"("^-^")!"
Reflected in the Red Knight's eyes were the monsters slowly ascending from the massive hole ripped into the throne room. Every single one of them was an undeniable powerhouse. To any regular soldier, the sight would offer nothing short of absolute despair. After all, excluding the Red Knight herself, every single one of Nagan's Quasi-Special Strategic Class assets had been deployed to the borders or sent on external missions. In a continent locked in perpetual warfare, dispersing military strength was the only way to defend the nation's territory.
Consequently, the elite soldiers protecting the capital numbered barely a thousand. Facing a literal wall of headless knights—approximately five thousand 'Dullahans,' each possessing combat specs roughly equivalent to the Red Knight—was a battle that could not be won through conventional means.
When fighting Tamer-types or Necromancers who commanded legions rather than fighting directly, an opponent typically overwhelmed through either overwhelming numbers or an overwhelming individual. This was the first time she had ever faced a monster who commanded both.
(And that's not even all of them...!)
Undead continued to surge from the breach. While these deceased entities accepted a crippling vulnerability to fire and holy attributes, they compensated by possessing an immense variety of specialized traits. There were those completely immune to physical trauma, wielders of complex magical arts, and defilers who spat lethal poisons and flesh-melting acids. Had they been naturally occurring undead, it would have been simple enough to gather intelligence and prepare countermeasures in advance, but...
Almost none of the undead standing before her matched any records in her knowledge.
If the Tactician were here, a single glance would likely allow him to deduce their approximate capabilities and deploy predefined countermeasures, but the Red Knight possessed no such analytical gift. While she recognized standard templates like the Dullahans, they had clearly been altered. A vast majority of these specimens bore heavy modifications unique to this specific Necromancer.
(On the other hand, our "Jet-Propulsion" martial arts, though exclusive to our military, have become widely known across the continent. There is no way an opponent who found our hidden passages and marched straight into the palace missed that data. We are thoroughly outmatched in both information advantage and sheer numbers. Furthermore...)
A temporary but remarkably potent Anti-Undead Barrier had been erected within the throne room. Even though they were acting inside the Tactician's grand script, "His Majesty" was physically present; failing to establish a sturdy defense would look incredibly suspicious. The Red Knight's presence here was for that exact purpose.
Furthermore, the Church—which continuously strove to remain the vanguard of humanity while keeping a strict political distance from state affairs—had been successfully integrated into this defensive operation by the Tactician. The holy barrier constructed by their clergy possessed a purification output lethal enough to disintegrate anything short of a true Special Strategic Class entity.
The undead were fundamentally fragile against the holy attribute, and the priests within this nation were exceptionally skilled. By all logical metrics, no undead should have been able to stand within this space unharmed, yet...
(Zero damage... Is it because of the Liches anchoring the rear?)
Her gaze pierced through the frontline to the rear of the Dullahan wall. Securely guarded by the vanguard were the spectral spellcasters: 'Liches.' Even when encountered as wild anomalies, their advanced magical proficiencies could drive entire regiments to ruin, and specific specimens possessed strategic command capabilities exceeding those of highly educated military officers. They were Quasi-Special Strategic Class monsters frequently revered as the "Kings of the Dead." Twelve of them stood in a seamless row, raising their staves in perfect unison to anchor the vanguard's defenses.
(It's one thing if they were wild beasts, but they are being steered by an actual 'intellect.' I suppose a barrier of this level was fully factored into her calculations...)
Dorothea tightened her focus.
The core directive she had received from the Tactician was remarkably simple: 'Survive.' While many lives occupied this room, her survival was the highest priority for Nagan's future operations. The Tactician had explicitly commanded that if the enemy shifted into a total war of attrition, she was to abandon everything and retreat immediately. While she trusted the Tactician's script implicitly to prevent such a worst-case scenario, she had fully steeled her resolve.
As she channeled strength into her sword-hand, aligning her senses entirely with the enemy vanguard, the opposing commander slowly ascended from the great abyss.
"My, quite a crowd~. Thank you ever so much for the grand reception~."
A young woman with raven hair emerged. Clad in a pitch-black robe that left her head completely exposed, her shoulder-length hair curled slightly inward, displaying meticulous grooming. Even to the female Red Knight, her striking beauty was undeniable outside the context of a battlefield. Furthermore, though obscured by the drapes of her robe, her silhouette possessed an exceptionally pronounced, voluptuous curve.
A massive contrast to the toddler-proportioned ostriches, Dorothea couldn't help but note.
