Dust and snow swirled like a storm around the collapsed building.
The impact of the massive wyverns crashing into the ground was terrifying.
The city’s buildings shook, and icicles fell.
The people hiding underground screamed.
In the minds of those who knew nothing of the situation, all sorts of dreadful imaginings arose.
To forget them, to cling to hope, the people offered prayers to the goddess.
“O Goddess, protect Kazan.”
“Please, keep my husband safe.”
Had their prayers been answered?
The ground stopped shaking.
How long had everyone held their breath?
“Kuoooooooh!!!!”
“Hiiiek!”
“Waaah! Mooom!!!”
A scream they had never heard in their lives rang out.
It was a horrifying, desperate shriek that sent chills racing down their spines just from hearing it, a sound so terrible it made them wish they could go deaf on the spot.
“O Goddess!”
“Goddess!”
Just what kind of living hell was unfolding aboveground?
To drive away their ghastly imaginings, the people prayed even more fervently.
Hoping the goddess would answer their prayers.
The people did not know.
That the one who had answered their prayers… was not a goddess, but a demon.
*
“A-are they dead?”
“They fell from that height. There’s no way they’re alive, right?”
“I-I know that too, but…”
The troops that arrived at the site where the wyvern swarm had crashed kept their distance and stared at the wreckage of the building.
The soldiers swallowed hard.
An entire three-story building had collapsed.
That was proof they had fallen from a great height, and with an impact like that, common sense said there was no way they could have survived.
But their enemies were not creatures that could be judged by common sense.
“Grrrrrr!”
“Damn it! To think we got hit by a cheap trick like this!”
“Huh!”
Shadows rose from within the dust.
An artificial gust blew the dust away, revealing enemies who were perfectly fine.
The wyverns clawing their way out through the building’s debris were brimming with killing intent.
Though their scales were cracked and their wings torn, they did not look weakened. If anything, they looked even more dangerous.
The wyvern riders were no exception.
“Report!”
“Four lightly injured! Two seriously injured! We can return to combat!”
“Do it!”
“Yes!”
The injured wyvern riders took out leather pouches and bit down on them.
The traditional potion made by the tribe’s shaman rapidly healed the wounded warriors’ bodies.
The wyverns, and even the barbarian warriors, were still in fighting shape.
The soldiers were shocked at the sight, but the knight beside them barked at them and snapped them back to their senses.
“Get a hold of yourselves! These are exactly the kind of bastards we expected!”
“They fell from that height! They have to be badly wounded! That’s a bluff. A bluff!”
“Anti-wyvern battle formation!”
“Hurry and bring the ballistae!”
The knights clicked their tongues.
Unlike the soldiers, they were well versed in information about the enemy.
Wyverns.
Monsters that, with just two of them together, could hunt and eat an ogre, a top-tier monster known as a mountain lord.
There were even records of them surviving a direct blow from a club backed by an ogre’s monstrous strength without dying on the spot.
A mere fall would hardly have been enough to inflict serious wounds on them.
The same was true of the wyvern riders.
To handle a wyvern, a creature that regarded every living thing weaker than itself as prey, one had to be acknowledged by the wyvern as strong.
Therefore, the minimum requirement for a wyvern rider was to be a great warrior capable of skillfully handling mana.
Monsters that devoured ogres, and knight-class forces riding those monsters while swinging weapons.
Now they had to fight such beasts.
The hands gripping their weapons were slick with cold sweat.
“Do not fear! We are the knights of Kazan!”
“Kill the wyverns and defend Kazan!”
The knights drew their swords, and the soldiers raised shields and spears.
They had not shaken off all their fear, but the eyes of the soldiers, steeled with resolve, flashed with courage.
“Advance! Fight! Win!”
“Uwaaaaaah!!!”
“You worms dare! Kill them all!”
“Kuoooooh!”
Both sides roared and charged at the enemy.
“OK. They took the bait.”
Never dreaming that a black mage had been waiting for this very moment.
“Die.”
“Huh?”
