“Milord, this… Did we come too late?” The aide-de-camp took a step back in disbelief, his eyes behind the seams of his helmet turning wide from disbelief.
The scene of a desolate city, no… of ruins filled his vision.
The last rays of the evening sun illuminated the shattered tiles, bricks and collapsed roofs. With the buildings of the city vanishing like hair on a shaved head, an aloft house was nowhere to be found. The raging inferno nibbled away at flesh and limbs, as the rotten smell of corpses permeated the air.
Judging from when the assistance request was sent, the incident must have happened less than half a day ago.
‘Can a few trolls possess such fearsome destructive capabilities?’
“What exactly has happened here?” The aide-de-camp blankly stared at the scene in front of him.
“Get back!” Ramaeu pulled his dazed aide-de-camp towards him with one of his hands and rolled backwards at the same time.
“Eee….”
“Boom!…” Like a cannonball, a massive silhouette fell from the city gate tower with a loud bang.
“Ssstt…” The earth trembled. Amidst the curling smoke, countless small glowing-red eyes swiveled up and down, as a scalp-tingling sound assailed the eardrums of each knight on the scene.
“W…What is that?? A demon?…” Reeling from the shock, the aide-de-camp looked at the massive, half humanoid spider the size of a chariot in front of him.
The monster, whose appearance gave one a strange and scalp-tingling feeling, caused terror to arise in the knights’ hearts.
Rameau’s complexion turned grave. Faced with this creature of unknown origin, he promptly gave out a command: “Magic riflemen, get into formation and commence attack. Shield bearers, cover them!”
Their officer’s roars had roused up the knights and cleansed the timidness from their hearts. The front team speedily dispersed on both sides, allowing the magic-rifle wielding knights behind them to take aim at the target.
The magic rifles were the product of [magic-release runes] personally inscribed by warlocks and the firearm manufacturing principles of the old era. Their precision might not be high, but they were able to bring about considerable disruption and harm towards demons.
Not only were the costs of creating a devil’s flame rifle extremely high, its construction was also exorbitantly demanding towards the current manufacturing industry. As such, it was very unlikely for common troops to equip them.
“Open fire!”
“Bang, bang, bang…” Bullets shot out from the muzzles like fireworks, leaving a burst of white smoke that lingered around the mouth of the rifles.
They hit the skin of the large spider monster, causing small sparks to splatter out.
“Tsssss…!!” This action seemingly drove the spider into rage.
The line of gunmen ignited the gunpowder in their muzzle, before immediately retreating to the rear to reload. A group then took their place and fired another wave of bullets.
“Clang, clang…” Countless small sparks spluttered against the skin of the half humanoid spider. Whenever a bullet struck against its human parts, it would let out a sharp sound.
“Ka-Ka…!” Two large pincers were on the verge of lashing out.
“Shield-bearers, protect the riflemen!” Rameau pulled out his scimitar and rolled to the side.
“Kakaka!” The spider monster began its offensive.
Dragging their large shields and placing them before the gunmen, the shield-bearers were forced to confront its sharp, large scissor-like mandibles that incessantly enlarged within their vision.
“Clank!…” A large shield was cut into pieces by its pincers, causing a severed limb to fly outwards.
“Aaaaah!…” The knight who had lost his arm collapsed on the ground and howled in agony. At the same moment, another knight promptly filled the empty space left by him.
The bullets incessantly shooting towards its back caused the spider monster to fly into an extreme rage as the injuries on its humanoid parts became more and more severe.
“Target this creature’s upper body!” Rameau made a stunning action after passing down the order; He had actually climbed onto the spider’s back and unleashed a flurry of indiscriminate slashes towards the spider’s human parts with his scimitar.
“Sssst?!” Noticing that someone was frantically outputting damage onto its back, the red eyes of the spider monster trembled. Its large and deathly pale hands felt about its back, intending to get this detestable human off.
For a moment, it seemed to go berserk; Its legs incessantly swung to-and-fro, knocking several knights away and trampling them to death.
