Chapter 57
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 57
Chapter Title: The Undying Legion
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Even after moving for so long without rest, there was no end in sight to the passage consumed by darkness. To make matters worse, the torch, its resin all burned away, sputtered out weakly. Kyle sighed. "Damn it."
Igor offered to create a light source by expending his divine power, but the entire party advised against it. With an unknown battle potentially awaiting them, it was not a wise choice for their priest to use his strength carelessly.
Fortunately, the party had an ego sword capable of making its own body glow, so they had no major issues pressing forward.
Though Ruin, suddenly treated like a torch, grumbled in discontent.
Something’s off.
Luon was the first to feel a sense of unease during the continued march.
He didn't know the layout of this underground area, but considering the visible size of the temple above, this endlessly stretching passage was far too long.
The moment the question tickled his mind, he came up with a few hypotheses.
First, this place, which he had simply assumed was the temple's basement, was actually massive enough to encompass the entire area.
Second, this was some damn magic. The kind that makes you lose your sense of direction or walk in circles.
Third, it was both.
Considering the shield Kyle carried behind him, the second hypothesis might not hold, but Luon didn't think so.
Shield of Paradox, Spellbreaker… While it was true the shield with such impressive titles possessed incredible abilities, he believed it couldn't block every single form of magic.
If it were that powerful, the Magic Tower's master or Garan, who had recognized the shield's history, wouldn't have been so composed.
And so, Luon brought his long strides to an abrupt halt. Kyle, who had walked right into his broad back, clutched his nose and stammered.
“Oof! Wh-what is it?”
Raising his arm with the back of his hand facing out, Luon gave a silent signal to be quiet and closed his eyes.
As he heightened his focus, his five senses surged from within, beginning to pick through the formless darkness.
The scent of darkness, its movement, its sound, its shape.
Luon, diagramming these metaphorical, impossible sentences with his superhuman senses, could feel a minute distortion within. An ominous gaze, hidden in the damp darkness, manipulating this space.
Opening his eyes, Luon slammed his sword into the ground and snatched the bow from his back. He pushed divine power into his fingertips while simultaneously drawing the string, instantly nocking an arrow. He took aim at the abyss-like darkness and muttered.
“Found you.”
The moment his fingertips released the transparent bowstring, a flash of light flared. An arrow of light shot through the darkness and struck the wall.
“Huh? What was that?”
Strabo’s eyes went wide as he pointed toward the direction the arrow had flown. He wasn't surprised by Luon's sudden action.
“It swallowed the arrow, didn't it?”
Beyond the faint afterimage of light, ripples were spreading. The unnaturally churning space seemed to be screaming.
Igor frowned.
“This place wasn’t normal after all…”
Swallowing the rest of his words, he immediately clasped his hands and began to recite a prayer.
“Merciful Mother! Grant strength to your weak little lamb.”
*Fwoosh—*
A halo of light extended from Igor’s body and delved into the unstable ripples.
Soon, granules of light began to spread like paint, each one flashing white before exploding. A cracking sound echoed as a fissure appeared between the ripples.
Darkness began to be sucked into the fissure. The crack, which widened as it consumed the darkness, eventually reached a critical point and shattered with a deafening crash.
Through the scene, shattering like glass and crumbling like sand, an gloomy voice was heard.
“To pinpoint the core of the barrier so precisely… I can’t believe it. I was told there were no mages among you. What an utterly unpredictable ability you have.”
The party, still adjusting to the fact that what they thought was a passage had instantly transformed into a vast, open area, turned their heads toward the source of the voice.
Someone was standing in the center of the clearing.
Toward the being that exuded a bizarre aura despite its lack of movement, Kyle shouted.
“Are you Belducias? You’re smaller than I thought.”
From within the hood obscuring its face, a snickering laugh could be heard.
Thinking he was being ignored, Kyle bristled and drew his arming sword.
“What are you snickering at, you creepy bastard.”
Did his profanity have an effect? The laughter began to subside. The opponent, its gloomy voice returning, answered slowly.
“Kyle, the woodcutter who wields a shield beyond his station. I commend your rudeness and your ignorance.”
“…You know who I am?”
Kyle flinched at the word "woodcutter." As if finding his reaction amusing, the creature shrugged and continued.
“Of course I do. And not just you.”
A gaunt finger emerged from the black hood and pointed at each member of the party in turn.
“The goddess’s slave, the half-baked druid, and…”
The finger froze. The giant it was meant to point to last was nowhere to be seen.
The moment the creature sensed something was wrong and tried to pull back, a blood-red blade flew in from outside its field of vision.
Before it could react, its head was severed and went rolling across the floor. The ownerless body flailed its hands toward the empty space where its face had been just moments before, then collapsed to the ground.
Stepping firmly on the back of the headless corpse, Luon asked coolly.
“And what?”
Surprisingly, a reply came.
“Experiencing it firsthand, it truly is instantaneous. It’s frightening…”
The lips of the head moved before it was engulfed in darkness. When the darkness receded, the creature stood in its original spot, restored to its previous state.
As if it had returned to the moment just before its neck was cut.
Luon, still looking down at the body beneath his feet, tilted his head.
He said.
“I’m sure you died.”
The moment the opponent's head had fallen, what had filled him was undoubtedly experience. It was just an extremely minuscule amount.
