Chapter 156
Chapter 156
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 156
Chapter Title: The False God
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“We die where we stand!”
The Black Armor Company's proud force of one thousand heavy infantrymen formed the central pillar of the unit. In the first rank stood Dale's personal guard, the most elite among them, clad in artifact armor.
Simultaneously, led by the 7th-Circle white mage Borenius, the hymn magic of countless white mages rang out.
“Praise be, praise be!”
“The heavens of the Goddess await you!”
Aria of Valor.
A divine voice, as if echoing from the heavens, filled the 'World of Light' created by Borenius and his mages.
The white mages of the White Magic Tower were not specialized in combat themselves, but the hymns they unleashed held the power to resurrect even a dying soldier into a divine warrior.
“Ah, ahhh, O Goddess!”
“The love and mercy of the Sister Goddesses are with us!”
“Praise be! Let us send every last one of the Sachsen apostates to hell!”
And amidst the echoes of light, the soldiers of the Church began to surge with an inexpressible euphoria.
Furthermore, the Templars charging toward Dale began to burst into tears, wailing like children.
It was not out of fear of battle. They simply couldn't contain their surging faith, feeling the presence of the Sister Goddesses filling their hearts.
Like watching a prayer meeting in a cult, they cried out the Goddess's name, unable to control their overwhelming emotions.
“Huuuk, uwaaah, ahhhhh!”
Wailing and sobbing like children, unable to hold back their tears, the swords of the Church charged forward, clutching swords and spears in their hands.
In a way, it was a scene truly befitting divine madness.
“Fucking lunatics.”
Dale muttered under his breath as he watched them.
People need faith. Even more so on the battlefield, where lives are on the line. Something to believe in, to cast aside one's own weakness.
That was the power of fanaticism, the pride of the White Magic Tower and the Church. But it was no longer their exclusive domain.
“Now, it's our turn to show them our god.”
And so, the Shadow Lord did not hesitate to become a false god for their sake.
“Iä Shub-Niggurath.”
Dale opened his mouth.
*I've been waiting for this moment, Brother.*
The most horrific and vile being in the world smiled by Dale's side.
*Shwaaak!*
From beneath the hem of her jet-black dress, countless tentacles began to surge forth.
But the one hundred guards protecting the Black Prince did not waver in the slightest.
Dale looked up.
In the sky above, a valkyrie of black stood alone against the Master Templar made of blood.
The Church's Aura Masters, transformed into fanatical swords by the white mages' hymn magic.
It was toward them that Shub's black tentacles began to whip and storm, providing covering fire for Lady Shadow, Orelia.
He lowered his gaze.
The spearheads of the Templar Order had already charged right before them, aimed at Dale and the Black Armor Company.
“Now.”
At the same time, Dale's black mana spread throughout the area. It was not to sweep away his enemies or create shadow creatures.
His mana was seeping into the one hundred elite soldiers of the Black Armor Company protecting him.
The artifact armor worn by the elite, selected for their supreme talent from Dale's personal mercenary group—now a thousand heavy infantrymen strong.
Each and every piece was an artifact imbued with the darkness of the Demon King's domain.
The price they had to bear was the mental fortitude to withstand wearing the artifacts, but the 'true owner' who controlled their power and malevolence was someone else.
The malevolence from the artifacts worn by the one hundred heavy infantrymen rushed toward their Shadow Lord all at once.
Whispers could be heard from all directions. Mad mutterings of incomprehensible meaning. Amidst the whispers of malice that threatened to shatter the mind just by hearing them, the Shadow Lord raised his head.
“—That is enough.”
The Shadow Lord spoke, and a silence as light as a feather descended.
Simultaneously, Dale's black mana activated their artifacts, and what stood there was no longer a mere hundred heavy infantrymen.
Heavy infantrymen lacked the individual might of knights who wielded aura. However, their organic system, organized around the Shadow Lord, was no longer a conventional force.
A steel formation that would not break its defensive posture even before the charge of the Templar Order, imbued with the power of aura.
One hundred pieces of armor-type artifacts that Dale had desperately acquired by ransacking the Black Prince's artifact vault, and even the entire Demon King's domain and the Great Labyrinth.
*Armor of the Undying*.
*Crunch, crack!*
The black armor seeped into the bodies of his mercenaries, armor and flesh assimilating much like Lord Helmut's. But controlling and manipulating the artifact's power was not their role.
For granting the power and shouldering the price was the burden of one man alone: the Shadow Lord.
All the hundred heavy infantrymen had to endure was the mental fortitude to withstand the pain, and that alone.
The promise that even if they fell in battle, they would receive the highest honors Sachsen could bestow, and their entire families would be cared for. It was because Dale was not merely a superior officer, but one who had shared the hardships of the battlefield with his mercenaries and truly earned their loyalty.
