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nCh. 78: Concluding After Ambush

nLoren never hesitated once he put his mind to doing something.

nBut he never attacked over two hundred enemies alone before when he was a mercenary.

nIt wasn’t that he believed Lapis, who said it would be fine.

nHe acted because he knew the enemy wasn’t ready for battle and was either excited about the success of the raid or about to go to sleep and thought that he could manage to cut down a few of them.

nOf course, he had no idea what would happen after the first few, and if there wasn’t a plan, he would soon be surrounded and killed, but he guessed that things would be fine.

nLetting things develop as they go wasn’t a very good way to do things, but for jobs such as mercenaries, they often found themselves in such situations, and only those who could do something about it could live longer.

n“W-who are…Gahh!?”

nLoren, who closed the distance between him and the enemy with Lapis’ light behind him, swung his great sword in the direction of the voice.

nThe under swing, with the force of momentum behind its weight, caught the body of the enemy, who was shielding his eyes from the blinding light, ate into it diagonally, and went through the other side without any resistance.

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nWith the sound of wet fibers snapping and bones cracking ringing out, the upper body of the bandit that Loren cut through spun into the air, while the lower body fell and spurted blood and flesh everywhere.

nAfter counting one, Loren continued without breaking momentum.

nBecause the first one died without even being able to scream, he managed to leap towards one of the archers, who had no idea what was going on, and swung his great sword to the right and then to the left, hoping it would hit something.

nAs one got caught from under his jaw and fell on his back, screaming as his face was split in half and another got caught on the shoulder and got his arm ripped off, the light Lapis had conjured had faded and the area returned to darkness, with only the light from the bonfires left.

nAmong the bandits who lost their sight, some swinging their weapons around blindly and others shooting their bows without aiming, Loren continued to find ones who were injured and kill them.

n“Attack! Attack!”

n“Damn it! Who the hell!?”

nLapis’ light and the screams of the bandits that Loren injured alerted the whole camp of an attack.

nOf course, that was to be expected, so Loren calmly counted the bodies rolling around on the ground and turned his focus to Shayna, who was inside him.

n“That’s a few of them!”

n‘Leave it to me. < >”

nThe No Life King inside Loren activated her powers.

nA black mist, so black that it was noticeable even in the darkness, erupted from the ground and covered the area around the dead bodies.

nAs Loren looked on, wondering what she was doing, as the bodies were nothing but pieces of flesh, the black mist covered the bodies, and with crunching sounds coming from within, they started to gather them into a single lump.

nMaybe she couldn’t make useful undead with bodies that were destroyed into pieces.

nBut that thought was overturned by the black mist that gathered the bodies into one large piece.

n‘Onii-san, I can’t make much since there aren’t enough bodies, but is that okay?’

n“I don’t mind so hurry!”

nSince Loren was just a single person that attacked a whole camp, there was only so much panic he could cause, and he was starting to panic as he continued to cut down bandits around him.

n‘Come to me! Undead Knight!’

nWhat emerged from the black mist was something’s thick left arm.

nAlthough it looked like a human’s arm, it was a few times thicker than one, and spread fear among those who saw it, as it was shriveled up like a mummy’s arm.

nWhat emerged next was the head, a giant skull.

nIts body was one of giant human well, with shriveled skin hanging on bone, with a rusted breastplate equipped onto it.

nIt’s lower body and legs then emerged, along with a rusted waist pads and armored boots, and lastly, emerged its right arm, wielding a halberd with red rust covering it.

nLoren had quite the large body, but even he had to look up at the thing that emerged from the mist, which was an undead that Shayna had summoned called an undead knight.

nWhile the bandits froze at the pressure from the giant halberd, the summoned undead knight roared into the night sky, and suddenly swept it across sideways.

nThe rusted blade didn’t seem like it could cut through much, but the strength and speed behind the swing tore through the bandits that were in its path, and the bodies flew into the air.

nIt was done very casually, as if it were cutting grass, but several bandits losing their lives every time the halberd was swung was a complete nightmare, as even Loren couldn’t help but stop attacking and stare at the sight.

n“That’s not much?”

n‘It’s not much at all. Onii-san could defeat it, you know?’

n“I’d like to avoid fighting that if I could…”

nThe bandits started retaliating, as the undead knight swung its halberd around with brute force, not caring to dodge or defend itself.

nArrows were shot from a distance, and those with heavy equipment swung their weapons onto its body.

nThe attacks weren’t completely meaningless, as the arrows pierced it and the weapons cut into its body and created cuts, but the undead knight showed no sign of caring, as it continued to swing its halberd around with unchanging momentum.

nUndead didn’t feel pain or fatigue in the first place.

nThey were beings that continued displaying the same performance until they were destroyed or exorcised.

n“Can I beat it…?”

