**Chapter 69**
—
It was not the kind of fear that came from thinking *the next might be me.*
No—strictly speaking, it wasn’t even fear anymore.
This was death itself—unavoidable, inescapable, indiscriminately scattered across the battlefield.
“Gatling-type, 20mm.”
Under the protection of his subordinates, Dale focused his consciousness into his incantation, unfolding the pure essence of slaughter.
A Gatling gun—
The very first weapon of mass destruction.
And in some sense, it was something far beyond what the people of this world could even imagine when they spoke of “mass destruction magic.”
From countless black barrels, the darkness was fired without end. *Shadow Bullets.*
There was no need to count the number of rounds.
From beneath Dale’s feet, shadows surged and coiled, weaving themselves into hundreds of bullets that rained endlessly downward.
A downpour of 20mm shadow bullets.
“Aaaaargh!”
“It hurts—it hurts, it huuuurts!”
Gunfire thundered; screams tore through the air.
Skulls shattered, brains splattered, bones broke, armor crumbled.
Entrails spilled onto the dirt, and a rain of blood poured from the sky.
Those who died instantly, without time to scream, could almost be considered fortunate.
One man crawled on the ground with both legs blown off.
Another clutched at his gut, trying to shove his intestines back through the bullet holes torn through his armor.
Another sobbed uncontrollably, crying out for his mother.
A river of blood.
The enemy’s cavalry, formed in a wedge formation to break through the Black Armor Company’s tight phalanx, had instead turned themselves into perfect targets for Dale.
And when the firing finally ceased, not a single one of the two thousand enemy soldiers dared to approach.
It had taken only an instant.
Before the cavalry could even close the few hundred meters that separated them, their entire force had been wiped from existence.
How else could one describe it, if not as “mass destruction magic”?
“How… how can that be mass destruction magic…?”
“B-but the Imperial court said so! They said the Duke of Saxen’s eldest son only had *three* circles!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Does *that* look like a 3rd-circle mage to you?!”
It should not have been possible.
And yet, before them now stood a mage wielding the overwhelming, war-changing power of a high-circle sorcerer’s mass destruction spell.
Silence fell.
But the performance of the Black Prince—the commander of the Black Armor Company—was not yet finished.
No, he hadn’t even *begun.*
Dale snapped his fingers.
The shadowed cloak billowing faintly at his feet quivered.
“Arise, my children.”
The command spread—
To the countless 20mm shadow bullets scattered across the battlefield.
*Kieeeeeeeek!*
At Dale’s order, the shadow bullets embedded within the cavalrymen’s bodies began to writhe madly.
They were not mere bullets.
They were living clusters of shadow, saturated with malice.
The living darkness began to move within the corpses of the cavalry.
The cloak of shadows revealed its second form—
**Shadow Parasite.**
Those already dead were the lucky ones.
The ones still alive thrashed in agony as their innards were devoured from within.
“I’m hungry, hungry, hungry—!”
“So hungry—so hungryyyyy!”
Cavalrymen who should have been dead—who should have been nothing but corpses riddled with holes—rose again with screams no living creature could make.
The shadows nested within them, using their bodies as hosts, taking root in the darkness.
They became puppets—famished wraiths dancing in endless hunger.
Dale’s cloak rippled even though there was no wind.
‘Not bad. Even at this distance, control’s holding steady.’
He observed the rising hosts of his Shadow Parasites without a flicker of emotion—merely assessing.
‘Can I add another modifier?’
His consciousness adjusted, seeking a spell structure that would further refine the individuality and form of his magic.
There were about a hundred hosts scattered some distance away.
Dale once again focused.
*Crack! Crack! Crack!*
The corpses twisted grotesquely, as if from a horror film.
The dead had no need to protect their organs, and so Dale shifted their ribs directly.
*Crack!*
From their arms, blades of bare white bone jutted outward.
Bony armor grew along their bodies, and through postmortem rigidity, their corpses hardened into makeshift *biological armor.*
And Dale no longer needed to issue commands to each one.
