Yenil, How Much Mana Is Left?
"Yenil, how much mana do you have left?"
"I still have plenty to spare."
"If you need a mana potion, say so."
"Understood."
Thanks to the considerable stock of mana potions Yujun had left them, Manuela and Yenil could hurl magic without so much as a rest. They had drunk so many that their stomachs were beginning to turn—but even that was better than not drinking them at all. Chances for experience to climb like this almost never came, and with their safety secured by Yujun's barrier, they didn't even have to feel a threat to their lives. All they had to do was cast at their ease. She couldn't begin to say how comfortable it was.
I need to get strong quickly, so I can be at least a little help to Yujun.
A faint smile touched Manuela's lips as she spread a Fire Field across the ground. That was when a Death Knight, standing perfectly still and staring at them, caught her eye. It stood in the very center of the spreading flames as if nothing were amiss, watching her. Crimson light seemed to lance from its empty sockets like lasers, and the sight was chilling.
Manuela turned her head toward Yenil. Yenil was searching out places where the undead had massed, and she hadn't noticed the Death Knight watching them at all.
"Yenil! That thing—"
Before Manuela could finish, the Death Knight shot upward as if a rocket had launched.
In an instant it was upon them, thrusting its sword at the barrier.
Kaaang—!
For a heartbeat it seemed the barrier would hold firm, worthy of something Yujun had set—and then clang! Clang! Beneath the relentless assault, every blow driven into a single point, cracks began to spider through it. The barrier was sturdier than most shields and covered a wide area, but the Death Knight's attack power was so overwhelming that fissures raced across it in no time.
Manuela's face went tight with urgency. The racket of something hammering the barrier made Yenil aware of the Death Knight as well.
"What is that?"
"I think it's been gunning for us for a while."
"It looks strong. I doubt we can kill it in a single blow... For now, we should drive it back with flame magic."
"Yeah!"
Yenil and Manuela cast explosive flame magic at the same time. A massive blaze crashed over the Death Knight, but it didn't spare so much as a thought for blocking—it only kept pounding the barrier.
Boom! Crash!
Whether the magic had dealt it no damage at all, the Death Knight came through the blast completely unharmed. It wasn't even forced back. It kept stabbing the barrier.
Crack! Crunch!
The fissures yawned wider than before. Even a barrier of Yujun's making had its limits, and enduring this far was already one of them.
"It must be resistant to flame magic! It was fine in the Fire Field earlier, too."
"An undead, resistant to fire?"
Judging by the situation in front of them, this wasn't ordinary resistance. It was closer to perfect immunity. The two understood each other at once, and each prepared the most powerful Freezing magic she could muster. Now, while the barrier still held, was their chance. Yenil's Freezing magic was somewhat larger, as expected from the gap between them in elemental magic, but thanks to the items Yujun had given her, Manuela's spells didn't fall far behind.
Once again, the Death Knight showed no intention of dodging. Manuela's unease swelled—and sure enough.
Crunch!
The Death Knight split the enormous mass of ice with its sword, and simply took the Freezing Storm Manuela had cast upon its body. It was a storm of cold so fierce that drawing near was enough to flay flesh, and the Death Knight looked utterly unbothered. Undead or not, nothing should have come through a Freezing Storm that intact.
"What even is that thing...?"
Manuela muttered, her face slack with disbelief, and Yenil couldn't hide her own shock.
"I do not believe it is an ordinary Death Knight."
"Yeah. I think we're going to have to call Yujun..."
Without him, there was probably almost no player on this battlefield who could handle that Death Knight with any ease. But Yujun had already read the situation and come running, before Manuela could even call him.
The Death Knight, sword extended toward the barrier, hastily drew the blade back and abandoned its position. Yujun's sword cut only empty air.
"Since when do Death Knights fly around in the sky?"
He muttered it as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. And the thing was fast, too. He hadn't even approached while showing his presence. He had hidden it as best he could and struck from stealth, and the Death Knight had dodged without so much as looking.
Feels like a Death Knight a cut above a Lich Lord.
The martial power of Death Knights varied wildly from one to the next. Even so, he had never seen one this strong. Except for Paranet. He hadn't fully grasped it yet, but in raw physical ability alone, this one seemed several steps above even Paranet. Which made sense. It hadn't been a careless swing. The thing had dodged a sword swung with the intent to kill in a single blow.
Yujun decided to fight the Death Knight as an equal. An unforeseen threat, but perhaps it was just as well. If it was stronger than a Lich Lord, the Peace Contribution ought to be higher to match. Surely they wouldn't toss him a few dozen points and call it done just because it was a Death Knight.
If they do, I'll be disappointed.
Though disappointed in whom, exactly? The System?
That was when it happened.
Whoosh!
The Death Knight closed in in an instant. The keen sword in its hand was steeped in a thick aura of darkness, and Yujun knew that if the blade bit him, that aura would devour him on the spot. His defense was high enough that taking the hit wouldn't matter much, but he had no intention of getting careless.
Yujun swung to meet it.
Kaaang—!
The Death Knight's blade collided with the Planet Destroyer's Sword and held.
"......"
