The golems began attacking Helbertron, who was just about to break through the encirclement.
“You damned…”
Helbertron spat curses as he threw himself aside. No matter how much of a Grand Master-class Death Knight he was, he could not take the terrifying attack of a Bronze Golem head-on.
Another bloody battle began. Meanwhile, Zicrate’s body continued to be torn to pieces by the Iron Golem.
The state of the Kasim Mercenary Corps was, in a word, bleak. They were fighting with all their might against five Bronze Golems, but there was no sign whatsoever that the situation would improve. Only Mitchell, Kasim, and Gerald could occasionally launch attacks that posed any threat to the Bronze Golems; the rest were busy running for their lives.
Though they were Paladins capable of deploying Aura Blades, that alone was not enough to pierce the Bronze Golems’ sturdy bodies. Since they were not particularly high-level Paladins, they had to gather mana for quite some time before they could unleash a powerful attack.
But there was no way the agile Bronze Golems would give them such time. Moreover, since they had no way of knowing the location of the life stone that could bring down a golem, the mercenaries could not even bring themselves to attack and could only dodge. The only thing they could do was create openings for Mitchell or Kasim to attack. And they had to use their own bodies as bait to do it.
“Eek!”
Patterson, who had approached close to a Bronze Golem, leapt away in terror. A massive longsword came crashing down on the spot where his body had been.
Kwa-kwaang!
Had he hesitated even for a moment, he would have been reduced to a pulp of mingled flesh and bone. But thanks to Patterson’s efforts, Mitchell was finally able to find an opening.
“Chaaat!”
With a clear shout, Mitchell’s longsword shot forward. A little over a meter of Aura Blade had formed around the blade. The longsword plunged straight into the Bronze Golem’s left chest.
Pshuut.
Expectation appeared on Mitchell’s face as his attack landed.
“This time?”
But that expectation quickly turned to disappointment. As the Bronze Golem’s fierce counterattack immediately followed, Mitchell had no choice but to fling himself aside in a frenzy.
“It isn’t the left chest either… Damn it. Just where is the life stone?”
The life stone, the source that breathed life into a golem, was only about the size of an adult’s fist. Finding the part where the life stone was embedded in the body of a gigantic Bronze Golem over 4.5 meters tall was an extremely time-consuming task. In a word, it was no different from searching for a needle in a sandy beach. And since he had to do it while facing a Bronze Golem that hurled itself about at tremendous speed, it was inevitably a difficult task even for Mitchell, a Sword Master.
And that was not the only problem.
Kwa-kwaang!
Mitchell’s body suddenly staggered. While his attention had wandered for a moment, a powerful magical attack had exploded against his back. It had to be a decisive strike from a lich that had been waiting for an opening.
Though he wore armor engraved with a great anti-magic defensive array, a dull pain spread through his back. The mercenary corps members had already allowed countless magical attacks from the liches. Mitchell turned and spat curses.
“You damned bastards. Just let me get my hands on you.”
Unfortunately, the liches were positioned beyond their reach. Floating in midair, they rushed in whenever there was an opening and poured out merciless magical attacks. They were so hateful that he wanted to seize them and chew them to pieces, but for now there was absolutely no way to catch the liches floating in the air.
“Eek!”
Mitchell, who had been glaring up into the air, hurriedly rolled away. A fearsome attack came crashing down on the spot where he had been.
Boom!
There was no way the Bronze Golem would quietly watch Mitchell looking elsewhere. Having narrowly escaped danger by a hair’s breadth, Mitchell bit his lip hard.
“The only place left now is the right shoulder. This time, I’ll make sure to disable you.”
As Mitchell prepared to attack, a desperate scream reached his ears.
“Aaaaargh!”
It was a familiar voice. Mitchell hastily turned his head and opened his eyes wide.
“Th-this… Bieri…”
Unfortunately, Bieri, one of the mercenary corps members, had been kicked by a Bronze Golem and was flying through the air. Seeing him spew fountain-like blood from his mouth, it seemed his internal organs had ruptured. His spine, bent at an abnormal angle, proved that his backbone had been shattered.
“N-no. Bieri…”
Mitchell reflexively launched himself forward. The Bronze Golem he had been facing was no longer in his mind.
Damon was, quite literally, in a trance. He had no time to think as he avoided the various attack spells Verkis relentlessly sent flying at him, alternating between shields, blinks, and other spells. Verkis’s magical attacks perfectly covered every direction in which he could flee. Each time he unleashed an attack spell, he simultaneously poured out several kinds of low-grade attack spells into the range where Damon could dodge or where his Blink could reach.
