The Black Demon King 479
Chapter 25: Days of Lies
The White Devil
“Huh!? Huuuuuuh? Where’s the other oneeeee!?”
Mashram yelled with a tone of voice so ridiculous that it was very hard not to make fun of it.
“Ur is not here anymore! Shut your mouth and give up, you mushroom head! Go away!!”
The habit-wearing little Sister yelled back at Marsham with such a force that it raged like a whirlwind inside the small storage shed.
Her short hair seemed to be vividly shining like gold. Her puppy-like big and round eyes were dyed in bright crimson, like a pair of actual rubies, with the hazy glow of a jewel.
Her blond hair and white skin were almost the same as that of the people of Sinclair, but her fiery red eyes gave a strong impression that could make anyone doubt what their own eyes were seeing. Her red eyes were the most remarkable feature of the people of Barbados, who were also known as “the northern barbarians”.
For the people of the northern areas of Sinclair, the red-eyed Barbados warriors were a more horrifying symbol of horror than even monsters, but the Sister standing in front of Mashram felt even less threatening than a yapping small puppy.
“Eeeh, so she’s called Ur-chan? What a cute name! I wanna gently whisper it in her ear… Ur-chaaan… Ur-chaaan… Heeh, heeheehee!”
“Don’t call her name like that, you pervert!”
“Eheee, sorry, you’re very cute too. Won’t you tell me your name?”
“Fuck you! Why would I tell Reki’s name to someone like you!?
“Hehe, so it’s Reki-chan. What a strange name, as if it was from a different race? But it’s still very cute, heeheehee…”
“Shit!!”
The girl held her head and screamed in regret of her own habit to refer to herself by her first name.
However, even sooner than pulling herself together, she seemed to have remembered the situation she was thrown into. Her small hands reached a rusty shovel that was leaning against the wall, and held it bravely as if it was a spear.
“I won’t let you get anywhere near Ur! Graaaah!!”
“Eh, what are you going to do with that? That looks dangerous…”
Though Reki was giving Marsham the worst glare possible, a wicked smile was floating on his face as he kept on looking at her with the same lustful eyes of a beast.
The habit, which completely covered the girl’s entire body from the neck to the ankles, were made so that they could hide the natural physical appeal of women. And even so, Mashram’s eyes were set in one particular part of Reki’s body.
Her chest. Despite her garments, something was definitely bulging there.
As unbelievable as it was, there was enough mass there to push even the habit’s thick cloth. And she wasn’t even older than 15 years old.
Mashram was swallowing his own saliva as if he had been just served the most delicious meal.
“Hee, hee, hee… If you play nice, I’ll treat you right… So… Hee, hee… Let’s do it?”
Reki’s red eyes showed no fear or panic. Only disgust.
“U-Ugaaahh!”
Still, she showed she was willing to resist. She started to swing the rusty shovel menacingly.
“Hmmm, well, if you’re going to get feisty, you leave me no choice… Hiyaah!”
The very moment she thought that Mashram’s voice had come out way too high-pitched, the shaft of the rusty shovel that Reki was holding was cut in half.
Mashram’s hand was holding a beautiful saber with a Mithril blade, with delicate silverwork and small emeralds engraved onto its handle.
Considering the aristocratic environment in which he must have been trained by a talented sword master since he was a child, his talent in swordsmanship was probably below the average.
However, this sword, which was already a Mithril blade, also had a Lightweight enchantment and an Elemental Boost that further enhanced the magical aptitude of the Wind Attribute that the Bergunt clan was so proud of. It allowed its wielder to slash at a speed that was unnoticeable by common eyes.
“Hiyaaaaahhh!!”
Then, following her distraction after having her only weapon cut in half, Mashram’s silver-clad toes dug themselves into Reki’s abdomen.
“Gaaaahhhh!”
Reki’s body rolls on the wooden floor covered by snow and mud, letting loose a heartbreaking cry.
“Hiyaah! Hiyaah! Hiiiiyaaaaaaaahh!!”
