The Dullahan's Charge
A storm of arrows tore through the air—and undead soldiers shattered into fragments. The barrage from the two archers punched a hole of breathing room into the allied lines that had been buckling across the whole front.
"Tch! What the hell are you doing?! Take those two out first!"
The higher-bloodline vampires abandoned the expendable rank-and-file and ordered their forces to target Kaisent and Lilith, who were raining arrows from inside the Wolf Mercenary Group.
"Khaaaaaah!!"
What the vampires charging toward them met instead was Lillian's fury—power pouring out of her far harder than usual, stoked by raw rage. Every swing of the greatsword Kaisent had forged for her sheared vampires apart, weapons and all. Because every vampire was a powerful magic swordsman, they carried light blades rather than heavy arms, and those light weapons simply could not stop Lillian's greatsword.
Of course the vampires tried to exploit their weapons' speed and edge, stabbing for openings—
"How dare you!"
"Gah—!"
—but the moment one lunged for Lillian's blind spot, Priscilla struck, and Lillian's greatsword finished the cut through the body that had meant to kill her.
"The evil eye doesn't work!"
"Damn it—we need the higher bloodlines!"
The upper bloodlines were busy hunting the heavily armed knights, so only lower bloodlines had come to this sector. With their strength alone they could not break through Lillian and Priscilla to reach the archers still cutting down their allies.
"Fire!"
At the same moment Priscilla, reading the whole field, gave the order. Soldiers locked in formation discharged their magic rifles. The volley could not deal decisive damage, but it carved breathing space for the surrounding units that were still being driven back.
"Now! Re-form the ranks!"
"Hold them here!"
Under the cover of the two protected archers, units that had been collapsing or falling back all across the line began to reorganize. It was only a force of two hundred, yet that small unit was tenuously stitching the shape of a crumbling army back together.
Then dark-crimson arrows, thick with malice, streaked toward Kaisent and Lilith.
"Li Mus Bel Lu!"
Lilith raised a barrier of pure magic and casually turned the arrows aside—yet her brow twitched. The shafts that struck the barrier liquefied into clots of blood, clung to the wall, and began to corrode its mana.
Corroding a barrier made of magic itself?
She had seen raw power or specialized spells shatter magic outright, but never a method that ate it from within. She dropped the barrier. The blood clots immediately began reshaping themselves back into arrows.
"I've got it!"
Kaisent cast at once, sweeping his arm in a wide arc. A torrent of flame erupted and boiled every arrow out of existence.
"Ugh—!"
"Sylph!"
Toxic fumes rose from the evaporated blood-arrows. Lilith summoned wind and hurled the smoke skyward. Had that vapor spread through the formation, their comrades would have died in droves.
"As foul and underhanded as you'd expect from undead magic. Watch yourselves whenever spells come flying."
"Yes."
Two master-class mages working in concert kept even the traps buried inside the enemy magic from dealing real harm.
Explosions rippled across the field. Screams followed.
"In the end, undead are still undead! Hit them with fire magic!"
"Knights—protect the mages! Don't charge out recklessly. Thin their numbers!"
With Kaisent and Lilith buying space, Akina's knights and mages finally found room to work.
"…I never expected powerhouses like that."
Sirin, who had believed that watching only Akina and the Purification Knights would be enough, let out a low groan at the turn of events.
"Do you have any intelligence on them?"
"……"
"Aide. Aide?"
"Ah—y-yes?"
She stared at the officer who had remained at her side to survey the grand strategy, now standing blank-eyed, and asked with open disbelief.
"What on earth are you thinking about that has you so distracted?"
"I-I'm sorry. But… that boy…"
"Boy?"
She followed her aide's gaze and found him: a pure-white-haired boy sheltered inside the soldiers' formation.
"Young. But his skill is exceptional."
"Lady Sirin may only sense that much… but we vampires can feel noble bloodlines."
"I know. That gift is how you recognize high birth… so you're feeling it from that boy."
She had begun explaining a trait of their world's vampire race when she realized exactly why her aide's attention had wandered.
"It may be blasphemous to say this… but I sense a nobility equal to—or greater than—Her Majesty the Queen's."
Watching the vampires' movements confirmed it: they kept glancing toward the white-haired boy. If not for the knights and mages cutting them down with killing intent right in front of them, every last one would have been hunting him.
"Right now we resolve this battle. Only if we win this war can we even talk about taking that boy into the bloodline. Focus on the situation."
"Yes."
"I thought finishing the Purification Knights would let us cook the rest at our leisure. Those two have ruined the entire plan."
"Powerhouses of that caliber should have been known. They look like elite troops hidden behind sophisticated information control."
They were laboring under a massive misconception—but by ordinary military logic the conclusion was natural. The unit carried magic rifles stronger than anything the regular troops used, and several fighters capable of dominating an entire region stood together in one place. A commander who failed to read it that way would have been unfit for the post.
"Even so, their performance has only stabilized about half the field. The other half still favors us, so—"
"Lady Sirin! Urgent report!"
While the aide was still laying out options for the next strike, a vampire appeared—one whose role was essentially that of a messenger handling external contact.
"What is it?"
"It's…!"
The messenger delivered the news. Sirin's face hardened.
"…And Her Majesty?"
"She is gathering nearby defense forces and will dispatch reinforcements, primarily cavalry."
"Then we finish these people and seal the rear."
She drove her heels into her horse's flanks and rode forward.
"We strike Akina."
"Then I will take overall command as usual."
"Leave it to you. Royal Guard—assemble!"