“Yes, I died. One of my many lives.”
Uttering the cryptic words, the creature slowly raised its arms.
The floor of the clearing began to tremble as if an earthquake had struck.
A wide-area spell?
Luon raised his sword and quickly corrected his posture. But contrary to his expectation, the trembling ground was not due to magic.
A rotting arm shot up, breaking through the hard ground. A monster, pushing itself up from where it had been buried, revealed baleful, glowing blue eyes.
*Kiiieeeeeek!*
“Shit! How many of them are there?”
“Luon! Are you there? Dammit!”
“Both of you, stay close to me.”
As if to echo the party's clamor, corpses were endlessly rising from the floor of the vast clearing.
Luon, now naturally separated from his companions by the sudden appearance of what looked to be well over a hundred undead, furrowed his brow.
What a shitshow.
Just then, a grim voice carried over the swarming corpses.
“Through the long ages, this place was a great altar where glorious offerings were made to the king. ‘We,’ who shed our mortal shells and were buried in the cold earth, have finally been reborn as a single consciousness through the king’s grace…”
At that moment, hundreds of corpses moved their mouths in unison.
“We are His army.”
*Kraaaaaaah!*
With a horrifying scream, they surged forward like a wave.
Luon did not retreat. There was nowhere to flee, but even if there had been, he wouldn’t have.
Why would he, when a bundle of experience points had gathered in one place?
He faced the living dead closing in from all sides and swung his sword without hesitation. A red afterimage was carved into the air like a scar along its trajectory.
Severing three heads from their bodies in a single motion, Luon didn't stop. Pivoting on his right foot, he twisted his waist.
The downward diagonal slash swept across the ground with incredible force and shot back up.
*Kreeck!*
The massive movement, forcibly linked by his overwhelming physical prowess, carved a huge arc that split the approaching undead in two.
Blackened entrails, long since having lost their function, scattered into the air. Before they could even hit the ground, a red light shot forward. Simultaneously, the corpses with pierced heads let out incomprehensible screams.
Roaring back at the unpleasant shrieks, Luon gripped the hilt with both hands and swung with all his might. The blade, after cleaving through one skull, split the chest of a large corpse that was raising its arm right next to it.
That was only the beginning.
Every time Luon swung his sword relentlessly, anywhere from two to more than four corpses crumbled.
The corpses, tireless, continued to pour into the artificial clearing he created by devastating his surroundings with explosive momentum, but that was all they could do.
Not a single one managed to land a proper blow on Luon before being, quite literally, ground to pieces.
Kyle, who was watching the unbelievable scene from afar with a sidelong glance, suddenly frowned.
Swinging the arming sword in his right hand, he cut off the arm of an undead that had grabbed his ankle, then stomped his foot down, crushing the suffering corpse's face.
Just then, Igor’s voice rang out.
“Kyle! Strabo! While all their attention is on Sir Luon, we have to take down the main body of the undead!”
As he said, more than eighty percent of the undead in the clearing were charging toward Luon. They fought desperately, as if it would be a disaster if they failed to hold him down.
Of course, considering Luon's phenomenal strength, wiping them all out seemed to be no problem, but there was another issue.
Even now, new undead were crawling out of the ground.
Igor shouted again.
“These are the corpses of human sacrifices! There’s no telling how many more will appear.”
Strabo, whose hand had transformed to resemble a bear's paw, slammed it into a corpse's leg and retorted.
“By ‘main body,’ you mean that guy Luon already beheaded?”
Igor nodded vigorously.
“Given the circumstances, that’s the most logical conclusion!”
“But that bastard resurrected earlier, didn't he?”
“That’s because of divine power…”
Igor stopped mid-sentence, pressing his lips together firmly before shouting.
“We don’t have time for a leisurely explanation!”
Kyle moved up right beside him. He said in a calm voice.
“That bastard is hiding over there.”
The arming sword pointed toward a figure hiding within a group of some thirty undead.
It was the same one that had first greeted them in the clearing.
Kyle, thrusting his sword into the torso of an advancing corpse, quickly added.
“Let's go now. Not even Luon can fight forever.”
There was no more time for talk. The three of them kicked off the ground at the same time.
Strabo, taking the lead, pulled a few branches from his pouch and threw them forward. As green veins bulged on his face, the flying branches expanded, lashing out at the corpses blocking their path and simultaneously binding them.
Sensing their unusual momentum, the figure hiding among the corpses extended a gaunt arm toward the charging party.
Kyle, moving past the dwarf who had stumbled back with a nosebleed, stepped forward and pulled his shield in tight against his body.
*Kwaang—!*
He staggered from the direct hit of the formless spell, but in the end, he did not fall. Kyle deftly regained his balance and kicked off the ground again.
The hardship of falling thousands of times during his training with Luon was finally paying off.
He wildly swung his arming sword, beheading a corpse blocking his way, and shouted.
“Igor!”
As if in response to his cry, a burst of light erupted from behind him and swept forward relentlessly.
“Kyaaak!”
Struck directly by the surging tide of light, the creature convulsed as if struck by lightning. Even so, it squirmed, attempting to do something. Igor strode toward it and said in a dry tone.
“There is no prayer for you, demon.”
At the same time, the light exploded.