༺ Evil Fate ༻
My senses, honed through countless battles, instinctively warned me.
Whoever that approaching being was, they were certainly not friendly.
I quietly drew my spear, Ajetus. And, raising it above my shoulder, I assumed the stance to throw it.
The moment the intruder revealed himself around the corner, without any hesitation, I threw my spear with all my might.
“Oh-“
Pffuk!
Before the intruder could utter a word, his head exploded instantly.
Blood and cerebrospinal fluid streamed from between his white skull, revealing his vivid crimson brain.
But even in that state, the intruder did not fall. His slackened lower jaw was trembling in a way that could be mistaken for rigor mortis, but I saw it differently.
He was trying to speak by moving his jaw. That too, with a shattered head.
Realizing that he could not speak with a shattered head, the intruder quietly raised his hand.
And then a mouth was formed in the split palm.
The mouth on his palm moved grotesquely and spoke in an eerie voice.
“You still start by throwing your spear without even waiting, even after all this time. What if I had been a civilian?”
As I automatically retrieved Ajetus, I aimed at him with the tip of my spear and replied.
“You speak well for a body that reeks of rotten flesh.”
The lack of breathing that I didn’t feel since I heard footsteps, the nearly ceased heartbeat, and a body state that was practically a walking corpse.
Rather than going to the trouble of explaining what I felt, I opened my mouth slowly with a voice full of conviction.
“…So it was you I saw that day.”
The root cause that drove the Iona kingdom to ruin.
The necromancer known by the alias of the Immortal King.
The commander of the demon king’s army, who governed an army that could not die.
The Immortal Corps Commander chuckled through the mouth on his palm and replied.
“That’s rather something I should say. I was trying to check who had killed my Death Knight, and when I see this familiar face, I was quite taken aback. What on earth could your business be here, huh? You know-”
What flew in reply was an endless flurry of strikes.
Soon, the finely chopped corpse rolled on the floor.
Yet, from one of the chopped parts, another mouth emerged and the Immortal Corps Commander continued speaking. His voice was full of annoyance.
“I am speaking here! Please, stop interrupting! Don’t you have anything to say after such a long reunion?”
I deeply thrust my spear into that mouth.
“Never give a mage any opening. I learned that well thanks to you.”
“One day of teaching makes a master, but is this how you repay your gratitude?”
Mouths sprouted from every part of the chopped corpse, and a mad voice echoed from all around.
An even more irritating figure than before I had last seen him. His survival skill was nothing short of a cockroach.
Ignoring worthless words at once, I swung Ajetus, launching strikes wherever the sound came from.
Squelch!
A red trail drew a circle around me, and the chopped corpse was torn apart by numerous strikes, leaving only a handful of blood behind.
All around, it became quiet.
However, the silence was broken by a single demon suddenly summoned into the void. A familiar sight from the battlefield, a demon with large eyes and wings.
[You brutal being. He was once a living human, don’t you feel any pity?]
“You killed him, not me.”
The body that the Immortal Corps Commander had possessed was, though swiftly dismembered, dressed in adventurer’s clothing underneath the black robe.
It was probably the ranger, the owner of the diary. Regrettably, from the moment his body was taken by the Immortal Corps Commander, it was already too late to save him.
The summoned demon mimicked its master’s tone and laughed mischievously.
[Hehe, well, you could say that. But aren’t you curious? How I, who was torn in half and died by you that day, have survived until now.]
“No.”
I already roughly knew why.
It was a figure I’d killed dozens of times with my own hands. It endlessly came back to life, repeating the cycle of being killed again and resurrecting.
That day, I thought I had killed his real body for the last time. But it seems that even that was not enough.
It doesn’t matter. Now that I know he’s still alive.
My right shoulder blurred for a moment, and the spear, flying like an arrow, pierced through the demon’s eyeball.
“Hide wherever you are and wait. I will come to kill you again.”
The demon, impaled by Ajetus, lost its strength and fell to the floor. It hadn’t been sent back; it had actually been killed by the power of Ajetus, which could cut through physical forms.
With the death of the summoned demon, the surroundings finally became quiet.
…It seems there are no more cards to play.
I put Ajetus back into the void only after confirming that there were no signs, no magic energies detected.
And the moment I looked around, I could see that the blood that had suddenly covered the floor formed certain phrases.
“……”
It was a very profound phrase.
It would have been good to have a little more conversation and extract information from any other opponent, but that was not possible with the Immortal Corps Commander.
He was a mad mage full of madness. He behaved in ways that ordinary people couldn’t understand, and it was a big mistake to think that communication was possible just because he could speak.
I could have dug up information about Ella, but if my purpose had been known, the situation could have unnecessarily become more dangerous.
Finding out Ella’s whereabouts through the Immortal Corps Commander would only be possible when there were no other means, at the moment when I had him completely subdued.
Before leaving this place, I checked the remaining contents of the diary I had been reading.
The contents were as roughly expected. The adventurer had returned to Shubaltsheim without even knowing how he had escaped from that hell, and suddenly he was holding a red gem in his hand.
