"We should go out too."
At Teresa's words, Audin set a hand on her shoulder.
"Not yet, Sister."
"I've recovered to a degree."
Even now, she was constantly radiating divine power and guarding this whole area. If either Audin or Teresa stepped away, all kinds of problems would break out.
The southern army was already stirring, and ghouls, beasts, and monsters were gathering around.
Was it time to go out even if they had to bear that? Should they tell the ones left here to stake their lives and charge straight out there right now?
Audin thought not.
"The barbarian brother, the lost brother, the fairy sister, and the musty sister are still holding up fine."
"But—"
At some point, Pel and Lawford were also at their side. Ingis set a dead Frog down to one side and limped over.
"If it's needed, we'll go."
Luagarne shook her head inwardly. Not a single one of them was in one piece.
They were all close to critically wounded. Audin and Teresa looked the most intact from the outside, but in truth those two were the biggest problem.
Audin and Teresa had been pouring out every bit of divine power they had, pouring it into the holy relics. They had been doing that this whole time.
Would those two even have any divine power left? Would they have enough room to use it freely?
'This isn't a fight you can jump into with only a body and no divine power.'
That was what she thought, but she didn't say it. She herself was full of the intention to rush in with nothing but a whip and a sword if she was needed. So there was no way she could stop them.
Audin looked over everyone and spoke.
"When the time comes, we go then. Not now."
Teresa quietly recited lyrics. It was a hymn of blessing.
If they started getting pushed back, everyone here, including Audin, would throw their lives aside and rush in.
Against an immortal that kept coming back to life, what can mortals do?
Audin knew the answer to that question.
Anything. Somehow.
Was that what Cypress's nickname was?
'Our captain brother is like that too.'
A battlefield of dying and killing—at that moment where only death waited regardless of enemy or ally, he had built a rampart with sheer momentum and made the fight stop. He had killed a demon that tried to swallow a fairy city, and he had even cut down forbidden magic.
The one who had even killed Balrog, the demon of struggle, was up ahead holding a sword and trying to fight. And at his side were people crazy enough to be called madmen as well.
***
Rem didn't expect a perfect rhythm from people meeting for the first time.
Instead, he had watched the knight named Lien fight earlier.
'Close combat. Specialized for fighting a small number.'
His way of fighting was completely different from what you'd put up in Audin's place.
'That bear bastard.'
He's not here when you really need him. Not that Rem was blaming him. If he's not here, then you do it without him, that's all.
And sure, they'd talked about breaking through the Lord of Ten Thousand Wraiths, but it wasn't like they needed the same formation as back then right now, either.
'The enemy's few, too.'
Compared to the Ten Thousand Wraiths, that is. Instead, you could call them the elite of the elite.
At the High Pontiff's gesture, even the knights that Cypress had killed got back up. The number blocking the way was close to fifty.
And on top of that, lightning was striking overhead, and that bastard High Pontiff wasn't going to just stand there and watch.
To Rem's eyes, the mirage clinging to the shoulders of the ones who had died and come back looked like a swarm of bugs. The demon's work.
Whatever it was, what he had to do right now was clear. Open the road. That was all the captain wanted too.
"Lost guy, you in the middle."
"Even if you don't say it, that's what I'm doing."
Ragna was in the center. Rem took the left, and Dunbakel took the right.
"What about me?"
Lien asked. Rem answered without even looking at him.
"We'll spill them out where it's appropriate, and you'll only get the timing for one clean hit. The fairy whose life goal is getting engaged, and you, you pick up what we spill on your own—nice and clean."
"Is that an explanation?"
Lien grumbled, but nodded. Instead of understanding the whole strategy, he grasped one clear thing.
'One hit.'
Meaning that in the middle of fighting, he'd only get the opening for a single punch or a single kick. He couldn't let his focus slip for even a moment.
"That's not even that hard."
The fairy said it with sincerity. She'd already caught on to what Rem was trying to do. They'd spent no small number of years sticking together, shoulders touching, cutting and hacking side by side.
