Proof of Power 8
"...Hey. What's going on?"
In the early dawn, the strange incident began without the slightest warning or sign. Even the quiet country village could not escape it.
A farmer who had left home early to work the fields spotted a fellow villager staggering by the river and tilted his head in confusion.
"Ugh... ughhh..."
"H-hey, are you all right?"
But something about the neighbor was wrong. The man kept lurching and swaying dangerously, his head bowed so low that the farmer could see blood dripping from his unseen face.
Under normal circumstances, he should have rushed over to check. Instead, he could only shout from a distance, too afraid to get any closer.
Instinct told him one thing: this was dangerous.
"Aaaagh!"
At the same time, a scream that bordered on a shriek burst from somewhere else. His eyes widening in horror, he saw another villager, attacked by someone else, fleeing with blood pouring from their body.
The attacker was baring his teeth with bloodshot eyes, thrashing about like a madman who had completely lost his reason.
"What the hell... huh!"
But there was no time to make sense of it. The neighbor standing before him suddenly lunged with a face twisted beyond recognition.
"Snap out of it! Ban!"
He ran as he shouted, but the villager seemed not to hear him at all and only continued to rampage.
Not just him—the entire village had already split into two groups: those raging like lunatics, and those trying desperately to flee from them.
"N-no... This can't be..."
In a world already steeped in chaos, the disaster that arrived without warning was simple—and all the more horrifying for it.
He was unable to escape in time and was caught near the village. They were monsters in the grip of frenzy, with no pain and no reason left in them.
The villagers who had become monsters in an instant tore into his companions, and before long, those companions had become monsters as well.
"D-don't come any closer! Stay back!"
Already exhausted, he had no strength left to stop them or shake them off. In the end, he was seized and devoured by the very people who had once lived in the same village, amid unimaginable pain.
Is this...?
But in the dimming haze of consciousness, he saw one last thing. He never learned what it was, and died before he could understand.
"Now your forces are ready. Brave, stalwart soldiers who can stand against the Black Beetles."
And the one connected to that something the man had never managed to understand was now seated in the center of the lord's castle, staring with a frozen expression at the scenes reflected in the crystal ball.
"It seems the numbers have grown enough. Now give your soldiers their orders. Find the enemies and kill them."
"Kkgh..."
Baron Baut closed his eyes tightly in apparent agony as he listened to the voice drifting out from beneath the hood, then heard the skeleton whispering in his ear.
When the baron gave the order, the countless soldiers born in just one night truly began to move at once.
I had no choice. For our territory!
The army of frenzied madmen spread out immediately and attacked the forest, stirring up some of the Black Beetles there. Through that, Hajin learned their identity, made his decision, and was able to send Lena.
"That's right!"
Baron Baut was overjoyed to see his army, created at such terrible cost, displaying inhuman strength as it cut down a few Black Beetle minions.
Like the Black Beetles, his army surged in from all directions without fear or hesitation and did whatever it could to bring the enemy down. It did not matter if the enemy was larger, or if its armor was harder.
They gathered together and shoved the Black Beetles back with sheer, stupid mass.
In any case, for a man who had been badly overpowered by the Black Beetles invading his lands until recently, it was enough that he had succeeded in striking back at them, even by using a method like this.
"...Regrettably, it seems my power can't turn those Black Beetles into allies as well. But with more sacrifices, more soldiers, I can grow stronger. Your soldiers will grow stronger too, and then there will be even more things they can do."
"T-that’s right! If I can use these soldiers to invade Brandt’s land! Then my army will grow even larger!"
At the skeleton's insinuating words, his eyes glittered with greed. The dazzling future this power could bring made him forget, almost entirely, whatever price he had already paid.
An army of madmen that neither dies nor hesitates. An army so stealthy no one would even notice it, one that could grow larger by devouring people—it was enough to make him instinctively feel that this power could make his dream of surpassing a mere petty domain a reality.
