Chapter 47 : Chapter 47
Chapter 47: Barely One in Ten! A Battle Report from Hell
More than ten miles away, in a concealed mountain hollow.
Martin supported the nearly collapsed Lilith, stopping in wretched exhaustion.
He used his last strength to set up a simple warning formation, then sat down heavily on the ground, gasping for breath in huge gulps like a dying dog.
Lilith leaned against a boulder, face deathly pale, eyes vacant.
Her former haughty charm had vanished completely, leaving only the dazed confusion of surviving disaster and bone-deep terror.
Her mind replayed scenes from the battlefield again and again—those melted soldiers, those warhorses standing back up… all of it was like the most vicious nightmare, impossible to shake.
A spatial fluctuation rippled, and Reno's figure appeared staggering before them.
The moment he appeared, he could no longer hold on. With a THUD, he dropped to one knee, his longsword in his left hand stabbing deep into the earth, barely preventing his collapse.
His right arm had already completely transformed into charcoal-black, hanging down without sensation.
That necrotic trend was still spreading toward his chest at a visible pace, black veins crawling like Vipers.
“Lord Reno!”
Martin cried out in alarm. Ignoring his exhaustion, he rushed forward to check.
When he saw that sinister wound, this well-traveled gray-robed mage couldn't help but suck in a sharp breath.
“It's Withering Touch… one of the highest-tier death curses.”
His voice was filled with despair.
“It's over… unless a Cardinal Archbishop from the Holy Light Cathedral personally performs divine purification, otherwise… otherwise…”
Otherwise, certain death.
And a death watching one's own body rot and wither inch by inch, dying in endless agony.
Reno laughed bitterly and shook his head.
“No need… I know my own condition.”
He raised his head, looking around.
Scattered and sparse, routed soldiers kept fleeing here from various directions.
Most had discarded their helmets and armor, covered in wounds, each face bearing expressions of lingering terror, like lonely ghosts crawling out of hell.
Some soldiers were wailing in grief, some praying in low voices, but more sat on the ground with vacant stares, not saying a word.
Reno silently counted.
Ten, twenty, fifty…
One hundred…
When the last routed soldier, crying and tumbling into the hollow, the wilderness returned to deathly silence—no new figures appeared.
Reno's heart sank bit by bit, descending into a bottomless abyss.
He tallied the numbers.
Surviving infantry, fewer than one hundred fifty.
Cavalry, counting himself, only about thirty riders remaining, most having lost their horses.
A crack force of thirteen hundred—after one battle, fewer than two hundred remained.
A casualty rate exceeding a terrifying eighty percent.
This wasn't just a crushing defeat anymore.
This was… total annihilation.
Reno's body trembled violently, not from the excruciating pain of his wound, but from indescribable shame and grief.
He, the strongest Knight under Viscount Simon's command, had utterly buried the Viscount's army, buried the honor of Lionheart City, on this cursed wilderness.
“PFFT—”
A mouthful of fresh blood mixed with black clots sprayed violently from his mouth.
He could no longer hold on. His vision went black, and he fell straight backward.
……
On a ridge even farther away, two figures crouched silently like ghosts merged with the rocks.
Cold wind blew through the grass leaves of their camouflage, making rustling sounds.
Barrett's scout captain, called Skinny Monkey, slowly lowered the brass telescope embedded with polished crystal—freshly crafted by the City of Miracles' workshop.
His face, in the twilight's afterglow, was white as a sheet of paper.
The hand gripping the telescope trembled uncontrollably.
“Boss… did you see it?”
Beside him, his deputy, an equally lean scout, asked in a dry voice, teeth chattering.
“I saw it.”
Skinny Monkey's voice was hoarse as if scraped by sandpaper.
He swallowed saliva, but his throat felt like it was burning with fire.
“Then… what the fuck was that thing?”
The deputy's voice carried a trace of sobbing.
He was a veteran, had killed people, seen blood, but everything happening before his eyes had completely exceeded his cognitive boundaries.
Skinny Monkey remained silent for a long while before speaking slowly.
“I don't know what that was.”
“I only know that Lionheart City's force of thirteen hundred…”
He paused, as if using all his strength to finish speaking.
“…is gone.”
“They were… like wheat thrown into a grindstone, ground down alive by a group… a group of monsters.”
After speaking, he coughed violently, as if trying to cough out his own lungs.
His deputy stared blankly at that battlefield which had returned to silence, where countless black figures were moving about, his body shaking like a sieve.
He saw those Lionheart Guard soldiers who had just fallen standing back up one by one, joining that undead army.
This discovery made his stomach churn violently, nearly vomiting.
Skinny Monkey took a deep breath and pulled out a small bamboo tube from his chest with trembling hands, extracting a specially treated thin sheepskin paper and a charcoal stick from inside.
His hands shook badly—several times he couldn't write complete characters on the paper.
Finally, he used all his willpower to force himself calm.
This was a scout's iron law: the more critical the situation, the clearer and more accurate the intelligence must be.
On the sheepskin paper, he wrote only a few lines—extremely brief yet heavy as mountains.
【Lionheart Army routed. Deaths exceed one thousand, barely one in ten survives.】
【Enemy is undead, not resistible by mortal strength. Their leader can absorb souls for power, cannot be killed completely, the dead all become their slaves.】
【Knight Commander Reno gravely wounded, afflicted by death curse. Mage fled in defeat.】
【Grayrock Town has become a death ground, an undead nest. Repeat, undead nest!】
After writing the last character, he carefully rolled up the sheepskin paper and stuffed it into a small bamboo tube on a carrier pigeon's leg.
He lifted that pigeon—which was similarly agitated with fear—and spoke in an almost prayer-like tone.
“Fly… quickly… you must bring this message back to the Lord…”
The pigeon cooed once, spread its wings high, and vanished as a black dot beneath the blood-red sky.
Skinny Monkey gazed upward blankly at the direction where the pigeon disappeared until his neck ached, then slowly lowered his head, his eyes filled with endless terror and lingering fear.
He knew.
The skies over this wilderness were about to change completely.
A terrifying Tempest of death and bones was sweeping forth in all directions from that cursed land of Grayrock Town.