Lightning poured from the sky without end.
Bolts tore through the air and raked across the earth.
It was as if the heavens and the ground itself had shattered.
In an instant Alicia and the others were blinded by white, and a moment later the thunder hit — an endless barrage of it.
——KRAKOOOOOM!!
It wasn’t sound so much as a shockwave.
They clapped their hands over their ears on instinct, but it nearly knocked them senseless anyway.
“Ugh——!”
“This is insane!”
They endured the assault of light and sound for what felt like forever.
When Alicia slowly opened her eyes, the forest had been transformed.
Smoke rose from everywhere. Charred trees collapsed where they stood.
The whole area looked as though it had been swept by a wildfire.
She raised her binoculars with some apprehension — and found the Crawlers that had blanketed the earth had stopped moving.
White steam was rising from their bodies. They’d been incinerated by the magical strike.
“……Ohh!! Magnificent!”
“And to think this only reproduces the Forest King’s miracles!”
The Elves cheered aloud one after another.
Alicia and Misha were also stunned into silence by the sheer scale of it.
A small nation’s army could have been wiped out by that single attack.
One of the Six Kings, indeed.
As the two of them surveyed the wasteland around them, Maruela drew her sword and cried out:
“Long live the Ethereas Mage Kingdom!!”
“Long live!!”
The Elves raised their hands with her cry.
Every person there seemed to believe the victory was theirs.
At which point, one of the airships began flashing signals down at them.
“……Impossible! She says we’ve barely thinned their numbers at all!”
The message wasn’t what she’d expected. Maruela hurriedly produced her mirror and sent a confirmation signal.
Then a soldier with binoculars turned pale.
“We have a serious problem!! More Crawlers are pouring in from behind — endless waves of them!! Keraunos barely made a dent!”
“Give me those!!”
Maruela snatched the binoculars and looked for herself.
Crawlers were surging forward over their fallen, coming in an unbroken mass.
Despite Keraunos burning through a massive area, their numbers showed no sign of shrinking.
If anything, the swarm looked to have more momentum than before.
“This can’t be……How long until Keraunos can fire again?”
“At least thirty minutes!”
“……We hold. That’s all there is! Everyone — weapons up!!”
The mood lurched from easy confidence to grim tension.
The knights drew their swords and braced against the oncoming swarm.
“Lancelot-types — go!!”
Alicia shouted and ordered the golems into action.
The Lancelot-types vaulted off the wall one after another.
They pressed shoulder to shoulder and leveled their spears, forming a hedgehog of overlapping pike-points.
A solid defensive formation — not something that could be easily crushed.
And then——
“Here they come!!”
Maruela’s voice rang out.
The black tide finally crashed against the wall, the ground shaking with its approach.
The knights answered with a roar.
“AAARRGH!!”
The proud Elven knights, averaging level fifty.
Their strikes cut down Crawlers one after another.
But the numbers were beyond overwhelming.
The knights fought with everything they had — and were gradually swallowed by the black tide.
“Talos-types, cover them!!”
Misha threw the Talos-types into the breach.
The massive golem bodies moved to shield the knights who were about to be buried.
But it couldn’t last.
Unable to withstand the crushing mass, the Talos-types began to groan under the pressure.
Several were crushed. The Crawlers surged through the gap with fresh momentum.
“……Fall back! Up the wall, everyone!!”
At Maruela’s voice, the knights scrambled back up to the top.
But the Crawlers came right after them — piling on top of each other, massing into a black surge that pressed against the wall.
“Keraunos — is it ready yet?!”
“Not yet!! At least ten more minutes!”
“We don’t have ten minutes!”
“Then I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do!!”
The mages shook their heads, gasping for breath.
Firing Keraunos now would almost certainly kill them — that was obvious.
But while they argued, the swarm continued to press against the wall.
It was about to give — and then——
“……They’re pulling back?”
The Crawlers pressing against the wall abruptly stopped.
No one could understand what was happening.
While everyone stared in confusion, the Crawlers changed direction.
And then, as though guided by something, they began circling widely around the wall.
“Are we saved?”
“……Looks like it.”
The danger had passed. The Elves let out long breaths of relief.
Alicia sank down where she stood with a deep exhale.
Below the wall, the wreckage of destroyed golems was scattered across the ground.
Of the five hundred Lancelot-types, roughly twenty had already been taken out.
If the fighting had continued, the losses might have been catastrophic.
Misha’s Talos-types had it even worse — not being combat units to begin with, a fifth of them were already gone.
“We barely made it!”
“That was close……”
“Lucky those things went off somewhere on their own, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
Then, relieved, Alicia and Misha looked in the direction the Crawlers were heading.
And Alicia noticed something.
“……Wait. Hold on. Isn’t that the direction of Isvall!?”
Alicia shot to her feet and cried out, her face suddenly stricken.
The greatest crisis yet was now bearing down on the city of Isvall——.