Ch.1210While She Was Gone

Hestella’s strength lies in the exceptional quality of individual soldiers—comparable to the Northern Army—thanks to harsh training and frequent combat experience, along with a high proportion of survivors who have become powerful warriors.

Though their forces weren’t numerous, they had an overwhelming number of powerful individuals compared to any other nation, and while their firepower couldn’t match the Empire’s, the quality of their weapons actually surpassed it.

All of this was due to Haschal’s contributions—leading from the front to prevent excessive casualties and hunting multiple dragons to arm her soldiers with their remains.

Thanks to this, Hestella’s army could safely defend the entire territory with less than 30% of the Empire’s military strength.

“They’re coming again! Air raid warning! Air raid warning!”

…for a while, at least.

—-

Hestella’s peace was fundamentally maintained only through the efforts of Haschal, humanity’s strongest warrior, and the hero-class powerhouses under her command—in other words, the Thousand Sword Corps.

Whether it was three dragons attacking or fairy guardians infiltrating, how many crises would have been insurmountable without them?

It was only natural that Hestella’s citizens went beyond mere praise to practically worship them as guardian deities.

In truth, the fact that such powerful enemies gathered was actually Haschal and Demian’s fault, so they were essentially causing problems and then solving them.

Well, anyway, thanks to them, Hestella had been able to safely face and overcome numerous crises that would have destroyed other nations several times over.

More precisely, they “had been” able to. Until now.

“Another attack? Damn, they just keep coming without getting tired…”

However, after Haschal descended underground with four companions, Hestella’s high-end combat power was literally cut in half.

Though Haschal had taken only the minimum necessary number of people with her, for Hestella—which heavily relied on the power of a few strong individuals—this alone represented a massive loss of military strength.

“Could those creatures somehow know that Lady Haschal is away…?”

For some inexplicable reason, since Haschal’s departure, the frequency of attacks by monsters and other enemies had mysteriously skyrocketed.

As a result, those left behind had no choice but to face threats of a completely different caliber than before.

“What is that… an angel?”

“It’s a Valkyrie! The one the Church of Volberg supposedly summoned!”

Moreover, the enemies attacking them weren’t simply monsters like those attacking other countries.

Unlike the commander-class Valkyries who possessed divine power, these were lower Valkyries—treated as mere soldiers without divinity but summonable even under Heaven’s Wall.

The winged maidens with helmets, whom the Church of Volberg had summoned through their highest miracle, came in groups of five or six, hurling storm spears from the sky.

“It’s not just from the sky! They’re coming from the ground too!”

On the ground, monsters with half-rotted beast heads—’Baltyr’s Warriors’—advanced alongside an army of thousands of monsters.

“What are those things doing…? They seem different from the monsters we’ve seen before…”

They were indeed different from the usual monsters.

They weren’t attacking villages for mass slaughter, nor were they wandering aimlessly—they were systematically and persistently attacking only Hestella’s army.

For Hestella’s knights, who had exterminated countless monsters over the years, this strange behavior pattern felt distinctly alien even as they fought against them.

In reality, they were neither Bellona’s forces—the Undead Duke’s troops attacking various parts of the world—nor naturally occurring monsters.

“Grrrrrrr….”

“—Divine command, execute.”

They were part of the forces that Alfodhr had granted to Feyrus, his first apostle.

Having learned that Haschal had descended to Naraka, Feyrus had sent up the war god’s legion to seize the opportunity to weaken Hestella’s military power.

Additionally, they received support from the former Church of Volberg, which had sided with Feyrus for worshipping the same god.

Does it make sense that those who worshipped Volberg as a war god would side with a half-soul sorcerer leading monster hordes to slaughter humans?

Well, that certainly would have been unthinkable in the past.

That is, back when the Church of Volberg was respected as one of the twelve churches of the Holy State and as Dane’s state religion.

However, the Church of Volberg had now been expelled from the Holy State and classified as a heretical cult, just like the Church of Grimnir.

Even Dane had accepted this and abandoned the Volberg faith, so it was natural for the Church of Volberg—suddenly rejected by all of humanity overnight—to harbor hostility toward the current human societies.

Of course, this was entirely self-inflicted by the church’s high officials including the cardinal, so their outrage appeared completely unreasonable from others’ perspective.

“Hahaha! Slaves of blind faith! Behold the might of the true god’s servants, the angels of war, the Valkyries!”

Anyway, the Church of Volberg had become Feyrus’s subordinates and, following his orders, summoned lower Valkyries to support Alfodhr’s forces attacking Hestella.

Though they were mere summons far weaker than Valkyries with divinity, that was only by demigod standards—their actual combat power was at the highest hero level.

Combined with an army of thousands of monsters and hundreds of Baltyr’s Warriors, this force was sufficient to destroy an average kingdom and then some.

– Whoosh!

“Coordinate-based spatial transfer…! Is that the wielder of Gram!”

Of course, Hestella was far from being such an “average” kingdom.

Although half of their core fighting force, including Haschal, had gone underground, the other half still remained on the surface.

