Necromancer Of The Black Bible (145)

Kael stood up from his spot.

Then he looked in the direction Verdin pointed.

Twelve thousand soldiers looked down at them from the hill.

At the center were the Commander-in-Chief and the remaining Swordmasters.

Verdin’s order was simple.

To stand against them.

It was an absurd order.

To fight twelve thousand alone.

Yet oddly, he didn’t feel angry or amused.

‘I can’t feel emotion.’

Instead, only one thought surfaced clearly.

‘Fight. Kill.’

Kael picked up his spear.

Before he knew it, his horse had come up beside him.

The heavily armored mount moved up at his side as usual, waiting for its master to mount.

Kael mounted, and then a voice came from behind.

A softly murmured rune.

It was a magic incantation.

He glanced back to see Natasha kneeling with her hand on the ground, casting a spell.

Her whole body was shrouded in a greenish aura, which focused into the dagger she had plunged into the earth.

The dagger amplified that energy and began injecting it into the ground.

Vrrrr-

A light vibration radiated around the dagger.

The screams on the battlefield had largely subsided.

The undead soldiers outnumbered the living, and those still alive were fleeing.

The enemies on the hill were watching the process and timing their charge.

And then.

The green energy rising from the ground began seeping into the fallen corpses, and they awkwardly rose.

They slowly approached and stood behind Kael.

Only then did Kael understand what Verdin’s order had meant.

‘These are my soldiers.’

They were some five thousand undead soldiers.

Their movements weren’t as quick as living humans, but they never stopped.

They did not flee or retreat.

In war, such forces are highly valuable.

Kael waited.

Until his roughly five thousand troops formed up.

And as they took formation, he charged toward the hill.

I was watching the battle at Brandstein Castle through the crystal orb in the Ethereal Gate palace.

Having never witnessed or been embroiled in war in my previous life, the sight was quite fascinating.

Especially the knight Verdin had recently recruited, Kael, fought so well that my core mana felt well spent.

‘He can hold his own even against twelve thousand elite soldiers.’

Of course, it hadn’t been good from the start.

In the first clash, my undead soldiers were brutally cut down.

Undead soldiers raised by Necroturgy couldn’t withstand the shock of well-trained heavy cavalry.

But only for a brief moment.

After the first heavy cavalry line penetrated deep into our ranks, Kael moved.

He felled the knight leading the cavalry vanguard in a single exchange.

Then Natasha used restoration to raise the fallen undead soldiers, and they were trapped without escape.

When the second cavalry line was sent in, Kael did not allow it to stand.

He cut down the leader of the second vanguard with his blood-hot spear, and the momentum shifted.

Undead soldiers who could not be killed and Kael, a knight who fought better than he had when alive.

And whenever attention focused on Kael, Verdin would appear like a specter and sever an enemy commander’s head.

Their efforts turned the battle in our favor.

Then Ceres, who stood beside me, spoke.

“Our forces are gaining momentum. If they retreat now, we may have to fight them again.”

I pondered her words for a moment and then spoke.

“So you’re saying we shouldn’t let them retreat like this?”

“That’s right.”

Ceres bowed her head and continued.

“Our army does not tire no matter how much it fights. But ordinarily we are slower than the living. They, conversely, are the opposite.”

Now I understood what she meant.

‘Empire soldiers grow tired the more they fight, and if they retreat they can wait for another opportunity.’

Any competent commander would likely notice this.

If their commander exploits this, he could use fast light cavalry instead of slow heavy cavalry for hit-and-run tactics.

That would be fatal to our forces as they stand.

Ceres spoke as if she had read my thoughts.

“We must not give them any leeway.”

“Agreed.”

I watched the image from the crystal orb and communicated with Natasha.

The view from the Ethereal Gate alone wasn’t sufficient.

-The enemies are running. Do you see?

-Yes, Master.

-I want to keep a close watch on them….

-Then you should use Laerin. She is currently riding the clouds and watching from above.

I immediately summoned Cirrhnua.

-Connect me to Laerin.

-Yes.

At once I could see the battlefield from Laerin’s vantage.

The sense of presence far surpassed the crystal orb’s feed.

Watching Kael and Verdin sweep the field was immensely satisfying.

But there was no time to revel.

The more our forces ran rampant, the more the enemy tried to flee.

‘We must annihilate them before they scatter.’

I summoned Zahakar, the Hammer of the Abyss, to me whom he had previously sworn loyalty to.

-Zahakar. Do you hear me?

-Hm? Who is this?

-It’s me. Your master.

I heard his wheezing breath.

He immediately dropped to his knees and bowed his head to the ground.

-M-Master. Y-You called?

-Yes. The thing we discussed—can you prepare it now?

-If it’s that….

-Your weapons.

