The Hero Who Returned From Death Quits - Chapter 201



EP9. ■■

I gritted my teeth. The soldiers were retreating at top speed, but there were some who couldn’t retreat due to injuries or other reasons. If it were a normal battlefield, I could have taken care of them, but I had to ignore them now. Even if I went at full speed, I wasn’t sure if I could escape from them, so I couldn’t afford to take care of them.

As expected, the enemies chased me and my soldiers. It seemed like they were chasing an enemy that had been completely defeated.

I pretended to block the path of the demons, and used black magic and other techniques. However, I didn’t attack them enough to cause significant damage or make them unable to pursue. My goal now was to make the enemies chase me without giving up.

I bit my lip. I couldn’t go faster even while riding a horse. Since I was the furthest back, there was a limit to how fast I could go.

A cold sweat began to run down my face. It felt like a knife was stuck to my throat.

If you are even a little slower than the enemy, you die. The moment the enemy catches you, you die. Knowing that, I felt tension running down my entire body, tingling my skin.

Now is the time to empty my mind. Emptying my mind, I ran forward.

As I glanced behind me, I heard the sound of a demon wearing fancy armor and holding a sword giving orders to other demons.

Perhaps that man was the arrogant knight my colleagues had been talking about. I felt a contradictory feeling of relief, but at the same time, I felt even more nervous.

Yes, keep chasing me like this. Keep chasing me, and stay away from the Demon King. That’s what I thought to myself.

And then the knight swung his sword once.

Boom! A huge explosion was heard. The aftermath of the simple slaughter had this much destructive power. I hurriedly blocked the slaughter with my divine power.

Even though they had set up a barrier, the aftermath of the attack spread in an instant, and dozens of soldiers died without even being able to scream. I gritted my teeth.

What was even more surprising was that there were more demons who fell in the aftermath of the tragedy than friendly soldiers. It was as if they didn’t even care about friendly forces.

“What kind of kid is that!?”

I said it out loud without thinking. With that level of swordsmanship, it seemed like he could be on par with the Sein. If he had reached that level, he would know well enough what kind of situation the sword he swung could cause. But the way he ignored his own soldiers in order to kill the soldiers of the empire felt so strange.

“That damn kid… No matter how much I want to chase him, he does something like that…”

The moment he said that, the knight of pride, Kaledarne, tilted his head and suddenly disappeared from sight.

“what!?”

At that moment, Kaledar was already falling through the air.

…

‘what?’

Kaledar’s face hardened, for an attack that he had thought would have done considerable damage to his enemies had been blocked.

‘It was an attack that couldn’t be stopped.’

It wasn’t an attack that could be blocked by a bunch of people. Kaledar smiled inwardly as he thought about that.

‘Well, I guess it was too easy.’

Thinking about it the other way around, if they couldn’t even do that much, they wouldn’t have even thought of attacking us. Kaledar smirked as his thoughts reached that point.

‘There’s no chance it’s a trap… I don’t think so.’

He soon began to wonder if pursuing them like this would result in falling into the enemy’s trap. However, no matter how much he thought about it, there was no place to ambush them nearby, and there were already many guarding the Demon King, so Kaledar felt a thirst piqued in his heart.

‘Come to think of it, I was disappointed that I couldn’t meet a demon who was on par with me last time. Yeah… good.’

Caledar finished his contemplation and leaped forward. Then, he swung his sword at Ainzel.

Ainzel counterattacked when Kaledar jumped and was unable to change his movements, but Kaledar dodged easily.

“Standing still!?”

Ainzel shouted in confusion. How can you change direction in the air when you’re not even flying? As Ainzel thought this and looked confused, Kaledar smiled broadly on his face and continued to swing his sword.

“Ugh!”

Ainzel also fought back with his own strength. However, Ainzel had no choice but to admit that he was being pushed back.

It was a sword imbued with black magic energy. I could feel the sword’s durability wearing down with each strike.

How long can he hold out? Ainzel felt his hands tremble. Not from fear, but from the aftermath of the collision just now.

Ainzel thought about it like that and then chuckled. No, there was no need to fight and win, or to endure. All he had to do was keep some distance from his opponent. That was his judgment.

As Kaledar charged forward again with his sword in hand, Ainzel threw the bone he had kept in his backpack at Kaledar.

Kaledar naturally tried to destroy the strange thing, but before Kaledar could destroy the bone, it changed shape.

It was the appearance of a humanoid knight clad in darkness. Kaledar was intrigued by its appearance.

“What the hell is this? You’re turning corpses into troops?”

Ainzel had no intention of answering Kaledar’s question. Instead, he had the Death Knight confront Kaledar.

‘Perhaps the Death Knight will no longer be of use.’

It was a natural thing. No matter how strong the Death Knight was, if he went up against a demon called Caledar who had reached the level of transcendence, it would be safe to say that the odds of victory were almost nil. However, it didn’t matter as long as he could at least block that knight to some extent.

Kaledar felt a sense of pleasure after clashing swords with the Death Knight.

What happened? Suddenly, the skeleton was wearing armor made of darkness, and now, even though it was wearing that armor and not even a helmet, the skeleton’s swordsmanship felt like that of a powerful swordsman. Thinking this alone, Kaledar felt happy.

Death Knights are undead that are virtually impossible to create unless you have a high level of skill in life, so Kaledar had read that habits from life are carried over to dead corpses. Kaledar smiled as he saw a Death Knight wielding the sword of the already dead Count Serindell, whom he had never seen before.

And, Ainzel felt relieved upon seeing that. Fortunately, the demon named Kaledar was enjoying the fight with Death Knight, having lost his mind. Since there was no chance of being annihilated, Ainzel felt a little more at ease.

How long did the clash continue? Soon, the Death Knight was turned to dust and scattered. In the first place, it was nearly impossible to hold down a swordsman who had reached the state of transcendence with just the Death Knight.

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Ainzel knew it, and prayed that the ‘main unit’ would do its job.

‘Time will continue to drag on. So, please do your job a little better.’

Ainzel thought back to the past. It was the story of when he first heard about this operation.

…

“So, the strategy I had in mind wasn’t to fight or prepare for Mercury.”

“huh?”

Feria tilted her head. What does that mean? Shouldn’t we be preparing for either a fight or a Mercury? Feria asked back, having heard something she couldn’t understand.

“What does that mean?”

“The method I came up with is to lure out those who make up the majority of the enemy’s forces. Let’s go fishing. During that gap, you kill the high-level demons who play a key role. They’re probably guarding the Demon King. I’m not talking about killing the Demon King. Even if the core forces are gone, the Demons’ forces will be much stronger than yours combined. So what I’m saying is…”

Ainzel said that, took a deep breath and then said.

“There’s nothing we can do about the Demon King. But the higher-level demons will become more of a problem if we leave them alone. So. I’ll lead the soldiers and pretend to flee to lure out the enemy’s main force.”

As soon as she heard that, Peria was startled and said,

“What!? How are you going to do that? If you lure out the enemy’s main force, it’s going to be a lot of work. And then, what if you really do something wrong?”

Ainzel looked at Peria like that, smiled faintly, and said.

“I’ve told you many times. I want to live too. I do this to live. I have my own thoughts.”

“Even so… the risk is too great. The chance of failure is also high.”

Ainzel stroked her cheek.

“It’s okay. You can’t win without taking risks, you know that.”

Then he muttered quietly to himself.

“And if, if it really fails…”