You Are Facing the Legion
“……”
Silaje opened his eyes.
Before him stretched a desolate desert, barren except for the endless sand.
“I see. So that's what this is.”
A smile crossed Silaje's face.
“A dungeon created by an ability.”
A short distance away, Simon stood waiting.
Simon shrugged his shoulders.
“Judging by your expression, I take it no one ever told you about this technique.”
“Being a professor doesn't mean one knows every student inside and out, my boy.”
[Aaaagh! What do I do? What do I do?!]
Both men looked up.
A colossal pair of eyes hovered in the blue sky, glaring down at the ground.
[I went and used my Third Authority again! What am I going to do? The moment this barrier falls, the Life Vessel is really going to burst this time!]
“Calm down, Herseba.”
Simon soothed her with a gentle voice.
“I'll figure something out.”
He said it with confidence, but in truth, Simon was worried sick. His opponent was a Kizen professor. Chatel, the first enemy he'd lured into a dungeon, had been formidable — but this was an adversary on an entirely different tier.
Can I actually win before Herseba's dungeon collapses?
“To whet your appetite, let me share an amusing little fact.”
Though he stood deep inside enemy territory, Silaje seemed utterly at ease.
“Just before this space dragged me in, the spell Blood Stone Castle was completed. The jet-black I poured into it never returned to me, so I'm certain. Which means the moment this dungeon shatters and we're cast back outside—”
The corner of his mouth curled with relish.
“—you die, Simon Polentia.”
“That's information I didn't need.”
Simon raised both arms high.
Kugugugugugugu!
Across the vast expanse of sand, the magnificent architecture of a golden city was rising into being, building after building erupting from the earth in unison.
“Because before that happens, I'm going to erase you.”
“Bold. I don't mind the reckless fire of youth.”
Kukung!
Thud!
Temples, obelisks, gardens, plazas, and amphitheaters. Doors swung open on the countless towering structures and edifices, and the city's inhabitants came pouring out.
-Gyagyagyagyagak!
-Gyagyagyagak!
Thousands upon thousands of bandage-wrapped mummies emerged, lurching and shambling into view.
“Ancient undead? Impressive.”
Silaje stroked his chin and readied his dark magic. Droplets of blood seeped out of his body, weaving themselves into blood magic circles.
Thirty of them. Then sixty. Now they numbered past a hundred. These magic circles, large and small, traded data with one another and interlocked like gears, preparing to assemble something enormous.
[Be careful, boy!]
Pier had sensed the threat too, and his warning rang out. Simon nodded and gave the order.
“Advance!”
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Thousands of mummies began their march, shrieking strange cries. Silaje contemplated the spectacle with detached calm as he began to layer and merge the circles floating in the air.
They had already ceased to be magic circles at all — it was a single vast city of glyphs.
“Allow me to show you.”
Every circle lit up at once.
“What true magnitude means.”
Tduk. Tduk.
Then the impossible happened. At the center of the circles, the rune script began to weep tears of blood.
One drop, then two — and soon the tears became a river of blood, branching out into tens of thousands of tributaries. It called to mind the veins of a living body.
“!”
Vessels ran beneath the mummies' feet, and beneath Simon's own. They blanketed the entire desert.
At last, his preparation complete, Silaje unleashed his dark magic.
⟨ Blood Fountain, Harry Helens ⟩
The desert heaved upward.
Dead center of the golden city, where the mummies came flooding in — the ground suddenly swelled into the crater of a towering mountain range.
Wait — this is what I saw before I entered the dungeon…!
[Flee, boy!]
Gwrrrrrrrumble!
And the volcano erupted.
But the contents were neither magma nor pyroclastic flow.
Blood…!
It was the blood of hemomancy. A crimson liquid so saturated in color it stung the eyes geysered into the air. The blood-magma blanketing the sky disintegrated midair into countless droplets.
They came crashing down upon the golden city, and in an instant the buildings collapsed in bursts of blood explosions. Every mummy caught within the radius vanished without a trace.
“Throughout history, it was always cruel natural disasters that erased the most advanced civilizations.”
Silaje said.
“Taste the power of calamity, rendered through hemomancy.”
Soon craters were erupting in every direction, spraying droplets of blood without end. The way they convulsed and vomited blood made them look like wounded living things.
Every mummy that emerged from a doorway was caught in a blood explosion and cut down. The stench of gore stung Simon's nose.
Swish!
Simon swung the greatsword himself and cleaved through one crater — but there were simply too many.
At this rate, we'll be wiped out!
