Chapter 1-16: The Horde of the Risen Dead

After taking revenge on the soldiers, Tenma continued flying for about another hour. As the sky gradually began to darken, he spotted smoke rising from the direction of the village.

“What is that smoke?!”

A terrible feeling came over him as he kept flying. Before long, the scene that came into view left Tenma stunned.

Several hours earlier, before Tenma returned…

“Celia, Merlin, when I give the signal, hit the ones heading for the gate with wide-area fire magic! After that, the warriors and swordsmen will finish off anything that survives!”

Ricardo gave the order and waited for the right moment.

“Now! Fire!”

““Firestorm!””

The advanced fire spells crashed into the zombies.

The zombies had no way of dodging the magic, and most of the group was burned away.

Of the roughly five hundred zombies, only twenty or thirty near the front escaped being reduced to charcoal.

Seeing that, I rushed out together with around thirty warriors and swordsmen.

“Listen! Disable them with a single strike! Once that’s done, withdraw immediately!”

As expected, we had placed our strongest fighters on the front line, and everyone was taking down the zombies with one blow.

They were only unarmed Goblin and Orc Zombies, but things were going smoothly.

The biggest problem was that the outpost had very little in the way of stored weapons, especially arrows.

Normally, more than fifty soldiers should have been stationed here, so there should have been a decent stockpile of weapons and food.

But this time there hadn’t even been thirty soldiers here.

Damn it. If they wanted to cut expenses, they should have done it somewhere else!

For the first year and a half, the outpost had always housed around fifty to sixty soldiers, and when replacement troops arrived, it was not unusual for the number to exceed one hundred.

However, even when they explored the forest, the most they usually found were Goblins and the occasional Orc.

Because of that, the number of soldiers stationed here gradually decreased. Recently there were only twenty to thirty, and even at most, there were barely forty.

To make matters worse, the fleeing soldiers had taken away as much food and weaponry as they could load onto the wagons, leaving only a small amount behind in the storerooms.

As a result, the villagers were fighting with whatever weapons they had brought from their own homes.

“Good! Fall back!”

“Right!”

My companions responded and rushed back through the gate.

If things continued like this, we might be able to hold out until reinforcements arrived.

But that was probably wishful thinking.

This was already the sixth attack since Tenma had flown off.

We had probably killed more than three thousand zombies by now.

Those damn soldiers had lied about the numbers too.

There was no way anyone could accidentally mistake this many for only a thousand.

Maybe it was the stress, but the way I spoke was starting to sound like I did back in my adventuring days.

Not that I had time to care.

“Hey, Ricardo!”

“What is it, Mark?”

Mark, who was keeping watch, sounded tense.

“This is bad. Ogres this time! About thirty of them! And behind them, I estimate another thousand Goblins and Orcs!”

That really was bad.

Ogres were B-rank monsters that stood around three meters tall.

If thirty of them attacked at once, this hastily built fortress would not last five minutes before they broke through.

“Celia! Merlin!”

“Yes!”

“Leave it to me!”

The two immediately understood what I wanted.

““Fire Arrow!””

The distance was still considerable, but they began firing repeated volleys of Fire Arrows.

Since the spell consumed little mana and had good range, they focused only on the Ogres.

Even so, the Ogres did not stop.

Once they drew closer, Celia and Merlin each cast Firestorm twice, engulfing the Goblins along with them.

They obviously could not wipe out the entire force, but the enemy numbers dropped to less than one-tenth of what they had been.

Only five Ogres remained.

“Charge!”

At my shout, my companions rushed forward.

The monsters were already badly wounded, so killing them was easy.

The attack wave ended, giving us a brief moment to breathe.

We drank some water and rested for a while.

Celia and Merlin still seemed to have plenty of strength left, but just to be safe, they drank a little mana potion.

Several more attacks followed after that, and eventually the number of monsters in a single wave exceeded one thousand.

If this was part of the enemy’s strategy, it was a truly nasty way to fight.

They had started with small numbers of weak enemies, then gradually increased both the numbers and the strength of the monsters they sent.

Whoever was controlling these zombies was probably extremely intelligent.

“Ricardo, the enemy is retreating.”

“Are they running away?”

I asked Mark while desperately hoping that was the case.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Looks like they’ve only pulled back into the forest.”

“I see… Still, at least that gives us time to rest.”

I had known things would not be that easy.

Even so, I ordered everyone to rest while remaining ready to move at any moment.

As I ate a light meal and checked my equipment, I thought that if everything had gone smoothly, Tenma should already be on his way back.

If possible, I wished he would simply stay away.

But knowing him, he would return and try to fight alongside us.

It would begin getting dark in about another hour.

Thinking that, I told the people waiting in the rear to start lighting fires.

For fuel, we used wooden boards taken from dismantled horse stables and similar structures.

Then, from the direction of the forest, the zombies’ roars sounded once again.

“R-Ricardo! This is bad!”

Along with Mark’s shout came screams from the people stationed atop the wall.

I rushed up onto the wall and looked toward the forest.

What I saw there was…

“What the hell is that number?! There have to be five thousand… no, nearly twice that many!”

I shouted as zombies continued pouring out of the forest one after another.

Goblin Zombies, Orc Zombies, Kobold Zombies, Ogre Zombies, Dragon Snake Zombies, and many other kinds of undead monsters emerged from the trees.

It was nothing short of a natural disaster made of zombies.

And since not all of them had even come out of the forest yet, there was no way to know just how enormous the horde truly was.

There were already nearly ten thousand visible.

Thinking about how many more might still be inside the forest filled me with something close to despair.

But we could not run.

If we wanted to survive, our only option was to buy as much time as possible and wait for reinforcements.

“This is a hopeless battle…”

An unbearable number of zombies swarmed in front of us, gradually spreading out as though to surround the fortress.

And night was approaching.

Zombies could move just as well during the day or at night.

Humans, on the other hand, were severely restricted in darkness.

That placed us at an overwhelming disadvantage.

“Keep those fires burning! We need as much light as we can get!”

If we continued burning wood at this rate, there would be nothing left for tomorrow night.

But if we failed to survive tonight, there would be no tomorrow.

If we wanted even the slightest chance of living, we had no choice but to gamble everything on the present.

Watching the smoke rise into the sky, that was what I thought.

This chapter was almost entirely from Ricardo’s point of view. Next time, the perspective will return to Tenma.

Chapter 1 should be ending fairly soon, though I still haven’t decided exactly how many episodes remain.

I occasionally revise the text, so there may be places where the continuity no longer matches exactly what you remember from reading earlier versions. Please understand.