The Butcher of the Battlefield
Tekeloman began to pant. He cast a look around him. Despite having claimed the most dangerous ground for himself, most of the knights who had come with him lay sprawled across the earth. That the majority of the fallen were already dead needed no confirmation — the blood soaking the ground made that plain enough.
Damn it...
He had lost more precious comrades. Still, he tore his gaze from the corpses and tried to fix it on the fight. If they were all slaughtered here, it would only insult the deaths of the knights who had followed him.
"Tekeloman. Give up. There aren't even ten of your comrades left standing. You killed them. If you'd just left the civilians to die from the start, it never would have come to this."
Gallard bellowed with laughter. As if flaunting his handiwork, he stepped forward and addressed Tekeloman directly.
"I'll make you a proposal. Kneel and beg me to spare you, and I'll at least let your remaining men live."
Tekeloman's hands shook violently. Without a second's hesitation he charged Gallard. But with one arm already gone and his stamina spent to the last drop, his blade never reached him.
Clang!
A clear, ringing note — and the sword was batted aside.
"Commander Tekeloman!"
A few knights tried to reach him, but the mages behind Gallard barred their way.
"Even if I die... I'll take you with me."
Even collapsed on the ground, Tekeloman crawled and hurled himself toward Gallard. Far slower than before — but he still refused to turn his back. He chose to fight.
Gallard shook his head and clicked his tongue.
"Tekeloman. Just as you once spared my life in exchange for the Saintess, I'll spare your subordinates' lives in exchange for yours. Is that pitiful pride of yours worth more than your men?"
Tekeloman still clutched his sword in one hand, dragging his body across the dirt as he crawled.
"Don't... don't insult my comrades. Alive or dead, they are knights. They do not crawl and beg a villain for their lives."
Gallard shook his head as if the sight sickened him, then crushed Tekeloman's remaining palm under his boot.
Tekeloman did not even scream. He poured mad strength into his hand, determined not to drop the sword. But only for a moment.
Thud.
Gallard drove a knife through the back of Tekeloman's hand, and the sword finally slipped free. Even then Tekeloman swung his arm, trying to seize Gallard and hurl him aside — but Gallard shifted a fraction and the attack passed him by.
"You lost to me because you half-heartedly refused to become a monster. You're not a knight. You're just a brat who can't grasp reality."
"You're rationalizing."
Tekeloman shouted up at him through eyes running with blood.
"Don't use me to justify what you've done. You simply live a petty, cowardly life. The title of knight is too good for you. One day you'll have to pay for every one of your sins."
Gallard looked down at him with cold eyes.
"Yeah. Maybe someday I'll die on a battlefield too. But do you know something?"
He brought his sword down as he finished.
"The one dying today isn't me. It's you."
Tekeloman watched Gallard's blade come crashing down from above. Even in that final instant, he did not flinch from the fight.
"May peace find the Fibron Empire."
Thud.
The wet sound of steel punching through flesh. Every knight averted his eyes. Tekeloman, too, believed he was as good as dead. But there was no pain.
Only then did he realize someone was standing in front of him, blocking the blow. The man's hand had taken the blade; blood was already running from it. He murmured quietly.
"So this is the level of power. Pathetic."
A man in a worn robe. Above him floated a sphere of vivid red. Tekeloman did not know who he was — but the girl at his side, he knew.
"You...?"
There was no forgetting her. The girl whose arm and leg Gallard had severed, whose eye he had gouged out, who had been cast aside in misery and begged Tekeloman to kill her.
Her arm and leg — and her eye — had been restored.
"We've come to help."
When Saintess Plimia clasped her hands in prayer, Commander Tekeloman's severed arm was made whole, and the blood pouring from his body ceased. Wounds closed as if they had never been there. A true miracle was performed.
It was a moment that forced them all to remember the majesty of a Saintess's divine power.
Tekeloman assessed the situation at once. The Saintess, the man, and the assassin-like girl beside them were a single party — and they had come to help. That much was clear.
