The more the situation called for it, the more certain it became that this was an unprecedented crisis.
In the historical records documenting events that had once transpired in Lugunica, there was an account of a similar abnormality—yet within the broader sequence of events, that particular case had not been treated as especially significant.
—The "Subjugation War."
A large-scale civil war that had once erupted in Lugunica, and the sole historical record that described an instance in which the dead had risen to wreak havoc as enemies, just as was happening now.
However, the main focus of those chronicles had been the friction between the human race and the demi-humans, and the details of the unconscionable tactics deployed during a portion of that civil war had gone unrecorded.
That was frustrating. If only those details had been documented more thoroughly back then— "I told you I ain't fallin' behind some bastards like these!!"
With a roar, his fist swung out, and a cluster of pale-skinned Imperial soldiers was sent flying en masse.
The blow was less a punch and more a sweeping strike, charged with the vitality drawn forcefully up from the earth beneath his planted feet, and hurled with raw strength.
Without pause, he followed up with a second, then a third strike, each time scattering the enemy's formation. No—calling it a formation was giving them too much credit.
They were indeed surging forward in a rough line, but there was nothing resembling coordination or teamwork among them. If that was the case, they were nothing more than a loose mass of individuals.
When it came to clashing with a disorganized rabble, Garfiel was not the sort to fall behind.
However— "Ha! Huuh!"
With a sharp step forward, two rapid slashes grazed Garfiel's neck.
The prickle of his stubble standing on end made him glare at his attacker. Leaping through the shattered remains of a corpse soldier was a single figure whose bearing was distinctly different from the other undead.
"Tch."
Clicking his tongue, he lifted his shoulder and checked the shallow cut near his neck.
The range of the first slash and the second had differed by about a finger's width. It was a veteran's trick—show a blow easy to dodge, then aim for the neck with the second strike.
Even among a faceless horde of individuals, the occasional presence of someone with that kind of skill cropped up now and then.
That was the real nuisance. Roughly one in every twenty seemed to be a capable fighter. Because of that, he couldn't recklessly encourage allies to press forward on the assumption that teamwork would carry them through.
After all, a single skilled individual could bring down an entire formation of a hundred if given the opening.
"Haa! Huuuh—!"
Garfiel wrinkled his nose, and the corpse soldier launched the same two-strike combination again.
Having seen the technique once, the attacker changed the range of its swings even more boldly. Before it had been a finger's difference—now it was a fist. A single fist deeper, and any superficial wound would become fatal.
But the corpse soldier who unleashed the attack widened its eyes, its expression the very opposite of victorious certainty.
The reason was simple—its opponent's right arm, the one holding the sword, had been shattered at the wrist.
"Sick of your damn parlor tricks—where you grip a longer blade don't change! 'Even a three-headed Balguren's got just one torso!' …Haa!"
He flipped his left hand—the one that had crushed the wrist—around, and the fist sank straight into the stunned opponent's face.
The impact passed through to the back of the skull, and the corpse soldier's head burst like overripe fruit. The collapse of the head sent cracks spreading through the torso and limbs, and the entire body crumbled to pieces.
"Can't stand this."
Glaring down at the remains of the enemy he had felled, Garfiel spat those words.
What grated on Garfiel was the manner of this defeat—this way of being destroyed. Since they were dead things, "death" was perhaps not the right word, and more than anything, this method of simply shattering apart robbed Garfiel of any real sensation that he was fighting something alive.
All that remained was a creeping chill—the uneasy feeling of wondering what, exactly, he was even fighting against.
"……"
Garfiel wiped the sweat from his jaw with his forearm. Casting his gaze across the battlefield of the moonlit plain, the forms of corpse soldiers appeared without cease.
To intercept them, Garfiel along with the rest of the delaying-action squad was fighting tooth and nail.
Originally, Garfiel had been assigned to a medical team leveraging healing magic, but the strategy of preventing casualties rather than treating them had suited his temperament far better.
"Garf-san, you're squirming and it's bugging me! If you're that restless, go help the people who are actually fighting!"
