The mercenaries genuinely wanted to protect Eliphis.
That much was true.
The thought — protect Eliphis — had risen up in their hearts of its own accord, unprompted and absolute.
As for why it had risen so easily and so completely —
Best not to examine that particular question too closely.
In their eyes, Eliphis was the reason every battle had ever been won. If protecting him meant using their own bodies to absorb Wrath of the Gods and buy him a few more seconds to think, that was a trade worth making without hesitation. That was how it had always gone in every previous fight.
And there was the other part of it, too — the part nobody said out loud. Whenever they threw themselves in front of him, Eliphis always responded the same way. That worried expression. The plea not to waste their lives, delivered with such visible anguish that it was genuinely impossible to resist wanting to do it again.
The more they saw that face, the deeper their devotion ran.
Right as the mercenaries were savoring that exact expression —
A gentle light enveloped all of them.
The next moment, they found themselves teleported to the rear of the formation.
Eliphis stood alone at the very front.
"Commander! What are you doing?!"
None of them had ever seen him move like this before, and panic spread through the ranks instantly.
"It's alright."
"You've all done more than enough."
Eliphis smiled, warm and steady.
Facing the incoming shockwave, he released every remaining drop of his mana at maximum output — converting his enormous reserves, perfectly attuned to Light magic, into the simplest form imaginable.
A gigantic cannon of pure mana.
The mercenaries stared, disbelieving.
The beam tore straight through the incoming shockwave, carving a path through it before slamming directly into Wolnir.
There was no way to gauge how much actual damage it dealt.
But simply watching the shockwave disperse was enough to send the mercenaries into an eruption of cheering.
"ELIPHIS!"
Hearing it behind him, he didn't turn around.
He simply raised one hand in acknowledgment.
To everyone watching, it was the coolest thing they had ever seen a person do.
In reality, his expression behind that raised hand had gone dark.
He had calculated the entire thing. The shockwave had already entered its decay phase — that was the only reason his strongest attack had been sufficient to cancel it out. If the shockwave had still been at full strength, he would have simply watched the mercenaries die where they stood and adjusted his strategy from there.
Of course, the mercenaries knew none of this.
To them, Eliphis had blocked Wolnir head-on. Which meant one thing.
Their commander had finally found the strength to stand toe-to-toe with an Overlord.
They had no idea how. But surely — surely — he must have found some crack in Wolnir's defenses.
It had to be that.
"Go, Commander!"
With that kind of noise behind him, a typical shonen protagonist would probably be discovering a brand-new form right about now.
Eliphis wasn't that kind of person.
His emotional register had always run somewhere between detached and mildly inconvenienced.
Mostly, he just found all of them unbearably loud.
He watched Wolnir's movement pattern with careful attention and finally spotted something worth acting on.
After releasing Wrath of the Gods, Wolnir had sheathed the Holy Sword, returned to his original posture, and resumed summoning skeleton warriors as though nothing significant had happened.
This is the opening.
Wolnir's individual techniques weren't the true problem — the problem was his absurd durability and staggering total health. The Light Eagle Corps simply lacked the raw firepower to bring that number down to zero within any reasonable timeframe.
Eliphis decided to test a different approach.
He pulled out the bracelet artifact — dark now, its glow long since spent.
Then he produced a small box.
Ordinary-looking, unremarkable. He opened it.
Inside: compressed masses of bloody flesh and bone, still wriggling faintly, as though some fraction of life clung to them despite everything.
He submerged the bracelet directly into the mass.
In an instant, the flesh, the bone, and even the box itself disappeared entirely — consumed, absorbed, gone.
The bracelet's light returned in full.
He turned to face everyone remaining.
"Everyone."
"Lend me your strength."
When their commander asked, there was no possibility of refusal.
Every mercenary poured their mana into him without reservation. When their magical reserves ran dry, they kept going — burning life force directly, converting it into raw mana to keep the flow uninterrupted.
