World Tree War (3): The Undead Advance on the Northern Front

Just as the undead that had struck the first blow began to falter under the elves' counterattack, Yeomje appeared on the northern front and started killing.

Screams. Shouts. Wailing. Through all of it, he burned the elves down without so much as a flicker of hesitation.

"Please, spare me! I have a wife and a son in the home world—"

"Those words mean nothing."

Yeomje no longer felt guilt when he cut down evil. His standard was simple. He cut whatever evil stood in front of him, and that was all. His still-immature sense of self had hardened into something slightly different from what it used to be. Nine out of ten people who saw him now would have said it was wrong. Yeomje had already become this way regardless.

"Halt! I, Rasili, shall stand against you!"

"You're... a bishop."

"Your soul is no ordinary thing. But that alone will not be enough."

The same robes as that fool of an elf who had attacked Dobong-gu alone and gotten himself captured. According to the information pulled out of him under interrogation, this was a rank two grades below Cardinal.

"Elves! Gather your power to me!"

At her call, even those who had fallen, those writhing on the ground, those who had been fleeing—every last one of them turned and stretched out a hand. Overwhelming mana gathered in answer.

"We elves have constitutions that allow us to share mana with one another. If you could see it, you would have fled already. The fact that you haven't tells me you're mana-blind, doesn't it?"

Bishop Rasili's mouth curled into a smirk. She had taken Yeomje for a half-baked favorite—someone who had been handed extra power despite being unable to even perceive mana.

"Think whatever you like."

Yeomje launched himself forward at a speed just shy of the sound barrier and, in the same motion, invoked the strongest skill he had. A sword glowing red-hot carved toward Bishop Rasili's throat.

"Not so fast!"

A grinding shriek of metal on mana. The bishop drew up a little more power, and the blade stopped dead in midair, caught against a wall of it thick enough to choke the air.

"I now possess more mana than even an Archbishop. You think the likes of you can defeat me?"

Haughty. Arrogant. And she had the strength to back it, which made the words hard to deny. There was, however, one exception. Someone stronger. Yeomje could deny it.

The Death Knight breathing fire did not bother to correct her. He simply moved to the next stage of the skill.

A blade already half-melted, shining with its own heat, slipped through a seam in the mana.

"What—?!"

She poured power out in a panic to stop it, but the sword was already gone from that spot.

The last blow came in with a savage rotational force and sheared the entire sphere of mana surrounding the bishop clean in two. The finishing strike of the skill Heavenly Cycle would cut through anything. It did not matter what the target was.

"Ah—aaaah!"

Even after splitting her from the right side of the chest down through the left hip, Yeomje did not stop.

This one thing, at least, is better than before.

Originally, the technique was meant to be used only as a finishing blow. Even Yeomje, who regarded his undeath as something to resent, had to admit that a Death Knight's authority was convenient. He could summon a decent blade whenever and wherever he wanted. He generated a fresh sword in his hand and raised it again.

He brought Flame Flash down on her head as if he meant to burn her out from the roots. The skill came with a burst of violent fire and an instantaneous surge of speed in whatever direction he chose, ignoring whatever momentum he had carried a moment before. Used in succession, he could cut the same place again before a tenth of a second had passed.

A wet slice. Another. Another.

Three Flame Flashes with not a sliver of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠delay between them. Bishop Rasili's head came apart into six pieces and tumbled across the ground.

It was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over.

"...Ahh. A repulsive thing, given power far beyond its station."

The instant even Yeomje let himself relax, the mana—having somehow knitted itself back into its original shape—spoke to him. It talked by the same principle as a voice carried on the power of the soul, and then stems burst from the abandoned lower half of the body and sneered.

"This is Stage Three Plantification. A divine authority permitted only to us elves—to our sacred race alone!"

"How kind of you to turn into a tree for me. Foolish."

Yeomje paid it no mind and lifted his sword again. The bishop's mana sharpened into thorns and stabbed at him in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a wild storm. Most of them glanced off his blade. A few found their mark. Holes punched through the metal of his body, opening faster than the artifact's regeneration could quite close them.

"Keep this up and you'll be the one who dies, you know?"

"Is that so."

Yeomje's answer to her giggling was flat. From the outside, a drawn-out fight might have looked like the bishop's to lose. Without her realizing it, the tide had already turned.

Becoming a Death Knight had not stripped him of Heavenly Cycle and Flame Flash alone. One more skill had stayed with him.

