Chapter 81. Under the Cemetery
In the rays of light illuminating the darkness, what they saw were terrifying figures.
Chaeng!
Everyone drew their weapons, nursing their sore bodies.
The sound of the group swallowing echoed through the silent darkness.
“Sir Binaeril, light once more.”
Binaeril raised a light orb above his head.
The place where they stood was a square-shaped cavern roughly twenty meters across in every direction.
Beyond the space, straight as if measured by a ruler, lay a precipice with no visible bottom.
And at each corner stood terrifying figures.
A figure holding a giant hammer and appearing to shout, a figure gripping a spear roughly two meters long with eyes wide open.
A figure wielding a greatsword, even a figure holding a mace.
Having confirmed their appearances once more with the secured visibility, the knights let out sighs of relief.
“What, they were just statues! We got scared for nothing.”
At a glance, they had looked like they were standing there targeting them, but now they could see they were statues carved with extreme realism.
All of those statues were short, with bushy beards.
“Statues of the Toin?”
“It seems so.”
The Duke had said that the race most massacred in Rotepallen was the Toin.
Had they been erected to commemorate the sacrifice of the Toin?
While they exhaled, relaxing their tension, Binaeril did not lower his guard.
“No. Everyone, prepare yourselves.”
Realistic statues encountered at the end of a dark maze. Binaeril recalled a memory.
*‘I experienced something similar during the Scala exam.’*
“They are not mere statues. I sense mana.”
“What do you mean?”
The answer came not from Binaeril, but from the other side.
The statues began to move.
Geu-geu-geung—!
“They are gargoyles imbued with mana! They will attack. Prepare yourselves!”
Ominous black mana welled up from the gargoyles’ entire bodies. That was the mana Balam wielded.
The knights also came to their senses and assumed combat stances again.
“Kreeee—!”
Bizarre sounds that humans could not make leaked from the gargoyles’ mouths.
Sounds that rang like ear-splitting screams. They sounded like warnings that the intruders would not be forgiven.
“They’re coming from all sides. Everyone take one! I’ll handle this side!”
Following the Duke’s orders, the knights began facing off, each taking one as a target.
Binaeril decided to help them from the center.
“I will provide support!”
“Very well!”
The first move was made by the gargoyles.
The gargoyles charged at frightening speeds unbefitting their material nature, striking the knights’ weapons with their own.
“What… strength!”
Even a single attack was enough to numb their arms.
Those who blocked the attacks felt as if their shoulders were screaming.
All except one.
“Die, ghost of the—past!”
Only Duke Dukes was overwhelming his gargoyle, continuously clashing against the creature’s hammer.
The gargoyle also looked utterly bewildered. Was this thing really human?
“What are you gaping at, you stupid statue!”
The Duke swung his flail, striking the gargoyle’s head.
The sound of the gargoyle’s head colliding with a lump of iron reverberated throughout the cavern.
*‘We don’t need to help him over there.’*
Spurred by the Duke’s fierce fight, the other knights also threw themselves into battle with renewed vigor.
The sound of spear clashing against spear, sword clashing against mace. The resonance of weapons heightened the atmosphere,
and Binaeril observed the situation from the center.
*‘The one being pushed back the most… is Sir Gustav’s side!’*
While the other knights were more or less exchanging blows, Gustav was being pushed back by the gargoyle’s attacks again and again.
Binaeril decided he had to help that side first.
What Gustav was facing was a greatsword-wielding gargoyle.
“Ugh!”
Every time their attacks clashed, Gustav felt his insides shake.
Because he had struck his shoulder during the fall, even lifting his sword was burdensome.
He mustered his strength and stabbed his sword into the gargoyle’s neck, but it was no use.
Whatever it was made of, the gargoyle’s body was hardly different from the weapon it held.
Not an inch did it sink in; Gustav’s sword simply bounced off.
Rather, it was Gustav who was exposed to danger due to the clumsy attack.
The statue swung its sword honestly. Gustav had not yet fully retracted his outstretched sword.
*‘Am I going to die like this?’*
Just as Gustav was about to give up on his life,
“Don’t give up, Sir Gustav!”
A clear boy’s voice rang from behind him.
“Pierce through!”
Having anticipated the gargoyle’s hardness, Binaeril reinforced the penetrating power of his magic bullet and fired it at the one facing Gustav.
The greatsword gargoyle hurriedly withdrew its weapon and pushed it into the magic bullet’s trajectory.
Mana and greatsword collided, and the creature’s arm was lifted greatly.
But the magic bullet Binaeril had prepared was not merely one.
“Continue to shoot!”
Two consecutive magic bullets pierced the gargoyle’s neck and chest.
“Gi… giiik…”
But the creature did not fall. Unless its core was damaged, a gargoyle was near-immortal.
As if thinking this couldn’t continue, the gargoyle shifted the greatsword it had held in both hands to one hand.
Then it extended its left hand.
Black mana seethed up from its left hand.
Ominous and sinister mana. The same kind Balam had used.
The other gargoyles also raised identical mana.
Responding to black mana with magic was foolish. Binaeril thought of a better move.
[Spirit emergence!]
Eden, having finished its rest and come to its senses, leaped out from the ring.
“Block the black mana!”
