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THREE days later, at the northern base of Mount Kugus.
“So, they managed to prepare in time as well? Impudent bastards,” grumbled Julian to himself as he looked up at the mountain.
A cluster of buildings looking as if they were made from sheets of solid stone jutted up from the lush mountain. It was obviously a defensive fort built using magic as quickly as possible.
“My lord, the mountain’s monsters are coming this way,” reported a knight as he knelt.
Several monsters rushed their way in a desperate frenzy, almost like they were being chased by something horrifying. They didn’t appear to be variants, but these crazed monsters fleeing from their death were going fast enough to mow down the humans in their path.
“What a lukewarm opening volley to this battle,” said Julian. “Give me the power of the dracovitae, dog.”
Monica was beside Julian. She floated next to him, as if crucified in air, the dracovitae in weapon form in her hand.
She stared at the ground, her eyes clouded with despair, but the Collar of Slavery around her neck made her act in accordance with Julian’s commands, even if she didn’t want to.
Julian heard a sound like gentle ripples, then a light like the sun reflecting off the sea surrounded him. He thought he might explode. Overwhelming power flowed into him.
Dracovitae could be used in battle, but its users were generally royals and high-ranking nobles. That meant that fighting with a dracovitae meant putting someone important at the frontlines, someone it would be particularly bad if they died (sometimes even a king).
For that reason, most dracovitae had the ability to give the right to use it to someone else, a function made with battle in mind. The dracovitae user still had to be on the battlefield, but they could maintain a relatively safe distance from danger that way.
What was more important in this situation was that, by Julian borrowing the dracovitae, he could wield it himself rather than having to use the interface that was Monica.
“First, an attack,” he said. He formed in his mind the will to attack, and everything immediately went as he wanted it to.
Water gushed from the ground, pushing out in waves that tore down both grass and tree. It slammed into the approaching monsters, becoming surging waves of slaughter.
A great flood born of the earth, water droplets mixed with blood, flesh torn to pieces like chipped wood. The monsters were wiped out in one second, with one attack.
“We move. I will forge a path, all you have to do is move through it.”
The unit moved at Julian’s command.
At the head was Julian and Monica, along with elite knights to defend them, close combat soldiers, and magic users making a total of about 80 soldiers.
The army following them numbered nearly 2,000, with a rearguard in reserve of about 5,000.
It might look like an unbalanced formation, but the crux of this strategy was on Monica (Julian, in other words) and the dracovitae. He would use the dracovitae to cut a path through the mountain, wiping out any who stood in their way, and that achieved their first goal.
The only thing on the battlefield that could stop the dracovitae was the red dragon. But the reverse was also true: only Julian could stop the red dragon. The rest was normal military combat, which meant things came down to numbers.
He could deploy the reserve forces once it got to that point. A straight-on attack wasn’t very effective in this mountainous terrain, and there were only so many incredibly powerful people who could handle a variant, and even less so in this situation.
“Hah!”
There was a roar and water surged from nowhere. Julian only needed to wish it to happen and water, one of the prime sources of this world, would attack with ferocity, changing the landscape in front of him.
Even these trees, as strong as steel after growing within the dragon aura filling the mountain, were toppled by the advancing water brought forth by the dracovitae. Julian hadn’t cared much about any soldiers or traps lying in wait, and a surprise attack would be even more difficult under these circumstances. The army simply continued moving forward. There was no enemy.
Are they not planning on attacking again until we reach the fort? That can’t be. They’ll come at us to wear us down, using the terrain to their advantage. Like here.
The former road ran up a gently sloping valley. Just as Julian and his vanguard began climbing the long stretch, a large number of figures appeared at the top.
“An attack!”
Bowstrings strummed in rapid succession, the enemy archers lying in hiding raining arrows down on them.
Out of the attack methods regularly used on the battlefield, the one with the longest range was the cannon. Second was the bow. Magic became most threatening in mid-range battles, but bows ruled over anything farther than that.
The literal hail of arrows arched up, increasing their range.
This wasn’t very threatening.
The elite knights wore armor made of mithril or orichalcum, strengthened even more through magic imbuement. Punching through that sturdy armor, and causing significant damage to the inhumanly powerful bodies inside, would require the archers to use abnormally powerful bows and fire the arrows directly rather than relying on gravity. In a fight between inhumanly powerful opponents, a bow’s effective range was shorter than its full range. Only a few of the normal cannon fodder soldiers would die from these arched shots.
But that changed if there was something special about the arrows.
The rain of arrows left trails of lightning in its wake, hurtling down like meteorites. They were magic arrows with lightning imbued in the arrowheads that activated once fired.
“This is trivial!” roared Julian. A freezing burst of wind cut towards the arrows, shattering them all so they fell in pieces.
But the volley was a decoy.
The moment he swept aside the arrows, a pink color settled around the squad.
It was a colored breeze moving in from the flank. Julian’s freezing whirlwind sucked in that pink-colored wind, inviting it in, applying blush to the world around them.
“What the hell is this pink powder…?”
“Poison?!”
The knights readied for an attack, the magic users prepared healing and defensive spells, but it wasn’t poison. In some ways, this was harder to deal with than poison.
It was a monster attractant and stimulant that used pheromones from paralyzing bees. Attractants were used to draw out monsters to capture or exterminate them, but the goal in this case was obviously different.
“Uraaaaaar!”
“Rooooooar!”
The cloyingly sweet smell filled the air, and monster roars immediately reverberated from nearby.
“Variants!”
There was a cow with more than ten horns sprouting from various spots on its body, a bird running across the ground on overgrown legs and talons, and several other oddly shaped beasts coming for a sudden attack.
Julian immediately went to deal with them, but—
“Groaaaaaaaar!”
It wasn’t just the variants coming at them.
Everyone froze at that roar that seemed likely to bury the heavens in rage, attacked by an overwhelming presence, so set apart from other things that it made all living creatures present aware of how small their existence was. Some soldiers fell, their knees giving out, leaving them trembling and unable to do anything but raise their shields above them.
A shadow far darker than the clouds plummeted to the earth, a form of pure crimson appearing with a powerful beat of her wings.
The red dragon flew through the sky, glaring down at all the humans on the ground.
“It’s here, the dragon! If you stand in my way, I will make you a stone in the foundation of my glory!” cried Julian, even then grinning fearlessly.