He had to strike the caster at the source of the calamity. Simon rallied the mummy cavalry, mounted and waiting, and hurled them in a charge at Silaje.
Dudududududududu!
Hoofbeats shook the earth. But at a single flick of Silaje's hand, the ground before them swelled and a volcano of blood burst open.
“Ghk!”
Simon leapt from his horse just in time. Blood rained down like a downpour, and in the chain of explosions that followed, the mummy cavalry was annihilated.
“How many cities and kingdoms do you imagine I've torn down in my lifetime?”
Silaje's eyes glinted.
“The depth of time we've each accumulated is simply… different—”
Trickle—!
Just then, a stream of blood ran from Silaje's mouth.
He grimaced and clutched the left side of his chest, where his heart lay. Burst blood vessels webbed his eyes, and blood poured from his nose in a steady stream.
Trouble again.
He looked down at his own chest with a bitter smile.
Silaje's congenital limit. His beginning, and his end.
It was the heart his father had ruined.
To mend that heart, Silaje had striven relentlessly — grown strong, founded the Blood Sky Cult, and won recognition as a hemomancer of the very highest order.
But the one heart he could never repair was his own. No matter what body he took, the agony from his heart would not fade.
I must hurry — perform the ritual, offer up the sacrifices, and summon the Apostle.
Every preparation was complete. The gifted, fresh first-years had all been converted into sacrifices, and the Dungeon Lord subdued. The dungeon's entrance had been sealed with the Blood Ring as well.
All that remained was to step outside and unleash his dark magic.
The Apostle — the Blood Sky Cult's grand project, soon to descend upon the surface of the earth.
The collaborator who had always funded Silaje intended to wield that colossal lifeform to plunge the continent into chaos. But on this one point, Silaje's ambition and his collaborator's diverged.
I will devour the Apostle.
He would consume it through Predation and claim its flesh for his own.
The Apostle possessed twenty hearts.
Whether one of them was broken made no difference at all.
Devour the Apostle, become the Apostle — and only when he finally transcended the limit of his heart would the whole world fall into his hands.
Hack! Hack!
Having coughed up blood, he spread his palm open. Damp bloodstains smeared across it. At last, this wretched, endless agony would soon be over.
“Herseba!”
Simon plunged both hands deep into the sand.
“Sorry, but I'm pulling out more!”
With a mighty heave, an enormous stable-like structure rose up before them, and bandage-wrapped mummy cavalry came pouring out of it in droves.
“Numbers are always such a nuisance.”
Silaje wiped the blood from his chin and drew his arm back behind him.
“Tell me — what do you suppose was the most fundamental reason I could hide my identity from Kizen headquarters?”
Kurururururung!
Simon's eyes went wide with shock.
Behind him, a blood-red portal had torn open. From within it, an endless procession of people was marching out, crisp and orderly.
“Because I possess a secret art that no other necromancer knows — one that belongs to the Blood Sky Cult alone.”
Simon was aghast.
Impossible! They came straight into Herseba's dungeon?
That was no subspace, and no teleportation circle. It was spatial magic of unknown origin. The number of people pouring through had already soared past a thousand.
And above all — walking among the faithful was that blood-red zombie, a creature Simon knew all too well.
Blood Zombies!
Anger flickered in Simon's eyes. These were the undead he had fought to the death against on the Holy Federation's holy train — and the vast majority of them had been made from abducted Federation citizens. Meaning their raw material was human beings.
And it wasn't just the Blood Zombies. The ordinary cultists' eyes weren't right either. They had completed their Blood Cores and escaped zombification, but they seemed to be suffering the side effects — vacant, unfocused eyes, and bodies wasted and withered.
[They look worse than death itself.]
Even Pier, an Ancient Undead, offered that grim appraisal.
Chaeok! Chuk! Chuk!
The countless faithful of the Blood Sky Cult, and the Blood Zombies, filled one corner of the desert to bursting.
And among them, three figures stood out with an intensity all their own.
“You called for us, Archbishop.”
A man dragging a pair of bloodstained crosses along the ground.
“Heheh! Can we finally see the Apostle now?”
A grotesque woman riddled with piercings, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.
“Of course it had to be here of all places.”
A ponytailed man muttering with a bored expression.
All three were of Bishop rank in the Blood Sky Cult — each one as strong as Aloken, the boss Simon had fought on the holy train, or stronger.
“Simon Polentia. Look upon this moment, feel it, and despair. For right now, you—”
Silaje spread both arms wide with a sinister smile.
“—are facing the entirety of the Blood Sky Cult.”
