Chapter 81 - Eighty-One ... The Death Knight

Chapter 81: Chapter Eighty-One ... The Death Knight

Chapter Eighty-One ... The Death Knight

The undead seemed to respond to this.

The undead let out a great howl into the air. One of them, an undead knight who seemed to be their leader, came forward with a rattle and drew his sword.

It was plainly an order to charge.

In that case, Jan had no intention of being outdone.

"Charge!"

"For the faith!"

"The faith wills it! Let’s go!"

"Purify them!"

"Raaaaah!"

In an instant, the silent forest became a battlefield. The living and the dead were locked together in a fierce fight for their lives. Steel rang against bone, and the air filled with shouts and the stench of the grave.

Of course, at a time like this, Jan could hardly stay at the back.

The undead knight he had seen earlier.

He was plainly the strongest of them. He had even been giving orders like a commander, so if Jan cut him down, the undead would probably fall apart.

"Hah!"

Jan charged at the undead knight.

Undead clung to him here and there along the way, but they couldn’t slow him down. He tore through them like a boar through dry reeds.

Every time his longsword swung, shields and armor alike were simply smashed to pieces.

’Hm?’

In the thick of the fighting, a thought suddenly struck him.

’Aren’t these things already dead?’

The undead were the dead, moved by resentment and the power of mystery.

In that case, even if he cut them down like this, it seemed unlikely they would die the way ordinary men did.

Sure enough.

Looking around, he saw the undead that had fallen to his sword slowly fitting their flesh and bones back together and rising again.

’Hm... Just as I thought. Then a blunt weapon?’

In the old soldiers’ tales, the dead only stopped rising once they had been smashed so thoroughly that there was nothing left to mend.

Jan looked around, searching for anything he could use as a club.

Then he remembered the siege of Sevn.

’I used my longsword like a club back then, didn’t I?’

Jan turned his longsword around and gripped it by the blade.

As it happened, the undead knight who seemed to be their commander was right in front of him.

The undead knight was pouring out its hatred for the living.

Jan, in turn, swung his longsword, now a club, with all his strength and all his loathing for the dead.

The blow landed like a thunderclap.

The living almost never had to fight the dead. So they had little idea how to fight and win against those who had come back from death.

That was why Agphiel was worried.

"This is bad! Without preparation, there’s no sending the undead back where they came from."

They were entirely different from ghouls, which were twisted things born from corpses. People mistook even ghouls for undead, but...

’These are the true undead.’

Those who had truly been raised from death, granted resentment and mystery. They had no soul and no reason, but they could use the weapon skills and knowledge they’d had in life, and their strength was magnified by the blessing of a dark mystery.

But there was something even more frightening.

’Without preparation, they can’t be killed! This is bad.’

To destroy the undead, one needed consecrated holy water, or weapons laid with mystery, or to smash them to pieces and burn every one in fire.

And they had prepared none of those things.

"Ugh. This young noble certainly knows how to work an old man."

Grumbling, Agphiel hurried to draw up his mystery.

He was, after all, the Great Sage of the Forest.

He too had a blessing of mystery that could drive off the undead.

A cool, bluish light gathered in Agphiel’s hand, then shot upward and burst like a shower of sparks.

It fell on the soldiers around them one by one and began to envelop them.

"Ohhh! I suddenly feel stronger!"

"What’s this?"

"Calm down! It’s the forest’s blessing. Attack the undead with this blessing on you, and they’ll fall!"

Agphiel shouted at the bewildered soldiers, then immediately had a few of them start a fire.

"Burn the undead you’ve cut down in this fire."

"Yes, master mage."

"Thank you!"

With the soldiers steadied this way, all that was left was the young noble.

But that lord had apparently lost his mind, because he was running wild at the very front of the line.

"Look at him! At times like this he’s just like some hot-blooded knight!"

Clicking his tongue, Agphiel hurried toward Jan. A lord who didn’t know the nature of the undead would surely be in danger.

Sure enough.

In an instant, Jan was surrounded again by the undead who had risen once more.

"Look out!"

Agphiel hurriedly swung his staff to cast a spell.

The wooden shield he had used in the battle against the Pexi.

But just as the magic was about to leave his staff...

With a terrible sound, the undead around Jan were crushed all at once.

Smashed to a bloody pulp.

Every one of them lay slammed into the ground, only twitching.

Agphiel stopped short.

He blinked in shock, wondering whether he had seen wrong, but nothing changed.

"Huh..."

But this was no time to stand there in shock. The undead in front of the young lord now was different from all the rest.

The young lord must have sensed its presence too, and that was why he had pushed to the front.

That undead was a Death Knight.

An extremely powerful being, born when wicked mystery and resentment had built up for a hundred years.

A destructive undead that could never be defeated without mystery! Even if the others had somehow been dealt with, the young lord would never be able to handle that one.

He would certainly need the help of a mage.

So Agphiel shouted more loudly than he ever had before, determined somehow to keep the lord he had grown so fond of from coming to harm.

"Lupton! You mustn’t fight that thing head-on! To defeat it, you need a powerful mystery...!"

But then...

There was a chilling sound of air being torn apart...

With a roar like a giant pounding on a castle wall, the Death Knight crumbled away like grains of sand.

Agphiel’s jaw dropped.

Quite literally, like grains of sand.

The Death Knight’s hard body had gone who knew where, scattered into dust and blowing away on the air.

Seeing it, Agphiel was so shocked that he couldn’t help crying out.

"Heavens above. Not content with an ogre, has that Ruler made him into a true monster now?"