That had been Petra's suggestion—she, too, was serving in the same medical unit.
It wasn't as though he had simply obeyed her, but Garfiel had indeed thrown himself into the fray. In truth, the results spoke for themselves.
But he could not delude himself into thinking he was doing his absolute best.
Because— "Haa—!!"
A sharp cry rang out through the darkness of night, and immediately after, the sound of taut bowstrings snapping echoed in rapid succession.
It was a torrent of arrows loosed at tremendous density, following a single command from Taritta, chieftain of the People of Shudrak.
There was no dodging arrows that fell not as individual points but as a solid mass—avoidance could only take the form of deflecting or blocking. In truth, those corpse soldiers with the wherewithal to avoid being riddled with arrows attempted to do just that, using whatever weapons and shields they had.
But— "I can see them!"
"Let's go!"
The corpse soldiers bunched beneath the incoming volley were swept away by the powerful bowshots that rang out with spirited cries.
More than merely "shot through"—it was a devastating impact, like being rammed at full speed by a dragon carriage, that sent the undead in defensive postures and the cluster behind them flying as one.
"I'm not about to be outdone, but that's ridiculous."
A shower of arrows blanketed the weaker zombies, while the stronger ones who survived the barrage were picked off by those powerful bowshots. The synchronized rhythm of the hunt from those nomadic warriors left Garfiel deeply impressed.
Even for Garfiel, being pinned down by an arrow-storm and then hit with one of those massive bowshots would spell major damage. A tactic he was glad to see on his side.
"Well, over there they're making about as much sense as everything else, but…"
The People of Shudrak's martial prowess notwithstanding, there was another group that won Garfiel's admiration in an entirely different way—the rough-looking lot that Subaru had brought along, the ones who had been fighting as a lone unit within the Empire and who called themselves the "Pleiades Battle Corps."
"Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go—!"
"Strongest! Invincible! Bring it on! Bring it on!!"
"Ooooooh—!!"
Even in the thick of a night battle, their racket was extraordinary. Yet from Garfiel's eye, not a single one of them stood out as a particularly refined martial artist. Certainly, many of them had honed their skills to a level above the average Imperial soldier, but still.
The majority employed fighting styles best described as instinctive brawling, far from anything polished.
And yet, they were strong. The gap in physical ability was like that between adults and children.
"What a spectacle. Their strength is positively refreshing to behold."
As Garfiel took in the Pleiades Battle Corps' performance, a voice called out to him. Before he even turned, the figure that had appeared beside him was a woman with tanned skin and red-dyed hair—Mizelda.
The woman who had replaced one of her legs with a wooden prosthetic wore a blood-bright grin as she watched the Battle Corps run wild.
"I don't know what their deal is, but they gotta be connected to the Captain somehow, right? I might wonder what they're doing, but I'm not worried about any trouble."
"The Captain… Subaru, then. Along with
"Ha! Trust? That word don't cut it. That guy Captain—he gives back a hundred times whatever expectations and faith you put into him!"
Without exaggeration or bravado, Garfiel could praise him with absolute sincerity and zero doubt. At Garfiel's answer, the quality of Mizelda's smile shifted—from something combative to something gentler, tinged with understanding.
"I get how you feel. Subaru proved himself to us at the 'Blood Oath Ritual' and in the fights after that—the soul of a warrior. He ain't much to look at, but he'd make a fine son-in-law for Taritta."
"Quit talking about looks already! He hates being told that too, the Captain does. Besides…"
"Besides?"
"No matter how taken the Captain is, the person he's always got eyes for is always the same."
"…I see. That's how it is."
Garfiel rubbed his nose with a finger, and Mizelda gave a deep nod.
He wasn't sure how much of her words had been a joke and how much genuine praise, but the fact that Subaru was held in such regard even within this Empire was something Garfiel could be proud of.
Wherever Subaru went, he drew people into his orbit and produced remarkable results.
But no matter how capable Subaru might be on his own, what Garfiel wished—and what the entire camp shared as a common sentiment—was that Subaru would still want them by his side.
That was why they had all crossed dangerous ground to come rushing to this far corner of the Empire.