But even with reinforcements, nothing had truly changed. Three more people would not reverse this battle. Still, with the Saintess here he could fight again as many times as it took. Even if he truly died, he did not care. If he could drive a blade into that bastard's face, he would offer up his very soul.
Thinking so, Tekeloman rose to charge the enemy once more. But the man in front of him blocked his path.
McDeras.
He spoke briefly.
"Stand back. I have personal business with that man."
"I don't know who you are, but these aren't opponents you can face alone. The mages in the rear and the knights up front are skilled — we need a coordinated attack. I'll take their blows from the front. Support me from the rear."
McDeras looked at him without expression.
"Rest. Your role on this battlefield is over."
Then he added,
"I'm told knights give their names to those they respect. Remember it. My name is McDeras."
He lifted the sphere into the sky. From the corpses littering the field, thread-like lines of energy began streaming into it. The sphere swelled to a size beyond any comparison with moments before.
Gallard watched. He did not know what kind of magic this was, but the aura rolling off it was bone-chilling and savage. He did not believe a single mage could turn the tide — but caution cost nothing.
"Kill that mage first!"
At Gallard's shout, the mages behind him began chanting as one. Too late.
"Pierce them."
At McDeras's single word, red shards erupted from the sphere and rained down upon the Caelon Empire's mages in an instant.
KRA-KOOM!
Like a storm of massive hail, the heavy fragments hammered from sky to earth. The mages raised barriers. It made no difference.
CRASH!
Under the merciless downpour of red shards the barriers were annihilated, smashed to powder. Then the fragments began embedding themselves in the bodies of the mages at the rear.
"Urgh... urrrgghh... AAAAAAGH!"
As the shards sank into their flesh, the mages twisted and writhed in agony. Blood poured from their eyes and mouths. They clawed madly at their own bodies until they withered to skin and bone — and only then did they collapse to the ground.
The Fibron Empire's knights could only stand frozen, staring.
Commander Tekeloman no longer tried to advance either. He had judged that any move of his would only get in the way.
"What in the world is this...?"
A single casual cast of magic, and dozens of mages had fallen. The vivid red sphere the man seemed to command had not shrunk — it had grown even larger.
This was not magic.
"A calamity..."
A calamity, pure and simple. Something human power could not overcome.
Unfortunately, the Caelon Empire bastards did not give up. Even with dozens of mages cut down in an instant, roughly five hundred troops still remained.
"I'll give you a chance. Surrender now, and I'll kill you without pain."
Naturally, no one accepted McDeras's offer.
McDeras broke into a run.
WHOOSH!
A whip of brilliant red lashed out from the sphere. When McDeras swung it, it struck at a speed the eye could not follow.
Wherever the whip touched, men burst apart and disintegrated in midair. The Caelon Empire knights who had held an overwhelming numerical advantage began fleeing toward the rear.
"I'll kill anyone who runs! Charge forward!"
Gallard, who had already retreated to the back, shouted as he beheaded a man trying to flee. With their escape cut off, the knights charged again. The result was inevitable.
Bodies burst. The life force still lingering in their corpses was drawn once more into the sphere.
Watching it, Gallard understood. The sphere. The sphere was the key.
He did not know the method, but it was clearly absorbing the energy of the dead and growing larger, and the man was using that sphere as the foundation of his magic. Gallard poured every scrap of strength into his voice.
"Attack the sphere, not him! Burst the sphere and stop the magic!"
The moment the words reached him, McDeras stopped cold.
And he began to laugh like a madman.
"You freely violate and slaughter others without a second thought, yet you still believe you yourselves won't die. It's so disgusting it's funny. What? Do you think I'm overwhelming you because of that sphere? Are you clinging to the hope that without it, you might survive? Hope is a fine thing. It's what drives people to keep living, after all."
McDeras gestured, and the sphere withdrew far behind him. It no longer drank the energy from the corpses. He simply picked up a sword that had fallen to the ground.
Then McDeras swung the mana-wreathed blade.
Slash.
With a cruel sound, ten men dropped at once beneath the sword aura he unleashed. Face spattered with blood, McDeras looked straight at Gallard and smiled coldly.
"How does it feel, now that your hope is gone?"