Mad Dogs Need a Beating
"KRAAAAAAH—!"
The skeleton legion's barrage continued for a full five minutes.
Among the judges who had already been turned into pincushions by the rain of bolts, only a handful remained alive.
"Huff…! Huff…!"
"Gghhh…!"
The judges rolled across the ground in ruined condition.
At this point, it looked as though everything had already been decided.
BOOM—!
'…No. Not yet.'
To endure all of that… what a monstrous bastard.
Watching Ben radiate holy power and ghostly energy in violent waves, I slowly formed a hand seal.
"I'll kill you, Klein. I'll kill you—!"
Squeezing out the last of his strength, Ben charged toward me.
The pressure of the wind generated by his rush wasn't even comparable to the infiltration squad from earlier.
But I, too, still had one final card left.
_ Raven.
KANG—!
A sword infused with mana knocked aside his mace.
"Death Knight?! You bastard…!"
Unlike me, who had no mana, Raven possessed mana on par with a knight commander.
Sensing the threat, Ben's attacks became even fiercer.
KANG—!
—My capabilities are superior, but the holy power is the problem.
After exchanging a few blows and gauging him, Raven spoke.
"Go for his back. I'll handle him from the front."
When I said that, Raven glanced at me and asked,
—Is there a reason you must fight personally?
—If you simply command the archers, the battle would end regardless.
It was a sharp observation.
I was still suffering aftereffects from the beating I'd taken earlier, and because I hadn't eaten properly, my stamina had hit rock bottom.
But—
"I have to kill that bastard with my own hands."
For the first time, emotion entered my normally calm voice.
The man who had destroyed my life,
the lives of innocent people,
and the lives of those who had shared my childhood.
Warden Ben Drake.
Clack—!
I picked up one of the scattered weapons lying on the floor.
A short spear used for suppressing prisoners.
For someone still small like me, it was a pretty decent length.
"Because I promised."
At those words, Raven nodded and lowered into stance.
—Then I shall follow.
The moment I heard Raven's answer, I shot straight toward Ben.
"Hah, charging into close range with a spear?!"
As expected, Ben locked his eyes onto me and immediately swung his mace.
Swooosh—!
I raised the spear's trajectory to alter the attack path, bent the spearhead, and aimed for his flank.
It was Wave Catcher, the standard spear technique of the Paulwyvern Coastal Guard.
"What…?!"
Ben had been preparing for a simple thrust, so when the spear's trajectory rippled like a wave, panic flashed through his hands.
"You heretic bastard—!"
KWA-BOOOOM—!
A heavy strike overflowing with holy power.
The instant his attack came crashing down with force spread over a surface rather than a line, I immediately widened the distance.
"I'll kill you—!"
"You should really watch your back."
The backward step had been a feint.
As I used the spear's long reach to strike him, Raven appeared behind him and targeted his rear.
KANG—!
This time, what Ben blocked was Raven's sword.
Apparently deciding the mana-infused Raven was the greater threat, Ben instantly changed directions and swung his mace upward, neutralizing Raven's horizontal slash.
But at that exact moment—
"Your front's wide open, you son of a bitch!"
The instant Ben entered my range, I thrust the spear straight in.
"Ghk?!"
Ben tried to grab it barehanded with his enhanced grip, but the first strike was only a feint.
"A third-rate swordsman without even a shred of mana, relying on pathetic little tricks…!"
"What I'm using right now isn't swordsmanship. It's spearmanship, you idiot."
I unleashed the high-speed thrust technique Ian used.
A spear art that shifted posture with slight time differences to simultaneously target six vital points:
Organ.
KAKAKAKANG—!
Instead of blocking it with his weapon, Ben defended by flooding his entire body with holy power.
"You're basically a human tank!"
So that was why he'd survived the rain of bolts almost unharmed.
It made me understand all over again why this man had once been selected as a candidate for proxy.
"I've killed more necromancers like you than I can count~!"
Along with those words, the massive mace came crashing down again.
But instead, I smiled triumphantly.
"Physical ability and combat experience are two completely different things!"
The moment I said that, I slammed the vertically raised spear tip into his wrist.
Using the spear shaft embedded in his wrist as a support, I leapt upward.
His attack path was a horizontal swing.
Ben's eyes tracked my body rising above his head, but unfortunately for him, his weapon couldn't follow.
"How can a technique this absurd even exist…?!"
"The battlefields I survived are on a completely different level from your little prison!"
As I shouted that, I called the Death Knight's name.
"Raven—!"
The instant I called him, Raven's sword sliced through the spear shaft I was using as support.
Now the short spear had split in half, becoming nothing more than a sharpened stake tipped with a blade.
And the back of Ben's neck was completely exposed, without any guard.
"If you can block this with holy power, then try it, you crazy bastard—!"
With that roar, I drove the spear blade into the back of his neck—
CRACK—!
Then kicked it even deeper for good measure.
"Ghk…!"
The blade driven downward from above pierced perfectly through the back of his neck and embedded itself into his body.
A fatal wound—practically instant death.
THUD—!
I had succeeded in recreating the martial technique,
but unfortunately, I'd never actually seen how the technique ended its landing.
"Ack?!"
My body, launched upward once, tumbled violently across the ground.
"Gghhh…?!"
As I rose while clutching my throbbing shoulder, Ben staggered there coughing violently with the spear blade lodged in his neck.
"D-Director?!"
"No way… Director Ben… lost to Young Master Klein…?!"
With their leader collapsing, unrest spread through the remaining judges.
"Raven."
—I know.
The moment the primary target fell, the tide had shifted completely in our favor.
Raven immediately charged the judges and began slaughtering them in an instant.
"Good. That finishes the first objective."
