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Chapter 172
The demon army that attacked Klinge on that day used orcs as its main fighting force.
Orcs, which are more powerful and burlier than goblins, also eat even more repulsive things,have a stronger reproductive ability and are somewhat smarter than goblins.
Such uncontrollable monsters came rushing while riding on the backs of wyverns and sub-dragons.
Moreover, as the demons had apparently put some effort into this battle, four of them had joined the monster army.
With just one demon being present, a human army would have been put in a tough spot. However, once several demons get involved, it becomes impossible to know just how much combat prowess they would add to the overall strength of the monster army.
The ones who recklessly plunged into such an army with immeasurable combat power from the front were the soldiers of Trident’s national army.
In addition, the superiority of numbers on the demon army’s side was around 20 to 1, according to Frau’s investigation.
But that doesn’t mean that they were completely helpless.
There were some soldiers who inflicted some casualties by thrusting their swords at the enemy in order to show their pride as military men, but those people were in the minority, and the losses they caused couldn’t even be called a scratch when compared to the whole enemy army.
Although almost all soldiers had readied their weapons, most were kicked down by sub-dragons, stabbed to death by orcs holding spears, ripped apart by the swords of orcs and the claws of wyverns, and turned into a bloody mess of minced meat in the blink of an eye.
Those chunks of meat were furthermore crunched by the strong jaws of the wyverns, sub-dragons and orcs as food.
All that remained from the soldiers were broken swords and bloodstained, crushed armor parts.
You could call it a gruesome scene of carnage that didn’t give the victims any time to raise anything close to screams or angry roars.
“What the hell were those guys?”
A male demon riding on the back of a sub-dragon asked quite mystified. Another male demon laughed while having the sub-dragon he’s riding kick an iron helmet lying on the ground.
“Who knows. Weren’t those suicide candidates?”
“Pointlessly wasting their already few soldiers…isn’t that city’s commander an idiot?”
Upon the words of another male demon, a female demon, who followed at the end of the line, frowned while chiding him,
“Pay attention. After all it’s possible that it was some kind of strategy.”
“A strategy that turned such a large number of soldiers into fodder? That would be a fairly extravagant plan. It would be somewhat profane to regard the person, who came up with it, as human.”
“There’s no mistake in that. If it’s a plan that can give us even the slightest pain, I dare say that their way of thinking is similar to ours.”
The female demon doesn’t even try to hide her displeasure towards the male demons who were laughing together.
The monsters, who literally devoured Trident’s army in front of their eyes, immediately tried to rush towards their next prey, the city, but then stopped.
Due to not just the orcs, but even the wyverns and sub-dragons having halted, the demons turn a quizzical gaze towards Klinge.
The wall protecting the city in front of their eyes was covered with green vines to the point where the stone beneath couldn’t be seen, but as soon as they wondered whether a part of it had squirmed like an animal’s tentacle, a single, cocoon-like cluster formed on a vine.
That cocoon, which stood out for some reason, slowly opened while gathering countless eyes on itself.
What stood up from within that vine’s cocoon was a young woman boasting a tall, slender and well-proportioned body.
Her flaxen hair naturally spills down to her waist. A black apron dress covers her balanced body.
That woman, who bowed so gracefully that it even charmed the orcs, who shouldn’t know anything about etiquette, began to speak with a voice that carried itself across the whole battlefield albeit not being very loud.
“Let me warn you. This place is Klinge, the city where Margrave Kunugi, who was permitted to rule this land by the Trident Principality, resides. This city doesn’t allow the existence of anyone who possesses even a shred of malicious intent. If you heed this warning and pull back, we won’t chase you, but please resolve yourself if you don’t.”
Upon hearing the woman’s calm words, the demons dumbfoundedly gazed at her for a while, but before long they pointed their fingers at the woman and started slandering her while revealing crooked smiles.
“You’re an idiot! I hate idiots!”
“You will overlook us if we pull back? Can’t you see reality?”
“Resolve ourselves, eh? Ooh, how scary, how scary!”
