Chapter 40: Oh! My God(5)
40
“Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha-!”
I laughed.
I laughed, forgetting even the situation unfolding before my eyes, forgetting the very existence of my enemies.
Looking over their faces, I laughed once more.
“Are you happy? Yes, of course you are! You, too, have finally found the place where you truly belong!”
Seeing my laughter, another man grew even more arrogant as he spoke to me.
“The Cult Leader ordered us to extract your brain, but our thoughts are different! You are worthy of joining us!”
As the man who said that reached out his hand toward me, the one who had spoken first chimed in to support him.
“Please join us, Young Master Klein! Together, for the resurrection of the great Akimond…!”
“Gr-great? Akimond? Hahahaha?!”
Calling my name, raving about how noble it all was—I laughed again at the sight of those grotesque figures.
“Ha ha, ha ha!? Hahahaha!!!”
I laughed, and laughed, and laughed again.
If I did not laugh, I could not endure it.
If I did not laugh, it was impossible to keep standing here.
‘Right. Why did I ever think things like this wouldn’t exist.’
Thinking back on it, there was nothing strange about it.
A single man who had driven the entire continent to the brink of annihilation.
If that story were distorted, things like these were bound to crawl out.
A religious cult born from adoration of Akimond.
A heretical sect worshipping a man, not a god.
My life, my achievements, my tragedy.
Maggots trying to use those as excuses to fill their own bellies.
It wouldn’t have been strange for at least one of them to appear!
“What is it?”
“Has he gone mad? Why all of a sudden….”
Perhaps my laughter looked grotesque, because the other Necromancers standing behind them began to murmur.
A man who had been looking at me with similar suspicious eyes spoke to me.
“H-has your reason been paralyzed by fear? Or have you been moved by our noble will….”
“Hahahaha?! Moved, yes! I was moved! You crazy bastards! Hahahahaha-!”
What did that maggot just say?
Ah, I didn’t know.
It was too funny—so absurdly funny that I couldn’t even tell what he was saying.
“Ha ha…. Hahaha…!”
I had laughed so much that my breath was now catching in my throat.
If their goal had been my life, then they were clearly trying to make me laugh myself to death.
Otherwise—
Otherwise, there was no way they could spout such nonsense about being my successors, my followers, with faces like that!
“…….”
“……….”
The thunderous cheers lost their strength, buried beneath my laughter.
The man’s face, filled with ecstasy, and the faces of the others who had echoed his fervor—
All of them lost their vigor under my endless mad laughter and gradually fell silent.
“Ha……!”
After barely stopping my laughter, I raised my head and let out a dry breath.
It was miserable.
Utterly, thoroughly miserable.
The hero who had plunged a sword into my heart, even if he fell, left behind upright people.
People who, though perhaps stifling, lacked nothing to be called the hero’s descendants.
But in contrast—what was this sorry state of what I had left behind?
“So in the end, I confirm it again like this.”
I lamented, sighed, and grieved.
I had risen to release the resentment of the northerners who died to the plague.
I had devoted that paltry life entirely to informing the whole world of those who died ignored.
And the result was this—those things standing before my eyes.
Without even understanding my lament.
Without even trying to learn why I swept across the continent.
Blinded only by the power and results that appeared back then, maggots scheming only to line their own guts…!
“What a twisted resentment leaves behind is, in the end, nothing but this kind of filth.”
What my life left behind was, in the end, only this.
The end of a miserable avenger scattered nothing but the same kind of trash across the world.
So how could I not laugh?
How could I not sneer?
When the ones I loathed so deeply—the ignorant fools—were born from none other than my own life.
“Th-that….”
“T-those….”
The ones standing before me could not say anything.
I did not allow them to.
Until my laughter stopped, until my expression stopped, until my emotions stopped.
The Necromancers facing me… no, the ignorant fools merely pretending to be Necromancers would not be able to utter a single word.
Kuuuuuuu…!
The dense demonic energy I had been exuding ever since I appeared before them.
The black power that summoned the dead, borrowed their resentment, and mediated between the world of the living and the dead.
In this life, I had never released demonic energy this dense.
“How many more are there?”
The Voice of the Dead flowed out through my vocal cords.
A chilling voice that shook the souls of the living.
Startled, the man answered me without even realizing it.
“O-of course, our comrades are spread across the entire continent! If we just seize the wall in this attack…!”
“Shut up.”
With that single short word, the man’s mouth closed.
“Ghk…?!”
The source of necromancy was demonic energy.
In battles between Necromancers, the most important thing was precisely the density of this demonic energy.
And the demonic energy of those standing before me was so paltry it could not even be called demonic energy.
It was utterly impossible for them to encroach upon the presence I was releasing.
“I didn’t ask for your introductions. I asked for the number of your Order spread across the continent, their locations, their organizational structure. That kind of information.”
At my words, the man who had taken a step back clenched his teeth.
“H-h-how arrogant, Young Master! Do you think we’d give that up so easily?”
“Is that so? Then fine.”
Kuuuu-!
My demonic energy flooded the underground passage and tightened around their hearts.
“I’ll just hear it from your comrades beyond the wall.”
Clear hostility.
Sensing it, the ignorant fools all at once assumed combat stances.
Krrrrrrrr…!
From the distance, the undead began to reveal themselves one by one.
They were patchwork abominations stitched together from the corpses of wild animals and monsters.
“I regret it. If someone like you, who lived as a Necromancer among filthy nobles, could only understand our great cause…!”
At the very moment the man standing at the forefront said that—
Puhk-!
