is more than 1.5 times larger than an adult man.

Its weapons are two-handed swords, two long, heavy weapons, one in each hand, and it wears bone armor so dense and thick that its ribs cannot even be seen.

Jules called them ‘Skeleton Gladiators,’ or ‘gladiators.’

The next beings to appear are even larger and bulkier than the gladiators, and they wear bone armor that looks painstakingly crafted.

They appear riding a chariot pulled by two horses that would have been used only in medieval battles, with something round tucked at their waist in one hand.

That round thing tucked at the waist. Looking closely, it is a head.

Looking again at the undead mounted on the chariot, it has no head. Dullahan. It is the death knight Dullahan Knight.

Twenty Dullahan Knights. From chariots pulled by two headless horses, the Dullahan glares at the enemy skeleton horde, just as he does.

“Wow! Captain! It has no neck!!”

As the warriors who had been fighting ahead fall back and come up beside me, Naruan tugs at my cloak excitedly like a child watching a peacock at the zoo or a dolphin trick at the aquarium, pointing at the Dullahan.

What appears from Shumix’s space is, of course, Death Knights. And only thirty of them at that. They look almost no different from the Death Knights made before departure.

The only visible differences are that their armor has become a lot thicker and that something is attached to their backs.

Swoosh—!

A forceful spraying sound is heard, and something attached to the Death Knights’ backs unfolds.

They were wings. Wings suffused not with a sinister black light, but with a faint dark sheen. The wings of an undead wyvern that had accumulated malignant energy for tens of thousands of years.

“Huh?”

The members are just as surprised as Arun’s bewildered voice. More than anything, the next move left the party even more flustered.

It rose so naturally and so smoothly. No, it took off. Fast and agile.

Some might say this: Death Knights already ride flying Phantom Steeds, so do they really need wings?

But if you saw what Shumix’s Death Knights were doing, you’d swallow those words right back down.

The Shumix Death Knights soar into the air and glide through the void with even greater speed and flashiness than the latest fighter jets. They are so nimble and fast that ordinary flying monsters wouldn’t even be able to compare.

It’s like a soldier who appears with mechanical wings as the assistant of ‘some hero,’ wearing red iron all over his body, a miniature reactor on his chest, and blocking everything with a single shield.

“H-Holy crap! Shumix! Can you make me one of those too, too?”

Arun, who had been watching the course of battle, completely let go of his tension and started whining, making ridiculous requests to Shumix.

That wasn’t just Arun; the entire party was like that. There was even a member who had put away his weapon.

Even so, Lee Hyo-ju and Hazel make no remark at all.

The reason could be found in the roaring booms and the sounds of air being split apart.

The Dullahan Knight, while mounted on the chariot, swung his own head—said to be harder than any metal—and even threw it.

As if it were a shortened Ruyi Jingu Bang. The Skeleton Warriors struck by the Dullahan Knight’s head had their bones crushed and their armor shattered, scattering in all directions as if pressed under a heavy object.

And the chariot the Dullahan Knight rides. Like the head he carries, the Dullahan Knight’s chariot also looks as if Jule made it using wyvern bone.

When the chariot races past, the undead there are cut down like straws sliced by an invisible blade.

Cleaning up the places the Dullahan Knight’s chariot passes through is a gladiator much larger than the Skeleton Warriors. As if the whole body had been replaced with wyvern bone, it was long and lanky overall, with thick bones.

Above all, its strength and speed were not even comparable to the Skeleton Warriors.

Every time the gladiator gripped the two-handed sword with both hands and swung it like a windmill, the Skeleton Warriors broke apart limply as if straw had possessed them, just like under the Dullahan Knight’s attacks.

While the Skeleton Warrior ranks were being utterly devastated like this, the Death Knight ranks were feeling exactly the same emotions the Rebound Legion warriors had felt a few days earlier.

The Shumix Death Knights soar into the sky and attack from the air, continuously hurling something downward from above as if firing a machine gun.

The thing carrying a slightly murky force was bone fragments. It was a hidden blade the length of one finger joint, thickly encasing the Shumix Death Knights’ armor. A deadly hidden blade made from wyvern bone at that.

“I knew it. I was wondering why the armor was so thick…“

The moment the Phantom Steed tries to take off, the force-filled hidden blades fly like machine-gun bullets, tearing it to shreds and turning it into dust.

