Chapter 125

The battle with the monsters intensified, indifferent to my worries.

The warriors of Valtir grew more ferocious as they were wounded.

The attacks of the monsters gradually reached the knight.

The old armor of the undead knight began to crack bit by bit.

It took five or six strikes to land a blow, but the warriors of Valtir were monsters too.

They wouldn’t die from just a few cuts.

“Grrrr…”

In an instant, the undead knight raised his sword to eye level.

Lifting the blade to eye level and covering half his head with the sword, following the knight’s etiquette.

Black smoke seeped from his mouth.

And then—the longsword imbued with dark energy blurred for a moment.

What followed were dozens of slashes.

Like a splash of water, the sword strikes spread in all directions, tearing through the warriors of Valtir.

Blood gushed out.

Pieces of the monsters, sliced into chunks, scattered everywhere.

Two died instantly, three lost their arms. The remaining two had their abdomens torn apart, armor and all.

“Kuaaaaah!”

The still-breathing warriors of Valtir let out a roar mixed with pain.

Foamy blood bubbled from their severed wounds.

They picked up the severed arms of their fallen comrades and attached them to their own.

Like mud sticking together, the severed arms reattached.

Regeneration, huh?

They couldn’t regenerate on their own, but they could recover using the flesh of their kin.

There were occasionally such types among hybrid beasts.

I didn’t know these guys were like that, though.

In the game, we usually blew their heads off with ranged firepower.

The undead knight’s eyes glowed darker.

Come to think of it, he had regeneration too.

Corpses raised by magic would recover unless attacked with their weakness.

“Krrrr…”

The warriors of Valtir, with their arms restored, crouched down.

Their shoulder blades bulged, and two more arms sprouted out.

“…ltýr…”

The undead knight muttered softly.

I couldn’t quite make out what he said.

—

What should I do? I pondered, gently lowering Durandal.

I hadn’t made a decision yet.

My desire to intervene had already half faded.

The technique the undead knight just showed was that threatening.

If I had been in the middle of that, I would have lost a limb.

And then I would have ended up as food for those monsters.

While I hesitated, the tide of battle slowly shifted.

The warriors of Valtir grew even more violent. Their strikes were now reckless, without any thought of defense.

Even a graze shattered the undead knight’s armor.

Missed attacks dug deep into the ground.

They didn’t care about cutting their kin or being cut by them, thrashing like rabid dogs.

The undead knight, now on the defensive, was gradually pushed back.

In this state, maybe it’s better to intervene soon…?

If the warriors of Valtir win like this, it would be troublesome.

I raised my sword as if to charge in, but then stopped abruptly.

Wait, hold on. Let’s think about this.

Is he really being pushed back?

That can’t be right.

A sudden intuition gripped my legs.

Being pushed back by such reckless, self-sacrificing attacks? A normal knight might, sure.

But that guy, the undead knight, is a monster. A corpse raised by magic, nearly immortal unless attacked with holy power.

With a level of regeneration far beyond that of mere hybrid beasts… there’s no reason for him to be pushed back like this.

Fighting while taking hits is actually the specialty of corpses raised by magic.

It’s a trap.

I don’t know the purpose or the method, but it’s clear that his retreat is intentional.

Slowly stepping back, the undead knight had now retreated to a narrow passage.

A bridge made of rock, connecting the open ground to the fortress.

Is he trying to narrow the battlefield? Reduce the number of enemies attacking at once?

But the passage is a bit too wide for that.

It looks about 6 meters wide, which is enough to surround the undead knight.

If that happens, the undead knight, with no room to dodge, would be at a disadvantage.

An incomprehensible decision.

As I expected, the warriors of Valtir advanced onto the bridge simultaneously.

The undead knight stood in the center of the bridge, unmoving.

If this continues, he’ll be surrounded soon. What is he thinking?

The warriors of Valtir were now just three steps away. One charge, and they’d be upon him.

They raised their weapons, laughing savagely.

At that moment, the knight’s eyes burned brighter.

“Ha…gal…az!”

From within his helmet, a voice like glass scraping, rough and chilling, seeped out.

The runes on the knight’s sword glowed ominously.

[ ᚻ ]

A massive amount of magical energy gathered on the blade.

The undead knight, gripping his sword in reverse, plunged it into the ground with all his might.

Like sinking into water, the tip of the sword pierced the ground effortlessly.

And then, the magic activated.

—

Thanks to my anti-magic resistance, I could clearly sense the flow of magical energy, but what happened next was beyond my expectations.

The magical energy stored in the blade unraveled and spread across the entire rock.

And then it exploded.

– Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwang!

A deafening roar, as if the heavens and earth were collapsing.

Like the roar of a giant, the destructive sound struck my ears, leaving them ringing.

