Regulus calmly scanned the misty battlefield, but he didn't spot Sphinx. Instead, he saw the sniper who had just ambushed him standing on a higher slope in the distance.
It was a man—or more precisely, a dead body that was being manipulated.
Due to his enhanced vision, Regulus could see the corpse's appearance in gruesome detail. To be honest, it was a bit unbearable to look at. Half of the flesh on its cheek had rotted and fallen off, exposing yellowed bones and a single, milky eyeball. Wounds all over its body oozed putrid, black corpse fluid, and wriggling white maggots could be seen thriving in the decaying meat.
Its completely rotted flesh was only covered by filthy rags and tattered Royal Army armor. Even several fingers on its bow-holding hand were missing, barely maintaining the basic semblance of a human. Given its condition, even if left completely alone, it would likely lose its ability to physically move before long.
Of course, it was only 'likely.' Regulus couldn't be a hundred percent certain. After all, in a fantasy world where magic existed, it wasn't unheard of for mangled corpses to move indefinitely, or even for mere skeletons to remain active.
However, the unsettling corpses were not limited to the lone sniper in the distance. The constantly churning ground around them brought forth dozens more corpses from the muddy earth.
The thick, gag-inducing stench of decay quickly spread across the plains.
Although Regulus couldn't smell it—because his active Authority of Greed perfectly isolated his body from interacting with the outside air—his wives beside him all covered their noses with extremely difficult expressions. Strong feelings of repulsion appeared on their beautiful faces. These corpses in front of them were truly disgusting.
At the same time, Bordeaux and his subordinates had already formed a tight defensive perimeter, protecting Regulus and his group in the center by blocking the closest Corpse Soldiers.
"The dead are walking... this is not funny at all," Bordeaux said, his face growing exceptionally ugly.
Among the Corpse Soldiers he had just blocked and destroyed, besides the bodies of Demi-Human soldiers, there were even more corpses of fallen Kingdom soldiers. Even if they were just reanimated meat puppets, it gave the loyal captain an incredibly sickening feeling to strike down his former comrades in arms.
What a vile and malicious tactic.
However, in the brutal reality of war, what is considered vile or malicious doesn't matter. As long as it can effectively terrorize and harm the opponent, then it is a good tactic.
"Miss Julia," Bordeaux called out, cutting down another Demi-Human Corpse Soldier with a heavy swing of his broadsword. "Are these reanimated corpses also a type of magic? If we rely solely on physical strikes, it will be quite difficult to deal with their sheer numbers. Is there any way to break this spell?"
Bordeaux had placed his tactical hope on Julia. Similarly, asking this was also a test to see the extent of Julia's knowledge. Her coming in place of the Great Magician Roswaal still made him somewhat worried about their magical support.
"These corpses..." Julia frowned, looking closely at the erratic movements of the Corpse Soldiers.
She suddenly recalled a forbidden grimoire she had read in Beatrice's Forbidden Library earlier.
"This is not standard magic. It's a highly specialized, forbidden curse," Julia explained clearly. "It's a form of necromancy known as the Sacrament of the Immortal King."
"A curse?" Bordeaux had never heard this specific term before, but whether he had heard it or not didn't really matter. "Then is there any way to break it, or a specific weakness to deal with it?"
"After a corpse is successfully bound as a Corpse Soldier, even if the necromancer who created it is killed, they still won't stop moving," Julia warned. "The only way to stop them is to physically eliminate them. Destroy the bodies entirely."
"It seems the hard way is the only way," Bordeaux grunted. "Fortunately, although these rotting bastards are numerous, their physical strength isn't particularly great!"
As he finished speaking, Bordeaux raised his sword high. "Everyone, put in more effort! Dig in and crush them all in one go!"
Bordeaux roared a battle cry, leading his subordinates to aggressively clear the surrounding Corpse Soldiers.
It seemed they didn't need help.
In this situation, Regulus was naturally happy to be idle. Moreover, his wives had absolutely zero interest in getting their dresses dirty by helping deal with such rotten, worm-infested zombies.
Regulus continued to observe the surroundings, searching for Sphinx's whereabouts. But strangely, there was nothing. At least, Regulus didn't see any sign of the Ryuzu clone.
