A hint of darkness was approaching. It was an indescribable feeling.
　If I had to describe it, I'd say it was as if a darkness was coming over me. As an undead person who is not subject to the rules of death, the presence was familiar to me, but the Knights of the End and the mercenaries who face it in the flesh are truly amazing.

　Escaping from the basement. The number of undead surrounding the old castle was incomparable, though they were not visible yet.

　Necromancers have always been good at crushing the undead by sheer numbers.
　Unless you are a mage who can attack a large area, the difference in numbers will determine the outcome. And that is why the Knights of the End, who have the power to eradicate a wide range of undead, are called their natural enemies.

　I left Razal and the others underground. The narrow passageway will mitigate the difference in numbers to some extent. It's doubtful that I'll be able to get through all of the undead, but it's not unlikely that I'll be able to survive.
　I thought about it for a while and decided to check the strength gap. The undead weren't running or hiding, and I was one of them, so it wasn't hard to read their signs, but the sheer number of them was beyond the limits of my brain's processing power.

　Then, it would be better to make a show of it and let them attack us.

A dangerous strategy.

　Senri said with a reproachful look, but this is not a strategy a person with limited physical strength can take.
　And it's the safest. Having Senri as a guard to the tunnels would be perfect.

　The undead gather deadly energy and are strengthened. For a vampire, it's a pittance compared to the power gained from bloodsucking, but it's better than nothing.
　The amount of energy the undead release in the second death is so small compared to the amount of energy they release in the life of a living person that there is no point in taking the initiative to hunt them, but with so many of them, there will be some hunger.

　Before I went into battle, I confessed to Senri.

"Every drop of Senri's blood is mine. I won't give it to them.

"............ Yes.

　I was expecting her to be impressed, but her reaction was very muted. But from the smell, she didn't seem to hate me, so I should probably leave. I know. A man who pushes too hard without thinking about the other person is not liked. It was written in a book.


　I went outside alone, and with the Light Eater in my hand, I climbed over the castle walls and onto the crumbling spire in the center of the castle.
　The cold wind caressed my skin and the moonlight gave me strength.

　Even through my sunglasses, I could see the dead crawling in the darkness. So many. An army, if you will.

　But I felt no fear. Just a feeling of excitement. The mafia was weak. I haven't fought this many monsters since Rainer. The dead deployed around the old castle would be more in number than Lord Horus had ever ruled.
　The battle instincts of the lesser vampires are aroused. No hatred, but I can kill as many as I want.


　I feel countless eyes on me. I'm being watched. The hatred, the will to kill, gives me a nice, tingly feeling.

　--And then, without warning, the dead came rushing into the castle.


§§


　Senri has given me a lot of information so far. She has given me a lot of information on how to fight, on common sense, on the tricks of the mages, and on the basics of fighting the undead.

　The first thing I checked was whether or not they knew who I was.

　When fighting vampires, you need to know how to exploit their weaknesses. The Kainushi I once fought is an example of that.
　I'm strong. I'm still in the lower ranks, but I'm strong enough to hunt down the Demon Lord, and with regular bloodsucking, my strength is even greater now than it was then.

　If they find out that I'm a vampire undead, they'll definitely come with their nasty crosses and garlic (they won't use silver weapons or blessed holy water because they're also very effective against undead).

　I looked at the undead for a while and was convinced that they were coming with force. The decayed walls of the castle were no longer standing, but the sight of countless skeletons climbing in a straight line toward me was spectacular. Of course, the skeletons are also pouring in through the open gates.


It's amazing ...... that there is such a thing.

　The bony people climbed on top of the bony people and the bony people climbed on top of the bony people - apparently, a body without skin and flesh is very useful for gymnastics.

　However, it would be foolish to challenge me with numbers, as I have a high regenerative ability without fatigue or wear and tear. Even the mighty Ryner's army was almost no match for me, so no matter how many bone men I had, they would be no match for me.

　I quickly slid down the half-destroyed roof of the steeple, bored with observation. I jumped into the crowd of hundreds of bones that were rushing toward me.

　The bone men were really just bone men. I've heard that a boneman's strength reflects the qualities he possessed before his death, but these were probably the bones of ordinary people.
　Their fighting skills are not even close to the bone men who guarded the Lord's mansion, but they are numerous.