“Grrrr?”
The black mage stretched his hand upward.
Black light surged.
A black star suddenly rose into the sky, seizing everyone’s gaze.
—Boom!
“?!”
The black star became a reaper and swung the scythe of death.
*
Danil, arriving near the building where the wyvern swarm had crash-landed, did not hesitate to blow the door off the nearest house with magic.
—Bang!
“Who goes there!?”
“I’m not a barbarian. It’s me. Me.”
“S-Sir Danil?”
The soldiers inside the house widened their eyes.
They were holding crossbows.
They seemed to have been lying in ambush, likely intending to snipe the barbarians if they came near.
“Perfect timing. Give me a hand.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“I’m going to fire a spell that will beat those wyverns to death.”
“.......!”
“So I need to requisition a horse. Grant me permission.”
“.......”
The soldiers looked at one another, then nodded.
If it had been an ordinary mage, they would have hesitated for quite a while.
But the mage before them was an exception.
The record of working night shifts without a single day of rest for four weeks, and the achievement of shooting down wyverns.
Those became trust and credibility, giving the soldiers faith in him.
“I’ll guide you. Follow me.”
He went outside after the soldier.
A military horse tied up at a nearby army stable came into view.
“Use this one.”
“Good. It’s just right for a sacrifice.”
“Pardon? A sacrifice?”
The soldier looked puzzled.
He had thought Danil was borrowing a warhorse to move like a cavalryman while casting magic.
He was mistaken.
The reason Danil had sought out the soldiers and asked for permission was not to use the horse.
It was to consume it.
“I forgot to mention.”
Danil stretched his hand toward the horse.
“The easiest way to kill a monster, you see, is for our side to become just as cruel as the monster. Life Drain.”
“Heehehehehehing!!!!”
“Huh!!!”
The soldier covered his mouth.
Dozens of streams of red light surged from the horse’s entire body and were sucked into Danil’s left hand.
In less than ten seconds, the military horse died and collapsed.
The desiccated corpse of the horse looked like a mummy.
“Report to your superiors that I requisitioned it. Well then.”
With his left hand stained red, Danil cast flight magic.
The soldier, looking back and forth between Danil as he vanished into the sky and the dead horse’s corpse, soon sank down where he stood.
“Was I possessed by a ghost?”
The soldier, bewitched by a black mage, blinked.
*
Why are black mages strong?
Many answers could be given to that question, but if one asked the mages of the Magic Tower, they would answer in unison like this.
“Because of the dark mana only black mages can use.”
Then people would ask.
What is dark mana? Please explain it simply.
Then the Magic Tower mage would say this.
“Think of magic as fire, and mana as oil. Dark mana is like blended fuel made by adding an additive to that mana.”
“What does that have to do with black magic being strong?”
“It has everything to do with it. If mana produces a firepower of 10, dark mana produces a firepower of 20.”
“Wow. That’s a big difference in firepower. Then why don’t other mages use dark mana?”
“For a simple reason. Dark mana can only be refined through a special spell called Life Drain. And only black mages who have made a pact with a demon can use that spell. But it is not something that should be used.”
“Why not?”
“Life Drain is magic that steals life force. The additive needed for dark mana is nothing else. It is the life force of living beings.”
“Gasp!”
“Magic cast with the lives of others. That is the true reason black magic is strong. That is why black mages are called evil mages. Because instead of following the proper path like us, they use the shortcut of a heretical path to cast magic with ease.”
And if a black mage happened to be listening nearby, he would glare with fire in his eyes and shout this.
“What a load of narrow-minded crap! You think using dark mana makes magic easy just because the firepower is guaranteed? Your ancestors don’t control the firepower for you!”
It was true that dark mana’s firepower was explosive.
But controlling and regulating it was an entirely different problem.
This was especially pronounced in high-level black magic activated using only dark mana.
To put it bluntly, among high-level black magic spells, there was not a single one with a casting difficulty below A-rank, a rank known among mages as otherworldly difficulty.