Mashram trampled on the fallen Reki while yelling with that same strange tone of voice. Her body turned over after being repeatedly hit by Mashram’s merciless kicks.
“Haah, haah… Whoops, did I go too far? Sorry, as you can see, I’m quite the sadist, so once I get it going, I can’t stop…”
Mashram’s breathing was getting all worked up by repeatedly kicking the body of a child, but it was enough for Reki to lose any power to resist it she could have had. After all, he was a grown man and she was a young girl. Their strengths could not be compared.
“Ugh, uhhh…”
Even so, though her groans of pain would escape her mouth from time to time, Reki didn’t cry, as if to show her willingness to resist.
However, no matter how hard she cried, Mashram wasn’t going to stop doing what he was doing any time soon.
“I’m in a bit of a hurry, so let’s get this started already.”
With a heavy breathing that showed a hint of fatigue as well as excitement, Mashram turned his saber towards Reki’s chest.
The sharp tip of the blade cut through the dark blue cloth without any sound the moment it got caught in the monastic habit.
“Ooh, look at that!”
Her pure white skin could be clearly seen through the vertical cut in the habit, right in the middle of the chest. Her lustrous, tender skin revealed a profuse cleavage that had once been hidden by the habit.
Marsham’s green eyes were completely focused on this new discovery. One didn’t have to be as depraved as Mashram to find it difficult to look away. The sight of a young Sister exposing her big breasts was too lascivious.
From that point on, Mashram didn’t say another word. He just stared at Reki’s exposed body– until a violent sound echoed somewhere.
The door of the shed that was right behind them had suddenly been busted open.
“Hey! Can’t you see I’m busy here!?”
With his enjoyment now disturbed, Mashram’s excitement quickly shifted into rage as he turned around so rapidly that he almost dropped his saber as he tried to menacingly point it at whoever was responsible.
The tip of the extended saber was pointing at a single man that was standing there.
“W-Who are you…?”
He wasn’t anyone Mashram knew.
But a mere glance was enough for him to understand. This was a very dangerous man. The moment he saw this man, Mashram’s body was already trembling.
Mashram was too inexperienced to realize that this thing the man exuded was the intent to kill.
“H-H-Hey… You, who… what…”
The man was silent and staring straight at him. His eyes –one of them black, the other one red– were so sharp that Mashram couldn’t muster the courage to look him in the eyes.
Still, it seemed that the man was observing the situation here. Namely, the situation where a fully armed man was standing over a girl with a torn habit around her chest as she lay in the middle of a storage shed.
“A-Answer me! Hey, heeeeyyyy, do you know who I am!? I’m Mashram Joshua Helvetia Bergun– guooooh!?”
Suddenly, he was being grabbed by the chin.
The man had been about three steps away from him, but the next moment, he was right in front of him. He had gotten past his extended saber and right within close-combat range.
He didn’t even see him coming. But the fact that he was being grabbed by the chin was even more frightening to Mashram than that.
“Die, you scum.”
That was the only thing the man whispered coldly. It was enough for Mashram to understand.
“Ah, wait, hey, wait, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, my bad, I’ll leave–”
While Mashram was hurriedly and fearfully trying to apologize, the man that had grabbed hold of his chin began to drag him out of the shed.
“—!?”
Reki was taken aback by the sight of this red-eyed man taking Mashram out of the shed with such ease.
As if she had just awoken from a terrible nightmare, she couldn’t believe the fact that that horrible man had been just dragged away like that.
“H-Hey, heeey, w-wait, wait, stop, please, stop! I get it, I’ll leave! I’ll leave this village alone, I won’t do anything bad here! So please, pleeeeeeeeeeaaaassssssseeeeaaaargghhhh…”
However, Mashram’s sorrowful cries, which could be clearly heard from the other side of the shed’s thin wall, were dreadfully real.
What was that man doing to Mashram? The thought of it caused Reki to shiver.
