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“To think that the advanced group would be decimated… You caused more damage than I thought.”

As I whipped away the blood that soaked Excalibur and watched another group of Shining Guild members flooding in, a voice was heard from a user wearing impressive white armor.

“It’s Lycan.”
“Who’s Lycan?”
“You don’t even know the vice-guild leader of the Shining Guild? He’s the top 16th player in the rankings!”
“T… That means he’s the one famous for his legendary item called ‘Cloak of Glory’?”
“Yeah.”

I heard sounds of whispers coming from the mercenaries.

“Hmm…”

I glanced at the white armored user with interest. I assumed that the probability of meeting with one of the vice-guild leaders would be extremely low since there were dozens of different battles happening at once, but one of them was standing there, beating the near-impossible odds.

If I was in a more favorable situation, he would have been an excellent target for me to challenge, but…

“No way… He couldn’t possibly have brought ‘Crusader’, the most elite unit in the Shining Guild with him here, right…?”
“Haha… N… No way…”

Crusader. Quite fitting to the name of the unit, it is formed with the highest leveled users within the Shining Guild, famous for being the guild’s main military force.

Most of the units in the group are composed of close-range classes, and they had the best possible items and equipment to match. Although the number of users in the unit was less than 200, they were all within the top 3,000 in the England server. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who didn’t know about this unit. Any videos taken of their exploits in raids or guild wars were popular enough to be a hot topic, even in overseas forums as well.

Thankfully, I didn’t see any of them. Thinking about it, there are 200 of them, so there’s no way that they would all be put in this specific location and battle. So I felt a bit at ease.

“Seems like there’s quite a high level ranking user here. Is it Eva? Well, I guess that doesn’t really matter. Sorry, I guess I went on a bit too long. Please die now. Fufu.”

With a creepy laugh, Lycan joined the enemy forces and mixed in among them.

An enemy force with equipment and power a step higher than the previous advance group poured into the interior of the castle. They seemed to be confident in their numbers, as they didn’t even bother maintaining a formation or anything and simply charged in.

‘Did they judge that a mage with an extremely powerful anti-magic spell was among us?’

I heard that even though it’s rare among the 6th or 7th circle magic users, there are some that fanatically studied one kind of magic the entire time, and their power and influence in battle can completely change the tides. There was a high chance they judged that such a user could be among our mercenaries after they heard of the 1st advance group being decimated.

Well, they may not have guessed that there could be an 8th circle mage among us‌. The possibility of a mage with focus on a single type of magic at 7th circle is several times higher than having one that has 8th circle unlocked after all.

“Everyone, please stand by.”

Katalina ordered all the mercenaries to stand down in the nick of time. Some of them were about to move out of formation and appropriately fight the enemy forces that were moving in.

Yep, looks like she’s aiming to unleash a powerful spell onto them. An attack that’s as powerful as the one I had shown just a few moments ago.

Rumble…

The ground shook as she began casting. As I had seen some epic-scale magic before, I realized she was preparing a grand spell. The rumblings of the ground obviously confused many of the mercenaries excluding mages.

“C… Counter that magi…”

One of the Shining Guild members who was charging at us became frightened and mumbled, but I clearly heard his sound even from afar. There’s no way any sound can escape the perception of a grandmaster user.

“Tsk… You’re too late.”

My words were like a caution for the punishment they were going to receive.

As the strongest straightforward attack magic in the 8th circle spells, even someone like me could be taken out with one hit if I didn’t block it in time.

A great ball of fire burning as bright as the sun hung in the air for a moment, before hurtling towards the enemies in a straight line.

It seemed like our mercenary mages were told of this plan beforehand, as they cast dispel on the enemy mages that were trying to put up a magic barrier to guard against the Hellfire spell.

As their magic had been disrupted by the dispel magic, their efforts to guard against the Hellfire must have fallen apart. It only delayed them for a few seconds, but the results were devastating.

“Damn it…”
“Ah…”

Booooom!!!

The great flaming ball of fire directly swept up the enemies that were charging towards us. If it wasn’t for the effect of the spell which made it do zero damage on its allies, we would have also taken damage as well, but thankfully all we suffered was a limited vision because of the flames that surrounded us.

“Getting real hot, isn’t it!”
“Heh…”

I heard sounds of giggling from some mercenaries. If this attack hit our allies, it would have meant disaster, but it was the enemies that were damaged by this attack.

Naturally, they had some time to laugh at the damage that the enemies were receiving.

“Aaargh! Save us!!!”
“Ahhh… H… Healer…!”

As the flames dissipated, the aftermath revealed itself and looked truly horrifying. If you didn’t get verified as an adult when playing this game, all you would have seen is piles of ash; but for those that have completed their adult verification, they would instead see horrifying corpses with burnt flesh and the realistic smell of skin being burnt assaulting their senses.

