Episode 54
The Wight that had breached the castle wall tumbled head over heels and crashed to the ground.
As if to prove it had overexerted itself, the muscles all over its body were torn, and its shoulder was caved in, hanging limp.
But that damage healed as the Worm Pests inside its body filled in the torn flesh.
“Th-they’re here!”
“Run!”
“No, don’t run! Fight! Hold them back!”
With a hideously contorted face and a mouth torn all the way to the ear.
At that sight, the people inside the territory began to flee, abandoning their weapons.
—Screee!
Between the gaps of the breached gate, the Wights disgustingly poured out like hundreds of cockroaches crawling forth.
The narrow gap gradually widened, and the gate eventually collapsed.
“The gate has fallen!”
“Damn it!”
“Who was it! The one who set the gate on fire…!”
The soldiers atop the wall were recoiling in horror when—
The moment one soldier leaned his back against the rampart, his body was pierced straight through.
“……?!”
The soldier looked at the hook-like talon that had burst through his chest. Then he strained with all his might to look at the being that had impaled him.
There stood a Wight, its massive maw gaping wide.
The Wight bit down and swallowed the soldier’s head whole.
“Uwaack?!”
“How did these bastards get up here?!”
Hundreds of Wights continued to hurl themselves against the wall. Some used a leaping comrade as a foothold to jump again, and others used that Wight as a foothold to leap once more.
As this repeated, the Wights themselves became an unintended staircase, scaling their way to the top of the wall.
Most of the soldiers had already fled; only an extreme few remained, weapons in hand, resisting.
They swung swords and wooden spears, but they could not inflict even a scratch, let alone a fatal wound.
If anything, it only stoked the Wights’ cruelty.
The Wights charged and overwhelmed the soldiers.
They bit off throats, severed limbs, and threw soldiers over the wall.
Soldiers bitten by the Wights transformed on the spot due to the Worm Pests.
The dead gradually began to stir, and they snapped their jaws at those who had been their comrades just moments before.
The eight hundred people defending the wall were surrounded by the Wights in an instant and swiftly hunted down.
A battlefield swept by plague.
To the soldiers, the weapons and armor they carried were nothing but burdens.
“Damn it! Weapons are useless!”
“Everyone run!”
“Th-the rear gate! To the territory’s rear gate!”
Not only the soldiers, but the civilians of the territory began to flee as well.
The Wights chased the scattered prey, gradually spreading out.
Loki, who had descended below the wall, picked up a sword dropped by a soldier nearby.
He cleaved the charging Wight’s body in two.
Watching the Wights extinguish in flames, Loki stomped on their vanishing corpses.
They disappeared without even leaving ash.
“Troublesome bastards!”
Behind Loki, Sallot cowered and looked around for something that could serve as a weapon.
All sorts of arms were scattered about, but she couldn’t find one she could wield well. At most, she spotted a bow and arrows and lifted them.
“D-don’t come near!”
Ash too picked up a fallen sword nearby and swung at a Wight.
But his resistance was blocked with pathetic ease.
The sword Ash had swung to cut the Wight’s neck simply lodged in its throat, unable to slice through or be pulled free.
“……!”
—Screeee!
The Wight shrieked at Ash.
It grabbed the blade with its hand and crushed it outright.
Human weapons broke apart far too absurdly easily before the Wight’s overwhelming strength.
Ash’s face hardened in despair as the Wight opened its mouth wide.
As he stepped back, arrows pierced both eyes of the Wight lunging at him.
“……?!”
Ash turned around in surprise and saw Sallot drawing her bowstring not far away.
“Coward. Move aside, quickly!”
Being called a coward by an Ain was humiliating, but now was not the time to worry about such things.
Ash forgot even the dignity of royalty and fell back in an unsightly tumble onto his rear.
The Wight struck by the arrows earlier writhed, pulled out and crushed the arrows, then shook its head this way and that.
Sallot shrank back, seeing the Wight moving perfectly fine despite having its eyes pierced.
“Wh-what are we going to do?”
Refitting her bowstring, Sallot asked Loki anxiously.