Eliphis accepted every drop without hesitation.
He slid the bracelet onto his wrist.
Then raised his right arm toward the sky.
An overwhelming pillar of light descended and swallowed him whole.
The bracelet's ability was simple, brutal, and elegant in its bluntness: amplification. All magic. Every kind, without discrimination.
Even Wolnir stopped moving to watch the pillar in silence.
When the light finally cleared —
A colossal being made entirely of light stood on the battlefield, rivaling Wolnir's own scale. A man's body. An eagle's head.
Inside, hidden at the center, Eliphis served as its core.
One glance told the whole story.
A complete instrument of war. Something that could reduce city walls to rubble without slowing down.
Amid the mercenaries' roaring approval, Eliphis charged.
His massive uppercut connected squarely under Overlord Wolnir's jaw.
It moved.
At long last — an actual reaction. A hit that registered.
An excellent start.
The giant of light unleashed a relentless barrage, every blow aimed at Wolnir's skull. The surrounding miasma gnawed continuously at the giant's light in return, and the Abyss itself contributed a steady stream of additional attacks.
Everyone, without exception, loves watching two colossal beings collide.
The mercenaries screamed themselves hoarse cheering him on.
The tide finally seemed to be shifting.
Every punch produced a reaction from Wolnir's frame.
The hit feedback everyone had been waiting for had finally arrived.
But — looking closer, past the spectacle —
Despite the sheer volume of the assault, none of it left visible wounds.
What ordinary people would generously call this kind of interaction was:
Scratching an itch.
To outside observers, it looked like Eliphis was systematically overwhelming Wolnir.
In actual fact, Wolnir was enjoying something closer to a massage.
Inside the giant, Eliphis's expression shifted for the first time. His jaw clenched. The eagle-headed face of the construct mirrored the tension perfectly.
Why isn't this working? Why can't I put a mark on him? This is like punching solid iron.
"Die!"
He raised the giant's left arm high overhead, gathering every scrap of remaining light into it — one final, decisive strike, everything committed to a single blow.
Then —
A flash of swordlight cut across his vision.
Boom.
The giant's left arm hit the ground. Separately from the rest of it.
"…Huh?"
The mercenaries froze in unison.
The giant stared down at its own missing shoulder with an expression of blank incomprehension — a perfect mirror of what Eliphis felt inside it.
At some point, without anyone registering the motion, Wolnir had drawn the Holy Sword.
His jaw shifted slightly. Just enough.
His skeletal face offered nothing in the way of expression, technically. Somehow, everyone present felt the mockery in it regardless.
Eliphis's anger flared.
He repeated the setup — raising the giant's right arm as though preparing another reckless charge. What he was actually doing, out of Wolnir's sightline, was quietly rebuilding the missing left arm behind the construct's back for a surprise follow-up.
Wolnir didn't swing his sword this time.
He drove it into the ground instead.
Wrath of the Gods.
Again.
The single attack that demanded absolute caution — twice, back to back, with no warning gap between them.
Eliphis hadn't imagined Wolnir could cycle it that quickly. He pulled back hard, throwing every defense he could manage into place.
The bracelet still had one charge remaining. He committed it entirely, launching a counter-attack to collide directly with the incoming shockwave.
The clash that followed shook the ground itself.
The residual force sent the giant stumbling backward. Behind it, the mercenaries were flung around like scattered leaves.
None of them died, though.
Good. We're still here.
The corner of Eliphis's mouth twitched upward, faintly. Maybe Wrath of the Gods wasn't as absolute as it looked. If he could keep recharging the bracelet fast enough, maybe he could —
His eyes went wide.
Because Wolnir had plunged the Holy Sword into the ground a third time.
Same posture. Same buildup.
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait.
You can chain this attack indefinitely?!
There was almost no time to process it. Several precious seconds evaporated in pure disbelief before Eliphis reacted at all.
By then, the shockwave was already inches from his face.