If you didn’t keep telling yourself this wasn’t real, you would actually have a panic attack by all the horrors you were seeing.

But this was the very best moment to charge the enemy. They were in a state of panic. Turning my head back for a moment, Katalina also seemed in a daze, looking at the horrific aftermath. It didn’t seem like she was planning to lead her troops.

‘Looks like women are women after all.’

It was my opinion that men have better tolerance to scenes of violence and brutality than women¹. Since there was nothing I could do, I thought that I should just lead for now instead.

“Everyone, we’re going to charge.”
“H… Huh?”
“We’re charging in?”

Before I even finished my sentence, I activated my Wind Walk as I ran towards the enemies. The mercenaries behind me slowly realized the situation one by one and started following me towards the enemies.

Squish!

A disgusting feeling wrapped around my feet. The enemy line that had been directly hit by the hellfire had turned into a literal mush of flesh, and it had stretched quite far.

Just how many had died from that single strike? It easily reached over two-digit numbers, and seeing as how there were still enemies on the verge of death trying to put out the fire burning them, I understood why mages were often called the most powerful weapon in siege battles.

‘It’s hard to raise one, but mages are seriously overpowered‌.’

Someone’s message that I once read in the Blue Sky forum resurfaced in my mind.

“Ugh…”

Although they were going to die even if I left them alone, there were enemy healers coming from the back and possibly saving them from their death, so I stopped in my tracks to make sure I properly killed the ones still surviving somewhat. As the befuddled enemies watched their allies being slain, they started to come out of their daze.

“You f̲u̲c̲k̲i̲n̲g b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲s̲, I’ll kill you all!”
“I’ll have my revenge for my allies, you b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲s̲!!”

Enemies that were angered by the damage they received started reorganizing to attack again. Even though I continuously cut them down, there were even more pouring in, and together with the ranged enemy units shooting at me from behind the front lines, it seemed to me that I needed to think about falling back.

“As if I’ll let you go!”

Just as I showed signs of backing off, one of them quickly noticed and tried to blitz towards me, but because of their abysmally lower amount of dexterity stats, I saw through their attack completely.

“Kgh…”

Staring at the Excalibur which had penetrated straight through his stomach with disbelief on his face, he died straight away.

Even master level users could die from a single strike from me, so it was impossible for anyone below master to even think about going up against me.

While taking down any enemy that tries to take advantage of my retreat, I started backing away.

And so multiple small to large clashes took place while I moved back.

“Huff… Huff…”

Although my health and mana were plenty enough to not give me any worry, my mental state was being worn down, giving me serious fatigue.

This not only applied to me, but all the mercenaries gathered around me as well. I wasn’t sure just how many hours we had been fighting, but there weren’t any that gave up because of too much fatigue, and the number of mercenaries we had was reduced to just half of the 300 we originally had.²

The number of enemies coming in was several times more than that. If it wasn’t for the system that automatically erases any corpses after a certain amount of time, the hallways of the castle would have been absolutely filled to the brim.

“854 kills.”
“Hm?”

While catching a breath as the enemy forces reorganized themselves again, I suddenly heard Katalina’s voice coming from behind me and reacted in surprise.

“The number of enemies I killed so far.”
“That’s amazing!”

It was understandable, even though she used the Hellfire spell only three or four times, the number of enemies that died from each time it was cast was extremely high.

Even now, the reason ‌the enemies kept slowing down their advances must be because of the tremendous damage they received from Katalina’s Hellfire. We could hold the line within the hallways thanks to her, and the mercenaries were able to survive.

In these hallways that seemed to be filled with despair, a faint glimmer of hope was shining. I also felt good knowing that such hope was there for us.

“947.”
“Hm?”

This time Katalina was the one who replied in surprise.

“Yep, that’s the number of enemies I killed so far.”
“…”

Katalina frowned a bit. Heh, that’s what you get for trying to flex your kill numbers at me.

Though her Hellfire spell was extremely powerful, it had huge delays between each cast, and in the meantime, I used the many AOE skills that I had in my arsenal and took down numerous enemies easily and quickly, as if I was simply sweeping away ants.

Naturally, the number of kills built up quickly as I plowed through the crowd.

“Looks like we will definitely level up quite a lot if we survive this.”
“Yep.”

Katalina and I smiled as we looked at each other. We were in the worst possible situation, but that didn’t mean that there was only despair waiting for us.

Once the siege battle timer finishes, we’ll end up being in the best possible situation.

“Have you been waiting long, my little mice trapped in a corner?”

1. Lilith: More dependent on experience
   Silva: Women should be more tolerant of blood due to “you know what”. Uhehe. I mean, I can’t stand blood.
2. Lilith: If there weren’t any why did the number reduce
   Silva: Because they got slain?
   Anonymousss: Ah yes, perhaps clarification would be good.
   “Although no one gave up from exhaustion alone, many were cut down from the harsh battle, putting us down to 300 in numbers”