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“…What are you talking about? What is that? Hm?”
At that moment, thunder and lightning flashed in the northern sky. Something covering the ground far away revealed its shape because of the lightning.
A considerable number of shadows were approaching the camps of the refugees and Baron Jerod.
“Damn it! Enemy attack! Everyone, take up your weapons!”
With Baron Jerod’s shout, the battle began.
The sound of weapons clashing, and the roars of monsters that made the lower belly tremble, began to echo.
“Hiiik?”
“Uwaaa… Cultists!”
The refugees heard that sound, covered their heads, and trembled in fear. Seeing the same people who had just been making absurd demands of Dilia now trembling in terror gave her a strange pleasure.
But this was not something to be happy about just because they were afraid. The beings they feared would not harm only them.
“Kuntachi! Where did your sister go?”
“Uh. Sister… is coming soon.”
Sure enough, a single human figure leaped over the wagons and across the crowd, arriving at Dilia’s caravan.
“They’re Nether cultists! Kuntachi! We have to fight!”
“Uh, Sister!”
Kuntachi grabbed his greatsword and battle-axe and stood up.
The refugees were overwhelmed by the massive body of the half-orc, who stood while holding in each hand a large weapon that an ordinary human would have had to wield with both hands.
However, the problem was that the refugees were blocking the road.
“S-save us!”
“Uwaaaa!”
The terrified refugees ran wildly in every direction… or blocked the road while trying somehow to enter the circular formation made by the caravan wagons.
Even if Kuntachi tried to advance, he could not easily get out unless he trampled the refugees.
The road was wide enough for two wagons to pass through, so it would not have been blocked like this if traffic were organized, yet since there was no one organizing the road, a traffic jam had occurred.
Looking at them, Dilia felt unbearable irritation.
‘These bastards are getting in the way! If it were up to me, I’d cut them all down and….’
It was when Dilia had such thoughts.
“Everyone, calm down!”
A young man’s voice came from the sky.
On one of a group of hippogriffs, a paladin who looked as though he had leaped straight out of a painting was raising a flaming sword.
“I am Triodana, Hospitaller of the Wisdom Order of the Rescue Knights Order! I have come to save you!”
As the paladin said that, dazzling wings of light spread from his back. When angelic wings shone clearly in the dark sky, people were overwhelmed with emotion.
They glided through the sky and, finding no suitable landing spot, landed on top of the caravan wagons.
The dignified figure of the hippogriff, and a paladin who looked like an angel to anyone’s eyes, with angel wings and a flaming sword, looked exactly like a scene from a heroic legend.
Countless people cheered and gained hope just from that appearance alone.
Taking advantage of that moment, a black-haired young man wearing a bird mask descended from a hippogriff, looked around, and removed his mask.
Compared to the Celestial, his appearance seemed rather plain, but he was the leader of the warlord faction that had pacified the Chadra Plateau and the true master of this merchant caravan, Azadine.
“S-Sir Azadine!”
The caravan’s guards, the subordinates of Azadine’s warlord faction, recognized Azadine and were moved. Since Azadine had personally flown over on a hippogriff to save them, they believed that he would at least be able to resolve this situation.
That was how great the loyalty Azadine’s subordinates had toward him was.
“Messengers!”
“Yes!”
“Let the refugees into the caravan wagon circle! Two lines! Keep to the right! Soldiers of Vermilion! Help the refugees evacuate safely inside the caravan wagon circle!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Tell the people to keep right! We are going out this way!”
Following Azadine’s instructions, the soldiers immediately began organizing traffic. When they were told that they would be allowed inside the wagon circle if they followed control, the confusion decreased.
The refugees began following their control without complaint, and thanks to that, the road opened.
“Sir Triodana!”
“Speak.”
“Go north with me. We will support the warriors in the north!”
“Understood!”
When Sir Triodana spread his wings and leaped into the sky, he truly soared to a height at which he could easily jump over one or two houses. Azadine ran by leaping over the wagons and followed Triodana.
“Hah, he really has become a true paladin. Yes, Azadine of Disgrace….”
Dilia admired Azadine as she watched him instantly organize the situation and run off.
She had looked down on the refugees and been angry at their lack of discipline and ungrateful demands, but Azadine had sorted out the situation extremely quickly and concisely.
‘He really does have the power that makes you want to believe in him.’
Dilia found herself cheering for Azadine before she knew it and gave a bitter smile.
In Hubris, “cultist” was a general term for those who had experienced bodily mutation after becoming immersed in black magic, forbidden sorcery, the faith of the Kurt Pantheon, or Nether magic.
In other words, the appearance of cultists meant that humans devoured by unknown powers had been found.
Baron Jerod’s army was facing exactly such cultists, grotesque humans who had thorny vine-tentacle arms through the power of alien forces.