He threw up defenses on pure reflex. The barriers he assembled in that half-second shattered like wet paper against the Weapon Art.
When the wave finally cleared, the giant had lost nearly a third of its total mass.
As for the mercenaries positioned behind him —
Let's just say only a handful still bore any meaningful resemblance to human beings.
"…I'm alive."
Eliphis raised his head, and something close to delight flickered through him.
"I never expected him to push into consecutive uses. That has to have a cost."
"After this, his output should drop off considerably."
He wasn't about to let an opening like that slip past unused.
He charged forward again.
This time, there was no one left standing to cheer him on.
Watching him close the distance, Wolnir raised the Holy Sword —
And immediately drove it back into the ground.
That posture looked disturbingly familiar.
Wait.
Is that Wrath of the Gods again?!
The realization arrived too fast. Eliphis had no time left to react at all.
This time, the attack caught the giant directly, full force, no mitigation.
"I have to block—"
When the shockwave dissipated, the giant had shrunk further still.
It looked genuinely pitiful now.
Eliphis bit down hard enough to draw blood from his own gums.
Impossible. Wrath of the Gods, three times in a row? That should not be physically or magically possible.
Then he watched Wolnir calmly repeat the exact same motion for a fourth time.
Weapon Art spam. Deeply impressive, in a way that made him want to lie down.
"W-wait, don't—!"
Fortunately, none of the mercenaries would live to witness their commander's undignified final moments.
Because they were already dead.
The fourth cast.
The fifth.
The sixth.
Wolnir's relentless, uncomplaining Weapon Art spam quietly demolished every assumption Eliphis had ever held about how the universe was supposed to work. Through sheer stubborn will, he kept his eyes open long enough to personally witness six consecutive casts of Wrath of the Gods.
As for whether there was a seventh —
He couldn't say.
He died during the sixth.
Crackle…
Before the bonfire, Eliphis stared into the dancing flames without blinking.
The thought wouldn't leave him alone.
Wrath of the Gods had every appearance of a finishing move — the kind of attack meant to end a fight decisively, once, maybe twice under exceptional circumstances.
So why had the Overlord spammed it six times in a row as though it cost him nothing at all?
Is he simply that far above me? Or is there some level of understanding I haven't reached yet?
He genuinely had no idea whether a seventh cast had been coming.
He had died during the sixth, after all.
A second question followed close behind the first, sharper and more aggravating:
If it's that effective, why not open with it from the very start? Why bother with the slow buildup, the posturing, the theater of a "real fight" first?
Was that all just for show?
It had been a very long time since Eliphis had experienced defeat this thorough. His silence pressed down on everyone around the fire.
"Commander looks like he's in a really bad mood," the assault captain whispered to Sali.
"Idiot." Sali shot him a warning look. "Don't say that where he can hear you."
The assault captain retreated a respectful distance.
The atmosphere around the bonfire had settled into something heavy and airless. Someone with the assault captain's default cheerfulness simply wasn't built to sit inside that kind of silence for long. He glanced toward Eliphis with genuine concern, decided he had no idea how to actually help, and quietly excused himself to get some air.
I wonder why the commander's so set on beating Wolnir specifically. Clearing the dungeon isn't even our job.
The single strongest impression Wolnir had left on him was raw physical power — enough that he had genuinely, briefly, believed he could hold his own in a contest of strength against an Overlord.
Looking back on that now, it had been wishful thinking of a very specific and embarrassing kind.
Sigh. How is anyone supposed to beat something like that.
Come to think of it — are all the dungeon bosses like this?
What exactly are those adventurers fighting through, every single day, for fun?
He muttered it mostly to himself, working through the question without expecting an answer.
Then —
Thunk.
"Ow!"
"What was that?"
He frowned and reached a hand out into the empty air ahead of him.
Something was there.
Invisible. Solid. Blocking his path completely.
"…Why does this feel so slippery?"