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Near the capital of Austria, Vienna.

Despite being the capital of the Austrian region, the city of Vienna was located in a rather unremarkable place. It was an old city that expanded from the hilly old town to the flat new town, with a river at a moderate distance. That was Vienna, the capital of Austria.

The terrain of Vienna could be described as “high in the west and low in the east.” Except for the low mountain range along the Danube River, the eastern part of Vienna was generally low-lying. However, the eastern part of Vienna had never been flooded, thanks entirely to the low mountain range surrounding the Danube.

In contrast, the western part of Vienna was relatively higher in elevation compared to the east. Specifically, it was a terrain with many hills and mounds, and thus, many densely forested areas.

Under normal circumstances, such geographical features would have held little significance. It would have merely been a good place for loggers to cut trees and gather various forest products.

The problem was that this was not a normal time. The soldiers escorting two wagons were acutely aware of this fact.

“Ugh, don’t retreat! Hold the line!”

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

Using large shields that covered more than half their bodies—a style that had fallen out of fashion in the last half-century—the soldiers leaned their weight into the shields, straining every ounce of their strength to maintain the formation. The shields, which seemed like a hybrid of a scutum and a kite shield, were effective in forming a shield wall. Especially against the undead, who were unaffected by spear formations.

In one hand, they held large shields; in the other, blunt weapons with sharp, blade-like protrusions. This armament of the guards was a direct response to the current situation. Spear formations were ineffective against the undead.

While any living creature would hesitate upon seeing a forest of spearheads due to survival instincts, the undead, being already dead, lacked such instincts. Thus, a regular spear formation not only failed to deter them but also exposed the lack of countermeasures against the undead who relentlessly pushed through the spears.

Moreover, unlike living creatures who weaken when injured, the undead could not be neutralized simply by severing their limbs. Therefore, bladed weapons were not an effective countermeasure against undead monsters.

Thus, the combination of a shield wall using large shields and blunt weapons for destruction was devised.

Though it might have been slightly insufficient to handle the overwhelming numbers of undead.

“Fuck……, fuuuuck……!”

As one soldier cursed while smashing the skull of a reanimated corpse, he suddenly noticed the soldier next to him in the formation being dragged away, screaming. An undead, crawling on the ground, had grabbed his legs and pulled him away, bypassing the sturdy shield wall and blunt weapons.

However, the only thought that came to his mind upon witnessing his comrade being dragged away was a single, threatening proposition.

‘The formation……, has a gap……!’

Instantly, the soldier’s mind flashed with the current situation. Two wagons were positioned front and back, escorted by six knights. Each knight was positioned at the front of the wagon’s path, two on each side, and one at the rear.

On the roof of the rear wagon, a spellcaster was perched, keeping watch. The spellcaster held a wooden sword engraved with rune letters in his left hand and gripped rune stones between the fingers of his right hand. The edges of the wooden sword were lined with obsidian blades, resembling shark teeth.

The formation of the guards was arranged accordingly. The vanguard, consisting of the most elite soldiers, slowly advanced in a fan-shaped formation. The rest were positioned on the flanks and the rear.

The flanks were formed by soldiers in a double-line grid, while the rear guard moved backward, guarding against rear attacks while following the wagons.

The two wagons inside were surrounded by a shield wall on all sides. Naturally, the interior of the wagons was empty. This meant,

‘If a gap opens in the formation, these damn corpses will crawl inside the formation!’

The chill running down his spine was not unique to this soldier. As the dragged-away comrade became a new undead and charged at his former comrades, the soldiers skillfully narrowed the gap in the formation and reinforced the shield wall.

The undead who had already crawled through the gap were fortunately dealt with by knights who had been waiting and swiftly moved in. There were sacrifices, but the immediate crisis was averted.

However, the escort team had no time to relax. The undead still surrounded them, filling the road, and the menacing aura beyond the shield wall was constantly targeting their warm life force.

The breakthrough team was steadily clearing the path, but the pace was too slow. In contrast, the undead charging sporadically from all directions were overwhelmingly numerous. If they had proper weapons and formations to push the shield wall with force, they would have overwhelmed it long ago.

“Damn it, this is frustrating! Hey, spellcaster! Can’t you use some useful spell now?”

“Do you think spells are some kind of万能钥匙? I told you! It’s still time to wait!”

Sir Roland, a knight on the left flank, asked the spellcaster on the wagon roof for a solution, but the spellcaster had no immediate answer. After all, spells were stored in the ethereal brain’s spell sockets and released one by one.

In the end, a spellcaster’s spellcasting was limited to the spells they had prepared in advance for the situations they might face that day.

Occasionally, there were monsters who could construct and cast spells on the spot without prior preparation, but they were exceptions among exceptions. Ultimately, spells were exercised through the ethereal brain, and the human ethereal brain was not designed to handle such eccentric feats.

