“It moved!”
“It’s a zombie,” I said.
“If these skeletons can turn the people they kill into zombies, things are looking bad,” Barl said.
I let the grimoire I’d just materialized disappear and summoned my Grimoire of Mammon instead. Then, I swiftly took out Flügel, which had just finished regenerating itself a few days ago.
“Mireille! Take the girls and leave! Now!” I ordered.
“Oulu, you run too,” Egret said, retrieving his own weapon from his magic bag.
We couldn’t let this man run wild. If he wasn’t stopped, the imperial capital would soon vanish into an ocean of blood. The man was still going around the area, using his jewel of death to produce more and more undead.
I jumped down and started running toward him. When he noticed me, he lifted his arm and the undead blocked my path.
“So he can even control the undead,” I noted.
“You’re in our way!” Barl shouted. He dashed past me and started delivering reinforced kick after kick to the undead, destroying them one after another.
There was no end to the zombies, though, and more approached to replace the ones Barl had struck down. While we were stuck here, the black-clad man just continued to make more undead. On top of turning the dead bodies of the civilians and knights into monsters, he also summoned more undead using mana as a catalyst.
“Ellie, Barl, move back!”
I reflexively jumped back at Egret’s order.
“Sand Wave!” A tsunami of sand erupted from Egret’s shamshir, swallowing and crushing the enemies. Even undead monsters wouldn’t be able to regenerate themselves after being so thoroughly pulverized.
I rushed into the breach Egret had opened. Clasping Flügel tightly, I swung my blade at the man’s neck. My timing was perfect, but the man let his legs buckle on purpose, falling down and dodging at the last moment. He’d managed to evade my blow, sure, but the way he’d done so left him completely vulnerable to my next attack. He wouldn’t be able to escape this time.
“Careful!” Barl screamed, grabbing my collar and dragging me backward just as I was about to bring my blade down.
Barl had clearly sensed something dangerous from the way the man’s arm had twitched. Suddenly, I noticed something glinting in the light in front of me.
“A thread?!” I exclaimed.
The man had sent a thread imbued with mana at me. It had grazed my bangs, and a few strands of my hair fluttered in the wind. Barl’s arm, however, was impacted more severely.
This man truly wasn’t an ordinary hooligan. Was he an agent provocateur sent by some foreign organization?
“You saved me,” I told Barl. As I thanked him, I took a potion out of my Grimoire of Mammon and threw it at him. Then, I raised Flügel in front of me and started concentrating my mana.
“Ice Needle,” I chanted. Before the sharp shards of ice could reach the man, a zombie jumped into their trajectory, becoming a meat shield for him. The man directed even more zombies at us while he wove his threads to form a spiderweb around me. The scope of his attack was so large that I struggled to get out of the way.
“Ellie!”
“Missy!”
Barl had paused his movements for a moment to heal his arm, and Egret had been focused on shaking off the skeletons and zombies. They were both running toward me, but they wouldn’t make it in time. I focused my mana into my arms and prepared myself to guard, but right before the man’s threads could reach me, mud surged from the ground, sending me flying backward. I twisted my body in midair to land on my feet and saw a gigantic fist made of mud right where I’d been standing. It swung at the man in black, only to be torn into pieces by his threads.
I looked around and spotted a woman with reddish-brown hair. It was Mud Sistia, the Rank A adventurer I’d seen fight in the tournament just yesterday. She wasn’t alone; several high-ranked adventurers and mercenaries who’d also participated in the tournament were there, as well as others who were confident in their strength. The members of the Imperial Guard had also composed themselves and surrounded the square to make sure the undead wouldn’t get out.
“Miss Ellie, are you okay?!”
“Are you hurt?”
“Tida, Elsa!”
These two must have also been near the square and come to assist us.
“That man’s the culprit, huh?” Elsa said.
“He is,” I confirmed. “I thought he was just a hoodlum at first, but he’s unexpectedly powerful.”
When I looked over at our allies fighting with the undead, I noticed that there were now higher-level monsters such as dullahans and wraiths among them.
“Wow! It’s not just zombies and skeletons, is it?” Tida exclaimed, noticing the same thing.
“They must have emerged spontaneously because of all that undead miasma,” Elsa said. “It might be because of that strange jewel he holds, but the miasma is unbelievably thick.”
After talking the situation over, Tida, Elsa, Egret, and I surrounded the man. A group of undead tried to attack us from behind, but the imperial knights and the Mud Dolls Sistia had created protected us.
We were about to close in on the man when a scream echoed from the other side of the square. A humongous skeleton had appeared. It had grabbed a knight and was currently slamming his body against the ground.
“A giant skeleton!”
“Tida!”
“I’m on it! Divine Artifact, Harvest!”
Tida was about to rush to the giant skeleton when it was smashed into pieces. Yuu appeared over the debris, holding her Divine Artifact.
“If this keeps up, the imperial capital will turn into a den of undead!” she exclaimed, running over as soon as she saw us.
“Thankfully, it looks like there are quite a few powerful fighters around. We’re going to have to push through and defeat him,” Elsa said.
“There’s no time to waste. Let’s subdue him,” I said.
The man chuckled before speaking in an accent typical of the Southern Continent. “The Silver Witch, the Dark, the Phoenix, and even the Envoy? And these two men accompanying you seem fairly skilled too.”
“You look far too carefree considering your current predicament,” I told him.
“Well, I did expect things would develop this way,” he simply replied.
I glared at him while whispering instructions to Barl. “The undead are spreading faster than I expected. Go join Mireille and the others.”
“Got it,” he said.
The man looked back at me as though he thought I was no threat to him. He smirked as he played with the jewel in his hand.
“Will I have to wait much longer?” he asked.
“No. We’re coming,” I replied.
We all readied our weapons.