Waaaaaaaah!
The cult's fanatics screamed themselves hoarse in triumph.
-Kyagagagak!
The mummies, roused by the din, lunged at the sound — but the three Bishops unleashed three different hemomancy spells, shredding them to ribbons as they descended to Silaje's side.
“Archbishop. Are we simply to kill the boy?”
The Bishop with the two crosses glanced back at Silaje. Silaje nodded.
“That is so.”
The instant his order fell, killing intent bloomed from all three bodies.
Simon's expression hardened to steel.
Crack!
Crash-crack!
Oh no.
As if things weren't bad enough, cracks had begun spidering across Herseba's World of Sand everywhere he looked. She had reached her limit too.
If the World of Sand collapsed now, the problem wouldn't be the dark magic Silaje had planted — it would be facing the thousands of Blood Sky Cultists head-on.
“……”
A hopeless situation.
And yet.
Somehow, Simon found himself smiling.
Hopeless, is it?
Was this really despair?
No.
Not yet.
His mind was still turning; his brain was still circling, hunting for a path to victory.
Simon lifted his head, and his eyes flashed.
“The little brat's got murder in his eyes.”
The ponytailed Bishop flinched. The woman jabbed him in the arm.
“Don't get careless. He looks like a kid, but the Archbishop himself called for backup over him.”
Simon lowered the hand pressed to his forehead and let out a long, slow breath.
A path to victory. A way to win.
“Herseba.”
[Kid! Aaagh! I can't hold on much longer!]
“There's one way we can win.”
Simon rolled up his sleeve to reveal the bracelet on his wrist. He channeled jet-black into it and tapped it lightly with a fingertip, and a subspace opened.
The subspace Herseba had received from the master craftsman Gallen Eclipse.
Within that narrow space sat the Lich's true body, the Life Vessel pulsing steadily between her chest bones.
Simon reached out toward the Life Vessel.
[Boy! You can't possibly—!]
Pier read Simon's intent and recoiled in horror.
[That's impossible! A Life Vessel is a completely different concept from a core!]
“It's the only way we have right now.”
Simon's face was taut, but a confident smile played at the corner of his mouth.
“I will make this work. No matter what.”
He knew that if he touched this, Herseba would likely be unusable afterward — at Kizen and out in the world alike. He still remembered, vividly, how much agony her creation had cost him.
But—
Right now, far too many lives are riding on this.
The faces of Meilin and the others, turned into sacrifices, flashed before his eyes.
Shedding every last trace of hesitation, Simon laid his hand on Herseba's Life Vessel and poured jet-black into it.
Kwaaaaaaaah!
Simon's jet-black began to interfere with Herseba's Life Vessel.
[Ghk!]
Herseba let out a cry of pain, and the cracks running through her dungeon spread faster.
“Bwahaha! What was that?”
“He's breaking the space for us! Even better!”
The Bishops and the cultists jeered.
Fzzt-crack!
Fzzzt-crack-crack-crack!
Simon's jet-black and Herseba's jet-black tangled and collided violently.
Breaking it apart, am I? Not even close.
Legionification.
Simon was attempting to turn Herseba into a Legion-type undead.
Of course, Legionifying a Life Vessel was something not even Richard had ever attempted. It was utterly unprecedented — and as things stood, the Life Vessel would simply explode.
Pop!
The first band holding the Life Vessel together snapped.
Pop! Pop!
The second and third bands broke too. The Life Vessel, only its central core remaining, wobbled precariously.
“Herseba!”
Intensity surged in Simon's eyes.
“I'm your creator! I am not losing you — ever!”
[You absolute lunatic— ghk! Why are you saying this now…! Ughhhh!]
“Trust me!”
Eyes wide, blood streaming from his nose, Simon shouted. He was suffering the backlash of jet-black reversal too.
“Trust me, and open your heart to me!”
His mind boiled hot, and currents of electricity crackled through his skull.
I can do this.
I will do this.
The moment he gathered all of his consciousness into a single point, the Bishops' sneers, the clash of mummies against cultists — everything sank away.
Sound vanished. Time slowed.
And as time slowed, his perception sharpened all the more.
He projected jet-black onto Herseba's Life Vessel, and around that center, he drew bands across the vessel as it threatened to come apart.
The first band.
A new band, formed of the Legion's jet-black.
The second band.
Beside it, a second, crossing band took shape.
“He's doing something!”
“Stop him!”
The Bishop with the crosses leapt over the mummies and charged at Simon.
[Not while I stand here, human!]