“For Sachsen and for Captain Dale!”
An unbreakable black formation unfurled.
And toward that very black formation, the white cavalry plunged their spearheads.
*BOOM!*
An impact struck, as if the very world beneath their feet was trembling.
Along the border where the heavens and the winter night collided, the front lines of both sides finally clashed, and sounds erupted.
The clash of steel on steel, screams, curses hurled at the enemy, and the faith that the Goddess was with them.
In the sky, the angel of blood and Lady Shadow, Orelia. On the ground, the entangled forces of the Black Armor Company and the Templar Order, the Blue Rose and Rose Cross Knights, and the nobles and soldiers belonging to each faction.
And in their midst was the Shadow Lord.
While struggling just to maintain his world of the cold, dark winter night against the heavens created by the 7th-Circle white mage and his assisting elders, which was expanding to devour his own world...
He was activating one hundred dark artifacts with his mana, shouldering all their malevolence alone, and pouring his black mana into Shub as if filling a bottomless pit.
It was an amount of mana that no mere 4th-Circle mage could handle. The same was true even considering the advantage this land, the Demon King's domain, gave him.
“Igniter.”
Nevertheless, nothing would change.
From the four circles entwined around his heart, a flame erupted. It was red mana, blazing like magma.
A heat engine, which converts thermal energy into mechanical energy to generate power.
Treating his own existence as a mechanical device, Dale began to project a mechanism from another world onto his heart and circles.
As the Empire's greatest genius, far surpassing the level of a mere 4th-Circle mage, in addition to the power of darkness granted by the Demon King's domain.
The world of the white and dark winter night began to devour the heavens.
*'Th-This can't be...!'*
It was impossible. Unlike Borenius, who was focusing all his power on a single spell, wasn't Dale currently fighting on the front lines of the battle!
Blood splattered, and flesh, bone, and viscera flew about in chaos.
In the hell of the battlefield, the Shadow Lord raised his head.
Within his dark-blooded armor, a crimson light blazed like magma.
He readjusted his grip on the Hero's beloved sword, 'Peacemaker'.
His role as a mage ended here. But Dale's full power was by no means limited to that.
Projecting the ultimate form of a knight known as an Avatar, and further, the martial prowess he had built as the Empire's Hero.
Clutching the undeniable true sword in his hand, the Shadow Lord kicked off the ground.
Into the black-and-white battlefield where one side desperately held its formation and the other crashed against it, trying to break through.
Weaving through the heavy infantry of the Black Armor Company clad in the Armor of the Undying, the Shadow Lord charged.
At the same time, the world of the white and dark winter night began to expand at his feet, devouring the edges of the 'heavens'.
A world was eating another world.
A mere engineering student, an SSS-class monster hunter, a hero from another world, the eldest son of House Sachsen.
The full extent of his power, unfolding as Dale fused the essence of the knowledge and strength he had accumulated throughout his entire life.
At last, the Dale of this moment had truly been reborn as an 'irregular powerhouse,' revered and feared by this world.
***
“Why do you not reveal your true form, child of the dragon?”
The mass of madness had ended, and there, the Undying Duke Frederick asked.
To the one before him, the golden bloodline, the 7th Imperial Prince Modred.
“Has your mind truly broken from something so trivial?”
Foaming at the mouth, laughing one moment and crying the next, his state was pathetic, as if he had regressed to infancy.
Watching him, the Undying Duke asked again, as if unable to understand.
“Ah, I see.”
And it did not take long for him to understand the meaning.
“So, not a dragon... That's not so bad either.”
After a moment's thought, the Undying Duke leaned his head closer to Modred.
He opened his mouth.
“Gah, hack!”
Simultaneously, a bundle of bizarre, unidentifiable tentacles began to emerge from Duke Frederick's mouth. It was a disgusting creature, like a giant leech writhing, and it soon entered Modred's mouth and slithered down his throat.
“The shadow's silence ends here.”
Duke Frederick spoke. And at those words, muttered as if to himself, Modred's expression instantly froze.
The color vanished from his pupils. His black, unfocused eyes turned to the other Shadow Lord before him, and Modred soon bowed his head in allegiance.
“Return, child of shadow. And wait for our time.”
“...I will obey my Lord's command.”
The Modred who had been driven mad, his mind shattered just moments before, was gone. As a 'child of shadow' receiving the command of a new lord, Modred lowered his head.
“Wait for me, my daughter.”
The Undying Duke Frederick turned his head. His grimoire, lost in the heart-wrenching pain after that day's humiliating defeat.
“I will come for you soon.”
Deeply sensing the presence of *The Book of the Black Goat* squirming upon this land.