"Prepare yourself, you two. This is the second condition."
"Huh? You mean...?"
"The rain?"
"Yes. The rain creates a link between the 'something' in the ground and the regrets of the dead. The anomaly happens during nights with a full moon... When it also rains. Here they come!"
I suddenly felt the ground beneath me jump up as though pushed from below. At the same time, one of the nearby trees was struck by lightning.
"Wh—?! Claudia!"
It was ripped apart and uprooted, causing it to fall on the softened ground and making it crumble. Claudia was caught up and swept by the resulting wave of dirt.
"...Dumb bitch."
I talked shit about her being dull again, but I didn't even consider helping her. I knew that going after her was the smart thing to do in this situation, but I just wasn't feeling it.
Why, you ask? Remember how I told you that Fusion Types couldn't think straight when we went too wild? Exactly.
It was strong enough to make us awaken the sorcery, embrace our lust for battle, and become aware of our craving.
"Wil, oh Wil, oh my dead Wilhelm..."
The Dark Gift that flowed within me... My kiss in the dark... The Devilish rose told me to drain all life until only corpses remained.
"I love you sooo much! You don't need any woman but meee!"
"Quit talking, you whore. You're nothing but my sustenance."
I'll do you 'til you're in pieces, so gimme all your blood. Let's give it a good shape!
"Yetzirah—"
"Eheheh, heeheehee... Kyahahahahaha!"
Following that demented shriek of a laugh, my fangs — the thorns of blood — were made manifest. Myriad stakes sprouted from my skin, like freshly vines.
This was me — Number IV of the Obsidian Round Table, Wilhelm Ehrenburg, Kaziklu Bey. The one who merged with the blood of Vlad Tepes. The First and the only True Vampire in the world.
Of course, I didn't enter this state just for show. The anomaly was happening right before us, and that was more than enough for me to transform.
Also, I wasn't the only one on the scene with something plant-like going on. Numerous hands were popping out of the ground, all muddy 'cause of the downpour, and as you can imagine, the sight looked somewhat like a flower field.
They covered the whole area as far as the eye could see. The sight was grotesque, and though it's in bad taste, it wouldn't have been wrong to state that the hands were "in blooms."
Of course, the flowers didn't stop growing there.
After the hands came the arms, shoulders, heads, torsos... It wasn't long until we had the full walking corpses. Half of their bodies were nothing but bone, and all the holes on them were leaking filthy liquids and spilling maggots.
"A fucking mess, all of you."
They were so generic that I felt bad for them. We were all undead here, but compared to them, we Knights of Lord Heydrich's Reich were in a whole other realm.
The idea that this was our original fate was downright fucking insulting.
"None of you shits are entering Valhalla."
I would grind them all into dust — make them wither and let the world behold their remains, waste them and end their journey forever.
"I'll trash you all!"
With that roar as my signal, I kicked the mud below my feet and danced my way into the anomaly, punching and pulverizing the head of the first corpse before me.
I felt basically no resistance. It was like breaking a dead, rotten tree, and I instantly realized that there was nothing I could take from them.
No soul or blood — there was nothing I could drain, and that pissed me the fuck off.
You might be thinking, "Duh, of course corpses wouldn't have any life in them," but I wasn't in a state of mind to accept such logic. My urge for violence was basically screaming that they weren't worthy opponents.
Because of that, obviously, I wasn't the one who analyzed the situation properly.
A blue bolt of lightning grazed my side and reduced several dozens corpses into scrap. Anyone with common sense could tell that this wasn't your usual rage of the storm.
"I see. In single numbers, they aren't particularly menacing. Their movements are sluggish, and I see no signs of thought. They might be physically strong, but..."
She paused her words and spun her body into a backward roundhouse kick. Despite her slender frame, it created a whirlwind that blew away all the undead that were caught up in it.
"...compared to us, they are next to nothing. Does that displease you, Bey?"
"Oh, it sure as hell does. No matter how much of this trash you take out, it's a damn waste of souls."
"Truly. Even so, they aren't something we can handle with only our natural fighting power. At the very least, we have to use Yetzirah. You are correct in saying that they have nothing for us to drain, but it's clear they aren't completely empty. At the very least, they are imbued by the arcane powers that animate them. Therefore, unless we also fight on those terms, they will not stop even if we tear them to shreds."
She wasn't wrong about that. Though it wasn't dense enough for us to convert into fuel, an anomaly like this had to be run by some sort of magic technique.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and an arcane for an arcane — common sense, really.
These corpses wouldn't die no matter how many normal attacks you landed on them. You could reduce them to singular teeth or nails, and even then they'd crawl at you like maggots before regaining their forms further down the line.
Sure, a bomb strong enough to reduce them to ash would probably do the trick, but sadly, we didn't have any with us. To us, this was a battle of attrition where we couldn't gain anything.
We were in a rainy forest with a horde of undead as far as the eye could see. Though they seemed to be limitless at first glance, the info we had told us there were nearly one hundred thousand of them. The fact that we couldn't stock up actually made it a pretty difficult situation, all things considered.