“…Who knows.”
A few had scattered, but a considerable number of Wights surrounded them.
No survivors were visible nearby anymore.
The dead devour life and birth more dead.
The Wights, which had numbered around a thousand, had grown rather than diminished, infiltrating every corner of Harma Territory to hunt the scattered, frail lives.
Those with blood are sucked dry, those with flesh are torn and eaten, those with bone are ground and consumed.
Not leaving a single drop of blood, the Wights still seemed unsatisfied, wandering in search of prey like vengeful demons.
Loki looked around, frowning.
Not far from him lay a conspicuous corpse.
‘The general merchant.’
General merchant Yuan.
He was being devoured by a Wight, tears streaming down his face. Whether he had been alive until just moments ago, his face was twisted in agony.
Loki cut down the gluttonously feeding Wight with his sword.
The Wight turned to ash and disappeared; atop Yuan’s dead body, Worm Pests squirmed. Within them, a small piece of paper was visible.
“…….”
A blood-stained letter.
It was the letter Yuan had said he would send to someone not long ago.
Loki picked it up and examined it.
The stained blood made it impossible to know what had become of its contents. The recipient would likely be bewildered.
‘Pitiful. He was quite a kind man… Come to think of it, didn’t he say he had a wife?’
Loki looked around.
The Wights had already completely seized Harma Territory. Unless one was hiding, most would end up as their food and die.
‘She’s probably dead. Truly a shame.’
Then something grabbed Loki’s leg.
It was Yuan, turned into a Wight.
Perhaps not yet infected all the way to his face, his tear-stained expression looked almost as if he were pleading.
As if saying, “It’s not too late!” but Loki felt no particular emotion upon seeing it.
With his usual blank expression, Loki looked down at him. Disgust dwelt in Loki’s eyes.
“That’s that, and this is this.”
Loki raised his foot and crushed the Wight’s head beneath it.
“May you rest well. Regrettably, I’m not so generous as to help others.”
Loki turned his gaze.
Dozens atop the wall and roughly a hundred below surrounded Loki, observing the situation.
“Quite a lot.”
Loki looked at Ash.
His unsightly tumble was brief; before long, Ash clenched his teeth, stood up, and picked up weapons from the ground around him.
Eyes filled with the will to survive by any means and killing intent toward the Wights before him, he glared at the surrounding horde.
“Then shall we clean house properly?”
It was time for Loki too to reveal his true power.
Right behind him, space blurred, and something walked out.
An undead draped in tattered rags.
It was the contact Skeleton Assassin Loki had sent to Aum.
“……?”
As Loki tilted his head at the suddenly appearing skeleton, the skeleton knelt on one knee and bowed its head in a gesture befitting a sovereign. Then it conveyed its intended message through sign language.
“Reporting now? Did Aum send you?”
The skeleton shook its head. Then it began signing again.
“Aum… is coming here?”
Loki started, his mouth snapping shut.
Because he never dreamed Aum Linia would come here.
Sallot, watching from the side, jumped in surprise and distanced herself from the skeleton.
She had seen it in the forest long ago, but only from afar, and never dreamed it was an undead.
As for Ash, he stared at the undead, frozen stiff.
“Un… dead? You Nord bastard! You were a Necromancer?!”
Loki ignored Ash and asked the skeleton.
“When will he arrive? Where is he?”
The skeleton conveyed its meaning again through sign language, and Loki, understanding it, stiffened as the muscles around his mouth twitched.
“…Right… now?”
***
On a hill not far from Harma Territory, a crowd surrounding it could be seen.
Clad in dark brown armor, wielding massive weapons and shields, their heads fashioned from beast skulls, they all looked down upon Harma Territory, fidgeting with their preferred arms.
They could hardly be called an ‘army,’ for they were neither orderly nor in formation; yet they did not look like mere ‘mercenaries’ who moved for petty coin, either.
Fully armed, they smiled beneath their helmets and exhaled ragged breaths.
Their breathing was not labored from heavy weapons or an arduous march.
They were excited.
