Corpse Explosion
The mass battle between the necromancers raged with brutal intensity.
It had begun with roughly twenty combatants, but as undead poured onto the field, it swelled into a full-scale clash of nearly fifty against fifty.
Explosions erupted on every side, undead wailed, and shards of curses scattered through the air.
"Punch through! Break through their line!"
"Put up an ice wall! Meilin!"
"No need to overdo it! Send out the undead and just rain curses from the back!"
Everyone fought with veins bulging at their throats, screaming themselves hoarse.
Somewhere along the way, the cards and prizes—whatever the original objective had been—vanished entirely from their minds.
There was only one thought left: win.
While the bloody battle raged across the courtyard before the Royal Palace, Elisa, riding aboard her Ghost Ship, opted for a rather different strategy.
If I get too close, Meilin's Jet-Black Flame series will tear me apart. But if I fire cannonballs, I'll probably hit my own allies too.
In the end, Elisa's choice was to strike at the inner fortress itself.
Tilting three Ghost Ships slightly, she unleashed a coordinated bombardment downward, sweeping the soldiers off the fortress walls in one blow.
The necromancers of the defending team who might have stopped her were all occupied fighting at the Royal Palace.
Elisa's one-sided bombardment threw the inner fortress's defenses into disarray, and at last—
The inner fortress's north gate has been breached!
Morale of the Khan Kingdom soldiers is rising sharply.
Morale of the Aon Kingdom soldiers has plummeted.
The Khan Kingdom had successfully broken through the castle gates.
Watching it happen, Simon raised the Commander's Token and issued his orders.
"We will execute Plan E, as previously outlined. Except for a minimal holding force, I need all troops to fall back to the Royal Palace."
The order from the supreme commander, holder of full command authority, was nothing short of a retreat into the Royal Palace.
Not barricading the gates, not fighting street by street—a complete withdrawal.
There was no small amount of grumbling among the beastfolk officers, but the command of the Guardian supreme commander was, for all intents and purposes, the word of the King himself.
In the end, the soldiers of the Aon Kingdom moved exactly as Simon directed.
Good. Now, as planned—
KWAAAANG!
"SIMON POLENTIA!!!"
Hector came charging through the flames and ice churning on all sides. His jaws gaped wide open—but faster than he could unleash his breath, the Dark Blazes of the Skull Drones circling Simon tore into him first.
Hammered by fireball after fireball, trailing black smoke, Hector was ultimately driven back under Meilin's blizzard and the torrent of curses pouring down from the other students.
"Damn it all!"
Hector, retreating through the blaze of flames, slammed his fist into an innocent tree. A student from the same siege team cast a Cancellation over him and spoke in a tone that was half advice, half caution.
"Hector! As long as they're just tanking with undead and sniping us with curses, a brute-force breakthrough isn't going to work."
"Those filthy cowards…!"
Hector ground his teeth, then glanced behind him. His siege-team allies were carefully watching his reaction.
"From this point on, I'm giving the orders!"
Hector had finally begun scheming how to actually use his forces.
"Dick! Meilin! Hold the line for ten minutes!"
Meanwhile, Simon had entered the Royal Palace and was preparing a new dark spell. Having dismissed his Skull Drones and reattached the skulls to their torsos, he unfurled four magic circles in the empty air.
⟨ Simon's Original — Magive System ⟩
The circles suspended in midair linked seamlessly with the magic circles of the Skeleton Mages. Taking a light, steadying breath, Simon focused and began rewriting their runes and formulae.
With the Magive System, Simon had reconfigured the spells his Skeleton Mages would use—then led them back out of the Royal Palace.
BOOM!
The moment Simon stepped back outside, an explosion erupted at his feet. In the short time he'd been gone, the enemy offensive had grown far fiercer.
"KYAHAHA!"
One male student punched through the defenders' flames using Spirit Transformation. Spotting Simon, he conjured a scythe in his hand and lunged.
⟨ Bounce ⟩
The instant the student dropped his Spirit Transformation to attack, a curse came flying at him like a bolt of lightning. His body was flung right back the way he'd come.
"Hey! What are you zoning out for?"
Meilin, who'd fired the curse, jogged over to Simon, panting hard.
"If you've got something prepped, use it already!"
"Thanks."
