Chapter 73: Invasion and Erosion (2)
“Enemies!!!”
He instinctively shouted with all his might.
At that moment, countless red eyes glimmered in the dark forest.
“Uaaagh!”
“Monsters! It’s a monster!”
What surged forth from the forest was, contrary to expectations, not humans.
They were bizarre and terrifying creatures that they had never even imagined.
The soldiers holding shields hastily raised them and assumed combat stances, but the ordinary civilians could not even hope to stop the charge with their lack of preparation.
The soldiers who hurriedly formed a defensive line were trampled down, as if crushed by a cavalry charge.
Steel armor was torn like paper by claws, and the swords made of steel could not penetrate the monsters’ carapaces.
‘This is insane.’
The deputy commander nearly fainted from shock, but an instinctual thought that if he collapsed, they would all be annihilated kept him conscious.
“Everyone, this way!”
He mobilized his magical energy and quickly cast a spell, striking the ground with his hand to execute the magic.
A shining formation rapidly spread from the point where he struck the ground, enveloping the people.
“This is!”
“An advanced protective spell!”
The soldiers cheered. The advanced magic used by the academy’s higher-ups was powerful for a reason.
Indeed, the claws and poisonous stings of the legionnaires were all blocked, creating ripples in the translucent golden barrier.
“What in the world are those things…?”
“Is this the time to worry about that! Attack!”
He could do nothing else but maintain the magic.
Fortunately, the mages from the academy who had come with him, along with several elite soldiers, swung their magical weapons within the protective barrier to attack the monsters.
However, these creatures seemed to have received commands as they stepped back uniformly and consistently, minimizing the damage.
“Leave it be, and hurry up and request reinforcements!”
“Can you hear me! Request support immediately! We’ve been ambushed!”
In the meantime, they used the communications network to connect with the city.
They barely managed to hold their ground, but they were still surrounded and unable to move an inch.
“Everyone, stay calm. Fortunately, those monsters seem unable to break through this barrier.”
“Deputy Commander, we received news of an anomaly in the labyrinth.”
“…That’s right. These fiends may be the ones that emerged from the labyrinth.”
At that brief moment of stalemate, he broke into a cold sweat as he glared at the monsters.
They were too alien and strange to be simply called monsters.
‘Are they even living beings?’
Having encountered all kinds of magical golems and magical weapons long past their prime, he found something familiar about the appearance of these black monsters.
Noisy and alien, these creatures seemed more like magical constructs that moved according to orders than living beings.
“Huh?”
“A person…? A girl?”
And at that moment, a stir broke out among those who were vigilant at the rear, not the front he was watching.
‘A girl?’
In his panic, he didn’t have time to check behind him.
A small female figure emerged, cutting through the monsters, raising a sword made of dark red ore.
“Unbelievable! A sword…”
The squad leader gasped in shock, but a merciless blow came first.
The empowered strike of the dark red sword exploded upon hitting the protective barrier.
“Khh…”
The effort he put into maintaining the barrier was shattered in an instant, and the recoil caused the deputy commander to cough blood and collapse to the ground.
“Oh, they’re coming!”
“Stop them!”
Before he could even regain his composure, the monsters charged toward those whose barrier had disappeared.
Screams, shouts, the clashing of weapons, and the sound of flesh being pierced and cut, along with blood splattering everywhere.
These were the sounds one would commonly hear on a battlefield.
The peculiar thing was that all of those sounds were from their own side.
The desperate cries and final gasps of the allied forces echoed in stark contrast to the monsters who charged forward without a moment’s hesitation towards the poised spears and swords, severely dampening morale and fighting spirit.
‘Foolish. So very foolish.’
The deputy commander, squirming on the ground like a bug, reproached himself for his own foolishness.
If they were the kind of creatures that could be blocked by a single protective spell, the Moonlight Fairies wouldn’t have even called for salvation.
“Deputy Commander?! Deputy Commander!”
He crawled on the ground, stretching out his hand toward a fallen crystal orb.
In the flipped view of the crystal orb, a staff member left behind in the city was shouting in panic toward the ground.
