At the sight of Ex's crooked smile, Circe pressed a hand to the bridge of her nose as though he had given her a headache. Then she ordered the skeleton soldiers to attack.
“That idiot…! Everyone, attack!”
The moment the order came, the soldiers unleashed their arrows. Already thrown into confusion by the rampaging guardian and Ex, the skeleton company scattered bone dust in every direction beneath that rain of arrows.
What had been a three-way battle between the company, the guardian, and Ex became a four-way battle with Circe's arrival. As a result, the company, which had the greatest fighting strength of all four sides, suffered enormous losses.
“Kraaaargh!”
At their commander's order, the company's soldiers moved to stop Circe's troops. But Ex's attacks had already cost them officer after officer, leaving their chain of command in disarray.
Circe's troops continued their one-sided assault.
Even so, Circe couldn't afford to be optimistic about the situation.
“Ex! Use Blink and get over here already!”
Ex was still surrounded inside the skeleton company's formation.
For some reason, he was racing between the soldiers as though fleeing for his life, under fierce attack from several skeletons that were clearly far from ordinary.
Every time she saw another wound appear on his body, Circe could only grow more frustrated and anxious.
Did she need to go in and save him?
Just as she was about to decide to do that, Ex shouted.
“The guardian is still chasing me! If I come over there now, you'll have to fight the company and the guardian at the same time! I have to stay here!”
“What?! Wasn't it supposed to follow only the treasure chest?”
“I don't know why, but the guardian is determined to kill me! I think it's really pissed off! The company and the guardian are both going after me and no one else!”
“Since when do these things have feelings? Didn't you do something wrong?”
That was certainly one of the things Ex himself found strange.
These creatures made of mana were practically undead. They shouldn't have intelligence or emotions. There had been no such description or detail in the setting.
He hadn't exactly fought them the way the original story had, though…!
Ex raised the Dragon Sword and deflected the elite knight's descending iron blade. He rolled away from a beam of light fired by the mage, then knocked aside the spear thrust that came at him as he finished the roll. A red line opened along one cheek, bringing a sharp, stinging pain.
They were strong.
The coordinated attacks of the four elite skeletons were far more skillful and threatening than he had imagined. Was this what it felt like to fight a veteran party that had spent years working together?
Fortunately, Ex's objective was to escape rather than win. Defeating these opponents did not look as though it would be easy at all.
All of them were at least 4-Star or Tier 4…. No, the mage was Tier 5.
The skeleton mage, wrapped in a thick robe, struck the ground with a staff made from an old tree and cast its spell.
Ten fireballs, each the size of a human head, formed in midair. They hurtled toward the place Ex was trying to escape to and exploded with tremendous force.
The heat and the wall of fire made Ex hesitate. At that very moment, a spear and swords darted toward his back.
Their attacks flowed into one another so naturally.
In the end, he had to abandon his efforts to conserve mana and use Blink.
He would teleport to an officer he had already marked out, throw their command into confusion, and escape again. Whether the guardian eventually collapsed from exhaustion or the company was destroyed entirely, all he needed to do was keep running.
But the moment he tried to blink away, blue sparks crackled from Paison's Leap. Blink did not activate. The spell had failed, leaving his mana to scatter uselessly.
Ex knew what this phenomenon meant.
Damn it…! He'd forgotten! The skeleton mages here had a skill that stopped others from using magic…!
It was the same sort of mana interference Circe had used on the golem before, only applied to a spell.
Interfering with a spell as it was completed in an instant, and making it fail, demanded mana control of extraordinary finesse.
Even Circe couldn't use that technique carelessly. Yet this skeleton mage could do it.
Why had anyone made a thing like this…!
Left with no choice, Ex protected his back with a barrier spell and a shield of divine power. Just before the swords and spear could cut through his waist, they struck the two hastily created layers of protection with a ringing clang.
