The Rampage Of The Thralls (1)

“And innocent, my ass! Did anyone hold a sword to their necks and force them to rely on Nether’s power? They gulped down the Nether’s drugs because they didn’t want to die!”

Seraph too showed no empathy for the people’s suffering.

“Do you even know how painful malaria is? They just wanted to live! So what if they relied on Nether’s power? Even the nobles and priests are studying Nether magic! They only borrowed the Nether’s power because the Yaegas God tribe’s strength wasn’t helping! And yet you make them rampage! How could you! You’re the real soulless monsters! You are the true monsters!”

The Blue Turban Party Priest shouted in fury and focused his mind. The thralls connected to him, who were originally Blue Turban Party members, began to move.

“Kill them!”

The Priest commanded the thralls to kill, but the male and female members of the Messenger Clan only scoffed.

“This punk’s throwing a tantrum in the wrong direction, huh?”

“Dimia. I heard you got easily beaten by Azadine? Feeling any better now?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s see what you can do.”

Clicking her tongue, Dimia of the Flower untied the composite sword hanging from her waist. It was a composite sword with a blue blade made of azure steel. As she mounted it on her bow and fired, the sword drew a blue trajectory in the air, dancing like a living snake.

-Thud!

One of the Oak Ghost’s thralls tried to block the incoming composite sword with a branch. But the sword, moving like a living thing, slipped through a gap and cleanly severed the ghost’s neck. She spread blue sword light as she sliced through the thralls one by one.

“Argh!”

“Gahk!”

Their necks and bodies severed, the Oak Ghost’s thralls twisted their bodies and spewed brain matter as they were destroyed.

Watching her easily dispatch the thralls by firing swords from her bow, the Priest realized the tremendous power of these enemies.

“You, you devils!”

The Blue Turban Party Priest tried to cast magic, screaming in horror as his subordinates were slaughtered helplessly, but a sword that was too large to be called a dagger pierced through his arm.

“Keugh!”

“Whoops. You better not move recklessly. There’s still a lot we want to ask you.”

Before he realized it, Seraph of the Bird was right beside him, holding a sword to his neck.

“Don’t be ridiculous! As if I’d ever submit to bastards like you—”

Branches shot up from beneath the Priest’s feet to attack Seraph. But at that moment, a flash of black sword light cut through, severing both the branches and the Priest’s leg cleanly.

“Ah, damn… Seems like I hit a vital spot. But surely a Nether thrall won’t die just from losing a leg, right?”

“Grgh!”

Indeed, the Priest sprouted branches from his bleeding stump to block the wound. But it was already clear he couldn’t stand against the Messenger Clan.

“Have they already started?”

At that moment, Arael appeared at the Blue Turban Party headquarters with Indim in tow. Having just finished meeting Azadine, she frowned.

“Lady Arael.”

“So you’ve already messed with the Blue Turban Party?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Lady Arael. But knowing Azadine’s personality, there’s no way he would ever agree to spike the medicine.”

Janis, Dimia’s younger sister, said this, causing Arael to glare at her.

“Seems you know quite a lot about my brother. Fine.”

Arael stretched her hand toward the collapsed Priest. At that moment, a key flew out from inside the Priest’s clothes and into her hand.

“Then what should we do with this guy?”

Seraph, holding a sword to the Priest’s throat, asked Arael.

“Feed him the medicine.”

Saying this, Arael tossed Seraph the bottle of medicine that Azadine had earlier rejected. Seraph twisted the Priest’s mouth open with his blade and poured the bottle into his mouth.

“Grkk?!”

The Priest tried to resist, but the potion was mercilessly poured down his throat.

“Here, drink it and regret it, you idiot.”

Seraph laughed mockingly as he forced the medicine into the Priest and then threw him aside.

Lightning tore through the sky and slammed into the earth.

“Good grief. It’s the end of the world. There’s no stopping it.”

Azadine felt even despair as he watched the camp being struck repeatedly by bolts of lightning.

Those who drank the Blue Turban Party’s elixir were transforming into thralls, and each time it happened, lightning would fall from the sky.

In other words, for every lightning strike, a new thrall was emerging among the refugees even now.

With thralls appearing among the refugees, there was no way to block their entry using walls or moats.

“This is bad, Captain!”

Scott was also overwhelmed by the numbers.

At first, Scott’s sorcery rendered the Nether thralls helpless. But somehow, they seemed to be sharing information, and gradually they began countering his techniques.

They prioritized destroying the undead Scott created and then ganged up on him.

“It’s endless! Captain!”

“Yeah! Time for focus and priority! We’re heading to the Blue Turban Party headquarters!”

Azadine decided to stop fighting the thralls here. Rather than trying to save people one by one, it was more rational to find and deal with the root cause.

But that meant ignoring the people who were dying — still, there was no other choice for now.

No matter how hard Azadine, Zebec, and Scott tried, new thralls kept appearing, and people kept dying. Staying here would only end once every person who drank the elixir was dead.

