Ch.195Army of the Dead (4)

-KEEEEEEEK!!!-

Thud thud thud!

Splash splash!

-KYAAAAAAAK!-

“Stone throwing really is the way to go. Definitely effective.”

I watched the numerous stone projectiles decorating the sky with my hands clasped behind my back.

Unlike arrows, these heavy stones possessed sufficient killing power from their weight alone. As they flew through the air, propelled by potential energy, the ghouls couldn’t keep up as their heads were smashed open. Meanwhile, the much sturdier golems struggled to break through the double defense line of trenches filled with spears and sharply carved stakes.

BOOM! KWANG!

“Hahaha! This is so satisfying! Struggling targets that don’t move!”

Click-clack!

“You can’t easily find such a delightful experience elsewhere!”

Berkman cackled as he poured out his temporarily unlimited grenades, starting to blow off the golems’ legs. The elf twins carefully adjusted the speed at which their quivers refilled with arrows and their firing rate, intercepting the incoming ghouls and zombies.

“How long do you think we can hold?”

“Well, probably about two hours. After that, they’ll likely break through.”

However, the battle situation was far from optimistic.

The undead characteristic—requiring complete physical destruction to kill them—was an extreme disadvantage for weapons that didn’t use explosions or flames.

Those of us using slashing attacks, like myself and Raisha, were somewhat better off, but the elf twins, who couldn’t perform area attacks due to their bow-wielding nature, were trying to compensate for their lack of power by putting a curse with each arrow they fired.

Of course, I too couldn’t display my full power as I had to use vertical slashes instead of horizontal ones to avoid damaging the stakes, and the same applied to Raisha.

“Ah! Really! Why! Won’t! They! Die! When! I! Shoot! Their! Heads!”

“Aim for the joints! Restricting their movement is more important!”

“That’s right! Just stop them somehow, and I’ll burn them all!”

KWAAAAA!!!

Hawkman said something after that, but his words were drowned out by the sound of his flamethrower.

Strangely, ice was attached to the nozzle of his flamethrower—a spell cast by Simon to prevent overheating.

With the addition of an inexhaustible fuel tank, the zombies and ghouls that had clustered together to climb the slippery castle walls began to melt away in the flames, while the sturdy golems were destroyed by precise weak point shots from grenades.

“Damn it! Look over there! Bats!”

“Oh no!”

The oversized bats, fed on corpses, were monsters strong enough to snatch a person whole, and I ordered the archers to stop the approaching bats.

“Bats approaching! Fire!”

“Sequential firing, commence!”

Papapapak! Papapapak! Papapapak!

Three volleys of arrows rained down with slight time intervals, and about half of the bats were hit, falling to be impaled on stakes and spears.

However, the remaining half flew past the barricade and snatched the soldiers who were loading stones into the catapults.

“AAAAARGH!”

“SAVE ME!”

The unlucky victims either fell to their deaths with brief screams or suffered a horrific end, torn apart by the bats’ claws and exposing their entrails to the sky below.

The expressions of soldiers who had their comrades’ intestines splattered on their heads were beyond description.

“Stop the stone throwing! Move to center around the archers and form an anti-air formation!”

“Archers to the center! 2nd Company! 3rd Company! Move to the left and right flanks! Form anti-air formation!”

“Our lord is fighting! Let’s drive away their enemies!”

“For Lord Nariakira Saburo! We fight for the Sun of Humanity!”

Step! Step! Step!

The soldiers moved in perfect unison.

Soon, a rectangular anti-air formation centered around the archers was completed. The spearmen stood like scarecrows, stabbing and pushing away the bats trying to snatch the archers, holding their ground tenaciously.

Papapapak!

“TWEEEEET!”

Under the endless rain of arrows, the bat swarms suffered heavy casualties and returned to their main force. As they retreated pitifully, arrows filled with aura from the twin sisters began to pierce them.

“Blessings upon the Sun’s Army! Lift your eyes to the sky and behold the sun! The radiant flash will annihilate our enemies!”

“For Saburo! For Lord Victor! Long live the Sun!”

“””LONG LIVE THE SUN!!!”””

I led the chant, the battalion commander followed, and then the soldiers joined in.

At the very least, we were comrades fighting under the same sun—beyond the master-servant relationship, we were one thousand warriors united as one.