"And yet these bastards keep gettin' in the way of me and the Captain…"
Garfiel was a warrior, and he loved testing his strength against others. But he was no battle junkie who would fight anyone, anywhere, anytime without a second thought.
When precious people were reunited and he wanted nothing more than to enjoy that moment together, having enemies spawn endlessly like this was nothing short of infuriating.
"But still… there's something off about these guys."
"Dead things coming back to life is unnatural in the first place. I get what you're saying, but…"
"No, that's not what I mean."
"—Hmm?"
Garfiel ground his fangs and muttered, and Mizelda raised an eyebrow.
In response to her silent question, Garfiel jerked his chin and directed his gaze toward the mass of corpse soldiers still being pelted by Shudrak arrows.
"If you stare long enough, you start to see—there's more than one way these guys get taken apart. Some go down from a single arrow, and some don't break even after five are sticking out of them."
"There are stubborn beasts too. And stubborn people. Isn't it the same thing?"
"Sure, there's a difference between strong and weak. But it's not that kind of thing…"
He couldn't quite put it into words, but even among corpse soldiers of roughly equal strength, Garfiel felt there was a difference in the upper limit of their resilience.
Whether the arrow hit a vital point or not didn't seem to matter much. Some had arrows buried in their eyes and kept going, while others crumbled from a single shaft in the shoulder.
It felt like something that couldn't be measured by sheer vitality alone— "Damn it! Thinking about it just pisses me off! 'Can't quite grasp it.' Smash 'em all and that's that…"
"…That thinking is exactly the problem you 'can't quite grasp,' you know."
In an instant, the realization that the voice had come from directly above made Garfiel's shoulder jump.
He looked up in alarm. There was a shape descending slowly through the cloud-thick night sky. It was growing larger at a steady pace, and resolving into a form Garfiel found deeply disagreeable.
And then— "You seem to be in the thick of things—mind if I join you?"
"You, Dudley…"
"My, my. The alias was just starting to feel comfortable, but I'm afraid that meeting earlier gave me no reason to hide my name any longer. So, as before…"
"You damn Roswaal…!"
"The honorific is a touch excessive, but you're welcome to keep using that too."
On the ground, Roswaal smiled, and Garfiel's irritation flared.
Since his illegal entry into Volachia, his face paint and eccentric attire had remained subdued, but the idiosyncratic speech pattern that was supposed to have been sealed away along with them had made a full comeback.
If the alias was back in play, then presumably the conference aboard the dragon carriages had reached some conclusion.
The accommodation between the Empire and their side—the one Otto and Frederica had discussed beforehand—achieved without bending Subaru's or Emilia's feelings.
That, in itself, was something Garfiel welcomed.
"So if the talk's over, I'd like to hear how it turned out…
"I was compelled by necessity. Betty would have preferred not to leave Subaru's side for even a second, if possible. But once asked, there was no alternative."
With that, Beatrice hopped lightly away from Roswaal's arm.
Garfiel still remembered how Beatrice had been active even during Subaru's month-long absence, and now that a reunion had finally been achieved, he had assumed she would never again leave Subaru's side. After all, when they had reunited aboard the connected dragon carriages, she had nearly been mobbed, and with her eyes completely vacant she had been muttering exactly that sort of thing.
For her to have left Subaru's side and appeared here with Roswaal meant— "Garfiel, you've sensed the wrongness too, haven't you? Have you come to discover its true nature?"
"The true nature… of the wrongness?"
"If you fight without knowing your enemy, the fruits of battle won't even reach half of expectations. To compensate, you must know the enemy—and this particular enemy is riddled with too many mysteries."
Released from Roswaal's arm, Beatrice was left standing there, and he waved his hand after her with a vaguely forlorn air. Their words stirred in Garfiel both optimism about the conference's positive outcome and a surge of fighting spirit.
Even if it had been delivered by the Roswaal he detested.
"So you're not Dudley—Roswaal. That's your real name."
"Yes, Mizelda. I owe you an apology for using a false name—for reasons. It wasn't just me; the one you know as Emre is Emilia."
