Ch.753Killing Fairies

Astonishingly, Haschal, who descended from the sky spewing fire, followed by the crashing wyvern, literally turned the battlefield upside down.

Following the avalanche, the black flame breath that continued for two minutes inflicted massive damage on the fairy army, with more than half of their scouts annihilated. Perhaps the only consolation was that the Dragonborn suffered losses no less severe.

‘I was careless. I heard he had a boar-like temperament, but I never imagined he’d be this aggressive…!’

Soaring through the air on a wind elemental, Tersillius couldn’t help but acutely realize that his attempt at divide-and-conquer tactics had been an inexcusable mistake.

In truth, it wasn’t entirely his fault.

No one in Alvheim had identified that their target possessed high-speed flight capabilities, so naturally, he couldn’t have even guessed that Haschal would return so quickly.

All the information they had about Haschal was from before the Eastern War.

While they could easily gather information about the Holy State due to its geographical proximity to Alvheim, the Great Plains region was practically on the opposite side of the continent, far removed from Alvheim.

Moreover, Haschal had arrived at the Sky Mountains shortly after returning from the Eastern War, so the fairies had no way of knowing what growth she had achieved.

At best, considering the constraints of Heaven’s Wall created by humans, they could only estimate that she wouldn’t match the level of the Great’s Twelve Knights.

Could even the World Tree have anticipated that this judgment would lead to such a catastrophe?

“Lord Tersillius! Please give us instructions!”

Of course, this was no time to be leisurely reflecting on mistakes.

The dragon’s breath, which had been spewing endlessly, began to thin like a dried-up river, but the dragon itself remained intact, and the core forces of the Dragonborn had survived unscathed.

It was like adding one frenzied dragon to the chaotic battle that had been raging until just moments ago.

Tersillius shook his head to clear the dizziness from the rapid maneuvers and gathered his thoughts to issue new orders to the surviving guardians and the few remaining scouts.

“Leave the wyvern to the Dragonborn! We’ll pursue our target!”

Their objective was never the wyvern in the first place, so there was no reason to get entangled in a fight with the dragon or the Dragonborn.

In the past, Nidhogg was certainly a detestable enemy who had gnawed at the World Tree and rotted its roots… but the current Nidhogg was not that dragon of old, but closer to millions of insect monsters forcibly moving the remains of the dead dragon.

From the fairies’ perspective, risking danger to attack would only give them the satisfaction of hacking at an old enemy’s bones.

Their declaration of the ancient enemy was merely a disguised pretext to naturally intervene in the wyvern subjugation and draw out their target. Their purpose had always been singular.

To eliminate Haschal of Median, the Empire’s strongest knight and descendant of the old enemy. The one who might become the reincarnation of Carlos the Great. That was the only order given to them by the Elder Council.

However, amidst the chaos of Nidhogg’s rampage, their actual target had carefully gathered her subordinates and escaped the hill. Taking advantage of the situation where the fairies couldn’t even attempt to stop them while avoiding the dragon’s breath.

So what other order could Tersillius give?

Let the dragon and Dragonborn run wild as they pleased, and order his forces to pursue and kill the fleeing humans.

“Wait, Tersillius. They’re coming back?”

“What…?”

At Eirnesia’s report, who was looking in the direction the target had fled, Tersillius turned his head from facing his allies to look in the same direction… and furrowed his brow strangely.

“Go! Everyone be careful!”

As Eirnesia had said, the humans were returning. Their formation led by a blonde man wielding a greatsword.

“They came back…? Don’t tell me they’re trying to push us into the chaotic battle!”

“It seems so, but I don’t see Median. Wasn’t she said to be the type to charge at the forefront?”

“Don’t trust information from the homeland. Those incompetent fools couldn’t even properly assess the enemy’s strength!”

Tersillius pulled back the bowstring of his divine bow, aiming at Demian, and shouted loudly.

“Divide the guardians into three! Feilandria, Disgelphiere. Contain the Dragonborn and the wyvern with the surviving scouts! Aurelisius and Iberfalos, stop the humans! I and Eirnesia will find and deal with the target, so until then, be vigilant against enemy surprise attacks!”

“Yes!”

“Understood.”

The responses came from four guardians, including Eirnesia.

‘…Four?’

Alarmed by the missing response, Tersillius quickly turned to look in the direction where the silent guardian—Aurelisius—had been flying.

And their eyes met.

