Kaan Kel of the Dragon Fire Magic Tower Is Here!
At that moment, from the high watchtower raised at the heart of the encampment, Kaan Kel announced his presence in a voice amplified by mana.
Arrogant—but the man clearly has real combat experience.
Having learned of the friction with Kaan Kel through Lillian, Fredrick conceded that the mage who had kept the mercenaries' morale from collapsing was a veteran of the field. Had the man simply conserved his mana and stayed silent, the muttering among the ranks would only have swollen, and unease would have spread like a contagion.
"All hands—prepare for combat!"
As the pits gradually filled in, armed undead pressed closer.
"The enemy is carrying weapons! Use the spacing of your spears properly!"
"Don't thrust deep! Focus on keeping them at bay!"
The mercenaries assigned to the recruits drilled them on how to face undead that held steel, hammering home the need to harass rather than overcommit.
"Kaisent!"
Once the armed undead had drawn near enough to make out clearly, Lillian signaled him.
"Fireball!"
Kaisent, who had already steadied his breathing and stood ready, hurled a sphere of flame into the densest knot of undead.
KWA-BOOM! Flames roared outward.
The violent blast shattered bodies and set others alight; the undead collapsed under the searing heat. He followed with several more Fireballs, punching holes through the undead tide, and the mercenaries tightened their resolve, clinging to the thought that with Kaisent among them they might yet survive.
A Vampire again this time?
Tracing the mana paths that had formed as he seized control of undead, he swept his gaze this way and that, hunting for the master of those threads. But even his eyes could not pierce the lightless dark beyond the moonlight's reach, so he simply kept casting, whittling down their numbers.
Then a fierce surge of mana from behind made him turn.
"Sun Fire!"
Kaan Kel completed his spell and unleashed his power toward the sector where the mercenaries were being driven back. A colossal orb of flame took shape. At first it looked like nothing more than an oversized Fireball—until the sphere began to spew fire in every direction like a flamethrower, reducing undead to charcoal in moments.
That one!
Committing the form of the mana to memory, Kaisent abandoned Fireball and began constructing Sun Fire instead. Shaping the power exactly as he had felt it, he loosed it at the armed undead closing from the rear. The same flaming sphere Kaan Kel had used burst forth, belching fire and consuming the undead.
Having encountered a proper mage for the first time, Kaisent had absorbed Kaan Kel's spell.
They used Sun Fire over there as well? So the boy had the skill to back up the noise after all.
Never imagining for a moment that someone had simply watched and copied him, Kaan Kel clicked his tongue with a sour look.
"Is something the matter, sir?"
"It's nothing."
Four guards with massive shields stood on the watchtower against any sudden turn of events. Brushing off the question, he ceased casting and surveyed the field.
Not yet time to pour out my mana.
Until the situation he had engineered arrived, he would husband every drop.
For a brat, his skill is unexpectedly sharp—but a child is still a child. Push him a little and he'll hit his limit.
And he had already planted the seed. That limit would come sooner than anyone expected. When it did, he would crown the victory in spectacular fashion with the Magic Tower's secret art—Dragon Fire.
Meanwhile Kaisent wore a look of pure dissatisfaction, his body itching with the urge to keep every last undead from ever reaching the company. If he simply chose to, he was confident he could carpet the field in Sun Fire until not a single corpse so much as approached the lines.
"There are a lot of eyes on you, so hide your strength as much as you can."
"Especially black magic that uses bones and corpses—avoid it whenever possible."
"The Dead Moon is the perfect stage for necromancers who want to swell their ranks with fresh bodies."
"If you use black magic, that fact alone will make them brand you a threat."
"And if you clear the Dead Moon too easily, the recruits lose their chance to grow. Keep them alive—but only just. Understood?"
Lillian's warning had sealed every black-magic discipline shut. Kaisent cast only when the enemy massed too thickly or when his own side looked truly endangered, nudging the flow of battle just enough to tip it.
Thud— thooom—
"Huh?"
Amid the snarls and the clash of steel against undead, a sound that did not belong drew steadily closer to the Wolf Mercenary Group.
"Captain! A Corpse Collector's out!"
