It was a silent funeral dirge.
Every time Barbatos lightly pressed her foot into the grass, the ground trembled faintly. Five thousand monsters had deliberately matched their steps to hers without a single inch of misalignment. Though they could not roar aloud lest they give away the element of surprise, by walking in lockstep they asserted to their mistress that they would claim victory.
Barbatos smiled.
"My lovely little brood of mine."
She had never been a necromancer in the first place. She was a warrior. She had plunged into hells of spears and swords, relying on her own weapons. She was strong. Even as her comrades and subordinates fell around her, she had survived to the end. Eventually, every last companion who had sworn to wage an endless war beside her died, and she alone remained.
From that moment on, Barbatos had clawed desperately to bring her companions back.
For the first time in her life, she touched magic. Lacking any talent, she failed again and again. Necromancy in particular was exceedingly finicky, and its lineage was rare throughout both the Demon Realm and the Human Realm. Even so, Barbatos refused to give up—because she still believed they were worth fighting for. To die from something as trivial as a stray arrow on the battlefield, a sacrifice made to shield a comrade, a foolish command that led to one's doom—that was far too small a fate for people who had been so radiant, so strong, so beautiful.
So I will make them live and breathe for eternity.
Barbatos cast aside her sword for their sake. There was not a flicker of hesitation. Instead of the weapons that had carried her until now, she chose the companions who would walk beside her from here on. She revived each and every soldier into an undying monster with her own hands. Not a single creature now striding through the mists of Austerlitz—not even the lowliest zombie—had come into being without her touch, nor had any of them failed to carve their way across a glorious battlefield beside her.
She did not know how long she walked across that sea of mist.
A wind blew in from somewhere, and the fog slowly parted. The sun rose.
At that moment, atop a hill, Crown Prince Rudolf von Habsburg, Margrave Fritz von Rosenberg, and Mercenary Captain Ferdinand von Wallenstein were receiving a situation briefing inside their command tent. A dispatch officer came sprinting toward the camp in a panic. He even forgot to salute.
"Your—Your Imperial Highness the Crown Prince!"
"How rude. Since when has the discipline of the Imperial Army decayed to this extent?"
The dispatch officer thrust his arm up in a hasty salute. His chest was heaving—he had clearly run a long distance. Without even catching his breath, the officer spoke.
"The enemy… the enemy force has appeared ahead!"
"The enemy has appeared?"
The Crown Prince furrowed his brow. Fury surged through him—who in the world had selected this idiot as a dispatch officer?
"Pull yourself together! Are you not supposed to report where they appeared and how large their force is?!"
"To the outside... hurry, to the outside...!"
The Crown Prince clicked his tongue. The man before him was in no state to speak properly. The Crown Prince swept his cape aside and strode out of the command tent. Count von Rosenberg and mercenary commander von Wallenstein followed close behind. They reached the edge of the hill and gazed down.
"What are we supposed to be seeing..."
The surroundings were shrouded in mist. Slowly, the clouds of fog parted. And when the sunlight began to illuminate Austerlitz, the pitch-black shins of monsters emerged from the mist. They were grotesque feet, the flesh mangled and revolting. At first, there was one foot. Soon, it was two. It didn't take long for two to become a hundred, a thousand.
*Thud.* The ground trembled.
Before long, the monsters completely pierced the fog and revealed their entire forms. Countless war banners fluttered in the wind. The sigil denoting the 8th ranked Demon Lord led the charge as a massive banner. Upon the banner bearing a crown of death, a single phrase was inscribed in Ancient Imperial script: *Valkyries, may you march forever—*
Behind it, eleven more banners fluttered. They were not Demon Lord army banners. They were flags that had once symbolized the Royal Guard Knights of Human Realm nations. The Azure Dragon Knights, the Crimson Eagle Knights, the Cross Knights, the Golden Horse Knights, the Iron Shield Knights, the Silver Lily Knights, the Iron Blood Knights, the Rhine Alliance Knights, the Freedom-Honor Knights, the Green Stag Knights, the Helvetica Lion Knights. The Royal Guard Knights of empires and kingdoms long destroyed and vanished—their symbols now flew high.
This was the pride of the Plains Faction leader, the legion of the 8th ranked Demon Lord, Barbatos.
They had always stood at the very front of the Crescent Alliance Army, facing the most powerful Royal Guard Knights among the knight orders, and had annihilated eleven of them, seizing their banners. Among them was the war banner of an empire that had fallen over sixteen hundred years ago. In other words, those flags now fluttering ominously in the mist from that place were history itself, the history woven by the Demon Lord army and human armies over the past two thousand years, drifting on the wind.
A zombie snarled.
Here we are, an invincible and undying army.
A skeleton soldier responded with a pulse of mana.
Here we are, the Valkyries who shall march for eternity.
Five thousand undead monsters sang a martial hymn with an exceedingly low voice, like a pipe organ. It was a voice that burrowed into the deepest recesses of the skull. They had weathered seven hundred battles, large and small, driven eleven nations to ruin, and now they yearned to make it twelve.
Here we are, for having died, we know no further death, and for not having died, we know not defeat.
O, God, gaze down upon us. Valhalla stands upon this very earth—!
"W-What in the world is this!"
Crown Prince Rudolf gasped. Five thousand monsters were ascending the Pratzen Heights with a solemn, majestic air.
