Hard Carried by My Sword

Chapter 187

During her sweep around Alger Fortress, Karen had discovered that the black mage had taken up residence in a detached wing of the lord’s manor. Not only was it guarded with tight magical defenses, but six knights radiating Expert-level presence patrolled the grounds. Even for Leon’s party, sneaking in unseen and eliminating him would be nearly impossible.

So, Karen flipped the idea on its head. If she lured the monster, unleashed into a frenzy by accident, straight into the manor, wouldn’t that drag the mage’s schemes out into the open for all to see?

“Hey, ugly! Come and get me!” she shouted at the blob of abomination.

Whether the monster had any intelligence was doubtful, but Karen didn’t think twice before hurling a dagger. The swollen mass of flesh, bloated to over four meters, was punctured in several places, yet in seconds it regenerated and came straight for her.

“Guuuuh.”

Its maw, a mangled jumble of teeth and bone, loosed a guttural roar that sounded quite far from man. Its insides and outsides had been turned and twisted, even its vocal cords warped beyond recognition. Its cry was nothing less than horrific.

“Gwooooooooh!”

The bellow rattled her eardrums. Windows dozens of meters away cracked, then shattered, splitting the quiet night of Alger with violence. And worse, the cursed relic, the Wraithstone, was a crystal steeped in the hatred and grief of countless souls. Fused into the monster’s body, its howl carried a power akin to a banshee’s wail.

This phenomenon was known as the “Deadly Cry.”

“This thing can’t just be left alone, can it?” Karen muttered as she hesitated.

To an Aura Master, the effect was negligible, but ordinary folk would collapse unconscious at the first note. At this rate, hundreds, or even thousands of Alger’s citizens could be caught in the crossfire. In her days as an assassin, she might have ignored that, but that wasn’t an option as the Hero’s companion.

“Damn, I’ve gone soft.”

With a sigh, she brought her hands together in a seal. Her ten fingers twisted and wove, forming and unforming complex shapes. The shadows on the ground writhed before rising in human form. Not one or two, but ten shadow clones, each solid enough to strike, emerged. Sweat dotted her brow from the strain.

“Pitch-Black Dance, Shadow Arts, Third Form: Tenfold Mirage.”

Her body swayed for a moment from the exertion. She had pulled it off in training before, but battle was another matter. Even so, she did not falter. She had sworn to Leon to live a different life from the one before she met him, and that promise she would keep, even if it killed her.

“All right. Shall we get started?”

At her signal, the ten clones scattered in different directions. Though she kept to empty streets, Alger’s city center wasn’t vast. Some citizens were still walking the night; others lay drunk in the alleys. She had to both evacuate them and draw the monster toward the manor. That added factor spiked the difficulty, but so be it.

The monster, fixed now in a grotesque humanoid form, smashed a building down on her with a single punch. With an Expert knight as its fuel, its speed and strength were formidable.

If I get hit by that, it might hurt a bit.

She slipped aside just a hair before it struck, moving with deceptive precision. The trick was to make it think she could be caught. Dodge too quickly and it might give up the chase. She had to tempt it with near misses, again and again. It was the sort of decoy work that would make even veteran rangers balk, but Karen’s lips never lost their grin.

“Gwooooooh!”

Another roar tore through wooden buildings, collapsing them in clouds of dust, but Karen didn’t care. She toyed with it, gouging its eyes that didn’t even look like they were working, slicing its wrists and ankles to topple it.

It was time-consuming, yes, but deliberate. The longer she delayed, the more time the border lord and black mage needed to realize what was happening.

“That’s it! Keep chasing me! Over here!”

Her ten clones cleared paths and taunted it, while Karen clenched her teeth.

Tch... this is way harder than I thought.

Thirty-two vagrants were evacuated, and seventeen drunkards were dragged to safety. Twenty-five residents were pulled from collapsed buildings.

Her mind reeled under the strain of eleven overlapping perspectives, but she showed nothing. She wasn’t about to let some lump of meat—not even a Demon King, just a puppet of flesh—see her break.

“Let’s see who comes out on top!”

With a shout to steel herself, Karen dodged another punch by mere inches. The manor was only a few kilometers away now. In the darkness, her eyes burned a fierce blue.

***

In the detached quarters of the Alger manor, court magician Nigel was roused from his comfortable sleep by a sudden thunderous roar. Actually, more than the sound, it was the energy that woke him. Waves of black magic were rippling through the night air thanks to the Deadly Cry reverberating across the city.

“Who dares to wield black magic in my domain!” Nigel shouted as he rose.

The black mage snatched up his robe and staff as the initial startle faded, and arrogance swiftly returned to his face. Thanks to the imperial decree having a hold of the margrave of Alger, everything had been proceeding perfectly—until now. That some interloper would ruin it enraged him.

Caution was said to be the black magi’s greatest trait, yet in this moment, Nigel abandoned it. How could he not? He commanded ten Expert-level Brain Suckers, their strength fed endlessly by the five magic circles he had laid around Alger.

“Wait, three of them are already gone?!”

When he finally noticed the drain in his mana flow, he smashed the furniture of his chamber in a fit of fury. Whoever was behind this he would not let them die easily.

Just as he prepared to storm out, a voice came.

“Nigel! What in the blazes is going on?”

The margrave himself burst into the room, clad in full plate. Awakened by the noise, he had come straight here, assuming that Nigel would know something.

Rank put Nigel beneath the lord, so though his teeth ground together, he answered with forced courtesy, “My lord, forgive me, but I do not yet know the full situation. If you’ll allow, I’ll trace the source of that disturbance and—”

“No need.”

“I beg your pardon...?”

With a scowl, the count jabbed a finger toward the window. Nigel followed the gesture and froze.

