Four Sides of Carnage
Silaje and the Blood Sky Cult's forces found themselves surrounded, with nowhere left to run.
To the east, the zombie horde led by Prince. To the west, Erzsébet's corpse spiders. From the north came Akemus's Skullwings. And from the south—the direction they faced head-on—a horde of mummies advanced under Simon's personal command.
No matter which way they looked, there was not a single gap to slip through. Silaje's expression hardened like stone.
"Golos, Gilla, Anvante. Split into three and take your troops against the undead."
"Yes, sir!"
The three bishops scattered at the order, moving with practiced speed.
"I will take the Legion Commander myself."
Drawing up his jet-black, Silaje stared straight ahead. Simon and the mummies under his banner were bearing down on them.
"Zombies, is it."
Golos, a bishop of the Blood Sky Cult, was heading east with a blood-red cross clutched in each hand. Combat-ready cultists and Blood Zombies trailed behind him.
[Hm?]
Prince, sprinting along with one hand clutching the crown on his head, spotted him too.
[What's this? The Blood Sky Cult wields crosses?]
"In the name of Goddess Deva, we shall execute the unholy!"
FWOOSH!
Golos kicked off the ground and soared into the air, swinging his blood-soaked crosses. Prince stopped in his tracks and crossed both arms in an X.
KRAAAANG!
The impact thundered out, and the ground beneath Prince's feet caved inward. Prince's brow creased slightly.
[Hold on—isn't Deva the goddess those Efnel kids worship?]
"They are the ones who have gone astray!"
The veins bulged on Golos's forehead.
"Nothing but vested interests who twisted the Goddess's words into a tool of control! We of the Blood Sky Cult are the true faithful of Goddess Deva!"
[Oh, for goodness' sake!]
Prince wrenched apart his crossed arms with all his strength, flinging Golos backward.
[We've exchanged maybe one sentence, and I can already tell how hopelessly tangled your thinking is.]
"Do not presume to judge me, you unholy undead!"
Golos planted both red crosses upright once more.
"The resurrection of the Apostles is the Goddess's true will!"
[Yeah, I don't know about any of that.]
CLACK!
Prince raised both fists as well.
[But one thing I know very well—you're a rotten villain, twisted through and through!]
WHAM!
The two of them charged at each other at once. Utterly unlike their conversation, which ran on two perfectly parallel rails that would never meet, the distance between their bodies closed in an instant.
BAM! WHACK! CRAAACK!
In moments, Prince and Golos were locked in a ferocious exchange of fists and crosses. Their raw brawling kicked up sandstorm after sandstorm around them.
"Ngh!"
Golos staggered backward.
Physical strength that surpasses even me, a Bishop?!
[Haha!!]
Prince's eyes flashed. So did the crown atop his head.
Golos dropped low into a guarded stance, every nerve taut—
SREEEAK!
WHUMP!
The pain came from behind him. Blood Zombies had latched onto his shoulders, neck, and thighs without his noticing, tearing into his flesh with their teeth.
"What the—?!"
[How does it feel to get done in by your own allies?]
Prince's fist drove straight into Golos's face.
[HIDDEN CARD PUNCH!]
CRUUUUNCH!
It could not possibly have landed any more perfectly.
The bridge of his nose shattered like pottery, and blood sprayed from his mouth and nostrils alike.
Golos rocketed away at terrifying speed, flipping over and over in midair before slamming into the sand far in the distance. The Blood Zombies swarmed over him in a flood and began tearing at his fallen body.
And not just him.
-UOOOOOOO!
The other Blood Sky Cultists were battling their own Blood Zombies as well.
Watching the scene, Prince fiddled with his crown.
[Hm, they're eating even better than usual today?]
Of course, the offensive was far from over.
[Attack!]
The black wave of zombies Deathland was famous for surged over Prince's head and crashed into Golos's battalion.
SHRAAAAAK!
SHRAAAAAAK!
Every time a pale-blue line of light flashed through the air, a Blood Zombie's head went flying.
Even when a few quick-witted cultists threw up blades to block the path ahead, the line simply sheared through the weapons themselves and kept pressing forward.
"Ugh!"
This was the western front—and its second Blood Sky Cult bishop, Gilla.
Herself leaping skyward to dodge a slash, she panted hard, the piercing on her tongue glinting.
[Whatever are you doing right now, human?]
Erzsébet sneered.
[Do you truly intend to keep letting your dear subordinates die so?]
"Kgh!"
Gilla had her hands full just fending off Erzsébet—and in the meantime, the corpse spiders descended on the cultists.
When Erzsébet raised her right arm with her palm facing the sky, strands of spiderweb stretched out into the air like laundry lines. The corpse spiders shot their own webs up to anchor themselves, then swung free of the ground, tracing pendulum arcs as they flew and sank their venomous fangs into the cultists' necks.