In the light of Kaisent's Sun Fire, a mid-tier undead more than two meters tall—a mass of countless fused bones—revealed itself: the Corpse Collector. It repaired damaged parts and bulked its strength and frame with the bones of its victims, yet the gains were modest and it never attacked other undead, which was why it had been ranked only mid-tier.
"Hyaaaaah!!"
As the Corpse Collector lumbered forward with its enormous bulk, Lillian loaded her greatsword with energy and leapt high. In the same instant Kaisent loosed a Fireball that struck one of the creature's legs. The sudden impact shattered the leg bone; balance gone, the Corpse Collector never even managed to swing its hook-sharp bone hands or its massive bone blade before Lillian split it cleanly down the middle, destroying the core and dropping it in a heap.
"Waaaaaah!"
"That's our captain!"
Mercenaries and recruits alike—who had frozen at the sight of a monster that size—erupted in cheers at the ease with which the leader of Wolf had cut it down.
"Someone is controlling the undead! Mind your stamina! Rotate the lines! First rank, fall back and rest! Second rank, forward!"
Fredrick, wary of the surge of morale driving men to overexert, rotated the two-rank formation. Those who had fought in the first line withdrew to the safe zone behind, drank water, set down their weapons, and began to recover. It was only possible because they fought as a company.
"Hah! Hah! Hahk! Hhuh—!"
Clint, who had held a spear in the first rank, gasped as if he had been holding his breath the entire time.
This… this is… war…
It was nothing like fleeing the mechanical assassin that had tried to kill him. Simply standing still burned through stamina at a terrifying rate—an extreme of environment and atmosphere.
Now I understand why comradeship is born.
In that extremity they had guarded one another's lives, fought together, and come back alive. Even among men who had never spoken, the way they looked at each other had changed.
KWA-RRRRRR!
Another sphere of flame took shape and belched a ferocious torrent of fire, turning dozens of zombies and skeletons into heaps of charcoal in a heartbeat. Even the undead that stubbornly pressed on through the rising flames met the same end, and a measure of breathing room returned to the entire company.
From the rear, Kaisent had cast Sun Fire to seal the gap left by the line rotation.
Incredible…
Until now Kaisent had worn a gentle smile and a face that seemed to know nothing of fighting. The sight of him fighting in earnest was breathtaking. That pure white hair and those white eyes, free of any stain, held a mysterious allure even another man could feel.
THOOM! Thud! Thud-thud-thud-thud!
But even that feeling became a luxury the moment crisis returned. Three more Corpse Collectors appeared on the heels of the one just slain.
"What the hell!? Why are they all pouring toward us!?"
The mercenaries who had just finished reforming their ranks compared themselves to the other companies, which were still facing only ordinary low-tier undead.
"Fredrick! Take one! Kaisent! Finish the last!"
Lillian, who had been conserving her strength against just such an emergency, snapped orders to the two men and charged a Corpse Collector herself. As the remaining one lunged toward the ranks, massive vines erupted from the earth and coiled around its body.
Crack!
In the same breath a spinning arrow punched through the core Kaisent sensed within the creature.
"Haahp!"
"Uooooh!"
Nearly simultaneously, Lillian and Fredrick destroyed the cores of their own Corpse Collectors and brushed the crisis aside as if it were nothing.
"Waaaaah!"
The two of them cut down a few nearby undead for good measure, then returned behind the lines amid the mercenaries' cheers to husband what strength remained.
Lately Lillian feels stronger than before. Our Prana ranks should be the same—so where does this gap come from?
When Kaisent holds me, the quality of my mana changes and my body awakens. Is that even possible?
Fredrick wondered at how Lillian had outstripped him; she wondered at how coupling with Kaisent left her stronger than before.
Just when it seemed the danger had passed, yet another undead revealed itself.
"Grrraaaah—"
An undead outbreak did not prey on humans alone. Monsters living in forests and mountains were swept up in the tide as well. Being stronger than humans by nature, they usually crushed the undead—but now and then misfortune piled upon misfortune, and a monster fell to them and rose again as one of their own.
Like the minotaur shambling toward them now, flesh torn away in ragged patches.
"Fuck! Give it a rest already!"
"Why the hell is everything coming at us!?"
A few Corpse Collectors could be written off as bad luck. When misfortune repeated itself again and again, it left the realm of chance and entered the realm of cause and effect.