　They had only one crude sword and no armor. The sloppy way they were treated made me feel a little pity for them.

　With one swing of the machete, several bone men were blown away. Even bones hardened by magic are meaningless in the face of the physical strength of lower vampires.
　I'm not sure what to make of it, but I'm sure it's a good idea.

　The bulky remains of the bone-men and their crude swords clattered against the cobblestones, making a rumbling sound. The swords of the hundreds of bone people don't even seem to touch me.
　But how many bone men did you prepare? Do you love bone-men?

　Just when I was frowning at the lack of response from the bone people and the fact that they showed no signs of diminishing no matter how many times I slashed them, the vampire's keen hearing caught the sharp sound of wind.

　He spun his body around to avoid the flying object.
　It was an arrow. An iron arrow. It miraculously avoided the crowd of bone people and pierced the stone floor.



　The dead were still pouring in without a second thought. On top of the city wall, I saw a figure of a bone man in fine armor.
　He carried a huge bow as tall as he was, and his bones were as black as darkness.

　I would call him the Kuro Bone Archer. Around him were similarly lined up bone people with slightly lower grade bows and armor.

　The Kuro Bone Archer fires his bow in rapid succession. The flying black arrows slip through the many gaps in the bone people, sometimes shattering them, and come straight at us.
　The skill of the black bone archer is clearly unparalleled. The bone people around you shoot arrows in response. The arrows are pouring down like rain.

　So this is the real deal.

　Then I realized what I had just done and clicked my tongue.

　I wasn't the only one who had been watching. They were looking too.
　What were they looking for?

　My identity, of course.

　More to the point, I'm sure they were sent to destroy me in order to make sure I wasn't a demise knight.

　The Demise Knight is an apostle of light. If I were a demise knight, I wouldn't be able to defeat them by any ordinary means, and they would purify me from a distance.
　And when they saw how I fought, they were convinced that I wasn't a demise knight. That's why they sent the real one.

　I've been licked.

　Of the arrows that rained down on me, I could only accurately cut down the ones fired by the black bone archers, who were harder to see and more powerful. The arrows fired by the other archers were slower and less powerful.

　The "Light Eater" that Lord left me is a really great machete. It has the perfect reach, strength, and sharpness.

　It ducks and dodges arrows, sometimes cutting them off as it crushes the bones that come in to stop it.
　The bones are like waves, but even if they belong to ordinary people with no combat skills, the number of tombs is finite. It's still early in the evening, and as undead as they are, they're not going to fight until the sun comes up. Time is on my side.

　Out of the myriad of sounds, I hear the sound of ground being crushed.
　I jump over the bones and catch the jet-black blade with my machete. The black-boned knight who had attacked me leapt backward, crushing his ally as he landed.

"That's a lot of play.

　I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
　He was a magnificent Kuro Bone, about two meters tall. He must have been a famous warrior before his death.
　Without saying a word, the Kuro Bone lifts a huge sword as tall as he is. It's a terrifying feat of strength reserved for the inhuman.

　But not as much as me.
　Had they been able to open their mouths, they would have said, "That's absurd.
　The blow, which they probably swung with all their might, contained more force than I could withstand when I first became a lowly vampire. But they were only mutated once, and I was mutated a different number of times.

　Before I knew it, the number of bone people coming to me had decreased. Instead, they were replaced by more powerful mutants.
　Bone wolves, bone monkeys, bears... Looking at it like this, I have a strange impression that there are many kinds of animal skeletons. This is a refreshing change from Lord's use of animals other than bone people.
　Before I knew it, there were countless other translucent humanoid figures flying around in the air, and a chorus of screams echoed through the night.

　It's like the end of the world.

It's a full course meal. That's quite a performance.

　I licked my lips and raised my machete in the air, taking in all the killing intent and hatred.



§ § § §



　A few dozen kilometers away from the old castle. On top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, a man was staring into a crystal ball with wide eyes and a demonic look in his eyes.
　He was a man with rough, earthy skin. He was probably in his thirties. He is not large in stature, but his stagnant eyes are so out of the ordinary that a sane person would scream and run away.
　In fact, he was a being that hated the world and avenged humanity. A mage of the dead. He is a dark mage who freely manipulates the dead and humiliates their souls.