[Leave it to me, Binaeril!]
The risen black mana shot forth like an arrow, targeting Gustav’s neck.
Gustav could hardly resist against the liquid-like movement of the mana swimming through the air and was in danger of having his neck seized.
[Move aside!]
Eden circled around Gustav and drove away the black mana.
Around Eden, the black mana lost its power, hesitated, and retreated.
*‘Veritas, where is its core?’*
—It’s in the groin.
*‘…Why there of all places.’*
Binaeril chanted a magic bullet while aiming at the gargoyle’s lower body.
For a moment, the stone statue’s face, meeting his eyes, took on a pitiful expression. Though surely that was just Binaeril’s imagination.
“Sorry!”
In this very moment, it was an incantation that suited his sincerity most perfectly.
Along with a cracking sound, the greatsword gargoyle moved no more.
As a result of failing to protect what was precious, it returned once more to eternal slumber.
“Sir Gustav, please help the other knights.”
“Y-yes!”
Gustav, clutching his shoulder, ran to the side of a nearby knight to provide support.
The battle situation, which had maintained equilibrium, had turned greatly against them when the gargoyles began wielding black mana.
“Hm? What is this?”
Duke Dukes grasped the incoming black mana with his hand and twisted it.
The eyes of the statue assigned to him widened in surprise.
“You cannot stop me with such sorcery.”
The Duke easily destroyed the black mana by merely applying strength to his grip, then continued his offensive, pressuring the gargoyle.
But the others could not do so.
The Duke, having grasped through his peripheral vision that the knights were being pushed back, shouted.
“Veron, Asdal, Gustav! Collect yourselves! Compared to the frontlines of the hellish North, these things are nothing!”
The groaning knights heard his voice and burned with fighting spirit.
“We are!”
“Warriors of the North!”
“The Duke’s!”
“Knights!”
“I am Duke Torben Dukes!”
As the knights’ souls were uplifted, the black mana could not easily erode them either.
Furthermore, as Gustav began supporting one of them, the tide of battle turned in favor of the knights again.
“Grr, grrr—.”
Amidst only the sounds of clashing weapons, the cries of the dead were heard once more from the depths of the cemetery.
“Again?”
From the corridor behind the space where they were fighting, undead flooded in once more.
The soldiers of the underworld advanced slowly but steadily.
“I will handle them.”
After dispatching another gargoyle, Binaeril stepped forth to deal with the surging undead.
Now it was two gargoyles against four knights. As long as the Duke held one, there was no need to worry.
The best magic to deal with undead was, without a doubt, fire.
Because he only needed to maintain his concentration until their bodies were all burned away.
Binaeril envisioned burning flames and uttered words befitting them.
“Eternally hungry, greedy flames, your prey is before your eyes…….”
“Sir Binaeril! You mustn’t destroy the cemetery again!”
Even while driving his gargoyle back, the Duke did not forget to leave a warning for Binaeril.
“…Slightly hungry flames, your prey is before your eyes!”
As the undead at the front were burned, they could advance no further.
Binaeril blocked the path, pushing the ones in the rear off below the precipice and safely dispatching them.
The sounds of weapons behind him also gradually ceased.
“Die, specter!”
The Duke’s flail split the air with a fearsome sound.
The gargoyle that had faced the Duke was battered all over, its body in tatters.
Striking the core that finally protruded through its broken body, the gargoyle’s knees collapsed.
“It’s over!”
The knights facing the last remaining gargoyle three-to-one also plunged their weapons into its core.
“We won!”
“Hm, excellent!”
“No, but how did you face this alone, Your Grace the Duke?”
The three knights collapsed to the floor, utterly exhausted.
“You young ones, with such poor stamina. Look to Sir Binaeril! Did he not help you and even handle the undead!”
“But Sir Binaeril is a mage….”
Each caught their rough breaths, sharing a modest celebration of victory.
Binaeril also sat down, briefly steadying his rough breathing. But rest was not permitted for long.
Veritas began sending him warnings.
—It’s coming.
—He is coming.
*‘Who is coming?’*
—Page is coming this way, you fool. Get up and prepare quickly!
Binaeril stood up and watched the entrance of the corridor through which the undead had flooded.
A minute after Veritas’s warning, he too could sense it.
It was Balam’s mana.
And about a minute after that, the Duke and knights who had been taking a short rest also stood, looking toward the entrance.
Because they too could hear the sound approaching, echoing through the interior of the cemetery.
“Something’s coming. Prepare yourselves.”
Their shoulders ached, their waists hurt, and their arms were so numb they could barely grip their swords, but they stood.
Because their lord was preparing for battle.
And finally, a figure appeared at the corridor’s entrance.
Balam seemed to have discarded his broken body and switched to a new, gleaming skeleton.
But the ominous mana he exuded remained the same. Balam too, upon discovering the intruders, halted his steps.
In his hand was gripped a sword emitting a red aura.
—Binaeril, it’s Page! That sword is Page!
*‘Yeah. It looks that way to my eyes too. No, anyone could tell it’s no ordinary item.’*
The black energy Balam exuded and the red energy emitted by the demonic sword were strangely similar.
But the demonic sword’s energy was far denser and more intense.
Binaeril looked at Balam and spoke.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry, Balam?”