What is this? Why are only the strong undead coming this way?
As undead too heavy for ordinary mercenaries kept flooding in, Lillian locked eyes with Fredrick. Sharing the same thought, they nodded and stepped outside the formation to intercept.
"Kaisent! Sweep the camp with your mana sense—center on the encampment!"
"Yes!"
Already thinking along the same lines, Kaisent cast Sun Fire once more to ease the pressure on the ranks, then moved out to hunt for the suspicious mana.
Not the front. I've circled that side several times and felt nothing strange.
He headed for the rear of the mercenary camp, where the wagons had been drawn into a defensive square, and there he caught the foul aftertaste of residual mana. Following the trail to where it ran thickest, he kicked at the earth and uncovered a violet crystal. It was already cracked; the mana within had sunk into the ground. Digging it up now would change nothing.
Whatever this is, it's definitely drawing the strong undead!
And there Kaisent's limitation showed itself.
This mana… how do I get rid of it?
A genius who grasped ten things from learning one—yet in any domain he had never been taught even once, overwhelming lack of experience left him helpless. He considered simply carpeting the field in magic and forgetting the recruits' growth, but he hated the thought of throwing away Lillian's goodwill that way.
Wait. Internal cultivation methods draw in the surrounding energy, don't they?
A simple, almost brutish solution occurred to him. Anyone who had walked the path of a mana lord or mastered internal cultivation would have called it a novel method of suicide and spoken with one voice. What he did not fully understand was that this energy was the aura of death itself—the force that lured undead. Absorbing it would not merely wreck the body; it would shatter the mana hole and the dantian and leave a ruined husk.
If I take this energy in whole, my body could break. Here I trust Father's cultivation method!
Kaisent sensed the danger instinctively, yet he gambled that his father's art could endure even this, and began.
Sssssssss—!
With no time to spare, he pulled the surrounding energy in hard. The death aura that entered him tore at a living man's life force and thrashed violently, trying to force a living body into the shape of the dead.
Shut up and stay still!
Then a will so fierce that even death could not resist crushed the malevolent energy beneath a power that converted it into internal force. Feeling a death aura strong enough to have drawn undead by the score, Kaisent analyzed it as he remade it into cultivation energy.
Power could not be labeled good or evil. Power took its meaning from how it was used. Grasping that truth, he reshaped the form of his internal energy until he could produce something akin to the aura of death itself.
"…nt……!"
"Kai…sent……!"
"Kaisent!"
When he finished absorbing every last thread and turned his awareness outward again, he found Clint desperately trying to shake him awake.
"Clint?"
"Thank god! The situation's getting critical!"
He scrambled to his feet and saw at once that Clint was right. Even the men who should have been resting after the first rotation were locked in the fight; Lillian and Fredrick were each locked in combat with powerful undead and had no attention to spare. He had erased the lure that had been gathering them—but the undead already here still had to be dealt with by hand.
Dangerous. They're packed too close for me to cast freely.
Watching the formation crumple into a free-for-all, Kaisent finally decided to use that. Confirming that everyone was too busy cutting down undead to notice, he adjusted his belt and opened the 0-Dimensional Warehouse.
"AT! Help me!"
"What? Kaisent! What are you—!"
The sudden call for AT left Clint stunned. Before he could finish the sentence, AT appeared in machinaroid form. The liquid-crystal eyes regarded Clint as if considering something—then ignored him entirely and charged the undead.
"It's fine. You know I already loaded the command so it can't attack us."
"I know that, but…"
Clint watched AT uneasily, yet the machinaroid speared undead with knife-hand strikes and shattered them with fists charged with monstrous strength.
"Whoa!?"
"What the hell is that!?"
"Doesn't… look human…"
The mercenaries reeled as AT appeared and began clearing undead in an instant.
"Everyone, don't worry! It's like a golem from my homeland!"
Kaisent soothed their unease by naming it a golem of his home world. Anyone else's word might have been doubted—but if Kaisent said it, they could believe it. The mercenaries drew a breath of relief as AT slaughtered the undead.
"You loaded a command into that one to help us too?"
"No."
"Right, so—wait. No?"
AT had no reason to aid them; of course he had assumed an order had been given. And yet—
"Then why is it helping us?"
At Clint's question, Kaisent only smiled.