Chapter 9

Chapter 9

 

THREE DAYS HAD PASSED since “The Great Wizard Geo Margilus” had led the Shultz clan to Filsand.

Nathan Cer Ladell, court sorcerer of the duchy of Filsand, was a gifted alumnus of the Academy of Sorcery in Shrendal. He was revered as one of the top ten graduates in terms of his ability to use high-level sorcery.

He’d been blessed with the opportunity, ten years prior, to serve in Filsand, and he had continued improving his skills ever since, recording many achievements in battle against daemons and barbarians alike.

Today, this battle-hardened sorcerer was in the command post above the main gate of Filsand. He looked southward from the top of the nearly twenty-meter-tall main gate. He could see the distorted formation of the swarming legion that covered the dry earth, creeping inevitably closer to his position.

Needless to say, the legion that filled his entire field of view was composed entirely of daemons. The daemonic legion had arrived, as unavoidable as the tides. According to the report from the recon team, there were ten thousand of them.

Directly below the main gate, in front of the moat that surrounded the city, the Filsand knights and army stood assembled in formation. Even after spending three days gathering all forces in the vicinity, they hadn’t been able to muster even five thousand.

The Filsand troops were elites. Five thousand would be more than enough if they were fighting humans, for example the Schultz clan or the Seisosand. However, this number would barely stand a chance against the overwhelming daemonic legion.

The legion was roughly made up of eight thousand imps, two thousand fiends, and fifty gigants. Worse, there was a new type of massive daemon, many times larger than a gigant. This might not quite have qualified as a brood event, as had happened twice in history, but it was on a scale that could easily destroy a nation.

“Now then,” the duke intoned. “The rest is up to you.”

“Leave everything to me.”

The duke of Filsand, dressed in black, sat on his throne in the center of the command post. Standing next to him was the person that Nathan feared above all others: the Great Wizard Geo Margilus. The sons of the duke would normally have been here as well, but they’d worked themselves to the point of passing out, and were now recuperating in the castle.

What he’d meant by “up to you” was that in return for the protection of the beleaguered Schultz refugees, Geo had promised he would destroy the approaching daemonic legion on his own.

It’s completely impossible! I have no idea what the mechanism behind his magic is, but the sheer number! No number of dragons or meteors can defeat that many!

Although Nathan had already seen Geo’s magic up close, he thoroughly doubted his ability to keep this promise. In other words, Nathan’s deep knowledge as a sorcerer prevented him from trusting Margilus. It wasn’t only Nathan. The prime minister, the captain of the duke’s guard, and the other officials in the command post above the main gate were thinking the same thing.

But there were some present who trusted him.

“Be careful,” Elisabel whispered.

“Are you sure you don’t need my help?” Diane asked.

“Yes,” Geo insisted. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

Two beautiful girls, the spitting image of each other, both gave their own caring send-off to Margilus. “Good luck.”

“We’re all counting on you.” The third woman in the room graciously bowed to Margilus.

Even Nathan knew the name of the sorceress Clara. What surprised him was that she put her hands together on her chest before bowing. That stance was called the Sacred Bow among sorcerers, and it was etiquette used to express the utmost respect for archmages and high elders.

According to reports from Nathan’s subordinates, this sorceress was from a high-ranking noble family in Shrendal, and thus she was also highly ranked in the Sorcerers’ Guild of Relis City. Such a beautiful, capable woman from a respected family—really, she looked so delicious he could slurp her right up—did not exist in the Filsand court.

And the subject of this beautiful, top-ranked woman’s gesture of gratitude and respect…was not Nathan. That wizard…to blatantly allow such a beautiful woman to pay homage to him in a way that made her look like a servant… What an egregious man…

After their earlier duel, Nathan had been forced to face the infuriating fact that the wizard’s power clearly exceeded his capacity as court sorcerer. Moreover, he got the sinking feeling that he was also a lesser man than Margilus, and Nathan couldn’t hold back his intense jealousy.

“Hey. What’s wrong?” The duke suspiciously asked Nathan, eyeing his sour look.

“Huh?! F-forgive me, my lord.”