n‘Of course, Onii-san is strong, after all. But I can summon more than one undead knight, so it could be dangerous for you if there are a lot of them at once.’

nThe black mist gathered the bodies of the bandits that the undead knight had killed, and a second undead knight rose from it, as if agreeing with Shayna’s words.

n“I can’t deal with that.”

nHe hadn’t counted properly, so he wasn’t sure how many of the bandits he had killed but seeing that it wasn’t on par with the speed that the undead knights were killing them, he put his great sword on his shoulder.

nWith a second undead knight joining the fray, the speed at which the bandits were being killed became twice as fast.

nIf the speed that they were dying doubled, it meant that the amount of bodies was increasing twice as fast as well, so the third and fourth undead knight were created not long after the second one had been.

n“What are these things!”

n“Damn it! Our attacks aren’t doing anything!”

n“Run! Dying against monsters like these is just stupid!”

nBy the time the fourth undead knight started its killing, the bandits completely lost their will to fight.

nIt wasn’t as if their attacks weren’t hitting, but seeing that they couldn’t defeat these giant undead, fear flowed throughout the bandits, and seeing that they started scattering and running away, Shayna created a different kind of undead.

n‘Zombie Dogs, go!’

nIt seemed to take a lot less bodies compared to the undead knights.

nAt Shayna’s call, countless numbers of undead dogs with rotting bodies jumped out from the black mist and launched themselves at the fleeing bandits from behind or jumped in front of them, blocking their escape.

n“What the hell are these guys!? Where’d they come from!?”

nThe zombie dogs, since they were easier to summon than undead knights, were being cut in half or crushed by the bandits’ attacks.

nBut there was more of them being summoned than the amount that were being defeated, a ghastly sight spread out in front of Loren’s eyes, as the bandits started becoming overwhelmed, with the dogs ripping their throats, as well as ripping their stomachs open and started tearing through the intestines.

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n‘None of you will escape! All there will be is annihilation! A massacre! Become food for the dogs while regretting you were ever born!’

nLoren looked up into the sky with a pale face, muttering under his breath as he heard Shayna’s loud laughter ringing in his head.

n“Scary…So scary…Today’s the first time I’ve ever thought you were scary. Someone, please tell me how she created dogs out of humans…”

n‘I wonder why? It’s not that Onii-san. I’m just feeling a bit excited right now. I’m not a scary girl. I promise!’

nShayna told Loren in a hurry when she heard his vacant words.

nThinking that it might be too late, Loren looked around at the gruesome picture of hell around him, with bonfires being knocked down, the tents on fire, undead knights turning humans into lumps of meat on one side, and zombie dogs tearing into screaming bandits on the other.

nAll he did was kill around a dozen bandits, and after that things just kept on getting bigger.

nOn top of that, their plan was to scatter them into smaller groups so they would be easier to deal with, but currently, out of the close to two hundred bandits, most of them fell prey to the halberds or the dogs, and it was hard to tell if any of them were lucky enough to have escaped.

n“What is this? How did this happen?”

n“It’s a plan limited to night time, only applicable to those outside the law, after all.”

nAs Loren turned towards Lapis, who had walked up next to him unnoticed, with frightened eyes, she looked at him with a slightly offended face and said with an annoyed voice.

n“You’re mean, looking at a person like she’s some ghost or something.”

n“I don’t think I’ll be seeing anything but ghosts in a situation like this.”

nTo Loren, the time since the ambush started to the time everything was destroyed was an instant.

nThe large scale group of bandits that seemed impossible to deal with without an army just a little while ago was nowhere to be seen, with the bandits running around blindly, being cut down, dragged onto the ground and being bitten all over, screaming, and calling for help as they died.

n“They reaped what they sowed. There’s no room for sympathy.”

n“I want to feel a little bit of sympathy for them…”

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nWhat the bandits did wasn’t something that could be accepted.

nIf they were caught and judged under the law, Loren would’ve thought that they reaped what they sowed and felt no sympathy towards them.

nBut when he wondered if what they did was enough to be attacked by undead and become their prey, he couldn’t completely say so.

n“Be reborn as good kids in the next life, okay? So, Loren, once this settles down and you release the undead, a fun time of looting will await us.”

n“I think the evil inside your stomach will put on a good match against them.”

n“What are you talking about? What part of my smooth, white stomach is evil…Loren? Don’t turn your back on me and look, see?”

n“Shut up! Don’t lift up your clothes in a place like this! Stop pressing it against me! Let me go!”

nAlthough cries of help and death cries continued to ring out around them, the two of them ignored them all and started messing around with each other, as Lapis tried to take hold of Loren’s head, and Loren tried to escape her clutches.

nAlthough she wasn’t out of the loop, Shayna realized that she was forgotten at the moment, so after ordering the undead to continue to search and destroy, she went back inside Loren’s astral to rest until they remembered her.

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