Ice Castle, My Longed-For Home (4)
In the dark snowfields where one could not see even an inch ahead, screams echoed from somewhere within the Ice Castle towering amidst the gloomy cold.
"KRAAAAGH?!"
"What the hell?! An ambush? Who in the world could possibly be here...?!"
"Where are they shooting from?! Find them! Hurry and locate the en—!"
Crunch—!
The head of the necromancer barking orders while desperately clinging to his fading sanity exploded apart.
"Guess all that time I spent designing these paid off."
Power incomparably heavier than a bow.
Watching quarrels rip chunks out of the frozen undead bodies, Klein nodded in satisfaction.
"First line reload. Second line fire."
At his command, thirty Skeletons pulled the triggers of the crossbows in their hands.
Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!
Screams rang out once more alongside the sound of tearing air.
Chewing on hardened jerky, Klein looked down upon the panicked necromancers.
Sniping attacks launched from the darkness, with visibility already crippled by snowfall.
Forget counterattacking—they couldn't even determine where the Skeletons were hiding.
"U-UWAAAAAAH—!"
One necromancer, who had been desperately sending undead charging into empty air, finally broke formation and fled.
"Let's see... that direction is..."
Klein briefly examined the direction he was running and the pattern of snow accumulation before losing interest in him entirely.
Then, moments later—
Crshhh!
The fleeing necromancer's body suddenly sank straight downward.
"W-What?! AAAAAAAAH...!"
His startled scream faded as he plunged underground.
A crevasse hidden beneath the thick snow covering the glacier.
Unlike last time, when they had advanced with undead leading the way, this time they had crossed the glaciers with their own bodies.
This was the price.
"Without undead support, you people are nothing more than stranded weaklings on an iceberg."
Long ago, even veteran rangers and knights of the allied forces had hesitated to set foot upon these frozen plains.
Because they knew the countless dangers hidden beneath the endless snow stretching to the horizon.
"If you want to run, then go ahead. These frozen plains will kill you first."
Watching the undead unable to move while defending against the quarrels, Klein spoke coldly.
Words spoken by the very creator who had wandered these snowfields for decades and built the Ice Castle itself.
"This should deal with most of the fodder..."
After confirming all the undead had been eliminated,
I stood before the Ice Castle's outer wall, staring at the massive blue gate before me.
Even if some necromancers had managed to survive and flee, they wouldn't be able to endure the cold here.
They would either fall into a crevasse and die, or freeze to death.
Those were the only endings awaiting them.
"That leaves only one person."
Bishop Jill.
Thinking of his face, I placed my hand against the wall blocking my path.
— Perish.
The voice of the dead directed toward the gate wrapped itself around the enormous structure.
Then, moments later—
Rumble...
Responding to the voice of its master who had returned after 200 years, the tightly sealed gate slowly shifted open, creating a narrow gap.
"Haa...!"
Slowly, I stepped forward into the Ice Castle.
The place I entered was one of the five towers maintaining the Ice Castle itself:
the Spear of Lamentation.
The moment my feet touched the transparent crystal-like walls and floor, my eyes trembled violently.
Two hundred years.
Two hundred whole years.
Beyond all that time.
Beyond the span of a human life.
"So in the end... I really did return here."
The Ice Castle.
My longed-for home.
A coffin of vengeful spirits created by a necromancer driven mad with rage.
A factory endlessly producing undead.
...And also a gravestone for the countless innocent people who died unjustly.
Woooooo—
One would think I'd forgotten by now, yet painful memories remained lodged in my heart like scars, gnawing endlessly at my mind.
Forcing back the tears surging up within me, I hurriedly examined the surroundings.
Archimond's stronghold was spotless, without even a speck of dust.
Yet something foreign caught my eye.
"...Corpses?"
There were corpses.
Not ones I had created, but corpses made by someone else.
Judging from the circumstances, they must have belonged to the necromancer Jill who had invaded this place.
"There was a battle here? But who in the world could have...?"
Rather than disgust, confusion and bewilderment came first.
With my death as a necromancer, the undead guarding the Ice Castle should have either passed on peacefully or gone feral.
If so, they had no reason to continue protecting this place.
'And these wounds...'
The more I examined the corpses, the stranger it seemed.
Every single one possessed cleanly severed cuts, as though sliced apart by something sharp.
This wasn't the aftermath of undead tearing each other apart in close combat.
It looked as though they had fought an actual knight.
"What is this? I distinctly told them to wait outside."
The moment I muttered that while examining the corpses—
A familiar voice reached my ears.
The same middle-aged voice I had heard while reading the necromancer's memories.
"Klein... Young Master...?"
From behind one of the pillars, Bishop Jill approached in black robes.
I finally saw the one responsible for the grotesque scene littering this place.
Jill walked toward me with a face full of shock.
And yet strangely enough, there was no fear in his eyes.
'...Shit. I was one step too late.'
The moment I saw him, I cursed inwardly.
"H-Haha! To think... to think I could feel such joy!"
Far from afraid, Bishop Jill stared at me with the face of a man overwhelmed with happiness.
The sinister demonic energy pouring from his body made me instantly frown.
The source of it was the black ring worn on his right index finger.
A ring forged by crystallizing Archimond's demonic energy itself—
an artifact known as the Obsidian Ring.
"So you too came here seeking Lord Archimond's power?"
"No. I came here to kill you."
I answered without lowering my guard.
At that, the smile on his face deepened further.
