13 (67)

At the time Louis was circling around the road, the two cavalry forces that had been playing tag collided as if shaking hands. In a way, that union looked as if they had merged exactly as both sides had wanted. The warrior leading part of Louis’s cavalry was Mihoff.

Her hair was messily tangled, but her smooth skin had not a single hair on it, and her red lips called to mind a pretty young nobleman who did not suit the battlefield. However, if one looked at her seasoned eyes, the story changed. They were enough to make one think of a veteran mercenary who had done quite a bit of sword fighting.

The armor she wore was light armor, but it differed from that of the other cavalrymen, so anyone could recognize that she was the commander. Considering that ordinary commanders commanded from the rear, her position seemed almost as if she was looking down on the enemy. Sure enough, wherever she glanced, sturdy cavalrymen poured in. She cut down cavalrymen here and there.

The eyes of the other nearby cavalrymen shook wildly as they watched those falling from their horses. Her breakthrough was seriously powerful. The only thing she wanted was the enemy commander’s head. The one watching her with interest while smacking his lips was Brandly Welch, the seventh-ranked member of the Wandering Guild.

With his thick body, he was extremely cruel, enough to be acquainted with Sire within the Wandering Guild, and he possessed skill befitting that cruelty. Most of the villages around this area—where humans to be used as materials for the Demon Soldier Corps had been captured—eight of them had been thoroughly destroyed by him. Also, befitting his position as a Wandering Guild member, he boasted a splendid record of assassinations, and among them was a history of eliminating someone connected to the Papal Court, something said to have been experienced by only a handful even among the Wandering Guild members.

Since such people were basically under strict protection, deceiving their eyes and ears and eliminating them was impossible without skill. His only weakness was that, befitting his obese body, he was lazy, so this situation where cavalry clashed with cavalry was unpleasant to him for another reason. The distance between him and her, inside the long, fairly distant rectangular formation, had been quite wide, but she and the cavalry group following her were rapidly closing that distance.

Welch looked at her with slightly surprised eyes. As someone with much experience due to living in a world where wars were frequent, he thought that level was a decent skill. Of course, it was decent, not strong. That was certainly the case until she finally approached a close distance and suddenly threw a spear shaft. The spear, thrown from an astonishing distance, passed through the heaps of cavalrymen piled up densely and appeared before his eyes.

“Uwaaah!!”

The moment he thought it had been thrown, the spear shaft appeared before him in an instant, far faster than any spear he had ever seen, and it was soaked in mana. He hurriedly knocked it away, making a loud sound, and fell from his horse, rolling across the muddy ground. Feeling as if he had been dozing off and then struck by lightning, he blinked.

Another second or so passed before he came to his senses, and his mind was dazed. Then, realizing how dangerous his current state was, he leaped backward. Sure enough, a spear shaft stabbed diagonally into the ground before him, and so much mana was loaded into it that half of the shaft sank in.

“Damn it. This isn’t a profitable deal.”

The change was missing from what Nestor had said. As he had said, this was obviously not delicious food, but something that would surely contain poison. Someone jumped down from a horse. His gaze fixed on her, now close by. The fact that her face and build looked more delicate than expected reassured him almost instinctively.

“To think you would ambush me….”

“Your soldiers are in a rather strange state. You definitely did something to them, didn’t you? That’s why I came all the way here, even if I had to force it, to kill you. If you die, your army will probably crumble like sand.”

“Hu hu…. How arrogant. It seems I looked too easy to you, but if it is a frontal fight rather than a surprise attack….”

“A frontal fight? So what?”

“What…? Fine. I’ll let you taste it properly.”

The mana he had prepared firmly covered Welch’s body. A turbid and poor-quality evil energy boiled up so fiercely that one could say Nestor had not entrusted an army to him for no reason. It was an energy that would severely stir fear and terror in ordinary people simply by being near it.

“Are you joking? If you made that kind of remark with such childish skill…. I’m disappointed. Don’t be scared, and come at me first.”

“Hu hu….”

He laughed in disbelief, then abruptly stopped laughing. A short while later, he suddenly let out a furious shout and charged. His instantaneous speed was enough for him to vanish from sight, and to put that into perspective, it was enough that even Anok would have briefly lost the direction of his attack. However, Mihoff, who had naturally good instincts, did not miss the direction he had disappeared in from the start, and then easily received his attack. As if fanning his flustered heart, she whispered softly.

“I’m willing to entertain you a little more… but if I still don’t like you then, I’ll kill you slowly.”

Welch’s eyes widened in shock. Growing desperate, he leaped this way and that, attacking her like a demon clinging to her. How long could he continue that? At some point, she said, “The game is over,” and cut his shoulder. Welch was so flustered that his tongue nearly fell out, but fortunately, with a heavy sound, his light armor properly fulfilled its role as armor.

As he took a crooked stance, she had already cut his thigh. She did not take his life immediately, but in the current situation, it was no different from a fatal wound. Thick blood streamed down his thigh. She then cut the back of his foot. He had been staggering as he ran, then collapsed. He looked back. Then he retreated backward. She cut down two more approaching cavalrymen and slowly came closer.

