Count Molsen wasn't a genius in strategy or tactics, but he had a broad mind.
He operated outside the opponent's expectations.
At the very start of the battle, part of the Count's forces broke away from their formation.
In the midst of the fighting, those who broke away appeared to be retreating.
The Kingdom Army Commander decided there was no need to chase them. It was natural to see deserters when the outcome of the battle was tipping, and they were already outnumbered.
If they were going to flee, it was a relief.
In other words, they became soldiers no one cared about.
They grouped up in twos or threes, then scattered, only to regroup again following the orders echoing in their minds.
'Find the source of the magic.'
Naturally, their destination was right in front of Andrew. As he observed the group of soldiers who had become a stealth unit, Andrew calmly opened his mouth.
"Should I catch them? Feels like I should get up."
Despite Andrew's words, Esther didn't move an inch.
Instead, a thin line of blood trickled down from the corner of her mouth.
It was proof that Esther was also fighting.
Andrew let out a deep sigh.
The situation was like dealing with rabid dogs.
The battle beyond the field paused, and suddenly, a group of madmen burst out.
'Where the hell did these bastards come from?'
It was an ambush from an unexpected direction.
'Why here of all places?'
It wasn't where the supplies were, nor was it where Krang was stationed.
From a tactical standpoint, this location was meaningless.
Obviously, it was because of Esther. Andrew managed to deduce that much.
More than fifty infantry. Not a single one of them looked easy to handle.
Fifty ghouls would've been better.
"Master, these bastards' eyes."
A freckled trainee took a step back and spoke. Andrew noticed it too.
Blood vessels seemed to have burst in their eyes, with most of them bleeding down their cheeks. In the rare eyes that weren't bleeding, the whites were barely visible.
Red sclera with pitch-black pupils.
With just the change in their eyes, they no longer looked human.
The intimidation their appearance exuded was no joke. Andrew clenched his teeth tightly.
'Should we retreat?'
Even though they had formed a formation with Esther in the center, there was no point in fighting here. They'd die in vain.
But what about fleeing with Esther?
The blood-eyed men all had their swords lowered, their massive thigh muscles bulging as if ready to burst.
What on earth did they do to make their thighs that thick?
'Running away at full speed seems impossible.'
It felt like even if he ran alone, it would be a close call. Carrying someone and fleeing was out of the question.
Though it was broad daylight, the sky seemed to be growing darker. Despite the battlefield being just ahead, instead of heat, there was a faint chill in the air.
No, earlier he had felt the warmth, but now it suddenly felt cold.
He saw them approaching, without any formation.
There was an old legend about angels who wept tears of blood as they fought, and they resembled something out of that fable.
It was said they were called by the Gods to fight, but they didn't want to kill, so they shed tears of blood as they battled.
Of course, these men were the opposite of that fable.
They were men whose physical abilities had been pushed to the limit by drugs.
"W-w-wizard, r-rip him apart, k-kill him."
A man in the center, who wasn't crying tears of blood, stammered as he spoke.
Though his speech was frustrating, the meaning was clear. Their target was the wizard.
What the hell is the main force doing, letting these bastards through?
Does the Commander even know what's going on over here?
It was a complaint Andrew had every right to feel.
"Master."
One of the trainees called out to him. There was still a rational choice left. If they fled, they could survive. He had no duty to protect a woman like Esther.
"If I can't even protect the person at my back, what can I possibly do?"
He recalled something the Commander had once said. In this moment of crisis, Andrew reflected on the time he first met Encrid and all they had gone through together.
What had he learned from him?
"If I flee, unable to protect a single woman, how can I preserve my honor? If I must survive that way, then today, I'll throw away the Gardner name."
He'd rather die here than run away.
"S-s-s…"
"Why don't you just shut up?"
Andrew cut off the stammering fool's words.
"Let's see you try."
The freckled trainee spoke, indicating the positions of the four others. Andrew stood in the center and swung his sword vertically.
It was a downward strike. A declaration of intent. The enemy detachment, with bloodshot eyes, rushed in, drooling as they charged.
"Raaaaah!"
Their cries were a mix of battle shouts and animalistic roars.
They were as difficult as their appearances suggested. Their slackened swords swung quickly and powerfully, and they stretched their legs and swung their claws.
Were they even human?
It was like a joke—like their mother had mated with a ghoul.
A hybrid of human and ghoul? It made no sense, but here were such monsters before their very eyes.
"You sons of bitches, come and get it!"
Andrew let out a fierce scream. One of his thighs had already been stabbed, and his leg wasn't moving properly, but what did that matter?
It was the moment he had been barely hanging on.
Bang!
Andrew thought a boulder had come flying from somewhere.