Previously I had arranged to receive weapons from him.

And to have them delivered at the time, place, and manner I desired.

Recalling that, he answered at once.

-I-I can prepare them! Where and how shall I send them?

Instead of answering, I showed him the scene I was watching.

The Imperial forces were collapsing slowly.

I pointed to the middle of it and said,

-Send twenty thousand swords to this area.

-T-Twenty thousand swords, here?

-Yes. Pour them down like a storm of rain. You can do that, right?

Could I have been any clearer?

He seemed to understand immediately.

-Understood. I’ll send them right away!

Not long after his booming reply, a black dimensional gate opened at the location I’d indicated.

It was the same sort of portal demons typically use.

The difference was its scale.

It spread wide enough to cover an entire area, and soon twenty thousand swords began pouring out like rain.

Shlaaaaaaa-

A rain of blades.

With the sound sharp swords make as they cut the air.

Unprepared soldiers struck by them screamed and fell.

The sight was truly spectacular.

Swords indiscriminately falling from the sky and enemies collapsing beneath them.

I had expected twenty thousand swords would be enough for roughly twelve thousand enemies, but once we rained them down the swords proved insufficient.

In some cases two or three swords stuck into a single soldier, while some quick-witted troops raised shields and blocked them.

I pointed to where many enemies still survived and gave another order.

-Twenty thousand axes. Send them concentrated here. Throw them with more force than before.

-I will carry out your order.

The command was executed almost immediately.

Sharp axes began flying toward that spot in focused volleys.

It was not easy to block those axes.

They were so powerful that shields trying to stop them shattered easily.

Even if one managed to block the first, they couldn’t stop the second and third axes that followed.

In the end, most of the surviving soldiers there died.

It was a satisfying outcome.

‘Now what’s left are those bastards.’

Those so-called Swordmasters.

They each raised an aura and blocked the rain of axes.

Some less skilled ones failed and died, but about five of them blocked everything.

I pointed them out and summoned Verdin.

-Verdin.

-Yes, Master.

-Deal with the rest.

-Understood.

With that short reply, Verdin spurred his mount and began to gallop.

He rode straight for the strongest-looking surviving knight.

The knight tried to resist, but the difference in skill was too great.

The moment Verdin sidestepped him, one of the knight’s arms flew off into the air.

Other knights tried to protect him, but it was useless.

Verdin sliced down the knights blocking him one by one and then severed that knight’s neck.

Now there were only corpses left on the battlefield.

A few survivors had already fled out of sight.

I watched with satisfaction and then gave the final order.

-Leave the corpses be. Instead, arm our forces with the weapons embedded in the ground.

Hyro, the Deputy Towermaster and vice-commander of this expedition, could not keep his mouth shut.

He had left the fort to scout the surroundings and had not expected the entire army to be annihilated in the meantime.

‘That idiot Aegis. I told him to scout first.’

Hyro hid in a village warehouse under an invisibility spell.

He observed the battlefield through the eyes of a summoned ‘magic raven.’

What he saw was one-sided slaughter.

The Imperial army could do almost nothing.

What was particularly astonishing was the prowess of the phantom knight.

He toyed with Imperial knights who had reached Swordmaster rank.

The scariest thing was that he had raised one of them as an undead.

The undead knight that rose again moved differently from the others.

It moved lighter and sharper than it had when alive.

It even stabbed and slew knights of higher rank with a spear.

Mages who hadn’t prepared their spells were mostly impaled by weapons falling from the sky.

It took only half a day for fifteen thousand troops to be annihilated.

‘This is bad. Really bad.’

Hyro’s mind began racing.

Being skilled in scheming, he roughly understood what would come next.

‘No one will easily believe this. Even if I report it, they might dismiss me.’

The Imperial Army’s might is the greatest on the continent.

Every nation fears the Empire; even the Dead Lands, which borders it, has a peace treaty with the Empire.

Yet fifteen thousand of such an imposing Imperial force annihilated in half a day?

If he delivered such news, the messenger’s life would be at risk.

Hyro abandoned the option of returning to the Empire alone.

It would have been tantamount to suicide.

‘It would be better to be reported dead here.’

Hyro began to carefully plan his next moves.

He realized one thing as he did so.

‘The news that Grovebern’s forces were annihilated by the undead legion was real.’

Becoming a Towermaster or procuring silvanite was no longer important to him.

The most important thing now was survival.

The key was where to flee from here.

After long deliberation, a single thought suddenly came to his mind.

‘What if I surrender?’

The thought of allying with undead was horrifying, but his instincts leaned that way.

‘Perhaps that would be better….’

Having weighed everything, he acted immediately.

Loyalty to the Empire or acquiring the Towermaster position no longer occupied his thoughts.

Instead, he craved survival and eternal life.