episode_0022
by fnovelpia“I like faces where hope has crumbled.”
So spoke the man in the Germania Guard uniform, smiling. The man named Colonel Hydra Waltz.
“Faces made when everything desperately believed in collapses, when betrayed by hope!”
Colonel Hydra, spreading his arms wide exaggeratedly, began a villain’s characteristic rant. I half-listened, silently reaching into my pocket for another cigarette… It wasn’t there. No, it was just here a moment ago.
“Ah, you may take pride! For this is not a glory granted to just anyone! Only those who have once believed in hope can truly─ understand the weight of despair when that hope is snatched away!”
It seemed the unopened cigarette pack had fallen somewhere in the aftermath of the shock. Perhaps it was buried when the house utterly collapsed.
“…”
My eyes wandered back to the cigarette butt fallen at my feet, but I held back, knowing I was being watched. My mouth felt idle. The villain’s rant in front of me seemed to be roughly finishing its third verse.
“He who knows the beauty of hope, must also understand the beauty of despair!”
No, he still wasn’t done. He was about to continue into the fourth and even fifth verses.
“So, what exactly is your business in the dead of night?”
Unable to bear it any longer, I spoke up. Only then did the man in the Guard uniform, Colonel Hydra Waltz, stop his rant and look at me.
“Hoo, you aren’t afraid. Nor are you surprised.”
“…”
“It seems you have something else you rely on, don’t you? For example─ a minion of the Empire.”
Hella gulped and looked at me. I didn’t answer. I merely waited for his next words.
“Whatever you believe in, it must be worthy of being called a ‘hope’! I’m looking forward to it again! The face you’ll make when the hope you believe in is utterly shattered, trampled, and you fall into despair!”
It seemed having a proper conversation was out of the question.
So I, too, gave up on trying to talk with him any further.
I turned my head and looked at Hella beside me. She was, as Colonel Hydra had said, steeped in despair.
“Why did you try so desperately to hide the ?”
“That grimoire must absolutely never fall into the hands of this nation’s military.”
“It seems to already be in that Colonel’s hands, though.”
“…Yes, it’s all over. No, it was over from the start.”
Hella laughed self-deprecatingly. In the despair where her entire life was crumbling and being denied.
“What on earth have I been living for until now…”
To her, laughing self-deprecatingly, I spoke.
“I will make you an offer.”
“An offer?”
“You don’t seem like the kind of person to break trust.”
Her entire life was proof of trust, guaranteeing that fact. That’s why I could believe her.
“I will take the from his hands, place it in the safest and most reliable place in the world, and protect it. In return, tell me everything you know about ‘him’. Can you do that?”
I made the offer. At my offer, Hella wore an incredulous expression. She probably thought I was talking nonsense.
“You all… No way, were you really people from the Bretona Empire?”
“We do not work for the Empire. Nor for any other nation.”
“How can I─”
“Whether you believe it or not is your freedom.”
I continued.
“It’s also an option to just return the like this. Whether something like this happens again or not, it’s not really my concern. Do you want me to do that?”
“!”
A short silence fell.
“Can you really… do it?”
At the end of the silence, Hella asked in a trembling voice.
“─In this situation?”
Her own voice disbelieved, and was disbelieved. It couldn’t be helped.
I didn’t answer, but looked around.
To see the enemy’s strength there─ this ‘situation’ she spoke of.
The highest-tier necromancy, ‘Day of the Dead’, had been unleashed and was still ongoing.
Even amidst this, the endless undead crawled out from the shattered and cracked crevices of the earth.
Along with the Germania Duchy’s proud Armed Guard, the , the nation’s foremost elite necromancer organization and the head of the Corpse Vultures leading them had arrived there in person.
And they had done so with the legendary-grade grimoire , said to be the culmination of necromancy, in their hands.
I looked at the head of the Corpse Vultures there, Colonel Hydra Waltz.
The man savoring this situation, not doubting his victory by even 0.1%, acting at ease.
I was sickeningly familiar with the name ‘Corpse Vultures’. It was an organization that never failed to appear in the ‘Eagle’ series. And it was also true that it appeared as a villain 99% of the time.
Its official name was the Duchy Guard State Security Office (RSHA) Section 4 (Amt.IV) – Secret Corpse Revitalization Department. Commonly known as Corpse Vultures.
However, the Colonel leading the Corpse Vultures was a face I’d never seen before. The same went for Hella.
‘When playing the game normally, this must be an episode or quest the protagonist encounters in a new release.’
I had more or less grasped the situation. Nothing had changed.
“Please, your command─”
Aria bowed her head beside me and asked in a quiet whisper. Without overtly revealing her identity or mentioning the Commander’s name. Silently waiting for my command.
