Chapter 136
Chapter 136
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 135
Chapter Title: Reverse Scale
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A brief standoff.
The roaring flames and the sharp sounds of battle echoing from the surroundings.
In this tense, precarious situation, Valkzar and I stared only at each other.
He glared at me as if he would hurl his spear at any moment, but he couldn't bring himself to act.
It was because the ancestors on Valkzar's shoulders and back were fleeing like they were running for their lives.
Anxiety.
Ominousness.
The great warrior panicked as the power he held in his grasp began to slip away like scattered sand.
The immense strength he had taken for granted was vanishing, leaving even him frozen in place.
Now was my chance while he was rattled. I slowly opened my mouth to attempt a conversation.
Not with Valkzar, but beyond him.
“O Red Eagle of the Great Forest.”
To the guardian spirit lending its power to the great warrior, even at the cost of its own life.
“Why do you abandon your nest and come here to endure such hardship?”
“You bastard, how dare you speak to...!”
[Enough.]
A thick voice that boomed as if from the heavens.
It spread heavily through my body, stinging my skin like lightning—a sensation different from the Mountain Lord's dignified majesty.
It was a voice fitting for a beautiful man, yet it carried the weight of ages beyond human comprehension, infused with an inner heat.
[You who reside in filth yet remain the most noble.]
“...!”
Horua's evaluation of me was more generous than I expected, and Valkzar's eyes trembled upon hearing it.
[Your actions have reached even me. The kingdom's subjects will be able to rest in peace thanks to you.]
“You honor me.”
Like the Mountain Lord, Horua responded quite favorably toward me.
If I could persuade him and strip even Horua's power from the great warrior, the battle would essentially end easily.
*But that won't be possible.*
Even as we spoke, Valkzar's red wings blazed brilliantly.
Proof that there would be no retreat.
[However, do not think your comfort applies to me.]
“...”
[Your nobility is great, but foolish. In your desire to embrace all, have you even included demons?]
“Belica is not a demon so easily defined. She's the Archdemon of Mutation, after all.”
Belica, who called herself twisted even in her demonic qualities.
The Mountain Lord had closed his eyes to the archdemon out of faith in me, but Horua was different.
[Do not extend those filthy hands toward me. I need no consolation from you.]
“...”
A clear declaration of refusal.
Horua had no intention of revealing why he lent his power to the great warrior.
Gaining confidence from this exchange, Valkzar smirked, adjusting his grip on his spear.
With a single flap, he unleashed a fierce wind and overwhelming speed.
Kwa-duk! Kwa-duk!
“This... is...”
“If there's one thing we have in common.”
The tip of Valkzar's threatening spear thrust never reached me.
Hundreds of hands seized the ankle of the charging great warrior.
They belonged to the kingdom's citizens he had massacred.
“It's that the places where we can truly rampage are the same.”
The battlefield was, naturally, where a great warrior like him shone brightest. He reveled in it, dashing through gloriously, slaughtering foes, severing necks, and intoxicating himself with the scent of war.
And I, likewise.
A battlefield teeming with countless undead was where I wielded my greatest power.
He feared the sleeping saintess and archdemon.
But it was a stage so perfect that I had no need to wake the two soundly sleeping ones.
I drew Remegaton from my bosom.
To demonstrate the clear gap in our power.
Black waves began to spread long and wide from Remegaton.
The sky churned, and the earth trembled.
[Kraaaah!]
[Why! Why!]
[Mooooom!]
[Please spare me! Please, just spare me!]
The cries from slaughtering men, women, young, and old alike.
They spoke of how lightly he valued life, and that he would bear that responsibility.
The undead poured forth.
The wails and screams of the dead, the lingering regrets of those who wished to live.
“Hah.”
“To this extent.”
“Oh, gods.”
Like clouds veiling the sky, like sprouts rising from the earth.
Pindenai and Gloria behind me gasped in awe at the endlessly manifesting undead.
Lucia carefully knelt, closed her eyes, and clasped her hands.
The great warrior became the target of all this resentment.
Sweat beading on his brow, he swallowed hard. Before the overwhelming number of undead, the strength in his spear hand visibly drained.
“You don't even know the weight of death.”
In contrast.
My grip on Remegaton tightened further.
My emotions were faint.
Yet I knew clearly now.
I was angry.
Not the explosive rage of a volcano, but a sharp, cold fury like frost on a winter's ice.
“Everything about you from one to ten disgusts me. But what I hate most about you.”
Souls flew unhesitatingly toward the great warrior who had killed them without remorse.
“Gah! Aaaah!”
He swung his spear in desperate flailing. The spirits of his ancestors tried to protect him, but it was insufficient.
Buried in souls with only one hand protruding, I addressed the great warrior accusingly.
“If you claimed to fight for Setima's people, you should have at least said one word for them.”
If he waged war for revenge over the clan chief's death and the massacre of Setima's residents.
He should have mentioned them, even briefly.
If he had, I might have shown a shred of mercy.
“You used them as tools, just like that.”