Since the Banshee hadn't detected any escapees, it was almost a perfect locked-room massacre.
'Well, I guess fortress walls count as a locked room too, in a way.'
I was thinking that pointless thought when—
"It's not… not over yet!"
Ben rose back to his feet with the spear blade still lodged in his throat.
I stared at him for a moment before letting out a deep sigh.
"You stupid bastard. You drank Holy Blood."
Flesh swelled grotesquely beneath his bloated priest robes.
It was the side effect of forcibly flooding his wounded body with Holy Blood.
"Hah! Kuhahahahaha—!"
Feeling the overwhelming strength surging through his body, Ben ground his teeth and glared at me.
"At the very least, I'll kill you, Klein Leinrant!"
His voice dripped with murderous obsession.
Meanwhile, I silently picked up another fallen short spear and stared at him.
"Ha… this is seriously insane."
More precisely,
I was staring at the enormous figure rising high into the sky behind the monster Ben was becoming.
KWA-BOOOOOOOM—!
Garrison descended from the sky.
More accurately, it would be better to say he crashed down.
"C-Cough…?!"
Every time I saw it, it was absurd.
Someone spends dozens of minutes trying to take down one monster like that,
while someone else ends it in a single technique.
Grrk! Grrrk!
'The regeneration is slow. He didn't drink that much.'
The moment I reached that conclusion, I launched myself forward.
"Garrison… you bastard…!"
Realizing what had happened only now, Ben called out Garrison's name.
But Garrison's gaze remained fixed solely on me.
He didn't even spare Ben a glance.
"Officially, I did absolutely nothing."
The first thing he said was directed at me.
Understanding the meaning behind those words, I shook my head and drove the spear into Ben's heart.
CRUNCH—!
"Ggh—?!"
Ben's swollen flesh had only undergone rampant regeneration around the damaged areas.
I attacked because I judged the Holy Blood's effects hadn't reached his heart.
THUD—!
And fortunately, that judgment was correct.
"Ghk… ghrrk…!"
Ben's entire body had been shredded apart, leaving behind little more than traces of flesh.
Everything except his heart and brain had been torn to pieces.
"Klein…!"
Instead of a death scream, Ben called out my name as he kept speaking.
"Do you… cough! know… what you've done…?!"
Blood poured from his throat as he glared at me.
"I already… sent people…! Reinforcements… will arrive soon!"
Even while dying, he shouted at me as though he found the whole thing amusing.
"The Holy Order… will hunt you…! They'll use… cough! everything they have! And yet you…!"
"You mean these guys?"
I interrupted him with a short sentence, and at the same time, one of the skeletons tossed something forward.
Thud.
"…Huh?"
The severed heads of the two judges he had sent away under his orders.
Seeing them, Ben trailed off in disbelief.
"With this, the reformatory is completely under control. No one escaped to the outside."
All that remained was dealing with the necromancers underground and the experimental subjects they were researching.
"D-Don't be ridiculous—!"
Even while on the verge of death, he screamed at me like a madman.
"You think… using tricks like this…! the Order will… just let you…!"
"And what if they don't?"
I cut him off again with a short sentence.
"…What?"
"I said, what are they gonna do if they don't let it go?"
Hearing my words, Ben stared at me in utter disbelief.
"I've already fought against an entire continent by myself before. Why would some cult freaks matter?"
Cult.
The moment I referred to the greatest religion on the continent as a cult, his expression became even harder to comprehend.
"No… wait…?"
Right. That wasn't the important part.
As he replayed my words in his mind, Ben's face gradually twisted into horror.
"Yeah. You're finally starting to see it, aren't you?"
His fading eyes reflected me once more.
The eyes of the living that saw form,
and the eyes of the dead that saw souls.
What was reflected in his gaze?
Klein Leinrant—
or Archimond?
"Ah… ahh…! A-Aaahhh…?!"
Judging by his reaction, apparently the latter.
"So now you finally see me?"
He could no longer continue speaking.
The man known as the Holy Order's mad dog trembled with a face completely consumed by fear.
As though he had witnessed something he should never have seen.
"If you've realized who I am, then you must understand this as well."
Death is often compared to eternal sleep.
No matter the form.
No matter the tragedy.
Death itself grants the living a peace akin to rest.
And necromancers are the only beings capable of stealing that rest from the dead.
"Even in death, you will never know peace."
And I had no intention of granting this man any peace.
"No! No!"
Dragging along his dying body, he desperately protested.
"It was all orders! The Order commanded it!"
In the end, they all become like this.
It wasn't me.
I didn't mean it.
You misunderstand.
They hide behind endless excuses, avoiding responsibility as though none of it had been their doing.
"I was only—!"
"Then who should the people you killed blame?"
As I said that, I grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up.
"All those countless people who knelt at your feet begging for their lives."
What I witnessed after arriving here.
A human slaughterhouse carried out under the excuse of a god that didn't even exist.
Remembering that scene, I continued questioning him.
"And those countless others who never even had the chance to beg for their lives—who are they supposed to resent?"
The Kripel Heretic Reformatory ruled by Ben Drake.
After witnessing its horrors, there was no way I could ever forgive this man.
The screams of those who died here would never forgive him.
"No… not me… I…!"
"Go on. Keep talking."
After saying that, I threw his body aside and formed a hand seal.
Wooooong—!
Numerous runes crawling across his body began to glow.
"W-What?! What are you planning to do to me…?!"
"I'm simply enforcing the contract, Ben Drake."
After saying that, I unleashed demonic energy toward him as he stammered in panic.
"From this moment onward…"
I paused briefly, then spoke slowly and clearly so he would understand every word.
"You will die only after experiencing every single death of the people you have killed."