A Knight Who Eternally Regresses-Chapter 408: Ten Thousand Wraiths

A single trickle of blood ran down her lips instead.

It was proof that she, too, was fighting.

Andrew let out a sigh.

The situation was like dealing with a rabid dog.

Beyond the battlefield, the fighting had suddenly halted, and then, out of nowhere, a swarm of crazed bastards surged forward.

"Where the hell did these freaks come from?"

A completely unexpected ambush.

"Why here, of all places?"

It wasn’t where the supplies were stored. It wasn’t even where Crang was.

From a tactical standpoint, this location had no significance at all.

It had to be because of Esther. Andrew realized that much.

Over fifty foot soldiers. Each one of them looked formidable.

Fifty ghouls would have been preferable.

"Leader, look at their damn eyes."

One of the freckled trainees stepped back a little as he spoke. Andrew had already noticed.

Blood vessels had burst in their eyes, causing crimson tears to stream down their faces. For the relatively ‘normal’ ones, it was difficult to even make out the whites of their eyes.

Blood-red sclera. Pitch-black pupils.

Just one change in their eyes, and they no longer looked human.

Even their appearance alone was overwhelming. Andrew gritted his teeth.

"Should we fall back?"

He and the five trainees had formed a formation around Esther, but if they fought here, it would be a slaughter.

But what if he carried Esther and ran?

The blood-eyed soldiers all let their swords hang at their sides, their massive thigh muscles straining as if on the verge of bursting.

What kind of training had they undergone to make their thighs that thick?

"Running away on foot would be impossible."

Even if he fled alone, it would be a close call. Carrying someone was out of the question.

It was broad daylight, yet the sky seemed to be darkening. The battlefield was right in front of them, so they should have felt the heat, but instead, an eerie chill filled the air.

No—it had been warm just a moment ago. The sudden coldness felt unnatural.

The soldiers were advancing without any proper formation.

There was an old legend about angels who wept blood as they fought. They were called upon by the gods but shed tears of sorrow, unwilling to kill.

Of course, these soldiers were the opposite.

They had taken drugs to push their physical abilities to the limit.

"Ma... ma... mage... tear... tear... kill... kill..."

One soldier at the center, who was not crying blood, stammered out his words.

The way he spoke was painful to hear, but his intent was clear. Their target was the mage.

What the hell was the main unit doing, letting these freaks through?

Did the commander even know what was happening here?

Andrew had every right to feel frustrated.

"Leader."

One of the trainees called out to him. The logical choice was still there—if they ran, they could survive. He had no obligation to protect Esther.

"What can I do if I can’t even protect the person behind me?"

He recalled something the commander had said once.

As he stood at the brink of death, Andrew reflected on all the time he had spent with Enkrid since they first met.

What had he learned from him?

"If I run away, unable to protect a single woman, then how could I ever protect my own honor? If I must survive that way, then from today onward, I will abandon the name Gardener."

Rather than flee, he would die here.

"Kuh... kuh... kuh..."

"Shut the hell up."

Andrew cut off the stammering bastard’s words.

"Let’s see how dying feels."

The freckled trainee spoke as he positioned the four others. Andrew stood in the center and swung his sword downward in a vertical slash.

A downward stroke. A declaration of intent.

The enemy’s detached unit charged forward, blood streaming from their eyes and saliva dripping from their mouths.

"Graaaahhh!"

Their cries blurred the line between war cries and screams.

Their movements were just as terrifying as their appearance. Their dangling swords swung with incredible speed and power. They lunged with their feet and clawed with their nails.

Were they even human?

It was the kind of thing people joked about—maybe their mother really had been a ghoul.

Half-ghoul hybrids? Ridiculous. But right now, those freaks were standing right in front of him.

"You sons of bitches, bring it on!"

Andrew roared. A sword had already pierced his thigh, and his leg refused to move properly, but that didn’t matter.

He held out for as long as he could.

Boom!

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

Andrew thought a boulder had been hurled at him.

Blood trickled down his torn scalp, blurring his vision in red.

Through the haze, he saw a charging war machine. No—looking closer, it was a person.

A giant of a woman, wielding a massive club in one hand and a broad sword in the other, crushing and cleaving through the enemy ranks.

A "red potato."