Scorching Hell. A skill that raised the temperature of the battlefield the longer he fought, heating everything around him and roasting his enemies alive. It had already triggered on its own and was eating outward through the surroundings. His strength would keep climbing. Hers would wither. Stall for thirty minutes and the win was certain.

"Ha! You think you can kill me with just th—"

"Sorry. I can't listen to any more of this. I have dwarves to save."

Yeomje had no intention of letting Scorching Hell descend on the living world. He needed those dwarves alive, and a landscape on fire would make that considerably more difficult. So he gambled.

"Die already. Flame Flash."

"What...?"

"Again. Flame Flash."

It had looked like a single cut. Bishop Rasili's body shattered in an instant into dozens of wooden fragments and burned.

"Flame Flash."

Before, one incantation had moved the sword three times. This was different.

"Flame Flash."

"S-stop! What in the world are you doing?!"

Five strikes from a single incantation. Or more. Every burst of mana she flung out in the gaps was intercepted by a blade moving at angles that should not have been possible, and burned to nothing. Her body was carved apart, incinerated, and forced to grow back, over and over and over.

Calling a skill's name, speaking a spell aloud—all of it was an act of concentration. You did it because the image inside you had to be made concrete, or the skill would not come out cleanly. Which also meant that using a skill was something that ate at the mind, something that demanded that kind of focus. Doing it the way he was doing it should have torn body and spirit both to pieces.

The bishop had dismissed that possibility entirely. She had no defense left. To Rasili, a man who could fire a skill that many times off a single breath looked like a monster.

"How... how can you fight like that?"

She asked it with a body that was coming apart in her hands.

"I have a purpose. Why would I think about holding out? I do it because I have to."

A grinding shriek. The sword split Rasili lengthwise. Then on a diagonal. Then across. The attacks came so fast that her regeneration hiccupped, and in that sliver of a pause Yeomje settled into a thrusting stance.

"You had the wrong idea earlier. I can see mana. I can wield it, too."

"...!"

Mana condensed at the tip of Yeomje's sword. The power of the soul and mana were not the same thing. More precisely, though a soul was made of mana, you could not handle the two the same way. But Yeomje was a Hunter. Before the world ended, he had already been trained at a professional academy in the handling of supernatural energy.

That was why, from the very first moment he obtained a skill, he had been able to pour mana into it and control how hard it hit.

Now that he was undead he had lost that mana of his own, and had to pull it from the air around him. But—

"Someone was kind enough to scatter it everywhere."

"That's—!"

Thanks to every burst Bishop Rasili had fired at him, the mana in the air was thick enough to choke on. It pooled quietly at the point of his sword. For an instant it seemed to catch.

At the crackle of dying fire, Yeomje looked back. All that remained was a faint ember and a smear of ash. The one who had just landed a blow like that turned toward the tower without a second's pause.

"Now I can save the dwarves."

He said it to no one at all.

The southern front.

Lahan appeared astride a Nightmare, wearing a sneer.

"How'd you like the wolves, you pointy-eared bastards?"

Here, instead of the usual monsters, it was undead wolves that had advanced. A simple unit—iron-plated, and all they did was run. The effect had been anything but simple. More than half the elves on the southern line were already down.

Their power had not been enough to stop a charge like that, and most of them had died with their bones crushed to gravel. The only reason the line had not collapsed entirely was the bishop standing here—the strongest one they had.

"It didn't bother me at all."

"Oh? Then what's the corpse ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠next to you?"

"A weakling. No longer my subordinate."

"Oho. You and I might just get along."

Lahan ordered the zombies at his back to finish the remaining elves, then walked forward.

"Come out. Let's have a duel of champions."

"Hmm. I remember you as someone who is strong when fighting many at once."

"You know that? What are you?"

"I observed all of you with my magic, of course."

"A pervert, then. Do elves have a voyeurism problem?"

Lahan laughed and cracked his whip. Tentacles burst from a magic circle that bloomed in midair and caught the blow.

"Oh?"

"A mystery you lowly humans know nothing of. It is called magic."

"Magic is for mages. Elves are supposed to shoot bows."

"Nonsense. Do not slap names born from your kind's cheap fantasies onto us."

As he spoke, the bishop unfolded a massive magic circle at his back.

"I am Guillaume. State your name."

"Fuck off. Who has time to exchange names in a fight?"

The instant Lahan refused the introduction, the real exchange began.