“Do not touch anything.”
“Understood.”
I said. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them. Rather, I trusted them too much, to my detriment.
“It seems the strategy meeting is finally coming to an end. Ah, it was truly long! Waiting patiently is not as easy as one might think!”
Finishing my thoughts, I took a resolute step forward, and Colonel Hydra, who had been watching me, smiled faintly.
Meanwhile, the encirclement of undead surrounding us on all sides was steadily closing in.
“Do you have any secret plan to escape this situation?”
“…None.”
I replied. At my answer, the Colonel blinked in surprise, and Hella merely gave a bitter laugh at a result she hadn’t even expected. I paid them no mind and asked back.
“Why should I escape this situation?”
There was no secret plan hidden away to escape this situation. There was no need for one.
“Hmm, I thought you had something else to rely on. To think you’re merely the type who doesn’t fear death─”
Colonel Hydra laughed.
“Well, this is more anticlimactic than I expected.”
The undead moved. Flesh, blood, and bone moved. The undead, endlessly crawling up from the shattered and cracked crevices of the earth, joined forces, one after another─.
Before long, they formed ranks and clumped together, becoming a wall of death that encircled and tightened the siege from all sides.
The wall of the dead.
As if the wall itself were moving, the wall built of the dead’s flesh and bone walked on its own. With each step of their march, they intricately interwove their bodies with chains of flesh and bone.
There was a mountain of corpses from which there was no escape. A mountain of corpses, thousands of feet moving and running.
“ .”
In front of it, I silently extended my arm. And spoke a short phrase.
The name of the river of lamentation flowing through the underworld, and the frozen lake spread across the lowest circle of hell in the Divine Comedy.
“Magic, is it.”
“Whoa! It’s Commander-nim’s Cocytus! I really love this one!”
No additional attributes were added. I had to save mana. Six-Color Gemcraft wasn’t free either.
Above all, there was no need to specifically add attributes against the undead in this area.
It was an area-of-effect magic that could instantly grind a Level 150 from the Abyss into nothingness. There was no doubt about its power.
“…”
I merely watched in silence.
The sight of an equivalent area-of-effect magic, which also had to be acquired through a legendary-grade grimoire, clashing.
─.
*Crack, crunch.*
Frost formed along the living wall of death, and ice shards descended.
The wall of the dead, feeling powerful enough never to collapse, and the chains of flesh and bone linking them, finally met the first winds blowing.
As the chilling breeze lightly kissed the wall of corpses, flesh tore, bones shattered, and blood scattered, as if crushed by a mace.
As the gentle breeze slipped through the gaps in the undead, it shredded, butchered, and swallowed flesh, blood, and bone as if churning a blender.
Each wisp of breeze, dancing as it blew, contained an absurd cutting power and destruction, as if emitting sword energy.
Winds that toppled a mountain of death piled from hundreds, thousands of corpses.
Yet, even all the winds that tore and shattered the wall of flesh and bone were nothing more than ‘slightly wilder breezes’ before the approaching storm.
Thus, as they waited for the true storm to arrive.
Suddenly, the storm ceased.
The storm that should have appeared beyond the horizon, beyond the sea, and made landfall, vanished as if it were a lie.
But still, with each breath, white, thin vapor like frozen air escaped.
“Ah, how merciful.”
“Ack, what?! How anticlimactic! It’s like stopping mid-pee… Mph, mmph!”
“Shh, Alice. A lady should be a little more careful when speaking.”
“─.”
Their voices beside me felt impossibly distant. Amidst that distant feeling, Hella had to doubt what she was seeing.
Was this truly a magic of the power a single mage could unleash?
Even if so, to cast magic of that scale and power─ with merely a one-word incantation?
Upon realizing it, the entire surrounding land was frozen solid, pure white.
Filling the shattered and cracked crevices across the earth with ice as if capping them, and imprisoning all the undead that should have crawled up from below ground within a prison of ice.
Even this was merely a part of a whale’s back, visible above water.
This was merely a glimpse of the tip of the iceberg.
Then what on earth lies beneath it? What am I standing upon right now?
Without realizing it, chills ran down my spine.
It was not the work of a human.
It was not something a human could do.
No, even if it were possible─ could a mage capable of *that* be called ‘human’?
“─.”
Colonel Hydra Waltz’s situation was not much different.
“Ah, ah.”
He unknowingly realized his teeth were chattering. Even trying to stop, his body wouldn’t obey.
So he just stared blankly, utterly lost.
Like standing on a pier, watching a tsunami approach.
It was a face utterly devoid of hope.
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