At first, the Prince thought he was seeing a hallucination. The monster army was far too close. Was such a thing even possible from the start? The climate of Austerlitz's mist, the geographical problem where high ground often obscured low ground in fog, and an elite undead monster army that made no sound whatsoever besides their footsteps—all these factors combined meant the Imperial forces had failed to notice the enemy advancing right up to their doorstep.
The monsters were as solemn as if conducting a funeral. The aura of death emanating from their corpses wafted up the hillside in an instant. A funeral procession for whom? For whom were they holding a mass?
"Now, my beloved undertakers."
Barbatos threw wide both arms.
"Let us hold the funeral of the Habsburg Empire."
The monsters let out a roar and broke into a run. There was no longer any need to walk in silence. The surprise attack had succeeded, and a mere six hundred meters ahead, the human army was trembling in terror. It was not only the rank-and-file who were shaken. Noncommissioned officers, commanders, generals—even the Crown Prince had been plunged into uncontrollable chaos.
"——Immortal Barbatos!"
Only Margrave Fritz von Rosenberg gritted his teeth and bellowed the cry.
He had instantly grasped the entirety of Barbatos's strategy. If they yielded here, the entire Imperial army would be split down the middle and picked apart one piece at a time. The Margrave turned toward the Crown Prince. And shook his head. The Prince stood with his mouth agape, some vital spark gone from his eyes. In that state, he could not possibly command an army. Here, the Margrave would have to step forward himself.
"Issue the order at once—correct the aim of the catapults and strike the front!"
"Y-Yes, sir?"
The commanders standing nearby answered in dazed voices. Margrave von Rosenberg, in a manner quite unlike his usual temperament, resorted to violence. He drove the tip of his boot into a commander's shin. The man screamed and crumpled to the ground.
"Where are your wits? The enemy has appeared. Then we crush them. Is that not what the Habsburg Imperial Army exists for? Answer me!"
"Y-Yes, sir!"
The commanders scrambled into formation. Drill after decades of training took effect. Though nothing in their minds had yet been sorted out, simply by moving in sync they felt as though they were doing something purposeful. For the Margrave, that was enough for now.
"Pass the order. The catapults are to correct their aim immediately and attack the front!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Captain von Wallenstein!"
The Margrave called out to the mercenary captain. Ferdinand von Wallenstein, who had been staring blankly into the mist until that moment, finally snapped back to attention.
"Yes, Count. You called for me?"
"The only force holding our center right now is your mercenary corps of twenty thousand. Under no circumstances can those creatures break through our front. Do you understand? Hold our lines with your lives."
Captain von Wallenstein snapped a military salute. This was the finest mercenary corps in Habsburg, hired precisely for moments like this. The captain outwardly deferred to his employer, the Crown Prince, but in his heart he recognized the Margrave's competence—and so he accepted the order without hesitation.
"We'll show you the might of the Landsknechte. Your Excellency, we are the strongest force on the continent."
"You need to hold out as long as possible. This is the decisive point of the battle! Ten thousand of our troops have been dispatched to break through the Demon Lord's army's right flank. The moment they pierce that flank, our Empire wins."
"Understood."
Captain von Wallenstein could only admire the man. It wasn't just a blunt order to act as meat shields and hold back the enemy. He had spelled out a clear strategic objective.
If they held this position until their forces broke through the right flank, they would win. If this position fell before that breakthrough, they would lose. Simply having a concrete goal was enough to transform the attitude of every commander and soldier on the line.
"If it comes to it, the Imperial Knights Division will deploy. Understood? We still have reserves. Commit everything to the defense."
"Yes, sir!"
The mercenary captain shouted the acknowledgment with full force.
The Margrave had not spoken only to the mercenary captain. Commanders nearby had been eavesdropping intently on the conversation between the two generals. The message was meant for them as well — how long they needed to hold, that they were not staring down an impossible catastrophe, but that if they performed well, victory was within reach.
The senior commanders of the Habsburg Imperial Army quickly shook off their confusion. They each sprinted back to their respective units and recited aloud exactly what Margrave von Rosenberg had just said. The words spread from officers to non-commissioned officers, and from NCOs to the rank and file.
"You think dying once means you get to skip dying again, Bael?!"
"Come and get it, you skull-headed bastards!"
The mercenaries roared, hefting their pikes. They were not the sort of idle drunks who wandered from town to town — they were elite soldiers who had campaigned across the continent's battlefields under Captain von Wallenstein's command. Their loyalty to a nation had merely been swapped for loyalty to an employer, or more precisely, loyalty to coin.
The captain wisely announced that "every soldier who holds through this defensive action will receive a hundred gold pieces!" It was an improvised idea, but it hit the mark with the troops. Unlike other mercenary captains, Ferdinand von Wallenstein had never once broken a promise of pay. When he said a hundred gold pieces would be handed out, a hundred gold pieces actually dropped. The mercenaries roared with renewed courage and belted out their battle hymn.
"Count! Forgive the report, but we cannot use the trebuchets."
"The angles won't work?"
The Margrave's expression soured. The enemy had gotten too close. At this distance the trebuchets could not lob their stones — not without flattening their own troops alongside the enemy.
"But we can hold. Have the Imperial Knights Division standing by in the rear."
"Yes, Your Excellency!"
A dispatch officer rushed in at intervals, reporting on the situation at each position.
The most critical piece of news — about the 10,000-strong Central Army heading toward the Demon Lord's right flank — still hadn't come through. They would have entered battle by now, surely. By rough estimation, at least 20,000 troops had been committed to the Demon Lord's right flank alone. They had to perform… Count von Rosenberg clenched both fists and glared toward the front.