"That's the sort of thing a handsome man does. I'll let it slide."
"What an extraordinary standard of judgment…"
Mizelda digested the alias issue according to her own unique sense of values.
Meanwhile, Garfiel regarded Roswaal and Beatrice as a pair.
"So basically, the fight in the Empire continues, and the two of you coming here means…"
"For matters beyond reason, those who wield magic—a force that can interfere with reason itself—are the most suited to identifying their cause. This is a historic joint operation between Lugunica and Volachia, and the most valuable thing the Kingdom can offer them is a magical approach to investigating the cause."
Innumerable corpse soldiers continued to spawn without end; if a magician's expertise could help pinpoint the cause, then indeed, in Emilia's camp, no one was better suited than Roswaal and Beatrice.
Emilia was a spirit arts user,
"Now that you've actually been fighting for a while—what have you found?"
"…I can't tell the difference between the ones that go down easy and the ones that don't. There's something beyond just strong and weak—I think the reason lies somewhere else entirely…"
"Hmm. Differences in individual survivability, vitality."
Roswaal pressed a slender finger to his chin, deep in thought, and Garfiel clicked his tongue inwardly. Not because he disliked Roswaal's every mannerism—this time it was because he was frustrated at himself for honestly finding Roswaal dependable in this situation.
"Roswaal, you won't get anywhere just staring blankly."
"I agree. Now then—Beatrice, how's your mana reserve?"
"I've reunited with Subaru, so I'm in peak form."
"Excellent. Then—"
Roswaal smiled faintly, his heterochromatic eyes narrowing, and in the next instant four differently colored lights—mana—materialized around him.
With a snap of his fingers, the four lights streaked through the darkness like arrows, piercing into a distant cluster of corpse soldiers and unleashing their respective powers.
One corpse soldier burst into flames, another was flash-frozen. One had its limbs severed by blades of wind, and another was impaled from below by a stone pillar that erupted from the ground.
All fatal—each victim shattered to pieces moments later with a cracking sound, a display of destructive power that made even Garfiel and Mizelda raise their brows in surprise.
"Just as the reports said—fire attribute has the greatest effect. Wind doesn't penetrate well, and earth is no different from a physical blow. Freezing seems to be inefficient."
But Roswaal, the executor of those spells, was not focused on the fact that he had killed the corpse soldiers—he was gauging the intensity of his attacks by how effectively each element penetrated them.
And Beatrice, too, had begun a similar verification in her own way.
"—Vita."
Beatrice extended her hand toward the night sky. The magic she chanted interfered with the rain of arrows from the People of Shudrak that was cutting through the air overhead.
The countless arrows blanketing the corpse soldiers were affected by Beatrice's shadow magic—a spell that altered the weight of its target—causing their weight to multiply several times over as they rained down on the enemy.
The increase in their destructive power could be imagined from the brutal sound of arrows punching through corpse soldiers and into the ground alike.
"As Garfiel said, even if changing the weight of the arrows explains the difference in power, it doesn't explain why some zombies fall and others don't."
"If you made every arrow heavier, wouldn't that mess up the comparison?"
"You're not insulting Betty, are you? I didn't make all the arrows the same weight—I changed them one by one to test."
Beatrice puffed out her cheeks like a sulking child, but the explanation she had just given was far more outrageous than anything Garfiel had said.
Though Garfiel's own specialty was healing magic, he understood enough about spellcasting to grasp just how precise Beatrice's magical manipulation was.
What she had just done with magic was equivalent to threading dozens of needles simultaneously—without using her hands—in a single go.
Moreover, the two of them—Roswaal and Beatrice— "The cause of their collapse isn't limb loss. Some survive even vital wounds. They look human in shape, but I'd advise against thinking of them as living creatures."
"There are ones that talk, laugh, and get angry—saying they're not living creatures is something only you could pull off. —It may be that a certain accumulation of damage is the condition."
"That's an unexpectedly harsh assessment. Despite everything, I've made considerable effort to regain my humanity while spending time with you all, you know. A single leg blown off is enough to bring some of them down. If damage accumulation were the condition, that wouldn't add up."