To put it kindly, the match-up is favorable. To put it badly, it even looks dirty.

In any case, the Death Knights, presumed to have once been the Royal Guard Knights, could do nothing and had to focus solely on defense.

With the situation like this, the Skeleton King and the Elder Death Knight, who had been waiting quietly in the rear until now, had no choice but to step forward.

“Knights with some strange attachments, huh.”

“…….”

The Elder Death Knight, the undead who had led the conversation until now, steps forward and hurriedly defends himself against the Shumix Death Knights attacking from the sky, raising a sword brimming with corrupted divine power.

BOOM—!

“You’re with me.”

Proy, who had kept glancing at me and reading the room, quickly approaches and takes on the Elder Death Knight as if worried someone might snatch him away.

“Then I’ll take that one!!”

Fwoosh—

As if answering her master’s expectations, Naruan swung the red Side, burning even more fiercely, and charged at the Skeleton King.

There was no time to stop them. Before long, one-on-one battles had begun on both sides.

“This’ll be rough…“

Without realizing it, sincere words slipped out of me. In a short fight, the two of them could definitely overwhelm their opponents. Their technique might be a little lacking, but they had weapons from a different level and the ‘power’ granted by a god.

However, as mentioned several times before, those guys do not get tired.

Both physically and in divine power….

Just look at the Shumix Death Knights still scattering hidden blades in the sky.

Here, in the land of death, under environmental conditions far more favorable to undead than the living, those boss-level undead were clearly like an inexhaustible spring of both stamina and divine power.

As expected, in the beginning both Proy and Naruan overwhelmed their opponents.

Proy, with his trademark rough force and battle sense, even committed the outrage of stealing and learning the Elder Death Knight’s techniques, smashing the Elder Death Knight’s armor almost apart four times.

Naruan, too, armed with battle sense that had surged after his first death in ‘Jinyeom’ and the Battlefield of the Gods, drove the Skeleton King hard.

Unlike the battlefield, which was gradually being cleaned up, the two duels had only just begun.

Before long, the Shumix Death Knights who had cleaned up the Death Knights by dirty tricks, and Jule’s undead who had driven forward brutally, came back and stood behind the group, striking a pose.

BOOM—! KRAAANG—! Fwoosh!! THUNK—!

A chaos of explosions and collision sounds erupts. The speed of attack and defense keeps increasing. The four-way battle hurtles toward its midpoint.

As time passed, Proy and Naruan’s breathing grew rougher and rougher. I stared at the two of them for a moment, then spoke.

“Next volunteer.”

“Huh?”

“Even if they’re undead, undead of that rank aren’t easy to come by. An unbreakable training dummy. And the longer they’ve lived, the more there’s bound to be something technically impressive about them. If it looks too much to handle alone, pairing up in twos is fine too.”

The members look at me with stunned expressions. But isn’t that true? That honey pot isn’t going anywhere, and where else would you find teaching material with such deep experience?

The beings the members truly have to face are not magical beasts or monsters. They are representatives who share the same way of thinking. Is there any other sandbag as good as those, similar to a representative and yet tireless?

“There’s no need to rush. Keep a good eye on the rest, and the volunteers get ready.”

I said it loudly on purpose, so Proy and Naruan must have heard it too. Of course the Death Knights and the other undead heard it as well. So what? What human rights do things like undead even have?

Hugo moved toward the Elder Death Knight, and Inex moved toward the Skeleton King.

After they swapped out like that, Naruan and Froi approached the group with satisfied faces.

Naruan took the water bottle Lee Hyo-ju held out, gulped it down, made a pleased sound of ‘Kyaa!’, and looked up at me.

“Captain! This is really fun! I’m totally excited!!”

“Yeah, well done.”

When I pat Naruan’s head and praise her, she laughs brightly with a ‘hee-hee.’

“Captain, can I have that one?”

What Naruan points at with sparkling eyes, like a child who has found a marionette doll in a toy store, is the Skeleton King.

“No.”

“Eeh…“

Naruan clutches the water bottle with both hands and smacks her lips, genuinely disappointed. But there’s no way we can give that kind of thing to our Naruan. It might even catch something…

Much later, the garden where the battle is taking place looks a little eerie.