*

After three hours of preliminary skirmishes, the heat of battle gradually subsided.

Zombies, ghouls, and golems were still clinging to the barricade, but no more bats were coming over. Observing this carefully, I ordered the battalion commander to quickly reorganize during this lull.

It had only been three hours, but dozens of casualties had already occurred. Everyone needed to eat at least a rice ball, wet their throats with a sip of water, and recover their strength with even just a 10-minute nap to continue fighting.

“Battalion rest! Prepare rations by company!”

“When sleeping, always form pairs and take turns keeping watch!”

“Clear the corpses and replenish arrows! Spearmen, clean your spearheads to remove oil and flesh!”

As the battalion commander relayed the orders, junior officers and non-commissioned officers repeated the commands, allowing the nearly 1,000 troops to rest.

The soldiers, breathing heavily, began stuffing freshly made cabbage stew and rice balls into their mouths with trembling hands. Some who were desperate for sleep used their spear shafts as pillows and dozed off.

Fortunately, the enemy also seemed to need time to regroup, as even the bats had disappeared. Suddenly remembering the inspector, I looked around for him.

“Inspector! Where are you?”

“I’m over here…”

Looking toward the voice, I saw the inspector eating a rice ball in the watchtower behind us.

“I had to hide from the bats, so this was the only place. Hahaha…”

“Haah… I was worried you might be dead. Stay there from now on. You don’t have to fight, just stay alive.”

“I’ll try my best to meet your expectations, my lord.”

“Hmm…”

I nodded heavily as I accepted the simple meal being delivered via pulley.

Munch… munch…

I was craving meat, but in a situation where the enemy could attack at any moment, we couldn’t leisurely grill steaks.

At least there was some meat in the stew, and the rice balls grilled with soy sauce stimulated my appetite with their saltiness, so I didn’t have much to complain about.

“Is this the typical army meal? It’s really poor.”

“Hahaha… This is actually heavenly. At least it resembles proper military food. In urgent battlefields, soldiers sometimes can’t even open their combat rations and end up making grain drinks by pouring powdered rice into their canteens.”

“You’re not even a veteran, how do you know so much?”

“When the military was stationed nearby, merchants got busy. Naturally, my workload increased too… and the ears of a young, fresh child are quite sharp.”

“If you’re a fresh young child, this world would have already perished from low birth rates.”

“There are baby factories, you know.”

“Oh damn.”

The elves, magnificently defeated by the power of modern science, silently slurped their cabbage with sulky expressions.

“Don’t complain too much. There’s 20,000 gold coins right in front of us.”

“I think giving Simon 10,000 gold coins is too much.”

“What, you don’t want to use unlimited arrows?”

“I’m sorry.”

Lucia, defeated once again, ate her rice ball while being scolded by Kasia.

…I almost envied her courage to still try to negotiate despite being shot down so thoroughly. If all soldiers had such a mindset, morale officers would probably all be unemployed by now.

“I’m curious. Is your sister unusual, or are all young elves like that?”

“I wouldn’t know… I haven’t really seen many elves besides my family… I heard my mother and father started dating because there were only two of them around when they were looking for marriage partners.”

“I see…”

The law of homogamy—professionals meeting professionals—was valid even at the species level.

Indeed, people are…

“Hey! Look over there!”

“What?”

At Berkman’s urgent cry, I quickly got up to examine the enemy lines.

“Those are bats…”

The bats were lined up alongside ghouls, apparently planning to attack with both simultaneously.

“Rest time is over! Battalion commander!”

“Yes, Lord Victor! Everyone assemble! The enemy is coming!”

Crack! Thud!

Something breaking could be heard from below, but there was no time to worry about that. The enemies were about to…

“What… what are they doing now?”

Two bats were carrying a single ghoul, flying through the sky.

“Elves!”

“No! They’re too far away to hit!”

“Damn it! What are they doing? Are they planning to send ghouls flying?”

As I said that, the two bats holding a ghoul began spinning around each other.

“….?”

Woong! Woong!

“Is… is that…”

Whoosh!

When the bats released the ghoul, it flew straight toward our barricade, only to be turned into black charcoal by a sphere floating in the sky.

The problem was, it wasn’t just one flying toward us.

“Form ranks! Anti-monster formation!”

“Anti-monster formation! Hurry! The ghouls are flying through the air!”