With soft, wet plop, plop, the cultists dropped one after another.
"You monsters!"
Gilla activated a magic circle.
At once, blood gushed from every piercing studding her body—her tongue included—soaking the ground dark and wet.
"Come forth!"
From her subspace, she dropped eight Golem Cores onto the ground.
BLORP... BLORP... BLORP!
The pooled blood quickly gathered around the cores, swelling up like balloons.
[Oh?]
"This is my true power."
Eight Blood Golems were rising to their feet around Gilla.
"Linked to a full eight Blood Golems, I am invincible. Whatever damage I take, I regenerate."
As if on cue, one of the Blood Golems seized a fellow cultist and drank in his blood. The shoulder wound Gilla had suffered from Erzsébet moments before healed over in seconds.
"There is no one alive who can break through my defense—!"
Shring. Shring. Shring.
Pale-blue flashes erupted around the Blood Golems from every direction, and a moment later, thin lines scored across all eight of their bodies.
[How pitiful, I must say.]
As Erzsébet flicked both arms outward, with a long shhhhk of parting flesh, every single golem collapsed at once.
"...Ah!"
The corner of Erzsébet's mouth twisted.
[How strange. The Blood Golems our dear master learned at Kizen were never this feeble. Tell me, are they not mere toys that happen to come in great numbers?]
Tik.
Ti-tik.
Now countless fine lines were beginning to score themselves across Gilla's own body.
[And the defining trait of a Blood Golem—]
Erzsébet wore a wicked smile.
[It shares all its damage with the caster. Am I correct?]
"N-no! I don't want this!"
Gilla clawed at her own hair as countless scratches opened across her entire body at once.
"I don't—!!"
FWOOOOSH!
Scarlet blood erupted from her as if detonating, and Gilla—now nothing but a mangled mass of meat—moved no more.
Erzsébet brushed off her hands with brisk, disgusted flicks.
"Not even worth dirtying my hands over. My darlings—leave not one alive! Annihilate the master's enemies, every last one!"
-KIRIRIRIK!
The swarm of corpse spiders descended on the Blood Sky Cultists like hawks sighting prey.
The northern desert rang with the shrieks of monstrous birds.
The Skullwing—the newest undead of the 7th Legion.
Its base was the harpy, that half-human, half-bird monster: the face and upper body built from a human skull and bones, and from the waist down, thin, delicate bird bones.
And as undead, nearly all of the jet-black flowing from a Skullwing's core was channeled straight into its wings.
Its whole body was a skeleton, yet jet-black feathers clung to it in scattered patches—a bizarre silhouette. On these it sprinted through the sky at breakneck speed, then seized prey on the ground in its two clawed feet.
"Gyaaagh!"
From there, it would drop its prey from high altitude—or worry at the back of their neck with its teeth.
"Watch out for the falling feathers!"
"Damned undead, making everything a chore!"
As the Skullwings flew, their feathers shed naturally—and every one of them carried a curse lethally harmful to living things.
Plague.
Burns.
Agony.
All manner of curses, mixed at random. The instant someone was snatched by a Skullwing and cocooned in its feathers, they convulsed in extreme torment until they died.
"They keep coming from the sky!"
"Fire the Blood Arrows!"
The Blood Zombies, with no anti-air capability whatsoever, were all but useless. They could only stand there dumbly until a Skullwing plucked them up—and most of the Blood Sky Cultists had their minds rotted through by Blood Core side effects and drug abuse besides. Proper resistance was out of the question.
And in the highest reaches of the sky—
The Ancient Undead Akemus stood with his arms crossed, looking down on the enemy from above.
The pale-blue feathered wings, crafted from Simon's jet-black, beat with a proud, stately rhythm.
[I have built my nest, but our numbers remain disappointingly few.]
Having only recently begun mass-producing his undead, Akemus could not hope to match Prince's or Erzsébet's forces. He was husbanding each and every Skullwing like an elite corps, deploying them with maximum care.
And yet.
[Ten of them lost already?]
A man with a ponytail, a tonfa gripped in each hand—the Blood Sky Cult bishop, Anvante.
He was strong.
He had personally brought down more than ten Skullwings. Those struck by his fired rounds rolled across the sand, twitching.
"When are you coming down, big undead?"
The man leveled a tonfa at the sky in open provocation. Akemus rose higher with a cold, expressionless face.
And then—
FWOOOOOOOOOSH!
Like a black comet, he crossed the distance in a matter of seconds and slammed into Anvante.
KRAKOOM!
The blast roared out, sand geysering into the sky like a fountain.
As the sand hissed back down, the tableau revealed itself: Akemus's foot and Anvante's tonfa locked together, straining against each other like a taut tug-of-war rope.