Unable to endure it any longer, I buried an arrow into the crown of his head.
“Uh……?”
Without even letting out a proper death scream, the man’s body sprawled across the tunnel floor.
“Damn it, since when?!”
“Everyone, prepare for battle! Capture Young Master Klein!”
While they panicked at the unexpected ambush, I opened my mouth while controlling the demonic energy I had spread throughout the cave.
[Bruni, answer. Judge those who have profaned the souls of the living.]
I imbued my will into the demonic energy and activated the summoning circle.
Soon, thirty Skeletons revealed themselves.
Unlike before, they were a new type reinforced with heavy armor.
Charrarrak!
The front line was equipped with massive war shields and short gladii.
The rear line consisted of long spears and archers.
From between the wall of Skeletons that had formed their ranks in perfect unison, a knight clad in black armor emerged.
“How can Skeletons have equipment like that?”
“And that…. Isn’t that a Death Knight?!”
Voices of agitation rang out from all around.
Even so, perhaps refusing to be cowed, the numerous undead they had brought bared their teeth and threatened me.
‘At most, ten undead per person…. Even compared to the Empire’s bastards, they’re a cut below.’
I didn’t know whether the entire organization was this pathetic, or whether they had sent out their underlings as expendable shields.
Honestly, I didn’t really want to know.
"I won’t kill you nicely, but still, consider yourselves fortunate."
Facing them, I spoke as if declaring war.
"Because I’ll make the head who sent you beg to be killed."
In fact, one Imperial Necromancer had already ended up that way.
Adding that remark, I stretched out my hand toward them.
“Advance.”
At my brief command, the Skeleton legion surged forward in unison.
Thud-! Thud-! Thud-!
Startled by the footsteps of the Skeletons moving like a single body, they flinched, but soon a few ignorant fools regained their composure.
“Do you think it’s winnable just because the terrain is narrow?”
“Utterly insolent. Attack!”
Their patchwork abominations also charged toward the shield wall.
Kraaahhh-!
“Kiieeeek-!”
In that moment when the roars of the dead mixed with the shrieks of monsters—
Tukwang-!
Shadow-covered weapons and masses of flesh collided, scattering blood and chunks of meat in all directions.
Kraaahhh!
The war shields enveloping the front line blocked their heavy bodies, while the long spears lined up in the rear pierced through them all at once.
Hududududuk-!
At the Necromancers who had sent out their close servants, volleys of arrows rained down from time to time.
“Kraaak?!”
“Damn it, release the rest! Kill the caster!”
When two or three comrades turned into corpses, perhaps finally sensing danger, dozens more zombies emerged.
“Krrrrrrrr…!”
This time, they were zombies made from people rather than animals or monsters.
Some of them were wearing the armor of sentries who guarded the wall.
Kwachik! Kwachik!
The long spears, moving with mechanical regularity, pierced through the bodies of the monsters at the front.
A few undead broke past the shield wall and rushed toward me, but blocking them was the Death Knight, Hector’s role.
Chwaak-!
When the knight’s sword cleaved through a zombie’s body, the severed surface burned away before it could even regenerate.
Chiiiik-!
“Damn it, there’s no opening…!”
“What the hell, necromancy could do things like this?!”
Some cried out in shock, others were frozen in terror.
The necromancy I was using was the necromancy of Akimond they so desperately longed for.
It demonstrated power on an entirely different level from the things cobbled together with half-baked knowledge.
Kwachik!
Three spears pierced into the head of the largest monster at the front simultaneously.
Their greatest fighting force, with the faces of a bear and a tiger stitched together.
Even so, it was impossible for that to break the cohesion of this undead legion.
“Ah, ahh…!”
When the final patchwork abomination fell, fear finally became clear in their eyes.
“Zombies! Send the zombies charging! Hurry!”
Yet even then, a few who grasped the situation barked orders at the zombies standing throughout the area.
“Kiieek?!”
But that, too, was only for a moment.
“W-what?”
When the zombies didn’t move despite the command, their voices grew urgent.
“W-what are you doing! Hurry and attack! You’re zombies I created…!”
“They’re also zombies made with my knowledge.”
When I answered in place of their frantic voices, one of them went silent before looking at me and speaking.
“‘My knowledge’…. Don’t tell me…?”
Of course, I had no intention of responding to that guess.
[I request it, so answer.]
While the Skeletons and Death Knight were cleaning them up, I was drawing a spell formation on the floor.
Kiieeeek-!
What I completed that way was a contract circle.
The targets of the contract were the souls trapped within the dead flesh of the zombies.
[I sever the chains that bound you and grant rest to your souls.]
I cut apart the contracts their creators had forcibly imposed with my demonic energy, and overlaid a new contract in their place.
[Grant due recompense to those who cast you into the abyss!]
At the same moment the incantation ended, countless runes were added to the contract circle.
The names of the dead who had answered the contract.
By inscribing the name of the guide, Klein Leinrant, at its center, the contract was finalized.
Pachit!
With a short cracking sound, the zombies’ bodies trembled.
My Voice of the Dead revived the zombies’ will.
“Krrr…?!”
The undead, having regained their original wills, looked at those who had reduced them to this state.
Not the forcibly imposed savagery of beasts, but unmistakable killing intent was directed at them.
“Uh, uh…?”
“W-wait, just now…! The control over the undead…?”
Even now, did they still not understand what was happening?
Before the former casters, eyes wide open, could say anything more—
“Kraaaaaah-!!!”
The cries of zombies, filled with resentment and hatred, flooded the underground passage.
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