24 – Revenge
Tekeloman, the commander of the knights, advanced with a battered body. Although his body was soaked in blood from being slashed by swords, the soldier didn’t care and continued to charge forward.
The knights who had hesitated from behind joined the battle, giving him some respite. Thanks to that, whenever his body stopped moving, he quickly swallowed the potion he had kept in his pocket, or if he didn’t have time, he hastily applied the potion for temporary hemostasis. He fought without rest, but the situation did not improve.
The forces of the Kaorelden Empire. Led by Knight Commander Galard, the core forces were left behind while the front line engaged in attrition warfare. They used traps and magic one after another, leaving no room for mercy.
Whenever he thought he had killed someone who seemed to be a core force, he quickly retreated, received healing from the saint, and went back to fight. While the Kaorelden Empire received support from the saint and fought like zombies even after receiving fatal injuries, the Phebron Empire died on the battlefield immediately if they suffered a fatal blow.
“Damn it… If only we had a saint too.”
Tekeloman, who rarely blamed the gods, couldn’t help but feel frustrated in this irrational fight.
The saint is a being chosen by the goddess’s call. Although the criteria are unknown, when a woman is chosen as a saint, her body becomes filled with divine power. While the Kaorelden Empire produced nearly a thousand saints a year, the Phebron Empire had produced only a dozen or so saints.
It was a situation that made one lament the capriciousness of the goddess Lua Star. Even if it was said that the Kaorelden Empire only assigned defective saints to the battlefield, the presence or absence of a saint made a huge difference. The saint’s divine power could heal wounds that couldn’t be healed with potions. Hundreds of times. No, even dozens of times, the ability to use that miraculous power made a huge difference in firepower.
It is said that the goddess Lua Star is the guardian of balance. But why does she favor the Kaorelden Empire to such an extent? It was nothing but resentment.
“I should have brought that saint to our side back then.”
A saint who lost arms and legs, even her eyes. At the time, it was said that she had no value, so she was not brought along. But that was a lie. The Phebron Empire was struggling with a serious shortage of saints. If they had brought that saint with them, they could have used her for healing and as a useful asset.
“No. I have no regrets about my decision. I cannot stoop to such trash-like actions.”
Tekeloman, the commander of the knights, believed that his choice was never wrong, no matter how much he thought about it.
The soldier had seen the saint, who fell to the ground with severed arms and legs, smiling sadly. He had seen her from a distance as she healed the wounds of her comrades in the knight order. She had sacrificed herself for the knights of the Kaorelden Empire until she collapsed from exhaustion. And in the end, she was discarded and thrown away, losing her arms and legs.
How could one make use of someone who had been betrayed by the person they had dedicated themselves to?
Tekelloman, the commander of the knights, had a determination of his own. Even if he had to go to the battlefield and kill countless enemies to protect it, he vowed not to become a monster.
The reason he wielded his sword was for his wife and child at home. If the Phebron Empire fell, the Emperor of the Kaorelden Empire would begin ruthless exploitation and perhaps even carry out massacres under the pretext of taming. To prevent them from being taken away, he had to fight. But if he became a monster in the process, he would become no different from those wicked demons.
That was the one thing he did not want. He wanted to be a knight, alive or dead.
“Commander! Please retreat! There is no hope here. We will hold them off, so plan for the future.”
“Before my head is severed, there is no turning back.”
Through the tip of Tekelloman’s fingers, his sword cut down countless people. The commander of the Phebron Empire’s knights. Among them, the five knights of the enemy empire fell to the ground in an instant in the hands of a man skilled in swordsmanship.
Tekelloman glanced back. The citizens who had fled had now moved far enough away. The situation no longer required them to fight desperately, but once they had reached the close range, the option of escape was erased.
The wizards in the enemy’s rear were still intact. Even if they turned and ran straight away from here, more than half of them would die from concentrated magical attacks. It was more reasonable to engage in a fight to increase the chances of survival. If luck was on their side and they could win the battle, they would achieve an excellent result.
“Charge, everyone! Don’t stop, charge towards the enemy!”
Bang!
Tekelloman, who was leading the charge at the front, was engulfed in a ominous explosion.