The Necromancer ascended while seated upon a grotesque throne crafted entirely from fused bones. Having travelled on foot until now, she had hastily remodeled one of her vanguard units into a crude, mobile throne for her arrival. Standing directly beside the King of the Dead was the entity formerly known as the 'Beast King,' positioned like an immovable shield to guard his master.
An oppressive weight saturated the air—an aura designed to declare that the sovereign commanding these dead could never be weaker than her subordinates. Yet, to the Red Knight, who had already survived the terrifying aura of the ostriches, this pressure felt like a gentle spring breeze. In fact, rather than the breeze, a completely bizarre discrepancy—something entirely absent from the Tactician's script—caught her eye. Dorothea blurted out her question before she could stop herself.
"...Um, why are you wearing a robe over nothing but your bare skin?"
"...Eh? ...Ah."
※ Author's Note: As of Chapter 46, the Necromancer received and donned nothing but a robe from her undead subordinates. No depiction of acquiring or putting on undergarments or actual clothes has occurred since.
Every single male present in the room, including "His Majesty," simultaneously and violently whipped their gaze away from the Necromancer.
Finally registering her current state of dress, the Necromancer's face flushed a deep, boiling crimson. Keeping herself tightly wrapped in the fabric, she silently, smoothly slid back down into the massive hole she had just ascended from.
The Battle for the Nagan Royal Palace has been temporarily suspended for a wardrobe change!
◇◆◇◆◇
"...Wardrobe change?"
"? What's the matter, Dele? We are in the middle of a battle, you know. Though I suppose to you children, this might feel a bit tedious."
Shifting locations, we return to our long-awaited ostriches.
After their supreme leader and maternal figure, Wraith, had vaporized a Quasi-Special Strategic Class undead with her magic cannon, the ostriches immediately launched a full-scale charge. However, from the ostriches' perspective, this engagement was far from satisfying. No matter how hard they stomped, absolutely no meat was dropping.
To them, violence fell into only two categories: "Self-Defense" or "Hunting." Since the enemy had technically initiated hostilities, this fell under hunting... but the meat standing before them was completely rotten to the core. Being ostriches, eating it would likely result in nothing more than a minor case of 'My tummy hurts a little bit...' but it was inherently filthy, tasted foul, and they genuinely didn't want to touch or strike it. It was profoundly "stinky."
However, because their sibling Dele was shouting 'Let's do our best~!' and Mama had explicitly commanded from the rear, 'Make sure to follow Dele-chan's lead~!' they were giving it their all. They didn't really understand who "Dele" was and had already forgotten the context, but they vaguely understood that someone was issuing commands on Mama's behalf.
The ostrich children are enduring the stinky things and doing their absolute best.
As for Dele, who was supposed to be leading them... she had immediately picked up a random stray thought through her mental antennae and completely wiped her prior train of thought.
"??? Did something happen?"
"My, you've forgotten already. Well, no matter. Let's focus on thinning out the enemy numbers for now."
"Okaaa~y!"
No matter how intelligent an ostrich became, it remained an ostrich—crucial data and trivial thoughts were cleared from their memory banks with equal, sweeping velocity. The only permanent fixture was Mama's face. Riding atop Dele's back, Amelia smiled softly. 'I see some things truly never change.' Both figures displayed absolute composure, which was only natural; the ostrich flock could never struggle against low-tier chaff undead.
"Cha~rge!"
"""""Yay!"""""
"Beat them up~!"
"So dirty!"
"Go away!"
"Poop got on me! Gross!"
The original vessels of these undead were the soldiers of the Beast Kingdom who had previously been trampled into paste by the ostrich flock. No matter how much they were augmented through necromancy, they were unfortunate souls whom the Necromancer had dismissed with: 'It takes too much time and effort to overhaul them~, and they aren't particularly good base materials anyway~.' Their power multiplier was 1.5 times their living spec at best. At that tier, matching an ostrich was an impossibility.
A few specialized undead attempted to utilize elemental payloads like poison or acid, but...
"It tingles!"
"Tingles? You okay?"
"All better! I'm okay!"
The attacks possessed zero practical efficacy.
Had they been the elite generals of the Beast Kingdom who possessed reasonable baseline strength, they might have managed to inflict a superficial scratch. However, those individuals had already been thoroughly purified by Wraith-chan, blasted into the great beyond. At this very moment, they were likely greeting the Beast King in the afterlife, desperately brainstorming technique names that didn't sound incredibly chuunibyou. In short, there wasn't a single entity on this battlefield capable of matching the ostriches.