It was like a missile had hit.

No flames erupted, but the destructive power was similar.

The bridge collapsed.

The massive rock shattered into pieces, scattering boulders in all directions.

Taking all the lifeforms standing on it with it, it began to plummet downward.

This is insane…!

A level of power I couldn’t even imagine. I was left speechless, staring blankly at the collapsing rock.

“Kwoooooar!”

“Kuoohhh!”

The helplessly falling Warriors of Valtir screamed.

They tried to push off the rocks and leap back up, but their weight made it impossible. Instead, the rocks they kicked only accelerated their fall.

Unlike the Undead Knight.

The Undead Knight leaped through the air.

Like a mountain goat bounding across cliffs, it dashed between massive boulders, charging toward the Warriors of Valtir.

A swung longsword.

The monsters, unable to regain their posture as they fell, had no way to resist.

Three Warriors of Valtir were slaughtered mid-air.

Gravity took care of the remaining two.

A deafening roar erupted as a massive spray of water shot up.

The surface of the magic-tainted lake twisted violently from the sudden impact.

A height of hundreds of meters. A horizontal, not vertical, landing.

Even if it was water, no living creature could withstand such an impact.

It was questionable if those creatures could even swim.

Unsurprisingly, the monsters that fell into the lake did not resurface.

The Undead Knight had fallen too, but… it would survive.

A high-level Corpses Raised by Magic wouldn’t die from mere physical impact.

It didn’t need to breathe, so once its shattered body recovered, it would leisurely rise again.

It was a disgustingly brutal tactic, but undeniably efficient.

Anyway, good. It’ll take that thing some time to crawl back up here.

I glanced at the shattered remnants of the broken stone bridge.

The gap was about twenty-five meters. I could easily jump that.

My calf was a bit injured, but it wasn’t serious, so that’s a relief.

I stepped back a bit, then sprinted forward.

The headwind whipped my hair wildly.

With each step, the ground crumbled beneath me.

Blood gushed from my legs under the intense pressure, soaking the bandages.

Enduring the sharp pain, I leaped with all my might near the edge of the broken bridge.

A liberating, exhilarating sensation.

My soaring body landed safely on the other side.

Before me, wide-open gates welcomed me.

Good. Lucky.

I need to get out of here quickly before that Undead Knight climbs up.

Combat? Any thought of fighting that monster vanished long ago.

Fight something that can shatter the ground with a single swing? On this terrain where one wrong move means falling to my death?

Unless I sprouted wings, it was pure madness.

I swiftly stepped inside the gates.

—

Inside the walls was a wasteland.

The ground was torn up everywhere, with craters large enough to swallow dozens of people and shattered boulders scattered about. The marble structures were all reduced to fragments.

It looked like a warzone—not medieval, but a full-blown modern war.

Then again, considering the kind of monsters that had been rampaging here, this devastation made sense.

Only two structures remained intact.

The surrounding walls and a pristine white temple visible in the distance.

A row of circular stone pillars. Triangular roofs atop them.

The roof surfaces were engraved with the same strange markings as before.

It was the temple depicted in the corridor reliefs.

The place where humans, defeated by monsters, had retreated.

In a place where everything else was destroyed, the temple’s untouched state felt less sacred and more alien.

That must be the deepest part of this dungeon.

I headed toward the temple.

Inside was… surprisingly underwhelming.

The temple’s interior was quite unexpected.

While the exterior looked intact, the inside was as much a ruin as the outside.

Several pillars were shattered as if struck by immense force, and the walls and floor were riddled with cracks and black stains.

There were also marks resembling claw scratches.

If those were really claw marks, the creature that made them must have been nearly ten meters tall.

Here too, broken and rusted metal fragments were scattered everywhere.

Pieces of weapons and armor. Crushed bone fragments mixed among the debris.

I don’t know who these people were, but it seems the ancients were wiped out here.

Or perhaps they turned into monsters.

I headed toward the center of the temple. The deeper I went, the more destruction I found.

As if the battle had started from within.

Shattered statues rolled across the floor.

Their heads were completely destroyed, making it impossible to identify them… but they were likely the temple’s deities.

Did the monsters destroy them?

Leaving the pitifully scattered statues behind, I soon reached the temple’s deepest part.

A space with a stepped structure, perhaps where worship took place.

The lower, wider area was littered with weathered corpses, while the upper steps held only an altar-like table and a shattered statue.

And on the wall behind the altar.

Two types of inscriptions were carved into the pure white marble wall.

Words chiseled into the stone with a sword, ensuring they would never fade.

The rough marks exuded deep hatred.

**Betrayal. Betrayal of the gods. Rejection of the gods.**

**Alföðrhlýtur að vera bölvað.**

…It was incomprehensible.