They were merely a pretext to unleash the battlefield.
Valkzar's screams no longer reached me. The warriors from other tribes who had come with him for guerrilla warfare had already fallen to the kingdom knights' blades.
It had been a surprise attack of sorts, but ultimately a complete failure.
Blinded by overconfidence in his own strength.
No different from the foolish ends of Lu Bu or Xiang Yu from Earth.
But one difference.
The gods had abandoned those two.
Horua had not abandoned Valkzar.
Fwoosh!
Flames from the guardian spirit incinerated the souls, forming a massive pillar. The oncoming spirits recoiled one by one, and I withdrew my mana to spare them pain.
Valkzar shot out from the flame pillar like a cannonball. Bloodied and unconscious, Horua's wings forcibly carried him high into the sky.
A scene revealing Horua's firm resolve to save the great warrior at all costs.
I thought victory was sealed perfectly, but Valkzar had escaped.
Still, I no longer needed to join the fray.
He likely now carried a massive trauma toward me, realizing he could no longer blindly trust his ancestors' and Horua's power.
It was a war driven by one man, Great Warrior Valkzar.
I had shown the overwhelming difference in level.
The moment he faltered, the war was effectively over.
* * *
“Cough! Cough!”
Saved by Horua's mercy, Valkzar barely escaped and was receiving treatment in his tent.
Once the healing was somewhat complete, he shoved away the woman wiping his vomited blood and struggled to sit up.
As if waiting, Shaman Sung's sharp rebuke followed.
“Didn't I tell you so many times? Not to fight him! We could have won without clashing by using our tribesmen's mobility! We could have won!”
“...”
“The ancestors have left you, and Lord Horua's power is limited! In the end, our tribe and the Great Forest will be devoured by the desert!”
Staring at the shouting Sung proclaiming no future, Valkzar felt exhaustion and headache like parasites crawling in his skull.
It was the first time.
For him, who had always known victory, to suffer such a humiliating defeat.
Unable to properly swing his spear even once at the enemy, just taking blows and fleeing.
He also realized the heavy weight of the slaughters he had committed until now.
Terrified of it all, Valkzar didn't want to move anywhere; he just wanted to run.
On the verge of his spirit breaking completely. But Sung sighed and brought a map.
“There is truly one last countermeasure. If you don't collapse here... this place.”
Thud.
Sung's finger pointed to Robern, where the academy was on the map.
“His weakness is here. Seize this, and you won't even need to fight him.”
“Haven't those idiot nobles already failed completely?”
Mentioning the clean failure of assassinating the necromancer and his fiancée made the nobles cowering silently in the tent corner flinch.
After the assassination flop, the three nobles' positions had narrowed further. Even their contacts in the Jerman Kingdom had cleanly abandoned them, so failure with the Marias Tribe meant the end.
Stay like this, and they'd die.
Noble Romerzan stepped forward, thinking so, and shouted.
“There is still a chance! Capture the necromancer, and we win in the end, right? We'll find out exactly what his weakness is!”
He still had connections to informants active in Robern. The link was tenuous after the botched assassination, hanging by a thread.
Sung added to Romerzan's words.
“Will you crumble here? You, a great warrior of your caliber? The fight has just begun. Don't kneel from one loss.”
“...”
Valkzar, lips pressed tight, exhaled deeply and clenched his fist.
The necromancer's cold eyes still chilled and pierced him to the core.
*But I am a great warrior.*
In a position where he had no choice but to overcome, Valkzar nodded.
“Find his weakness. Report to me. I will go myself under Horua's wings.”
A firm declaration not to entrust it to the nobles carelessly.
With Horua's wings' mobility, a round trip to Robern was feasible short-term—a sensible judgment.
But Romerzan wondered about Shaman Sung's intentions.
As far as he knew, there were no weaknesses for Necromancer Deus Verdi at Robern Academy now.
His fiancée, Erica Bright, was away on practical training, as were Princess Elenoa Luden Griffin and the commoner girl student he cherished.
What could possibly be in Robern?
Yet Sung pinpointed one person precisely.
“Find the pregnant woman, about 7-8 months along.”
“Pregnant woman?”
Just hearing it made his scalp tingle.
Did Deus Verdi have some hidden mistress?
That was all Romerzan's mind could conjure.
“That pregnant woman is the necromancer's reverse scale.”
Valkzar urged him to move quickly with a glance, so Romerzan hurriedly pulled out his crystal orb and began contacting his trusted aides in Robern.
But unease flooded his chest even as he did.
*Reverse scale?*
It meant weakness, usually.
*But also, something you touch and definitely die.*
Chills crept up.
If the necromancer, who made even a great warrior tremble like this, truly raged—what horrors would unfold?
For a moment, Romerzan felt the impulse that surrendering now might be right.
But Valkzar and Sung's pressure bore down relentlessly.
Romerzan could only pour mana into the crystal orb and pray.
Please.
After touching the dragon called the necromancer's reverse scale.
May the great warrior sever the dragon's neck before its wrath reached him.