Thus, even a spellcaster could not help but react sharply to laymen requesting spells. Even if such spells were prepared, they could not be recklessly unleashed at this moment.

Spells were a resource that could only be cast from what was prepared in advance, requiring careful consideration of timing and location. If spells were used carelessly without saving them, they might not be available when truly needed, leading to an indescribable predicament.

Regardless, the front was slowly but surely making progress. The rear guard, compared to the elite concentrated at the front, was holding up well. Moving backward step by step with the wagons, they faced relatively less pressure and burden.

‘The problem is the flanks.’

The spellcaster rubbed his throbbing temples with the back of his hand holding the wooden sword, pondering.

Guarding the flanks of two wagons with relatively less skilled soldiers was more challenging than expected. Even if they were just holding the line, the enemy was the undead. Maintaining the formation without collapsing against an enemy unaffected by deterrence was clearly beyond their strength.

If it weren’t for the rune letter ᛏ (Tiwaz – victory) the spellcaster had activated earlier and the blessing of obsidian affecting the entire formation, they might have collapsed long ago.

‘The mystery of the volcano latent in obsidian is the ultimate counter to beings like the undead who defy the laws of the earth.’

Just as heavenly lightning is a punishment for those who defy the heavens, the earthly volcano suppresses and purifies those who defy the earth. Originally, the bodies of the dead should return to the earth, following the natural order. For the undead who defy this, the power of the volcano is the force that turns them back to the earth.

Obsidian mined from volcanic regions carried some of this volcanic influence. The spellcaster, using his skill in handling rune letters, supported the soldiers fighting the undead with spells that manipulated the energy latent in obsidian.

Even with this support, the spellcaster watched the still precarious flanks with concern.

Yet, the spellcaster hesitated to act. It wasn’t that he lacked a useful spell. In fact, he had kept one last resort spell in reserve. However, he hesitated to release it for a clear reason.

‘There’s definitely someone hiding, waiting for a chance to strike.’

Just as warriors trained in the Reverse Muscle Technique could sense the intentions and presence of other warriors, spellcasters trained in the Reverse Brain Method could sense the presence and intentions of other spellcasters. Especially in his field of rune magic, which involved deep meditation on the meanings embedded in runes, he was confident in his ability to detect such things.

‘These undead are definitely not naturally occurring. Someone is controlling them.’

Though the undead’s movements were crude and unimpressive, the spellcaster was certain they were being controlled by someone. The undead’s movements reeked of blatant and persistent malice.

His sensing ability was specialized against other spellcasters, so if these undead were ordinary wild (?) undead, he wouldn’t have sensed such clear malice.

In duels between spellcasters, the one who conserved their trump card until the end usually won. Conserving one’s own means while depleting the opponent’s was the general strategy of spellcasters.

Unfortunately, the current situation was not favorable for a rune spellcaster. The opponent was hidden, while he was exposed. In such a setup, the hidden side usually had more room to maneuver actively, while the exposed side was more likely to be dragged along passively.

If the opponent took the initiative and forced him to expend his resources while conserving their own, he, with a group to protect, would likely be dragged along helplessly.

Sure enough, even now, the spellcaster watched the constant shaking of the flanks with anxious eyes, hesitating whether to release the prepared spell. He inwardly felt he had already lost to the opponent, gritting his teeth in frustration.

As the spellcaster hesitated, the flanks shook steadily, but with increasing frequency. One by one, soldiers were sacrificed to the undead. Each time a soldier fell, a small gap opened in the formation, which was quickly filled by a knight, but the resulting disturbance did not easily subside.

The immediate heat and frenzy of survival, and the resulting hyper-focus, kept them outwardly calm—preventing the disturbance from showing—but if this continued to build up, even a moment of cooling off would make the outcome clear.

A soldier was dragged away on the left flank. Soon, he became an undead, his eyes glowing blue as he turned his blade and teeth toward his former comrades. A soldier died on the right flank. Similarly, he lay bleeding, only to rise again with blue flames in his eyes.

Each time a soldier was sacrificed, the already thin formation inevitably developed small gaps. Even if they were quickly filled by other soldiers, the formation accumulated disturbances. Each disturbance was manageable individually, but like a drizzle soaking clothes, they added up.

Individual disturbances could be managed by the collective morale of the formation. But if the collective morale itself was shaken, what could manage it?

Once on the left, then on the right, again on the left, then left again, and right, followed by consecutive right disturbances. Like a boxer being pummeled from both sides, the disturbances gradually spread, accelerating the formation of cracks throughout the entire front.

“Calm down! We must maintain the formation no matter what! If we collapse here, we’re all dead!”