Before either defense could break, Ex rolled forward to avoid the attacks that followed. Then, before the elites could settle back into their fighting stances, he fired his Golden Form Swords at the spearman.
Unfortunately, the attack struck the shield of another elite and was blocked. Its ability to protect an ally at precisely the right moment was quite impressive.
Of course, Ex had no intention of simply letting them do as they pleased.
“You'd better watch your feet.”
They probably couldn't understand him, but that didn't matter.
Before the elites could move, a menacing red light began shining beneath their feet.
When they noticed something was wrong and looked down, a red, blazing fireball was giving off an enormous amount of mana. It was a spell Ex had set in place before he rolled away.
With a tremendous explosion, the elites were swallowed up by fire and a violent blast of air.
Since they hadn't been prepared for it, that ought to have dealt them a meaningful blow.
Having to dodge attacks all the time had certainly improved his bag of tricks.
The skeleton mage was the only one that hadn't been caught in the explosion.
Ex concentrated his internal energy in his legs and big toes, then leaped with all his strength.
Reaching the mage in an instant, Ex swung his sword with aura pouring into the blade. Even if it meant he couldn't use this elite as a soldier afterward, he would bring it down, no matter what. He put that resolve into the strike.
But with a ringing impact, his sword was stopped right in front of the mage's face.
“When did you set this up…?”
Ex's body and sword were bound by something like invisible chains. It was a restraining chain spell the skeleton mage had prepared in advance.
“Ghh…!”
The chains held him with considerable force. Even when he strained hard against them, they didn't loosen; instead, they tightened enough to threaten his breathing. At the same time, the skeleton mage pointed the end of its staff at Ex.
If it cast a spell that fired a flash of light at this distance, he might be in danger even with a barrier and a divine shield in place.
Nothing ever came easily, did it?
He wanted to lament a life that kept throwing him into one unreasonable situation after another. But instead of wasting time on that, Ex gave the mage an easy smile.
“You'd better watch your head.”
The words had barely left his mouth when four Golden Form Swords shot down from above, aiming for the skeleton mage's head.
He had already expected some sort of trap. He hadn't known it would be chains, but that made no difference.
He only needed to make the mage focus on him for a moment.
That brief opening would cost the thing its life.
Clang!
At least, it would have if the surprise attack had landed.
The Golden Form Swords had failed to pierce all the layers of protective barriers the mage had created. It had anticipated a surprise attack and prepared for one.
With a clatter of bones, the mage tilted its head to the side and looked at Ex as though asking, Is that all? He couldn't know whether that was what it really meant, but Ex answered it anyway.
“Not those. I meant you should watch out for something else.”
Then Ex disappeared.
Blink had activated.
Bewildered by the sudden turn of events, the skeleton mage searched for the cause. If Ex had tried to use Blink, it should have been able to block him with mana interference long before the spell went off.
But it had sensed no sign of that happening.
He'd expected that, which was why he had concentrated his demonic power in the ring.
If the creature read the flow of mana and blocked the spell before it could be cast, he only needed to hide the casting itself.
With the spell's presence blurred in such a frantic situation, it would be impossible to notice. Just as he had expected, the mage had failed to stop Ex's Blink.
And the price of that failure was far greater than it could have imagined.
As the strange event before its eyes stole the mage's attention for a moment, an enormous shadow fell over it.
By the time it realized what was casting that shadow, it was already too late.
A tremendous crash rang out. What came down was a huge mass of stone: the guardian's stone sword.
The sword that had been meant to crush Ex lost its target and slammed uselessly into the ground. The skeleton mage, in Ex's place, was pinned beneath the blade and pulverized.
While Ex had fought the elites, the guardian had somehow forced its way through the soldiers. Seeing Ex caught in chains, it had rushed over and brought its sword down, determined to kill him at last.
Even that fury had ended up being used by Ex, however.
The guardian let out a low, dwindling rumble. Apparently it had pushed itself too hard, because its entire body was now battered and ragged, like a shredded old cloth.