The biggest standout of this battle was Meilin. She was raising ice walls single-handedly, hurling flames, sniping with pinpoint curse shots—and on top of it all, operating skeletons with her death-will. She was showing off skills that had completely leveled up.
Simon, too, slowly closed his eyes and raised both arms.
Rise.
He could feel it. The monster buried beneath the ground.
Rise.
With his death-will, he slowly began to wake the beast.
GUUUUUMBLE. GUUUUUMBLE!
Suddenly, the ground began to shake violently. The students, locked in their chaotic exchange of attacks, stumbled backward in alarm.
"Wh-what is it now?"
"…An earthquake?"
Meilin whipped her head around to see Simon with his eyes shut, murmuring something under his breath. It almost looked like he was chanting a spell.
"So that's where you were hiding!"
⟨ Strangle ⟩
Hector swung his arm, hurling a curse.
⟨ Cancellation ⟩
Meilin, darting in front of Simon, swept her arm and shredded the curse apart.
"How dare you vermin—!"
"Not a chance."
As the two traded curses with vicious intensity, the ground began trembling harder and harder.
Judging that curses alone wouldn't cut it, Hector punched straight through the ice Meilin was firing and charged at Simon.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWAAAANG!
At that moment, the ground floor shattered entirely, and something pitch-black shot up from below. Hector, mid-charge, smashed straight into it and went flying with a resounding CRACK!
"GRUUUOOOHH!"
A mountain of a monster's maw burst up out of the floor.
-SHRIIIIIIEEEEEEE!
At the sudden intrusion of a colossal monster, everyone went speechless.
"Th-that's… that's the one, right?"
Meilin turned to Dick, trembling.
"The thing Simon caught in the sea during the 3rd BMAT!"
"That's right. The Gwaegong."
Its scales falling away in patches, its flesh sloughing off in places—the zombified Gwaegong was even more horrifying and menacing than anyone could have imagined.
Simon issued the Absolute Order.
THUD!
Every time the Gwaegong twisted its massive bulk and swung its arms, siege-team students went flying, one or two at a time. It was like watching a mountain move.
"Block it!"
The siege-team students hurled every dark spell they had, but the Gwaegong kept its assault going as if all of it were a mere tickle. Each blow shattered the ground and sent students tumbling through the air.
"Hey, commoner! What the hell is going on? I thought you salvaged that monster corpse to sell it!"
"Heh heh. It'd take a while to explain."
The Gwaegong, salvaged from the seabed, had gone up for auction in parts. The breath organ and certain skin tissues had sold for a handsome price thanks to Vanilla, netting Simon 2,000 gold.
But nobody had wanted the Gwaegong's hide with all the vital parts removed. Simon had hoped some noble might buy it as a rare trophy for display, but its condition was too poor, and it was passed over.
Someone had shown interest at 30 gold, but Simon refused and decided to keep it for himself.
That was why, with the help of the artisan necromancers of Vanilla whom he'd befriended, he'd had the Gwaegong zombified in advance.
"Duration is twenty minutes. It's a one-use undead."
"What?! Twenty minutes, and one use? What kind of useless thing is that?"
Dick shrugged.
"Well, it's being pretty useful right this second, isn't it?"
There was no denying it was impressive. No matter how much punishment the siege-team students rained down, the Gwaegong didn't seem to take so much as a scratch.
Phew.
Hector stared at the Gwaegong, chest heaving.
Simon had caught that thing in its prime during the 3rd BMAT.
If he did it, then so can I!
Hector launched into the sky. Having transformed into a near-perfect Death Dragon, he blasted his breath down at the Gwaegong's back, and the Gwaegong heaved its mountainous body upright and gave chase.
"What is this, a kaiju manga?!"
Just as the two monsters were locked in ferocious combat—
-Sorry to interrupt mid-battle, but we need to pull back now!
-The Aon Kingdom soldiers are climbing up. Stay there and you'll be caught in a pincer!
Elisa's urgent voice rang out from every siege-team student's card.
She was right. Supreme Commander Simon's order was to retreat to the Royal Palace.
The Aon Kingdom soldiers who had fled the inner fortress were all streaming up the stairs toward the palace.
Stay put, and they'd be attacked from above and below at once.
-There's a Ghost Ship waiting behind you—get on board!
Looking down, they saw Aon Kingdom soldiers swarming up the staircase in dense packs.