“I-It huuuurts… Stop… It hurts… Stop… Stop, you’re tearing me apart… Agh!”
Then came a loud thud, and Mashram’s voice wasn’t heard anymore.
Then the other man came back. Alone. There was no Mashram with him, or probably even in this world, anymore.
“Are you hurt?”
The man had a frightening face and dreadfully sharp eyes, and a rugged expression. How many children could answer honestly to such a question when being asked that by someone like that?
Reki felt this man’s gaze all over her body, but unlike Mashram, he didn’t give off any unpleasant feelings. His eyes showed less emotion than those of a doctor during a medical examination.
The man seemed to realize that though her abdomen was throbbing in pain because of Mashram’s kick, it actually hadn’t left a very big trauma. He appeared to have immediately determined that it was not a life-threatening wound.
“Stay in here for a while. It might still be dangerous outside.”
Reki couldn’t reply, but at least managed to nod.
“Good girl.”
At that moment, the man turned away in order to leave. From his feet, something black, like elongated strings, or ropes -no, tentacles. Dozens of winding tentacles suddenly spewed out at his feet.
“Whoaa!? Holy shit!”
Feeling a sense of danger, Reki shrieked in fear, but soon realized that none of those tentacles were aimed at her.
Those tentacles began to wriggle all over the storage shed, quickly grabbing hold of any tools that came in contact with them.
Hatchets for chopping wood, big axes and saws for cutting down trees, pickaxes for breaking ice in winter, and so on. All of them were things with metallic edges. In other words, tools that could become deadly weapons.
One by one, the tools caught by the tentacles seemed to be dyed in black in the blink of an eye, like some kind of optical illusion.
Only when the man was already crossing the door outside with several blackened tools on him did Reki’s voice finally come out.
“U-Um, thank you very much!”
The man reflexively stopped halfway through the door.
As he turned back towards Reki, he looked a bit surprised, but soon smiled.
“Wait here. I’ll go help the village.”
Then the man left like the wind.
“…S-So cool…”
That whisper hadn’t come out of Reki’s mouth.
“Waah!? Ur!”
When Reki quickly turned around, there was no one in that shed beside her. And yet, a figure gradually became clear.
From the corner of the shed, white smoke suddenly began to rise as if a fire had been lit. Then, from the other side of the smoke, a girl appeared.
She was a brown-skinned girl with long, wavy silver hair arranged in cute twin tails. This was, of course, the Ibraham Sister that Mashram was also looking for.
“Ur” was a nickname. Her real name was Ursula.
“It’s still dangerous, stay hidden!”
“It’s okay.”
In contrast with Reki’s constant and nervous alternation between facial expressions, Ursula murmured that with a face that barely changed at all.
“B-But—”
“I’m sorry… If I had used my power earlier, you wouldn’t have had to go through that horrible experience…”
“Oh no, Reki is fine. After all, Reki is the older sister!”
“Older by only one year, though.”
“But I’m still your big sister, and I worry about you!”
The two began to laugh with each other as usual, rejoicing at the fact that they were safe.
Then, following that man’s advice, the two of them hid in a corner of the shed.
In the silence, they could hear the faint echo of screams coming from the village
“Hey, Ur… I wonder who that man was. Reki has never seen anyone with such eyes.”
“Me either, but…”
Ursula closed her eyes as if recalling what had just happened. Then she made a clear statement.
“I’m sure God has sent us a savior.”
“Help the village… Huh.”
What was I thinking when I said that? I hadn’t even gotten inside the colony to begin with.
I had come here to pillage this place for supplies, and found that it was already being pillaged by someone else. It was like a bad comedy sketch.
“Oh well, whatever.”
I had already killed two people here. I couldn’t undo that, and I had no intention to.
I couldn’t forgive scum like that. My own conscience wouldn’t allow it.
The fact that I had just ripped off that mushroom-faced man’s head with my bare hands was proof enough that I couldn’t control myself.