“…You, no, you girls…”
But the moment he reached out, the crystal orb was crushed to pieces under a stomping foot.
A clawed foot of a monster, and as his gaze rose above it, he saw a woman in a black armor-looking mask looking down on him with her black bobbed hair fluttering.
“Alright. Let’s see the end.”
Sensing defeat and annihilation, he rose, his body aching.
At the same time, he mobilized his magical energy and prepared a spell. A technique close to a self-destruct device that would use all his internal magical energy and simultaneously overload it.
‘At least I must take down those fiends, that monster woman.’
He had already given up on his life. There were hardly anyone left around him who was still resisting.
Begging for his life while being desperate wouldn’t save him; these black beasts would mercilessly cut off his breath.
“Though my position is merely a mid-level manager at the academy, this strike will be hard to stop.”
This was truly an attack where a mage poured everything into, including his magical life and soul.
The air around him twisted with his magical energy.
‘I will reduce this to the maximum. That way, the city will hold. At worst, a few hundred; given enough defenses, I can hold them off.’
With blood spilling from his eyes, nose, and mouth, he aimed the completed spell forward.
It just so happened that the incantation was for fire magic primarily studied for combat, a powerful explosion known as the Flame Explosion from the Clawclaw Academy.
With the overload enhancing its power exponentially, the fire pillar exploded, lighting up the dark forest as bright as day.
‘Did I succeed?’
As he unleashed the spell that would consume even his own body, he was flung backward as he saw the enemy generate a dark red barrier around themselves.
“What the… what is their identity…”
In the forest, which had regained its silence, the only sound was the crackling of burning trees and grass.
With one arm completely burned away, stretched out on the ground, he swallowed his pain and looked up at the bright full moon, mumbling to himself.
‘At least I eliminated many of the other ones…’
The red glare from the mask that looked down at him was still there, with no signs of being charred.
His heart sank at the sight, but most of the other monsters had been obliterated by his spell.
He lay there in a terrible state on the ground, but for some reason, he smiled as if he had won.
“You were… planning to invade the city? Hah, a few dozen of you… is impossible. Foolish… little creatures of the ancient labyrinth…”
He chuckled lightly, squeezing out his last remnants of strength to mock his opponent. It didn’t matter whether they understood him or not.
“Now… soon… the reinforcements will be coming… for you…”
“…”
The opponent lifted their sword. The chuckled one nodded knowingly.
Still, his heart was at ease. It felt like he had done all he could do.
Thus, he prepared to face his death proudly, upholding the honor and pride of a mage.
“How amusing.”
“…This can’t be.”
“You, achieved nothing. You foolish creature.”
But his end was brutally crushed.
Another masked figure mocked him in human language, stepping out from the darkness as their long, jet-black hair flowed behind them.
And in that instant, surrounding them erupted with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of monsters, shaking the air and the ground as they headed straight for the city.
At that moment, a sword flew into his neck, severing him in one swift motion, engulfing him in a deep sense of emptiness and despair.
*
[The dispatched legionnaires are heading toward the city. Ambush, war, devouring—Is that your purpose?]
“No.”
The legion grinned as they watched their soldiers running out.
The previous battle was not merely simple hunting.
It was their first encounter with an indigenous species. As invaders by nature, the legion had grown tired of such wars.
And through those wars, they had grown stronger. The previous battle was merely a taste to gauge the level of the indigenous species.
“The worthwhile captives blew themselves up…”
“[Aren’t you looking to learn some advanced magic?]”
“There are plenty of mages. There’s also… a lot of time.”
The legion rubbed the dirt it stood upon.
The true goal of a legion that had grown this much was not war.
‘To consume everything in this forest, everything in my sight, everything in this world.’
The true goal of the legion was not invasion but erosion.
While they were lost in a daze dealing with the legionnaires, who were nothing but teeth and claws.
The legion intended to devour this world without leaving even an ant behind.
[With that nourishment, the legionnaires will be produced in greater numbers, and their resistances will be trampled down.]
The first button had already been fastened. The ground that the legion stood upon began to turn black.
The erosion that started in the labyrinth was steadily devouring the surroundings.
