On the city wall, a single lamp flickered, conspicuous amid the surrounding darkness.
Everyone was drawing empty pay and didn't want to work, so the only one on guard duty was the man who'd lost at finger-guessing.
With those three invincible lines of defense in place, it hardly mattered whether the gate was guarded or not.
As a guard with rich night-watch experience, he turned a deaf ear to those faint little sounds outside; setting his lamp on the wall-top, leaning his back against the battlement with his head lolling to one side, the guard displayed the peerless art he'd honed over many years — sleeping while standing.
"Hey, wake up!"
"Eeek—eek—eek!"
A pale, scarred face leaned in close — under the dim lamplight it looked just like a vengeful demon, and with the icy-cold yet burning-hot sensation coming from his cheek, the guard was so frightened he toppled flat onto his backside.
"You — go open the gate, quick."
"Eh... boss?"
The guard got a clear look at the newcomer, only to catch another big slap across the face with a "splat."
"Quit yapping — one more word out of you and I'll cut you down!" The other man was in a thoroughly foul mood.
"Eh, yes, yes, yes, I'm going right now."
The guard scrambled to his feet, not forgetting to steal a glance down below the wall: all was dead silent, and yet the once-empty ground beneath the wall was now packed with a vast, pitch-black crowd! On the spot, he sucked in a cold breath.
Holy crap — the boss isn't about to lead the whole mercenary corps in a revolt, is he?
"How thrilling." Twisting his body, he turned the gate handle with every last ounce of his strength, the tip of his tongue licking his parched lips.
With a rumbling "ka-thunk," the great gate yawned open; thousands of pairs of eyes lit up, and Aura, walking at the very front, grinned.
"Lady Aura, let me do it — I guarantee I'll lead everyone in slaughtering this place clean!" Draht was excited, contrary to his usual self; after being cooped up in Gaderia for so long, he'd finally gotten the chance to show off his skills! Praise be to Lady Aura!
"No. We'll go straight for their leader and take him out. We need only clear away whoever gets in the way."
Aura said expressionlessly.
"Lady Aura, the wall's been dealt with. Do you need me to lead the way?"
Half-gliding as he leapt down from the wall over ten meters high, the burly Scar-Face landed perfectly unharmed — living up to his self-proclaimed title of Kinton's King of Mercenaries; at the very least he was a warrior approaching first-rate caliber.
At this moment, this man who represented the strongest fighting force in the Kinton territory was bowing and scraping obsequiously before Aura.
"Tch, Human, it's not your place to speak." Draht disliked this glory-grabbing fellow.
"There's no need to stay concealed now. Light all the torches. You — go lead the way."
Orderly footsteps rang out as the Demon Race army led by Aura entered the city!
"Haah, the dead of night... why's it suddenly so bright and noisy? Ugh—"
An emaciated resident opened a window to look, only to freeze stiff on the spot.
"Demon Race! There's Demon Race here!"
Someone began to shout at the top of his lungs, and at the word "Demon Race," the once-silent, dark streets and houses began to stir to life, scattered and uneven lights flickering on.
Lighting a lamp at night, if discovered, meant being taxed — this was a rule laid down by the nobles of Kinton.
"Eh heh heh... Demon Race? You've got to be kidding, hic, good, good, good — it wasn't for nothing that I came out of the manor; with this many households lighting their lamps, this baron stands to collect a tidy sum in taxes!"
A lavishly dressed man came staggering crookedly down the road, heading toward the direction from which Aura's army had come.
"Eh? Why's the head on you, the leader, so pointy? Hic."
The noble's eyes were bleary with drink; by the firelight he saw a host of overlapping afterimages. Probably aware that he was drunk, he still assumed that this great mass of pointy-headed double-images of varying heights was only a few people.
"You... you, hurry up and... cough up the tax. Rules are rules, ugh... let me count — lighting a lamp at night, going out at night... ah, right, I'll tack on one more for talking back to a noble, which comes to..."
Swish! Before his rambling words were even finished, a streak of white light flashed before the noble's eyes; his eyes suddenly went wide, and his throat could no longer produce any sound. "Cough, cough, cough..." His neck stung and swelled with pain.
Draht crooked his finger sharply, and a thread of Mana drew out beads of blood as it sliced open the man's throat.
"…" On the other side, Linie swiftly followed up; the Mana in her hand condensed and took shape into a great hammer, smashing the man flying just before the blood could spray.
The corpse crashed into a flimsy house, smashing the wall clean open.
In an instant, amid the flying dust, screams rang out. On the bed, a woman in loose, ragged clothing curled into a ball clutching the infant in her arms; the filthy black bedding was etched with blossoms of blood, the corpse shattering as it landed on the open ground, the piercing shrieks echoing throughout the entire territory! No one dared go outside, and no one was willing to go outside; they were all like a flock of lambs awaiting slaughter, huddling in their tattered sheep-pen.
"Ugh..."
Beside them, Draht made to continue his assault, but Linie set her hammer crosswise in front of him.
"This one... doesn't really count as getting in the way, does it?"
"Tch." Draht curled his lip and looked over at Aura.
Aura, however, didn't so much as glance that way, merely saying in an indifferent voice, "Keep moving."
The burly Scar-Face walking alongside breathed a sigh of relief; a moment of carelessness had let that noble walk right up in front of Aura, but luckily she hadn't held it against anyone.
Through the long, endless night, the Lord's Manor remained brightly lit: women stripped and danced, a musician played songs with his eyes closed, wine refracted the lamplight to cast red upon flushed cheeks, fine meats and delicacies lay strewn about as common as cabbages, and corpulent nobles, every one of them, sat embedded in soft sofas while women covered all over in whip-marks fed them gourmet morsels.
"Heh heh heh..." In one corner utterly out of place with this scene, a small, thin adjutant was drinking the bright-red wine all alone; among all the faces of unbridled merriment, his alone — an aged face covered in stubble — was furrowed in sorrow.
With the threat of the Demon Race and monsters gone, these people grew ever more reckless and wanton; taxes and atrocities kept on mounting.
In his heart, he had in truth always envied that country which possessed a Hero; having traveled in his early years through the kingdom in the Southern Lands, he'd come to deeply yearn for the life over there.
A single weak man could change nothing; Kinton was a chaotic frontier, a noble's paradise of decadent extravagance, and the various nations and the Empire all had their eyes fixed on this slab of meat.
Even so, the adjutant chose to remain here, because this was the place where he'd grown up.
"Haah." Sighing mournfully as ever, just as the adjutant was preparing to leave—
The ornately carved doors, inlaid with rare and exotic gemstones, were suddenly smashed open by force; the music came to an abrupt halt, and everyone turned their gaze toward the same spot.
"Lady Aura, our luck really is good — everyone just happens to be gathered right here."
The Scar-Face man drew back his fist and made a somewhat clumsy gesture of invitation.
"You stray cur, what are you doing running over here in the dead of night?!" The corpulent lord seated dead-center bared a vicious expression.
"My lord, I've only come to remind you — the dog's leash has come loose, and now it's a matter of who grabs it first... woof woof."
The burly man's feigned cutesiness was nauseating, but what left the lord and the other nobles frozen in place was this: a purple-haired, long-horned Demon Race strode in with the utmost elegance.
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Path of Elation in Warhammer 40K
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