Some are taking out snacks or drinking beverages, while others just habitually watch the site of the fierce battle as if they were watching TV during a meal.

The one thing they have in common is that they’re comfortably ‘resting.’

Amazoness Riru, who had been the last to step in, and the new legion member Numi step back.

Then the Elder Death Knight looks this way with an expression as if he had won. His face is hidden by the helmet, so I can’t see the expression, but his tone is 200% arrogant. All the while, he has no idea what fate is about to come.

“Is it over already? You’re less persistent than I thought.”

What a talkative captain of the Royal Guard Knights.

“Uh, yeah. We’re a little busy.”

Arun cuts in quickly and scratches at the guy’s nerves with his trademark nonsense.

What comes out of the Elder Death Knight’s mouth is a ‘hahaha’ laugh, but the killing intent keeps rising thicker and thicker.

“Ja-ryong, want to try?”

I asked Ja-ryong if he wanted to fight. Contrary to my expectation that he’d jump in excitedly, he shakes his head with a lukewarm expression.

“Gyaaah. Gyaaah…“

—No matter how good it is, how am I supposed to eat something that’s been squeezed dry of all its juice? I’m not the kind of dragon who just eats anything.

Ja-ryong’s complaints, audible only to me through the talent ‘Communion.’

‘Ugh… Is that chewing gum that’s been chewed and spat out? And you say you don’t eat just anything?’

I clicked my tongue at Ja-ryong’s complaints, but had no choice but to approach the two undead.

“Oh? Weren’t you just the owner of a divine dragon? Originally, the owner of a divine dragon was a weakling because he had to bear the dragon’s spirit, you know?”

“Well, well. Nice that you still have so many things you’re curious about even after dying and becoming undead.”

“What…?”

“I’m telling you to drop some good items.”

“What nons…!! Guh!”

The breaker apparently can’t hold out easily, and it retreats in a scream. But there’s no way I swung it in a way that some measly Elder Death Knight could dodge.

“T-This is…“

The Elder Death Knight was certainly slower to recover than Froi or Naruan. The rate at which his armor was restored felt almost like slow motion.

“Even gods can’t guarantee immortality, so why is a corpse like you so surprised?”

Realizing that the situation was becoming serious, the Elder Death Knight jumps back and looks back and forth between his gaping chest and me.

The Skeleton King also grips the greatsword made of bone with both hands.

“Thanks to you, we got some good rest.”

Once inside enemy lines, we couldn’t just rest however we pleased. But fortunately, those two idiots didn’t interfere with the members taking turns or pull any other tricks, so the remaining people were able to rest sufficiently.

‘Pyosik,’ after coming out after a long time, lets out a pleased sword hum, ‘woong-woong—.’

The breaker changes from a dull dark sheen to a deep, ominous black in an instant.

The manifestation of Deicide, sped up more than dozens of times through sparring with the five heroes met every night, or every time I briefly shut my eyes.

“You, y-you! That thing! Supe…!!”

The flustered Elder Death Knight points at ‘Pyosik’ gleaming with an ominous black color, and stammers.

Just as I’m in a good mood from Deicide manifesting after a long time, ‘Pyosik,’s ego seems to be in a good mood too, transforming into a flexible sword form and wrapping around the Elder Death Knight’s body like a snake constricting prey.

“…The art of superhumans. How… at such a young age as you…”

“Goodbye.”

I yank viciously on Pyosik, which is wrapped around his body. The Elder Death Knight is torn into dozens of pieces.

Unlike when he was struck by the members’ attacks before, he doesn’t regenerate at all; instead, he gradually turns into black smoke and vanishes.

That was also when the Skeleton King, who had been holding his greatsword in a tense stance, began his attack.

“Come on, let’s hurry. The items spilling out might disappear to a stray attack if we’re not careful.”

As carefully as possible, I move my wrist and swing ‘Pyosik’ toward the Skeleton King. It writhes forward like a snake and sweeps over the Skeleton King’s body, leaving only bones behind.

Where the two vanished undead had been. As Arun’s grumbling about ‘monsters’ and such could be heard over the hollow battle, a pitch-black space opened in the air just like when the Arch-lich died, and all sorts of things began to pour out.