“Just because we’re letting Margilus carry the torch here doesn’t mean it’s time to slack off. As a sorcerer, you should be burning Lord Margilus’s magic into your brain.”

“Ha ha…” Nathan broke out in a cold sweat and bowed to the duke. He looked back out at the daemonic legion. Even in the pitch-black army, one massive figure stood out. It was the supermassive daemon that the recon team had reported.

What the hell am I thinking… This unprecedented threat is almost on top of us, and I’m feeling jealous about a woman…?

“Phantom Horse.” Seizing Nathan’s confusion as an opportunity, Geo chanted his spell and conjured up his jet-black horse. The duke’s guards and officials chattered quietly to each other.

But then again…I was able to forget my fear—no, I was able to forget daemons even existed, if only for a moment.

“Now, you all wait here. I’ll take care of this.”

It was because of that man. It was because I felt confident, knowing that this man is our ally.

Nathan silently watched the wizard straddle the black horse and fly away into the sky.

 

***

 

“H-hey, they’ll b-be here s-soon.” Vike, a spear-wielding soldier of the Filsand infantry, spoke in a shaky voice to Bond, another soldier in their line.

“G-g-gotcha,” Bond replied.

They’d joined the army three years earlier and had had the bad luck to be stationed on the front line of today’s three thousand-soldier infantry unit formation. They had battle experience, and they made a reasonable salary, which kept their families comfortable. There was no thought in their mind of running away.

Even so, they couldn’t ignore their fear. The spectacle of a black wall rushing at them was what nightmares were made of.

“What the hell is that? That huge thing?! It’s bigger than the statue of the duke in the town square!”

In fact, it would have dwarfed the statue of the duke that had long stood over Filsand’s central green. Even within the black wall of daemons, its massive figure towered high above, higher than the city walls.

Its legs were thick and stout, its arms long and muscular. It stayed hunched over, and mostly walked on all fours. Its movements were slow and labored, like those of giant, but if it made it all the way to them, it could easily destroy the city walls.

It may be easy to forget because of the distraction of the supermassive daemon, but there were also fifty gigants, each half as tall as the city’s defenses, and over two thousand fiends, each with the fighting power of twenty human soldiers.

“Are you really, really sure it’s going to be okay? One time, I watched half my squadron get crushed by a single fiend,” Bond worried.

“Th-the duke is watching… I-I’m sure it’s fine…probably,” Vike tried to reassure him, but he wasn’t so sure himself. Going off how their commanding officer had explained things to them before the battle, the duke’s guest, the “amazing sorcerer,” would defeat most of the daemonic legion. The job of the army was to take care of any stray daemons and ensure that none managed to get away.

“L-Look, that sorcerer who summoned the dragon to the castle is about to do something, right?!”

“Yeah. Probably…”

Rumor had it that Elisabel’s fiancé had summoned a dragon to his duel with the court sorcerer and the captain of the duke’s guard. It had been spreading far and wide among the Filsand people.

There’s no way he’s there. What if the duke in the command post is a fake, and we’re stuck here…?

“Raaargh!”

Vike’s thoughts were interrupted by not only the air, but even the ground shaking at the supermassive daemon’s roar.

“Reeee!”

“Gyaaah!”

“Gra-gaaah!”

“Skreee!”

The daemonic legion cried out in hatred, as if joining in chorus with the supermassive daemon’s roar. An infinite number of lights started shining within the black wall formation. Vike knew instinctively that those were the eyes of the daemons.

The supermassive daemon stretched its long arms high. The moment it dropped them in the direction of Filsand, countless murderous daemons would probably begin their attack.

“Th-they’re coming.”

“L-Let’s kill ’em!”

“We won’t just lie down and die.”

Anyone living in the duchy of Filsand would candidly admit that the duke that ruled them was an evil villain. However, it was obvious in the do-or-die expressions of the soldiers like Vike that the Filsand infantry weren’t outlaws. They were soldiers. Almost reflexively, they reached for their spears.

Just then…

Vike caught sight of some sort of white, glowing masses passing over their heads, which left eight trails behind.

There was a pyoom sound, like the rushing of a powerful wind, as the trails flew by.

