151. Play with clay
The two captains, one disappeared, the other dead. But still the war was not over.
No matter how rampant we may be, there is a limit to the impact a single sword can have on the battlefield. Well, of course I’m no ordinary swordsman.
[Crunch Crunch Crunch]
Even at this moment, the darkness spread widely across the battlefield, and the ghosts crouching in it were eating away the blood and flesh of the monsters. But that ends here.
There is no point in just eating something. The important thing is how much I can digest the things I greedily swallowed.
The darkness scattered everywhere returns to me again. Like a salmon returning to its hometown through a waterfall, the pitch-black battlefield was being sucked into me.
The black tidal wave overflows, the ghosts who are not allowed freedom because they are swept away by the violent and capricious tide, and the grumblings of the monsters who died in this war flow into my unconsciousness and make waves.
[How long have you died?]
[I don’t know.]
The number of souls far exceeds the number of monsters we have slain. No wonder. War doesn’t just happen in one place. Countless people would have died even where our eyes can’t reach.
But the war was now coming to an end. The darkness that covered my eyes was lifted, and the horrors of countless corpses were revealed. The commander who was supposed to comfort the shaking ones was also absent.
Fear spread as quickly as madness. Not the beloved of God, who live beneath the walls of the city. Monsters who lived in the same forest and fought together. The smell of higher predators that ate their mothers and tore apart their siblings.
What remained in the place where the cause collapsed was a pristine ecosystem.
[How many kills?]
“Hundreds, about.”
The war is over. However, the battle was still going on. Meaning and purpose. The monsters who lost all of that bit each other regardless of the gathering place, and ran away avoiding their teeth.
Still more than a third, almost half of the monsters survived. However, looking at the indiscriminate food chain, I was convinced. Monster waves won’t happen.
I don’t call it an army simply because there are a lot of them. It was never easy for those who had nourished their bodies with each other and meat to join forces again.
Well, we won anyway. Even if it wasn’t a common victory, it would be nice to toast to the fact that the goal was achieved.
“Ugh, I’ve been itching all along, but I can’t even fight!”
“Sorry, next time, let’s play together.”
“Chi, okay.”
If any of us weren’t satisfied with the results, it was Choco. He was excluded from the fight in the first place because he feared that he would not be able to control himself and use his divine power while fighting.
Well, it also means that it was a leisurely fight that made it possible to lay down the two greatest weapons of faith and the pure-blooded prisoner. Oh, but it might have been pretty tricky if the bicorn had attacked properly.
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Anyway, that’s all in the past. After briefly escaping from the battlefield and sighing, Cream rose again. The holy sword emitted a mysterious mental wave at the tense body, as if it was about to turn into a battlefield at any moment.
[Isn’t the monster wave stopped with this?]
[No, I said it at the beginning.]
In place of the holy sword, I answered while staring at the deadly silent muffin in Choco’s arms.
[I’ll let you meet me so you can see for yourself whether it’s the eternal demon king or not.]
[·······.]
And like many Jangsaeng species, there was no elder lich with an obsession close to ruin for life. According to what he said, this place is probably the closest to the base.
This rendezvous is only the base of the monster wave, and its real base is probably different. Still, it wasn’t without clues.
[Besides, from what he said earlier, it seems that there is an assembly point elsewhere… After all, shouldn’t he catch the culprit?]
Nearly 10,000 units of monsters’ movement. There is no way these two are all gathering places. If we don’t use any number like this, even if the scale is reduced, the wave will inevitably happen.
Otherwise, I am armed with a burning sense of justice and mission. It is completely unacceptable to my concept of justice that heinous monsters attack poor grasshoppers.
[So what is the real purpose?]
[There are many treasures of Dragon Road that I covet.]
[Ugh. I knew it.]
The Holy Sword responded by not expecting it at all. This is a bit heartbreaking… On the other hand, Choco, who is excited about a new hunt, pointed out a surprisingly sharp part.
“So, how are you going to chase him?”
[That’s really simple. If you use the altar…]
“You mean that?”
