Chapter 3: The Golden Dash
The head of the bearded man slipped cleanly off his shoulders.
It was such a swift strike that there was no sound of tearing flesh. That only made it feel even more unreal.
The bearded man’s face remained frozen in a dazed expression, as if he hadn’t even realized he was dead. His head rolled to the ground and came to a stop at the feet of his companions. Even as blood gushed from the remaining body, the atmosphere still felt like some kind of sick joke.
“Oops.”
Amidst it all, Diz was the only one moving calmly. She casually sidestepped the slowly collapsing body of the man and lightly closed the distance to his stunned companions, who were staring at the severed head.
“Here we go.”
Once again, with a speed that was literally too fast for the eye to follow, she swung her arm and sent the heads of two more men flying.
“Wha—”
The head of the man next to him vanished, and as if finally freed from the paralysis of shock, another man tried to step back—only for a hole to appear in his forehead.
“You bas—”
A man who had been reaching for the sword at his waist was cut in half at the torso, still in that pose, and died instantly.
“Eek!”
“Capture.”
“—Gotcha.”
In the span of a single breath, all the surrounding companions were slaughtered. The last remaining man finally seemed to grasp what had happened and let out a scream, but he was quickly bound by a crimson cord that extended from Diz’s sword.
It was only then that Ur realized the weapon Diz had been using was Akane.
“Aka—”
“Ur, move!”
But immediately after, Diz’s sharp command snapped Ur out of his stupor. Feeling as though he had just woken up, Ur glanced at Shizuku. She had already begun preparing a barrier.
“The passengers are your responsibility.”
“Leave it to me.”
Shizuku smiled, and at the same time, a blue barrier magic centered around the gathered passengers activated. Confirming this, Ur leapt onto the handrail and opened the jaws of his dragon spear.
“【Howl】!!”
[K——AAAAAAAAAA!!!?]
The magical core roared as he unleashed the Howl, sweeping away the undead soldiers surrounding the hostages and mercilessly blowing them back. The undead soldiers within sight were all incinerated, but the magical core reached its operational limit.
[AAAAAAAAAA!!]
However, immediately after, as if they had been waiting, a new wave of undead soldiers flooded into the hall. Seeing them begin to charge toward the barrier-protected hostages, Ur clicked his tongue and leapt down from the handrail.
“It’s not gonna be that easy, dammit!”
The magical core wouldn’t recover immediately. He couldn’t use Howl again. The number of enemies was overwhelming. Each undead soldier was weak, but if surrounded and beaten, he’d be torn apart. So,
“Charge!!”
As soon as he landed on the first floor, he immediately charged forward, piercing and shattering the undead soldiers. He ran at full speed to avoid being surrounded.
“Tch…!!”
The shattered fragments of the undead soldiers cut into Ur’s skin. But he never stopped moving.
——If the enemy has the advantage in numbers, run. If you can’t run, at least never stop moving.
It was a tactic his master had taught him, one that even the clumsy Ur could execute. He repeated it stubbornly.
Strike, shatter, pierce, and keep running.
“【Open, Tome of Flame】”
In the midst of it all, Shizuku’s incantation echoed from the upper floor. At the same time, something was thrown into the air—a type of magical tool called a 【Tome】. The moment it opened in the air, a wave of flame magic was unleashed.
[AAAAAAAAAA!!!?]
The flames incinerated only the undead soldiers, blowing them away. It was part of the goods entrusted to her by Minne, one of the rescued passengers, but it was proving far more effective than he had imagined.
However, there were some that even the Tome of Flame couldn’t handle.
[G, AAAAAAAAAAA!!]
“Big…!”
A massive undead soldier, about three meters tall, charged through the flames. It didn’t seem like it would collapse from being burned.
“……!”
As Ur turned his spear toward it, the giant undead soldier raised its fist. Just before it swung down, Ur lunged forward. As he stepped in, he swung his dragon spear at the undead soldier’s badly burned left leg.
[G!?]
“Well, at least it’s more fragile than a gem doll!”
With one leg gone, its posture crumbled, and it bent at the waist. Ur swung his spear upward, striking its torso and cleaving it in two. The undead soldier’s body scattered into pieces. Even in that state, it tried to move, reaching out toward Ur before finally collapsing.
“Even if it’s a bit bigger, I can handle it…!”
“Sir Ur!”
It was Shizuku’s voice. Looking over, he saw that the undead soldiers that had survived the flames were beginning to charge at the barrier. Even if they were fragile individually, their sheer numbers were a threat.
Ur hurriedly leapt onto the barrier and glared at the dragon spear in his hand.
He had used it once lightly during the journey and once more during the previous long-range attack. After the battle with the gem doll, the dragon spear had grown somewhat stronger, but it still wasn’t capable of endless attacks.
However, there were no reinforcements in sight. So, there was no time to hesitate.
“【Howl】!”
On top of the barrier, he aimed the spear’s jaws and swept it around. The heat and light incinerated the approaching undead soldiers, blowing them away.
“Alright…! Now…!?”
His thoughts turned to his sister, Diz, and the girl who had been tortured. What had happened to them? Just as he was thinking this, the dragon spear, which should have been out of energy, began to pulse strangely.
“What the…!?”
It wasn’t a malfunction or a glitch—it was a strange, resonating reaction. Immediately after, with a tremendous shock, a massive hole was blown through the ceiling.
“Wha—!?”
A cascade of rubble fell, crushing the undead soldiers below. Avoiding the debris, Ur looked up. Through the giant hole in the hall’s ceiling, he should have been able to see the starlight of the spirits watching over the people, in place of the sun god Zeuradia.
But he couldn’t see it. Instead, what he saw was——
[——GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!]
A massive, impossibly huge head of an undead soldier.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…!?”
Ur couldn’t help but curse.
He had said he could handle something big, but there were limits. And now, that ridiculously enormous skull was opening its giant maw and beginning to condense a blast of heat and light, just like the dragon spear’s 【Howl】. Ur felt his mind go blank.
“Sir Ur!!”
But Shizuku’s voice snapped him back to reality, and he desperately began to think.
Could the barrier Shizuku had erected protect the hostages from the blast that the giant skull was about to unleash? Probably not. No way! The hall itself was on the upper floor of the building. If he could jump into the barrier, blow a hole in the floor, and get the hostages out before the barrier broke, could they make it? But the dragon spear was out of magic. Did he have a Tome? Was there a guarantee they could descend? Would it work——But there was no other choice!
His thoughts raced, and Ur moved to act. But before he could,
“Ur, you stay in the barrier and keep the passengers under control.”
A golden girl stood atop the barrier.
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT LOCALIZERMEERKAT.PAGES.DEV
[KAKAKA————A!!!?]
“Ugh, how did they even use this junk…?”
Diz swiftly cut down the remaining undead soldiers with the shoddy sword she had taken from the bandits, then lightly landed on the barrier Shizuku had erected.
[KA, GAGAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKA!!]
“Good grief, this is awful.”
The barrier was quite strong, but against the Starving Skull that sought to mock and incinerate everything, it was far from enough.
“Silver rank, sage level. And they’ve killed quite a lot to prepare for this.”
The bodies of the undead soldiers didn’t necessarily have to be human bones. But the skeletal soldiers swarming around here were all made from real human bodies. They must have desecrated graves and forcibly awakened the sleeping dead, but even that wouldn’t have been enough. They must have produced corpses themselves to gather the souls needed to move such a massive skeleton.
The caster wasn’t just using necromancy—they were a true heretic. Diz sighed at the realization.
“This is going to be a pain…”
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