My best option was to limit my energy consumption, but...
"Fucking hell, what the shit is this? I'm not the kind who holds back, for fuck' sake!"
I roared and shattered all the corpses gathering around me. Of course, they were as frail as before, but their numbers meant that they were best destroyed with appropriately large scale magic.
And, like I said, holding back for that was pretty much impossible for me. I just wasn't the type, in terms of both temperament and fighting style. Wilhelm Ehrenburg is a simple man, you see. Just light him and he explodes.
"Very good. Continue as you are. I never expected you to hold back, and going all out is the correct course of action here."
"Huh? The fuck do you mean?"
As she launched lightning as powerful as my attacks, Beatrice looked at me with cool eyes devoid of her usual stupidity and matter-of-factly explained the situation.
"They attack the living because they want to rob them of their life force. Be it blood, life, or soul — they reach for it because they lack it. Your motives may be different, but they're much like you on that front. That is why they're ganging up on us. Both you and I have an amount of lives far greater than any normal person. To them, we are the equivalent of a welcoming bonfire. Therefore..."
Her lightning clad blade sparked as she swung it at will, reducing the undead to carbon and dispersing the remnants of magic within them.
"...if we keep their attention, Claudia will be safer."
"Whaaat?"
I didn't even understand what she was talking about. In fact, I'd forgotten all about the woman until she mentioned her. Apparently, this idiot wanted to act as a decoy so that Claudia wouldn't be attacked.
It took me about five or six seconds to catch on.
"What? Do you have anything against that?"
Of course I fucking did. Beatrice's suggestion had nothing to do with actually taking care of the undead.
They were empty, so they targeted us, who were full of souls.
Sure, if we went all out and spent our fuel to keep the "flame of life," so to speak, burning bright, Claudia would go unnoticed by them.
What about it, though? What would we do afterwards? We'd still be wasting souls, so the situation would be shit.
Fuck, it'd get even worse.
"Are you braindead? That's fucking dumb."
Especially since she was the one with the lowest soul reserves among us.
"You do that and you'll be running on empty in no time. You're idiotic and suicidal."
"Really, now? What of it, though? I cannot change my way of life and don't plan to even try. We're no different in that regard."
She launched another lightning bolt, not holding back at all. It shattered the undead, vaporized the rain, and filled the air with static.
"Thus, this is all we can do here. You are unable to hold back, and I have no intention, either. Why, the complaints, then? Are you scared? Do you believed this is dangerous enough to make the reaper stand ready for your soul? Is that all you are, Wilhelm Ehrenburg?"
"..."
Though it sounded like it, she wasn't actually provoking me. The reason Lieutenant Beatrice Kircheisen was called "Valkyria" was exactly because she was an honest idiot. It was to the point of making me want to kill her, actually.
"I firmly believed that I am not of a small enough caliber to be ended here. Even if I'm stained by mercury, I swore to never cease being human."
I actually liked that part of her. She was one of those women I wanted to drain completely dry.
That moment never actually came, but whatever.
"Well now... You sure know how to use your mouth, you little bitch. My caliber? Don't make light of me. I'm way above you."
"Do prove it, then."
"Watch me. And don't fucking blink."
From then on, I started giving my all. Sure, I didn't go beyond Yetzirah, but besides that limit, I didn't hold back whatsoever.
I wasn't the type to do it, and Beatrice didn't intend to, either. She wasn't wrong that it would've come to this regardless.
Countless lightning bolts and stakes tore apart the forest as we almost competitively exterminated the corpses swarming over us like the maggots infesting them.
Needlessly to say, I wasn't counting. There's a reason I used the word "countless." A two versus one-hundred-thousand battle was far more too hectic to care about the progress you were making.
If I had to name one thing that was on my mind at the time, it'd be Machina. The man had also faced thousands of enemies all by himself.
Not only that, but they weren't anything like the ragdolls I was up against. They were Einherjar — all champions of the battlefield.
He fought them all and ended up coming out on top. I couldn't help but respect his Valor, and that was exactly why I didn't want to lose to him in that regard.
Basically, you know, fucking this up wasn't even an option.
"Well done, you two. You've provided me the time I needed to prepare."
Obviously, I was fired up something fierce, but all that heat ended up going nowhere.
"—Yetzirah—Pallida Mors—"
Why? Because our leader ended up taking all the spotlight.
"What?"
"Well, damn..."
Beatrice and I were so focused on what we had before us that we forgot the one most suited for handling this anomaly and what her power was.
She was given the order by Lord Heydrich Himself, for fuck's sake. The result was set in stone before we even got here.
"This makes things a bit easier, doesn't it? All that's left is to take care of the remnants."
The army of corpses still stretched as far as the eye could see, but about half of them had completely stopped moving.
They looked like some freakish trees. In a way, the scene was even more disturbing than before.
"Amazing... Did you steal the authority over them?"
"More or less, yes. It took quite a while, though. Whatever the case, you're not as outnumbered anymore."
Number XI of the Longinus Dreizehn Orden, Riza Brenner — a lover and manipulator of corpses. In terms of magic, she was a necromancer, putting her in the exact same vein as the anomaly we were staring down.