Amidst this absolute unilateral slaughter, Dele barked out a fresh directive.
"Next! Over here!"
"Over here!"
"Over here!"
"Which way?"
"Mama! Mama! Pick me up!"
Flapping her wings wide, she selected the next cluster of undead to flatten while projecting instructions to the rear. She attempted to recreate the tactical commanding aura Mama had shown back on the plains and utilize the direct lessons Mama had provided the previous day to convey complex structural data to her siblings.
Yet, it didn't manifest nearly as seamlessly as Mama's execution. With more practical experience, she would likely master it, but currently, several lines of instruction failed to reach certain chicks, while others simply weren't paying attention. The data successfully reached about fifty ostriches in Dele's immediate vicinity; the remaining hundred and fifty merely followed along because 'our siblings are running over there, so let's go too.' The final hundred had absolutely no idea what was happening.
Had Dele been entirely alone, the flock would have eventually scattered in random directions, but there was no cause for alarm. Following closely behind was everyone's beloved Wraith-mama.
"Mama~! The dirty things are gross~!"
"Oh dear, did you kick right through its stomach? Amelia, could you give us some water~?"
"Yes, yes. 『Water Ball』."
To Mama, managing an army of ostriches with question marks floating over their heads was child's play. Comforting the chick who had accidentally stepped in "gunk," she thoroughly rinsed its feet while simultaneously projecting immediate pathing corrections to the confused ostriches, all while taking mental notes on how to refine Dele's training after the engagement. Furthermore, she surveyed the wider theater, checking which defensive lines required ostrich deployment, organizing the tactical flow, and funneling refined data directly to Dele through Amelia at the front.
She was executing an absurd volume of multi-tasking entirely on her own.
"It looks like everyone is heading over that way. Come on, dash, dash."
"It's true!"
"Hurry up!"
"Run~!"
"Mama come too! Come too!"
"Yes, yes, give me just a moment."
With that, the sweeping cleanup progressed perfectly.
The Tactician had engineered the broad strategic framework and specialized equipment; Matilde utilized those tools to deploy flawless field tactics. The moment Nagan's forces pinned the undead to prevent casualties, the ostrich flock charged through to obliterate the cluster. The allied forces of Ostriches, Heed, and Nagan combined numbered barely over a thousand, and the active milita of the Beast Kingdom numbered roughly three thousand. Though facing a staggering numerical disadvantage against thirty thousand undead, the tactical flow belonged entirely to the ostriches.
Because absolute elemental advantage was maintained at all times, the front lines never buckled. Any sector experiencing minor structural strain was immediately reinforced by the Tactician's hidden triggers, and Wraith's battlefield awareness allowed her to route the ostriches instantly to patch any gaps. The frontline infantry could endure any pressure as long as they knew the unstoppable ostrich wall-clearing units were en route.
Before long, the active threats ceased to exist. By the time the ostrich children gathered around Mama, begging her to wash the grime off their feet, the eradication of the vanguard was absolute.
"Mama! All done! Is Dele amazing!?"
"Yes, yes! Amazing! You worked so incredibly hard~!"
Wraith showered affection upon the chicks who crowded around her, desperately seeking praise, with Dele receiving an extra thorough scratching behind the ears. Every single one of them had endured the foul odors to execute their duties and listened to Dele's voice, resulting in a giant pile of ruffling feathers. With the work completed, Wraith began planning a trip to a nearby river to give the children a thorough bath, but...
She registered an anomaly.
A "delayed trigger" left behind by the Necromancer. A composite entity forged from the collective malice of undead that had suffered a second death.
Right now, it was drawing its first breath.
"...Oh?"
Well, no matter how hard it tried, it wasn't going to beat Wraith-chan anyway.
◇◆◇◆◇
Returning to the Nagan Royal Palace.
Whether she had brought extra garments along or her undead subordinates had been carrying them was something the Red Knight couldn't determine, though judging by the muffled voices praising a "pet undead" from the depths of the breach, it was likely the latter. The Necromancer ascended once more, seated upon her skeletal chair, attempting to completely restart her grand entrance.
"N-Now then~. L-Let us resume where we left off~."
However, her trembling voice made it blindingly obvious that her mental composure was entirely shattered.
