With a hint of tension, I looked down at the corpses of the ghouls swept up by the bombardment, and soon, I found myself grinning widely.
"They're done for! They're not getting up again!"
I looked around at the still dazed soldiers and called out again.
"We got them, all of them!"
Whoa-!
Finally, a beat late, the soldiers erupted in cheers. These nervous guys! Still, I love them!
‘I had worked out how to destroy the spirit cores of the vampires while exploring dungeons.'
When I first encountered a vampire in the Colosseum.
After driving a silver sword into its body and launching a magical attack, its spirit core was exposed.
When I destroyed that core, it screamed out in its death throes.
While exploring dungeons afterward, I attempted to refine this strategy based on different conditions and situations.
The conclusions I came to were as follows:
1. A sufficiently powerful magic attack will expose a vampire's spirit core.
2. At our party's current level, the damage from our magic attacks is insufficient, making it difficult to expose the spirit core using magic alone.
3. However, if we land a physical attack with a silver weapon—vampires' weakness—and follow up with a magic attack, the damage from the magic attack is amplified.
4. If we destroy the exposed spirit core in this manner, the vampires can no longer regenerate and die.
5. Profit!
In short, if you use a magic attack while a silver sword is lodged in them, the silver serves as a catalyst that amplifies the magic damage, allowing us to expose their spirit cores in one fell swoop.
This enables us to secure a definite kill.
As for the lesser vampires, the ghouls, they burnt to death just from having their spirit cores exposed without needing any further steps.
‘But of course, we can't go through this laborious process for every single one of the thousand ghouls.'
So, I came up with a trick.
Sticking pieces of silver into the bodies of livestock.
There was plenty of silver powder and fragments leftover from making silver equipment piled up in the blacksmith's shop.
We painstakingly stuck those into the bodies of the livestock and used them as bait.
Ghouls will go for the flesh of any living creature.
Whether there's silver mixed in, or poison, they'll blindly rush in and start eating.
This allows us to lure them all to one place and they're literally stuffing silver into their own bodies. It's killing two birds with one stone.
Now all we have to do is top it off with a powerful magic attack.
‘The mages have to conserve their magic power. They need to save it to deal with the vampires; it'd be endless if they wasted it on ghouls.'
So, I made preparations!
An artifact that shoots magic, the Mana Cannon, made by emptying all the SR-grade magic cores we had!
I nodded in satisfaction as I looked at the five Mana Cannons cooling down next to me.
These were the guys that had just shot down onto the ghouls' heads. They work splendidly, as expected of the new model.
It's the same artifact as the cannon used in the tutorial stage.
Of course, back in the tutorial stage, I had intentionally caused a magic core to go berserk to increase its power, and Damian had aimed it himself, so the power was incomparable.
But these cannons are still very powerful. At least, they're sufficient as a cannon that projects magic damage.
‘We've prepared hard too, you monster bastards.'
With a grim smile, I stared at the silent enemy line.
I deliberately let their army approach without any damage.
Even knowing it wouldn't work, I had normal cannons fired at them.
If they noticed our methods, they might have come up with other strategies.
But those naïve bastards kept rushing towards the fortress in textbook fashion.
So I gathered them together and took away 300 lives all at once.
‘Now what will you do, Celendion?'
30% of the army's lives vanished in an instant.
In this situation, what move would the enemy make next?
And then-
Chek! Chek! Chek! Chek!
Honestly, they sent out the next army.
The second wave of the ghoul army. Again, about 300 Frost Ghouls.
I narrowed my eyes. I could see a clear difference from the first wave earlier.
At the very front of the enemy line,
Ten pale figures, draped in ragged black cloaks and drooling, were marching at the front.
Fallen Blood.
Degenerate vampires. Beasts chasing blood.
Elite monsters.
Crrk...
Kyaaaa-!
The Fallen Blood at the very front let out a hideous scream.
Its flipped eyes blazed with red light as bright as car headlights. Frightening.
Ta-a-at!
Ten Fallen Bloods started to rush forward.
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud!
And right behind them, a horde of Frost Ghouls pursued.
'Still daring to crawl forward after witnessing their defeat?'
Then, it's nothing but a thorough incineration for you. Accept it graciously.
I yelled to my soldiers.
"Are the silver powder bombs ready?!"
"They're ready!"
"Fire! Give them a full course!"
I stretched out my arm and roared.
"Fire!"
"Fire!"
"Fire!"
Boom! Boom!
Cannons simultaneously launched the shells.
Ordinary shells, yes, but filled to the brim with special silver particles and fragments!
Boom!
A shell precisely landed above the head of the leading Fallen Blood, exploding magnificently.
Silver powder scattered in all directions from the exploding shell. The Ghouls caught within the blast radius disintegrated as if melted.
However, they soon began to regenerate.
You think I'm just going to watch that happen?
"Old Hunters!"
I looked at two wizards waiting on the side.
"Jupiter, show them what you've got!"
"Of course, Your Majesty."
Jupiter and her fellow wizard respectfully nodded.