World Tree War (2)
"You captured an elf bishop?"
There was no way Ttacttac-i had marched into Uijeongbu and dragged one back. That meant they had come to us first.
"Didn't they say they wouldn't touch us? They said that themselves."
Even if this had only been a diplomatic envoy, something felt off. Ttacttac-i ranked among the sharpest minds in my officer corps — if he'd taken a prisoner, that meant force had already been used.
Whatever the truth was, I needed to see it for myself. I called Hwanggu and raced toward them.
"You corpse bastards! I am Aliac, Bishop of the Endless Land!"
Well. It was real after all.
I slid down from Hwanggu and walked toward the bishop. He spotted me and bellowed.
"You there! I don't know who you are, but cut me loose!"
Ttacttac-i and the skeletons had the elf bound tight, ringed in a circle around him.
"What is this skeleton in the tricorn hat? He can't even speak, yet he led the charge and beat me himself! This is an outrageous act of viole—"
"Shut up!"
I stepped in and slapped him across the face. He sagged, head drooping, too dazed to finish the sentence.
Looking closer, I saw his arms were plant matter. So this was the one the Cardinal had already mauled. Judging by how he'd been reporting directly, he'd held a decent rank.
"Nice work, Ttacttac. Where'd this one come from?"
Clack!
"…He just barged in out of nowhere?"
He hadn't come alone. Behind him, weaker-looking elves were stacked in a crooked heap like a collapsed game of Jenga.
I prodded the still-reeling fairy and spoke.
"Why did you come here?"
"Ugh… to suppress the necromancer…"
"Why suppress me?"
"T-to restore my fallen standing…?"
His senses were returning. He lifted his head and looked at me — and for a moment he only gaped at the unexpected sight of a young girl. Then the meaning of a child standing in a city of the dead hit him, and he convulsed with terror.
"Ne-ne-ne-ne-necromancer!"
"You said you came to kill me."
"Hieeeek! That was a lie! My standing in the Order had shrunk so much I had no choice!"
God, he was loud. Should I just kill him?
But killing him would mean picking a fight with Uijeongbu for good. Or wait — they'd already thrown the first punch. Was the war already on?
"Hic… sob. When His Eminence the Cardinal was away, I shouldn't have gotten greedy on my own…"
Bishop Aliac started crying out loud.
Hold on. What did he say about the Cardinal?
"Who's away?"
"H-His Eminence left his post, so I tried to earn merit while he was g—"
Before he could finish, my eyes met Ttacttac-i's. The Cardinal was gone. We already held one of their bishops.
Which meant Uijeongbu was an empty house right now.
"We're going in."
Clack!
"What? What did you just…"
"I said we're invading your house!"
Of course we couldn't march into a full war on the spot. Nearly everything we'd prepared so far had been for defense. Just recalling the undead scattered across Dobong-gu through the dwarves would take time, and not everyone was fully equipped yet.
But that didn't mean we were weak.
"How long is the Cardinal away from Uijeongbu?"
"I absolutely won't sa— aagh!"
"Want me to turn you into an undead?"
"Until tomorrow evening! Please, anything but a corpse puppet!"
I didn't even need torture. A blade at his throat and he spilled everything, shaking like a leaf.
Tomorrow evening. It was a little past noon now, so roughly eighteen hours if we moved fast.
"We move now."
They were watching me. I didn't know how closely, but they might have been listening to this conversation. Even if they were — could they stop us?
There had been a time when I thought maybe this could be settled without force. Not anymore.
"Ttacttac. Send the monster army."
Clatter.
Our opening move. Overwhelm them with numbers.
It had begun with confidence.
A bishop watching the south through observational magic reported that the undead were moving, and everyone turned out ready.
"To your positions. Move as briefed."
Priests who could use mana stepped forward; lay believers who could not waited to channel their power into the priests.
"Hold until the Archbishop completes his spell!"
This was not a formation meant to annihilate. It was a formation meant to endure until the Archbishop's grand magic finished and swept the enemy away in a single stroke. Solid. Hard to break.
"Urgh… aaaaaagh!"
But the line began to groan.
"Your Grace! They're short on priests in the east!"
"Damn it — send one, and pour more mana into me!"
Bishop Gaul, holding the western front, ground his teeth and cursed Aliac's name.
That dog of a man. I knew he was a bastard of the royal house, but this…
Had he really believed his own faction alone could defeat a necromancer who'd seized all of Dobong-gu in barely a month? Victory would have been a problem. Defeat would have been a problem. And instead he'd been taken without landing a single blow.
If not for that fool, none of this would have been necessary.
But that was past. The work before him now was stopping these disgusting things.