While the Red Knight had only recently evolved past being a simple "pawn," she had previously experienced the absolute mortification of losing control of her functions due to pure terror, allowing her to empathize profoundly with the Necromancer's current psychological state. A grand entrance is supposed to be the absolute pinnacle of a villain's presentation; to realize mid-delivery that you are completely unclothed...
(Ah. Nope. I would literally pass out and die on the spot. Let's actively avoid thinking about it.)
Engaging in mild reality detachment, the Red Knight locked her focus back onto her opponent. The Necromancer was attempting to project a composed expression, but her ears were burning a bright, radiant scarlet. She was likely still screaming internally from the sheer embarrassment.
Unbeknownst to Dorothea, because the Necromancer had spent years isolated from human society surrounded exclusively by her undead minions, her basic social awareness regarding clothing had severely degraded. Living inside a secluded fortress with nothing but loyal pets meant clothes naturally became irrelevant, eventually solidifying into a daily habit. It was an entirely logical progression for her lifestyle.
However, despite lacking any actual exhibitionist tendencies, she had just suffered a catastrophic social detonation directly in front of an entire royal court.
(How tragic...)
Furthermore, by a stroke of peculiar fortune, the soldiers defending the throne room were fundamentally decent people. While some harbored extreme political ideologies, the Necromancer was undeniably a baseline human, removing her from the scope of their racial biases. Consequently, the gaze of the entire room was incredibly warm and supportive.
There were middle-aged soldiers looking at her with the gentle, forgiving eyes of a father watching a daughter trip on stage; older brothers looking away to completely overwrite the memory; and even a female knight offering a silent, encouraging thumbs-up as if to say 'Your skin texture was lovely.' The psychological landscape was pure chaos.
(...P-Perhaps I shouldn't have pointed it out.)
Watching the Necromancer stand enveloped in an unexpected wave of collective human kindness, the Red Knight felt a twinge of regret. The aura the Necromancer projected was undeniably equivalent to a Special Strategic Class entity, and the sheer martial weight of the Beast King standing beside her was enough to make one's bones rattle. Without the Tactician's pre-laid blueprint, Dorothea would have accepted her death right then and there.
Yet, compared to the raw, suffocating pressure she had experienced from Wraith and the ostriches—the kind that caused physical system failures—this was entirely manageable. The cloaked figure before her was terrifying, but having survived an even higher tier of absolute horror, Dorothea found this aura to be nothing more than a passing breeze. It was precisely because she hadn't been paralyzed by fear that she had noticed the wardrobe issue in the first place, but she couldn't help but wonder if keeping her mouth shut would have been the more honorable choice.
"Now then... Beast King. You are up~."
While the Red Knight wrestled with her conscience, the tactical situation advanced. Having finally forced her consciousness back into a combat frame, the Necromancer deployed the Beast King to shatter the lingering awkwardness. Dorothea snapped back into her stance. Her opponent was an overwhelmingly superior combatant, but as long as she could lure him to the designated coordinates, a path to victory existed.
"The legendary Beast King... I presume."
"..."
The deceased monarch offered no response. Dorothea was aware that his remains had been secured by an unknown party after his defeat by Wraith, but she had never anticipated facing him under these circumstances. Historical data was one thing; facing the physical reality was entirely different. The profound sacrilege of desecrating the dead, coupled with the absolute duty to grant this sovereign his final rest, weighed heavily upon her.
The Tactician had stated that actual victory in this duel was irrelevant to the broader plan, but as a warrior, the hunger for triumph remained vibrant within her. The realization that she had broken through her personal ceiling after her clash with Amelia the Elf had reignited a specific spark: the desire to ascend to the Special Strategic Class.
(First... I will bring down the warrior standing right in front of me.)
"Red Knight, Dorothea Eques. Advancing!"
"Go play with her~, my absolute masterpiece."
The instant her foot struck the floor, she activated her Jet-Propulsion system, accelerating to a blinding velocity. Based on the Necromancer's specific wording, Dorothea deduced that the Beast King would not be exerting his full lethality from the opening exchange. ...However.
"ッ!"
A maximum-output thrust, channeling the combined mass and velocity of her jet-augmented full plate. Against any conventional master, this strike was completely unavoidable, designed to pierce clean through the target. Because it concentrated entire momentum in a single trajectory, it left her dangerously exposed—a technique strictly reserved for a decisive opening gambit—but it was an attack she executed with absolute confidence in its theoretical lethal capacity. Even a Special Strategic Class asset should have suffered a severe wound. Or so she believed.
Yet, he was entirely unmarked.