“Going by your appearance, you’re the pet dog of this city’s lord, aren’t you?”
The female demon snatches a spear held by a nearby orc.
Being too late in letting go, the orc was lifted up alongside the spear and then blown away while screaming once the female demon wielded the spear.
“Go and redo your studies from the basics of how to speak in the netherworld!”
The female demon, who fixed her hold on the spear after making it revolve in the air once, immediately throws it.
The orc spears weren’t originally meant for throwing.
It’s a weapon that won’t have much penetrative force and range if thrown without taking its length, weight and center of gravity into account. However, once that spear left the female demon’s hand, it flew in a straight line towards the apron dress-wearing woman leaving a whistling sound behind as it cut through the air.
The spear had such momentum that it would doubtlessly drive itself into the woman’s body up to its shaft if she didn’t defend herself.
Anyone, who saw that spectacle, imagined the woman drenched in blood with the spear handle sprouting from her chest.
Anyone besides a few humans, that is.
“That’s a truly tasteful reply. On top of being easy to understand, it’s quick.”
The spear’s pointy end suddenly stopped in front of the woman’s chest as if it had stabbed into something.
The spear handle shook intensely as if to display its stabbing force, but the spearhead didn’t advance even a millimeter from where it was.
While the faces of the demons were dyed in surprise, the woman presses her index finger against the pointed end of the frozen spear.
With just that, the spear crumbles away as if several hundred years had passed all at once, and vanishes.
“I’d love to give you a return gift, but I don’t have anything besides this.”
What the woman retrieved from her apron’s pocket was a butter knife that doesn’t even have a sharpened edge.
It’s not even considered a weapon.
The woman lightly swings the butter knife, which isn’t a threat even if thrust at someone, and brandishes it like a throwing knife.
The butter knife that left her hand just like that turned into a single flash that flew with a speed that surpassed the demons’ imagination.
Even the demons could understand that it had been thrown at them, but there’s quite a large distance between the woman and the demons.
It’s a distance the heavy spear managed to traverse precisely because it had been thrown with the physical strength of a demon.
There should be no way that a light butter knife would reach after being thrown with the strength of a human, but the butter knife that had transformed into a flash stabbed into the forehead of a single man among the demons, who had been careless as he believed that it wouldn’t get this far. The knife’s end protruded out from the back of his head after passing through his skull.
“Eh?”
The male demon, whose eyeballs flew out of his head apparently due to the knife’s impact at the time, which also left a hole going from his forehead to the back of his head, raised an awfully stupid sound. With that apparently being his last word, he feebly fell backwards onto the ground.
With a slight delay, blood and some kind of fluid that’s not blood gushed out from the gaping hole on his forehead.
The remaining three demons needed several seconds to comprehend that he had just lost his life.
Moreover, they needed another ten-odd seconds to accept the reality that it was caused by a meager, metallic tool like a butter knife which normally shouldn’t be capable of piercing them.
“No way…”
“Now that we have literally crossed swords, I guess it’s time to start the battle, everyone.”
The woman in an apron dress puts her hands on her chest and performs a courteous bow.
“Please reflect upon having ignored my warning. Please regret having turned this Klinge into your enemy. And, it’s very likely His Majesty the Demon King the one who ordered you to make a move on the city of my master Renya Kunugi, so please curse His Majesty for your doom.”
Even while forming a smile with her mouth, a feeling of indignation that makes everyone that looks into her eyes freeze is oozing out of her.
The woman in an apron dress smoothly informs them,
“Today’s battle will likely result in you guys realizing how deeply compassionate an instant death in itself can be. How gentle death could be. And you will probably learn to understand how wonderful it is to be granted death even without asking for it.”
“What are you saying…”
The woman’s words sounded like a resonant song.
The female demon, who started to open her mouth to ask as she didn’t understand the meaning behind her words, notices how the fingers of the previously stabbed male demon move with a twitch, and turn pale.
