Chapter 180: Battle Ends
"Damn it! Stop him!" Schlacht's order cut through the chaos.
He'd positioned monsters outside the battlefield as a fallback, insurance in case his forces needed to retreat. He'd never expected to use them for something like this.
But what the light screen showed him now was far worse.
The man's speed was inhuman. The flying monsters sent to intercept him couldn't even touch his clothes before being left behind. When they tried to block him with their bodies, a single spell from his opponent tore them apart, scattering remains across the battlefield.
As the distance closed, the figure on the screen grew larger, clearer.
Schlacht stared at the approaching silhouette with mounting dread, desperate to identify this arrogant human who dared charge at him alone. He forced more magic into the Eye of the Abyss, locking his focus as the face came into view.
Black hair. Young. Male. A human face with perfect composure, but those eyes—they held something else. Endless, patient killing intent.
And there, unsheathed at his waist, was a sword he recognized immediately.
The memories hit like a physical blow. Two hundred years ago. That battle. The one that had broken him.
That terrifying swordsman. The elven holy blade, Athos, burning in his grip.
That single strike that had shattered every defense Schlacht possessed and taken his horn.
"Impossible. Absolutely impossible!"
Schlacht froze as if struck by lightning. Color drained from his face, leaving only a corpse-pale mask.
The fear was suffocating. It locked his chest until the burning in his lungs forced him back to consciousness.
His hand trembled as it rose to touch the crown of his head. Where a magnificent horn should have grown, there remained only a smooth, severed stump.
That stump was his shame. His disgrace. The reason he'd spent two hundred years in hiding, afraid to show his face.
"It's him. That swordsman. Athos—"
Schlacht's words came out distorted, barely recognizable beneath the weight of his terror. "How is he alive? Two hundred years! How does a human even live two hundred years?"
He had deliberately extended his exile from one hundred years to two hundred, certain that time itself would consume this human, grind him to dust and memory.
"Why... why is he here?"
Panic seized him. The absurdity crashed down like a physical weight.
This swordsman. The one who'd dragged Schlacht to the edge of oblivion. The one he'd believed time had finally claimed. He hadn't simply survived—he had returned.
And he'd brought Serie with him. That elven mage. That other terror.
All of Schlacht's plans. All his calculations. They meant nothing now.
The delays. The El Country scheme. None of it mattered. Not against a man wielding that sword. Not against strength born from something beyond understanding.
One thought dominated Schlacht's mind: Run. Get out. Now.
He cut off the magic flow and activated the contingency he'd prepared decades ago—a small teleportation array.
Normally, such an array demanded more power than most beings could generate. Schlacht had never expected to need it. But necessity changed calculations.
He poured everything into it, drained his reserves to dangerous depths, pushed past the limit into overdraw. It still wasn't enough.
He'd accounted for that.
From a pouch at his side, he withdrew a crystalline focus, a rare artifact designed for this exact scenario. Magic flooded into it, and the missing power surged into the array.
The spatial gate materialized before him, edges writhing with eldritch light. On the far side lay safety, coordinates he'd memorized decades ago, a sanctuary he'd sworn never to need.
Opening this gate came at a steep cost. Schlacht's reserves crashed into critical overdraw; he wouldn't be able to access magic for months, perhaps longer.
It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except escape.
The moment the gate expanded enough for passage, he threw himself through without looking back.
In that instant before his form vanished, an attack struck the cave above with devastating force. The earth shattered. Stone cascaded down. The mountain opened like a wound, venting destruction across the space where he'd stood moments before.
The swordsman had arrived.
"Schlacht."
The voice followed him even as he fell through the veil between worlds. Calm. Certain. Like a judge pronouncing a sentence.
He'd never told this man his name. Never spoken it aloud. Yet somehow this stranger had divined it. The knowledge sent fresh terror spiraling through him.
Schlacht forced himself deeper, abandoning control, throwing his consciousness into the void itself.
Behind him, the gate sealed shut. Spatial ripples faded to nothing.
He had escaped just as he had two hundred years before.
But Kurtz's voice, cold and measured, was now carved into Schlacht's being. More indelible than any scar.
Schlacht understood with perfect clarity now: his greatest enemy had never perished. He had merely slumbered. And now he had awakened in a form far more terrible than before.
Worse still, the man remembered him.
Kurtz descended slowly through the dissipating dust.
Below, the mountainside lay open like a wound, exposing raw stone and the hollow chamber beneath. He studied the crater he'd torn into the earth, watching residual energies dance across its surface.
The moment he'd sensed Schlacht's aura, he'd released his attack. But by then, the demon was already gone. The spatial fluctuations told him everything, Schlacht had burned through his reserves to open a teleportation gate, escaping to some distant sanctuary.
"Coward," Kurtz muttered.
He'd underestimated how far the demon would go. Opening a gate at the cost of shattering one's own reserves spoke of primal fear, terror deep enough to override every other consideration.
Two hundred years was a long time to carry a wound. Apparently, long enough for it to fester into something like this.
Kurtz made no move to pursue. Tracking a teleportation was possible but dangerous. An opponent cornered enough to make such a sacrifice would have prepared traps, contingencies, perhaps worse. There was no guarantee he'd survive the other end intact.
Besides, the battle at White Fortress wasn't finished. Flamme remained. And Schlacht's presence here had confirmed Kurtz's suspicions: the demon had been buying time, stalling them.
Which meant the real threat lay elsewhere. To the west, in El Country.
If Schlacht had coordinated a massive assault, if he'd personally commanded forces with the intent of tainting El's Light, of corrupting Athos itself, the consequences would be catastrophic.
But even if he was wrong about the details, the conclusion was the same: Schlacht needed to be stopped, and El Country was where it would happen. The dwarves and their problems could wait.
After two consecutive failures, Schlacht would need months to gather enough forces again. The immediate threat was contained.
Kurtz dispersed his flight magic and dropped toward White Fortress.
The battle had largely concluded.
Serie hung suspended in the air, her magical aura still settling. The ground beneath her was devastated, craters scarred the earth in every direction, each one marking where she'd unleashed her power.
The ten demons surrounding her were gone. So were the reinforcements that had come to their aid. All reduced to ash, scattered on the wind.
The dwarf warriors were cheering and clearing away the last of the scattered monsters, their eyes full of awe as they looked up at Serie.
[End of Chapter]