Once Again, the Monster Subjugation
Mireia leapt from the cliff with her longsword raised high and landed in the thick of the monsters.
All around her, the battle between the subjugation force and the horde was already raging at full intensity.
Goblins, ogres, dire wolves, kobolds, Skeleton Knights, mutant slimes — creatures of every kind seethed and crowded the canyon floor. Through that chaos, Mireia walked slowly forward.
What waited at the end of her gaze was the largest monster on the far side of the gorge: the Behemoth.
It was a creature the size of a house, with long, razor-sharp claws and hide as hard as stone, as though a gorilla and a rhinoceros had been fused into one. Smashing through the canyon rock, it advanced on the subjugation members locked in the melee.
A sharp whistle split the air.
Mireia swept her longsword through the empty space around her at a speed almost too fast to see. Then she walked straight toward the rampaging Behemoth.
The monsters that had hemmed her in lunged all at once. But before a single attack could so much as graze her, their bodies came apart in two wet, bursting halves. The ones that followed met the same fate. Flesh split. Blood sprayed.
Mireia was not even swinging her sword. She was simply walking forward. Yet every monster that drew near was cut down without fail.
She had already sliced the empty air in advance, stored those slashes in time with her mana, and triggered them at will. It was an application of the Time-delayed Slash she had once shown Yunoa.
The volume of mana packed into Mireia's blade defied imagination. A single cut through empty air was enough to store a killing stroke that could fell a monster in one blow — and she could unleash that stroke again and again from the same position. Because those stored slashes carried her mana, she could even shift their locations as she pleased.
In effect, she was walking around inside an invisible Blade Barrier — a marvel no different from cutting her enemies down with a sword no one could see.
A road of blood formed in Mireia's wake, paved with the severed corpses of everything her Time-delayed Slashes had touched. The other subjugation members fighting fiercely nearby felt their morale surge at her appearance, and they began driving the monsters back.
"GRAAAAAAAAAH—!"
The Behemoth bellowed and swept its massive arms through everything around it. A few unlucky subjugation members caught in its path were struck and sent flying with tremendous force. The house-sized monster did not even spare its own allies — the smaller creatures were flung aside just the same.
Mireia raised her longsword, laid it horizontal, and settled into a thrusting stance aimed at the Behemoth.
The beast spotted her, turned, and slammed a clawed hand into the earth.
A thunderous crash shattered the surrounding rock and kicked up a cloud of dust. The ground trembled hard enough that a landslide broke loose on the cliff above, sending boulders tumbling down.
But Mireia was no longer where the Behemoth had struck. In the space of a blink, she had circled around behind it.
Blue mana gathered along the horizontally held longsword, bright enough to see even from a distance. The mana wrapped around the blade spun about it like a vortex, whipping into something like a miniature storm.
The next instant, Mireia drove the longsword — Mana Storm raging around its edge — deep into the Behemoth's hindquarters.
The sharply rotating mana tore through the creature from the inside. The Behemoth threw its head back and roared in agony, its mouth stretching wide. From that gaping maw, a gust of blue mana burst forth as if the monster's very soul were being expelled.
A heavy thud.
At last the Behemoth's massive body toppled sideways in a cloud of dust. The monsters beneath it were crushed and pulped under its weight. With its internal organs shredded by the Mana Storm, the Behemoth died on the spot.
"Ghhk! Damn it!"
No matter how many monsters I cut down, there was no end to them.
After sending Mireia onto the battlefield, I had joined the rest of the subjugation force in fighting the horde. I deflected a goblin's spear coming in from the side, then released a short burst of Sword Qi that carved through the creature's body. At the same moment, a dire wolf charged from one direction, and a kobold's fire magic came screaming in from the air.
I couldn't catch a single breath. This was a melee on a completely different scale from anything I'd faced against Blue Slimes or Arachne. And every so often there were powerful monsters my sword couldn't even pierce. The instant I ran into one of those, the situation turned against me in a heartbeat — because even in that split second of panic when I realized my attack hadn't landed, the monster's assault never stopped.
A sound loud enough to shake the earth rang out, accompanied by a cloud of dust.
The massive Behemoth that had been rampaging across the battlefield had fallen.
"The Behemoth is down!"
"Waaaaah—! Mireia—!"