“…Caught me?”

With a ghostly smirk pulling up the corners of her mouth, a blue-eyed barbarian of the short-lived race was covering Aurelisius’s mouth and tearing out his throat.

“What…?!”

“Aurelisius!”

The guardians who had also turned to look at Aurelisius cried out in shock.

Though he was a young guardian, a guardian was still a guardian.

They couldn’t imagine that Alvheim’s greatest fighting force would perish without even a groan of resistance, let alone any resistance at all. For a moment, they doubted whether they were under some hallucination magic.

However, the scene unfolding before their eyes was undeniable reality.

Guardian Aurelisius was dead. With just a single strike, despite it being a surprise attack.

This too was an unforeseen situation.

—-

Haschal, who had burrowed underground and advanced by melting earth and rock with the fire rune, sensed the guardian’s presence and shot upward, activating her Tale of Heros. Guardian Aurelisius, far from responding, couldn’t even properly perceive what was happening before his neck was torn out.

One couldn’t blame Aurelisius for his weakness.

The time it took for Haschal’s right hand to reach his neck as she burst through the ground was shorter than the time it took for his optic nerve to transmit the image to his brain.

How could he counter an attack faster than not just the speed of thought, but even the speed of neural response?

“Guardians aren’t much, are they?”

Haschal lifted the head with its dangling spine, holding it like a bowling ball with her index and ring fingers piercing through Aurelisius’s vacant eyes, and taunted the fairy guardians. Which was more insulting—her attitude or her tone—only the fairies would know.

“How dare you…!”

In any case, they reacted exactly as Haschal intended, pulling back their bowstrings in rage.

Tersillius and Eirnesia drove their high elementals toward Haschal, and the other guardians also momentarily focused all their hostility on her.

Of course, Haschal merely smirked inwardly, mocking how easy it was to manipulate those who fell for provocation, while hoping they would expose even greater openings.

“Why get so angry just because I tore off your friend’s head? After spending hundreds of years together, you must be tired of seeing each other’s faces by now.”

“How dare a short-lived creature like you spout such nonsense!”

“Alright, alright. I’ll give him back. I’ll heal him, so don’t be angry.”

Haschal held up Aurelisius’s body like a shield, flashing a smile so innocent that even Orhan would call her a demon, and raised Aurelisius’s head high.

And then—

– Crack!

She shoved the head back into the neck. Like hammering a nail into clay.

The severed vertebrae scattered in all directions, and the limbs of the body that had regained its head trembled. Spurting blood touched Haschal’s cheek and dripped down.

It was a sight that momentarily left even the guardians, who had lived for over a thousand years, speechless.

“Healing complete! How about that, perfect, isn’t it?”

Haschal, having fixed Aurelisius’s head to his neck, lightly shook the corpse with its now much—very much—shorter neck and joked.

“I’ll kill you, Haschal Median—!”

It was an effective provocation, more than enough to make the young guardians’ eyes roll back in rage.

Guardians Disgelphiere and Iberfalos, forgetting about the dragons, the Dragonborn, and even the existence of other humans, shot their elemental arrows at Haschal.

“Stop! Don’t fall for her provocation…!”

Tersillius tried to stop them, but mere shouts couldn’t halt enraged fairies or recall arrows already fired.

The moment the two guardians who had fired their arrows became momentarily defenseless, something flashed past beneath their feet.

A streak of light mixing gold, white, and blue-silver. It was Demian, who had been waiting for the opportunity to cut down their high elementals, following Haschal’s instructions.

“Oh no…!”

“Aaaargh-!”

With the sudden emptiness beneath their feet, the two guardians who had lost their high elemental platforms fell helplessly with cries of shock.

They managed to summon earth elementals to catch their falling bodies instead of the vanished wind elementals, but it was merely a belated response.

By the time they landed on the palms of the earth elementals, Demian’s greatsword had already sliced off Disgelphiere’s left arm, and Millia’s arrow had torn through the upper part of Iberfalos’s shoulder.

“Gaaaah!”

“You short-lived creatures-!”

The two guardians charged toward the humans who had inflicted deep wounds on their bodies, screaming in pain and rage.

What happened to the elemental arrows they had fired?

Well, one could easily tell by looking toward Haschal. More precisely, by looking at the pieces of flesh in her hands.

A fairy guardian’s body made quite a useful shield. Though it had the drawback of being single-use.