Wait, what happened to that altar? I followed Choco’s fingers and turned my gaze to the flagship. That’s right, Cerberus came out carrying the altar and dropped it.
And then, while chasing the priest who fell with me, I completely forgot about it… The altar, which escaped everyone’s attention, was left in the middle of the battlefield.
Amidst the slow-moving world, a cyclops was seen focusing light into the optic nerves of its eyes. It was aiming at another monster in front, but there was an altar placed in the path.
[No, no!]
At the same time as I let out a scream, a flash of light exploded from that eyeball.
*
As a result, the altar was unharmed. And it wasn’t even safe. Cream, who quickly rushed into the battlefield and took the altar, looked down at the altar with a frown.
First of all, although we don’t know exactly what kind of power it possesses, the altar was not harmed even when it was hit by the Cyclops’ destruction beam. However, even considering the unusual durability of the altar, the time it was on the battlefield was too long.
“I can use this, right?”
[That’s right…]
It’s the core of the altar that escaped. Even if you use the black jewel extracted from the forehead of the bicorn, the pillars and symbols are all crushed like this.
Rolling all over the place, getting hit by the kicks of the monsters… No matter how I looked at it, it didn’t look like it would work.
“You didn’t have any thoughts other than this, did you?”
[No, that’s not the case.]
I turned my head shyly at Choco’s sharp gaze. Actually, I didn’t have any thoughts… Ah!
[Don’t you remember? There is also an altar at our gathering point.]
“You want to go there?”
I shrank under Choco’s scornful gaze. Yeah, it was overkill.
Anyone of the level of the Elder Lich would have had at least a few ‘eyes’, so he would be able to grasp the situation outside before long. So, before that, we must locate the Elder Lich.
Because it would be a headache if he ran away. According to the original plan, I was planning to call the elder lich’s spirit body to the altar and trace the base of the elder lich through him.
If I had known this would be the case, I would have tried to detect Hargath the first time I encountered him. Honestly, when we first met, I had no idea, so I missed such a great opportunity.
“Once is enough?”
[Huh?]
It was at that moment that Cream, who had been quietly listening to our conversation, placed her hand on the altar.
Since it was quite far from the monsters, I had no intention of stopping Cream even if he used his divine power. However, the shape of the ice formed at her fingertips made me agitated.
The spreading frost covers the altar, and then the pale cold air gathers and rises. Icicles rise sharply and spread widely from the edge. Countless irregularities follow a certain regularity.
[This is…?]
The darkness that originally formed the altar. The broken and shaved parts are filled with hardened ice to form a certain shape. An altar of soul fire made of half stone and half ice.
It was a more elaborate shape than the one at our assembly point. Cream, looking at it as if appraising the work she had made, soon inserted a jewel into the groove made of ice.
No, of course, it’s surprising that the exterior was perfectly reproduced, but the internal structure is rather important for such a shamanistic structure. It can’t work in such an unstable form…
[Hmm? What’s going on?]
·······Is there?
No, does this make sense? Just once, even from afar, you can figure out the structure and working principle of the altar and repair it? And that by using divine power, a power different from witchcraft?
Is this realistically possible? As much as I had an understanding of witchcraft in my own way, what she did came as a shocker to me.
[No, wait. This unpleasant aura… How did you call me?]
Oops, Hargath seems to have figured out the anomaly quickly since we called him and didn’t say anything. The skull of purple flames that bloomed on the ice of divine power crackled nervously.
I succeeded in temporarily implementing magic, but there was a limit to soldering. The purple heat melted the ice and cracked the black rocks.
Soon, the altar collapsed as quickly as it was built.
[You are… □□□.]
With nothing to sustain my existence, Hargath’s cerebral body went out like a candle. Before disappearing, the skeleton’s hollow eye sockets glared at us.
But I snorted lightly. It was clear that those ghastly gazes were wary but not fearful. As long as he didn’t run away, it didn’t matter anyway.
[Found it.]
It’ll be faster for us to find him than for him to act.