The eight streaks of light pierced the heart of the daemonic legion, centered on the supermassive daemon.

And then Vike couldn’t see anything but a wall of white.

 

***

 

BA-GOOM!

“Whoooa!”

“Eeeek!”

From the command post, the court sorcerer Nathan could clearly see the eight meteors rain down on the center of the daemonic legion.

Eight giant fireballs were generated in the spots where the meteors fell. The command post was drowned in the roars of impact. The command post, situated high above the robust main gate, shook violently while Nathan and the other officials struggled to keep their balance.

“S-so those are Margilus’s meteors…” It was rare for the cool-as-ice duke of Filsand’s voice to waver. But in this case, Nathan thought it was amazing he managed not to scream. The only one with a calm look on her face was the sorceress from the wizard’s entourage.

“L-Look. The massive daemon…”

“What incredible sorcery…”

Even without the commentary by the officials and duke’s guard, everyone could see it for themselves. The enormous body of the supermassive daemon that was approaching the main gate had been cut nearly in two. Its torso rolled back from the point of impact. There were a number of holes in the swarm of daemons that had covered the earth moments ago, craters present where monsters once had stood.

“W-wizardry. Can magic do this much…?” Nathan murmured, trembling with fear.

He had experienced the terror of Geo’s dragon firsthand. He remembered being startled and frightened at that time, but it was nothing compared to the shock he felt this time. It wasn’t just the sheer strength of the spells that impressed him, as it did the duke and his officers. They’d told Nathan he was gifted at the Academy of Sorcery. For a while, he’d believed he was one of the greatest magical talents in the world. He could fully appreciate now the sheer breadth of Margilus’s wizardry. Geo wasn’t just some one-trick pony who could summon dragons, but instead possessed a variety of terrifying techniques.

“I-I think that my best fire-elemental spell would only manage half the power of one of his meteors…and it would use up almost all my mana in a single go…” As a sorcerer, he couldn’t help but think in terms of comparison with his own sorcery.

Sorcery was normally activated by consuming mana. For example, the mana capacity on Nathan’s sorcery frame would be reckoned at 522 mana points. That meant he was in the top percentile of sorcerers in the world. The amount of mana consumed by his strongest sorcery skill, Valvord Galeiza—the Arcane Thunder Spear—was about 300 MP. In other words, using Valvord Galeiza would make his MP drop from 522 to 222. That meant that he could only use two or maybe three medium-ranked sorceries thereafter.

And judging by what he’d just seen, his highest-ranked sorcery wouldn’t be even half as powerful as Meteor. (Though to assuage his ego, Nathan reminded himself that his Valvord Galeiza was powerful enough to kill a gigant in a single blow). If he wanted to pull off the same effect as what Geo had just done, he would need MP of at least 4,800.

“I just…can’t believe that one human could have almost 5,000 MP.” Even the most powerful sorcerer Nathan knew, the grandmaster of the Sorcerers’ Guild, probably only had 1,000 MP. Nathan shook his head, defeated by the out-of-this-world abilities of someone he had once foolishly challenged to a duel.

“Hey, the giant daemon!”

“It’s moving… D-did it regenerate?!”

“And there are still daemons left… A lot of the gigants survived.”

“Now we’ll see how long the knights and infantry can fight them off…”

The internal organs of the knocked-down supermassive daemon were spilling out, and they could see its red muscles swelling. It didn’t quite happen in a flash, but there was new flesh growing steadily. Given a few hours, it might completely regenerate.

Furthermore, while the meteors’ force was amazing, it just wasn’t enough to defeat ten thousand daemons. It was only effective in defeating or incapacitating about two thousand. The remaining daemons were unscathed, and after about ten seconds of confusion from the impact of the meteors, they were fully recovered. Even daemons with injuries that would have rendered human soldiers immobile dragged their bodies onward, heading for the Filsand army that was guarding the castle gate.

I could do something about that gigant with my sorcery…
if the remaining sorcerers and soldiers could just hold them off… No, impossible. There’s no winning this!

Nathan screamed silently, within his heart.

Pyooom!

