"OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The mighty roar shattered the air.
It was the signal for a slaughter to become a massacre of a different sort.
In the blink of an eye, the hunters had become the hunted.
Londes Di Gelanpo had probably cursed his gods more times in the past ten seconds than he had in the rest of his life. If the gods really did exist, then they should defeat that evil being right now. Londes was a faithful man — why had the gods abandoned him?
The gods did not exist.
In the past, he had looked down on those people who did not believe in the gods as fools. After all, if the gods did not exist, how could the priests work their magic? And now, he realised that he was the foolish one.
The monster before him — a Death Knight, for want of a better word — drew closer.
He took two steps back in response, trying to get away from it.
A shrill creaking noise came from his armor, and the sword he clutched in both hands was trembling uncontrollably. He was not the only one; the other eighteen knights surrounding the Death Knight were all acting the same way.
Although they were filled with fear, none of them ran. This was not courage — the grinding of their teeth could attest to that. If they could, they would run as fast and as far as they could.
It was because they knew there was no escape.
Londes's eyes shifted, pleading for help.
This square was at the center of the village, where Londes and his men had gathered sixty or so villagers. They looked fearfully at Londes and his men, while a group of children were hiding behind a wooden watchtower.
Some of the children held sticks, but none of them was in a fighting stance. It was all they could do not to drop their sticks.
During Londes's attack on the village, they had chased the villagers to the central square. They searched the houses, and then, in order to root out anyone who was hiding in the cellars, they poured in alchemical oils and set them on fire.
There were four knights standing guard around the village with bows, and their job was to shoot down anyone who tried to escape the village. They had done this several times now, and it could be said that they were old hands at this sort of thing.
The massacre had taken a fair bit of time, but it had been successful, and they had gathered the surviving villagers into one place. After that, they would release some of the prisoners as bait.
It should have been like that, but—
Londes still remembered that moment.
The sight of Erion flying through the air, after the last few villagers fled into the square.
It should have been impossible. Nobody knew what was going on. How could they understand the reason why a trained, grown man in full plate armor — which still had some weight even if it was lightened by magic — could fly through the air like a ball?
After soaring about seven meters through the air, he fell to the earth with a thunderous crash and lay still.
A bone-chilling monster stood where Erion had been. The hair-raising undead being called a Death Knight lowered the tower shield that had bashed Erion and stood before them.
This was when their despair began.
"Aiiiiieee!"
Their panicked squeals echoed through the air. One of the men huddled together with his comrades could not bear the oppressive terror and fled with a scream.
Under these extreme circumstances, it was only natural that — when stretched to the breaking point — people would snap. However, among all of the fleeing man's comrades, not one of them joined him. The reason was that would soon be evident.
A black gale whirled past the field of Londes's vision.
The Death Knight's body was larger than a normal human's, but its nimble grace was far beyond anyone's expectations.
The fleeing man only managed to take three steps.
Just as he was about to take his fourth step, an arc of silver brilliance cleaved his body in two. The bisected left and right halves of his body collapsed in opposite directions. A sour stench filled the air as his pink internal organs spilled out.
"GUWOOOOOOOOOOHHH!" the blood-covered Death Knight roared as it swung its sword.
It was a roar of joy.