If Damon had been an ordinary 9th Circle mage, he would have died long ago. The Lightning Bolts and Energy Cannons that flew in as if they had been waiting the instant he used Blink to transfer through space were attacks that an ordinary mage could never avoid, even if they came back from the dead. But Damon had once been a supreme master. Thanks to the experience and reflexes he had cultivated then, Damon had already survived several brushes with death.
“You really are like an eel. Let’s see how long you can keep dodging.”
Before Verkis’s words had even ended, a devastating attack spell came flying in. Damon had to throw himself aside without even a chance to catch his breath.
Kwa-kwa-kwaang!
If even one hit landed, it would mean instant death. Damon now had no leisure to think of anything. Far from using the magical interference that was his specialty, he could not even attempt a single counterattack. Damon had never dreamed that the gap between the 9th Circle and the 10th Circle would be this vast. His face was twisted with despair.
“Damn it. If only I could distract him even for a moment…”
But Damon could not continue the thought. His body suddenly vanished from midair, and the spot where he had been erupted in a great explosion as attack magic detonated.
Kwa-kwa-kwaang!
Damon, who had succeeded in transferring through space with Blink, had to roll across the ground again as soon as he appeared. An Energy Cannon, flying in as if it had been waiting, narrowly missed his body. After that as well, Damon was almost instinctively hurling himself about in order to evade the attack spells that kept coming.
It was not only the humans who watched the duel with their mouths agape. Kartroi, too, was staring at the duel in a daze, as though his soul had left him. The bloody battle unfolding before him was, in a word, a shock.
“A dragon of Truvenia is that powerful…”
He had known that they had fought humans many times, but he had not known they would be this strong. Kartroi thought that even Arcadia’s Dragon Lord would not be a match for that Red Dragon. A short while earlier, when the fight began, Kartroi had stepped aside as promised.
“Another pitiful Red Dragon will meet his end. As promised, I will not interfere. I will return after the hunt is over.”
Though the Red Dragon appeared to be of Ancient class, Kartroi had concluded that he could never be a match for the Kasim Mercenary Corps. With two Bone Dragons, four Death Knights, and the skills of that detestable Damon fellow, he had thought that no matter how Ancient a Dragon he was, he would surely be hunted down before long.
But that was clearly a miscalculation. The mighty Guardians revealed through magic—each and every one of them was a monster beyond Kartroi’s imagination. There was the Iron Golem that was busily smashing the Bone Dragon Zicrate apart, the group of Bronze Golems that were proudly fighting on equal footing with those immensely powerful Death Knights, and on top of that, the formidable supporting fire of liches beyond the 6th Circle… Exclamations kept bursting from Kartroi’s mouth.
“Even if I dragged every Ice Golem in my lair here, they wouldn’t dare face ten Bronze Golems. Even if I deployed all one hundred and twenty of them.”
That was how fast the Bronze Golems were. There was no way the much larger but sluggish Ice Golems could have been their opponents from the start. Watching the situation unfold, conflict appeared in Kartroi’s eyes.
“I don’t know what I should do. Should I remain like this? Or should I help the Kasim Mercenary Corps?”
The duty of dragons, handed down from the beginning of time, was to preserve the balance of neutrality. The members of the Kasim Mercenary Corps were already companions who had spent nearly a year with him. Though that one human called Damon was unbearably detestable, he felt a certain degree of affection for the rest of the mercenaries. In other words, he felt camaraderie toward those humans. Because of that, Kartroi was at a loss.
“To maintain the balance, I should help the mercenaries. But if I do that, I’ll be betraying my own kind.”
That was precisely why Kartroi was conflicted. Whether to stand with the humans he thought of as companions, or side with his own species and watch the situation unfold—that was the dilemma Kartroi currently faced. But his choice was made before long. The moment one mercenary was struck by a Bronze Golem’s attack and sent flying through the air, Kartroi made up his mind.
“Right. If I don’t join in, all of them will not escape death.”
Kartroi immediately gathered mana. Though he could not guarantee how much help he would be even if he joined, he still could not simply stand by and watch.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa.
Mana rapidly rearranged itself, and in that place appeared the figure of a gigantic White Dragon. Having returned to his true form, Kartroi immediately began to take flight.
Shoooook.
He began flying straight toward Verkis, who hovered in midair.
“Hm?”
A strange light appeared in the eyes of Verkis, who had been in the middle of pouring attacks on Damon. One of his kin, who had been watching the fight since earlier, had suddenly polymorphed back into his true form and was flying toward him. Verkis had already sensed the presence of one of his kin, but he had paid it no attention at all. He had merely thought it was a fellow dragon out on a game.