"I'm not like Golos or Gilla."
Cheok!
Anvante leveled his other tonfa at Akemus.
RATATATATATA!
Bullets came spewing from the holes bored through the tonfa. Every single one was a Blood Bullet built entirely from blood.
Akemus withdrew, shielding his body with his wings.
[Hm.]
His expression twisted. Feathers from those wings, boasting a hardness beyond steel, had been blown out in ragged patches.
"I don't give a damn about the Blood Sky Cult or any of it. I'm a neutral-zone mercenary by origin. I was just so stupidly strong that they recruited me."
Anvante shrugged as he went on.
"You look pretty strong yourself, so how about we each fight about half-seriously, take our lumps, and call it a day."
[...Half-seriously?]
GRRRRRRRRROOOO!
A vast torrent of jet-black began pouring out of Akemus's body.
[There is no "half"! I have sworn to burn this body, every last thought, and my very soul itself for the Young Master. AND YET!]
The mouth of Akemus—always the picture of composure and calm—split open like a monster's.
[You dare lay a claw on the wings he so graciously bestowed upon me?!]
KEEEEEEEEEEEE!
A wide-area sonic curse spread outward. Cultists collapsed with blood pouring from their ears, and even the Blood Zombies toppled over backward in heaps.
[I shall kill you, human!!]
"Whoa—okay, wait..."
Anvante wore the look of a man who had stepped on the wrong landmine.
Akemus charged at him, dragging a curtain of blackest jet-black behind him like a war banner.
"Charge."
GUUUUUGUGUGUGUGUGU!
Simon, leading an army of thousands of mummies, struck Silaje's main camp head-on.
The momentum of the Ancient Undead Herseba had summoned was overwhelming—had they simply stalled for time, the odds would have tilted their way. But alas, Herseba was in no condition to buy them that time.
The Legionification had bought her only a little extra time before the barrier broke; her power would run dry before long.
And the moment the barrier shattered, every advantage they held would vanish.
Unlike the cultists who had crossed through the portal themselves, the Ancient Undead were only temporary "summons" via Herseba's ability. If her space collapsed, the other undead would scatter with it.
So Simon had made his decision.
-GYAGYAGYAGYAGYAK!
-GYAGYAK!
He would strike Silaje directly.
"Come forth."
The magic circle etched at Simon's waist flickered to life. A cyan flash surged upward, then settled into the bodies of the mummies around him.
Their bandages took on an emerald sheen, and light kindled in their pupils.
<Simon's Original — Mummy Royal Guard>
He had succeeded in forging ten mummies into his Royal Guard. These mummies—now Simon's direct retinue among their kind—closed ranks tight around him.
"Break through!"
Simon roared.
"Hold the line."
Silaje sent his fanatics and Blood Zombies charging. The two forces collided, and a vast melee erupted.
Zombies and mummies tore into each other tooth and limb while the cultists unleashed their hemomancy.
"Get the necromancer first!"
Blood Sky Cultists targeted Simon from the air.
But—
SHRAAAAAR!
Emerald-glowing bandages came slicing through the air, cutting them down or hurling them aside.
The mummies who had earned the name of Royal Guard, protectors of a Legion Commander, were exceptionally strong.
-GYAGYAGYAGYAGYAK!
In the meantime, the ordinary mummies reached Silaje himself.
Silaje still seemed to be suffering from the pain in his heart, grimacing as he clutched the left side of his chest.
"Tch."
As he swept out his arm, countless droplets of blood flew forth, triggering chain after chain of blood explosions across the front line. Even for a technique that consumed his own blood, he had been firing it recklessly ever since the battle began.
KWA-KWA-BOOM!
GU-DUM!
Mummies torn to shreds and soaked red collapsed to the ground—and still more mummies came pressing over their corpses, wave after wave.
"Pests."
Just as Silaje moved to cast another great spell—
SHRAAAR!
A bandage erupted from the ground and sheared through Silaje's leg.
"!"
His leg dropped with a thud into the sand. A Royal Guard mummy, surfacing from the earth without a sound, was already glaring up at him with sinister, glowing eyes.
"How does it feel, being taken down by a technique you taught me?"
As the blood explosions died away, Simon came striding toward him, the Doom Greatsword in hand. Silaje smiled savagely.
"So that's it. I raised a monster of my own making."
Silaje's hollow right leg filled rapidly with blood, weaving itself a makeshift limb.
Simon leapt with all his might and brought the greatsword down. Silaje, too, raised a Blood Sword into his palm to meet it.
KAAAAAAAAANG!
The two men's swords clashed in midair, sending out a massive ripple of force.
Between the crossed blades, their eyes met—and gleamed.