Belius Nflogo Biz was the captain of the 63rd company in the Slaine Theocracy, a position he was unequivocally undeserving of, but a position he occupied regardless.
The reason he became the captain of a company could be found in the generous donations the Nflogo family made to the Cardinal of Light on many occasions.
Belius knew of this, and so did many of his subordinates, but he didn't care. If they don't like it, he would say, then donate more money and take my place.
For him, his family was intrinsically connected to himself, so any merit his ancestors had that made the family rich was his for the taking.
His subordinates didn't like having him as their superior; he could see it in their faces, in how they dragged their bodies whenever he ordered them to do something, and especially in the whispers that followed him whenever he passed by them.
It was funny, really, because he also didn't want to have this job.
His bastard of a father had forced him into this position 'to build merit and honor for the family', what a bunch of nonsense.
He told him that they needed someone in the military to build connections, to preserve the family's interests, but Belius was way more interested in his new elf slaves and what he would do with them.
A lecherous smile would adorn his already perverted face whenever he thought about these things, and then he would twirl his blonde mustache like a stereotypical villain.
And a villain he was, he didn't care about the morality of his actions or if they would make others suffer; he only cared if it would affect him.
Funnily enough, this quality of his was one of the reasons he was chosen for this very mission. This time, the mission was simple enough. He only needed to lead the company to kill a few villages to draw the attention of the Warrior-captain of the Re-Estize Kingdom so that the Sunlight Scripture could kill him.
The only real instruction he received was to let a few villagers survive every time they burned down a village, and the rest was left to his own discretion.
This village, he thought, was just like the others, about two hundred commoners with no combat training. An easy hunt.
They appeared in the early morning, riding their horses and brandishing swords.
He cut off one child who was blocking his path, the body falling to the ground as a mournful scream escaped from who he assumed to be the mother.
Another knight who was just behind him beheaded the shrew with one swing.
The massacre had started, and voices of pain and screams of hate rose from the small village as villager after villager was slain one way or another.
At some point, he saw a beautiful young girl entering a house.
She was pretty enough to stir his appetite, so he followed her into the house, holding her wrist to claim his prize.
This girl would soon die, just like the others, so he figured he could do anything he wanted with her before killing her.
But then her father tackled him, holding him to the ground and allowing her to escape with the other women in the house.
He was furious, yelling for his subordinates to come and help him.
After they entered the house, they did a quick job of the father, but this wasn't enough for him.
Belius felt furious and humiliated. The girl was already his possession, for her to escape and for him to need the help of these comoners was a great humiliation for him. So he screamed for his subordinates to bring him the girl.
Two of them followed her into the forest.
With no clear target for his anger, he vented by hitting some of the villagers.
But just as he was beginning to calm down, it appeared.
It was big, and it was fast.
Before anyone could process what was happening, a horse had already been bisected by this creature.
Then Belius felt something hit him, and suddenly he was slammed into one of the wooden houses, breaking the wall and falling to the ground.
"HAHHN! Cough, cough, cough!" He felt the air leave his lungs and desperately tried to inhale more, but he began coughing without stopping.
He brought his hand to his mouth and found broken teeth and a lot of blood on it. A pain, like nothing he had ever felt, was irradiating from his torso.
Did I break something?
It was difficult to breathe, but he still turned to yell at his subordinates.
Why didn't they protect him?
But he stopped midway, the words dying in his mouth as he let a silent scream.
At some point, a creature had appeared in the village.
It was taller than any man he had ever seen, easily more than a head taller than even the tallest knight in his company.
It wore a spiked black armor that covered most of its body.
It brought a waved blade on its right and a tower shield on its left, but he didn't even notice that.
His attention was all on its rotten face and its empty eye sockets that irradiated a profound hatred for all living beings.
He felt a wet sensation in his pants as he emptied his bladder immediately.
What followed was a nightmare, as this undead monstrosity began to play with them.
First, it killed all of their horses, as easily as one might kill a sick kitten in the crib.
Then it stopped, waiting for them to react.
It seemed to be mocking them, telling them that there was no escaping from here, that they were locked with it.
One of the vice-captains, a comonner he didn't remember the name, rallied a group to face the undead knight.
They marched with as much bravery as they could muster to fight the creature, but it easily destroyed them, breaking their weapons and armor as easily as it had bisected the horses.
Belius stood up, only to fall again. His legs were trembling so much that he couldn't muster any strength to even move.
His body was taken by a primal fear that made it completely useless.
Then the creature took a step towards them, and his subordinates took one step back.
"Har, Har, Har!" The creature made a horrible sound that seemed to come right out of his worst nightmares.
Was it angry? Did they make it mad?
No. He knew exactly what this was.
"It… It's laughing." One of his subordinates spoke what all of them were thinking.
Somehow, this only made it scarier.
The undead knight took another step, and then another, and another. With each step, his knights got closer and closer to the center of the village.
They knew they were getting cornered, but there was nothing they could do about it.
But Belius couldn't move, and as the creature got closer to him, the fear gave him the strength to crawl.
"Har, Har, Har!" Once again, he heard the creature's terrifying laugh.
It seemed to find his suffering funny. It slowed down its pace, moving at a speed that still allowed him to crawl.
Whenever he slowed down, the undead knight would stab one of his limbs with its immense sword.
He once again found a new threshold of greatest pain he had ever felt.
As he moved, he left a trail of blood on his way, but it still wasn't enough, and he once again felt his whole body turn weightless as he was thrown to the ground right in the center of the village.
Would he die here, he wondered, surrounded by men whom he hated and who hated him back in a miserable village in the middle of nowhere?
Oh, how he hated his father for making him the captain of this company, and how he hated this cursed village, especially that girl whom he couldn't have.
Belius was looking at the sky, cursing his luck and the ones he felt were responsible for his fate, when he saw two figures flying towards him.
They were masked men, one with a butler outfit and the other with the robes of a magic caster.
He then heard the magic caster saying:
"Death Knight, that's enough."