In truth, his next action should have been to give an order. The cavalrymen had half their reason stolen, so they obeyed his orders without resistance and were in a state where they felt pain dully, but there was just one problem: they would move only if he gave an order. The general premise he had given his cavalrymen was all-direction annihilation, and it did not include an order to protect him.

If he had been calm, he would certainly have noticed it easily, but the current him was not in his right mind. And Mihoff coldly drove her sword into his neck. She had said she would let him feel pain slowly, but this was a war, and wasting even one minute or one second would bring more casualties, so she made a very rational judgment.

The interesting fact was that the cavalrymen suddenly began floundering. The powerful spell had been released. Except for the location where she was, the cavalrymen, who had been numerically inferior, had been dying in considerable numbers. She looked at Welch, who no longer moved, and mounted her horse.

Welch’s cavalrymen, who were collapsing into disorder, showed chaotic behavior: some fell from their horses, some fled, some harmed themselves in shock, and some knelt and begged. She stopped the battle. As she ordered them to reorganize, a lightly dressed ranger ran over and reported that additional forces were coming toward them.

‘Christina… to think she even predicted this. What extraordinary skill. The moon has not yet completely tilted before Lord Louis reaches his destination. Shall we buy a little more time?’

Louis’s cavalry moved quickly. Perhaps because everyone was severely tense, even their expressions were fierce. That was only natural, because the scenes they had witnessed on the way here had undeniably been horrible, even if this was assumed to be a brutal civil war, and it had become even more so after they witnessed the Demon Soldier Corps, mysterious monsters in human form.

They probably did not show it outwardly, but everyone was suffering from an unknown anxiety, and the reason was Christina. Whether her words were true or not would soon be revealed, and if Louis had been deceived, it was clear that they would be placed in a fatal situation. And in such a deep location—right before them was a city owned by Duke Christopher—such a situation meant facing unavoidable death.

Amid this, not a single one among the thousands of cavalrymen maintained a perfectly upright heart, except for one person: Louis alone had no disturbance in his mind. Rather, Louis was thinking about postwar cleanup even in the middle of this. Trusting once more someone who had deliberately tried to weave lies was a very difficult decision. There was nothing certain.

Even if Louis used the System to see information, that alone could not reveal someone’s complete sincerity. However, whatever decision he had made, its result was now just beginning to appear before the eyes of Louis and the anxious cavalrymen.

Hiiing.

Louis pulled the reins, and the horse neighed roughly. The horse stopped at a remote hill. Below, a long plain spread deep and wide, and because it seemed that farming had been abandoned midway and no one had managed the land, grasses had grown densely. Below that, defensive fences, palisades, and watch posts that would surely have been heavily guarded normally had been emptied out, with only the minimum number of people remaining.

Behind them, a long black barrier stretched endlessly. It was cold like the sea. A connection point between the present world and the Demon Realm. Louis had the thought that it was alive, because as soon as he appeared, it reacted to Louis’s highly pure mana and squirmed as if it were alive. It was as if it was refusing to let him enter. It was afraid.

Just by seeing that, Louis knew what was happening inside. Christina’s opinion and strategy had passed with this. The strategy was elusive and ghostlike, and it had brought Louis and Louis’s cavalry before the enemy commander with almost no clashes. Two mages hurriedly drove their horses over to Louis. With nervous faces, their complexions were pale.

“It is seriously impure magical power. As for what is happening inside…. A trap may be prepared. We must pour offensive magic on it first. It will not be too late to charge in afterward. In my opinion, fire-type magic would….”

“Lord Taltir, fire-type? I judge that lightning-type is more suitable. Look at the nature of that barrier.”

“Lightning-type against that kind of nature would be a waste of magical power. It would be better to pressure the surroundings with fire-type.”

They had decided to attack, but their opinions were split in two. Asking which would be more efficient was, in a way, also representing the feelings of the mages who had followed them here—that is, people like them. It was no different from saying they did not want to attack, that they did not want to enter that place. The two quickly exchanged opinions, but neither could gain the upper hand, and in the end, their gazes gathered on Louis, who had to decide this matter.

“Mm… it’s moving.”

“Yes…? What?”

“All army, prepare to charge.”

The cavalryman beside Louis began waving the flag. Once the signal for the order was given, they forgot everything about how the situation was unfolding and how anxious they were, and began moving to carry out a single command. Like bows that had been drawn, they would now be fired as soon as Louis gave a single word. And that would be an extremely rough charge.

“Lo… Lord Louis. A… a preliminary attack….”

“Hey. Taltir.”

“Yes…?”

“We are the ones who have seized the momentum. At times like this… we must strike down.”

Louis moved his horse. The horse that leaped out alone from the long waiting line stood out exceptionally. Behind him, one after another, the cavalry began moving like a chain.

Nestor was praying in neat clothing. Considering the events unfolding around him, his clothes were excessively clean. He still looked as if he was twenty years old, and his skin was pale. His face, somehow delicate in its lines, would make one believe he was a promising priest if only his clothes were changed. In front of him was a statue of a demon god. It had a considerably dignified appearance for something that could be viewed as a simple statue. It was seated upon a throne.