The damage from fighting the company's soldiers had accumulated. Its movements were visibly far slower than before.
The elites and the guardian, his most threatening opponents, had been neutralized. All that remained was to bring the battle to an end.
“You have no soldiers left to protect you now.”
The place he had reached with Blink was right in front of the company's commander.
The soldiers that had once guarded its front like an iron wall were now so few that he could count them on his fingers. Circe's troops were steadily closing the distance as well, subduing the company's soldiers as they advanced.
Circe seemed to have some room to breathe now; she was picking off officers one by one with her spells. With the skeleton mage that could counter her magic gone, the battlefield had become hers alone.
Ex raised his sword toward the commander and took his stance.
“If you were a wise commander, wouldn't you sacrifice yourself instead of your soldiers' lives?”
The aura-wreathed Dragon Sword and four Golden Form Swords aimed for the commander's neck. There were no soldiers left that could stop them.
The commander's head parted from its body and flew through the air.
***
When the commander died, the surviving troops joined Ex's force exactly as they were. There were more than fifty of them alone. In an instant, Ex's force exceeded a hundred skeletons, growing to the size of a company.
“We managed to take down the guardian, too.”
“…Let's never make another plan that uses the guardian.”
The battered guardian fell under the surviving soldiers' attacks and was reduced to a pile of rocks. Since it had been obsessed with killing Ex from the start, dealing with it had been no trouble at all.
“Well, we got the problems sorted out somehow. And we managed to get the elites, except for the mage. That's a relief.”
“Ten lives wouldn't be enough if you keep doing things this way…. Anyway, what are we doing now?”
“Well…. We still aren't strong enough to take on the fortress, so we'll need to gather more troops, but….”
The army occupying the fortress had soldiers of an entirely different quality. Not only were there a great many elites, but the skeleton general, their supreme commander, also possessed formidable fighting strength.
In the original story, they had challenged it with a thousand-strong force. Even with that many troops, the fighting had been fierce. That meant he would need at least the strength of a thousand-strong unit.
It was something they could accomplish if they put in enough time, but….
He was too worried about the situation outside to take things at a leisurely pace….
Time in this place might be passing slowly, but it had not stopped.
Darius would act rationally, so Ex wasn't worried about him. There was, however, another source of danger that he could neither control nor predict.
Princess Beatrice…! Please, just stay where you are and don't do anything…! They couldn't let things fall apart after coming this far…!
With a look of despair on his face, he clung to that fleeting hope.
Whatever else happened, escaping from this place was his first priority.
“Let's work out a plan for now. We have information about the future. If we think it over, we'll come up with a good approach.”
“Even I don't have a way to beat the army guarding that fortress. Coming up with sneaky little tricks is your specialty, isn't it?”
“Hmm. I feel as though you've been treating me rather harshly lately. Would you consider changing that?”
“Depends on how you behave.”
While the two of them were bickering like that, the warning spell buzzed in their ears, alerting them to an intruder.
The skeletons they had posted as guards let out loud cries as well, issuing a warning and going on alert.
Ex and Circe hurriedly got ready and ran toward the intruder.
He'd thought they had moved far enough away from the site of the battle….
Apparently some skeletons had followed them anyway.
By now, they could easily defeat a platoon-sized force. But if they made a commotion, more enemies would keep coming. They needed to deal with the enemy as quietly as possible if they wanted to rest in peace.
That was why they hurried to the spot. When they arrived, however, what they found was nothing like what either of them had expected.
“P-people! Please, help me! These skeletons are trying to kill me!”
Standing there was the female student from the martial arts department who had been assigned to Ex's group. She was 2-Star.
“Atel? You're Atel Dane, from our group in Class F, right?”
“Th-that voice…? Could it be Imperial Prince Ex?!”
It was none other than Atel Dane.
–TL Notes–
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