To her, corpses were both tools and weapons, so, in this case, it was all a matter of influence — of making it clear who was the top dog.
"I lose in terms of how many I can animate at once, but the power of my influence seems to be greater. They're as good as mine now. Let's hurry and finish this. It will make for a fine memorial service."
Suddenly, Babylon's army of the dead turned around in perfect union and attacked the opposing army.
With these allied forces on our side, we were no longer at a disadvantage. After all, it wasn't like Babylon picked the corpses at random.
She obviously prioritized the ones closest to us, effectively creating an orderly unit and making it clear which side was ours and which wasn't.
The chances of Beatrice and I accidentally attacking our own were negligible. Though battle formations primary existed to increase the speed at which orders were relayed, they also helped avoid harming your own.
Additionally, if I observed them properly, I could tell them apart by the type of arcane arts that animated them. This allowed me to go wild without worrying about wasting my souls.
"The Mask of Pale Death
I have kissed thy mouth, my beloved,
I have kissed thy mouth.
There was a bitter taste on thy lips.
Was it the taste of blood?
But perchance it is the taste of love."
Babylon's Ahnenerbe, Pallida Mors, had a pretty fucking grim history. It was basically both a corpse shroud and a death mask.
Some assholes with a taste for sarcasm may even call it a "Holy Cloth," like the Shroud of Turin, but that couldn't be less fitting. The damn thing was made out of the skin of human brats.
Not only that, but Babylon herself was the one who made it. Most of us — I, Beatrice, even Lord Heydrich Himself — got our Ahnenerbe from the Deutsches Ahnenerbe, a Nazi think tankfor occult shit.
However, the Longinus Dreizehn Orden also had members that'd created — or, rather, "nurtured" — their own weapons.
They'd spent the war killing so much that their dear little toys gathered enough karma and misery to enter the realm of the paranormal.
Machina's, Samiel's, Schreiber's, and Babylon's Holy relics were all among those ranks.
Though it was true they didn't have much of a history to them, that didn't mean they were weak. Like I said before, even in the world of magic, newer things were almost always stronger.
The fact that they were created in such a short time meant they had great density. You had tons of child-killing women all throughout history, but those that matched Riza's numbers were pretty fucking rare.
Apparently, she also did it with love and affection for them. Bitch definitely had a few screws loose, I tell ya.
It didn't and still doesn't really matter to me, though. Can't say I ever gave a shit about her backstory, but there's one thing I can say for certain.
"Ah, Jochanaan, Jochanaan, thou wert beautiful."
A woman's love can become a really fucking shitty curse. I know that from experience, and I doubt anyone would argue.
She wore the skin of her beloved dead children as a dress while controlling a horde of corpses. It made her look like some sort of dark saint.
The corrupted Whore of Babylon. The sinful holy mother Mary. She was the embodiment of the Third Reich's madness.
As far as I knew, she could gain greater power over the dead by changing her Ahnenerbe into a mask and putting it on the corpse, but she was focusing on numbers here. The garment of undeath decorated Riza Brenner like a stage actor.
I felt like I was watching an opera of death. The magic pulsing through the earth's veins caught Katyn's anomaly like a fly in a web.
It was as though she was caressing its head, embracing it, and saying "There there, good boy, listen to me."
"Man, this whore freaks the fuck outta me."
She was summoning the memories of their mother and the peace of the cradle. It was a lethal poison to all men, and not even the emptiest corpses could escape it.
Then again, their emptiness might've been exactly why they couldn't resist.
"Ah...!"
Fastidious little Beatrice clearly looked uncomfortable, but she wasn't dumb enough to complain about all the reinforcements we got.
Her superior — Samiel — got along with Babylon like cats and dogs, so she probably figured that this wasn't a good time to act as her proxy.
With that in mind, it was clear what we had to do next.
"Let's finish this, Bey."
"Whoa, look at you, acting like hot shit. Sure you don't need to catch your breath or something?"
"Why would I...? Never. Watch me!"
To finally take care of the situation before us, we just had to go all in.
And so...
"Looks like we're done here."
Babylon looked around the silent forest and sighed. She undid her Yetzirah, returned the corpses under her command to mere cadavers, and pulled out a watch.
"We took a bit over three hours... Well, I'd say we did well. Are you two all right?"
"Yes. You saved us back there. Thank you."
"I should be the one thanking you. This was originally a solo mission, after all. Thank you, really. You two were a big help."
The rain had already stopped, and the woods were shrouded in silence. If you ignore the corpses littered all over the area, it was more or less a normal forest.
"All that's left is Claudia. I'll find that idiot myself. You two can just go."
"No, I will see this through to the end. I'm worried about her, after all. I've said it many times and I will say it again — I am against leaving Claudia to you."
"Fucking let it go. Just how annoying can you get? Men hate women like you, ya know."
"Fine by me. I don't believe I'm saying anything wrong, and I don't care for men who have a problem with my words. Also, you showed absolutely no consideration for her when she was separated from us. Your words are empty because of that."