But the White Dragon was flying straight toward him. Judging by his size, he was a young dragon who seemed to have only just surpassed the Wyrm class. Temporarily suspending his attacks on Damon, Verkis looked at the White Dragon flying toward him.
“White Dragon of Arcadia. Do you perhaps have business with me?”
“I do.”
Kartroi’s eyes shone with determination.
“What business?”
“Stop this damn fight right now. Damn it. If you don’t, I will attack you without holding anything back.”
Kartroi answered without hesitation. His reply was heavily laced with the way of speaking he had learned from Damon. At those words, a look of absurd disbelief was etched across Verkis’s face.
“Then you mean to say you will take the humans’ side and attack me?”
“I am not taking the humans’ side. But the mission of dragons is clearly to uphold neutrality, and I believe such an overwhelmingly one-sided fight must be stopped. So withdraw the golems and liches at once. If you do not, I will attack without mercy.”
At those words, Verkis burst into hearty laughter. Kartroi, who had flown up at great speed, had nearly reached the place where Verkis was.
“How amusing. Upholding neutrality is not such a thing, young dragon.”
“Damn it. A moment ago, you turned hundreds of innocent humans into a handful of ash without hesitation. That is an act clearly contrary to Lord Verhazel’s will.”
“Hohoho. What should I do about this? Even so, I cannot injure one of my own kind.”
Verkis shook his head as though dumbfounded, then his expression turned serious.
“I cannot bring myself to kill you, my kin. Instead, I will give you a suitable opponent, so go and play with it for a while. If you live in the world a little longer, you will come to understand what sort of creatures humans truly are.”
Having finished speaking, Verkis lightly waved his hand. Then, from far below, out of nowhere…
A fearsome sound of air being torn apart burst forth.
Ssswaaaak.
The sound was heading straight for Katroi. Katroi, who had been flapping his wings and flying with all his might, was startled by it.
“Wh-what is that sound?”
Halting his glide, Katroi tilted his long neck and looked down. In that instant, his eyes flew wide as if they would split.
“An Iron Golem? Astonishing. A golem that can fly……”
The source of the piercing sound was none other than the Iron Golem soaring into the sky. Its thick back had spread wide open, and enormous wings had sprung out; the moment Verkis gave the order, the Iron Golem shot upward like a streak of light, abandoning the utterly battered Zikrate without a shred of hesitation.
The Iron Golem was hurtling in a straight line toward Katroi. Katroi stared blankly at it, his eyes showing that he had no idea what to do.
“Zikrate. Pull yourself together!”
Thanks to Katroi, Damon had barely managed to regain his senses, and he desperately called out to Zikrate. But the mangled Zikrate could only show the faintest response.
Kirik.
Zikrate desperately thrashed his neck, but his gruesomely shattered body would not move at all. It was because the Iron Golem’s attacks had completely crushed him. Since his wings had been torn off, he could no longer fly. In other words, every means Damon had to wage an aerial battle had vanished. Into Damon’s ears, as he stood there in despair, came Katroi’s roar, thick with fury.
Kyaaaaaa!
Having given up on flying toward Verkis, Katroi was now fiercely battling the Iron Golem. As though enraged by the fact that he had to face a mere guardian, Katroi unleashed one terrifying attack after another. But the Iron Golem was by no means an easy opponent.
Tzzzzzz.
Though it took Katroi’s Ice Breath head-on, the Iron Golem did not so much as flinch. Instead, it counterattacked without the slightest hesitation. Its great axe, covered thickly in frost, came slashing down like lightning, aiming for Katroi’s torso.
“Not a chance.”
Katroi nimbly evaded the attack, then swung his tail without restraint. But the Iron Golem raised its massive shield and easily blocked the tail strike.
Thunk.
With a heavy resonant boom, the Iron Golem’s body was knocked backward, but it soon regained its balance. Wings that looked remarkably frail compared to its massive body were keeping the hulking Iron Golem suspended in midair without the least difficulty. It was a sight that seemed utterly incomprehensible, but Katroi soon realized the reason.
“Levitation-type magic must be engraved on its body. In that case, try taking one of my magic attacks.”
Blue fireballs flared fiercely in Katroi’s two hands. Judging by their form, there was no doubt they were Hellfire. Those dreadful flames of destruction were soon blasted toward the Iron Golem.
Kwakwakwakwa!
It did not try to dodge. Instead, when the Iron Golem raised its shield and assumed a defensive stance, Katroi inwardly cried out in delight.
“You fool. Hellfire burns everything it touches. Even rock and stone. No matter how hard your body may be, you will not be able to withstand this Hellfire.”
