At the easternmost part of the Bertica Kingdom, there was Erma.
Soldiers with tense expressions stood lined up atop the tall castle wall that separated the territory of the vampires from the human city.
It was the same dull guard duty that repeated every day.
Usually, after getting used to something like this, one would find ways to slack off a bit.
However, for some reason, the atmosphere of the soldiers peering into the deep, distant darkness beyond the wall, relying on the torchlight, was as tense as standing in the middle of a battlefield.
Ever since the shocking defeat of the allied forces, which they had believed would surely lead to victory, Erma had been stuck in this kind of atmosphere.
If the defeat had just been a defeat, that would be one thing, but their forces had been halved, and they hadn’t even been able to recover most of their supplies, which was a total rout.
Among the four nations that had joined the allied forces due to the earlier occupation of Albresia, the Bertica Kingdom had borne the brunt of the losses, making it impossible to calculate the damage.
Moreover, with the emergence of the fourth progenitor, who had gained an incomprehensible power and reappeared after three years, the future actions of the Sahelrn Duchy were unpredictable. It was only natural for the residents of Erma, on the border with the duchy, to tremble in fear.
“So what do you think the vampires will do next?”
“If I knew that, would I be here? I would have already run away to a safe place.”
“Hey now, if someone heard you say you’d run away….”
The two soldiers on the wall joked as if trying to dispel the suffocating tension that persisted day after day.
In fact, among the newly conscripted soldiers, there had even been attempts to desert recently.
Of course, no one succeeded, and they all vanished like dew in the morning, but conversations like this wouldn’t be beneficial if it reached someone else’s ears.
“Just saying. Didn’t the esteemed knights from the Royal Capital even come here? With 40% of the kingdom’s troops stationed here, if this place isn’t safe, is there anywhere safe in the kingdom?”
“Well, that’s true… wait?”
“What’s up?”
As one soldier was matching the other’s banter, he raised a hand to interrupt him.
Was it just his imagination? It seemed like something faintly gray was moving far away in the areas where the torchlight did not reach.
With unnecessary anxiety, they stared into the pitch-black darkness as if their eyeballs would pop out.
However, even after 30 seconds and then a full minute passed, aside from the sound of the wind brushing against the leaves, there was no sign of any dynamic change.
“Hmmm. Maybe I’ve become sensitive from doing this day in and day out. At least the daytime guard is somewhat better, but at night, I feel like I’d jump if a rabbit hopped by.”
“Seems like you’ve got your military discipline tight. Well, better to be cautious than to die from carelessness—”
Thud, splat.
With narrowed eyes and stretching his neck to see into the distance, the soldier had suddenly turned to his frozen comrade, and then—he froze in place.
There stood a body without a head. No, it was propped up.
The soldier’s trembling gaze slipped downwards.
On the ground, the head of his comrade, with whom he had just been speaking moments ago, rolled around, spewing blood like a fountain.
In his line of sight, he caught sight of two pairs of legs.
One pair was clad in armor and belonged to his comrade. Then, behind his comrade, the pair of white legs peeking out from beneath the black dress—
“Ah.”
Before the soldier’s gaze could rise once more, his body swayed and collapsed.
Only when he saw the fountain of blood surging from his chest did he realize he had already lost his life.
As his vision began to blur, a beautiful woman with flowing white hair was etched into his mind.
As the woman pressed down on the severed neck of his headless comrade, burying her face in the nape of his neck, the soldier’s consciousness sank into darkness.
*
“Enemy raid—”
When had the vampire scaled the wall? The instant the sentinels above noticed the sight of a vampire naturally killing two soldiers and drinking their blood, they all tried to scream.
But none of the guards could fulfill their duty.
They couldn’t speak. They couldn’t move.
Heart clenching, as if the blood vessels throughout their body were being turned inside out, they experienced intense pain.
Gushing forth, blood poured from their four orifices as they collapsed.
Among the soldiers on the battlements, only six survived the unknown attack.
However, in the next moment, red threads that had sprouted from the bodies of the dead pierced the hearts of the surviving soldiers, and they were destined to meet the same fate as those who had gone before.
Down below, a commotion erupted.
Aria easily realized that the humans had begun to move as they sensed the ominous atmosphere on the wall.