“Ugh, hold the line! We’ll handle the ones that get inside, you fill the gaps!”

The knights tried to manage the situation and boost morale to calm the soldiers’ disturbances, but once such things started, they were not easily quelled.

Meanwhile, the spellcaster, unable to act due to the hidden enemy’s presence, found himself forced to make a decision as the situation rapidly deteriorated. The flanks, which had barely held on through several crises, finally collapsed simultaneously, and the undead began pouring through the gaps.

Like water seeping through cracks in an old dam, widening the cracks as it flows, the undead’s momentum grew stronger as they poured through the gaps in the formation.

The undead’s surge through the gaps in the formation was like this. The undead’s waves, pouring through multiple simultaneous gaps, fiercely pushed to completely break the already precarious formation.

The knights, who would have normally moved to calm the soldiers and reorganize the formation, were now too busy dealing with the undead who had broken through and were charging wildly toward the wagons.

Even in this chaotic situation, the knights’ skill in swiftly eliminating nearby undead was truly admirable. However, even so, covering all the gaps with a small number of strong fighters was difficult. In short, when a small number of strong fighters are on the defending side, inevitable gaps occur.

Was it luck (?) that the undead who slipped past the knights’ swords headed straight for the horses pulling the wagon and the coachman?

“Ah, don’t come this way!”

The coachman, startled by the grotesque undead charging straight at him, was not a bad person. Of course, not being a bad person didn’t mean he had no reason to die. The coachman, who was about to drop the reins and flee somewhere, had nowhere to run in the midst of being surrounded by undead.

Unable to avoid the undead charging at him, the coachman was pushed over and soon had his throat torn out by the undead, dying instantly. Of course, he soon rose again as an undead.

The coachman wasn’t the only one in crisis.

“Neigh——!!?!?”

Horses, being sensitive and timid creatures, were naturally frightened. Warhorses bred and trained to carry knights through battlefields filled with bloodlust, fighting spirit, frenzy, and bloodshed could trust the knights on their backs to cross the battlefield, but expecting the same from wagon-pulling horses was overly unrealistic.

Physically, horses were powerful enough to easily crush a mere undead, but the timid wagon-pulling horses couldn’t help but cower in fear at the undead’s menacing, lifeless, and alien bloodlust.

No matter how strong they were, frightened and cowering horses couldn’t possibly face undead driven by mechanical bloodlust, regardless of the difference in strength.

As the horses, frightened by the undead, began to panic, the situation became even more complicated. Whether the horses panicked or not, the undead, devoid of intelligence or emotion, driven only by bloodlust and ferocity, remained unaffected, and the chaotic and troublesome effects only impacted the living. After all, while horses were clearly cowards, the impact of their panic was sufficiently threatening to living creatures.

Finally, the spellcaster, who had hesitated, endured, and waited, realized he could no longer do so. Swinging the obsidian wooden sword in his hand, he smashed the skull of an undead charging at the horse and cursed, making his final decision.

“Damn it, let it be!”

Realizing there was no turning back, he uttered a short incantation difficult for humans to pronounce and threw the rune stone he had been holding, infusing it with his main strength.

This action served as the key to release the trump card spell he had stored in his spell socket.

The rune letter engraved on the rune stone, about the size of a marble, was ᛇ. Its pronunciation was “Eihwaz,” meaning “yew tree.”

“Grow!”

As if responding to his shout with arms raised high on the wagon roof, a red light burst from where the rune stone fell, and something began to grow. Its form was that of a coniferous tree with reddish hues on its branches and countless small, blue, feather-like leaves.

The fully grown yew tree trembled its feather-like blue leaves and began to emit a red aura.

The result was dramatic.

The red light emanating from the yew tree spread in all directions, restricting the movements of any undead within six yards of the tree.

The sight of the undead cowering as the yew tree’s light touched them was enough to revive the soldiers’ morale, which had been dampened by the undead’s earlier momentum.

“They’re starting to falter!”

“Hahaha, you’ve done well so far? Die!”

The soldiers, emboldened by the undead’s sudden loss of momentum, began to counterattack. However, the spellcaster clicked his tongue nervously, constantly wiping the cold sweat from his temples.

He rolled his anxious eyes around and pursed his lips several times. And then…

“He’s coming……, he’s……!”

In an instant, a fierce gale swept across the path the wagons were taking. A whirlwind of chilly air, dry dust, and withered leaf fragments mixed chaotically, followed by thick, ominous black clouds gathering to cover the sky.

Moments later.

《Whoooosh——!》

An unexpected whistle pierced the air. A sharp, grating sound, unpleasant to the ears, echoed, and at the same time, a faint aura visible only to those trained in the Reverse Muscle Technique or Reverse Brain Method wavered like a heat haze through the trees, enveloping the cowering undead.

 

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