Blood flowed through the gash on his scalp, blurring his vision, and the world turned red.
He saw what looked like a heavy chariot charging toward him from one side. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't a chariot, but a person. Swinging a flat mace in their left hand and smashing enemies with a broad sword in their right.
'Red potato.'
Andrew found himself thinking that as he watched the crushed enemy.
He had long reached his limit, and this was help arriving just before he was about to die.
It was the half-blood Giant warrior, Teresa.
Next to her was Dunbachel, who had also arrived. Wielding curved swords in both hands, Dunbachel rampaged like a crazed sorcerer.
The twin blades slashed, stabbed, and bent as they tore through the enemy.
Slaughtering the detached unit mercilessly, they dashed in front of Andrew.
"Hey, you okay?"
"You're looking pretty these days."
Andrew said as he wiped the blood streaming from his eyes.
"I've always been pretty."
"The one over there looks even prettier."
Andrew gestured with his eyes toward the direction over Dunbachel's shoulder.
Teresa's shield and sword moved like a crushing machine. Now was the time to use the word 'ruthless'.
The massive female warrior, with her enormous frame that distorted depth perception, smashed, broke, and pulverized more than ten enemies in an instant.
To anyone watching, it wasn't a sight one would associate with beauty, but Andrew was sincere.
These two had saved his life. He could say anything more in gratitude.
Andrew collapsed to the ground.
Just before Encrid made his move toward the Count, he had sent Dunbachel and Teresa to Esther.
The fact that Esther had sent a spectral form or something similar to deliver a message meant she couldn't come herself.
That was a clear sign of danger.
It wasn't an instinctual conclusion, but a rational one.
That's why Dunbachel and Teresa were sent here.
Of course, Dunbachel, upon seeing the Count, felt a mix of fear and self-loathing from her primal instincts.
Meanwhile, Teresa, realizing her lack of skill, was in a foul mood.
In the midst of such emotions, they had found someone who needed them and had saved him.
Seeing Andrew, the two felt their spirits lift a little.
"Cough!"
Just as Teresa and Dunbachel were about to finish wiping out the ambushing enemy soldiers, Andrew saw Esther coughing up blood.
She briefly opened her eyes.
"Witch?"
Andrew called out to her, but Esther didn't respond and closed her eyes again.
Something was clearly wrong.
Esther, rejecting the magic of the Count who had pushed her away, once again opened her eyes in the shadowy world.
She saw a black soot-like mist spreading from around the Count.
'I was caught.'
To put it plainly, it wasn't so much that she had been outwitted, but rather it was unavoidable.
Her opponent was a well-prepared wizard, and Esther hadn't yet fully recovered her magical power.
Had her own world of spells been intact, she wouldn't have been caught, even knowing it was a trap.
'So what?'
Esther had seen a man who never knew how to give up, and she had learned something from him.
Moreover, Esther was well aware of her own lofty pride.
Her self-esteem, bordering on arrogance, would never allow her to back down like this.
So.
'Did they think I'd retreat?'
It meant she couldn't bear to leave the playing field that the Count—or whatever that wizard bastard was—had set up without flipping the table over.
If it was difficult to win head-on, she just needed to use another method.
'A fallback plan.'
Of course, several conditions had to be met for this.
First and foremost, the source of that black soot—the entity generating the magic—had to be beaten to death or half-killed.
'Enki will handle that.'
A wizard's prediction is a form of foresight. It's a conclusion reached after weighing all the circumstances.
But what Esther said to herself wasn't a prediction.
Nor was it just a wish.
It was faith.
It was trust in the way a person had lived their life up to this point.
Enki was someone who, once he set his mind to something, would do it.
Believing that, Esther began to prepare her fallback plan.
* * *
The Count didn't explode in anger. Throwing a tantrum when things don't go your way is the behavior of a seven-year-old child.
'Can I not handle this problem that has arisen?'
I can handle it.
'Has the plan gone seriously awry?'
Not really.
His cold mind quickly quelled his irritation.
While the prepared magic circle had twisted, this was still enough.
He couldn't swallow up the entire Kingdom in one go, but he could at least end this battlefield.
'But did I ever really need a fully intact Kingdom?'
Didn't he start this because he craved power? As he tried to recall his past self, another voice inside him asked:
'Does it matter?'
The Count answered.
'No.'
Whether it's black or white, a throne is a throne.
Expand your followers. Paint the world in your image.
After muttering those words to himself, the Count began chanting his incantation, based on the prepared magic circle.
In fact, this was a spell that another part of him had been chanting continuously since the start of the battle.
Whether his ambush had failed or not, the wizard who had disrupted his world of spells was still alive. But that was a problem for later.
Right now, the priority was to extract the souls of the ones approaching him.