"You see, undead are quite fascinating~. They fundamentally surpass their living specifications. Especially in regards to cellular density and physical rigidity~."
The Beast King had halted her blade using nothing but his bare fist.
An unadorned, straightforward punch. No complex magical barriers, no visible reinforcement arrays. He had caught a maximum-velocity kinetic payload using raw physical durability alone.
"Now then, Red Knight-chan was it? Do your best~."
The moment the words left the Necromancer's lips, a relentless tempest of blows commenced.
The Beast King executed the flawless, highly refined martial arts he had mastered during his life. Because the directive was merely to 'play,' the structural lethality of his strikes was heavily suppressed. Yet, to the Red Knight tasked with intercepting this sequence at point-blank range, the experience was indistinguishable from hell. She was acutely aware that he was holding back, treating her as a mere plaything, yet merely avoiding a lethal puncture consumed every ounce of her cognitive focus. Crafting a counter-offensive was completely out of the question.
She swung her blade to intercept the incoming fists, but her baseline reflexes were utterly outpaced. To survive, she resorted to violently compressing the air within her armor's venting arrays, triggering directional micro-explosions to forcibly wrench her limbs into position. Though she managed to catch the impact of his fists upon her sword, minimizing direct torso trauma, her entire skeletal structure groaned under the feedback. A battle violently exceeding her anatomical limits was unfolding.
(This is insane... ッ!)
Barely a dozen seconds had passed, yet to the Red Knight, the duration felt entirely eternal. After an exchange exceeding a hundred continuous clashes, the structural equilibrium shattered.
Despite her continuous parries with blade and shield, her operational capacity finally hit a wall. Her heavy shield was positioned to deflect an incoming punch, but whether due to systemic fatigue accumulating in her muscles or the violent strain of her directional explosions, her angle deviated by a fraction of a degree. She received the Beast King's fist flat against the face of her shield.
(Crap—!)
She immediately attempted to ditch the shield to preserve her balance, but the velocity was too great. The Beast King's completely unaugmented fist punched directly through the mythril heavy shield, his knuckles driving forward toward her torso.
(Move—!)
Forcibly solidifying the air directly before her chest, she triggered an emergency rearward blast. Because the compression was executed too rapidly, the shockwave wasn't perfectly directed, peppering her body with concussive backfire, but it was an acceptable trade-off. Ignoring the sharp pain, she barely managed to pull her torso out of the primary trajectory.
The fist that should have bored through her abdomen grazed her breastplate, instantly reducing that section of the armor to shrapnel. Had it achieved clean contact, it would have been an instant, lethal perforation.
To conclude the engagement against the target he had failed to eliminate, the Beast King took one decisive step forward.
Deep into the trap coordinates.
"Now!"
The instant the cry left her lips, Nagan's personal guard moved as a single entity.
The specialized tactical trigger constructed by the Tactician was officially activated.
"Ahaha, a trap of that caliber was easily factored into—ッ!"
For the very first time, the Necromancer's expression warped.
Through her extensive undead espionage network, she had thoroughly mapped out the existence of Nagan's defensive arrays. When she had first acquired the blueprints, she had been deeply impressed by the Tactician's intellect, even attempting to replicate the design parameters within her own network. While she couldn't reproduce the exact components, she fully understood the underlying magical theory and the structural objective of the trap.
An array designed to temporarily suppress the target's internal mana pool while simultaneously applying multiple debilitating status ailments to enforce total paralysis. An incredibly expensive and time-consuming construct to produce, but one designed to cleanly downgrade the Beast King to a tier where the Red Knight could execute a lethal strike. Having known of its existence, the Necromancer had naturally layered counter-measures onto her minion.
However, the array manifesting before her eyes was fundamentally different from her intelligence reports.
While the baseline theoretical foundation was identical, the functional output had been completely inverted. This array utilized the target's own massive mana pool as the catalyst to manifest binding chains. The greater the internal magical volume of the victim, the more numerous and unbreakable the constraints became. Furthermore, once total immobility was achieved, it was programmed to funnel an extreme-output holy attribute payload.
The magical density cascading through the room left the Necromancer with an absolute, undeniable mathematical certainty: The Beast King was about to be completely vaporized.
"FIRE!!!"
In that exact fraction of a second, the Beast King's entire field of vision was swallowed by pure, radiant light.
"Screen time too short!"
"Give us more scenes~!"
"Hey, it's not over yet! Liar!"
"Food!"