Breaking his neck would have been enough, but my hands swelled with anger, and when that red spark flashed in my hand, I had already pulled his head out of his neck. The worst part of it was when that man’s spinal cord came out of his body along with his head.
More than that, the reason why my power increased so much for a moment with that red light, even though I didn’t activate my first blessing “Overdrive”, was because I couldn’t control the blessing. Or maybe it was some kind of mechanism that automatically activated in response to my emotions. Or maybe it was how this blessing was after being mastered. After all, this “Overdrive” was the blessing I used most frequently.
Anyway, it was hard to say that my magical power was in perfect condition. It would be better to get rid of the Crusaders attacking the village without resorting to my blessings, as they would take a heavy toll on my body.
Rather than fighting them in a fit of rage, I had to kill them coldly and calmly.
“…There they are.”
This wasn’t a large village. I reached the center square after a quick sprint.
I was running in the middle of the road leading to the central square without even trying to hide. No one would care about an unfamiliar face in this state of chaos. The villagers who were inside their houses were hiding while holding their breaths, while those outdoors were running for their lives.
Running against the flow of fleeing people, I jumped right into the middle of this chaos.
“Bullet Arts”
What I saw was the central square of the village, which was completely different from what I remembered. If I hadn’t known that this place had once been Ils Village, I would have sworn this was a completely different place.
A white church now stood where the Adventurer’s Guild once had been, lined along wooden buildings that seemed to have been built only recently. Other than the church, I had no idea what those buildings were for… But for now, knowing that the people encamping in the middle of the square were Crusader soldiers.
My first target were the mounted soldiers that stood watch in the middle of the square. I counted a total of six of them.
Their equipment was a little more luxurious and had more armor parts than that used by regular infantry, but well, that wouldn’t be a problem.
“A Full Burst won’t do here…”
However, magical bullets wouldn’t be the right choice here. There were villagers in the way.
They had caught several young women and even girls in the middle of the square. They were all almost naked, but looking at the wine barrels they had taken out as well, the soldiers seemed to be only starting to enjoy themselves.
I thought it was crazy to get this merry while outside in the middle of winter, but these guys no longer surprised me.
I didn’t know why this Crusader force was attacking such a small colony, but judging by the fact that they had occupied the square and the way they had left their horses, I could only guess that they would leave the colony soon.
By the look of how they were just doing whatever they wanted, this could be the security forces Sariel mentioned, coming here to do their rounds. Perhaps this was a small unit that had voluntarily strayed away from the main corps. And since the Crusaders lost in Galahad, it was also reasonable to think that they were a unit that fled to this colony…
But at any rate, the problem wasn’t their motive for coming here, but how to get rid of them.
As long as there were innocent villagers nearby, the risk of hitting someone with a stray bullet made me reluctant to use magic bullets. I was confident that I could pick each and every soldier off with a headshot by shooting at them one at a time, but if possible, I wanted to kill them all in one go. I didn’t want to give them any time to take hostages.
When it came to dealing with several enemies at the same time, I had only one available option at the time.
“Sword Arts”
I shot six of the tools I borrowed from the shed earlier toward each target. Even though they were shovels and saws instead of swords, the magical power that made them float inconspicuously right behind my targets’ backs had the same effect as usual, flying as smoothly as a servant bird.
“Hmm? What’s going on— Gaah!?”
They immediately noticed me sprinting in the middle of the road, since I had no intention to hide myself. However, the black blades I unleashed quickly reached their targets.
A glowing shovel pierced the soldier’s face deeply before he could ask who was there or what was going on. He had a cup of wine in his right hand while stroking the delicate bare shoulders of a girl who was trembling with fear.
It had been such a humorous death, but then the soldier immediately turned over on the spot and became just a regular corpse, together with the by-now familiar sight of a bright red pond of blood spreading over the snowy ground.
Then the other five quickly followed a similar fate. The only difference was whether the blade that dug itself into each of their faces was an ax, a hatchet, or a sickle.
