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--- East Gate Side ---
This had turned into a real mess. The zombies were moving far too fast. The plan had been to hammer the incoming horde with area-of-effect magic as they crowded together, then have Tenma run around picking off stragglers as a mobile striker... The worst part was that their boss had enough intelligence to think tactically.
"Merlin, more zombies have started moving. Combined with the survivors from before, we're looking at around three thousand."
More of them, huh? What a pain. It'd actually be easier on the magic budget if they just charged in all at once.
"I'll fire off three Firestorms, and after that, ignore the ones near death and put arrows into the zombies that took the least damage."
As he spoke, he launched a Firestorm straight into the mass of zombies. It only killed about a thousand.
(Not good at all — there are still over six hours until dawn.)
Before his eyes, the zombies kept pressing forward, barely seeming to care that a thousand of their number had just been wiped out.
More and more zombies were reaching the wall. He still had Magic Power to spare, but his physical stamina was going to give out first.
"Your visibility is poor from all the smoke — be careful where you aim!"
This time he fired off about ten Air Bullets in rapid succession while calling out orders. The remaining mages here might be running dangerously low on Magic Power.
"Mages, take a break! Drink your Magic Power Potions!"
While the other spellcasters paused, he loosed a handful of Wind Cutters. The gusting wind scattered some of the smoke, but it didn't seem to make much difference to the number of zombies pouring through.
"Leave the small zombies to the Golems! Concentrate arrows on the medium and large ones to deal as much damage as possible!"
The small zombies were numerous and relatively fast, so they reached the wall in no time, but the backlash from magic attacks or a single Golem strike finished them off easily. Once they got to medium size or above, though, they wouldn't go down unless you dealt a decent amount of direct damage to the head.
"There are a lot more medium and larger zombies now."
Just as Merlin had said, in the beginning the horde had been mostly small zombies with only the occasional medium one mixed in. Now the ratio had shifted to roughly six small for every four medium or larger.
The numbers hadn't increased or decreased from before—it felt like roughly 3,000 were perpetually shuffling their way toward the fortress at a slow, steady pace.
Just then, a massive pillar of fire erupted from the northern gate, illuminating the area around the fortress.
"An enemy attack?"
"What the hell is that?!"
"Is the northern gate alright?!"
Voices rose up one after another from all around. Among them, some were panicking, shouting that a new enemy force must have arrived.
"Calm yourselves! That pillar of fire is without a doubt Tenma's magic attack!"
Merlin explained this to those around him, but the commotion refused to die down.
"Lord Merlin, even granting that Tenma can use advanced magic, I've never heard of any spell like that!"
One mage spoke up, his voice strained with disbelief.
"That is unquestionably Tenma. Tenma's Magic Power has already surpassed Celia's. In terms of raw talent alone, even I couldn't hope to match him. Moreover, at his age, he's already completed several original spells. That must be one of them."
Merlin explained this. The others remained only half-convinced, but when a messenger arrived with the news—Tenma had used magic to annihilate roughly 4,000 zombies gathered at the northern gate and was now heading for the western gate—cries of jubilation erupted.
——Southern Gate Side——
At the southern gate, approximately 7,000 zombies had clustered together some 400 to 500 meters away.
"What are these zombies doing over there?!"
In response to Ricardo's question, Celia glared at the zombies crawling out of the forest and—
"So far, there's no notable movement. It's unnerving."
—she answered with a troubled expression.
"Well, they're zombies. Being unnerving is kind of their whole thing."
Ricardo deliberately spoke in a light tone, but Celia kept a serious look on her face,
"That's not it. I don't mean they're creepy — I mean their behavior is suspicious. They're standing completely still, like they're waiting for something."
She replied. Indeed, while a considerable number of zombies had emerged from the forest, they seemed to be deliberately keeping their distance.
"What do you think they're waiting for?"
"I don't know, but whatever it is, it can't be good for us."
As they were speaking, flashes of light and the sounds of rapid-fire magic erupted from the eastern gate.
"A simultaneous assault on the eastern gate!"
Ricardo braced himself, but the zombies hadn't moved. Disappointed but quickly recovering, he—
"I have to admit, this is genuinely eerie."
He conceded to Celia's premonition.
"Celia, is your Magic Power holding up?"
"Yes. I just drank a potion, so I'm nearly full."
As they talked, the zombies began to slowly advance.
"Seriously, what kind of thought process do zombies have?"
"Right? Why wouldn't they attack in tandem with the eastern gate? Well, that's exactly what makes it so unsettling."
While some things remained baffling, the two of them sprang into action.
