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My sharpened instincts, honed through countless battles, instinctively warned me.

Whoever that approaching entity was, it would certainly not be friendly.

I silently drew Ezetus and raised it high over my shoulder, adopting a javelin stance.

The moment the intruder rounded the corner and revealed themselves, I threw the spear with all my might without hesitation.

“O-”

Pervak!

Before the intruder could say a word, his head exploded in an instant.

Blood and brain matter oozed out through the white skull, exposing the crimson brain within.

Yet even in that state, the intruder did not fall. His drooping jaw trembled as if in post-mortem rigidity, but I viewed it differently.

He was trying to speak, even with a shattered head.

Finally realizing that he couldn’t talk with his destroyed head, the intruder silently raised his hand.

And then a mouth formed in the palm of his hand, splitting open.

The mouth in his palm moved grotesquely and spoke in a chilling voice.

“It’s been quite some time, but you’re still the first to throw a spear without warning. What would you have done if I were a civilian?”

I automatically retracted Ezetus and aimed the spear tip at him.

“With a body that reeks of corpse rot, you sure have a mouth on you.”

The breathlessness I sensed with the sound of his footsteps, the nearly absent heartbeat, his body resembling that of a walking corpse.

Instead of explaining what I felt, I slowly spoke with certainty.

“…So it was you watching back then.”

The root cause of the destruction of the Ionia Kingdom.

The necromancer known as the Undying King.

The commander of the Demon King’s Army who commanded an army of the undead.

The Undying Legion Commander replied with a chuckle through the mouth in his palm.

“Well, that’s something I should say. I was just trying to find out who killed my Death Knight, but I was shocked to see such a familiar face. What business do you have here, huh? Heh—”

Instead of any answer, a relentless slash flew at me.

Soon, the mangled body rolled onto the floor.

However, once again, a mouth formed on one of the severed pieces, and the Undying Legion Commander continued speaking. His voice was filled with irritation.

“I’m talking here! Can you please stop interrupting? It’s been a long time since we met; don’t you have anything to say?”

I shoved my spear deep into that mouth.

“Don’t give a wizard any chance to act. Thanks to you, I’ve learned that lesson well.”

“They say a single day of learning is enough to consider someone a teacher, and this is how you repay that kindness?”

As all the severed parts sprouted mouths, crazed voices echoed from everywhere.

His appearance had become even more ghastly in my absence. His survival instinct was beyond that of a cockroach.

Ignoring words that weren’t even worth answering, I swung Ezetus and unleashed slashes wherever I heard a sound.

Chwa-zhak!

Crimson trails circled around me, and the mangled corpses were shredded into pieces, leaving behind only a puddle of blood.

Silence fell all around.

But suddenly, a summoned familiar broke that silence. It was a familiar sight, a large-eyed, winged creature I often saw on the battlefield.

[You cruel being. Wasn’t this once a living human? Aren’t you a bit too heartless?]

“You were the one who killed this guy. Not me.”

The body possessed by the Undying Legion Commander had indeed been swiftly sliced apart, but it wore an adventurer’s outfit beneath the dark robe.

It was probably the ranger, the owner of the diary. Unfortunately, it was too late to save him once the Undying Legion Commander had seized the body.

The familiar mimicked its master’s voice and chuckled.

[Hehe, well, that’s one way to look at it. But aren’t you curious? How did I, who was torn in half by you, manage to survive until now?]

“No.”

I had a rough idea already.

It was someone I had killed dozens of times with my own hands. Someone who kept coming back, getting killed, resurrecting, and getting killed again, this cycle had repeated for years during the war.

That day, I thought I had finally killed the true essence of my foe. But it seemed even that was not enough.

It didn’t matter. I knew that he was still alive now.

My right shoulder momentarily blurred, and the spear flew like a bolt, piercing the familiar’s eye.

“Wherever you’re hiding, just wait. I’ll come back to kill you again.”

The familiar, pierced by Ezetus, fell lifelessly to the ground. It wasn’t just a reverse summon; it had actually been killed by the ability of Ezetus.

With the death of the familiar, this time the surroundings finally grew quiet.

…Looks like there aren’t any more cards to play here.

After confirming that there were no signs or magical auras left, I stored Ezetus in the spatial realm.

And as I glanced around, I could see the blood covering the floor forming a certain phrase.

‘For me, death is not the end.’

‘Soon, I will become complete.’

“……”

It was a deeply significant phrase.

If it were a different opponent, it might have been better to have a conversation and extract some information. But with the Undying Legion Commander, that simply wasn’t feasible.

He was a mad wizard filled with insanity. Acting with a mindset incomprehensible to ordinary people, and just because he could speak, it would be a grave mistake to think we could communicate.

I might have been able to gather information about Ella, but if my objectives were to be discovered while doing so, it could unnecessarily escalate the situation.

Finding out Ella’s whereabouts through the Undying Legion Commander would be possible only at the moment when I had fully suppressed him.

Before leaving this place, I decided to check the ending of the diary I hadn’t finished reading.

