Chapter 1133: The Battlefield

The battlefield was pure chaos.

The knight, adventurer, and noble divisions of Kranzel were scattered, engaged in combat with various undead and knights in red armor.

War, huh?

This is the first time I’ve ever seen so many people at each other’s throats.

In this world, those with power will often one-sidedly slaughter those who lack it. Even so, there exist clashes between huge armies. Only a handful of people are capable of dominating a battlefield all by themselves.

Huge countries like Kranzel and Raydoss might be the exception to this rule. Both have been aggressively building their militaries, so they have plenty of powerhouses at their disposal.

More importantly, simply crushing the enemy with brute force isn’t sufficient.

The entire purpose of war is to seize the enemy’s territory. The strongest fighters might be able to take a big chunk of territory, but they can’t occupy several towns and villages all by themselves.

That’s why large armies must be sent to assist them. And in order to counter the invading army, the defenders need to maintain an army as well.

There’s also the matter of the nobility. War is the stage where they can rise in the ranks by accomplishing great feats.

Leaving all the fighting to others will only cause them to lose this rare opportunity. As a result, many nobles hire soldiers and send them to the battlefield as their proxies. Must suck to be treated as a tool like that.

Well, the nobles seemed to have hired plenty of mercenaries, but they were still getting overwhelmed by the undead. Handling those with poison and regeneration must be difficult.

Apparently, there’s a special undead for mass-producing hordes named Scavenger lurking someone in there. He was created by the Black Skeleton Corps, and also the one responsible for undead hordes popping out of nowhere, like Jean’s usual strategy.

But the Red Knights on the front lines seemed way more dangerous.

Even without any tricks, they were just ridiculously strong, pushing the adventurers back with pure power. If Forrund had not grabbed their leader’s attention, the adventurers would already be dead.

The sorcerer who seemed to be their commander was strong enough to go head-to-head with Forrund of the Hundred Swords, making his strength readily apparent.

I think our best course of action is to send our squad to assist the adventurers. Then Fran, Urushi, and I will join up with Forrund to eliminate the commander. We can take out the undead after him, I guess.

While I was still discussing with Fran, a great change occurred on the battlefield. Donadrond, the ogrekin leading the adventurers, suddenly started radiating a white light.

The light enveloping the adventurers seemed to contain a protective, healing power. To our enemies, it’s as if the adventurers grew stronger for no reason.

『This is our chance!』

「Nn!」

We ran off into the battlefield.

「Oi, fleshbag.」

「At your service! What is it, my priestess?」

「You go kill the Scavenger guy you mentioned earlier!」

「Understood! I vow to fulfill your command!」

「We go rescue the adventurers!」

「「「 Yeah! 」」」

Our squad rushed onto the battlefield and struck at the Red Knights. Fran led the charge herself, going after their leader.

Fran’s black lightning struck the commander directly. Though he didn’t seem to take much damage, we definitely caught him off guard. Meanwhile, Urushi invoked shadow magic to bind the nearby Red Knights and restrict their movements.

A successful ambush!

Fran took advantage of the opening to reach Forrund and heal his wounds.

「Forrund! Are you okay?」

「Y-Yeah.」

「Priestess! Leave the undead to us!」

「Nn. Okay.」

Forrund seemed pretty stunned to see the Genocide Ghouls following Fran, but we have to save the explanation for later!

「Forrund! Back me up!」

「Roger.」

「Who the fuck are you?!」

The young man shouted with anger as he launched a barrage of flame magic. We recognized him as the vice-captain of the Carmine Flame Knights, one of the six divisions of the Red Knights. Yeah, he’s only the vice-captain.

The actual captain of the Carmine Flame Knights seems to have remained in the fort to control the relic that’s also the namesake of their division. The power of his relic is incredibly simple: it strengthens the wielder and their subordinates, granting them boosted flame magic, flame resistance, and physical stats. Apparently, it can even provide a more powerful buff by limiting the number of recipients.

『We take out the vice-captain first!』

「Nn!」

「Die, die! Just die already!」

I created anti-flame barriers to counter all his spells.

Though his personality left much to be desired, his skill with flame magic reflected his status of vice-captain. Even considering the buff from the relic, not many people can multi-cast this many spells at the same time.

That said, multi-casting is one of my specialties too.

Fran, Forrund, and Urushi closed in on the vice-captain as I continued deflecting his magic. The other Red Knights made an attempt to back him up, but were intercepted by our squad.

「Captain! You got this!」

「Don’t let them get in the captain’s way!」

「Nice.」

Fran complimented them, and they all nodded their heads happily. They’ve grown pretty close in such a short period of time.

「Grr!」

「I ain’t letting you touch me!」

Damn, he transformed his body into flames to avoid Urushi’s hit! How about this then? I invoked my Arch-Sorcerer skill to interfere with his transformation.

Since Evil Conquest allows me to dominate the target’s evil energy, I was thinking that Arch-Sorcerer might be able to interrupt the target’s spells.

And would you look at that? We saw immediate results.

「Wha-…! My body!」

As expected, complex magic is proportionally difficult to control. It seems such an intricate spell becomes too difficult to channel with my interference.

『Now’s our chance!』

「Hah!」

「Teyah!」

Right as I shouted, Forrund and Fran struck him down at the same time.

「Kuh…! Gwah…!」

Having lost the effects of his magic, he stood absolutely zero chance against the swordmasters. The man collapsed to the ground along with a splatter of blood as the two blades tore through his neck.