The gunmen heeded the orders, took aim at the human parts of the spider and greeted it with another salvo of bullets. Their disappointing accuracy meant that it was unavoidable for their shots to brush past Ramaeu, who was still on the spider’s back.
“Stop firing!Do you have a death wish? That’s your officer!” The aide-de-camp did his utmost to restrain the gunman beside him.
“Don’t stop! Keep firing for me! This daddy wants to see if his life is resilient enough to overcome this obstacle or if this hellspawn can hold on long enough to take it away!” Hiding behind the spider’s back, Ramaeu wiped away the bloodstains on his face and shouted. Even in the middle of conversation, he incessantly unleashed a flurry of stabs onto the spider’s neck.
The glyph-engraved scimitar ferociously pierced through the spider’s weak neck, causing a blackish liquid to splash onto his face.
“Tsss…?!” The spider went completely berserk, as its sharp legs unceasingly lacerated the knights around it.
“Everyone, retreat!” Ramaeu tightly held onto the scimitar that was deeply embedded into the spider’s neck, and rotated the hilt around, churning the neck of the spider into pieces.
“Tsss…” As if the dying flash of energy ended, the spider’s action began to slow down. After performing a series of movements, its eight legs powerlessly dangled downwards.
“Damn it! Just my freaking god-damn luck.” Wiping away the black blood on his face, Rameau gasped in coarse breaths and jumped down from the large spider that had lost its vitality.
“Are you alright, sir?” The aide-de-camp was somewhat terrified as he looked at Rameau, who was covered with black blood and spider fur. Eventually, he decided against walking towards him.
“I should be fine for the most part, other than the scrapes caused by our own.” Saying which, Rameau narrowed his eyes.
“What sort of thing was that monster exactly…? Why did it appear at the Border Town? Which race of demon does it actually belong to? Why have we never seen it before?” Even though the large spider was seemingly dead, its extremely horrific appearance meant that no one was willing to come closer and verify its death.
Rameau didn’t say a word as he surveyed the completely decrepit Border Town. Suddenly, his pupils shrank.
“…This is bad.”
“Eeeh?” Before he could open his mouth and ask further, the aide-de-camp found himself holding his breath.
“Boom!”
“Tss…”
“Tsss…”
Along with two collapsing sounds at their rear, two massive humanoid spiders similar to the first one fell down from the skies behind the group of knights, blocking the path where they came from.
“Tssss…” And at the same time, scalp-tingling sounds rose and fell in succession inside the city.
Within the ruins, the piercing stares of countless red eyes appeared beneath collapsed roof beams.
Like spring bamboos after rainfall, humanoid spiders of varying body types pushed some rubbles aside and made their way out.
The rosy evening sunlight illuminated their hard and stiff hair and their small swiveling scarlet eyes.
They had noticed the arrival of uninvited guests. Moving their legs about, they slowly formed an encirclement.
The complexion of the aide-de-camp gradually turned pale, while Rameau’s went grave as he tightly grasped onto his scimitar which was still dripping blood.
Their path of retreat had been cut off.
“Milord…That…” Upon seeing the dense encirclement of spider monsters moving towards them, the knights couldn’t help but take a step back.
“…To arms! It’s worth it if we can get at least one of these b*stards, each additional enemy is just consolation on top of that!” Lifting his scimitar up high, Ramaeu shouted and boosted the morale of the soldiers behind him.
“Let’s leave death and life aside and give them what we got!”
…………
Huddled on a clock tower’s spire within Border Town was a tall and sturdy silhouette.
Countless light-purplish light otherworldly in nature flew out from disintegrated body parts and corpse embers and were all absorbed by a mouth on an abdomen belonging to the black silhouette.
Along with the amounts he absorbed, his dark skin gradually turned purple, as small sharp spikes and little black thorns resembling fangs grew out of his arms and face respectively.
The monster opened his blood-stained scarlet eyes that were imbued with madness to stare at the setting sun in the distance.
“The time has come…”