Eight more meteors passed overhead and dropped onto the daemonic legion.

“Whaa?!”

“Aaagh!”

Not even thirty seconds had passed since the first attack. The exact same scene of eight fireballs burning up the daemonic legion repeated itself right before the human soldiers’ eyes.

The difference this time was the number of surviving daemons. The supermassive daemon that had started regenerating had now disappeared without a trace. Half of the gigants—some twenty-five or so—were also gone. Even more of the imp and fiend brigades had vanished, too.

“I-I-Impossible! It’s impossible!”

Nathan’s apprentice watched him hold his head and cry out.

The other sorcerers and the duke’s guard were in the same state. The officials who were not familiar with sorcery or battle were simply happy to see things go their way.

“This means that he must have at least 10,000 MP,” Nathan’s apprentice gasped. “Surely that can’t be possible!”

“I-If Lord Margilus wanted, he could easily destroy this Stalwart Castle,” another sorcerer murmured.

“A single castle? No, he could obliterate an entire country…”

There was silence.

Nathan wanted to rant and rave like his subordinates. But his sense of responsibility as the court sorcerer forced him to think rationally, if only barely.

I have no choice but to admit it. This is something completely different from sorcery. Is it even magic? It is some sort of artifice or thaumaturgy based on a different principle than mana?

Nathan had been able to sense mana as far back as he could remember, and he’d grown aware of his sorcery frame as soon as he started training. The conclusion this exceptional man came to was that Margilus was such an anomaly that he didn’t even walk on the same earth as the rest of them.

“M-m-more meteors!”

Just when it seemed Nathan would completely lose himself in his thoughts, a third round of meteors flew overhead.

“N-nothing could surprise me now…”

The court sorcerer did everything he could to maintain his honor. Ten seconds later, when the fourth round of meteors flew in, all he could do was laugh.

But ten seconds after that, he would take back his comment about not being surprised.

 

***

 

“Wh-what…? Is this a dream?!”

“What kind of lousy dream would this be?!”

Vike shouted along with Bond, who was lying on the ground next to him. The soldiers’ ears were ringing like crazy after the fourth round of meteors, and they couldn’t hear each other without shouting.

Until a few minutes ago, they’d been prepared to be swallowed up by the black tide of the daemonic legion and die. Now, it was the corpses of daemons that filled the land. But upon closer inspection, about half of the imps and fiends were still moving. Most of them were badly injured, but their instinctive hate for human beings was clearly still intact.

Now that they had time to think things through, the soldiers could see this was still a critical situation. However, the repeated baffling events left their senses numb.

“Was that…? That monster did all that, right?”

“Don’t call him a monster! What if he heard you?!”

Vike was looking up at the small, faraway figure of a man straddling a black horse in the sky. To Vike and Bond, his existence was completely unfathomable. The only sorcery they had seen were flame arrows and wind blades that could kill one human at a time. Vike shoved at Bond—who’d called that man a monster—without hesitating. It was only natural to be afraid. What if that man suddenly changed the aim of his meteors to rain on their heads?

“Ah… The daemons are still coming! All troops stand ready. We repel them here!”

They heard the orders from the commander behind them.

That was when they realized there were still four or five thousand daemons right in front of them. The power of the meteors was amazing, but as the daemonic legion had spread out, their own concentrated force had grown less effective. The commander’s anticipation of battle was reasonable. Vike and the other soldiers desperately pulled their shaking bodies to their feet.

“O-okay, everyone. They’re already reeling! All we have to do is finish them off.”

“Yeah! Easy work!”

Vike and the other soldiers knew this was just bravado.

“Gii-shaaah!”

“Greee!”

“Go-gaaah!”

The legion was now a mere fifty meters from the Filsand infantry. They readied their spears.

Just then…

BWOOOOOSH!

A wall appeared in front of Vike’s eyes. The soldiers lost their footing at the sudden impact. The wall had fallen out of the sky to strike the earth.

“Wh-what the hell is this?!”

“Whaaa?!”

“D-did the daemons do this?!”