All of them were absorbed into satisfying their desire for alcohol and women, so none of them managed to react to my attack in time. At the very least, it would have been nice to see at least one of them try to reach for his sword.
“K-Kyaaaaah!!”
As I finally arrived at the central square, the women, who didn’t have a single scratch thanks to the Sword Arts’ precise control of the enchanted weapons, screamed energetically, which proved their safety.
I wasn’t sure whether their cries were for the sudden death of the soldiers, or the horror of witnessing me killing six people in a blink of an eye. Still, before I could even say anything, they quickly ran away from the square and scattered like baby spiders.
They did well to run away so quickly.
Now, everyone who could have been taken hostage was finally out of the way.
I had only found six soldiers in the square, but looking at the number of horses, there should have been more. As I began to wonder where the hell could their friends be…
“Hey, what’s with all that noise!?”
“What’s up with those guys? Can’t they even keep watch without falling from their horses?”
…They saved me the trouble of looking for them.
A dozen soldiers wearing similar equipment to the six I had just killed showed up, joined by five Armor Knights, clad in thick silver-white heavy armor, just like the ones I fought against in both the Alsace and Galahad wars.
A total of twenty or so platoons came from across the street, pulling a carriage full of goods, probably to supply their troops.
“Uwaah! What the hell? They’re all dead!?”
“Hey, you, over there! Did you do this, you bastard!?”
That was an understandable reaction considering the scene they found when they arrived.
The corpses were still sprawled out on the floor, and the criminal was standing proudly in the middle of the scene. Of course, I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Who the hell are you!? Hey! Say something!”
“Tell us right now if you were the one who did this or not, you bastard!”
Were these guys stupid? Their friends were dead. An armed suspicious man was standing right in the middle of the scene of the crime. The situation was clear.
In other words, our fight had already started.
“Burst open, Blast Blade.”
Every blackened weapon other than the ones I still had on me, that is, the weapons that were still floating under the control of Sword Arts, were put into my first strike. As if to respond to my call, red strains of light emerged in every direction on the surface of each of the tools that had once been completely black.
A total of ten tools, including the ones used to kill those six soldiers earlier, turned into bombs and were thrown into the group of soldiers.
“Gwaaaahh!”
The “Blast Blade”, which covered the distance between me and the soldiers at about the same speed as an arrow, caused a big explosion the moment it landed on the ground.
No matter how tough their armors were, without the help of a shield, there was no avoiding being blown away by this attack. Those who had nothing but their infantry equipment had their bodies not blown away as a whole, but instead, their limbs and heads would end up flying in all directions.
The red and black flames came and went away in the blink of an eye, and I could see some of the soldiers’ limbs, lit like torches, flying apart from their bodies. One of the soldiers failed to block the blast so miserably that all of his limbs and even his head had been blown away, leaving only his torso lying on the ground.
Not even the Armor Knights, which were considered to be the elite among the Crusader soldiers, had managed to withstand my attack. I had to be thankful that they were rather weak from my perspective.
For the time being, there were only five Armor Knights left. They weren’t so many that I would need to use my blessings. If possible, I wanted to finish them off before the smoke cleared out.
By the time I had decided that, I had already broken into a dash towards the remaining knights. Regardless of the method I’d choose to deal with them, it would involve close-ranged combat.
With a big, lumberjack-like heavy ax in my right hand, and a pickaxe big enough to be used in a mine in my left hand, I ran in a straight line, closing the gap with the knights. My target was the closest one among the Armor Knights that had managed to withstand my “Blast Blade”.
I didn’t know if he was aware that I was approaching from the other side of his tower shield. He didn’t even move his weapon, the halberd, as I closed in, perhaps due to poor visibility, or even because he had been too focused into his defense to come up with a counterattack.
Whatever the case, I was easily able to get on top of my target.
Even with this poor weaponry, I was aiming to cut the knight in half as if he was nothing but a lump of steel.
So before anything else, I had to jump.The landing point would be his bucket-like helmet. It was the same way I had gone through the Armor Knights at the front lines in order to get to Linfelt.
