[ ~ Chapter • Start ~ ]
Once they have arrived outside the town, Rance was woken up from his nap by Sill, now looking full of energy as he exited the carriage.
"It's dawn already?" Rance said, noticing that the sky indicated that it really was, with a straight face. "Hey, Sill, how many hours have I slept?"
".... 6 hours, master. Why?" She replied, and Rance crossed his arms with a look of mild annoyance.
"Now that's just bad, I wouldn't be able to sleep through the night normally....." He complained, shaking his head, though that might not be a problem anyways. "And where's the entrance? All I see is just a massive wall of stones, and a wooden gate."
The group stared at a massive, 10 meter stone wall in front of them, and a wooden gate quarter of it's size was below it, imposingly halting them in their tracks.
"Beyond this gate is a town, no, it would be better to call it a fortress that would serve as the secondary shield keeping any forces commanded by the Dark Queen from invading Geofu." Corneias began to speak in a calm manner, her snow-white skirt swaying around the cold wind as she approached the gate. "Normally, guards would be up there, patrolling. But..."
"But if there's none, then we'll just have to break the gate." Rance interjected, before he glanced at Sill who had an expectant look. "What are you waiting for? Break the gate with any spell you have, we can repair it later."
With a nod, Sill stepped forward, extending her gloved hands towards the gate while mana began to gather towards her hands.
Corneias and the other knights wanted to stop her from doing so, but seeing the serious look on Rance's face made their suspicions grow harder.
The smaller and weaker monsters (that were completely fodder due to cautiousness) from earlier, and the less frequent attacks from them....
It really looked like Rance predicted something really bad and due to that, some of their hidden distrust with him began to be lifted. This man was their king, after all.
"Haaa! [Fire Laser]!" Sill yelled, closing her hands together as four hot beams of pure energy hit the gates, but the beams were blocked by a powerful barrier of dark energy.
A barrier, that should not have existed in the first place.
The beam held on, and Sill slowly put more mana into the spell, strengthening the beams and expanding them to the point where the barrier began to gain noticable cracks on it's surface. Seeing this, Sill screamed to power up her spell for the last time, converging the four beams into a bright burning beam as big as her body that pierced through the barrier and demolishing the wooden gate, along with several monsters that were unlucky enough to be hit by it.
After that, she breathed heavily, knowing that she had wasted a lot of mana inside her, not just that, she had accidentally created a new spell.
Yet, Rance wasn't done as he leaped upwards, Chaos raised to the air, it was engulfed in purple energy, fueled by Rance's mana.
"Just to make sure the gate is destroyed! [Rance Attack Zero]!" He shouted, before slamming Chaos to the ground, sending several arcs of sharp forwards with immense speed that it did not just cut through the gate and destroyed it, it damaged the walls around it too (*1).
When the gates fell down into chunks of wood, Rance immediately decided to charge through the gate, with a recovering Sill and several knights following without question.
When they entered through the gates, most of the knights were horrified at the sight that were not expecting to see. Sill was also horrified too, and Rance was completely shocked.
The town had already been overrun by monsters, yet there was some sort of resistance around it, even if it was.... little.
A few mages and knights (both male and female) scattered around, yet when they noticed backup coming, hope began to fill their hearts. They were saved, but due to the upcoming danger they felt, the people retreated to
"How did you filth get through Lady Olga's barrier?!" A voice of a woman resounded through the area, as the monsters stopped from all the violent destruction and the forced taking of the girls and women's virginities and brutal slaughter they were doing at this very moment, staring at Rance, and mostly the girls. "No, wait, let me rephrase that, destroy him and take all those women to Lady Olga, now!" (*2)
With that command alone, several women, in varying ages around 14-27 were taken by several imps, orcs, and hobgoblins to somewhere, while the others were completely focused on attacking Rance and his group.
"I don't have to say anything else but...." Rance stared at the dark elf that began hiding behind several monsters ".... What the hell are you waiting for!? Kill them!"
"Yes, your majesty!!!"
With swords and rapiers out, the knights, along with Rance and the town's warriors and mages had began to fight the hordes of monsters, maybe around 700 of them, though completely overwhelmed, the knights under Rance were elites, and he actually could fight for hours with no rest.
Several spells were being thrown towards the monsters, and the knights were showing off their skill in numbers.