After falling back on their butts, Vike and Bolt looked up to inspect the wall, but what they saw was a huge warrior clad in thick armor. What they’d thought was a wall was actually its leg.

“A g-g-giant?!”

From high atop his phantom horse, Margilus had created three forest giants using the Create Monster: Any spell. The giants were lined up in a row, as if to make a wall between the Filsand main gate and the daemonic legion.

“Th-these are from that mon…no, from Margilus. Did Geo Margilus make these with his sorcery?!”

“P-probably… I think so…”

“What are they holding…?”

“Hey, could it be…?”

The three giants were armed, but they weren’t holding weapons. They carried bundles of long sticks with thin ends. In other words: brooms.

“Hm…”

Swoosh!

The giants moved in unison, like a reflection across three mirrors. The target of their “sweeping” was naturally the daemons.

“Wha?!”

“Eeep!”

If the movements of the giants were as slow and labored as their appearance suggested, some of the daemons, burning with unyielding hate, might have reached Vike and the other soldiers. However, the giants were able to shift their weight and change positions quite nimbly. They swiftly moved their brooms back and forth, creating a turbulent airflow that would easily send a child flying.

They were lined up alongside each other, establishing a line of defense to protect the Filsand army and the city behind them…but only a few calm people realized that.

They sweep the same way my mom does…

Still sprawled on his backside, Vike absentmindedly watched the giants. How long had it been since he’d last visited his mother, anyway?

“Giaaah?!”

“Ga-hii!”

The swept-up daemons suffered a far worse fate than being knocked onto their backs. Some flew dozens of meters away, some were crushed between a broom and the ground, and some were skewered by the branches. Vike was grateful that the storm of kicked-up dust made it hard to see anything.

“It’s happening again.”

“How many are there…?”

While the soldiers remained stunned, watching the daemons get swept up by the giants, the ground beneath them shook again and again. Each time, three more giants appeared to join the line of defense. In the end, there were a total of twenty-seven giants. They were all lined up in a row and kept on using their giant brooms to sweep away the daemons. With so many giants in the way, the soldiers couldn’t even see the enemy legion anymore.

“Gi-gyaah!”

“Greee!”

The daemons, being daemons, continued to rush into the giants’ attack without fear, almost mechanically. The screeches were enough to instill fear in the soldiers, but from the perspective of the giants, they might have thought: “This dirt I have to clean up keeps jumping right into my broom.”

“At this rate, do you think they’ll get all the daemons?”

“W-well, maybe…though there are still a lot left.”

The soldiers didn’t look depressed anymore.

They now understood that the Sorcerer Margilus, who controlled the giants from above, was using unimaginable power to protect them.

“Errgh… Aaagh…!”

A sound came from the edge of the Filsand army. Brigades of battle slaves were stationed in the most vulnerable spots of their formation. They used battered weapons, and many of them suffered from visible physical deformities. It was easy to pick them apart from the armored regulars.

Among them was the former suitor of Elisabel, an especially huge and misshapen man. Under normal circumstances, he would have let out a bloodthirsty scream and gone right at the enemies with his massive axe. Right now, he wore an expression of fear in the face of this overwhelming power. Although their positions differed drastically, the duke and his entourage felt the exact same fright as their lowliest slaves.

 

***

 

“There are giants there, too!”

“And over there!”

The view from the top of the main gate was quite clear. From their refuge, the duke, court sorcerer, and officials could see additional giants walking in from the horizon.

There were nine coming in from each angle, for a total of twenty-seven. They arranged themselves to form a square around the daemonic legion.

These were the giants that Geo had made with his spells the day before. Each day, Geo could use nine spells from each level. The number of forest giants he could make with Create Monster was three, so he could make twenty-seven each day. Create Monster lasted for one hour, so he used the Infinity spell to prolong it. Infinity extended the duration of the spell to twenty-four hours.

“He created more than fifty giants?” Nathan felt like nothing could surprise him at this point. “Is he an incarnation of the sorcerer-god Soler? Is he really the avatar of Beelzebub, like the Schultz say?”

“I can’t believe I dueled with such a monster…”

Both the court sorcerer and the captain of the duke’s guard were on the verge of passing out from shock.