—-

– Crack!

A flash of light appeared, followed by a snow-white greatsword that cleaved through the air like lightning. Demian’s holy sword, transferred via Skywalk, tore through a Valkyrie’s breastplate like paper as she was loading “The Spear of War’s Beginning.”

“You dodged that? Quick reflexes.”

Thanks to her hasty retreat upon sensing the spatial transfer’s precursor, she escaped with just damaged armor—had her reaction been even slightly slower, her waist would have been severed.

“Did you think I couldn’t dodge?”

“Not particularly.”

Despite her arrogant tone, the Valkyrie’s clothing beneath her breastplate was torn, exposing her bare abdomen.

‘This one is the priority target, the wielder of Gram… I can’t underestimate him.’

She held a circular shield of light in front of her and twirled a spear wrapped in whirlwinds with her fingertips, surrounding Demian along with her companions.

War angels wielding gray shields and whirlwind spears, fluttering wings of light and dispersing the holy light of Volberg—no, Alfodhr.

Demian himself had snow-white wings on his back due to the effect of “Skywalk,” making the scene appear as divine as a confrontation between angels when viewed from the ground.

“That light…!”

“It’s Lord Demian! The ‘Knight of the Holy Sword’ has arrived!”

The knights and soldiers who witnessed this scene cheered.

Almost like when Haschal descended from the sky—well, not quite to that extent, but a close second.

Knight of the Holy Sword.

Demian, who protected Hestella in Haschal’s absence and cut down countless monsters with Gram, had come to be called by this title.

Of course, almost no one realized that this holy sword was actually Joyeuse, the sword of Carlos the Great from history.

They simply called him the Knight of the Holy Sword because his sword looked extraordinary and its wielder flew with wings while unleashing goddess-like miraculous powers.

But well, what did it matter?

What’s important isn’t whether the sword is truly a historical holy sword, but that its wielder protects people like a hero from ancient tales.

That’s why the people of Hestella, without any doubt or resistance, honored Demian as the Knight of the Holy Sword with pure reverence.

Demian himself was secretly quite pleased with this title, which was dozens of times more impressive than his previous “now winged” moniker.

“Wielder of Gram, puppet of Elpinel. Perish here along with that sword.”

“You’re the puppets here. You’re essentially tools of a god from the beginning, aren’t you?”

And so, five of Alfodhr’s female knights and the vessel of the “hero” clashed, using the clear sky as their battlefield.

—-

“Haaaah!”

Demian evaded the Spear of War’s Beginning with acrobatic flight that defied inertia, neutralized Alfodhr’s miracles with Elpinel’s miracles, and charged forward with short-range spatial transfers while swinging his holy sword.

“He’s fast…!”

“Without even awakening divinity, he’s already this powerful…?”

“Indeed, it’s no wonder our lord ordered his elimination as the highest priority.”

Demian’s martial prowess, which had steadily grown stronger, was certainly impressive enough in terms of speed to draw admiration even from the Valkyries surrounding him.

“However, if this is all he has…”

But that didn’t mean they were frightened enough to tuck their tails and flee—he wasn’t quite that overwhelmingly powerful.

“This is actually fortunate. Before he grows any stronger, we can clip his wings and bury him here today.”

From the perspective of these lower Valkyries without divinity, Demian’s power was, at best, merely that of a troublesome opponent.

In a one-on-one fight, they would certainly lose, but with five of them attacking together, they could definitely defeat this moderately strong enemy.

– Boom! Rumble!

After about thirty seconds of exchanges too swift for ordinary soldiers to follow, Demian was finally hit directly by a massive whirlwind and slammed into a wall, proving their assessment correct.

“Demian! Are you okay?! Let me heal you first…!”

“No problem. I can still hold out.”

Of course, that single blow hadn’t decided the outcome.

Demian’s body, emerging from the broken debris, was merely a bit dirty from the dust—his wounds were already rapidly healing through Elpinel’s healing miracle.

“Valkyries… they’re certainly not easy opponents. Everyone, be careful.”

Rising to his feet, Demian spread his snow-white wings again as if he had never fallen, and offered brief advice to Millia and his other companions who had rushed over with worried faces.

“Don’t worry! I’ll shoot down all those things!”

Millia gripped her divine tree bow tightly, her face showing equal parts determination and anger.

“I’ll handle the ground forces. So that you may focus on eliminating those ‘Valkyries.'”

Joshua, lacking talent for aerial and ranged combat, responded that he would instead command the knights and take charge of stopping the monsters on the ground.

“…This sobered me up quick. Lately there hasn’t been a day when I could drink in peace.”

Perneisia, covered in dwarven mechanical devices to the point where it was becoming difficult to tell if she was a fairy or a dwarf battle machine.

“Have they now joined hands with monsters, these vile heretics…!”

Adamante, who was no longer Astraea’s saint but somehow still loyal to Haschal, and others.

Hestella’s top fighters, left behind by Haschal to defend the country, gathered one after another to support Demian.

That was when the true battle began.