Chapter 409

It was said that one ordinary Knight could replace a thousand soldiers.

Then what do you do against ten thousand?

Count Molsen decided to kill them as if they were Knights.

Ten thousand Wraiths.

‘Die.’

‘Become fertilizer.’

‘Become nourishment.’

‘Become food.’

‘And become a part of me.’

The only effect of the Count’s magic circle was to realize his Spell world in reality.

As a result, the Wraiths gained physical substance and became Wraith soldiers.

A wave advanced—bodies made of black soot.

The Wraiths, turned into a black tide, rose even when they fell, pushed back and surged forward.

Groooaaan.

From time to time, the mass let out a scream that made your skin crawl.

They were just a heap charging blindly, with no formation.

Because of that, they weren’t fast.

It was less an army advancing and more a riotous flood rolling in.

Encrid looked at it and thought, ‘An ant swarm.’

Except each “ant” was human-sized, and getting swept up by them meant death.

And it wouldn’t be just him.

The soldier behind him, now scratching at his forearm, would die too.

“Mother! Mother! Where are you going!”

The soldier suddenly shouting at empty air—seeing things—would die too.

“Magenta, I’ll come to your side too.”

The soldier who’d fallen into a sudden despair and was pretending to strangle himself would die too.

Chaos.

Count Molsen’s magic or sorcery—whatever it was—had landed cleanly.

Not everyone had lost their minds. Some soldiers were still sane.

“Hey. What are you saying, you idiot? Magenta is my sister. She’s living just fine, and she’s never done anything with you.”

A sane soldier slapped the back of the neck of the one strangling himself.

“What is it? What’s going on?”

One soldier looked around, bewildered. He looked genuinely lost.

He must have been wondering why everyone else was acting like that when he was fine.

Encrid didn’t know what spell the Count had cast, but he understood the situation well enough.

One spell covered the entire battlefield, but if you left a certain area, you weren’t affected by the soot.

The longer you stayed inside it, the more it ate into you.

With this much influence and scale, wouldn’t it end if you cut down the caster?

It wasn’t reasoning so much as certainty.

If he didn’t break through and kill the source, there was no other solution.

So he had to move forward.

Rem, after receiving Encrid’s order and seeing the Wraith horde, said they should form up.

“I refuse.”

Ragna answered first, stumbling a step as he spoke.

Ragna wasn’t in good condition, either. Overusing [Will] was bound to strain both mind and body.

“Brother, has something inauspicious gotten into your head? Shall I take it out?”

Audin asked with concern.

It sounded like Rem had fallen for the magician’s trick, so Audin was kindly offering help.

Audin, who’d been cracking his knuckles, was also covered in wounds.

The opponents hadn’t been easy in the first place.

Was Jaxson any better?

He’d paid for failing to kill the Count with his earlier surprise attack.

A small hole had been punched into his stomach. He’d smeared ointment on it and sealed it with a specially made bandage, but he wasn’t in any condition for a long fight.

Worse, a cold energy was rising up from the wound.

Rem was the same. Borrowing someone else’s magic left him nauseous.

Among them, Encrid was the worst.

Not because of [Will], but because he’d used his body far too roughly.

It was inevitable.

Lierbart had grafted Fiend muscles onto himself to become a Knight.

To handle that, Encrid had wrung every last drop of strength out of himself.

And luck had followed.

If he hadn’t realized the [Will]-based skill he’d named Eyes That See an Inch Ahead, he’d be welcoming the morning sun and repeating today.

Even as that thought passed, the black tide kept pushing closer.

It looked like seawater made of black oil.

Just looking at it made bile rise.

Some Wraith soldiers rolled along the ground as part of the wave, falling and piling up, yet they still crawled forward, scratching the floor with their fingers to get closer.

Kill. I will kill.

Nothing but murderous intent shone inside their souls.

Above them, you could see a knot of Wraiths tangled together, limbs intertwined.

It went past unpleasant and straight into nauseating.

Everyone was refusing, but this wasn’t a situation where refusal mattered.

“Let’s take a shortcut.”

Encrid didn’t add anything. Rem replied in the same flat tone.

“The leader goes first, I go second, and the lazybones goes third. The stray cat and the religious guy fall back and cover the rear.”

It was businesslike. Not kind, but Encrid understood.

Everything he’d learned from Rem hadn’t been wasted.

“Three-Wave Formation?”

Encrid asked, and Rem nodded.

It was the name of the formation they’d been forced to endure once before.

The Centaur Colony and the horse Fiends had used it together.

First wave draws the attention, second wave tears into them, third wave breaks through.

Each wave grows heavier.

Rem’s plan was to repeat the Three-Wave Formation over and over while rotating positions.

“Let’s go.”

Encrid didn’t hesitate. Even if they talked it through a hundred times here, there was no time to practice.