“Waah!?”
He seemed to be surprised that such an unexpected weight had fallen on his head, but he was still a heavy Armor Knight. He remained standing firmly without being crushed underfoot.
I succeeded in landing safely without my foothold collapsing, and used my momentum to bring down the pickaxe. The cutting edge swung down in an arc like a pendulum, piercing the Armor Knight’s throat.
Though the throat is one of the weaker spots of the human body, it was covered by a single piece of armor that was actually rather thin due to the armor’s structure. Still, it would have been hard to aim for the knight’s throat with a slash of a sword, but my overhead attack had left the weak spot ripe for the taking. In this situation, even a blackened pickaxe would be enough to do the job. I didn’t need a cursed weapon to do it.
The jet-black cutting edge pierced the metal plate that protected the weak points in one go, breaking through the chainmail that was worn under it, and piercing the soft human throat.
“Haa, gaah… guh…”
His throat crushed, the Armor Knight’s body fell to the ground, unable to make any other sound than that of his desperate and rough attempts to breathe. Right before he actually fell, I jumped again leaving the pickaxe stuck in his throat.
After kicking off his head, I was once again in the air, now holding the ax over my head with both hands.
“Black Calm”
The fully charged “Black Calm” smashed the thick helmet of the second Armor Knight the moment I brought it down on it from the sky.
I was sure I could have cut his head off cleanly if I had had my “Kubidan”, but since I hit it with an ax, which was closer to a blunt weapon, the silver helmet was brutally squeezed, crushing it rather than splitting it in two.
I quickly pulled the ax from the Armor Knight who collapsed without a single groan, and brought it down again onto my next target, which was a stupid-looking guy who had fallen down after failing to fully block my “Blast Blade”.
He was simply looking around, and didn’t seem to show any sign of getting up even after I had ample time to get rid of two of his friends.
I decided to quickly put him out of his misery with a swift blow to the head.
With that, there were only two more left.
“Wooooooohhh! Break!!”
Even though the black smoke of the explosion was still thick enough to hinder their visibility, the remaining two soldiers managed to pinpoint my location and decided to unleash a splendid pincer attack from the front and back.
This martial art they were using against me was part of the Armor Knights’ standard arsenal. Of course, a single direct hit from it was powerful enough to kill a person instantly.
However, with only two people attacking at the same time, I didn’t feel any sense of crisis. I figured that whether to dodge or to block, I could always rely on my trusty cursed weapon… Which then I remembered I did not have on me, so trying to take it head on would be actually quite risky.
I gave up on pulling out the ax from the neck of the third soldier, and quickly let it go, switching to a dodging stance.
Thanks to the quick decision to let go of my weapon, I easily managed to slip through the deadly martial art unleashed by the remaining two knights. Even if I hadn’t been able to use my “Overgear”, my own visual acuity was enough to see through it. Compared to Sariel’s attacks, this one was slow enough to make me yawn.
As I slipped through the side of the Armor Knights who slammed into my afterimage with all my might, I produced a new weapon. I had used up the big ones such as the pickaxe and the ax with my “Blast Blade”, so I only had a small tool tied around my waist with my tentacles. But I knew it would be enough to get rid of these two.
I had chosen to take a sickle, like the ones used for mowing. Except for its reddish blackening, it was an ordinary sickle that had no magical effect and, of course, no curse.
Rather than going for a frontal slash with the sickle that was now in my right hand, I slashed as if mowing down grass.
I was aiming for his ankles. It was just like how Rudra defeated an Armor Knight during his fight against that priest.
Since the ankle was one of the joints, the armor covering it would be quite thin. The armoring on that area wasn’t zero because the steel plating had been made in a pleated shape to allow for unrestricted movement.
There was no way I could sever his foot in a single slash like Rudra, but this sickle was good enough to cut a few centimeters deep into the knight’s ankle. even with a few centimeters of cutting edge. That alone would cause so much pain that the knight wouldn’t be able to remain standing.
