Ghostly Conferences
“What… the undead are retreating?”
One of the knights who was struggling on the city wall noticed something unusual and whispered.
The surrounding undead were still rampaging, but the undead below the wall were clearing the ladders and retreating.
They also stopped attacking the city gates and retreated, pulling back their battering rams.
He wondered for a moment if they had won, but then decided that they hadn’t.
There was no way that a powerful enemy that had broken through even the protective barrier could be defeated so easily.
As if to confirm this prediction, a huge shadow crossed right above them.
There was no time to watch the battle above the capital, but when the undead cavalrymen, who were returning more frequently than they were coming, were seen, it was clearer than daylight what had happened.
“Damn… what’s going on, this…”
*
“Here is the status report. Our objectives in the first phase of the battle have been largely achieved. As you know the battle for the city walls. We have taken out a good number of knights. Also, the troops who crossed the city walls fought an urban battle. They also defeated a few adventurers and knights. The remaining troops on the city walls and in the city are fighting to the last man, and the rest are retreating.”
“Yes, that’s good.”
On the wyvern, René received a report from Alastair on the call mark.
The main camp, the palanquin, and the tent that had been erected beside it as a command post came into view, and René made the wyvern slow down.
As the ground approached, René jumped down and ran directly into the tent.
Alastair was staring at the table, looking the same as he did when she exited.
“I’m glad to see you’re all right, my lady.”
“Even Ciel-Terra’s airborne cavalry have started carrying priests. It’s going to be tough if we go in head-on.”
“I see. Then, let’s discuss our strategy. … Well, if the operation goes well from here on, air control will become less important. If it becomes an urban battle, the enemy airborne cavalry will be less likely to move in.”
“Oh yeah, what about that?”
Alastair grinned thoughtfully at René’s question.
“As you have instructed, we have not killed any members of the Second Order of Knights. We also captured one of the Second Order’s archers alive and kidnapped him during the battle on the city wall.”
“Well done. Now then…”
As René was about to speak, one of the call marks on the table made a noise.
“How’s it going?”
Alastair asked, and a hushed voice came from the other end.
“… The assassination squad succeeded in infiltrating the Temple. However, the enemy force was stronger than expected and they had a hard time. We took out four priests, but we lost the Skeleton Assassins entrusted to us by Her Highness. It seems that the adventurers of the priestly type who were in the royal capital have been gathered together. A party of escorts is also present…”
The call mark reported that the Ghoul Scout commanded an undercover assassination squad composed of Skeleton Assassins (created from the corpses of Thief adventurers and Night Pythons assassin squads.)
The objective was to infiltrate a temple and eliminate the priests who were performing healing and casting ≪Consecration≫. Temple priests, even those who could use holy magic, were not experts in combat, so if they were successful, they would be able to block the enemy’s recovery at once.
However, it didn’t seem to go so well.
“Are there any adventurers in the temple?”
“Yes. It was an adventurer who led the ritual magic.”
I see, René thought.
There were many different kinds of ‘adventurers’ in the world. For example, if an adventurer had the experience of fighting a defensive battle against a large number of undead in a town, it would not be surprising if that adventurer had some sort of influence over the temple.
But Alastair’s reaction was furious.
” Adventurers!? Do you think those barbaric rats could possibly have this much wisdom!?”
He was distraught, his tone sounding like he was saying that the ghouls reporting to him were lying. He resembled the duke before his death when he had been distraught by René’s attack.
Seeing this, René adjusted her evaluation of Alastair downward.
–Oh, …so that’s the kind of person he is. He’s smart, but he’s weak against the appearance of non-standard opponents, and he basically treats adventurers and ordinary people like fools… He might be too sensitive after all.
Revenants inherited their memories and personality from before they were born, if they were nicely made. What appeared here was Alastair as he was before his death, except that he was absolutely loyal to René. He had inherited not only his pre-birth wisdom, but also his foolishness.
“Is there any sign of preparation for the next ritual?”
“I believe they were already using up what little catalyst they had during the ceremony earlier. It seems that the adventurers in the streets have been collecting the same amount of catalysts, so it would be difficult to gather them all.”
When using ritual magic, the catalysts used to increase the power of the magic differed from system to system. And only temples performed rituals with holy magic. There were few places that went to the trouble of storing catalysts for performing rituals with holy magic.
The Knights also have their own exclusive holy magicians, but their main role was to be the front line “medic”, and it seemed that the Knights did not have the know-how and preparation for ritual magic.
“I’ve seen the signs, too. Now I’m going to launch my final attack…”
” You’ve done well. My thoughts are with you until the very end.”
René said something she didn’t mean.
“What a waste of your words.”
And the communication was cut off. Forever.
“Well, then I must do my job.”
“The prisoner is being held in another tent. I decided it was best not to show my face, so I haven’t explained the situation yet.”
“I understand… But first, I’d better change my clothes. I’ve gotten a little dirty in the battle.”
＊ ＊ ＊
Humphrey thought a hundred times that he was probably the unluckiest man in the world at that moment.
Humphrey was an archer belonging to the Second Order of Knights of the Kingdom of Ciel-Terra. He was a former commoner who had earned himself a title of a first generation noble by being made a knight under the direct command of the royal court. He married the daughter of a merchant four years earlier, and fathered a son and a daughter.
