Whoosh!

The flame wave slammed into the corpse army.

"KRAAAAAH!"

The corpse army went up in pointless fire.

Even Whitebone Knights forged from countless skeletons clinging together, and Whitebone trumpeters who blew their horns to strengthen nearby skeletons—before flames that rose higher than ten meters, they were nothing but moths to a fire.

A fearlessness army sprinted toward destruction without fear.

But there is no eternal flame.

Like thousands of corpses filling a sea, the mass of the skeleton army smothered the unquenchable blaze as it pressed forward.

"Frey!"

"Yeah!"

"Follow Kyrie!"

That was when I kicked the reins.

With the Blue Knights, I charged toward the flame wave that was about to collapse.

Dududududu!

"Battle formation!"

"Neural acceleration, physical reinforcement, Bio-radar, weapon lightning imbuement!"

The Blue Knights repeated my words back and completed House Astreos’s battle posture.

"Hah!"

We checked our reins in front of the flame wave.

Our warhorses leapt over the heads of skeletons thrashing in the fire.

The flame wave had shrunk a lot, too—warhorses of a great house could clear it easily.

After that, all we did was display the skill we’d honed.

"O thunder’s roar!"

"We do not seek eternal life, but a life that will be remembered forever!"

"Glory to the name of House Astreos!"

"Behold me!"

"Follow Kyrie!"

"Victory, honor, fame!"

Thunk!

I drove my cavalry lance through the spine of a skeleton soldier with three heads and six arms.

Bzzzt!

With multicolored Discharge, I tore off every head and arm from a centipede-shaped Whitebone Knight bristling with countless heads and arms.

Dududududu!

We trampled past an abomination that was nothing but bone.

Slash!

With Bio-radar, I saw and dodged the blades the skeleton soldiers swung.

"Hiiiii!"

A skeleton soldier’s blade stabbed toward a warhorse’s leg.

I stamped Thunderstep and sprang several meters up, then came down while spreading a “halo,” butchering dozens of skeletons in one drop.

Even so, they were still skeletons—enemies with no will, no name, no honor.

"Hamos is pinned down!"

"Keep going!"

An enemy too cheap to spend Blue Knights on—Blue Knights that cost gold equal to their weight every time you trained one.

It made me sick.

It was meaningless.

It was inefficient.

So if I was going to stake my one and only life on this kind of bullshit, I had to give it meaning.

I looked at the future I could seize from this victory.

Proof of mutated manbeasts, a foothold to climb the rock, the Elixir of Starlight, ties to other houses, preparations to become Emperor, preparations to save my soul!

"KRAAAAAH!"

The Whitebone Lord—the King With a Hundred Legs—lifted its head even as it took Andromeda’s lightning over and over.

Its four-split maw was almost completely charred.

Just as I relaxed, assured it wouldn’t be able to shout anything with that mouth—

"Huh?"

["■■■, ■■■!"]

From inside the four-split maw, a double-chin like a moray eel burst out.

That double-chin yawned wide and hurled a black roar.

Ah, ahhh, ahhhhh, ahhhhhh!

Boiling black foam, black-and-white tentacles, scattering feathers, and transparently shining crystals—

all of it became sound and matter at the same time, ravaging our ears, our eyes, our brains.

Clang!

Still at a gallop, I tumbled across the ground.

Fucking hell.

I blacked out for an instant.

"...Kiri-kiri!"

Frey’s shout drifted to me from far away.

A skeleton with a vicious aura opened its maw and lunged toward my face.

Inside that gaping jaw were so many teeth it was hard to believe they belonged to any human-shaped thing.

A never-before-seen pitch-black force clung to its hands and jaw, and black feathers sprouted from its wing bones.

Why something like that was even attached to it, I couldn’t know—and didn’t want to know.

Crunch!

I thrust out my gauntleted hand and blocked it.

Crack!

The engravings carved into the absurdly expensive armor Traysan had used—“Impact Sharing” and “Impact Reflection”—flared and shattered the skeleton’s jawbone.

Another skeleton was biting my shin guard, and a zombie stretched an arm toward my neck, its limb transformed into a bone whip.

To hell with mana efficiency—I called lightning.

Flash!

Lightning dropped from a clear sky, and dozens of skeletons burned.