“Aaargh!?”
He had been desperately looking everywhere trying to find me after I had suddenly disappeared. Because of this, the Armor Knight began to lean forward with the momentum of his own violent motion as he turned around vigorously.
I had no spare time to see him fall to the ground.
My right hand pulled the sickle out of the knight’s ankle, and at the same time, my left arm produced yet another weapon. I began to wind up a hatchet. Of course, this was yet another tool commonly found in most rural homes.
The quickly unleashed hatchet flew through the wrist of the next Armor Knight. It was his right wrist, the one once connected to the hand that was holding his halberd.
With that, I was finally able to get my hands on a proper weapon.
That being said, there was now only one knight left.
The moment I took the halberd, the Armor Knight that had just lost his hand fell to the ground. I had swiftly finished him off by driving the rear end of the halberd into his face.
This halberd had been specially made for Armor Knights, so It is a halberd dedicated to heavy knights, so the ridge at the rear end of the halberd’s handle was also very solid and sturdy. It was hard and heavy enough to crush the helmet’s face guard.
Leaving the knight’s corpse behind, I jumped towards the last one of them.
“You bastard! Brush!”
“Black Calm.”
Our martial arts collided with each other directly. There was no need for any sort of tricks or feints.
Considering we were using the same weapon, I definitely had the upper hand. My opponent was a trained elite Armor Knight, but he was just a human being. I had trained even more than that, and to top it off, I was a remodeled human. I was essentially a cyborg. There was no factor in which I would be inferior to him in power.
“Guuh!?”
The Armor Knight was hit by my halberd and lost his posture. It was exactly the same scene I had expected.
After that, all I had to do was to take advantage of his exposed stance and finish him off.
Before the knight could regain his posture, I delivered a powerful thrust with the halberd’s sharp tip.
The halberd’s silver blade pierced deeply into the joint between his abdomen and his waist.
“Red-Hot Blackening – Blast”
Right after I stabbed him, the halberd’s blade exploded. The abdomen of the Armor Knight burst off with the force of the explosion, causing his upper and lower body to come apart from each other as they went up in flames.
By the time the knight’s remains fell to the snowy ground with a loud “thud”, the smoke that had been released by my first “Blast Blade” had finally been swept away by the wind.
“W-What’s going on…”
“No way…”
The rest of the infantry appeared, and expressed their surprise with their faces so pale that I could almost see through them.
Their reaction was quite understandable, as the five Armor Knights, who were supposed to be their strongest, were all killed in a matter of seconds. In fact, the actual fight lasted about 10 or 20 seconds. But to me, it wasn’t about doing things quickly. It was about doing things efficiently.
That’s why this next battle was more of a throwaway match. The game was already over.
“Bullet Arts – Full Burst”
I had set magic bullets I had set in case I had to use them all over the place. And there was no better time to do so than at this moment.
Their equipment was a little better than the standard infantry, but it was still no match for my pseudo-full metal jacket. All of them would die, just like the ones on the riverbanks of Alsace and at the walls of Galahad.
And after the storm of black slaughter had blown through, none of them was standing anymore.
“U-Ugh… H-Help…”
Some of them were lucky enough to get fatally wounded and killed instantly, while others I had to put out of their misery.
No one else spoke, and no one else moved. It was all over.
“That should take care of things…”
I looked everywhere around me, and sure enough, I felt no signs of any enemies, nor I could see any other armored soldiers around.
Ignoring the constant crackling noise of the arsonized houses around me, the silence that suddenly befell made it hard to believe that an actual massacre with screams and cries for help had just happened. But then…
“Eeeek!”
“Whoa, look at that!”
More horrified voices began to reach my ears.
There were no more Crusader soldiers, but several villagers here and there were holding their breath and watching from the shadows. Their eyes were all fixed on me, staring at my every move.
Well, their astonishment and horror was understandable given the current circumstances. But whatever.
“Well, now what…?”