"Mages, form a horizontal line and fire fireballs on my signal. Warriors, stand by."
He issued the order. When the zombies closed to within roughly two hundred meters—
"Fire!"
Ricardo gave the signal. The mages unleashed their spells in response.
"Keep going! This time, aim further ahead! Fire!"
He called out and deployed the formation five times. That brought down nearly two thousand zombies.
"If only it could just stay simple work like this,"
Ricardo muttered. Upon hearing that, Celia—
"Wouldn't that be nice. But that's almost certainly not going to happen,"
she said dismissively. Meanwhile, the zombies kept pressing forward, climbing over the corpses of their own kind.
"Same tactic as before—fire!"
The zombies remained in their tight formation, heading straight for the gate.
They launched their spells, cut the zombies down in droves, caught their breath and occasionally drank potions. Repeating this process, they killed over ten thousand zombies and were just starting to settle into a rhythm when a messenger reached Ricardo.
"What—zombie hordes from the north and the west?!"
His senses had gone numb from the endless repetition, which made the sudden ambush hit all the harder.
He had been completely convinced that ordinary zombies were incapable of such a tactic, and that false certainty only deepened the chaos around them.
"Get word to the mages and warriors stationed in the north and west immediately—I need them moving!"
He was about to issue the order, but the messenger relayed Merlin's instructions: Tenma was already heading north, so the stationed mages should be sent west instead. Ricardo adjusted at once.
"Send only warriors to the north! All stationed mages—west, every last one!"
At Ricardo's command, the reserve forces mobilized instantly.
"Celia, is there any chance we can pull some of our mages away from here?"
he asked, but Celia's response came back sharp—
"Negative. The zombies were after exactly this. Their speed just picked up."
The zombies, which had been clustered tightly together until moments ago, were now spreading out and advancing with gaps between them.
"So those attacks until now were all an act?"
"I don't want to believe it, but it looks like that's exactly what happened. They deliberately took hits while secretly carrying out an encirclement strategy behind our backs. Isn't this something straight out of history?"
She said it with a touch of humor, but there was no composure on her face.
"My concern is just how much Tenma can handle…"
Ricardo murmured. But Celia responded in a voice that didn't sound particularly worried.
"I think he'll be fine. He has more Magic Power than I do, and it seems like he's developed several original attack spells."
She said this, but Ricardo looked puzzled.
"How do you even know that?"
he asked.
"He seemed to be keeping it under wraps, but every now and then he'd use spells with baffling power. Brit was the same, but Tenma had a real knack for coming up with improvements and innovations we'd never think of."
In truth, the Brit-series spells had been created by Tenma, who imagined handguns from memories of his previous life and taught them to Celia and the others. He had also applied knowledge from his past life to magic in various ways, so when Celia saw all this, she mistakenly assumed they were original creations.
But only Tenma himself and the gods knew the truth, so calling them "original" wasn't really an exaggeration.
"Still, his lack of experience is a real concern."
Recently, Celia had lost the overprotective streak she once had toward Tenma — Ricardo noticed that, and on one level appreciated it. At the same time, though, he felt a small pang of jealousy that she knew things about Tenma that he didn't.
"Then let's wipe out these zombies fast and go back Tenma up!"
"Good idea. Let's make that our goal."
Celia replied while launching a firestorm, and just then a massive pillar of fire erupted from the north gate.
"Hey, Celia. Could that be Tenma's magic?"
The sudden development froze everyone for a heartbeat — both the defenders holding the south gate and the zombies.
"Maybe… it is?"
Celia answered with a slightly strained look on her face.
"Hey, Celia! The zombies have stopped moving — launch your magic attacks now!"
At those words, Celia unleashed five Firestorms in rapid succession. The other mages followed up by continuously firing off ball-type spells in a barrage.
For reasons no one could quite understand, the zombies had frozen in place. Unable to respond in time, they fell one after another to the magical assault. The count was climbing past three thousand at a furious pace.
"Good — we've dealt them a serious blow!"
Most of the zombies that had closed in on the gate were dead, leaving behind a wide, hollowed-out gap in their ranks. At the same time, pillars of fire erupted at the western gate as well. A spell of that magnitude had surely inflicted devastating damage there too.
Ricardo and the others were beginning to think that if things kept going like this, they might actually survive.
That is, until the next instant — when a thin, dark beam of light shot out from deep within the forest…
I'm planning to wrap up Chapter 1 soon.
It wasn't supposed to run this long initially, but before I knew it we were approaching Episode 20.
Still, I haven't had any room to introduce the heroine yet… What am I going to do about that…
Well, please look forward to what's in store for Chapter 2.