More than anything, the Wraith horde was already right in front of them.

Groooaaan!

It sounded like a ghoul screaming from the bottom of a well.

‘Practice is the best training.’

Recalling Rem’s old words, Encrid brought Silver down in a Heavy Sword crown split, pivoting on his left foot.

Whoosh.

The blade seized the space and dropped.

“Relax your strength!”

Rem shouted from behind, but the swing was already committed.

Thwack!

The first Wraith to rush in had its head caught and split clean in two.

It was a black mass shaped like a body, with limbs but no eyes, nose, or mouth.

When Encrid’s sword split its head, black mist burst out.

It was dead. He could feel it.

And the Wraith behind it attacked immediately.

They didn’t stop. What did it matter if the one in front died?

“Left!”

Rem shouted.

A Wraith in front of Encrid formed something like a sword and swung it down.

It wasn’t an angle you could dodge just by stepping aside.

Even so, Encrid stepped anyway.

It took faith to do it, but he moved without hesitation.

A lump like a beam dropped from the right.

Bang! Crunch!

Rem’s hammer crushed the Wraith’s head.

Then Rem swung the axe in his right hand low and horizontal at a steady speed.

Brrrk, brrrk, brrrk! Rumble.

Instead of cleaving through in one strike, he split the Wraith each time it caught on the axe blade—pushing and dragging, sawing it apart.

You could tell at a glance it wasn’t ordinary skill.

He distributed the weight through his abdomen, used the balance of body and arms, and even drove force from his feet into the ground.

It was an axe swing that let him keep advancing without stopping.

After those two attacks, Rem also shifted right.

The space Rem opened was immediately filled by another cluster of Wraith soldiers.

Groooaaan!

A jagged blade—missing teeth—dropped through the scream.

Ragna’s sword.

Whoosh.

His blade split the space vertically and cut through three Wraiths tangled together.

One stretched out a hand, struggling to grab Ragna by the collar.

It didn’t reach.

Ragna, after the swing, retreated.

“Again!”

Even before Rem shouted, Encrid recognized the returning shape and motion.

How many times had they sparred?

Hundreds, at least.

They filled the gaps and held the front.

Relaxing your strength meant receiving—enduring.

In other words, retreat mattered more than striking.

Grasping the key, Encrid did exactly that.

He loosened his grip, used the Flowing Sword form, and cut, struck, and shoved Wraith heads away.

One Wraith leaped—

A long stick came flying in from somewhere.

Whoosh, thwack!

The projectile pierced the Wraith and sent it flying far back.

It looked like a javelin throw.

In truth, someone had snatched up a fallen spear and hurled it.

“Keep going, Brother.”

Audin’s skill.

Behind Encrid’s left, Jaxson’s hand never stopped moving.

With a long sword, he stabbed and cut down the Wraiths that tried to wrap around them, one by one.

Their roles were clear.

Encrid and Rem held the front.

Ragna cut down the center.

Audin became the foundation that kept everything from collapsing.

Jaxson moved to fill any gap that opened.

With Audin and Jaxson holding the rear, the three in front could drive straight ahead.

Encrid’s group was swallowed by the Wraith horde.

The world turned black. The sky vanished, replaced by pure darkness.

Even so, his sharpened senses clearly tracked the positions of the men fighting beside him.

Encrid trusted that.

The other four did too.

They weren’t going to stab each other in the back—unless they meant to.

Wraith claws fell.

Some even pushed their tongues out between long nails. The tongues were sharpened like spearpoints—Wraiths of a twisted form.

Rem’s axe cut one down.

A diagonal swing split its head on the diagonal.

As Encrid saw the severed head, he drew his Gladius and chopped down the hand of another Wraith.

Thwack!

It felt like striking heavy mud, not iron.

The hand caught on the Gladius tore away in a chunk.

There was no need for a follow-up.

As Encrid turned aside, Ragna’s sword moved through the space he’d left.

Encrid stopped thinking about reasons.

He just kept moving forward.

The five became one and churned through the Wraith wave.

The most taxed were Rem and Audin.

One held the middle and adjusted the balance. The other served as the foundation, supporting everything.

They had a terrible relationship.

They’d fought each other plenty of times—too many to count.

Whether it was sparring or brawling, it taught them each other’s habits faster than anything.

If you couldn’t read each other’s breathing, you lost.

So they’d learned.

That was why the five moved together so naturally.

Even though it was their first time fighting as a unit, it wasn’t much different from a royal guard that had trained together for over a decade.

—

Krang saw it.

Markus saw it too.

Pell and Aisia were seized by a bad feeling.

Anyone would feel it, seeing black Wraiths, soot, and dark clouds swallowing the sky.

And then seeing the Wraith wave engulf Encrid’s group.

From the outside, it looked simple.

Encrid and his lunatics would die.