Left with no choice, the siege-team students reluctantly boarded Elisa's Ghost Ship.
-SHRIIIIIIEEEEEEE!
The Gwaegong bellowed and tried to drag the Ghost Ship down, but even a monster of its size couldn't fly.
"We finally chased them off, huh."
Meilin wiped the sweat from her brow and looked at Simon.
"So what's the plan now?"
The situation remained overwhelmingly dire for the defenders. More than six hours still remained on the clock, and the inner fortress had fallen.
Their own allies were climbing the stairs—but now the Khan Kingdom's soldiers, ten times their number, would soon pass through the inner fortress and rise into the city proper.
And once the Khan's forces arrived, the siege-team students would come back down from their Ghost Ships, and the entire Royal Palace would end up encircled.
Even if the full garrison holed up inside the Royal Palace—an indestructible object—necromancers had no shortage of ways to attack soldiers inside: poison gas, wide-area curses, and more.
"Leave it to me."
Simon said this as he gazed at the Gwaegong. At his word, the Gwaegong immediately began descending back down into the city it had risen from.
Then he issued another order through the Commander's Token.
"All forces, move into the Royal Palace."
The jet-black soldiers of the Khan Kingdom began climbing the stairs, following hard on the heels of the fleeing Aon soldiers. Simon and the other students rushed out to support them.
Squeezing out the last of their Jet-Black, they checked the Khan Kingdom's pursuit as they shepherded their allies into the palace.
"Hurry!"
"Move, move, MOVE!"
By the time the Aon Kingdom soldiers began filing into the Royal Palace, the Khan Kingdom's troops had already reached the midway point of the stairs.
"Ugh, it's crawling with them."
That was Meilin, grimacing—and no wonder. The staircase was packed solid with Khan soldiers halfway up. The Aon Kingdom soldiers, hesitant and uneasy, filed into the Royal Palace.
Murmur. Murmur. Murmur.
"The palace is too cramped—fall back into the Obsidian Mine!"
"Keep moving, quickly!"
The civilians, watching the soldiers being pushed all the way back to the palace itself, huddled together in terror, clinging to one another.
The King, who had sat resolute upon his throne, was startled when the soldiers abandoned the walls and poured into the palace—but even he chose to trust the Guardians, and made no move to stop them.
"Just a little longer."
Even as the Khan Kingdom's soldiers drew closer and closer, Simon murmured quietly.
"Just a little more. Just a little more."
The Khan Kingdom's soldiers now stood at the very doorstep of the Royal Palace. Hector and the siege-team students, who had been waiting aboard the Ghost Ships, all disembarked.
"Backed themselves right into a corner, didn't they."
"Anyone know a good poison smoke combo?"
The siege-team students were already acting like the battle was won.
But Simon hovered his four magic circles in the air and waited, perfectly calm. His Skeleton Mages, too, stood ready with their staves raised, spells primed.
"Th-the enemy's coming!"
"So this is the end of the kingdom."
Just as notes of despairing resignation began to rise among the soldiers who'd entered the palace, Simon—the dark spell finally prepared—spread open his palm.
Meilin flinched at the sight.
"Hey! Don't tell me—!"
Simon's palm was pointed downward. The Skeleton Mages followed his lead and slammed their staves into the floor in unison.
Simon, who had been concentrating with his eyes closed, slowly opened them—and a faint golden glow flickered in his irises.
Perfect immersion.
"Corpse—"
His fist clenched tight, lips parting—
"—Explosion."
THOOM.
From somewhere impossibly far away, a tremor could be felt.
GUUUUUUMBLE—!
The tremor swelled and expanded, building into a deafening roar. And then—
――――――――――――!
In an instant, all of Aon Castle was flooded with bluish-green light.
KU-KWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAKWAAAA!
The ground caved in. The Khan Kingdom soldiers climbing toward the Royal Palace were swept away, screaming.
Pillars shattered, houses crumbled, hills collapsed—everything came tumbling down. In the blink of an eye, the surroundings were swallowed by pitch-black smoke as Khan Kingdom soldiers rained down like a downpour.
"You absolute maniac!"
Hector screamed, eyes bulging.
"Don't tell me you Corpse-Exploded the Gwaegong…!"
RUUUUUUMBLE!
The capital of a kingdom—
Aon Castle began to collapse by its own defenders' hands.