The contents were roughly as I had expected. The adventurer returned to Schwarzheim without knowing how he had escaped that hell, and somehow he was holding a red jewel.

From the moment he obtained that jewel, a maddening voice filled his head, and the diary described how, once he regained consciousness, he had committed terrible acts, gradually losing himself, the handwriting becoming more distorted and difficult, until it abruptly ceased.

It seemed that was the moment he lost his sense of self and was completely robbed of his body by the Undying Legion Commander.

During the last war, while the Undying Legion Commander had created numerous clones from corpses, the main body had only been an ordinary elf who embraced dark magic. And I had personally killed that main body with my own hands.

The red jewel was something I had never seen before, an object that appeared suddenly. Could it be related to the Undying Legion Commander’s resurrection now?

But when I had sliced apart the Undying Legion Commander earlier, the red jewel had not been anywhere in sight. I couldn’t find such an object in this workshop either.

Was it moved somewhere after the resurrection was complete?

“……”

It seemed that was all I could ascertain here.

Considering the people anxiously searching for their families outside, it wouldn’t do to leave the victims here unattended.

I gathered the bodies of the women one by one. Each one had been subjected to terrible torture, their state horrific enough to be hard to look at, but I made sure to arrange their corpses as neatly as possible for those who would have to see their family’s remains.

That was all I could do for them at this moment.

After leaving the sewer, I informed a passing adventurer of the situation. And before people could gather, I immediately left the scene.

Having already endured enough of the cries left behind by those who remain.

*

Time passed quickly after that.

The citizens of the city were still preparing for battle, while at the same time waiting for the rescue team that would come someday.

However, the news coming in was not good.

For the past few days, the suddenly pouring rain had continued for a long time. The delays in repairs due to the weather were soon to be overshadowed by something even worse.

The Imperial Army heading toward Schwarzheim was hampered by the weather. Due to the suddenly swollen river and the dangerous currents, carpenters reinforcing the broken bridge had encountered accidents.

With such weather, it was of course impossible to set sail.

The delayed arrival of the rescue team dampened the spirits of the city. Even seasoned adventurers felt downcast; it was needless to say the students were in a worse state.

If it hadn’t been for Instructor Rilya’s proactive care, I wouldn’t have been able to respond properly when the students of the Red Garnet panicked.

In any case, with the defense of the city left to adventurers and the students in charge of Instructor Rilya and the other instructors, I was outside.

Outside the city, I was slaughtering the undead.

Chwa-zhak!

It had already been three days since I swung my spear without rest from morning till night.

The number of undead I had personally killed must have exceeded around 100,000.

With this, I had thoroughly scoured the southern region of Ionia’s capital, Karia.

Since this was a place where others wouldn’t notice, I used dark magic to search the surroundings, but I found no traces of Ella here. Nor those of the Undying Legion Commander.

“Damn….”

Where could they possibly be?

I had already checked the royal castle, and the only area left was the vicinity of the capital Karia. However, it was physically impossible to survey an entire city filled with buildings in just a few days.

No, I shouldn’t be getting anxious. While the situation is far from ideal, it’s not the worst.

The city is still holding up well, and even if it’s delayed a bit, we can still expect support from outside.

How many cities perished without even hoping for outside support during the Demon King’s Army invasion? Compared to those, this situation was nothing.

‘I need to find a safe place to rest for a bit and then continue searching.’

It’s already been three days since I roamed around fighting the undead without eating, drinking, or even sleeping.

It was about time for me to take a break.

In a land filled with undead, I couldn’t rest just anywhere. So I had been scouting for a suitable resting place.

The Ionia Royal Palace had already been thoroughly searched on the first day, and it was relatively safer with fewer undead and plenty of space to rest.

“Grrrr!”

“Kyieeeek!”

Chwa-zhak!!

It hadn’t been long since I cleaned the place up, but again, after sweeping away the undead pouring in from all over the city, I stepped into the Ionia Royal Palace.

Once, the Ionia Royal Palace had shone the brightest in the capital Karia, but after being attacked by the uninvited undead, it had lost its brilliance.

Bloodstains were painted on the walls, statues lay in ruins, gardens had blackened and withered, shattered glass windows and cold stone walls… The palace’s interior was vivid with the traces of overnight downfall.

But the building itself remained sturdy. Compared to other buildings that had been left unattended for the last 15 years, one could say it was relatively clean.

With no owner left to claim it, there were no permissions to be sought. I found a fairly clean room I had scouted ahead of time and entered.

This room, whose previous tenant I couldn’t identify, was the most intact even among the corpse- and rotting-scented remains of the palace.

In here, I could close my eyes for a moment. Though not too deeply.

During this time, something I hadn’t noticed when I searched this room before caught my eye.

It was a large portrait that had fallen to the ground. Perhaps it had been knocked off the wall by some impact, as it lay on its back, covered with dust.

For some reason, that portrait caught my attention.

I turned the dusty portrait over to check its front.

“……”

A girl with beautiful blonde hair and green eyes, so beautiful that I mistook her for Ella for a moment.

Only then did I realize.

Who the owner of this room was.

 

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