Chapter 220: Repulsion
A ray of light appeared in the Keonitra Temple, which was about to collapse. It wasn’t actual light, but over thirty nude male and female soldiers. However, the occupants of the temple saw it as more dazzling and brilliant than sunlight.
And the draugr, who had risen from the dead, attacked the undead to gain the right to be revived.
Clang!
If they had eyes, they would have opened wide. When the skeleton soldier noticed that its spear had been stopped, it flinched.
In front of the skeleton stood a man, naked except for a shield, blocking the spear with his bare hands. The skeleton’s jaw joint clicked. The clicking sound was more a mixture of bewilderment and surprise than anger at the living.
“Clack.”
The dragon gnashed its teeth, mirroring the skeleton soldier’s jawbone. Then it lowered the mace it was holding in its right hand onto the skeleton soldier.
Bang!
After crushing the skeleton soldier’s head, the draugr rushed to its next target. A banshee, which had been hovering above and manipulating dozens of corpses, swooped down on such a draugr.
Kyaaaaaaaaa-!
The wicked cry caused the air to vibrate and created a transparent ring-shaped wave.
However, the draugr was not affected by the banshee’s cry at all. All draugr, before gaining their right, were in a state of neither life nor death.
One of the draugr, unaffected by the banshee’s cry, leaped over a pile of corpses and swung at the banshee. However, the draugr’s blade passed harmlessly through the banshee.
Similarly, the draugr had no way of inflicting damage on the wraiths.
After a few blunders, the draugrs learned the banshees couldn’t harm them, and they couldn’t affect the banshees.
The draugrs’ stance toward the wraiths was unanimously chosen to be indifferent. They totally ignored them.
They didn’t even blink an eye when a swarm of banshees or wraiths surrounded them, screaming.
And they started viciously slaughtering the physical corpses.
The dark cloud that had been lurking beneath the dead lifted the broken bones and re-energized the shattered corpses, but it was insufficient.
“Khahahaha!”
A draugr’s war hammer smashed through the zombies and skeletons, slamming onto the floor.
The hammer did not stop there. It swung around and transformed five more zombies into blood before charging through the spears and swords.
Puck, Puff, Puff!
Swords and spears pierced the naked draugr, and he was immediately drenched in blood. However, even in the face of certain doom, the draugr reached out and snatched the zombie’s skull.
Puck!
The zombie’s head fractured and scattered, leaving nasty brain matter and bone shards everywhere.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
After slaughtering scores of corpses, the draugr fell and closed its eyes, swords and spears protruding from its torso.
Warriors who had left behind nothing but a hollow promise of slaying dragons, never recorded in history books, were now breaking the corpses, transcending time.
Their expressionless faces showed neither desire for battle nor joy in killing—only corpses.
They simply moved their arms and legs softly, like farmers gathering grain or butchers butchering livestock.
“……Th, th……!”
“Pr, priest……!”
The soldiers and priests gathered on the ramparts, sighed, and stared at them.
The odds were apparent. The number of draugr was small, and the most terrifying Death Knight was thwarted by an unknown man brandishing a greatsword.
The paladin and the blonde woman were chanting prayers and radiating divine force around them, but the number of undead in the canyon’s crevices appeared to be in the thousands, if not tens of thousands.
Then Princess Julia, who had sought sanctuary inside the ramparts, hurriedly clambered onto the parapet.
“Y, Your Highness!”
“Are you okay?”
“You should rest a little more……!”
“How can I rest when it’s like this outside? I’m much better now, so please step aside.
“Oh, yes.”
As she received bows and greetings from those who bowed to her, Julia placed her hand on the parapet and looked out.
She quickly surveyed the battlefield and, taking out the sword she had picked up along the way, said,
“Prepare to charge.”
The knights and priests of the temple turned to face Julia when she spoke. Then they nodded vigorously.
“Yes!”
The surviving horses were swiftly gathered, and both the paladins and Julia’s knights mounted them. Julia also remounted Kry, the black steed that had carried her.
Woosh!
Julia gently stroked the black steed’s mane as it shook its head as if asking if it would be alright. She said quietly,
“Let’s go help your master.”
At that point, the soldiers had removed the stones, wooden frames, and twisted gates that were blocking the castle gate. Even once they were gone, they barely left a path large enough for two horses to pass through, but Julia didn’t mind.
“To death!”
Julia yelled briefly and dashed forward; her visor formed.
Hihihihing!
Julia charged out of the castle gate, neighing like a horse.
“H, Hey, you, you’re really, fast…!”
Julia continued to charge towards the bodies, despite leaving a trail of blood from the jolt she received every time she stepped on the ground.
Following her, the paladins and other knights tightened their reins and kicked their horses in the flanks.
“Let’s go-!”
“Waaaah-!”
Soldiers, knights, and priests with ragged armor, shattered swords, and half-broken helmets pursued the knights and charged over the debris of the collapsed castle gate.
Their forces were so few that they could barely reach a thousand, but their yells sounded like tens of thousands.
The heads of the bodies, which had been rolling around the canyon and down the mountainside, turned towards the temple when they heard human voices reverberating.
“For the Emperor!”
“Long live Lutheon! Long live the sun!”
The knights surged towards the battlefield, holding swords and spears while shouting adoration and admiration for their respective rulers and gods.
“Close ranks!”
The cavalry tightened their formation at Julia’s command. Forming a wedge formation with Julia at the apex, they became the sharpest edge of the sword, piercing into the scattered corpses.
Clank, clang, clang!
Flesh flew into the air when warhorses and corpses collided. Limbs with only leather flapping or bones remaining flapped through the air.