"Kill me? Me?"
Bishop Jill repeated the words.
Then—
"Ha! Hahaha! Hahahahahaha! So you came to kill me?! Me?! Hahahahahahaha—!"
Like a man intoxicated by drugs, he burst into manic laughter with completely unfocused eyes.
'He shouldn't even be capable of fully controlling the demonic energy inside that ring yet...'
I gritted my teeth while staring at the ring he wore.
Back during the Great War, it had been one of five rings hastily created to replenish demonic energy.
'Compared to ordinary necromancers, the wavelength of that energy is completely different. It won't be easy for him to control it. But...'
Even as I continued analyzing the situation in my head, I couldn't shake the growing unease.
More specifically—
the traces of battle I had just witnessed.
And for a necromancer, those traces implied only one thing.
"Someone like you dares claim you'll kill me?! Me, Jill Rahelin, who has been granted the blessings and power of that great one—?!"
First he laughed, then raged, and now he was outright convulsing.
As though driven insane, Jill could no longer control his emotions.
With his hysterical outburst, a group of undead emerged from behind him.
...Wait.
What is that?
"This... insane... bastard...?!"
My expression twisted the moment I saw them.
It wasn't the grotesque rag-covered undead themselves that shocked me.
There was only one thing.
One existence walking among that undead horde.
Step. Step.
With the sound of worn armor scraping against the floor, it slowly revealed itself.
"Heh heh heh...! This worked out perfectly."
Rust-covered steel plates hidden beneath tattered cloth.
And engraved upon them, a familiar raven emblem.
The thing slowly approaching me was a Death Knight.
The pinnacle of Soul Reversal Arts created from the corpse of a knight.
".....!"
"What is it? Have you lost your words after witnessing my new power?"
Seeing me frozen in place at the sight of the rusted knight, Jill sneered mockingly.
But right now, nothing he said mattered to me in the slightest.
"How could this even..."
Unable to believe it, I looked at the armor once more.
At the old emblem engraved upon it.
"Why... why are you here...?"
I forced the question toward an undead that could never answer.
The twelve knights who once gathered beneath Leinrant's banner.
Among them, the very first to stand beside Berkel.
And in later ages, the one whose name became the foundation of the knight order that protected the wall.
"Raven... Foldring...!"
The Death Knight standing before me was one of Berkel's Twelve Knights.
The Great Crow Knight, Raven Foldring.
"Hah...! Hah...!"
"Berkel! Over here! Hurry!"
"HRAAAAH—!"
KWA-BOOOOM—!
With a sword strike blazing brilliantly with mana, the cursed undead spirits shattered apart.
"Where's Archimond?!"
Leaving behind five Death Knights whose upper bodies had been blown away entirely, Berkel shouted toward the red-haired knight running ahead.
"He already went deeper inside! If he activates the key, it's over!"
"Damn it...!"
Berkel cursed under his breath and was about to accelerate—
BOOM—!
— KROOOOOOAR—!
A giant over five meters tall blocked their path and swung down its fist.
"A Shadow Golem?! That son of a bitch Archimond really intends to go all the way...!"
Seeing it, the red-haired knight, Mercaine, urgently called out to his partner.
"Aigin!"
"You don't need to tell me twice. Get ready!"
With that brief signal, the two knights launched themselves toward the incoming fist.
KWAAANG—!
By the time the giant's fist smashed into the ground, the two knights had already used its arm as a foothold to propel themselves upward.
KIIIIIIIIING—!
Two different mana signatures resonated together, spiraling around their swords like a double helix.
And at the same time, that power overwhelmed the giant like a raging tidal wave and pierced straight through its chest.
— KROOOOOOO...!
The enormous Shadow Golem lost its balance and collapsed.
Yet despite defeating a siege weapon capable of grinding down castle walls alone, Berkel's expression remained grim.
"They've already caught up this far...!"
Countless undead swarmed behind them.
Faced with that overwhelming army that seemed close enough to grasp, despair filled the knights' eyes.
Is this the end?
In the end, are we truly unable to stop the destruction of this world?
It was at that moment.
Click.
One knight at the very rear of the formation suddenly stopped in place.
"Raven?!"
"What are you doing?! If you don't move now, you'll die here—!"
"No."
The black-haired knight spoke only a single word as he turned his back on his companions and drew his sword.
"...!"
His scabbard had already been removed from his waist and tossed aside.
Seeing that, Berkel met his eyes and fell silent for a moment.
"This is the best option."
A short statement so plain it was almost detached.
Berkel alternated his gaze between the approaching undead army and Raven.
Then, eventually, he turned away from him.
"Do not die, Crow. That is an order."
"As you command."
The familiar reply came as always.
The moment he heard it, Berkel immediately resumed running toward the depths of the Ice Castle.
"B-Berkel?!"
"Damn it, protect the battle mages! Increase speed!"
"Don't die, Senior! You hear me?! If you die, I'll kill you—!"
Once the other knights grasped the situation, their hesitation didn't last long either.
— KRAAAAAAH—!
After all his comrades departed,
the lone knight remaining behind recalled the final order left to him.
'Do not die.'
The command of the man who had saved him.
And the request of his very first friend.
Facing the advancing undead horde, he slowly opened his mouth.
"Raven Foldring, Great Crow Knight."
The corners of Raven's lips curled into a clear smile as he poured every last drop of mana into his sword.
"No one... passes beyond this point."