Having chosen her target, she summoned her personal guard. Thirty knights who had waited in the rear until now—clad in crimson armor and magic plate—formed an escort wedge around her.
"Charge!"
On the order, Sirin drove straight at Akina. Watching her come, Akina felt a jolt of genuine bewilderment.
She's attacking me—in a situation like this?
The Purification Knights collapsing faster than expected had been a shock, but Lillian's group had fought far better than projected and the battle had settled into a near-even grind. For the enemy commander to suddenly come for her head was enough to throw anyone off balance.
"The enemy commander is targeting Lady Akina!"
"Mages—attack!"
"Escort unit, watch the charge!"
Without waiting for orders, the escort forces around Akina moved at once. Mages poured fire-attribute spells onto Sirin in a concentrated barrage, but the red-armored knights simply swung their weapons and split the magic apart as if parting curtains.
"Split them."
On Akina's command the mages heaved the earth upward in a chevron of rising walls. The sudden barriers blocked the charge. The red-armored knights scanned the length of the wall, judged it was not long enough to force a breach, and simply rode along it—splitting cleanly into two groups.
A griffin's screech tore the air.
"!?"
Griffin riders who had been holding position until that moment dove on the half of the enemy knights without Sirin. The sudden plunge pinned half the red-armored force in place. Sirin saw it happen and did not care. She kept driving straight at Akina.
"We go as well."
"Escort formation!"
Akina chose to meet the charge head-on and spurred forward; her guard closed in around her. On the chaotic field, the two supreme commanders and their personal retinues were a heartbeat from collision—
—when Sirin suddenly seized the crest of her own helmet and tore her head free, hurling it.
"Kyaaaaaaaaaaa———!!"
The scream that erupted from the flying head was a nightmare given voice. A wave of death-aura rode with it so thick that even Akina felt a spike of pure terror. Anyone of weak will collapsed into panic, crumpled where they stood, or simply fled. The knights who remained went deathly pale and shook like green recruits tasting war for the first time.
The head never touched the ground. It snapped back onto her neck.
A Dullahan?!
This world had never possessed undead of that kind. Only after humans and monsters began crossing over from other dimensions had anyone learned what a Dullahan was.
This power far exceeds any ordinary Dullahan!
More than half the knights she had personally forged had broken from a single scream. She had heard of Dullahans; she had never heard of anything like the might Sirin had just shown.
Having reached the Origin realm, Akina now faced an opponent she would have to risk her life against. As the distance closed she raised her spear in one hand. Sirin mirrored the stance.
"Haaaah!"
"Hup—!"
Both knights thrust into empty air. Shockwaves rolled out hard enough to warp the landscape. When the two earth-splitting blasts collided, the mere aftermath hurled living soldiers screaming through the air and collapsed undead where they stood, their forms unraveling under the surge of mana.
Whether driven by the shockwaves or by the simple knowledge that intervening would only get in the way, both personal guards peeled left and right and slammed into each other.
"Die, you corpse bastards!"
"I'll carve you so you never rise again!"
"Noisy lot."
"I will make thralls of every last one of your corpses."
Mounted knights crashed together in a storm of curses. Yet even in that chaos, as if by unspoken pact, the path between Akina and Sirin remained completely empty.
"Sirin!"
"Akina!"
Their spears met. A colossal shockwave detonated outward. One weapon was a massive lance, the other a long spear, yet the speed and force of each strike were nearly identical, blow after blow.
Far to the rear, the vampire mage straining to hold the magic circle felt his face go rigid.
The circle is shaking! The backlash from their clash of power is reaching all the way here!
It was the divine-power suppression array aimed at the Purification Knights. Originally they had arrived at the defensive sector early and taken the time to set it properly—but when word came that the people had been massacred, Sirin had moved at once, and a new circle had been thrown down in haste. It functioned, but unstably. A hard enough shock, and even the mage who had laid it could not say what would happen to him.
"I was looking forward to facing you," Akina said, once more measuring Sirin's spear work and raw strength as equal to her own, "but this is far too early. Or were you simply less patient than I expected?"
"You seem unaware."
"Of what?"
"Halrot Kingdom soldiers have struck a different region entirely."
"What?"
Akina, who had heard nothing of other units, furrowed her brow.
"I thought it was a diversion. Astonishingly, they are sweeping Black Soil into sacks as we speak. In other words—you were nothing more than bait so they could steal the Black Soil."
"……"
She had never imagined the king would devise such a plan. For a moment her thoughts tangled.
"I have no intention of reproaching or insulting you. That look in your eyes tells me you were deceived as well. However."
Sirin drove the butt of her spear into the ground. Death-aura rose in visible streams from the corpses of the fallen expeditionary force and the wreckage of destroyed undead, pouring into her body.
"To cut off the retreat of the thieves who are stealing the kingdom's wealth, I will bring you down. Feel free to call me a coward for refusing to settle this with innate strength alone."
With every pulse of absorbed death-aura, ominous black energy coiled and writhed around her.
"Tch—!"
Akina judged she could give no more time and struck—
—only for Sirin to meet the blow head-on. Horse and rider went flying.
I used my Gift and still got driven back?!
Her beloved mount, bound to her by the Horse-and-Rider-as-One Gift, shared her power. That horse had not merely been shoved by the impact—it had been launched through the air.
"I am Her Majesty's knight, Sirin Valantion. Akina Karayden—to punish the thieves who seized and stole the people's property, I will kill you."
Fully saturated with death-aura, cloaked in writhing darkness, Sirin drove her heels into her horse's flanks and charged straight at Akina.