From the moment he obtained the gem, a voice filled with madness echoed in his head, and when he regained his senses, he was committing terrible acts and gradually losing himself. The diary’s entries, in which the writing gradually crumpled and weakened, suddenly stopped at some point.
He probably lost his ego from this point and was completely physically seized by the Immortal Corps Commander.
During the last war, the Immortal Corps Commander created many avatars using corpses, but the original body was just an ordinary elf who had only accepted dark magic. And I definitely killed that original body with my own hands.
The red gem was something that had suddenly appeared, something I had never seen at that time. Did it have something to do with the Immortal Corps Commander’s resurrection now?
But when I dismembered the Immortal Corps Commander a little while ago, I didn’t see the red gem anywhere. I didn’t see anything like a gem in this workshop either.
Had it been moved somewhere after the resurrection was complete?
“……”
It seemed that everything I could find out here had been discovered.
For the people outside desperately looking for their families, it wouldn’t be right to leave these victims here indefinitely.
I took care of each of the women’s bodies one by one. Their appearances, marred by gruesome torture, were hard to bear, but for the sake of those who would have to identify their family’s bodies, I tidied up their corpses as neatly as possible.
That was the only thing I could do for them at that moment.
After exiting the sewer, I informed a passing adventurer of the situation. And before a crowd gathered, I immediately left the scene.
I had already experienced more than enough of the screams left by those who were left behind.
***
Time passed swiftly after that.
The city folk were still preparing for battle, while simultaneously awaiting the arrival of rescue at some point.
But the news that came wasn’t good.
Over the past few days, the sudden downpour had continued for a long time. The delay in repair work due to the weather was nothing compared to the news that soon came.
The Imperial Army headed for Shubaltsheim had been hindered by the weather. It was reported that carpenters, reinforcing a bridge that had been broken due to a sudden rise in the level of a river and rapids, had an accident.
Naturally, with the weather like this, it was impossible to launch boats.
The delay in the arrival of the rescue team demoralized the city. It goes without saying that the students and even the adventurers who had been through everything were affected.
Without Instructor Lirya’s active care, I would have been unable to properly handle the Garnet Red students falling into a panic.
In any case, I left the defense of the city to the adventurers, and the students to Instructor Lirya and other instructors. And what was I doing?
I was slaughtering the undead outside the city.
Swoosh!
It had already been three days since I had been swinging my spear from morning till night without rest.
So far, the number of undead I killed directly by my own hand had roughly exceeded 100,000.
With that, I had almost combed through the entire southern region of Karia, the capital of Ionia.
Having explored the surroundings with dark mana in places where others wouldn’t notice, I found no trace of Ella in this area. Nor were there traces of the undead corps .
“Damn…”
Where on earth was she?
I had already checked the city of Wangseong, and all that was left was the capital area of Karia. But it was physically impossible to go around an entire kingdom’s capital filled with buildings in just a few days.
No, I shouldn’t be impatient. The situation wasn’t good, but it wasn’t the worst either.
The city was still holding up, and despite some delay, we were in a situation where we could hope for external support.
How many cities had been annihilated without any hope of support during the invasion of the Demon Army during the war? Compared to that, the current situation was nothing.
‘I need to rest in a safe place for a while and resume searching.’
It had already been three days since I had been wandering around, fighting with the undead, without eating, drinking, or even sleeping.
It was about time to take a break.
In this land filled with undead, one cannot rest just anywhere. Therefore, I had already scoped out suitable places to rest.
If it were the Ionia Royal Palace, I had thoroughly explored it on the first day, so the number of undead would be low and there would be enough space to rest.
“Grrrrr!”
“Kieeeeek!”
Swoosh!!
After sweeping away all the undead swarming from various places in the city, no matter how long it had been since the last cleanup, I entered the Ionia Royal Palace.
Once upon a time, the Ionia Royal Palace, which would have shone the most beautifully and brilliantly in the capital, Karia, lost its light after being invaded by unwanted undead guests.
Bloodstains painted here and there on the walls, collapsed statues and dried-out gardens, shattered glass windows and cold stone walls… the palace’s interior still vividly showed traces of its rapid downfall.
But the building itself was still sturdy. It was relatively clean compared to other buildings that had been neglected for the past 15 years after being swept away by the undead.
Since there were no more owners of the palace, there was no need to seek permission from anyone. Therefore, I entered a fairly clean room that I had previously scoped out.
This room, whose previous occupant was unknown, was in the best condition even within the palace filled with rotting corpses and stench.
I could probably catch some sleep in here. Of course, I couldn’t afford to sleep too deeply.
In the midst of this, something I hadn’t noticed when I searched this room before caught my eye.
It was a large portrait that had fallen to the floor. Whether it had been hanging on the wall and fallen due to a shock, it was facing down, covered in dust.
For some reason, that portrait nagged at me.
I flipped the dust-covered portrait over to check its front side.
“……”
A girl with beautiful blonde hair and green eyes, so much so that I momentarily mistook her for Ella.
Only then did I realize.
Who the owner of this room was.
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