"Achoo!" Yuna sneezed for no apparent reason, and her sense of unease grew even stronger.
She felt the riotous Mana overflowing from the lord's manor, and then a solid pillar of purple Mana burst through the roof. The once-clear sky abruptly turned overcast.
"Lady Nanoda!"
Yuna was a little worried. She badly wanted to go in and help. Ever since arriving here, she—Nanoda's disciple—hadn't been able to help her master with anything at all.
But then, among the monks encircling the lord's manor, someone cried out in alarm.
Back the way they had come, there came the sound of clashing armor. A tall figure entered everyone's field of vision, and behind him stretched a ghostly white expanse.
Within the buildings of the domain, tightly shut doors swung open one by one, and undead came walking out of them.
All the vanished residents of the Kinton domain were right here.
"You've got to be kidding me—that guy came back to life again?!" the male monk who could use healing arts cried out in disbelief.
At the very front of the undead army was Undying Böse!
"Their numbers keep growing! We definitely didn't sense any of this on the way in."
The female monk with closed eyes furrowed her slender brows, a little bewildered that her Heavenly Eye hadn't foreseen these enemies in advance.
"That member of the Demon Race probably just hadn't activated his magic yet. The residents' corpses hidden in the houses were no different from the bones in the ground before touching any magic—just ordinary dead things. We all let our guard down."
The most muscular of the male monks slowly stripped off his coat and trousers. Aside from his muscles, only a few interlacing restraint straps covered the important parts—truly an eyesore.
"Wait—what are you doing?!"
Beside him, Yuna hurriedly covered her eyes, peeking through the gaps between her fingertips.
"As I thought, dressing like this is the lightest and lets me unleash my full strength! Hup-hah!"
As he spoke, he even flexed his muscles, striking a flashy, show-off pose.
The other monks seemed used to this big brother's antics, and all selectively ignored the sight before them.
"Everyone, prepare for battle!"
With the military capability Yuna had honed during the war between Gaderia and the Northern Empire, the best choice now was to stall until Lady Nanoda and Lord Himmel dealt with the leader. The moment the magic was undone, it would be their victory.
"I'll handle Böse. The rest of you focus on the undead. Healers, please advance behind the formation to keep the warriors safe. Leave some people at the very back to lay down magic attacks as cover! Everyone, mind your safety—if you're hurt, be sure to fall back at once!"
Yuna had already roughly grasped this magic; if anyone in the ranks died, it would become very dangerous.
No wonder Aura had been defeated. Setting aside the killing power of Böse of the Seven Sages of Destruction, the moment someone died they'd become the enemy's puppet, and the situation would snowball. The enemy's snowball would grow larger and larger, while the snow on the ground gradually ran out.
"For the New God!"
"Rain down judgment upon the impure!"
"Charge!"
The battle erupted in an instant.
Gritting her teeth, Yuna hurled several ordinary Demon-Slaying Magic attacks at Böse.
The continuous beams of light forced Böse to prioritize defending with a barrier.
This was Yuna's way of preventing Böse from having the leeway to activate a vacuum barrier—for once that barrier went up, their small group would surely fall into the trap of being wiped out all at once.
She absolutely could not let this trouble spill over into Himmel and Lady Nanoda's fight.
While pressuring Böse with continuous casting, Yuna also kept an eye on the distance.
She had watched the entire process of the four earlier assaulting Böse, and she'd already settled in her mind on the barrier's approximate size and dimensions.
"Good..."
Under the relentless, continuous barrage, Yuna stepped into the range of the barrier magic, yet was not trapped by the barrier—and her heart leapt with joy.
Although it carried an element of gambling, this plan was viable.
She quickened her running speed once more. Yuna preferred close-quarters combat—that way, even if Böse deployed his barrier, it would only seal the two of them inside it alone.
All she needed was to stall for time until the other side reached a decision.
By now the army of the Church of the New God had also collided with the undead army.
Volleys of the Thirteen Spears of the New God shot out; houses collapsed amid endless thundering roars.
"Hahahaha! Come play with me!"
The monk in the black restraint straps bounded about like a kangaroo, darting everywhere on his powerfully muscled legs, felling an undead husk with a single punch wherever he passed.
Splattered all over with disgusting slime, he would sometimes shatter enemies outright with a great big bear hug.
"Two o'clock direction, four hundred meters," the closed-eyed nun raised her voice in a shout, and the monks beside her hurled light spear after light spear according to her directions.
Now she gritted her teeth, determined to make up for her earlier ease and negligence.
"Hey, hang in there! I'll heal you right now!"
The male monk dragged a warrior who had just fallen, and once things were a bit safer, he hurriedly lifted his Scripture and aimed it at the knife wound on the man's chest. "Detoxify, staunch the bleeding, restore."
After that string of treatment combos, the monk-warrior sprang up again, full of life, snatched up his weapon, and charged back into the fray.
The male monk wiped away his sweat and ran off toward the front line once more.
Apart from Böse, these undead were not strong—no better than ordinary people.
For these carefully selected warriors of the Church of the New God, dealing with them was quite easy.
No one fell out of formation; even if they went down, with magic cover and the healers' aid, they could keep fighting again.
It looked like a disadvantage, but was actually an advantage.
Yet the battlefield changed in the blink of an eye.
Böse deliberately let Yuna's Severance Magic strike him. As the armor covering his body shattered, he reached out, pressed against Yuna's body, and unleashed a barrier, shoving Yuna away with an irresistible force.
The Severance Magic nearly cut through more than half of his body, yet Yuna also let out a muffled grunt as she was shut straight into a vacuum cage!
The other monks tried to rush forward to help, but were also enveloped by the vacuum barrier, their fate unknown.
And it was precisely at this moment that a streak of blue joined the battlefield!
Borrowing the momentum of his charge, Himmel swung with everything he had—a single stroke of ultimate power!
Böse, who had just gone sluggish, was once again, yet again, caught off guard, and was slain outright with a single stroke.
After the vacuum barrier vanished, Yuna knelt on the ground propped up by her staff, gasping in great breaths. That situation just now had truly been dire; she'd also gotten a taste of the suffocating feeling Nanoda and the others had experienced back then.
"Well done. It's truly remarkable that you held out until now."
Himmel's two brows crinkled into curves as he smiled and extended a wrinkled, callus-covered old hand toward Yuna on the ground.
"Mm." Coughing twice, Yuna grasped that hand and rose to her feet again.
—
"How can you be so mean!" the loli demon shrieked, splitting off two constantly shifting masses of Mana.
"Heh, I should be the one asking you—just how many Böse are there?"
Inside the open-air lord's manor, Nanoda looked at the two identical, mass-produced Böse before her, and was rather at a loss for words.
____
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