"Damn corpse bastards — how are there still this many?"
The undead pressed in with a horror of sheer volume. Size, shape, method of attack — all different — and they came on trusting nothing but their overwhelming numbers.
"Don't let them through! Anyone out of mana, grab a shield and shove them back!"
They held for hours. No one dead. No — no one fully dead.
"Aaaagh! My arm! My arm!"
"F-Father, my leg. My leg…!"
The wounded piled up, and the fear of it spread.
"Damn it. Pull two priests for the wounded."
"But then we won't be able to hold them!"
"I'll handle that! Pull them!"
Leave the injured and the line collapses anyway. He had to force the reassignment even if it strained everything else. At Gaul's roar, a priest beside him sprinted toward the wounded.
Mana was being chewed away, bit by bit. But… so were the enemy. They could hold. They could hold until the grand magic was ready!
"There's hope — I can see hope! Don't give up!"
The words had barely left his mouth when a different kind of undead stepped out from beyond the bare trees along the main road.
"Human skeletons… just as reported."
According to the bishop charged with surveillance, these human corpse-puppets trained constantly.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
The skeletons advanced in lockstep, every footfall matched. Perfect coordination — and the pressure that came with it.
"Priests, respond as before."
In the end it was only a change of undead type. Kill them before they closed, same as always, and there would be no problem.
That was a miscalculation.
Thunk! A skeleton caught a priest's mana blast on its shield. From behind it, an arrow flew.
The trajectory wobbled. A lay believer lifted his shield with a careless look, ready to bat it aside.
But Bishop Gaul saw the savage mana coiled around that arrow. A mana-stone bomb was strapped to the shaft.
"Damn it! Everyone take cover!"
KRA-KOOM!
The exhausted elves couldn't react in time. A hole punched open in one sector of the western front. Four of the men who'd been grinding their teeth to hold the line died to that single arrow.
"No — we can still hold…"
Thwip. Whooosh!
Dozens of arrows followed. Every one of them carrying the same mana stones.
"You — worthless — things!"
Bishop Gaul roared and wrenched his mana up. Spread it wide, detonate them in the air — that would do it.
KRA-KA-KA…
The idea worked. Every bomb-arrow exploded overhead without dealing damage. But in the heartbeat the fire net thinned while he held the barrier, skeletons pushed through.
"What the—!"
After the barrage, they closed. White bones with massive shields tanked the priests' mana. Once the line of contact was made, skeletons with swords and hammers poured through like a flood.
"I won't allow it!"
He spent every last scrap of mana and blasted a swath of skeletons apart. Bought a moment. Or so he thought.
A skull sigil rose from the ground and shook Gaul's mind to its roots.
Grave Sanctuary
Summoned to raise the fallen undead once more.
Crrrk. Grnnddd.
Shattered, broken bones rose into the air and reassembled as if nothing had happened. Weapons restored to perfect condition, the skeletons resumed the attack as though the blast had never been.
Blades that knew their work drove into chests. Those without swords tore arms free with both hands.
Death was coming.
"Ha… haha…"
At some point his field of vision had dropped. Nothing special. He had simply collapsed under despair. Black flooded his sight. His ears rang. The screams of his people filled the air.
"O Endless Land! Do not abandon us! O Endless Land, our god…"
Mind fully broken, Bishop Gaul muttered prayers.
Clack. Clatter.
In the middle of praying, a sound reached him and his eyes opened.
The world was blood-red. At first he thought it was sunset — they'd fought into evening, and the light had dyed the ground.
"Ah."
It wasn't sunset. The hour for sunset had come, but the ground was red for a different reason.
"Blood — aaaaaah! Blood!"
His comrades' blood. His subordinates' blood. The blood of those he had trained and taught, those he had cherished, soaked every inch of the earth.
The lay elf who had greeted him only yesterday lay in severed pieces. The adjutant who had dashed about treating the wounded was dead with a severed neck and a lolling tongue.
Gilhen, Dagner, Jilve, Rasilida… countless names rolled across the ground. Like trash in a dump.
Clatter.
He lifted his head. A single skeleton stood before him — tricorn hat, leather coat. No expression to read, and yet a strangely firm, unyielding presence radiated from it.
It raised its sword. Resolute. Almost solemn.
As the blade fell toward Gaul's neck, he still believed there was a chance. The grand magic was nearly complete. If the enemy was concentrated here, the other fronts would show promise…
"Why…?"
But the sight that filled his eyes was nothing but horror. On one side every elf already burned dead; on the other, massive stone pillars crushed them flat.
If only the Cardinal… if His Eminence had been here—
Shnk.
The sword fell. The Cardinal was not there.