Passing through the gates, we entered a dead city. No longer maintained, the buildings had decayed and the roads that had once been paved were missing stones. The groans of the dead echoed through the streets. Since the dead are drawn to the living, they soon found us. And as those dead gathered, we saints sent their heads flying.
We had been assigned to an area on the main road that was a ways away from the gate. That we were neither by the gate nor in the center of the city was presumably based on the academy’s rating of our skills. If we proved ourselves, we would likely be assigned to the center before long.
“Ah, I knew it.”
“Some who have yet to receive the blessing.”
“How pitiful.”
Curions poured into the main road. Although we had killed a good number of them the other day, it hadn’t even made a dent in the total.
“All right, let’s get to it,” I said. Linum and Agrimonia deployed their divine protections on their partners.
“Go on, kill them. That’s your job.”
“Understood, Princess.” Despite the lack of concern in her order, Nemophila still gave the grave keeper her divine protection to maintain appearances.
As I confirmed that everyone was ready, I called out to the princess. “Princess, can I get your protection?”
“C-Certainly!” I had thrown out my rule about fighting by myself. She was my partner, so why not rely on her? The princess offered up a prayer, and a pale light engulfed me.
Drawing my bone sword, I kicked off the ground beneath me. Beheading three of them as I dashed forward, I plunged into the swarm of curions. I ignored the body parts that littered the ground, targeting the curions that were standing and mobile.
I cut off the head of a curion whose right arm I had shattered with my previous attack, smashed through the skull and down to the sternum of a curion that had approached me after losing its wrists; then, as I pulled my sword back, I destroyed another’s shoulder blade and ribs to reach its neck. It might seem like you were limited in how you could attack curions, as you needed to remove their heads to truly kill them, but as long as you beheaded them in the end, you were free to fight however you wanted. I just had to cut through anything blocking their necks.
It didn’t just apply to me either. With the divine protections of their holy women, modern holy knights were more than capable of doing the same thing with their enhanced strength.
When most of the walking corpses I could see were dealt with, I noticed something snapping at my feet—it was the upper body of a curion. This was the kind of thing that happened when I didn’t pay attention to where all the pieces went flying. I used to be a lot more careful, but now that I had a holy woman’s divine protection, surprise attacks were simply warded off by a pale light and couldn’t reach me. I could fight knowing I was safe.
“Sorry, but there’s no point in trying to curse me.” I was already cursed. Before the curion could say anything in return, I crushed its skull with my foot. A clean kill couldn’t save anybody. Not me, and not them.
Looking around, I saw my squadmates finishing off the rest of the surviving curions on the ground. The grave keeper, while using his sword, killed them with complete indifference. Of course, he wasn’t using his powers. His face was emotionless—he didn’t show any feelings for the undead he killed.
It was easy to confirm that three-century-old curions were dead, as their bones would turn to dust. If the skeleton still remained, it wasn’t truly dead yet. After the first wave of curions was defeated and scattered to the wind, the second wave arrived without giving us any time to breathe.
“Hmm?” At the other end of the road, I saw a particularly tall curion approaching us at great speed. No, wait. It’s not that it’s tall... “It’s riding a horse?” Naturally, both the horse and its rider were nothing but bones.
“Slaying those who only wish to bless you is the work of the devil! It won’t be tolerated!”
“Seriously? Is that a holy knight from three hundred years ago?” Even now, he was passionate about protecting the people from harm. Maybe he had come from the center of the city—if that was the case, he was probably pretty strong. It was possible the Embodiment of the Spirit had given him a special ability.
“Albert!”
“It’s all right, Princess. I’ll take care of that one. The rest of you deal with the others.” The rest of my squad got to work immediately. They were quite dependable.
“Princess, what should we do?” the grave keeper asked Nemophila.
“Follow Sir Albert’s orders.”
“As you wish.” It seemed like Blizzard had entrusted the knight to me.
“It won’t be tolerated, huh? Then what are you gonna do? Kill us?” I asked the knight.
“No! I shall punish you, then grant you the blessing myself! You shall atone for your sins by blessing even more than you have killed!” Although the holy knight’s sense of justice remained, his top priority was now spreading the blessing. He hadn’t been able to escape the witch’s spell.
“’Fraid not. I’m gonna be adding to my sins by killing you too.”
The skeletal cavalryman charged at me. No sane individual would attempt to challenge a mounted knight with only a sword. Whether you were trampled or sent flying, you wouldn’t make it out unscathed. A large horse moving at high speeds became a weapon unto itself. As its hooves clacked over the shoddy road, I thought to myself.
Hooves are technically nails, right? It shouldn’t have them anymore... Its horseshoes should have been destroyed or come off by now too. Does that mean it can run as fast as when it was alive just on the bones of its feet? It seems just as fast as any living horse to me. Oh well, I guess it’s not a big deal. Being able to continue moving as just bones is already illogical.
There was something else I was curious about. “Quick question. Is that horse a stallion?”
“So what if it is?!”
“It doesn’t really matter. I’d just feel a little bad if it was a mare.” A horse was a knight’s partner. Back in the day, I’d had my beloved horse, Viola. Killing mares never sat right with me since it would remind me of her. Standing directly in the way of his horse, I held my sword over my head.
“Are you insane?!” the knight cried out in astonishment.
“Try me.”
“I’ll take that as a yes!” The knight gave in to my provocation and charged at me. Cutting me down as he rushed by wasn’t his aim—he was planning to trample me with his horse. Even as a skeleton, a horse running at full speed packed a punch, but I didn’t look away.
I waited for it to get so close I could see the individual grains of dust it was kicking up. Carefully measuring the shrinking distance between us, I sprung into action the instant it got close enough. Now!
I swung my bone sword down onto the horse’s nose, smashing through its cranium and severing its lower jaw. However, it took a lot more than that to halt a charging horse’s momentum. Its vertebrae from its forelegs to its ribs all shattered to pieces upon impact with my sword. The bones from its hind legs to its tail veered off course without me even touching them, tumbling to the ground and sending the knight flying.
“Gaaaaah!” The horse’s bones turned to dust and disappeared before the knight hit the ground. Approaching the knight as he stood back up, I called out to him.
“Looks like I was sane after all.”
“Argh! Why do you not use that strength for justice?!” The knight swung at me. His sword seemed surprisingly unused. While it wasn’t brand-new by any means, it certainly didn’t seem three centuries old. He had probably plundered it from a holy knight. I couldn’t imagine any of the Colors being defeated, so it likely belonged to someone he had killed in the past.
“Justice, huh?” I parried his sword three times and got a decent grasp of his strength. The fourth time, I put some force into it and his sword broke in half.
“Wha—?!”
“Later.” As I moved to behead the knight, my sword was repelled just before reaching him. It was as though an invisible wall was in the way.