“It’s a spell. It won’t last long!”

Aisia shouted, forcing calm into her voice.

It was something she was telling herself as much as anyone else.

She was a Junior Knight of the royal guard.

She didn’t handle spells, but she’d dealt with magicians often enough.

She forced her mind cold and kept thinking.

How long could someone maintain a spell on this scale?

Not long.

That was true.

But even if it lasted only as long as a candle took to burn down, both armies would be devastated, and there was a good chance soldiers tainted by Wraiths would become something no longer human.

Aisia couldn’t know that far.

“We have to break through and get out.”

She said.

Krang kept staring at the place Encrid had disappeared.

Had he really died?

“Damn it, Your Highness!”

Markus shouted. The battlefield was going insane.

The Count had to be possessed by something.

No matter how much of a magician he was, could this even be possible?

Should he have called the royal guard sooner?

Pell gripped the Idol Slayer again.

‘Do I go in?’

Looking into the Wraith wave, it almost seemed doable.

No. For now, the answer was endurance.

Even after swallowing Encrid’s group, the Wraith horde still had plenty left.

Pell cut down one or two. The Wraiths surging in were immune to the Idol Slayer.

If so, all he could do was cut them down one by one and drive them back.

Aisia gathered her squires into a tight circle, then stepped forward.

She slashed left and stabbed right while spinning her body in a tight arc.

Two strikes, two Wraiths.

She didn’t even have time to watch them spill mist—she tucked into a backward somersault.

It wasn’t something you could do in full plate, but Aisia wore partial armor, including a breastplate, and she managed a near-feat of a flip.

The moment she cleared the spot—

Thud!

A Wraith dropped into the space she’d just left.

Aisia didn’t even have time to breathe. She drove an elbow sideways into a Wraith soldier that had already closed in.

Thwack!

It felt like striking stone. The Wraith’s body wasn’t soft at all.

Using the recoil, she brought her sword down on the opposite side.

A vertical slash, weighted with force, cut down another Wraith.

Aisia’s vision swam.

‘How long can I endure this?’

If it was a battle of time, was endurance really the answer?

Krang’s side was holding—for now.

But those weren’t ordinary soldiers.

“Save me!”

“Aaaaaaah!”

A Wraith soldier with a physical body rushed a sane soldier.

Skill-wise, they weren’t impressive, but numbers were the problem.

They didn’t stop.

They kept coming.

Wraith soldiers didn’t know fear.

Crisis breeds opportunity.

Across the battlefield, people who could be called heroes began to appear.

An old commander with experience.

A young soldier with courage.

They gathered those around them and held out.

But how long?

How long did they have to endure to live?

The curtain of despair fell.

The dark clouds that blotted out the sun seemed to be declaring tomorrow for them.

That they would be caught by Wraiths and die.

Or be torn apart and stabbed to death by Wraith soldiers.

—

Inside the darkness, Encrid forgot himself, forgot everything, and swung his sword—again and again.

‘It’s hard.’

The words escaped on their own.

But it wasn’t beyond him.

And as he kept doing it, he found the rhythm.

Instead of forcing each strike, he saved his strength, twisted, and deflected.

What he lacked, Rem filled.

If it still wasn’t enough, Ragna filled it.

They fought, and sometimes fell back two or three steps, but overall, they moved forward.

If they retreated two, they advanced three.

If they retreated three, they advanced four.

Rem’s contribution—adjusting the center and rotating the flow—was the greatest.

Encrid deflected a falling Wraith hand with the flat of his blade instead of dodging.

Deflect, then cut.

Originally, ordinary metal couldn’t cut Wraiths, but once they gained physical substance, weaknesses appeared.

You could kill them with a normal sword.

Encrid repeated stabbing and cutting, enduring and enduring again.

Everything around them was pitch black.

Black soot.

Wraith soldiers in waves.

Darkness.

Black masses pressing in from every side.

Hands overflowing with murderous intent.

The world was nothing but that.

And yet—

“Ah.”

A sound of pleasure slipped out.

He was satisfied that he could swing his sword again, and again.

“Are you crazy?”

Rem’s voice cut through. He must have seen Encrid’s face.

Laughing, in a situation like this?

They fought and advanced without stopping, and at some point, the darkness around them thinned.

Encrid swung once through empty air and halted.

No Wraiths.

No—there were.

Behind them, countless Wraith soldiers lay scattered, their bodies spilling blood like mist.

Only then did Encrid realize it.

They had pierced through the middle of ten thousand Wraiths.

He raised his head.

Count Molsen sat there, on his black chair.

The Count stared at Encrid, eyes wide.

The man who had fought through hell looked calm.

Encrid did nothing but breathe and look back.

But the one who’d waited was trembling with disbelief.

Human reactions were all the same when something beyond comprehension happened.

“How?”

Count Molsen was no different.