Enkrid would sometimes drag Rem along and push him to build little "small-number tactical formations" and the like.
"Why are you making me do stuff like this?"
"It's fun."
Not just a simple spar, but combining their strength and accomplishing something new. Enkrid was someone who felt interest in that itself. In other words, he was a madman who enjoyed the process itself.
A brief thought that passed through both Rem and Shinar's minds at the same time.
"If you miss, you block it with your body. If you got it, nod."
Rem finished. Lien found it refreshing, the way these people treated him.
"Is it because you don't know who I am? I'm Lien of the Red Cloak."
"I said nod."
Even right before a fight, Rem had a talent for scraping at his allies' insides. Truly, you had to call him a remarkable talent.
Lien didn't bother with trivial things. He would cut open the road his master needed to go down. For that, if it was needed, he'd do anything.
It was for the person who had raised him from childhood and brought him to where he was now. If he had to, he was ready to stake his life.
Had the standoff dragged out? Not really, but with a kwareung— sound, lightning stretched out in strands and drew pure-white lines across the sky. It felt like a gesture urging them to hurry up and come at them and fight.
"Let's go."
Rem's words were fast, and they moved at once, so the fight resumed almost immediately.
'Beast souls.'
Rem called the souls and divided them into his body and his axe. He took in the souls of more than ten ferocious beasts—bear, leopard, wolf, and more—into his whole body. Rem's axe trembled, shivering.
"Did you take medicine?"
Ragna said, running, glancing back.
"Shut up and do your job."
Rem answered with a grin. The one talking, Ragna, was also running with his whole body trembling. He was tearing down the dam he'd built to keep his Will from flowing.
A faint red light gathered in Sunrise. It looked like the heat clinging to the sword had turned into light.
Just seeing the momentum the two up front were giving off made Lien's heart go weak.
'Were you hiding this kind of skill in the middle of all this?'
He hadn't poured out everything he had either, but it was a change that made admiration spill out just from watching.
"Musty, if you get pushed back, I'm leaving you behind."
Rem said it and surged forward. Ragna, in the center, matched his steps.
"Then I just won't get pushed back."
Dunbakel answered.
Kwareung!
As if it had been waiting, lightning crashed down toward the charging Ragna. Ragna's Sunrise struck back at that lightning. At the same time, he detonated Will inside his body. Point Explosion.
Not once, but repeatedly, one after another. The moment he tore the lightning apart, his body snapped forward and vanished.
Red and black lines connected. Ragna ran as a single line, and everything that got caught where he passed was cut, torn, and blown apart.
Would Rem, running beside him, get pushed back?
By wrapping beast souls around his body, his original strength and explosiveness doubled. Like that, he ran at a similar speed just behind Ragna's left.
His axe did something similar to Sunrise. No—something even more.
In the middle of fighting, if he threw the axe, it flew out, burst a faceless knight's skull, and returned to his hand again. A technique wielded through sorcery.
Dunbakel couldn't match their rhythm exactly the same way. Instead, she used the two legs she had that they didn't.
'Hit and come back.'
She kicked off the ground, sprang forward, struck, and sprang back again. If Rem threw his axe, Dunbakel threw her body.
It was something she did by wringing her muscles until it was brutal. In her right hand she held a broken scimitar, and with her left she raised her nails and slashed. The sword-work and claw-work she swung like that was heavy, fast, and concise.
She surged forward like a heavy shell, tore and smashed, and came back again. Calling her a living artillery shell that ran and cut wouldn't be wrong.
Boom, Chop! Thunk! Brrrrr-boom!
In time with their movement, roaring impacts and blasts erupted in succession, loudly shaking the air. The three of them were like high-speed siege engines. The force that could smash a rampart smashed the rampart built out of black iron plates.
Flesh sprayed in their wake, and blood that was turning black as it rose spouted up.
That didn't mean there were no ones that slipped through. Their weapons were swung wide on purpose. Thanks to that, quite a few scattered left and right as they were spilled out.
That was for Lien and Shinar.