Whether it was the royal army, the imperial army, or even the orcs currently causing chaos in the northern continent, he felt sure that with this army of madness, he could defeat them all.
"For now, I'll drive every last one of those vile black bugs off my land."
Baron Baut, now fully restored to confidence, gave the order to attack in a state of excited agitation. The plight of the frontier region, which had already been forced to suffer a zombie apocalypse without understanding why, had long since slipped from his mind. He was thinking only of carrying this momentum forward and claiming the future he desired.
What a ridiculous man.
Behind him, the skeleton quietly manipulated its power. It might have called this Baron Baut's army, but that was a lie.
The true power came from the skeleton itself. The army of cursed madmen was, in truth, moving according to the skeleton's commands. And it was not Baron Baut's strength, but the skeleton's, that grew as the numbers increased and the curse sank deeper.
It was only fitting that the baron, unaware of all this, would look ridiculous in his own excitement. For now, though, there was more to gain by saying nothing, so it remained silent.
In any case, all that grinding and leveling in the Demon Realm was worth it.
The skeleton worked to regain its composure once more and organized its power. This was only the beginning, after all. Since it had appeared later than everyone else, it had prepared quite a few things in secret.
With this, its first plan was to deal with the Black Beetles—those who seemed to belong to the same "family" as itself. If it won this competition, the quality of the reward would be on a completely different level.
"That can't be..."
"I heard it too. So that's the elite unit of the Black Beetles... no, their command-type entity?"
Then something appeared in the crystal ball Baron Baut was watching. A girl in black armor, her face twisted as if the world itself annoyed her, emerging from the sky.
Recognizing her, Baron Baut, and even the skeleton, set their red eyes blazing.
Their reasons were slightly different, but in the end, she was someone both of them had to capture.
***
"What in the world are these things?"
After arriving at the destination, Lena frowned as she looked down at the ground beneath her feet. She had no idea that someone, through her units, was watching her from far away.
Eliminate the aberrants first.
Then the order came down. She was to attack the aberrants who were rampaging about and indiscriminately assaulting people.
"That should be easy enough."
She smiled and drew her weapon, a spear. She knew nothing of grand, complicated matters, and she didn't care to. For Lena, the only goal was to fight according to his command and earn his recognition.
Ascalas-style Spear Art (C)
As soon as her spear touched down with the other forces, it wrapped itself in mana and bent at will, sweeping violently in every direction.
The aberrants, who were doing nothing more than rampaging and whose attack power and durability were no different from ordinary humans, were crushed and smashed by the sheer force of the wind pressure alone.
On this battlefield, though they were few in number, they unleashed overwhelming power against a far greater enemy.
The enemy tried to push forward no matter how many bodies were broken or how many comrades fell, but that was meaningless once their bodies were shattered. At least from this sight alone, it seemed as if no matter how numerous they were, they would all be suppressed by Lena's hands.
"You little..."
But Lena soon noticed a sudden change in the enemy's momentum and twisted her face in a vicious scowl.
Until just a moment ago, they had been focused solely on chasing the fleeing villagers. Then, all at once, they changed targets and began attacking her side with suicidal frenzy.
"You're nothing!"
From the tip of Lena's spear, the fierce mana she had accumulated by drinking essence all this time erupted outward. It was only the release of condensed energy, but it was her own technique all the same.
In an instant, dozens of enemies vanished without a trace, along with the surrounding terrain.
"...What?"
But in the eyes that glared with venom, she saw something that had blocked her attack.
At first glance, it was nothing like the other enemies, which still retained their previous forms. It was a giant with a grotesque body, as if a huge human had been forcibly stretched and rebuilt.
With no lower jaw, and another face occupying that part instead, the horrific monster split open the jaws on both sides of its face, then charged at her with a pickaxe and a sword in its hands.
"I knew you used mana! But so do we. A corpse golem, pieced together from bodies that have awakened to mana!"
At that moment, even the skeleton watching from afar finally lost its composure.