CLANG!
In the blink of an eye, Pier — his Bone Armor dispelled — struck the Bishop's cross head-on with the Sword of Ruin. The Bishop's eyes went round as saucers.
“Wh-wha— what is this undead?!”
[KHAHAHAHA!]
BAM!
A follow-up blow sent the Bishop flying into the distance. Pier glanced back over his shoulder.
[Go on, then! Do as you will, boy!]
Pier's jaw split open in a roar.
[You are that man's son, after all!]
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWA!
At last — the moment three bands, forged from the Legion's power, overlapped upon Herseba's heart—
the collapsing World of Sand transformed.
“!”
Night fell upon the desert.
The clear, pristine sky flooded with a deep blue-black gloom. Herseba's eyes, hanging in the heavens, took on a dark blue gleam in her murky pupils — the very color of Simon's jet-black.
Kugugugugugugugugu!
Kugugugu!
The cultists froze in terror. The golden city, its construction halted, began to rise once more.
“Wh-what's happening?!”
“More mummies are coming out!”
The Blood Sky cultists stumbled backward. Herseba's feverish voice rang out.
[Kid! Kid! What did you just do?! Power is surging through me like crazy!]
“Welcome to the Legion, Herseba.”
Simon, down on one knee, grinned as he panted for breath.
“You can keep going, right?”
[Of course—!]
Simon was remembering what Magnus had said when they met to trade Akemus in the prisoner exchange.
—Shall I tell you one thing? The true way to use an Ancient Undead.
The true way to use an Ancient Undead.
Ever since hearing those words from Magnus, Simon had been thinking about it. I still haven't drawn out a Legion Commander's real power.
Right now.
Beyond the limit!
What he needed to do was clear. Bound closer to Herseba than ever before, right now he could grasp it.
The true power the World of Sand possessed.
Herseba's Authority isn't creation — it's the power to 'call' the mummy army she owns. Which means…!
Set no limits. Expand freely.
Herseba is the Legion, and the Legion is me.
Therefore—
Herseba was no longer limited to calling mummies.
Ssssssssssssssssssss!
From the center, toward the right. Something was rising out of the desert.
It was an enormous mansion.
And that wasn't all. Around the mansion, faded buildings rose like those of a ghost city, and a domain of undecaying death spread across the sand.
[UWAHAHA! This is insane, you know that?]
The mansion's doors burst open!
Out stepped a small boy wearing a faded crown, patting his own body incredulously.
[Simon! How did you bring me here?!]
The Ancient Undead, Prince.
And there, in the heart of the desert, Deathland itself was being reproduced. From the buildings of the ghost city poured out an endless tide of zombies.
“Two o'clock! Large-scale zombie emergence at two o'clock!”
“Minimum three thousand of them!”
“Where the hell are they coming from?!”
At the sudden appearance of an enemy force, the cultists' faces went pale with panic.
[I don't know what's going on, but—!]
Prince struck a pose, one hand shading his face.
[Commander of the Legion's Zombie Corps! And hero — PRINCE has arrived!]
-Uwoooooooooh!
-Uooooooooh!
A pitch-black wave of zombies churned and rolled like the sea itself.
[How tiresome it is to meet you.]
At the same moment, on the opposite side of Deathland, a new presence was stirring. The cultists' gazes swung the other way.
-Kiririririk!
-Kiririk!
This quarter of the desert had been recreated as a spider's den draped wall to wall in webbing. And there, perched upon the strands with her legs elegantly crossed, sat a woman.
[Commander of the Spider Corps — and the most loyal vassal of our Legion Commander.]
She rose with a bewitching smile.
[My name is Erzsébet.]
Kukung!
Kukukukukung!
And at the rear of the formation—
Tall trees shot up one after another, until the heart of the desert had become a jungle.
[We were standing by in the ruins when we were summoned — and into the most battle-ready terrain imaginable, no less.]
Dropping from nests in the trees came the harpy undead, the Skullwings.
And the man who led them.
[Commander of the Skullwing Corps — Akemus. I have answered the Young Master's call!]
-Kiiiiiiik!
-Kiiiiiii!
The Skullwings blackened the sky.
“Now then — Silaje the wraith, and the Blood Sky Cult.”
Simon grinned and donned Pier.
“I'll return your words exactly as you gave them. Look upon this moment, feel it, and despair. For right now, you are facing—”
He spread both arms wide.
“—the Legion.”
Uwooooooooooooooooooh!
The host of the dead, gathered in the desert's night, unleashed a roar that shook the world.