“One, two, three… about six should be enough for a path.”
The walls of Erma were inscribed with defensive magic.
The defensive magic, inscribed using fortified silver manufactured by the Luminous Kingdom, was said to additionally weaken the effects of dark magic in the vicinity when activated.
However, that was all if the defensive magic activated properly.
The moment the humans, who noticed the raid, hurriedly activated the magic, Aria, who had been waiting for this moment, lightly leaped upwards, waving her arms.
The blood from the corpses scattered on the battlements began to rise as if drawn by an invisible force.
Upwards, with a gesture, the streams of blood that defied gravity transformed into countless stakes that fell downward.
Boom!!
The castle wall crumbled.
Like pressing down on butter with a finger, the stones that touched the bright red stakes broke apart helplessly.
There was no time for the defensive magic to activate.
The six fortified silver pieces designed to weaken darkness magic had not even had the chance to display their prowess before the blood magic shattered them along with the castle wall.
With the collapse, Aria leaped and landed lightly atop the debris, raising her arms.
“Charge.”
Outside the range of the torches, the creatures of the night, holding their breath and waiting for orders, began to move in unison.
“Waaah!!!”
At the forefront, Grand Duke Jeil swung his fist.
A fierce gust shook the ground, and the irregular debris that had fallen began to scatter like dust.
With Stella’s gesture, a pair of gigantic shadowy hands rose from the ground, capturing the swirling dust.
As the murky vision cleared once more, a massive entrance, dozens of meters wide, opened in the towering castle wall.
“Eliminate them. And survive. Do not sacrifice the lives of our kin in vain for the progenitor.”
Martini was the first to charge into the interior of the walls, solemnly declaring.
Bang! At her gesture, the arriving soldiers collapsed en masse.
In that moment, a glint of silver flashed.
The knights of the Bertica Kingdom struggled to fend off the flowing shadows, barely managing to stem the tide.
“Don’t retreat! The pride of the Bertica Kingdom—”
Swoosh, whether she had moved in the meantime or not, Plona, shrouded in black lightning, swept past the knights in the front line.
As the crimson blood dripped from Plona’s sword, simultaneously, the heads and bodies of the kingdom’s knights were severed.
Screams erupted from all directions. Like a dam bursting, fear and chaos spread rapidly.
“Don’t run! Don’t flee, fight back!!!”
The remaining officers, clinging to their sanity, shouted loudly, but were unable to maintain control.
That was because the ones who had just been killed were the knights who had come down from the Royal Capital to defend this place.
While they couldn’t use sacred magic and might not measure up to the holy knights, they were still acknowledged strong ones in the Bertica Kingdom.
When they saw their comrades being slain in packs of ten, it was no wonder the morale of the hastily conscripted soldiers crumbled.
“There they are.”
Seeing the column of light rising from the rear, Martini furrowed her brow.
It was familiar sacred magic. The priests of the Luminous Kingdom who had been dispatched to the eastern part of the Bertica Kingdom had likely gathered and prepared here.
Martini thought that if they had to breach the castle while receiving support from the knights with sacred magic, they might have had a tough time.
Of course, by now, such conjectures had become meaningless.
“Eleonora! Now!”
Lavina shouted as she kicked off the wall and leaped.
In her hand was her familiar bow. Notching a wind arrow on the string, she lunged forward, tracking the black-haired, golden-eyed Dragonkin girl with her gaze.
“Whew—”
As she inhaled to her utmost capacity.
Eleonora, feeling the heat rising from her chest, expelled it all with a breath.
A crimson flame, symbolic of the Dragonkin, surged forth, dispelling the darkness of the night and melting the metal on the battlefield.
“Wow.”
The arrow, released from Lavina’s hand, soared beyond the now spacious area created by the breath.
The wind arrow struck precisely the source of the light column, where the priests had hastily gone on the defensive.
Boom! With a few of the priests’ retreating, the light column dimmed slightly.
Just as the relief of having somehow fended it off threatened to be reflected on the faces of the humans, the current of blood surged like a tsunami.
“No way—!!”
With a splash, the red wave crashed in, bringing with it an unfinished scream and completely erasing the light column.
The world began to be engulfed once more by the darkness of night.
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