Sill, although already spent a lot of her mana from earlier, still managed to fire several different spells like an [Icicle Field], [Chain Lightning], and other AOE spells with such mastery that the people who saw her cast these spells were amazed, even for a moment before their focus swiftly shifted to the battle.
Rance really was very skilled, and very strong, as with one punch, an ogre's face was morphed to being barely recognizable, it's spinal cord being detached and almost being decapitated. He would sometimes throw Chaos through several monsters and chase after it to catch it before sending a [Rance Attack Zero] to remove several dozens of monsters.
When Corneias watched him fight, it was as if seeing a master swordsman at work, his true skill hidden inside crude movements that are more into power and not into speed.
Yet....
"Push them to one spot!" Rance yelled, intending to use his signature technique against the monsters just to get this over with.
The people did as told, with some trouble of course, thought it took a little long enough to gather them to one spot.
When they were done, although some of the women were about to be raped on the spot.... the monsters became confused before the mana sensitive ones glanced at one spot where Rance was.
With a leap, and an even brighter Chaos.... Rance delivered a [Rance Attack], which can obliterate an entire area of 50 meters or even more if Rance felt like doing so with. Though mass destruction of property would probably be a great problem to him.
And with that.... several hundred monsters were obliterated by a massive wave of energy. Nothing remained but only a lucky few, that immediately fled in fear to escape from Rance, to regroup or maybe just stay away from him, a monster in human skin, wearing green and black clothing.
"Now that was done...." Rance sighed out, sheathing Chaos and immediately dashing forwards to find someone. "... Let's search for that Dark Elf! She must be hiding somewhere...."
Most of the knights were sweating from the battle that just happened recently, though none of them were tired just yet.
They let Rance do what he wanted, and right now, the people and the town were their priorities.
And with a stoic face, Corneias commanded her subordinates to search the town for every possible survivor. The other survivors that were fighting assisted too.
The destruction the monsters caused was immense, and it would take months for the town to rise up.... how very distasteful....
Sill had already healed several people , though she wanted to assist, she was stopped by Corneias.
"Sill. I need to ask you about Rance." She began to speak, as the mage girl tilted her head sideways.
"What is it?"
"Is he, a good person?"
"Mm! We've been together for 5 years, and we've been through many adventures on our own world." She replied to her question, yet when she realized she was getting a little off-track with the question, she shook her head and smiled at the Knight Captain wryly. "I mean, when you get to know him more personally, you will know that he's much more kinder than what you think he is. Though he wouldn't completely admit such a thing, ehehe~"
Corneias's eyes closed for a moment, before glancing at the distance, where Rance was searching for someone.
"I see.... I've had my doubts ever since laying eyes on him for the first time, almost a month before I was called to the Castle." She replied to Sill, before walking away to do what she needed.
"Gahahahahaha~! Found you~!" Rance's excited voice rang out from the calming fires nearby, as a scream from a female Dark Elf was heard afterwards.
"Noooo! Keep your filthy hands away from me, worm! W-wait!! Lady Olga! I ask of your assistance, please get me out of this man's gras- kyaaaAAAA!!!!" The Dark Elf's screams turned into unwilling moans, as Rance was taking care of her bratty personality, trying to futilely resist him as much as possible.
No matter how much she screamed, Olga seemed to not answer.
Though, after all that, Rance had gained a some good information regarding the Dark Lands, and practically just taking the Dark Elf as his slave for the meantime.
The town had barely any chance of recovering, and due to the immensely small population reaching only 30 caused by the attack, that had been actually lasting for an entire week until Rance decided to barge in, it would take a few months to restore the town.
Aside from that, it could soon be used as the base of operations for when Rance would decide to invade the Dark Lands.
But... he did need to conquer the other Kingdoms soon, right?
[ ~ Chapter • End ~ ]
Extra Note:
*1: Rance Attack Zero - A vastly weaker version of [Rance Attack], not as effective at dealing with several enemies at once, or destroying stuff as the actual one.
*2: This is not Chloe, lol. Just a Dark Elf OC as loyal as her like the Dark Elves around Olga's territory..... Until Rance came sweeping in.
Fun Fact: The OC I made is the grandmother (possibly the great-grandmother) of a certain Kuroinu 2 character. Lol.
Second Fun Fact: I named the chapters, "Turns" just to (slightly lazily) indicate the month things took place in.