“Amazing… There are no words…”

“Wow, wow, wow…”

The two beautiful, red-eyed girls with matching faces had started holding hands at some point, and were just staring at Geo and his magic.

“What are those giants over there doing?” the duke asked. He’d managed to maintain his cool, albeit through thick, greasy sweat.

“If you look closer, you’ll understand right away,” Clara answered with a smile on her face.

“Huh? They…” The duke’s eyes opened wide in disbelief.

The new giants that were surrounding the daemonic legion from all sides were carrying multiple boulders in their arms. They dropped the boulders on the ground and then each selected a single one to pick up anew. The duke thought he might have seen such behavior before.

“Impossible…”

The twenty-seven new giants were all behaving in exactly the same way. After jogging a few steps, they planted one of their massive feet, swung their right arms, and then let the boulder roll, aiming for the daemonic legion.

The rocks that the eight-meter-tall forest giants sent rolling were about two meters in diameter. Any daemons who got in their way were smashed, sent flying, or were crushed into dust.

The duke struck his hand to the armrest of his throne, laughing. “They’re bowling?”

 

***

 

“What the hell… What can you do but laugh?”

“Oh, gods…”

“It’s just crazy… We’ve all gone crazy.”

By this time, Vike and the other soldiers, as well as the knights and battle slaves, were all numb to their fear. They started enjoying themselves. There were even some who felt a bit of pity for the enemy. The remaining daemons were shredded to pieces by the attacks of the giants that had appeared from each of the three sides. Those giants didn’t just bring a couple of rocks. Each time one of the twenty-seven boulders passed through the daemonic legion, their numbers decreased.

Between those who’d assaulted the giants and those who’d been crushed by boulders, fully seven or eight thousand daemons had already been reduced to piles of meat.

Somewhere along the line, with the number of living and moving daemons so drastically decreased, the effects of the giants’ boulders and brooms began to wane.

“Grooooo!”

“Guh-gaah!”

This time, the sound that roared down from the heavens wasn’t that of fiery rocks tearing through the atmosphere. It was a dragon.

The Create Monster: Any spell required for making dragons was Rank 9. In order to use Meteor—also a Rank 9 spell—multiple times, he had only prepared two spells for summoning dragons. Therefore, there were now six small, red dragons flying in.

“Now dragons?!”

“That’s great! Burn up those daemons!”

The six dragons spewed their fiery breath, burning away the few survivors of the daemonic legion.

The scene had gone far beyond reality into the realm of fairy tales. Really, this sort of scene was too much even for a children’s bedtime story. Everyone present, including Vike, prayed from the bottom of their hearts: Let’s hope the duke never makes this man angry.

 

***

 

“I wonder if this is enough…?” I murmured to myself, high in the sky over Filsand on the back of a phantom horse. Below me, the giants were methodically sweeping the ground, gathering the remains of the daemons into a single pile.

The red dragons were burning the small mountain of daemon remains to dust with their fiery breath. If the massive amount of daemon corpses was left alone, they might cause illnesses or transform into undead, so we had to be thorough.

“Mm-hmm. This should be…fine. I think.” Up to that point, I’d enjoyed myself a great deal. Anyone would have. I’d stood against overwhelming odds all by my lonesome and prevailed.

But after that uplifting moment, I started imagining a number of worst-case scenarios. Looking back on what I’d done since my transition to this world at the Watcher’s hands, I felt proud of my record. I’d figured things out and done pretty well. But a persistent fear had stayed with me: that somewhere along the line, I would make a huge mistake. Power like this couldn’t be thrown around without consequences.

Less than an hour later, all traces of the formerly massive daemonic legion were gone, thanks to the work of the giants and dragons. Now all that was left was the crater-ridden land.

“Mmn…”

Once everything was cleaned up, I finally felt some relief. I lifted my arms to greet the Filsand army lined up in front of the city walls, and headed toward the command tower above the main gate.

“Margilus! Margilus! Hail the mighty sorcerer, Margilus!”

My phantom horse had barely even touched down in the command tower before the soldiers started raising their fists and weapons, cheering. I could correct them about my title later.