They were perilous spells in which dark mana, driven mad by even the smallest mistake, could run wild and lead to a magical explosion.
That was why using high-level black magic required extremely delicate caution and concentration.
And here was a madman trying to cast such magic in the middle of a battlefield that could only be called chaos itself.
—Wooooooong!!!
“Tch. Still a pain in the ass.”
On the rooftop of a building near the collapsed structure.
Danil clicked his tongue and began refining dark mana.
The life energy dwelling in his left hand fused with the mana inside his body and slowly transformed into dark mana.
‘I really do have just enough mana left.’
Dark Flame Rain required a vast amount of dark mana.
In Danil’s case, he had to turn about seventy percent of his total mana into dark mana to use it.
Before coming here, Danil had used the Army of Soma, which devoured thirty percent of his total mana, and on top of that, Lunatic Flame and flight magic as well.
Normally, even if he wanted to use it, it would have been impossible due to insufficient mana.
But now was different.
“I really did well buying the Half-Dragon Heart.”
The mana used for the Army of Soma had not been Danil’s mana.
It had been the artifact’s mana.
—Flash!
The dark mana he created by squeezing out every last bit of his remaining mana responded to Danil’s incantation, and a massive magic circle formed on the rooftop.
The magic circle emitted a gloomy light and began absorbing the dark mana.
‘Read the flow and match the grain.’
Danil focused.
The dark mana looked as if it would rear and rampage like a crazed wild horse at any moment, and the magic circle greedily devoured that dark mana like a ravenous maw, as though it might go berserk at any second.
To use Dark Flame, he had to control both at the same time.
Without divinely inspired mana control and a high level of concentration, it was something that would fail one hundred times out of one hundred.
And failure in black magic led to magical explosions that threatened the caster.
‘I can do it. I can do this!’
Danil was not afraid.
He was certain.
That he could control this perfectly.
A conversation he had shared with Titania during training flashed through his mind.
‘Trust your intuition. When you do not think of mana, but feel it, only then does a mage become a magus.’
The mana control ability he had completed after brutal training.
The confidence he had gained from enjoying marshmallows over the past four weeks.
And the combat intuition he had earned through countless real battles while working in the Foreign Legion for the past eight years.
All of it came together, and at last, in the middle of the battlefield, a single black magic spell was completed.
“It’s done.”
Danil looked down at the black sphere the size of a basketball formed in his left hand, then turned his gaze to the battlefield.
As expected, he saw the wyvern forces still in good shape.
There was no sign they had noticed him, but Danil did not attack immediately.
His combat-honed intuition whispered to him. Not yet.
He trusted his intuition.
“Advance! Fight! Win!”
“Waaaaaaah!”
In less than five minutes, the opportunity came.
The moment every last nerve of the barbarians was focused on the enemies before their eyes!
Danil unleashed the strike that contained his everything.
“Dark Flame Rain.”
—Boom!
Black flames scattered in all directions.
The black sphere that had soared into the sky exploded like fireworks powder.
Fireballs split into dozens, then hundreds, drifting down like snowflakes as they poured like rain over the wyverns’ heads.
For the Steel Scale Tribe, who had always attacked from the sky, being attacked from the sky was a first.
The enemies could not avoid it.
*
—Chiiiiiiik!
“Kuoooooooh!!!”
“Aaaaaaagh!”
Screams that sounded as though they would tear the listeners’ eardrums rang out.
The old knight, who had fought the Steel Scale Tribe for twenty years, turned pale.
“Wyverns… were wyverns creatures that could cry like that?”
Beneath the hellfire, an inferno unfolded.
The scales of wyverns, which could withstand a knight’s sword or spear, burned away.
Their skin was crushed, and their bones melted.
In the agony of burning alive, the wyverns howled in despair.
“Kraaagh!”
“Aaagh! Someone! Someone put out my body! Fire! Fireeee!!!!”
“Save me! Someone save meeeaaaargh!!!”
The wyvern riders screamed.
It was black magic that burned even wyverns.