"Would attributing it simply to individual differences in durability be too crude?"
"There must be another reason. The flow of mana is uniform."
"It is indeed uniform… Wait. Could it be too uniform?"
They bantered back and forth as they went, but the analysis of the enemy by Roswaal and Beatrice was steadily advancing.
Remarkably, the two of them conversed in this manner while each wielding their respective areas of expertise in magic, checking the nature of the corpse soldiers that lunged at them.
Fire, wind, purple arrows—all raged, and the corpse soldiers could not draw near to the pair who stood back to back.
Of course, Garfiel and Mizelda were also attacking the corpse soldiers to prevent them from closing in, but even without that, Roswaal and the others would not have budged.
He would never say it out loud, because Beatrice would absolutely hate it— "These two are about as perfectly in sync as you can get."
"And I'd never let either of them hear that."
Mizelda offered precisely the same assessment Garfiel had arrived at.
Beatrice, unaware that she was being thought of this way, lowered her brow-tips and called out, "Roswaal!"
"Touch me once."
"—You're asking for trouble."
Those were Beatrice's final words before she lightly kicked off the ground and leaped forward.
Her dress hem fluttered as Beatrice's small body rose nimbly into the air—another unnatural jump achieved by using shadow magic to negate her own weight.
The direction Beatrice headed was toward a corpse soldier that had its back to her. It sensed her approach and turned— "Jiwaldo."
In that instant, the corpse soldier's right arm—the one gripping a sword—evaporated before it could swing.
Roswaal, pointing his finger at the corpse soldier, had launched a beam of white light from its tip that burned through the arm. The corpse soldier stiffened in shock, and Beatrice's palm pressed against its forehead.
Beatrice's distinctive patterned eyes opened wide as she confirmed her suspicion.
"I knew it."
Beatrice's body was pulled downward by an arm wrapped around her slender waist.
Roswaal had caught her, swapped their positions, and with his free arm delivered a vicious punch that shattered the still-frozen corpse soldier's head.
"Oh dear—I'm the one who'll get scolded by Subaru-kun for this."
"And I'm the one who'll be praised by Subaru. —Restoration magic, perhaps?"
"…So that's it."
Roswaal, who had been about to criticize Beatrice's recklessness, closed his yellow eye at the words that came in place of an apology.
Through that brief contact with the corpse soldier, Beatrice had gained some manner of conviction. She had conveyed it to Roswaal in remarkably few words, but unfortunately, it was completely over Garfiel's head.
"Oi, I don't get any of it! Explain so even Emilia would understand!"
"Basically, Emilia and Garfiel are about on the same level. —The structure of these zombies' bodies—their mechanism. Do you understand now?"
"That's what I'm asking! What does it mean?!"
Garfiel ground his teeth as he demanded answers.
He knew that restoration magic existed. It was a spell used to repair broken objects, and he had heard that first-rate practitioners could even restore a burned book from ashes.
However, practitioners were few, the spell required exquisitely precise mana control, and restored objects were prone to quality degradation. Those were notable drawbacks.
And above all, it could not restore life. That was not restoration or repair at all—it belonged to the domain of forbidden arts, like the "Secret Art of the Undead King" that had come up repeatedly.
"The Master chose mana as the vessel; I chose blood. But this 'enemy' chose earth as its vessel—and doesn't mind if the contents spill out?"
At Beatrice's revelation, Roswaal clapped a hand over his mouth.
Garfiel's understanding still had not caught up to the two of them, but intuition told him it was something deeply troubling—and likely to yield an answer equally unpleasant.
Ignoring Garfiel entirely, Roswaal looked at Beatrice with a grave expression.
"Beatrice—this isn't the 'Secret Art of the Undead King,' is it?"
"…The origin is the same, but the approach is different. With the 'Secret Art of the Undead King,' the vessel comes first and the soul after. But with these zombies—"
"The soul comes first, and the vessel after. —The body reshapes itself to match the soul."
At Roswaal's words, Beatrice nodded deeply.
