Chapter 188: The Undead Crown Kings
The smell of blood had saturated the city. The noise was constant and layered — screams of terror, sobbing, car horns, desperate cries for help — all of it blended into a sound that pressed against the eardrums like the end of the world.
Which, for the people living through it, was more or less what it was.
One hour since the formation appeared. The city's death toll was uncountable. So was the number of undead destroyed. The streets were covered in equal measure with human bodies and undead remains. Most survivors had barricaded themselves in their homes or found hiding places, waiting for something — anything — to change.
Tens of thousands dead. Maybe a hundred thousand by now.
Nobody knew.
"This is not a world I know. There is no magical energy in the air here whatsoever — no ambient mana. Fighting in a place like this means drawing entirely on stored reserves. And these strange structures. These fragile living humans."
The voice was a low, malevolent rasp.
A skeletal figure of indeterminate species crawled out of the formation and simply hung in the air, motionless, as though gravity had decided not to apply.
Another figure followed, wreathed in shifting black fog.
"This is definitely not a world any of us recognise. How did this happen? Still — this strange world has an enormous number of living humans. Far more than anywhere we know. Interesting."
Another emerged. Then another.
"Where did the bone dragon go? It came through first."
A fourth.
"I can't see it anywhere. I can't even feel its presence."
"It was probably killed. That one was always too impulsive — charged through ahead of everyone instead of waiting. Getting killed was an expected outcome."
"Have Elwooze and Gnawooze not come through yet?"
"They're behind us. A few moments."
"A completely new world. Nothing like this has ever happened before. But it doesn't matter — all these weak humans, they're basically a food supply. I can smell the blood from here. This city alone must have millions. Back in our world that would be an entire country's population."
"The food situation here is exceptional. Pity about the bone dragon."
"Be careful. The bone dragon was the weakest of our fifteen Crown Kings, and something killed it. Whatever did that is at least our equal."
"We've been noticed. Something in this world is watching us."
"…"
Tatsumaki floated in the air, several hundred metres away, watching them emerge one by one. Her expression was flat. Her dark green hair drifted in a wind that wasn't there. She made no move to attack — she waited until the last two figures wrapped in blood-red fog finally came through.
A few seconds passed. No further signatures.
The corner of her mouth moved slightly upward.
Fourteen. A lot.
Good.
She hadn't bothered to learn what any of them were called. They were enemies. That was the only classification that mattered.
"These fourteen should be the strongest. A lot of the flying undead have already assembled around them — very obedient. Fourteen… I wonder which one of these is the strongest."
There was something almost like curiosity in her expression. And beneath it, something sharper.
This was the only kind of fight that actually interested her. The kind where the other side might actually put up resistance. Same feeling as sparring against Yukari in the Arena. Same feeling — the one that made her want to actually engage instead of just finishing it.
Not that she'd ever beaten Yukari, but — ahem.
She didn't speak. Even though the Chat Group's cross-world function let her understand what they were saying, she had nothing to say to them.
So she simply acted.
A vast pulse of psychokinetic force discharged outward. The air across nearly half the city seemed to congeal. Her hair lifted. The hem of her skirt swayed. Her eyes were completely without expression.
"We've definitely been targeted — but what is this ability? There's no magical signature whatsoever, and yet the threat I'm sensing from it is lethal."
One of the undead Crown Kings, its gaze locked on Tatsumaki in the distance, felt something closing around every bone in its body.
It couldn't move.
The bones were creaking under the pressure. Hairline fractures forming. A few of its kind had faced humanity's most powerful light-attribute Archmages before — this felt worse than that. The pressure from this single opponent's presence alone exceeded anything it had encountered in its own world. And there were supposedly no more than three beings in that world who could generate this level of threat.
This world was full of weak humans. And yet this exists here.
The other thirteen were pulling back, moving to spread out.
The one being held could only watch.
Then a column of golden light with a diameter of several dozen metres streaked in from the east.
The thirteen scattered with impressive speed — whatever instinct or sensing ability they possessed had fired a fraction of a second before impact.
But the one Tatsumaki was holding had nowhere to go.
The beam hit it squarely. The undead enchantments layered across its bones began fracturing and peeling away. The temperature contained in the light was something its undead physiology had apparently never been designed to resist — it felt pain. An undead creature, feeling pain. It had forgotten how many centuries had passed since anything had managed that.
Every bone in its body was transmitting signals of distress to its soul-flame. It clenched its jaw rather than scream.
"Hey. Kizaru-uncle, were you seriously trying to steal my kill just now?"
Tatsumaki glanced sideways at Kizaru, who had materialised a few dozen metres away.
He shrugged. "This old man was simply testing their defensive capability~ That shot should have done serious damage — but it only achieved moderate injury? I underestimated them. Should have skipped the probe and hit them with everything immediately~"
"Defence is solid," Tatsumaki said flatly. "Combat strength is around the mid-range of Dragon-level threat. Still too weak."
The vein at her temple became more visible.
Her loosely clenched hand tightened.
The undead she was holding felt the force redouble. The cracks in its bones were multiplying. Then —
Crack.
A rib snapped.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Each break sent its soul-flame dimming further. The feeling spreading through what remained of its consciousness was very clear: if this continued, its soul would simply come apart.
Those other thirteen are just watching me die?
Then, through its narrowing field of vision — a familiar silhouette.
Moving fast. Diving toward the ground at full speed and slamming into the street below with enormous force.
That silhouette — wasn't that one of its own?
Someone hit one of the fourteen? How?
Before it could process that, a blood-red figure came spinning out of nowhere, bone fragments scattering across the sky.
It stared.
If it was remembering correctly, the only undead in their entire realm that moved within blood-red fog were the two lords — Elwooze and Gnawooze. The two beings second only to the Undead Sovereign himself.
One of them appeared to have just been hit hard enough to go flying.
Hit by what? By whom?
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