These beings, who had once been human, crawled across the ground in grotesque forms and swung terrifying tentacle whips.
A startled knight blocked the attack with his mounted shield and lance, but the tentacle sent sparks flying from the shield and struck the horse’s head. The horse screamed, sprayed blood, and collapsed.
“Ugh!”
The arm of the knight who had blocked using his shield was also broken.
“Damn it! What kind of strength….”
To kill a horse in a single blow and break the arm of a knight wearing plate armor at once. They were opponents that absolutely should not be fought head-on.
Baron Jerod immediately took out his pistol.
“Everyone, volley fire!”
Perhaps because they were knights and servants of the Banreung Kingdom, they all had pistols. The knights drew the pistols they had carefully kept from getting wet in the rain and began firing all at once.
Half of them failed to ignite because their powder pans were wet from the rain, but even when only the remaining half fired, a thunderous roar that shook heaven and earth echoed.
-Puh-puk!
The cultists, the monsters, fell. The power of gunpowder weapons was truly absolute.
However, more cultists came rushing in behind them.
“Grrrrr.”
“Kh!”
A pistol that had been fired once took far too long to reload.
That was why the cavalrymen of the Banreung Kingdom used the caracole tactic, firing pistols, retreating, reloading, and charging in again. But when rain fell on the battlefield like now, they could not reload guns anywhere.
“We have to stand and fight here! There is no road behind us anyway!”
Baron Jerod put away his pistol, raised his sword, and encouraged his soldiers.
But considering those monsters’ monstrous strength, hand-to-hand combat was suicide. They had no place to retreat, so they had to stand and fight, but what should they do? It was when they were agonizing over that.
“Behold!”
A winged knight landed from the sky.
“Huh?”
“A-an angel!”
Everyone was startled as they saw him. The Celestial, Sir Triodana, had reached the rearmost line before Azadine.
He raised flames from his ceramite longsword and touched the blade with his fingers. Then he transferred the flames of the sword to his hand and drew a divine character of fire in the air.
“O sacred flame!”
A fiery whirlwind rose amid the icy rain of the night. When Triodana swung his sword, the fiery whirlwind advanced and swept away the charging monsters.
The monsters swept up by the fiery whirlwind rose from the ground and burned. They let out indescribably horrific screams, but to the ears of the soldiers whose lives had hung by a thread, those screams sounded so sweet that they were almost like heavenly hymns.
“Sir Triodana!”
“We will help!”
“We have arrived as well!”
The other Celestials, Triodana’s subordinates, also revealed their wings and began fighting the monsters.
When knights in the form of angels appeared, people were moved as though they had seen a ray of light amid destruction.
As Triodana and the Celestial party overtook him, Azadine let them take the front and carefully examined the surroundings himself.
Many monsters were swarming in the darkness. Because of the road, the attack was currently concentrated on the rear, but once more enemy forces arrived, troops that had naturally detoured to both sides would arrive as well.
They had to cleanly cut off the enemies at the rear, or operate a detached unit to widen their own battle line as well.
‘The Celestials certainly look more impressive.’
Azadine inwardly admired the sight of the Celestials capturing people’s hearts in an instant.
The ritual of being reborn as a Celestial was an act of blasphemy, but those born that way were certainly beings who gave people hope in this age of destruction.
As a member of the Messenger Clan hated by all, and among them someone once called Azadine of Disgrace and avoided for his hideous appearance, he felt complicated emotions when seeing the Celestials, who received everyone’s love just by their appearance.
Should it be called jealousy, or self-pity?
Of course, now that he had stolen Arael’s appearance, those words no longer applied, but that was precisely why he felt all the more empty.
‘Shall I see Triodana’s skill?’
Not only Triodana, but also the Celestials who were his subordinates drew their ceramite longswords and charged in to face the cultist mutants.
Among the cultist mutants, there were some who still had human forms, and some who had already mutated into gigantic masses of tentacle vines.
Against them, the Celestials fought incredibly well. They gripped and swung their swords with tremendous grip strength, as though their bodies had been connected by machines, cutting and burning everything that touched their blades.
Even the tentacle attacks of the cultist mutants, which had killed horses in one blow, were directly parried by the Celestials with their swords.
“Waaaaa!”
“A-angels really are amazing!”
“We are saved now!”
Seeing the soldiers rejoice and cheer, Azadine became troubled. Considering the Celestials’ manufacturing process and the Northern Emperor’s ambitions behind it, he wished people would not cheer for them. But at the same time, he understood that the environment was one in which they could not help being enchanted by them.
[That is the glory you should be enjoying, Azadine. Are you not the one chosen by the angels?]
Arael’s voice spoke to Azadine.
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