Master and Slaves

"...This is bad... maybe?"

I muttered to myself.

Harold and the others were gradually being pushed back.

"Ku..."

I hesitated for an instant, then stabbed Destroyer into the ground and immediately ran toward the front line.

Destroyer was heavy and large, so it got in the way when I was in a hurry.

"Master!"

"You all stay there!"

I stopped Muriel, who tried to follow me, and headed in the direction where Harold and the others were fighting.

As I drew closer, the enemy soldiers’ fighting spirit came through.

When I found Harold I went to his side and joined in.

That said, it was only checking the enemy soldiers coming at us.

"What’s going on?"

"General... sorry. These guys aren’t normal."

Harold said that as if groaning.

Certainly, it wasn’t normal.

Even if their arms were torn off, their legs cut away, the weapons in their hands made useless, they still came crawling.

"At first I thought they were magic creatures or zombies, or being controlled by magic or drugs... but... nah!"

Harold parried an enemy soldier coming at him while talking with me.

"They have proper will, and first of all they’re telling us to pull back. ...Hey, General. If you show these guys mercy you’ll have a hard time."

When I checked the enemy soldiers so as not to wound them while listening to Harold’s words, Harold cautioned me.

"Ku!"

"See, I told you so."

I struck an enemy soldier’s hand with the flat of my sword and knocked down the hoe he held, but the enemy soldier still tried to punch me.

Harold helped me by cutting off that enemy soldier’s one arm.

"Thanks."

While enduring nausea I thanked Harold.

"It’s still too early to thank me!"

Just as Harold said as he started dealing with another enemy soldier, the enemy soldier clung to my leg with his remaining arm.

"Please! Please go back! Go that way!"

An enemy soldier pleaded with me while shedding tears.

"What’s wrong?! What’s going on?!"

I crouched, grabbed his shoulders, and asked that enemy soldier.

At that moment the town gate opened and demonic beasts appeared from inside.

Orcs and ogres, several hundred of each.

They were uniformly wearing flesh-colored armor.

"...Don’t come... don’t come! We’re still fighting!"

The enemy soldier in front of me suddenly cried that out, shook off my hands, and struck me with his remaining one hand.

However there was no force, and he immediately collapsed on the spot, perhaps from blood loss.

"You all right? General."

Harold spoke to me.

Whether that was about being hit, or seeing my face that had lost its color.

"Yeah, I’m fine."

I didn’t know which, but anyway I answered.

Looking down, the fallen enemy soldier was groaning in a small voice.

"Stop it... don’t... don’t lay a hand on my grandchild..."

Grandchild?

What did that mean?

"No good. We’re pulling back for now, all right?!"

Harold shouted and asked me.

Looking around, the mercenaries were being pressed even further by the enemy soldiers.

The enemy soldiers were more desperate than a moment ago.

Apparently those demonic beasts were the cause.

"Understood! I’ll take the rear! Harold, lead everyone!"

"Hah! I won’t let only the general look cool! Nora! Pull these guys together!"

"Understood!"

Leaving the rest to a female swordswoman named Nora, Harold and I met the enemy soldiers pressing in with even more fighting spirit.

"If you hold back this time you’ll really die."

"Yeah, I know."

Both Harold and I readied one-handed swords.

"Go that way!"

"Don’t come this way!"

The enemy soldiers came while shouting, but the content was strange.

"There are children over there!"

"My wife’s there too!"

"Don’t make them fight!"

The enemy soldiers, covered in wounds, swarmed us while saying that one after another.

"Hey! Stop! Hey!"

Harold checked an enemy soldier trying to grab him with his sword.

However they came without fearing at all.

There was no will to kill us now.

One enemy soldier threw away his weapon and pleaded with us.

"Please! You pull back too!"

An old man who must have been close to seventy clung to me and cried out as well.

"My grandchild is over there! Not even ten yet! Please! I’m begging you!"

An old man prostrated himself on the battlefield.

What is this.

What is he saying is over there.

Those are demonic beasts...!

I concentrated and "saw" in front of the town where the orcs and ogres were.

Then I was taken aback.

What the demonic beasts were wearing was not flesh-colored armor, but naked humans.

What the ogres were wearing were adult women.

They had huge, towering members put into their vaginas or rear holes and were bound to their bodies.

What the orcs were wearing were children.

Boys had them in their rears, girls in their vaginas, and were bound to their bodies the same way.

"Damn it! Harold! We’re pulling back like this!"

"O-oh!"

When I turned straight around and started running, Harold also turned around looking confused and started running.

The enemy soldiers did not follow.

After the mercenaries pulled back, their will to fight had apparently been lost.

The first battle closed its curtain like this.

...

If I strained my ears, I could hear the screams and crying of women and children, unfit for a battlefield.