While fighting atop the city wall, he was captured by a climbing skeleton and carried off.
It was terrifying to be carried by the skeletons and swept backward in the muddy current of the undead running silently across the battlefield.
And now, Humphrey was tied to a chair in a tent in the main camp of the undead.
Inside the tent, there was a thick stake driven into the ground, and Humphrey was tied to the stake along with his chair.
He tried to struggle against it, but it didn’t budge.
He was even carefully gagged, probably to prevent him from biting his tongue off and dying.
He had no idea what was going on.
For the time being, it seemed that death was not an option, but if so, what would the undead do to a living person was beyond comprehension.
There was no one else in the small tent, and nothing was going on, but that was frightening.
All he could think about was the possibility of some terrifying creature slipping through the fluttering doorway and entering at any moment.
But when a girl entered the tent, Humphrey was struck by something other than fear.
She was a girl in a white dress. Her straight silver hair was almost to her back and shining, and her silver eyes were bewitchingly beautiful.
Her face was innocent like a child’s, but her behavior was somehow elegant.
Her entire body was white and silver, including her exquisitely white skin. …Except for the rose print on the skirt of her dress, which looked like it had been struck with a large paintbrush dipped in fresh blood.
Her nobility and beauty struck Humphrey like a bolt of lightning.
–Silver-haired, silver-eyed, noble girl … assuming that she is…!?
The one Humphrey and his friends were fighting right now.
The undead, the daughter of the former king. The “Rose Princess of Hellrage”. She was René “Rosey” Ruvia Ciel-Terra.
“Greetings, Knight. Though you are a disloyal servant of a false king, let me offer you a courtesy as a military officer to you now that you are a prisoner of war. My name is René “Rosey” Ruvia Ciel-Terra.”
René picked up the hem of her skirt and bowed lightly with her knees bent.
It was a graceful yet somewhat girlish gesture.
“I am sorry for being so forceful. But I really wanted to speak with the Second Order.”
A large number of questions were swirling in Humphrey’s head. The question marks were pouring out of his ears and threatening to spill out.
“I have no intention of harming you, no matter what the outcome of our discussion. I will send you back to the city with my teleport magic. So please listen to me calmly. I will release you from your restraints now.”
As soon as René announced that she was going to release him, Humphrey’s body relaxed.
He didn’t know what it was, but both the rope and the gag that had tied Humphrey down had been cut in two from behind him, and he fell to the ground.
“W-why aren’t you a … skeleton?”
As soon as the gag came off.
Of all the questions swirling around in his head, this was the first one that popped out of his mouth.
Humphrey thought ‘Oh shoot’ after he said it. It was a very unimportant question. If he offended René by saying such an impolite thing, he could be killed immediately.
However, René, who looked a little taken aback, immediately broke into a smile and laughed, elegantly holding her mouth shut.
She looked amused and happy, and if one were to just look at her, she wouldn’t look like a monster. She was just a well-brought-up girl.
“Fufufu. That was just to scare them a little. It’s not an appropriate look for a conversation, so I’m in a different form now.”
Then, with a serious, slightly nervous look on her face, she cut in.
“I have nothing else to say to you. I want the Commander of the Second Order of Knights to cooperate with us in order to end the battle with as few casualties as possible.”
Humphrey gasped at the sincerity in her eyes.
The Second Knight Commander, Bertil Lagerbeck.
He was not a glamorous and charismatic hero like Lawrence, but he was a steady soldier and trusted by the people. Like most knights, Humphrey adored Bertil.
To that Bertil. He was told that it would be an invitation to communicate privately.
“Are you acquainted with the Commander …?”
“No, I am not. But if he didn’t take part in the coup, he might be willing to listen.”
René’s tone was somber, as though to say that Bertil was the last hope.
When Hilbert II, the king’s younger brother, raised the banner of a coup d’etat, the First Order of Knights, led by Lawrence, was complicit in it, and the Second Order acquiesced, thus deciding the course of events.
But Humphrey knew that the Commander never tacitly approved of the coup because he “didn’t care what happened to the king”.
If the Second Order were to have followed the king into battle against the First Order, Bertil believed that the Second Order would have been defeated after exhausting each other. If that were to happen, Ciel-Terra would be in ruins, and even if the Knights were destroyed, the Federation behind the king and the Second Order and the four powers behind the king’s brother and the First Order would be fighting over Ciel-Terra.
Bertil thought that the actions of the King’s brother and the First Order were foolish, but as a bitter choice, he decided to tacitly endorse the coup d’état.
” I, too, do not want to burn down the capital to the ground and kill so many people in order to take revenge. That is why I need the Commander of the Second Order to help me.”
Humphrey could not help but stare.
A princess who had risen as an undead out of resentment, an invader who had led 4,000 undead to attack the capital.
She said she didn’t want to kill innocent civilians if possible.
The fact that she was so earnest in her appeal didn’t seem like a lie at the very least.
“So, I would like you to pass a message to him. Can you do that for me?”
“… It depends on what you want the … Commander and the Second Order to do.”
René smiled at Humphrey as he carefully, cautiously said that.
It was a smile like a gentle shining silver moon.
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