His body may have been rotting away day after day, but apart from the movement of his mouth, his mind was far clearer than it had ever been when he was healthy. His nerves were now constantly on edge, making him acutely sensitive to every change around him.
And so…
“Captain! Cavalry from below! D-dragoons! Two units!”
Upon hearing this report, he blew the whistle hanging around his neck.
The ground erupted, and worms thrust their heads up from the hardened earth. The riders on the slope were swept away, but the magicians remained unharmed.
“A-all units! W-withdraw! Fall back and join…Lord Berganda!”
He always assumed the worst. At some point, that mindset had become the guiding principle of Parokt’s thinking. Ever since the day he had been poisoned by his own subordinates and the kobolds he had trusted.
The fact that the unit with the greatest striking power in the Hero’s army had come this way meant only one thing. They were here to wipe out those controlling the worms. In other words, their plan to launch a flanking ambush from here had already been exposed.
“Come at my call. With your very bodies, let a thousand riders and ten thousand soldiers alike be burned to cinders.”
“It is radiance, it is the iron hammer, a thunderous shattering blow in a flash.”
They intended to incinerate everything, forest and all. A merciless grand spell was being woven from the mouths of the dragoon.
“Captain, hurry!”
A subordinate riding on the back of a black panther reached out a hand, but he brushed it aside.
“Go! The worms, won’t be able to control them, anymore, but y-you get out alive!”
And with that, his subordinates fled with a gust of wind.
Parokt threw aside the insect-controlling whistle he had been holding, and then raised the other whistle hanging from his neck to his lips.
“May fortune favor you, Berganda.”
After the brief farewell, he blew it with all his might.
Just as the tone, inaudible to ordinary living creatures, rang out…
A mountain-shattering torrent of flame, lightning, and the worms’ rampage swallowed everything, including Parokt.
—
While casting a sideways glance at the battle lines, Komos ran on toward the right wing with ragged breath.
From the left wing behind him came a catastrophic roar. And when he glanced back for just a moment, he saw the mountainside give way in a landslide, stripping the earth bare.
“…Parokt.”
He thought of the death of a man who had been his longtime comrade, a veteran who had shared hardship and joy with Berganda for many years.
The Hero’s army had likely moved to crush the group of magic beasts lying in wait. Especially the worms. And the beast tamer must have driven the worms into a rampage, so that he could perish along with his enemies.
The lightning strikes at the center of the formation had ceased some time ago. Udik had charged straight into that center, and would not have escaped unscathed.
“Damn you…”
Komos muttered as he continued on to the forest.
Couldn’t something have been done before it came to this?
A sense of regret burned in his chest. Everything had started with the Demon King’s order to capture that kobold.
If only they hadn’t fixated on such a thing…if they had just killed it on the spot.
He knew all too well that such thoughts were against the Demon King’s will. Still, he could not tolerate the idea of being toyed with by such whims while he and the others fought on the front lines.
But then again, would they have been able to fight this much, without Sheto as a pawn?
The only reason they were even able to hold their ground against the Hero, who commanded a vast army and could easily render their desperate strategies meaningless, was because that kobold was there.