　However, his face, which had always been almost unchanged, was now distorted in shock.

"Oh, ............, that's impossible.

　In the crystal ball, an unbelievable scene was unfolding.

　Countless dead people were pouring into the castle where no one had reigned in a long time. Most of the undead are bone-men, but there are also a number of mutated bone-men called "Kuro Bones," skeletal wild beasts that can move in strange ways that are structurally impossible for humans, and undead spirits that cannot be damaged by ordinary weapons. They had enough power to destroy a small town in a single night.

　But the army of the dead that this man prided himself on was unable to kill a single person.

"What the hell is that man--

　The sight was unbelievable to the mage, who had so far had almost no one to stop him.

　The target of the deaths was a single young man. He was in his mid-teens, wore sunglasses even though it was night, and wielded a large blade that was clearly out of the ordinary.
　But that's all. He's not a demise knight, and he's not using any offensive magic. There's no ally nearby.

　But the blow from his machete easily blows away the swarming undead. It repelled the blows of the Kuro Bone Knight, who boasted extraordinary strength, and accurately cut off the arrows of archers who were difficult to recognize.

Is he really human? ......?　Or is it the power of some kind of curse?

　The forces dispatched by the man tonight are enormous. In the event that you have any questions concerning where and how to use the internet, you can call us at the web site.



　Numbers are power. Even if your opponent is one of a kind, all you have to do is send out an army of ten thousand.
　If the opponent was the Knights of the End, it was too far from the man's expectation to be unable to kill a single person who looked like a human being.

　His crystal ball reflected a scene that was always inferior. The excited man's thoughts gradually regained their composure.

Neither the poison nor the miasma has any effect. ...... No, what about the wound?　d*mn, I can't see.

　You're a terrible shot. But not all of the arrows that rained down on him didn't hit him. The bone man archer he's got is an elite one, made from the bones of a former great archer.
　Although none of them had clearly pierced his body, there were many that had been grazed. And the arrowheads are laced with a powerful poison that can make a human being fall into a coma with just a scratch.

"How can you be so calm?　Why?

　There are many other mysteries.

　The undead are covered in a powerful miasma caused by dark magic. The miasma changes the air. If they were alone, they would have no effect, but if there were that many of them, it would be hard for humans to move.
　Despite this, the young man does not change his color. The screams of the Banshee, which shake the human spirit, and the fog of sleep, which should have been flowing as soon as they entered, had no effect whatsoever.

　The giant skeletons that I had worked so hard to create collapsed the castle walls and attacked. However, the giant skeletons had already been defeated once. It is unlikely that the young man can be defeated without inflicting much damage on his opponent.

　The man clenched his hands until they bled and muttered in a trembling voice.

"d*mn ...... monster. You misjudged it. I'm not sure that [Descend] has such a great skill in the old castle.

　I should have prioritized obtaining the Night Crystal instead of choosing to eliminate the foreign enemy. Even if it is a crystal that a mortal mage desperately wants, it can't be weighed against an army that has struggled for years to produce it.
　No matter how strong they were, they were still single-armed, so they should have released a decoy and searched for the crystals while they were at it.

　There's still a way. But I have to avoid further loss of life.

　I know his face. I'll kill him next time I see him. I will make you regret forever that you made an enemy of a mortal mage.

　I'll issue the order through the connection as if I were spitting it out. At that moment, a cool voice echoed in the supposedly empty room.



"Wait, third level necromancer, Lohman the Flesh Stripper.

　A black mist gathered and took the shape of a man. A woman in a black robe appeared in the darkness. Her eyes are cold, but her irises are as red as blood, and her skin is so translucent that it is hard to believe she is human.

　A vampire. The most famous and feared kind of undead in the world.

　At the unexpected appearance, the man known as Lawman raises his eyebrows and shouts.

You, sir!　I don't remember welcoming you. How did you get in here?

That's why you're third class. There are many ways out. This mountain was already bought by my Lord and given to me, trespassers have no rights.

"What do you want, ............ one vampire?

　In the event that you've got any questions regarding where and the best way to get in touch with me, please do not hesitate to contact me.

"My Lord is interested in him. I won't let him get away with it.