That was the first thought that popped into Andrew’s mind as he saw the pulverized bodies.

He had already reached his limit. This was aid arriving at the very brink of death.

It was the half-giant warrior, Teresa.

Beside her was Dunbakel, dual-wielding scimitars, moving like a deranged shaman in a trance.

The curved blades in her hands slashed, stabbed, and twisted through the enemy ranks.

Together, they mercilessly slaughtered the detached unit and rushed to Andrew’s side.

"Hey, you still breathing?"

"You almost look beautiful to me."

Andrew wiped the blood from his eyes and smirked.

"I was always beautiful."

"The other one looks even prettier."

Andrew motioned toward Dunbakel with his chin.

Teresa’s shield and sword moved like a meat grinder. If the word "merciless" had a perfect moment, it was now.

The towering warrior blurred the battlefield’s depth as she crushed, shattered, and tore apart over a dozen enemies in mere moments.

No one would call it beauty, but Andrew meant every word.

These two had saved his life. He could say even more if he wanted to.

Andrew slumped to the ground.

Before Enkrid set out to face the count, he had sent Dunbakel and Teresa to Esther.

If Esther had reached out through some sort of projection, it meant she couldn’t come in person.

That alone was proof that the situation was dire.

It wasn’t instinct—this was a rational decision.

That was why Dunbakel and Teresa had been sent here.

Of course, Dunbakel had felt instinctive fear and self-loathing upon seeing the count.

And Teresa was annoyed, realizing how lacking her skills still were.

Yet, in the middle of all this, there was someone who had needed them.

Seeing Andrew alive improved their mood, even if just a little.

Cough!

Just before they finished exterminating the ambushing soldiers, Teresa and Dunbakel saw Esther cough up blood.

She briefly opened her eyes.

"Witch?"

Andrew called out to her, but Esther did not respond before closing her eyes again.

Something was wrong.

Esther, resisting the count’s mana that had invaded her, opened her eyes in the world beyond once more.

Black smoke-like soot was spreading from the count’s body.

She had been struck.

To be precise, it wasn’t that she had been caught off guard—there was no avoiding it.

The enemy had been prepared. And she had yet to recover all of her mana.

If her domain had been intact, she wouldn’t have been affected.

"So what?"

Esther looked at the man who never knew how to give up. She had learned something from him.

And she knew herself well.

Her pride—bordering on arrogance—would never allow her to back down.

Did they think she would retreat?

That bastard of a mage, the so-called Count, had set the stage, and there was no way Esther could let it stand.

If winning head-on was difficult, then another method would do.

A backup plan.

Of course, a few prerequisites were necessary.

For one, the source of that blackened soot—the one who had unleashed the mana—had to be beaten within an inch of his life, or outright killed.

Enki will do it.

A mage’s prediction was prophecy. It was a conclusion reached by weighing the circumstances.

But what Esther told herself wasn’t a prophecy.

Nor was it a mere wish.

It was belief.

The faith built upon the trust she had placed in a man whose life she had witnessed with her own eyes.

Enki was the kind of person who did what he set out to do.

With that conviction, Esther prepared her backup plan.

***

The Count did not explode in anger. Throwing tantrums just because things didn’t go his way was something fit for a seven-year-old child.

Is this a problem beyond my ability to handle?

No, he could handle it.

Has the plan completely fallen apart?

Not quite.

His cold mind quickly cooled his irritation.

The distortion of his prepared magic circle was infuriating, but it wasn’t a complete loss.

He couldn’t devour the entire kingdom in one go, but a single battlefield was still within his grasp.

But didn’t I originally need the kingdom intact?

This all started because he desired power, didn’t it?

As he tried to recall his past self, another voice inside him asked:

Does it matter?

The Count answered.

No.

Whether it was ruled by a sword or by submission, a throne was still a throne.

Expand his dominion. Stain the world.

He whispered the words to himself as he resumed chanting, using the distorted magic circle as his foundation.

In truth, it was a spell his other self had been reciting continuously since the start of the battle.

Though the ambush had failed and the enemy mage had interfered with his domain, that could be dealt with later.

For now, there were souls to reap.

Raising the staff in his hand, the Count pointed it forward.

From the tip, black soot began to spread.

Even though it was already dim, the broad daylight darkened further.