Azadine picked the shortest route toward the camp where the Blue Turban Party Priest had been. He only eliminated thralls that got in his way.

Other thralls not in his path would harm people, but there was nothing Azadine could do about that.

‘Worrying over an unsolvable problem is just stupid! This is the best choice for now!’

Azadine cut down the thralls blocking his path with his azure steel longsword as he rushed toward Baron of Adirov’s fortress.

In front of the gates of Baron of Adirov’s fortress, the Blue Turban Party Priest was already collapsed in a pool of his own blood, and in the distance, Arael, the four of Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon, and Janis were heading toward the baron’s fortress.

The distance was too far.

Azadine braced his lower abdomen and shouted at Arael with the loudest voice he could muster.

“Arael!”

At that, the corpses of thralls scattered around began to twitch.

“Ugh?!”

“Be careful,”

Zebec warned, but Azadine calmly stared at the scene.

Just then, Arael’s voice — no, an artificial spirit controlled by Arael — appeared.

[Ahh. Azadine. You’re going to tear your throat. Let’s talk like this instead. Well, you still can’t use proper magic yet, can you?]

“What did you do, Arael?”

[I obtained the keys to the Emperor’s treasure vault that the Blue Turban Party possessed. There are two keys. With this, the Emperor’s coinage machine will be mine.]

“You… don’t you feel anything? Because of what you’ve done, so many people have died!”

[It’s because the idiots of the Blue Turban Party stupidly used the Nether’s power. How is that my fault?]

“If you hadn’t flooded Coral Sahar in the first place, these people wouldn’t have had any reason to come here and die! You colluded with the Nagas and slaughtered people in Coral Sahar, and that disaster spread here too!”

[That’s quite an imaginative interpretation. Sure, it was me who acted in Coral Sahar. But if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to minimize sacrifices in the Age of Jupiter! I only acted to minimize losses.]

“Unbelievable. If that’s your so-called best effort to minimize sacrifices, what would you have done if you were trying to maximize them?”

[Yeah. I guess you could have handled it with even fewer sacrifices.]

“What?”

[That’s why, Azadine. Come to my side. With you, we can truly save people. I have no qualms about using others as stepping stones, so stay by my side and protect them.]

“……”

Azadine was at a loss for words. He never expected that even now, Arael would try to coax him — under the pretense of minimizing casualties, no less.

‘Unbelievable. She’s the one killing them, and she wants me to come stop her? Seriously?’

Arael’s reasoning was so self-centered that Azadine was dumbfounded.

[Of course, it’s too soon for that right now.]

Suddenly, Arael’s voice exploded.

“Ugh!”

“Captain!”

“Azadine!”

Scott and Zebec pointed toward the Blue Turban Party Priest lying on the ground. As he rose, lightning struck all around, and thralls began flooding in.

“Tch!”

Azadine drew his sword, gathering strength in his body, ready to cut the Priest down in one swift stroke.

But at that moment, the Priest raised his hand.

“W-wait! Calm down!”

“Huh?”

“I’m still conscious! I’m fine!”

“……”

Surprisingly, the Blue Turban Party Priest was fully conscious. And not only that—

“I’ll control the thralls for now.”

As the Priest focused his mind, a reaction appeared among the thralls rushing into the courtyard of the fortress.

Previously just raw violence, savage beasts — now there was a hint of order and organization among them. The Priest was controlling the thralls with his mind.

He then formed small branches. They were as sleek and pointed as bolts fired from a crossbow, sharp enough to pierce flesh without armor.

The branches shot through the air like the wind, striking the thick wooden skins of the thralls, embedding into them like mistletoe on great trees.

And then, something incredible happened. The thralls regained their sanity.

“Uh… S-Priest?”

“Eek, what is this? What happened to my body?”

Screams echoed from those who recovered their humanity.

They were horrified by the monstrous violence they had just committed and shocked by the grotesque changes in their bodies.

“U-um, has anyone seen the child who was with me? A little kid with a short haircut, carrying a cloth doll….”

The man’s branch had a blood-stained ragdoll hanging from it, swinging miserably. Likely, the child he was searching for was no longer among the living.

Seeing that, Azadine lowered his sword and glared at the Priest. Though he had managed to salvage the situation, none of this would have happened if he hadn’t spread the elixir in the first place.

Of course, the suffering from endemic diseases had driven people to rely on the elixir, so he couldn’t entirely place the blame solely on the Priest. But still, the blood-soaked ragdoll clung stubbornly to Azadine’s mind.

‘If I had eyes, I would’ve said it stuck to my retina.’

Azadine questioned the Priest.

“Got your senses back? Care to explain what the hell happened?”

“I don’t really know myself.”

“I thought as much. What I want is for you to explain it from your perspective. I’ll filter it as I see fit. Do you even realize how many people killed their own family members on the way here? How many I had to kill because of that?”

Azadine’s voice burned with anger.