But once again, Katroi’s expectations were utterly wrong.
Kwa-kang!
The two shots of Hellfire struck the shield dead-on, but the Iron Golem did not budge. The magic circle engraved on the shield flashed brilliantly, and the explosion of the Hellfire simply died away. At the sight, Katroi’s strength drained from him.
“So there was a magic defensive array engraved on the shield. If it can even block Hellfire, then using more magic will be pointless. The only thing left is physical attacks.”
Steeling himself, Katroi immediately began his assault. The sharp teeth and enormous tail of the White Dragon continued to aim for the Iron Golem. But it was clear that injuring an Iron Golem made entirely of solid steel was by no means an easy task.
“What a truly foolish fellow. To dare side with humans. If he were not one of my own kind, I would have killed him without the slightest mercy……”
Verkis was watching Katroi with a frown. When he finished speaking, a voice at his side chimed in.
“The dragons of Arcadia have not experienced war for a very long time. In my opinion, he will never be able to contend with the Iron Golem.”
The one who answered was Gedenhide. Though all the liches had joined the melee, he alone remained floating beside Verkis, prepared for any unforeseen situation. Verkis nodded silently.
“Of course. In a word, the Iron Golem can be called the strongest golem in existence. It has a magic defensive array capable of blocking even Hellfire, and since it can fly, the only beings capable of matching an Iron Golem are dragons.”
“Indeed. If not for you, Lord Verkis, who would dare create such a terrifying weapon?”
Verkis slowly shifted his gaze.
“Gedenhide. After staying by my side for so long, you’ve become quite skilled at flattery.”
Gedenhide shook his head in alarm.
“It is absolutely not flattery. I merely……”
“It does not matter even if it is. It does not displease me.”
Having said that, Verkis turned his head again.
“In any case, it is time to finish off that black magician.”
“Indeed. Nearly seven Bronze Golems have already been destroyed by the Death Knights. If we do not hurry and deal with him, our losses will grow even greater. As you know, the source of life for the Death Knights lies with that man called Damon. If we bring him down, the Death Knights will return to their original state: nothingness.”
Verkis shook his head as though that was not the point.
“Bronze Golems can simply be made again. The problem is that we cannot drag this out any longer. If we do, something extremely troublesome will happen. Therefore, we must quickly settle the situation and return to Truvenia.”
At those words, Gedenhide wore an expression of disbelief.
“No matter how I look, I judge that there is no one here who could dare stand against you, Lord Verkis.”
“That is not so.”
Curtly dismissing him, Verkis fixed his gaze precisely on Damon, who was at an immense distance. The man had gathered a certain amount of mana, but there was nothing to worry about. Since he had already been caught in Verkis’s detection magic, he could not flee. Thinking of that, Verkis smiled in satisfaction.
“Once I finish him now, Incresia will return to me, along with the annihilation of the Death Knights. Seize that moment and withdraw the Bronze Golems. Have the liches take one golem each and levitate them into the sky. After storing the golems and all of you inside Incresia and the newly made magical treasury, we will immediately return to Truvenia.”
“Understood.”
The situation was growing more desperate by the moment. Having lost their only means of aerial combat, the Death Knights launched a fierce assault on the Bronze Golems as if venting their fury. But that was all they could do. A total of seven Bronze Golems had been destroyed by their hands, but because Verkis had added another five after the previous five, there were still fifteen Bronze Golems remaining. With their numerical superiority, the Bronze Golems were now tying down the Death Knights without much difficulty.
The mercenaries, who had been fighting a desperate life-and-death battle, also looked as though they could no longer hold out. The combined assault of the Bronze Golems and the liches was that terrifying. The anti-magic armor worn by the mercenaries was already glowing red-hot. The magic circles engraved on the armor were on the verge of collapse. If what they had been wearing were ordinary anti-magic armor, they would never have lasted until now. Even so, because they were wearing the highest-grade anti-magic armor stored in Incresia, they had managed to endure this long.
But even that had nearly reached its limit. Of course, it was not as though they had achieved nothing at all; one Bronze Golem each had been destroyed by the attacks of Kasim and Mitchell. But that was the limit of the mercenaries. Every one of them was gasping for breath, so exhausted that even throwing themselves forward was difficult. A faint sense of despair began to settle in their eyes.
‘Is this the end? It is a pity I cannot see Father before I go.’
‘Matilda. Please be happy. I am truly sorry I could not keep my promise.’
‘Proctor. My only regret is that I could not drive my sword into your heart.’
The mercenaries slowly began to put the final moments of their lives in order. In a little while, one by one, they would have to bid farewell to the world.