As the knights and their horses trampled the bodies, soldiers’ spears and priests’ prayers showered down, casting a bright light.
“Die-!”
“Raising the prayer of the sun high, let its grace descend here!”
The undead, whose ranks had been shattered, collapsed one after another, and the vast majority of them instantaneously transformed into corpses or ashes and vanished.
“Hwaaaap!”
Julia, who had wrapped her magical force in her sword, swung it with both hands. It was more like crazy swinging than swordsmanship, but she was surrounded by zombies and dead.
The sword, bolstered by magic power, wrapped a sword energy comprised of magic power around its surface and shattered the skeletons and bodies as it moved ahead.
The corpses and zombies that had risen via the power of morale collapsed like scarecrows or lost their cores, returning to being mere corpses, crushed.
The armor and swords of the paladins, infused with holy power, intimidated the undead simply by being present.
A swirling snowstorm, a thick haze of dust, a black mist that made breathing painful, and within it, flashing swords and meaningless screams.
With a frigid breeze flowing through the armor’s cracks, her fingertips lost sensation.
It was now difficult to tell if she was moving her body or if her body was holding onto her spirit. As she reached this state of confusion, Julia hastily parried a spear thrusting towards her side.
However, there were more than one or two spears, swords, and axes pointed at her. Julia lost her reins and fell off her horse after Kry let out a loud cry and elevated its forelegs.
Clang, clang!
The unanticipated shock and pain were excruciating. Julia rolled several times after falling off her horse.
Julia woke up after smelling the icy ice and grime on her visor.
Clang!
A spear held by a corpse struck the ground where Julia had been resting by a hair’s width. The spear’s shaft snapped off, and Julia swung her blade, cutting the corpse’s waist.
Julia, who was still adjusting to her blurry vision, swiftly raised her sword and prepared for the next strike.
But no more attacks came. Julia, confused, looked around.
The zombies and corpses stood immobile. Like orchestra musicians who were perplexed when the maestro abruptly stopped conducting, the corpses stood around aimlessly, biting each other or collapsing on the floor meaninglessly.
Julia, who had been wondering what this phenomenon was, suddenly felt goosebumps on her skin.
She felt a tingling feeling throughout her body and could smell something burning.
Rumble……!
The low clouds above the canyon, so dark that it was impossible to tell day from night, crackled with blue lightning as thunder roared.
A giant shadow fell across the battlefield. It was a shadow shaped like a dragon, causing the living and the dead to look up in unison.
Something resembling a white dot was drifting in the high sky with no device. At the same time, blue lightning began to strike the ground with astonishing speed.
Clang!
Along with the lightning, snowstorms swirled with white air currents across the sky, forming a massive icicle that plummeted.
Julia, who had been looking at the girl in surprise, turned her head again when she heard a loud commotion nearby.
There, a woman with red wings on her shoulders, was slaughtering the corpses with a bloody blade.
Because of the tremendous speed with which she stabs and the length of her spear, the zombies were killed before approaching her.
As she swung the red spear in her right hand, she bent her left hand like a hook and swung it upward. Five red lines were drawn, plowing the ground.
Pwah!
Unlike the woman who swept away the dead with crimson blood, a dark elf rescued the soldiers and priests who were nearly killed by the two sickles.
Julia identified Lexi by her pinkish complexion, extended ears, and supple, leopard-like physique.
“That woman too?”
The dark elf charged over the ground, holding two sickles like a lunatic. Every time the sickle made a horizontal line, many of the corpses’ skulls fell off.
The surviving soldiers and priests watched in a daze as the dark elf, the woman with red wings, and the girl floated in the sky, gesturing to send lightning and icicles down.
Lexi, the dark elf who had quickly tidied up her surroundings, approached Julia and extended her hand.
“Long time no see, Your Highness. Your face looks like you’re about to die.
“……You haven’t changed a bit.”
Julia nodded her head. Kry approached her side, nudging Julia with its snout. It appeared to be apologizing for knocking her down, so Julia patted the black horse’s nose.
“You don’t have to apologize. I fell because I was reckless. By the way, how did you get here?”
“Oh, it’s all done now. Let’s take a step back.
“Yes? What, uh?”
Lexi, who had been peering behind her, took Julia and Kry’s reins and moved back. Julia, who was being guided by her hand without knowing why, soon recognized that the white girl floating in the sky and the woman flying with red wings were both retreating the battlefield.
At that moment, she suddenly felt warmth from behind, and she saw a long shadow falling before her.
Julia looked back and saw a blonde woman waving both palms above her head.
“……As the sun descends here, all shadows will be dispelled, and evil will crumble.”
Julia heard the woman’s words, the final part of the prayer, like a whisper in her ear.
At the same time, a beautiful golden light broke into the sky. The continually rising ray of light pierced the black clouds.
Paaaaaaaat!
And the clouds started to clear. The ferociously blowing snowstorm gradually lessened and then ceased.
The wind was no longer blowing. The soldiers and priests who had collapsed rose with bewildered expressions.
As the sparkling golden dust rained from the sky, the bleeding wounds healed, and the fractured bones fixed themselves.
People coated in blood, sweat, and dust stared up at the sky. The midday sunlight had cleared the clouds and shone brightly down on them.
And the zombies melted away as soon as they were exposed to the glaring sunlight.
Screaming weakly, the banshees and wraiths fluttered and turned transparent, while the zombies, skeletons, and corpses burned white on the spot and vanished, leaving only white ashes.
Countless people stared blankly at the hordes of zombies fleeing from the sunlight slanting down from above the temple.
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