The subjugation members roared her name, their spirits soaring as they began driving the monsters back. Until now, no one but Mireia could have faced the Behemoth alone, so the force hadn't been able to approach its vicinity and had been bottled up in a confined stretch of ground — putting them at a clear disadvantage. But with the Behemoth down, the members started pushing the monsters out and forming a proper battle line, and the tide of the fight shifted.
I fell in with the formation and swung my sword at everything that came at us.
At first, overwhelmed by the sheer difference in numbers, Yunoa had not been confident of victory. He felt a wave of relief.
The tide of battle was tilting toward the subjugation force. Or rather — it appeared to be.
That was when the Narration in my head started saying something ominous.
Yunoa had forgotten that this massive allied monster army was under the command of a demon.
Now that the tide had turned against them, the demon commanding the monsters was approaching, preparing to enter the battlefield himself.
That demon's identity was a direct subordinate of the Demon King, the one known as the Lord of Blood — Bloodstain.
"Wh... what did you just...?"
A clang, then a wet thrust. I parried a goblin's blunt blade, drove my sword into its gut, and tried to focus on what the Narration had said.
Bloodstain.
I felt like I'd heard that name somewhere... Ah.
"The Lord of Blood, Bloodstain — a subordinate of the Demon King — attacked a village called Sinsi. More than several hundred people were killed, and the village vanished without a trace."
That was the one who had destroyed Mireia's hometown.
With the face of a horse and an axe of slaughter in his hands, Bloodstain's strength was more than enough to sweep through the subjugation force single-handedly.
If Mireia was the subjugation force's last bastion on this battlefield, then Bloodstain was the monsters' last bastion.
The only one here who could stop him was Mireia.
I hurriedly pulled back from the fighting line and searched for where Mireia was. We were pushing the monsters back with high spirits right now, but if Bloodstain appeared on the battlefield the way the Narration said he would, the tide would reverse — that much was obvious.
Then the monsters suddenly began to fall back.
The subjugation members broke formation and charged forward, chasing the withdrawing horde. I kept my eyes on the figure faintly visible behind the retreating monsters.
A massive, muscular body. The face of a horse. A huge axe.
"Don't chase them! All of you, stop!"
I shouted toward the subjugation force. Those who heard me halted their charge, fell back, and held their positions. But some of the members, too heated by the frenzy of battle, ignored me and kept pursuing the monsters.
"Damn it."
The retreating monsters suddenly parted to either side, as if opening a path. Bloodstain walked through the gap and raised his axe high overhead. Ominous red mana gathered along the blade.
That looks dangerous.
But the next instant, Mireia shot forward like a flash of light and caught Bloodstain's descending axe on her sword.
A deafening clash. Metal groaned and shrieked under the strain.
The two powerhouses locked weapons. At the same time, the blue mana and red mana pouring off both of them collided, whipping up a fierce wind. Dust and stone fragments flew, and even the nearby monsters were shoved back in a widening circle by the force. The ground beneath Mireia's feet slowly sank under the tremendous pressure.
The other monsters couldn't even approach that fight. They scattered in all directions, then regrouped and began attacking toward the subjugation force again.
And so the battle split in two: Mireia versus Bloodstain, and the subjugation force versus the monsters.
I was grateful the catastrophe I'd feared hadn't come to pass. If Mireia hadn't intercepted Bloodstain so quickly, the subjugation force's casualties would have been enormous.
Just as the fighting was drawing toward its end, something underfoot felt strangely unstable. A faint rattling. Then a deeper tremor.
"Uh... uhh?"
The other subjugation members seemed to sense it too, staring down at their feet. The monsters lost their balance in the shaking and faltered mid-fight, confused.
Then Bloodstain's axe came down on Mireia's sword once more, even harder. A roar like an explosion echoed through the entire canyon.
"The ground! The ground's collapsing! Get clear!"
Someone shouted. The subjugation force scattered in all directions, diving toward earth that hadn't cracked. A rumble. Then a roar of collapsing stone.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
I wanted to get to stable ground like everyone else. But the moment I took a step, the earth beneath my feet caved in, and my body lurched.
"Oh, hell..."
Before I could even react, the ground under both feet vanished in an instant. A massive hole had opened in the earth like a sinkhole — and of all places, I was standing right at its center.
"Waaaaaaaah!"
I screamed as I plunged into a pitch-black hole whose bottom I couldn't even see, as if falling into a bottomless abyss.