'This is odd,' Regulus thought. 'The sudden appearance of these Corpse Soldiers is undoubtedly Sphinx's doing. However... could Sphinx have already left?'
After all, due to his "personal delays" along the journey, their arrival time at the front lines was much later than originally expected. It was a bit disappointing. But if she left, she left; it wasn't a massive problem. Carol and Julia's military mission couldn't end just like this. As long as they continued to roam the active battlefield, they would eventually catch her.
That's right, 'catch her.'
Sphinx was a defective clone of Ryuzu Meyer who inherited parts of both Ryuzu's and Echidna's memories. The underlying reason Sphinx even appeared on this battlefield to wreak havoc was ultimately due to Echidna's grand arrangements.
Because Echidna had grown tired of waiting.
Even staying in the Castle of Dreams, where the flow of time could be manually adjusted, waiting four hundred years for Regulus to finally arrive still felt a bit too long for the greedy Witch. Since she didn't want to wait passively any longer, was there any way to actively force Regulus to appear earlier?
Of course there was. That was to target something Regulus held dear—but something he wouldn't get genuinely furious about if it was slightly damaged.
The Kingdom of Lugnica was designated as the perfect target.
According to Echidna's smug reveal in the dreamscape, Lugnica was a kingdom established by Regulus's future, time-traveling self and a certain woman, entirely with his personal help, and it had continued to exist to this modern day. Echidna had calculated that even if it was just a passing whim, Regulus probably wouldn't stand by and watch a kingdom he had personally helped establish be utterly destroyed, right?
The result was exactly as Echidna expected; Regulus had actively chosen to appear on the battlefield.
After learning all of this temporal lore, and looking back at Echidna's smug little expression in the dream, Regulus felt completely detached from reality.
'The Kingdom of Lugnica was established with my help? And more importantly, I established it with a woman?'
He had later specifically asked Theresia about the Kingdom's founding history. It seemed there was absolutely no one named 'Regulus Corneas' recorded in history. At most, there was only the legend of an unnamed, mysterious Sage.
Regarding this Great Sage...
Regulus didn't know the truth until he asked, and after asking, he heard a very scandalous rumor and a highly inappropriate historical title.
The rumor passed down among the high nobility was that after the Kingdom of Lugnica was formally established, the Sage chose to leave. But when he left, he didn't leave empty-handed. He allegedly abducted the first Queen—one of the Kingdom's founding heroes!
And that wasn't all. Throughout the entire Kingdom, and even far beyond its borders into neighboring nations, an unquantifiable number of girls mysteriously disappeared overnight. The disappeared girls all shared one undeniable characteristic: they were all breathtakingly beautiful.
In the history of the world, besides the legendary Sage whose abilities seemed limitless, no one else could have possibly orchestrated such a massive, flawless abduction.
Why the people at the time didn't investigate further, or why they even continued to revere this Sage despite the mass kidnappings, was lost to the countless years of history. Even when Regulus asked the Witches, they couldn't give any specific answers. They simply hadn't paid attention to mortal politics.
As for Echidna... she also didn't care about such trivial historical details. She only knew that the Kingdom of Lugnica was founded by Regulus and a woman. She never gave specific details about who that woman actually was.
And the final result was that, behind closed doors, later generations of nobility gave the Sage the secret title of the "Flamboyant Sage."
Carol, on the other hand, had directly and bluntly called him the "Perverted Sage."
'This really makes one not know what to say,' Regulus sighed internally. 'So my future self basically created a Kingdom just to farm a massive, continent-spanning harem, and then vanished into the sunset with the Queen?'
Whoosh!
The sharp sound of an arrow slicing through the fog violently interrupted his historical musings.
This time, the sniper's target had shifted. The arrow was aimed directly at Lycoris.
Without missing a beat, Regulus raised his hand, expanding his Authority of Stillness to effortlessly block the incoming projectile mid-air. With a flick of his wrist, a simple playing card materialized in Regulus's hand.
Infusing the flimsy paper card with his absolute Authority, he casually flung it directly at the archer Corpse Soldier standing on the high slope.
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