It didn't look like a particularly exceptional sword, which told him an Indestructible option was attached to it.
These days, does every mutt and mongrel come with Indestructible stuck on?
Well. Facing him one-on-one without that option would be a fool's errand. It probably wasn't an item the Death Knight had prepared because it knew him well, either. If you were strong enough to stand against him, owning a weapon like that was nothing strange. And the Death Knight's edge lay less in the weapon than in the power it possessed.
I don't have the leisure to play mind games with a single Death Knight.
Different from an ordinary Death Knight or not, from Yujun's perspective, pouring a great deal of time into one undead was the same as throwing Peace Contribution onto the dirt. He used Super Concentration.
Darkness was gathering across the Death Knight's entire body. It seemed to be preparing a major technique. In that instant, Yujun moved.
Shhk!
A clean stroke carrying Chaos. The Death Knight's body split in two, and the thing vanished without even managing a reaction.
Peace Contribution has increased by 10,000!
It must have been quite high-level. He had gained two levels at once.
As expected. Whether I use Super Concentration or not makes a huge difference.
Of course it did. The rank on that skill had better be on the high side.
If there were just three more of these nearby, the players wouldn't be able to hold out.
Graaaaaaah—!
From far off came a shriek loud enough to ring in the ears. It was the Bone Dragon. He was intensely curious how a dragon made of nothing but bone could make a sound like that, but that wasn't what mattered. The Bone Dragon rose into the sky without even spreading its wings, as if the wings were mere decoration, and every player witnessed it.
The undead had already grown markedly stronger with nightfall, and when the Bone Dragon joined them, no small number of players fell into panic.
"We can't keep going like this!"
"Reinforcements! How are we supposed to hold this by ourselves!"
"Shin Yujun's here. He'll handle it somehow."
"He's still just one man. And no matter how strong Shin Yujun is, facing a Bone Dragon alone is too much!"
"You don't know that until they actually clash. I saw him smash the Lich Lords earlier."
"...By himself?"
"Yeah."
"You're not exaggerating?"
"Why would I? I don't even like him that much. If anything, I lean toward disliking him."
"Still, a Bone Dragon is on a different level."
"What do you even know, going on about different levels? Have you actually seen a Bone Dragon? I don't think I've even seen one in the records."
"Is that so?"
A few of them found hope in Shin Yujun's presence alone. But they were only a fraction. Most had their morale broken by the Bone Dragon's appearance, which was why Yujun felt he needed to bring the Bone Dragon down quickly. If the players lost heart, even what should have been possible would fail. In a war on this scale, the influence of morale was immense.
A night of the fourth day of the seventh lunar month, black as pitch, with neither moonlight nor starlight. The players could see ahead even in the dark, but there was no helping the narrowing of their field of view.
"This is driving me insane..."
"Think we can hold out until dawn?"
For the players, fighting through a night this dark was much like moving with night-vision goggles on. They weren't blind, but they couldn't see with the clarity of broad daylight. The undead, by contrast, grew quicker in their reactions and sharper in their senses once night fell. Only the players had been placed at a severe disadvantage, and problems of stamina came with it. It was a mercy that the undead's numbers had at least thinned somewhat, but even with Yujun and the other outstanding players in the fight, far too many undead remained. The situation could only be called grim.
"Haaahm..."
Masare, the Root of Darkness who had been piloting the Bone Dragon up into the sky, wore a bored expression.
The Root of Darkness. The race of the plague player who had drowned the dwarves' Kingdom of Sitahel in terror had been that rare race, the Root of Darkness—a race Yujun had only learned of through a system message after killing it. But Masare was a being of an entirely different order from that Root of Darkness, which had been plague itself. Far greater, and stronger, cleverer, and more corrupt. She was pure evil itself, and the difference in caliber was so severe that grouping her with the same race of darkness would have been an insult to Masare.
Among the few Roots of Darkness on the Continent, Masare possessed overwhelming power. She did not originally belong to this undead legion. Which made sense—she wasn't undead to begin with. The reason someone like Masare could play commander from the rearmost line of the great undead army was simple. She had killed the most powerful Lich Lord there had been and stolen the command that Lich Lord held, intact. That, too, was one of the abilities Masare possessed.
Her reason for bothering to command the undead legion was nothing special. It had looked fun. That was all.
Across the long ages she had lived, she had committed murder, arson, and kidnapping, annihilated villages, and every other kind of atrocity—and she had also done good deeds, helping people more times than could be counted. The reason underlying all of it was what she had already named: fun. If something caught her interest, Masare meddled, without fail. She never created the work herself. Masare knew the power she possessed, and so she always did the sort of thing where she lent her strength to something already underway, or—since some house was already burning—fanned the flames higher. She had no concept of good and evil. She did what she wanted to do, and interfered only in matters where she need not bear responsibility from beginning to end.
The Holy Empire lot were already grating on me a little. This works out nicely.
She possessed the power to bring down the Holy Empire by herself. But she hadn't done it, because then she alone would have had to answer for all of it.
I've set the Bone Dragon moving. Let's see how that man responds.
Looking at Shin Yujun, fighting thousands of undead alone with a sword in his hand, Masare smiled a deep, rich smile.