The Count raised the hand holding his staff.
As he pointed his staff forward, black soot began to spread from its tip.
Though it was already dim, the sky, once lit by the midday sun, grew even darker.
Behind the Count, a thick black cloud, resembling the throne he sat on, began to gather.
It was a cloud so heavy that it seemed ominous just to look at it.
The dim sky blocked out the sunlight.
It was as though everything was being painted black.
"What... what is that?"
One soldier of the Kingdom Army looked up in shock at the strange sight.
The black sky slowly spread and then reached the ground. Part of the soot crept forward and touched the soldier's arm.
It must've been the darkness of the thick clouds, that's what it was. But how could there be shadows when there was no sunlight?
The rational mind explained it that way, but instinct said otherwise.
The soldier tried to shake off the soot that touched his arm, but it spread and soon enveloped his entire body.
"Grrrgh."
Soon, he felt something else crawling inside him.
It wasn't something physical.
-Give me your body.
A ghost invading his mind.
The soldier's eyes glazed over, leaving only the whites, and he began to drool.
The Count, observing the result, smiled and spoke.
"Try handling ten thousand spirits!"
His voice echoed across the battlefield, full of confidence. The layered voice mercilessly shook the minds of ordinary humans.
The soot itself was a spirit that drained life from humans.
The densest parts of the soot reached the five people who were approaching the Count.
Encrid heard a voice muttering to him.
-Give me your body.
Before he could respond, his Will instinctively reacted in rejection. The soot couldn't affect his Will in the slightest. The spirit was repelled by his sheer willpower.
-...Give me your body.
Thump.
-...
The spirit moved away from Encrid.
It approached Rem, but Rem knew how to handle these types of beings.
That didn't mean he wanted to touch such a foul thing. It was like seeing a rotten egg in the heat of summer, you just didn't want to get near it.
Wouldn't a normal person want to hold their nose at such a stench?
So, Rem swung his axe.
Whack.
The spirit's Will scattered along the vertical path of the axe blade.
He still had the power of the soecerer's magic he had taken from the madman, so cutting through a spirit was hardly something to boast about.
Even without the sorcery, he could have managed it with a simple trick.
Ragna, on the other hand, simply ignored the spirit.
The spirit clung to Ragna, but it received no response.
-Give me your body. Can't you hear me? Give me your body.
Ragna consistently ignored it, and the spirit gave up. If it didn't listen, it could at least react, but there was nothing.
No spirit could penetrate Ragna's rock-solid Will.
Jaxon, following slightly behind the group, sensed an approaching spirit and dodged it.
Though the soot seemed to spread everywhere, if you looked and felt closely, there were plenty of places to avoid it.
It wasn't particularly difficult. Even if it couldn't be avoided, it didn't matter much. If things got tricky, he could always use the straw doll artifact or something similar.
Jaxon had several such items prepared, just in case.
Audin, on the other hand, welcomed the spirit. He alone displayed compassion and generosity.
"Come, the Lord awaits you."
How pitiful this soul was. He would embrace it. Not even in death could it rest peacefully.
He felt like shedding tears. In fact, small droplets of dew formed at the corners of his eyes.
Within Audin was a hidden divinity, bound by sacred seals. The spirit eagerly dove into Audin, only to encounter the mass of Divine Power bound by the seals.
It didn't even have time to scream. It simply vanished, sent to be with the Lord.
For the spirit, this was the worst possible death.
There was a reason Divine Power was the natural enemy of undead creatures and wraiths.
Divine energy caused them unimaginable agony.
Of course, Audin knew this well.
"The path to the Lord may be painful, but he says it must be endured."
And so, Audin acted, fully aware of what he was doing—for the spirit's own good.
The Count frowned as he noticed that the five approaching him hadn't slowed down at all.
Moreover, there were others resisting his 'soot spirits' in various places.
The same was true around that Krang fellow, and a few others.
"Arrogant wretches."
The Count muttered as he waved his staff. If he couldn't break their spirits, he'd just tear their bodies apart.
"Let's see you block this."
At his command, the soot rose from beneath the chair where the Count sat, forming bodies.
They were ghost soldiers.
Manifesting spirits into the physical world from his spell realm, the number of them reached ten thousand.
Before Encrid and the Madmen Platoon, a black wave suddenly formed, blocking their path.
Encrid, seeing the ominous wave, didn't hesitate.
Who among them was most adept in this type of battle?
"Rem."
The mad axe master.
"…I'm not thrilled about it."
Rem also saw the approaching horde of spirits and knew they had to break through.
Though he wasn't fond of it, he said what needed to be said.
"Let's form a battle formation."
It was a suggestion to line up for a specific purpose, a concept not typically associated with the Mad Company.
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