"Damn it! This is sickening!"

Harold muttered as if spitting it out.

What was fighting now was the knight unit.

However it was not the knights themselves fighting. Their Dules, the beastman Vista tribe, were taking the lead and fighting.

Almost all of the knights had Dules.

That was apparently something you could even call a status as nobles and knights.

Therefore among Dules there were many beastman tribes with small souls who could be made into Dules even without room in the soul vessel.

And those Dules were strong physically and mentally, and further many of the beastman tribes had a warrior’s aptitude from birth, so they were often operated together as a unit.

Naturally, or rather, all the Dules were women.

Against that the enemy was a mixed force of the human soldiers we had fought and demonic beasts.

The human soldiers were fighting desperately while protecting the demonic beasts who had women and children bound to them, but the demonic beasts were attacking without regard for those soldiers as well.

...An extremely abnormal battlefield.

"What is this! Is this a war!"

Harold cursed again.

Moreover our side was worse.

The beastman Dules were bewildered by the demonic beasts’ attacks and defense.

The attacks came without mercy even when the Dules were fighting human soldiers, attacking without distinguishing friend or foe.

The defense suffered from the human soldiers trying to protect the demonic beasts as if ready to die, and they hesitated to attack the living women and children the demonic beasts wore on their bodies.

Further the knights showered abuse on the Dules for their unreliability, and they seemed worn down mentally as well.

Even so I thought they were still fighting well.

The front line was somehow being maintained even while being pressed.

A deadlock continued for a while.

And by that much both friend and foe suffered.

The only ones who did not suffer were about the demonic beasts, who had no obstacle physically or mentally.

"Can’t you do something?!"

Harold shouted that at me, but I had been told to stand by here.

The reason was apparently that I had fought on my own.

Helene and the others did not want me to die more than I thought.

"Damn it!"

Harold cursed for who knows how many times today.

At that moment a gigantic light ran through the battlefield from the town.

It swallowed friend and foe without distinction, and after the light vanished blackened, charred corpses of humans and demonic beasts lay rolled about.

"What?!"

When I concentrated and "saw" toward the town, I could see something on top of the castle walls surrounding the town.

They were two figures who seemed human.

One was wrapped in a black robe and wearing a hood.

I could not tell the gender.

However I had seen them somewhere...

The other was a woman.

She was standing in front of the robed human.

No, she was floating in the air.

She was completely naked, chains wound around a body written with patterns like a magic circle, both arms and both legs stretched out in a large X.

I had seen this one too.

Not only that, I felt as if I had known her from long ago.

And... I felt something unpleasant.

Suddenly the robed human chanted some kind of spell and put a hand on the back of the woman floating in front.

The woman stretched both arms and both legs, arched her body, and screamed.

Then the patterns written all over her body and the applied chains began to glow, and a gigantic pillar of light centered around her navel in the middle of her belly was created and flew toward the front line.

As before, it took lives without distinguishing friend or foe, human or demonic beast.

And damage also began to appear against the knight unit and soldier units standing by in the rear.

Fortunately the magic unit led by Hein had put up a gigantic barrier, so it was not something that produced dead.

However at this rate it would be a slow death.

In fact only a countable number of the Dule unit remained after the previous two magic attacks, and at this rate the knight unit and soldier units would have to go out.

Even so the other side would probably use magic without hesitation.

"...Tiria, put up barrier magic. Muriel, Sara, if that magic comes, block it with this. Listen, hold it together, you two."

I ordered Tiria, Muriel, and Sara that way, then handed Destroyer to Muriel.

"Master, what are you going to do?"

"I’m going to take that out."

When I stroked the head of Sara, who asked looking worried, I readied a one-handed sword in my right hand and ran toward the town.

"Master!" "Hey, General!"

Muriel and Harold shouted toward me, but even if I answered they probably wouldn’t hear, so I ignored them.

Anyway I had to deal with that one.

No, I had to meet "them."

My intuition said so.

There was quite a distance to the town’s castle gate.

I ran at full speed and closed it in one breath.

The hooded enemy on the castle walls also seemed to have noticed me and took aim this way.

For that they turned the naked woman floating in front toward this side.

Even if that light came, I had the confidence I could dodge it.

So I ran with my eyes fixed on the target.

I looked at that woman from the front.

The woman also seemed to have noticed me. When our eyes met she wore a surprised expression, then shook her head and shouted something.

...Ru-n.

For an instant I was in a daze.

The running legs slowed.

Did that woman know me?

And I...

The woman’s voice immediately changed to a scream.

At that instant light was released from the woman toward this side.

Slow to react, I was swallowed by that light.

Inside that light I muttered a certain name.

"...Yu...ki..."