At the ravenous pleasure of soon being able to slaughter something.
They were the Nord tribe.
Plunderers who trampled and stole the happiness of others!
To them, battle was play, and proof of their existence in this world.
Above all, they were ones who enjoyed hunting beings superior to humans.
“Ooh! It burns gloriously!”
Aum Linia relished the soil of the continent he trod for the first time in a while, gazing upon Harma Territory transformed into hell.
The walls were shattered in places, the gate burned, and atop the gate Wights could be seen tearing into corpses.
Territory civilians who had luckily escaped the walls were caught and eaten alive as quickly as weak herbivores hunted by predators.
“…It is rather terrible, however.”
Kudan frowned.
He too was armored like the Berserker warriors. Over his shoulder hung something massive covered in cloth.
“Well, so what? They aren’t Nord. Then it doesn’t matter much.”
Aum Linia was a man who gave no thought to anyone outside his own clan. Except for Hans, who had become a comrade, he felt nothing even if the continent’s people were annihilated.
“But it’s a problem, no? If left like that, their numbers will surge rapidly… That makes things a bit uncertain.”
“It will be fine. Kan-kun, the Berserkers, and I can at least look after ourselves.”
At Kudan’s words, Aum smacked his lips.
“What about me?”
“Protect yourself.”
“Don’t lump me in with you lot. I’m different from those freaks who laugh off wounds that would kill an ordinary man as if they’d merely cut a finger. The Berserker warriors are my escort unit from the start. If they scatter and fight, I’ll be in danger. Or do I have someone else to protect me?”
Aum turned his head and looked to the side.
There stood a woman wearing armor of blue and white hues.
“What do you think, Priestess?”
The woman, Kan-kun, bit her lower lip at the sight of the burning territory and the fleeing civilians being hunted, then drew her sword.
The white blade, engraved with runic letters, shone as it pointed toward Harma Territory.
“We cannot allow any more victims. Therefore… we must drive out those terrible demons.”
Aum laughed at her firm voice.
“Haha! I asked if you intended to protect me… Seems not at all. By the way, ‘drive them out’? Kudan, your niece is quite bold, drawing her sword to drive away that horde of dreadful plague.”
“She may say that, but… she seems quite eager.”
“Who? Me?”
Aum tilted his head.
He didn’t know what expression he was wearing.
He was wearing a smile with ravenous eyes filled with ecstasy.
Though he cared for nothing but cooking, he too was a Nord.
He could not hide the battlefield thrill rising from his very blood.
“Ah, I won’t deny it. Honestly, I’ve been under a lot of stress. So let’s blow off some steam. So…”
The corners of Aum’s mouth curled up.
“Let’s enjoy this.”
Aum too drew his sword—
“Berserker Warriors. This is your first deployment. The power bestowed upon you by the blessings of the Holy Throne—”
—and aimed it at Harma Territory.
“It is time to show it.”
***
They tear into flesh. They chew. They crush and drink, intoxicated by the sharp pleasure of the bloody, metallic scent on their tongues and at the tips of their noses.
The Wights felt the meaning of their existence by devouring life. Even when full, the Worm Pests within them endlessly consumed mana and hungered to steal life once more.
With only ‘pleasure’ and ‘emptiness’ driving them, they possessed no reason; thus they had become monsters that acted on instinct alone.
It was precisely this nature, this characteristic, that allowed them to reign as beings of terror across the continent.
They had become apex predators surpassing both humans and monsters.
—Ssk? Ssk?
…Even such predators were feeling an unusual sensation now.
The Wights abandoned their prey and turned their heads to look at the approaching strangers.
Humans. Tasty and nutritious… and fresh meat capable of bearing spawn to reproduce.
That was the Wights’ perception of humans. But the ‘Berserker Warriors’ before them gave off a very different feeling.
An extremely ‘alien’ feeling.
A feeling almost like ‘kin’ starving in the same manner as themselves.
The group clad in beast bones muttered as they looked at the Wights.
“Fine prey.”
Berserker Warriors.
Their burning eyes glinted.