Beep beep beep-
A loud noise rang in his ears. When Tekelloman regained his senses, he saw that the knights were protecting him as he lay fallen. He tried to get up in a hurry. But he fell flat on his face.
The man looked at his arm.
‘Ah…’
His left arm had been completely severed. He tried to stand up by grabbing the ground with his right hand. One of the knights approached him.
“Please stop. Commander, you have done enough. Now entrust us with your back. You are not in a condition to fight anymore.”
Tekelloman roughly pushed the man aside and moved forward. With his limping leg and only one hand left, he raised his sword.
“Die!”
Some of the enemy knights aimed at the weakened Tekelloman, but even with only one arm left, he sliced their throats. His leg staggered, losing balance, but his sword never missed.
One more person must die.
In order to ensure that the knights who followed him and believed in him did not die, Tekello believed that he must personally kill at least one enemy. That was the only thought in Tekello’s mind.
— — —
Walking slowly along the blood-stained road.
Choi Ye-bin looked at the corpses with a twisted expression, unable to respond.
“This… is really cruel.”
While moving to the border area, they passed by a hillside. This place was filled with blood and corpses, presumably after the battle had taken place. The only peculiar thing was that the majority of the knights wearing the emblem of the Phibron Empire were wearing armor, and their bodies were severely mutilated.
Surely it was the victorious knights of the Kaorendon Empire who had done this for venting their anger. Even Ye-bin, who had killed countless people, almost died, and seen countless corpses in the process, had to turn her eyes away. The horrors of the battlefield were self-explanatory.
Ye-bin’s mouth was slightly open, and her eyes grew cold.
“They played with people indiscriminately. You can tell just by looking at the wounds. This is not a battle, but simply a scene where one group overwhelmingly massacred the other.”
The Saint also turned her head and spoke quietly.
“These corpses are the knights of the Phibron Empire.”
She kneeled down for a moment and prayed for them.
After the girl finished her prayer, the orb I had suspended in the air began to tremble wildly in response to the corpses. When I lightly flicked my hand, the blood that had filled the battlefield began to be sucked into the orb. The size of the orb had grown even larger than before.
Witnessing this peculiar sight, Choi Ye-bin asked as she walked.
“Does that magic floating in the sky absorb people?”
“More precisely, it absorbs blood and life force.”
“Then, the mass slaughter magic that was posted on the internet before… is that true?”
From Noble mtl dot com
I nodded my head.
“The mass slaughter magic is not as divine as this. It’s more like a… battery that serves as a means to use mass slaughter magic. Even if I were to use the mana in my body alone, it would be impossible to cast mass slaughter magic on a large scale. Even if I forcibly draw mana from the outside, my body wouldn’t be able to withstand it.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and reminisced about the past. The days when I almost died multiple times trying to develop magic, and the days I suffered in agony. The days when I had to sacrifice countless lives. This power was never obtained lightly.
Now, erasing the distant past, I added briefly, “This is a magic that I almost died trying to use, slaughtering with my bare hands. It absorbs the life force and blood of people from a separate location, storing it, and can create beings like living organisms or tentacles, but its most essential role is energy storage.”
As I raised my hand, the sphere started spinning madly. Soon, sharp blades began to shoot out from the sphere.
“Watch out…!”
As the blades flew, several knights of the Karel Empire lurking nearby fell to the ground. At the same time, their life force was drawn into the sphere.
“It seems there are some people guarding the area.”
Sure enough, as I walked a little further, I heard the sound of a fierce battle.
“Let’s deal with those guys fighting first.”
As I said that and walked forward, Fleamia grabbed my arm. For some reason, she tightly held my hand, trembling in fear. Fear, resentment, and various mixed emotions were reflected in her eyes.
“G… Galad… Galad is there. He’s the one giving orders from behind. And… on the other side, there’s the commander of the Phevron Empire’s knights who saved us.”
Galad, Phevron.
I confirm the faces of the people to kill and the people to save.
Then, I moved my finger and raised the sphere higher. And I patted Fleamia’s head and whispered, “Don’t be afraid. Those guys are not worth your fear.”
A horrifyingly intense red light began to flow out from the sphere, unlike before.