Klose’s voice was already hoarse, but he did not care. He simply swung his sword with everything he had. When he saw that flash of red—the golden lion banner of the Elfin Kingdom—burst from the darkness of the western forest, he felt his blood ignite in an instant.
Nolan. That man had truly descended like a divine soldier, driving an unimaginable surprise assault straight into the heart of the undead.
We can’t hold them back. We absolutely can’t!
“Switch to longbows!”
“Nock arrows!”
“Volley fire—!”
At the center of the line, the second wave of soldiers, long prepared, immediately dropped their swords and swiftly unslung their bows. They were not professional archers. Unlike elven rangers or high-tier marksmen, the guard unit’s accuracy was far from reliable. Fortunately, they did not need precision.
These bows had been meant for defending the city walls, yet Nolan had found a use for them in a place no one could have imagined.
The soldiers’ hands trembled slightly from tension and exhaustion. One by one, they pulled small, unremarkable bottles from their waists. Inside was nearly all the lesser holy water Nolan had distributed before the battle.
But now, it was not meant for healing.
They uncorked the bottles and plunged the arrowheads inside, stirring them thoroughly. If a priest of the temple had seen this, they might have wept.
The soaked arrowheads emitted a faint, sacred glow in the dim firelight.
“Ready—!”
Klose raised his sword high.
“Fire!”
With a low hum, over a hundred arrows shot into the air, their uneven whistles tracing crooked arcs as they passed over the tangled frontline and descended upon the neatly arrayed skeleton reserve unit behind.
At the very moment the arrows took flight, Klose issued his second command, “Light the torches! Now!!”
Before the battle, Nolan had insisted every soldier be equipped with tinder and flint. Now, at last, they proved their worth.
Scratch. Scratch.
One torch after another burst into flame, and across the dim battlefield, patches of warm orange light flared to life. At the instant the firelight rose, a series of piercing, soul-chilling screams erupted above the formation.
“Ah—!”
Dozens of semi-transparent, twisted humanoid shapes had appeared overhead at some unknown moment, silently drifting above them.
A more experienced veteran turned pale with fear, his voice trembling, “Wraiths!”
Cold sweat instantly soaked Klose’s back.
Wraiths. These undead had no physical form and no direct attack power, but their most terrifying trait was their ability to pass through armor and possess the living, turning comrades into the deadliest enemies in an instant.
They had crept this close without a sound. If not for Nolan’s orders… the consequences would have been unthinkable.
Fortunately, while these invisible killers were terrifying, they were extremely vulnerable to firelight. Under the glow of the torches, they let out agonized shrieks. Those too close burst apart instantly, while the rest fled frantically upward into the darker reaches of the night, not daring to approach again.
Klose watched, his heart pounding wildly. “Shoot when you see the banner, then light the torches immediately!”
Every word Nolan had spoken felt like a precise prophecy. Just how had this man managed it? It was as if he had seen straight through the undead, down to their very bones.
***
In the distance, the great corpse-lich observed everything unfolding on the battlefield with perfect clarity. When the wraiths were driven off by torchlight, he merely let out a disdainful snort.
A coincidence, nothing more.
Those low-level creatures were only meant to sow chaos. Their success or failure hardly mattered. He had also seen the cavalry charging out of the forest. A mere thirty riders.
Laughable.
Even if they managed to reach the reserve unit, their speed would be cut down by the skeleton formation, stripping them of any real threat. At that point, he could eliminate them one by one without even relying on others. He couldn’t help but feel pleased with himself for leaving behind a reserve force.
As for that volley of arrows? That only made him want to laugh even more.
Using arrows against skeletons—how was that any different from trying to scoop water with a sieve? Unless the shot struck the skull where the soul-fire resided, no matter how many arrows were fired, they would merely pass uselessly through the gaps between bones.
Just as he expected, the first volley fell in a scattered rain. Most of the arrows stuck into the ground, and only a few, by sheer bad luck, lodged into a skeleton’s ribcage before hanging there limply, dealing no damage at all.
But then, in the next instant, the great corpse-lich’s ashen eyes trembled slightly as a strange scene unfolded on the battlefield.
Pssh!
Where the arrows had struck, the skeletons suddenly began to emit wisps of white smoke, as though doused in a corrosive acid. The withered grass beneath their feet, infused with dark magic, ignited with a sudden whoosh. Under the erosion of sacred power, the dark energy binding their bones together was rapidly neutralized and destroyed. These undead fodder began to stagger uncontrollably, swaying like drunken men, unable even to maintain their footing. The once orderly reserve formation descended into instant chaos.
No matter how dull he was, the great corpse-lich understood what had happened. For the first time, his cold, unchanging voice wavered. A surge of anger and humiliation twisted it into a sharp, grating shriek. “Holy water! You cunning, wretched swine!!”
At the very moment he roared, the cavalry struck.
Boom!
With Hank at its spearhead, the charging cavalry smashed violently into the crumbling formation. The terrifying kinetic force of the warhorses was fully unleashed. The already unsteady skeletons could not offer even the slightest resistance; they shattered instantly upon impact.
Hank rode at the front like a full-speed icebreaker, except what churned before him was not frozen sea but a storm of bone fragments. He was the sharpest tip of the spear, tearing open the undead line with brutal force.
“Maintain speed! Hold formation! Don’t fall behind!”
Close behind him, Nolan cut down skeletons at the flanks with the Darkpiercer in hand, while loudly directing the rhythm of the charge.
“Push through!”
The great corpse-lich felt, step by step, that he had fallen completely into the enemy’s tempo. His favored tactics—skeletal hawk bombardment, wraith infiltration, the crushing tide of skeletons—had all been dismantled with baffling ease. Meanwhile, these rabble he had dismissed as insignificant unleashed one unexpected move after another, each one deadly.
Why does the enemy commander understand me so well? That’s impossible!
While the corpse-lich’s mind reeled, Hank’s cavalry had already driven clean through the entire reserve formation and burst into the open ground beyond.
But Nolan did not slow in the slightest. With his left hand gripping the reins tight to control his galloping mount, his right hand flashed to his side, pulling a spare longbow from the saddle. From his quiver, he drew an arrow soaked in holy water.
Draw—nock. The entire motion flowed in one seamless action despite the violent motion of the horse. Mastery of all weapons, ingrained through a lifetime of experience, guided his every movement, while his refined horsemanship allowed him to execute the shot with precision. His gaze locked onto the patch of darkness ahead.
There.
His fingers released.
Fshoo!
The arrow, wrapped in a faint sacred glow, shot forth like a silver meteor, tearing through the night and plunging straight into the depths of that darkness. One second later—
“AAARGH—!!!” a piercing scream erupted from beyond the Dark Veil.
The distorted darkness rippled violently. A black-robed figure, wreathed in silver-white flames, tumbled out of the void, crashing onto the ground and writhing in agony. It was one of the lesser corpse mages maintaining the Dark Veil. Though its phylactery lay hidden within its staff, making the blow non-lethal, the searing pain of the holy water rendered it incapable of sustaining the spell.
The night ahead seemed to tear apart like a curtain. The suffocating veil of darkness slowly dissipated, and moonlight poured down once more.
And behind the fallen veil, all the remaining lesser corpse mages—along with the great corpse-lich itself, standing tall with his bone staff—were fully exposed, their figures laid bare to every eye on the battlefield.
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