Shinar's black sword had already changed into a needle, an awl shape.
She only performed the motions of finding gaps, stabbing, and pulling out. With that, she killed what the ones in front had spilled. Each time she thrust her sword out, the scent of grass spread. She was consuming vitality without holding back.
Lien was the same. He shattered his Will and scattered it across his whole body.
'Compression.'
The fragments were compressed Will. And each time he detonated and consumed the shattered fragments one by one, he became faster than usual and his strength increased.
Among changes in the nature of Will, it was clearly a higher grade—Lien's unique technique called "iron shards."
The shards of broken Will swirled around his whole body. Lien smashed the belly of a minotaur holding an axe handle that was dropping straight down.
Bang!
Will detonated, and the bastard's body detonated with it.
Lien's unique technique was an excellent art, but its limits were clear too. When he killed the bull-headed monster, his insides shook, he retched, and blood rose to his throat. Lien swallowed the blood down.
His master said that if he wanted to use this art perfectly, first his body had to become several times tougher than it was now. Not just the outside, but the inside too.
'I know, but it's not easy.'
Because he knew that wasn't something that happened overnight, all he could do was detonate everything in this moment.
"Hahaha!"
Lien burst into laughter, his mouth still vivid red.
They could see the road the five of them had stormed through and carved open. Since they'd killed everything, only three members of the Faceless Knights were left alive.
Through that opened road, Enkrid and Cypress charged.
A steel whip flew in over their heads, leaving a faint afterimage. Even with a knight's kinetic vision, it looked blurry.
Enkrid and Cypress each swung their weapons overhead. Like a reflection in a mirror, their stances were similar, only the directions opposite.
Enkrid's sword swept up to the upper left, and Cypress swung up to the upper right.
Bang!
The sound came late. Steel fragments slammed down where the two of them had been. The High Pontiff's weapon was a mid-to-long-range weapon, and neither its speed nor its power could be ignored, but there was a gap.
'If you block it, you buy time until the next strike.'
Would Enkrid have seen it and Cypress not?
To fill that gap, he must have planted those bastards that kept coming back to life, right in the middle.
In the opening as the steel fragments swayed, they were just about to press tight to the High Pontiff's side.
The three left behind as guards rushed in.
'Me.'
Enkrid turned his body toward the three. Dawn in his right hand stabbed, and with his left he drew Penna and swung.
In an instant decision, he twisted his body just slightly to the left and kept the attack going.
Brrr-bang!
While he shredded, stabbed, and cut the three, Cypress's resolve struck at the High Pontiff's head.
Thunk!
No—it was blocked by his forearm.
"Stop. Knight of an enemy nation."
The High Pontiff spoke and moved his feet. Cypress pulled resolve back and swung it down, blocking his kick.
Bang!
Compressed air burst, and a shockwave swept the area. In the gap as the two traded blows, Enkrid raised Dawn and thrust.
That sword strike, aiming for a moment's opening, didn't achieve its purpose.
More precisely, Enkrid stopped in mid-charge, flipped his body, and swung his sword.
Crash!
Because the High Pontiff's weapon, the steel fragments, flew in on its own like it was alive and aimed for the back of his head.
He blocked and knocked it away and hopped one step to the side, and Cypress pulled his body out to the other side.
From Enkrid's grip around Dawn, blackened blood dripped, drop by drop. His grip had split a little as he blocked and deflected the steel fragments.
A knight's palm—even protected by Will—and it was still like this. If the steel fragments hit dead-on, of course a skull would get crushed.
"You had something you were relying on."
Cypress said.
"You too. My words of command don't work on you either. Annoying ones. Truly annoying ones."
Muttering, the High Pontiff took a step back, leaving the two knights to either side. In time with that step, the ground under his foot rose.
"Carry it out."
At those words, the dead rose again. It was time for everyone to hold out again.
And in that time, they had to kill the High Pontiff.
—We should give those foolish ones a present.
Behind the High Pontiff, the demon formed out of mirage moved its mouth too.