The pillar that the magic chains were wrapped around broke apart. The chains slackened. Al’s halberd, which he had swung up from below to intercept the demon’s club, had at some point become engulfed in bright-red fire. I felt the aura of a god. It was a brave, manly aura that was neither the god of the flame’s nor the god of undeath’s. I got the feeling that the corners of his mouth had curled up into an awkward smile.
Al bellowed. The axeblade imbued with divine fire traced a crimson trail and sent the spiked club flying through the air with the Scarabaeus’s hand still attached. But the beetle-demon was itself a storied warrior. Disregarding its sliced-off hand, it drew a dagger with its other hand and charged forward, trusting in the defense of its shell.
But that was nothing other than a blunder. That was Al’s range.
He grabbed hold of the Scarabaeus’s arm. He bent down low and pulled it towards him, just as I’d taught him, with the same movement I’d used when I threw the forest giant. There was a mighty roar. A large body flew through the air, and the King of the Iron Country slammed the invading demons’ supreme commander to the ground.
It may have been protected by a tough shell, but the impact shook through its body, knocking the breath out of it. Yet the demon showed a dogged refusal to be beaten. Out of nowhere, it issued four jointed, insectile limbs from its body and wrapped them around Al, pulling him in towards it. The two fell to the ground and rolled, fighting. Then, a piercing, alien scream arose from the tangle.
Sticking into a gap in the Scarabaeus’s shell near its neck was a right-wield stiletto. Blood’s favorite custom dagger would not permit its opponent to fight back at this range, and healing miracles would be of little help to the demon with that blade still lodged into its neck.
“What you’ve taken—” Al held the struggling demon down and forced the blade in farther still. “You will return!”
The demon twitched two or three times. Then, at last, it stopped moving completely.
Blood’s voice, which I remembered so fondly, revived once more in my mind.
— One thing is always on their minds, day in and day out. The question ofwhat is worth laying down their life for. What is their reason to fight.
“The enemy general,” Al yelled, “is slain!”
— And when they find it, they go into battle with their souls burning with thefire of courage, and never once fear death.
“Wow…”
You were right, Blood. You really were. It was just as you said.
Dwarves are true warriors.
After Al had claimed the head of the Scarabaeus, the demons who had been surging towards us until that point suddenly slowed. Perhaps they had been under the Blessing of Frenzy, which the evil gods often gave to their followers.
If this was a story, the enemy would probably have taken flight at this point.
However, it seemed that the demons weren’t such easy foes. The mere death of their general hadn’t caused them to lose the will to fight or their ranks to collapse. On the contrary, a few Commander demons immediately took over leadership and rallied the Soldier demons, putting up a strong resistance; meanwhile, several demons with bat wings flew around the hall, perhaps trying to take back the head of their leader. They darted at Al, who had mostly checked out mentally after claiming the demon’s head.
“You feckers!” Menel shot down most of them, firing arrows in quick succession, but finally his quiver was empty. Two demons came from above, descending quickly upon Al. There wasn’t time for him to defend—
I tossed my shield aside, bent my body backward, and hurled Pale Moon with all my strength.
It wasn’t a spear meant for throwing, but my body was well trained and my weapon familiar, and they answered my unreasonable request regardless. Two dying screams overlapped. Its blade glinting and its handle bending, the spear I had thrown had flown through the hall, impaled the two demons through the chest, and pinned them to a distant pillar.
“We’re not done, Al!” I called out. “Keep it up just a little longer!”
Coming to his senses, Al shouted back, “Yes, sir!”
Blood had told me once in the past that on the battlefield, the moment when a warrior defeats a strong foe and claims their head is the moment when they leave themselves the most vulnerable. I even had a memory of a relevant picture I’d seen in my previous world, in a book about Japanese history. I think it was about the Sengoku period or Edo or something. It had showed a warrior in the process of claiming the head of the enemy he’d defeated getting his own head chopped off by a different enemy. It showed that the moment of sweet victory is exactly when defeat and loss creep up on you.
Even as my mind wandered over these irrelevant thoughts, my trained body never stopped moving. Seeing that I’d lost my weapon, a demon swung its two- handed greatsword down towards me. I stepped towards it and to the side, dodging the swing. Then I placed both my hands on the back of the handle and continued the arc downwards, forcing the swing of my opponent’s sword to continue beyond the point where it should have stopped. The natural limits of the demon’s body prevented it from keeping hold of the sword.
And then I snatched it.
At the same time, using the momentum from my opponent’s swing, I sliced the demon wide open from its thigh to its stomach with its own sword. In terms of time, it was a mere moment. From the demon’s perspective, in the single instant it had swung its sword down, its opponent had dodged and closed in, and simultaneously its sword had disappeared from its hands and its thigh had been slashed. The demon might not even have understood what had happened. While thinking that I’d never expected to use this showy technique in an actual battle, I swung the sword I’d stolen without a moment’s hesitation and finished the demon off.
To be honest, this weapon’s center of mass was a little too close to the hilt, and I wasn’t very fond of two-handed greatswords. However, under Blood’s teaching, I had learned how to handle pretty much anything that could be called a weapon. Whatever a weapon’s intended purpose, as long as it wasn’t something difficult like a chain weapon, I could probably use it, and I wasn’t about to be choosy in a situation like this.
Another demon charged towards me. I gave it a slight opening which it took, attacking me head-on. With perfect timing, I pulled one leg back and dodged, then countered by chopping off its hand at the wrist.
It was useful, and honestly to be expected given the greatsword’s weight, that all I had to do was connect and wrists would fly off regardless of bone or anything else. I personally preferred spears, but I felt like maybe I could understand why Blood had adored two-handed swords so much.
I continued brandishing the greatsword for a while, lopping off limbs and chopping through torsos. Then, I checked the situation around me again.
Reystov was breathing quite hard. I couldn’t blame him. He’d been going too wild for too long by this point. Ghelreis was similar. Only the sound of heavy breathing could be heard from beneath his helmet. Even Menel, who commanded a view of the whole battlefield and had been lending his support to everyone, was starting to dull, and Al was hard at work protecting him in spite of his own injuries.
If we continued this much longer, we really would reach our limits. But now that we’d killed the majority of the high-level demons, the rest of them were starting to show signs of faltering. It was about time I acted. I dashed at the final Commander I could spot, chopped off its head, and belted the Word of Departure at the demons in the hall.
“Discede! ”
I felt a colorless, transparent pulse of mana spread out from me like a wave.