“Y-You d-don’t say…”
In front of the female demon, who strongly tries to deny the words which have popped up into her head, the man, who should be dead, raised a scream.
“Ouwwwwwwch!? W-Why!? Why am I not dead!? Even though the knife is still stuck in my head!? Even though it hurrrts so much! Why haven’t I died!?”
“Something like that…it should have been a fatal wound…”
“K-Kill me…please kill meeeee! I can’t bear this paaaaain!”
The other three demons stare with widened eyes at the man who’s rolling around while blocking the gaping hole on his forehead with his hands.
Each time the man turns over, blood and something muddy spill out of the hole in his head, but there’s not the slightest indication of the man dying.
The male demon writhes in agony while blood streams out of both eyes that are now just dark brown cavities.
Without understanding what’s happening in front of their eyes, the demons shift their attention towards the woman in the apron dress. At that point they notice the faint, red light stretching across Klinge’s city wall.
If anyone from the demon army flew right above Klinge, they would witness various repeatedly blinking diagrams being drawn across the streets of Klinge which is encircled by crimson phosphorescence.
“There are three composed spells that make use of Klinge’s City-Class Sorcery Array.”
The woman says while raising three fingers.
“The first, a barrier. On top of possessing a strength that allows to cover the whole battlefield and doesn’t allow anyone get away, it’s a barrier with the purpose of not letting any of the internal circumstances leak to the outside.”
The woman lowers one finger.
“The second, maintenance. The spell’s name is <Temporary Immortality>. One cannot welcome death within this barrier. No matter what might happen, the soul will stay shackled to its body.”
She lowers yet another finger.
“The third, alignment. It’s a spell for the sake of preparing the same environment inside the barrier as the one I have created in the basement of master’s castle.”
She lowers her last finger and tightly grasps her fist.
“Now then, you probably wonder just what I’ve done, right?”
The woman opened her clenched fists, clapped her hands in front of her chest once, spreads them apart suddenly, and asks while tilting her head to the side, but there’s no one in this place that can answer her question.
For a short while the woman waited for someone to reply while maintaining that posture, but once she realizes that there won’t be any answers, she returns to her formerly upright posture while sighing.
“Time’s up. Let’s hand out a punishment.”
Suddenly several sorcery arrays appear on the surface of the city wall emitting a red phosphorescence.
“A sorcery attack, huh!?”
The demons deploy defense magic at once.
Once the woman in the apron swung a finger without minding the demons’ reaction, the manifested sorcery arrays spit out countless light spheres.
Seemingly not possessing any considerable power, they were repelled or disappeared after touching the defense magic deployed by the demons, but the orcs, who don’t own any decent measures against sorcery, have no means to defend themselves.
Orc bodies, which were directly hit, are torn to pieces. As flesh and blood continue to fly around, bewildered voices start to spread among the orcs.
The orcs, who were injured to the point they should be dead, continue screaming while exposing their wounds unable to die.
“Pain, suffering, sadness and resentment. It’s possible to easily use such negative emotions as mana.”
With faintly blushing cheeks and an entranced look, the woman watches how some orcs roll over while scattering their intestines, how others wriggle like worms after having their limbs plucked off by light spheres, and how still-unhurt orcs let their eyes wander around looking for a way to escape while twisting their faces in terror.
“As it appears that the alignment of the environment went well, Putry-chan below will be full of joy.”
“What the heck…”
“It’s fine even if you don’t understand the situation in particular. Now then, I guess I should welcome you all properly?”
The woman pinches the skirt of her apron dress and bows while depicting an elegant drape with the hem.
Her conduct is perfect and beautiful.
“Welcome, everybody. To my feeding grounds. Welcome to the simple hell furnace, one of Klinge’s defense mechanisms. Come on, please dance, everyone. You will be alright until your soul dries up completely. We have plenty of time. After all you won’t be able to die, even if you want to. You won’t be able to die, even if you try to!”
Her smile changed into laughter.
Right now, right here a predation that reversed the role of attackers and defenders was about to begin.
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