Through clouds of dust, a monstrosity was barreling toward the manor. Its hulking form stood over five meters tall, bones and muscle fused in a grotesque lattice. Human faces bulged from its surface, so hideous that even Alger’s elite troops fled rather than stand against it.

“I-is that...?”

Surprisingly, Nigel instantly recognized the monstrosity thanks to the decades of black magic study he had under his belt.

That’s... a Hive Walker! An undead abomination that only a necromancer of the seventh-tier or higher could create!

Had such a being suddenly invaded Alger? As Nigel’s thoughts raced toward escape, he noticed something strange. The artifact earring given to him by the Evil Order—the one that controlled the Brain Suckers—was reacting to the creature.

“N-no way!”

Though he had not reached the Master’s realm, as a sixth-tier magician, Nigel was rare enough. He was fully knowledgeable about the Wraithstones and Brain Suckers he had distributed, and so the answer came swiftly.

Someone has breached three of my circles. The Brain Suckers stationed there were defeated. The Wraithstones at those sites sensed destruction, fused themselves to the fallen hosts, and mutated them into this.

Normally, a Hive Walker was forged by burning away countless souls and cramming their remnants into one body. This time, the process had gone differently, but the same result had somehow been yielded.

Nigel’s eyes glittered with greed. An undead of such caliber—normally possible only for a seventh-tier necromancer—had fallen into his lap. And the body was still alive, still under the Brain Sucker’s link to his artifact. He might not dominate it with raw power, but the reins were there for him to seize.

“My lord,” he said smoothly, his tongue like that of a snake.

“It seems a black magician—or perhaps an exolaw wielder—has infiltrated Alger. No ordinary school of magic could control such a monster.”

“Can you take it down?” the margrave asked.

“With the knights at my side, it should not be impossible. I may even be able to wrest control of it myself.”

The margrave paled and snapped back, “No. Destroy it. Erase that abomination from my land as quickly as possible.”

“As you command.”

Nigel cursed him silently, Clueless fool, but forced a smile as he bowed and left the room.

Once in the corridor, his face twisted into something cold and vicious as he muttered, “Come to me, my slaves.”

Nigel used the earring and summoned the knights patrolling the manor. Their bodies, infested by Brain Suckers, answered his call obediently. Within seconds, they gathered before him to give Nigel the firepower of six Expert-level knights and a sixth-tier sorcerer versed in exolaw and black magic in himself.

With this much strength concentrated at his side, even a Master could be contested so long as they fought within the fortress. Nigel felt more secure than ever.

“It’s here, at last.”

Moments later, the Hive Walker’s massive shadow stretched across the front gate of the lord’s estate. A servant-beast of the seventh tier was about to become his, without cost or effort.

Like an adventurer staring at a mountain of treasure, Nigel gazed at the monstrosity with near affection. If he seized it, his rise within the Evil Order would be assured, two full ranks at least.

The Hive Walker, having lost track of Karen, paused to scan the courtyard. Eventually, its many eyes locked onto Nigel and his knights.

“Grooooah!”

With a shriek that shattered the night, it kicked the gate. Iron doors that could withstand ballista bolts buckled instantly.

With two more stomps, the gate splintered apart. The monster stepped into the courtyard. On its way, it had warped itself further—legs now in three pairs for speed, arms split into nine writhing limbs, over thirty eyes sprouting grotesquely across its body.

“Magnificent!”

To Nigel, even this hideous appearance was proof of its efficient evolution. He brushed past the knights, stretched out his hand, and poured mana from his earring into the creature’s infested brain.

The Hive Walker accepted the interference without resistance, and a smile crept across Nigel’s face, his mask of composure cracking with glee.

And then, a squelch, almost deflating, sounded.

The Hive Walker’s fist smashed Nigel flat like an insect. Blood, bone, and flesh exploded beneath its blow. No creature could have survived such damage, bar a lich.

“Gruuh?”

Instead of rage, the monster gave a confused growl at the prey that had simply walked up and... died?

The truth was simple. Nigel had assumed the Hive Walker’s hive-mind was ruled by the Brain Suckers, when in truth, it was the opposite.

No parasite could dominate Wraithstones condensed from thousands of souls’ hatred. The Brain Suckers survived only by occupying fragments of its body, clinging to existence in isolation.

Nigel’s interference had shattered that balance, handing the Hive Walker total control and unintentionally setting it free.

Worse, when he died, the earring shattered too. The Brain Suckers he had called became mindless husks, unable to fight back. The only force that might have hacked apart the incomplete Hive Walker collapsed into useless puppets.

“Gruuuuhk...”

The Hive Walker gorged itself on Nigel and the six knights in a single feeding. A sixth-tier black magician and six Expert-level warriors made prey of unparalleled richness. The feast triggered a new evolution within its twisted body.

Nigel’s brain was absorbed to bolster the hive-mind’s intellect. The knights’ physiques reshaped their malformed frames into something more efficient.

The result was a form incomparably stronger than before, enough to raze Alger territory in short order. Karen, watching from a safe distance, could only mutter in shock.

“What the hell is this...?”

Already suffering headaches from splitting her senses across ten shadows, the shock of seeing the situation spiral so far from her calculations nearly made her reel. Her goals had been simple: expose Nigel, warn the margrave, or at least thin the enemy’s ranks by turning them against each other.

Watching a monster gorge itself and belch afterward was not part of her plan.

“Karen! What in the world happened here?!”

“What is that thing?!”

Leon and Elahan, arriving just as the calamity unfolded, demanded answers. Karen, her face tight with embarrassment, muttered the only words that fit.

“Haha... It’s a goddamn mess, that’s what it is.”

And she meant every word.