As before, the crux of their exchange eluded him. Garfiel endured that bitter feeling—only to catch sight of something that made him question his own eyes.
Roswaal stood there wearing an expression even more pained than his own.
He never would have imagined Roswaal distorting his face like this. No—that wasn't quite right; there had been times Garfiel wanted to drive a fist into that smug mug and put just such a look on it. But regardless of that desire, Roswaal was genuinely tormented.
With that anguish flickering in his eyes, Roswaal spoke.
"…I may have an idea of what the 'enemy' truly is."
"—What?! Really?! Then—"
"But please, wait. That can't be. Because she—by my own hands…"
The composure he had shown until moments ago had vanished. Roswaal's voice was thick with hesitation and doubt.
At his evasive attitude, Garfiel's eyes widened—then narrowed. If it had been Garfiel who had come up with this idea, there was a fair chance it would have been some hare-brained nonsense. But the person who had reached this conclusion was not Garfiel—it was Roswaal.
"This ain't the time to go getting all shaky on me!"
"……"
"Roswaal, I've got one question for you."
Garfiel half-rose, reaching as if to grab him by the collar. But before his hand could lunge out, Beatrice's voice struck Roswaal silent.
Beatrice stared at him, waited until he looked back at her, and then— "Is your hesitation because of Mother?"
"…Am I really that easy to read?"
"You never get this rattled unless it has to do with Mother. Or lately, I suppose, Ram."
"I'll admit I do have a tendency to be emotionally invested when it comes to you."
Answering with a bitter smile, Roswaal squeezed his eyes shut and tightened his jaw. Then, opening them again, he brushed aside his previous hesitation and nodded.
"Beatrice's assessment is correct. The mechanism by which the zombies reanimate without their original corpses relies on an application of restoration magic. At its foundation, a soul must be placed into a vessel—and for that, the 'Secret Art of the Undead King' has been applied."
"Neither restoration magic nor the 'Secret Art of the Undead King' is something you can use just because you understand the theory. The combination of two magics with such fundamentally different principles—that kind of reckless feat isn't something even a handful of geniuses could pull off. The only ones who could—"
"—Are from the Master's lineage. But it cannot be the Master. Therefore."
The "Master" Roswaal referred to and the "Mother" Beatrice spoke of were one and the same—a person who was not exactly a stranger to Garfiel either.
The situation was muddied by the fact that multiple people shared the same name, but hearing that the "
Perhaps Beatrice's single question had helped cut through Roswaal's anguish—and the latter's willingness to confront what he did not want to acknowledge played its part in Garfiel's own acceptance as well.
However— "…Unseemly, that gaze."
Without warning, Mizelda's voice dropped low.
Less attuned to magic than Garfiel, Mizelda had been unable to follow much of Roswaal and Beatrice's conversation. She had given up trying to understand the source of Roswaal's anguish and had devoted herself entirely to attacking the corpse soldiers.
Now, though, she had stopped in her tracks and was looking skyward, her keen eyes narrowed aggressively.
The gaze of a hunter, piercing and sharp—and Garfiel followed it. His throat went dry. The same was true for Beatrice and Roswaal.
Though the reasons for each of their reactions differed slightly.
For Garfiel, it was because he saw a familiar figure that should not have been there.
For Beatrice and Roswaal, the sensation was far more negative.
—In the night sky, a girl clad in black robes, her long pink hair streaming in the wind.
She had the same face as the person Garfiel had admired since childhood—yet she looked down at him with the cold eyes that he had never once seen directed his way.
"It was not my intention, but the experiment was successful… It seems this world has acknowledged me as a single living being."
The familiar face spoke in a familiar voice, lightly tracing the cracks that had spread across her own cheek with one hand, while her golden eyes fixed Garfiel and the others with a hard stare.
Hearing this, someone swallowed audibly. Roswaal spoke.
"You were alive…
"No—I am dead. —Subject… under observation."
With a flat tone, almost teasing, the girl known as Sphinx—a "Witch" who was the spitting image of Garfiel's grandmother, Ryuzu—spoke through the face of a corpse.