Behind the Count, storm clouds as thick as ink gathered, resembling a throne of shadows.

A sky without thunder, heavy and ominous, loomed overhead.

The darkness swallowed the sunlight.

Everything threatened to be drowned in black.

"W-what is that?"

A soldier from the kingdom's army looked up in horror at the eerie sight.

The blackened sky expanded, reaching down to the ground. The creeping soot brushed against the soldier’s arm.

It must have ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ been a trick of the thickened clouds. That was the only explanation. But if there was no sunlight, how was there a shadow?

The sky was like an overcast, suffocatingly cloudy day, yet somehow, everything remained visible.

Cold reason whispered its reassurances.

But instinct screamed otherwise.

The soldier tried to shake off the soot from his arm, but it only spread, binding his limbs.

"Ugh..."

He felt something invading his body.

It wasn’t physical.

Give me your body.

A voice that crawled into his mind. A wraith.

His eyes rolled back, leaving only the whites visible, and drool trickled from his mouth.

The Count smiled at the result and declared loudly:

"Endure the wrath of ten thousand wraiths!"

His voice echoed across the battlefield, full of confidence. Layered in unnatural reverberations, it sent chills through ordinary soldiers.

The soot itself drained the life from men—it was a wraith made manifest.

The thickest of these blackened souls reached the five who advanced toward the Count.

Enkrid heard a whisper.

Give me your body.

Before he could even think of a response, his will reacted instinctively, repelling the invasion.

A wraith could not stain his will.

The entity was thrown back.

...Give me your body.

Thud.

Silence.

The wraith turned away from Enkrid.

Another wraith approached Rem, but Rem knew how to handle these things.

That didn’t mean he wanted to touch something so filthy. It was like spotting a rotten egg on a sweltering summer day—just looking at it made you want to hold your nose.

So he swung his axe.

Whuum!

A vertical arc split the wraith’s essence apart.

He still carried remnants of the Mad Lich’s sorcery, and cutting through wraiths was nothing but a mere trick.

Even without sorcery, he could have found a way.

Ragna ignored them.

A wraith clung to him, whispering insistently.

Give me your body. Can’t you hear me? Give me your body.

But Ragna remained silent.

The wraith gave up.

Even a wraith needed a reaction to work with.

No wraith could pierce Ragna’s rock-solid will.

Jaxon, trailing slightly behind the others, sensed the wraith approaching and dodged.

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The soot seemed to spread everywhere, but a careful eye could find gaps to slip through.

It wasn’t even difficult.

And if dodging ever failed, he had a few artifacts prepared just in case.

Audin accepted the wraith.

He alone offered compassion and mercy.

Come forth, the Lord awaits you.

Such a pitiful soul.

He would embrace it.

To be denied rest even in death—how wretched.

Tears nearly welled in his eyes. A single droplet formed at the corner.

A hidden divinity slumbered within Audin, bound by sacred restraints.

The wraith eagerly burrowed into his being—only to meet the chained mass of divinity.

It had no time to scream.

It was annihilated, returned to the embrace of the Lord.

For a wraith, it was the most horrifying of deaths.

There was a reason divine power was the bane of the undead and spectral beings.

Divinity inflicted upon them the most excruciating torment.

And Audin knew this well.

"On the path to the Lord, suffering is to be endured."

He did it knowingly, out of pure benevolence toward the wraith.

The Count narrowed his eyes, displeased that the five approaching him showed no signs of slowing down.

And worse still, there were others resisting his "soot wraiths."

Crang’s group, among others, stood firm.

"Arrogant fools."

With a wave of his staff, the Count sneered.

If he couldn’t break their spirits, then he would tear apart their bodies.

"Try stopping this."

At his command, figures rose from the soot pooling beneath his throne.

Wraith soldiers.

Bound to his domain, they materialized into reality.

Their numbers reached ten thousand.

A black tide formed in front of Enkrid and the Mad Platoon.

Enkrid did not hesitate.

Who was best suited for this kind of fight?

"Rem."

The mad axe master.

"...Not that I like it."

Rem looked at the approaching wraith horde and recognized the need to break through.

He didn’t like it, but he said what had to be said.

"Let’s form a battle line."

An orderly formation for a specific purpose.

A phrase that sounded completely out of place for the Mad Platoon.