There was no way a human body could withstand it.
Amid the agony of their entire bodies burning away, the Great Warriors died one by one.
Even those who had barely escaped the baptism of flame had no time to feel relieved.
“Aaaaaargh!”
-Crunch!
A wyvern rider, thrown off by the thrashing wyvern he had been riding, was crushed to death beneath another wyvern flailing in agony.
A barbarian Great Warrior was someone even a knight who could use sword aura could not be sure of defeating.
Yet deaths so futile it was hard to believe they were the ends of such Great Warriors came one after another.
“Th-this can’t be.”
Kudan felt as if he were having a nightmare.
His loyal subordinates, the wyverns his tribe took such pride in, were dying pointlessly, emptily, miserably, disgracefully.
This was not the honorable battle he had expected.
This was a disaster.
It was a massacre beneath a shower of fire falling from the sky.
His body began to tremble.
At this rate, at this rate… did this not make him seem like the weak one?
“Don’t make me laugh, don’t you dare! I am the strong one! I am the strongest warrior on the plateau! To think I’d fall to some mere mage…!”
-Crunch!
“Huh?”
Kudan wore a stupid expression.
He had meant to strike down the mage who had created this living hell.
But… why couldn’t he see the right arm that had been holding his axe?
“Kyaaaaaaah!!!”
“Kuwaaaaaah!!!”
“Ah.”
He saw wyvern heads flying in from every direction.
Kudan’s vision went dark.
*
“Kyaaaaa!”
“Kiaaaaa!”
“This is insane!”
“Fuck! Stop! I said stop, you crazy bastards!”
“Kyaooooo!”
“Kraaaagh!!!”
-Crunch!
The wounded wyverns lost their reason.
As they thrashed, they attacked their own kind, and the wyverns enraged by this shrieked and bared their fangs at their opponents.
This place was a hellscape where barbarians were being killed by wyverns!
This place was a battlefield of carnage where wyverns bit other wyverns to death!
A chaotic scene of kindred slaughter where blood, screams, and flames tangled together.
In the bloody frenzy of tearing one another apart, the wyverns and warriors died one by one.
“Grrrrrr…”
“Kiiiiii…”
The flames died down.
The Steelscale Tribe no longer existed.
The only things still breathing were three wyverns that looked as if they might expire at any moment.
No one could speak as they looked over a battlefield where it would be no exaggeration to say every living, breathing creature had died.
The knights, the soldiers, and even Rud, who had just arrived on the scene, could not close their gaping mouths.
Someone muttered.
“The Steelscale Tribe has been wiped out.”
It sounded like nonsense.
They could not tell whether this was reality or a dream.
But the stench of burning that filled the air.
The corpses of wyverns burned to death and bitten to death.
The ends of the Great Warriors, shattered to pieces and crushed beyond recognition.
All of it insisted that this absurd reality was no lie.
“Cough, cough! Ugh, I’m dying. Damn, it’s been ages since I had mana exhaustion like this.”
The hero who had wrought such a miracle appeared, coughing.
The hero, who drew everyone’s gaze, was pale-faced, but his expression was the complete opposite.
“You’ve arrived, Sir Rud. Good. Has the Grand Prince taken shelter somewhere safe?”
“Y-yes, he has. But what is this…”
“Mm. Does it really need an explanation?”
Danil grinned and raised his fist into the air.
“Just feel it. We won.”
“……!!!”
That one simple sentence awakened the minds of those who had turned to ice.
Victory? Victory. Victory!!!
The next moment, a cheer erupted.
It was a shout at a level that seemed capable of shaking the eternal permafrost of the North.
It was the roar of victory.
*
In the North, a knight was a strong one who staked his life to hold back enemies and protect the city.
Therefore, to be acknowledged as a knight in the North, one had to prove one’s strength.
Shieldsmanship, swordsmanship, horsemanship, command… or perhaps magic.
Danil was no longer “Sir Danil” in jest.
At this moment, everyone acknowledged it.
A new knight had been born in Kkajan!