"Hhk—hhk!"

"Are you okay?"

"Y-yeah!"

I hauled Frey up and swept the area with Bio-radar.

"Damn it."

The Blue Knights were mostly fine, but the situation wasn’t.

Even inside this gorge alone, at least three thousand corpses still remained.

There were hundreds of high-grade entities like Whitebone Knights.

["-----!"]

["---, ---!"]

["-! -! -! -!"]

Maybe because of the Mental Shockwave just now, black feathers were sprouting all over them as they raved—one look was enough to tell they’d grown much stronger.

And the skeleton army that had just exited the gorge was advancing toward Flammerios’s twins.

The Red Knights met them with burning swords, but their movements were far slower than the Blue Knights’.

Why?

The answer came quickly.

Fire arts were efficient on a large battlefield, but they had no self-buff like the lightning arts’ “physical reinforcement.”

They also couldn’t sheath themselves in an exoskeleton like the Rikenta Navigators’ “Wind King Armor.”

"This can’t be happening."

In raw physical ability, they were no different from ordinary knights.

I looked deeper into the gorge.

Flash!

The King With a Hundred Legs was still raging even as it got hammered by lightning.

On its back were four wings made of absurdly long, light-swallowing, pitch-black feathers.

It looked like some kind of waterside insect.

["-----!"]

The King With a Hundred Legs spread its wings and roared like a hell-ghost.

It tried to lift off into the sky.

We couldn’t allow that.

"...We have to bring it down. Us."

Through Bio-radar, I checked Andromeda’s face, and Vicher’s, and Vichera’s.

All three were staring this way, expressions hardened.

To prevent another Mental Shockwave, Andromeda had to keep sealing the maw with lightning.

Vicher and Vichera had to block the gorge entrance with flame waves so Andromeda wouldn’t be interrupted.

"We have to bring it down. If we just bring it down, we can cut and stab it!"

If we just brought it down, a blade would reach it.

In fact, it could be even better—since it was stepping out from the place where it was layered in protection by the Whitebone Knights.

"How?"

Frey asked.

"Disarm the ones using metal weapons and bring them to me. And guard me. Ten minutes is enough—until that thing drops."

Nod, nod.

The Blue Knights around me exchanged looks.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if they told me to go die alone and ran.

["--, ---!"]

The Whitebone Knights were starting to stop raving and look this way again.

Every one of them armed with black feathers and blackened living blades, their faces even more vicious.

Ten minutes against hundreds of Whitebone Knights like that.

It was a long time.

"Guess I’m finally getting out of unemployment."

At my demand, Frey gave a smile far too mature for her youthful face.

"Kiri-kiri. I swear to the constellations—so long as you don’t leave this gorge, this peerless, transcendent, genius pretty-boy Blue Knight will protect you no matter what."

She raised her greatsword and drew a circle around us.

"Blue Knight Astrot answers Kyrie’s command."

"Blue Knight Python answers Kyrie’s command."

The Blue Knights followed Frey and raised their swords in salute.

As always—people I couldn’t understand.

I stood among them and drew the Thunderclap Greatsword.

["---, ---!"]

The King With a Hundred Legs beat its four huge feather-wings and rose into the air.

Whooooo!

Wind pressure like a typhoon rocked our bodies.

But the hand that aimed the Thunderclap Greatsword didn’t shake.

Thoom!

I threw the Thunderclap Greatsword at its wing.

Its wings spanned hundreds of meters, but with an insect-like structure, the joint where wing met body wasn’t that wide.

One Thunderclap Greatsword, dozens of daggers, and whatever weapons the Blue Knights brought me would be enough to turn the base into mush.

It still wasn’t time to pull out the electromagnetic cannon.

KRAAAASH!

The Thunderclap Greatsword, flying at three times the speed of sound, tore violently into the joint of its first wing.

Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Thoom!

Without even watching, I fired Magnetic Railshot after Magnetic Railshot.

The moment I gripped a dagger, I generated repulsion and launched it.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

Each dagger drove into the root of the black feather-wing, steadily separating wing from body.

I threw every last dagger.

"Kyrie!"

"Our lead!"

"Here!"

The Blue Knights handed me weapons the skeletons had been using.

Pickaxes, swords, spearheads, arrows with metal shafts, axes—everything.

Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Thoom!

I fired whatever I could grab, and fired again, and again.

A hundred weapons surged into the wings of the Whitebone Lord—the King With a Hundred Legs.

A chance to saddle them with a political debt.

Erica looked down over the battlefield and smiled faintly.

Kyrie and Flammerios’s plan was excellent.

It was just that a legendary monster witnessed for centuries had, of all things, mutated this year and gained new organs and the power of Mental Shockwave.

Now there are only two options.

Erica didn’t think a variable like this would annihilate an expedition assembled from the top elites of both houses.

Even Kyrie and the Blue Knights could retreat without difficulty right now.

Either return to the city, regroup, and come back—or ask me for help.

They could extend a hand to Erica.

If I can use Flight, I can rise straight into that high sky and tear its wings with the Grip of Destruction.

Even just generating a headwind or a downdraft to disrupt its glide would be enough to force it back to the ground.

"Your Highness."

"Is that really the only way?"

Andromeda and the twins were already watching her side, too.

"I don’t want to drag Rikenta into this. And it’s not even proper Rikenta, is it?"

"But brother—sometimes the fact that there are no other options can itself become the basis for a choice."

Kyrie chose neither.

He chose a third way—one even Erica hadn’t predicted.

Fight to the end.

"Hah—Aaaaaah!"

Screeee! Screeee! Screeee!

Countless Magnetic Railshots split the sky and soared upward.

How is he that skilled?

Wing joints snapped and tore.

Shaaah!

Black fluid poured down like rain.

It was a savage assault as if he’d done it tens of thousands of times—so ingrained it had become bodily instinct.

He learned it less than a month ago! Why go that far—?

Erica knew it couldn’t be effortless.

A nosebleed was already running from one side of Kyrie’s nose.

Around both eyes, the blotchy red marks distinctive of neural overheating were blooming thickly.

Even the Blue Knights around him weren’t in a situation they could hold for long.

"Why does it have so many legs!"

Whitebone Knights—bodies literally made of a hundred corpses—rammed into the Blue Knights.

Even before lightning arts, the mass difference was crushing.

Boom!

A gigantic spike that was about to spear Kyrie’s back from behind—Frey smashed it with her greatsword and snapped it aside.

"Holy shit! That was close. Kiri-kiri! Trust me! No—don’t trust me!"

Erica knew Kyrie was a master of Bio-radar.

She wondered whether he had trusted Frey—or whether he’d been confident he could dodge on his own.

Did he trust her?

Then, suddenly, she realized.

Did he have to trust her?

Kyrie didn’t trust Frey.

He didn’t have the confidence to dodge at the last instant, either.

And he hadn’t forced this operation to reduce civilian casualties.

That hunger was aimed solely at himself.

It was the light of House Astreos—seeking a life vivid enough to leave scars on the world.

So that’s what it was?

It wasn’t about honor or merits.

There was a reason Kyrie, Andromeda, and Flammerios’s twins had to kill that monster.

She didn’t know what ambition it was, exactly.

So Erica reviewed the past.

By keeping her alive, Kyrie had gained a pretext to interfere in Rikenta’s internal affairs.

Now, fighting beside Flammerios’s twins—she didn’t know what he meant to gain from it, but at minimum, it was bound to be that large a goal.

War—!?

Bzzzzzt!

Kyrie “imbued” lightning into the rusty sword in his hand until it glowed white-hot.

The overheated blade shot upward faster than sound.

Magnetic Railshot, lightning imbuement.

Bzzzzzt!

The white-hot blade became a streak of light and pierced the pitch-black wing.

The Whitebone Lord that had ruled the wasteland with a hundred legs rose into the sky—and in less than five minutes, crashed back down to the ground.

That was way too fucking close.

I let out a deep breath as I looked at the King With a Hundred Legs, smashed down after the fall, hammered by flame and lightning, and finally silent.

If it had reached Andromeda, it would have been blasphemy.

I agonized over what I could possibly say to bear the weight of this recklessness.

Only after I pushed my mind into high-speed thought until I cried tears of blood did an answer come.

This was material that would have come up once in this joint grand subjugation anyway.

I’d pull it forward instead.

"Do you know what the Elixir of Starlight is?"

I walked up to the twins of the flame great house.

Chapter 144

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