Within their throats, within their hearts—his living shadows already dwelled.
The Shadow Parasites began to move, dragging their hosts with them.
“I’m hungry, hungry, hungry—!”
A horde of the dead—ghouls driven by insatiable starvation.
Even their comrades, their fellow soldiers, were no exception.
All were prey.
Dale’s weapon of mass destruction had annihilated the cavalry,
and now those same bodies—pierced by shadow bullets—served as vessels for the parasites controlling them like puppets.
‘How far can I push this?’
Dale watched dispassionately.
‘How much influence can I exert on the tide of battle through them?’
Within the Black Armor Company’s lines, his magical output now rivaled that of the Black Tower’s elder necromancers.
He understood what he had achieved—
and that the enemies before him were nothing but *specimens* to test his limits.
Sacrificial subjects for experimentation.
Unbidden, a memory of the Red Cult’s twisted laboratories crossed his mind.
“……”
He shook his head.
This was a battlefield.
You kill or you die—there’s no third option.
And so his undead began their charge once more.
Even if they could not match a Death Knight, each one required several soldiers to bring down.
“Hold the line! Don’t let the formation break!”
“Aaaargh, it bit my neck—my neck!”
Dale watched the clash of living and dead, calmly assessing the tactical value of his creations.
‘One heavy-armored undead equals seven infantry.’
‘One unarmored undead equals three.’
‘Their bone blades can’t yet pierce plate armor.’
He took mental notes as though recording experimental data—without a trace of emotion—measuring his magical performance to refine it further.
That was when it happened.
“I—I don’t want to die…”
“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
“We can’t win! Run! Everyone, run!”
“Out of the way!”
Amid the surge of the undead, another contagion spread—
a plague of terror.
The same plague Dale’s sniper rifle had once unleashed.
Fear.
The desperate, instinctive terror of *not wanting to die.*
Before a mere hundred undead, even with several times their number, the soldiers broke.
They turned their backs and ran.
“D-don’t run!”
“Hold the line! Don’t turn your backs!”
“Deserters will be executed on the spot!”
Morale shattered, discipline collapsed, and after that came only one thing—
Desertion.
Even when the disciplinary squads drew their swords to cut down fleeing soldiers, the broken morale could not be restored.
Even the mercenary companies who had sworn to crush the Black Armor Company—
fell into panic.
All of them turned and fled for their lives.
But when an entire unit turns its back in unison,
it costs dearly.
And in that chaos, their exposed rear became easy prey.
The undead surged forward.
Before long, it was no longer a battle.
It was a massacre.
The Viper Mercenaries, the Golden Lions, the Brotherhood—
their proud names meant nothing now as they fled in terror.
‘Well, that’s about what I expected.’
After all, only two mercenary legions in the Empire could ever have posed a true threat—
*Landsknecht* and *Reisläufer.*
Their silence was proof enough.
They would never retreat until the last man fell.
Even now, they must be observing the Black Armor Company’s movements closely.
But what stood before Dale now—
could no longer even be called a threat.
“We’ve won.”
Dale murmured softly.
But even at those words, no one dared to cheer.
The overwhelming pressure of a being beyond all measure left them all silent in awe.
Dale snapped his fingers once more.
The Shadow Parasites halted their pursuit of the fleeing enemy,
turning instead—
toward the city walls of Hamburg,
and toward the heavy infantry of the Black Armor Company.
The undead turned as one, facing him, and the soldiers held their breath.
“Well, I suppose we’ve won.”
Dale spoke as if commenting on someone else’s affair.
And at his voice, the undead knelt as one.
Only then did the fear finally dissipate.
“We’ve won!”
A moment later, cheers erupted.
“It’s the Black Armor Company’s victory!”
“The Commander has wiped them out!”
“As expected of Lord Dale!”
Deafening cheers.
The people within the city shouted in unison, praising his triumph.
Barely a hundred heavy infantry had defeated a force twenty times their size—
and all thanks to a single man whose power defied convention.
Victory was theirs.
Undeniable, absolute victory for Dale and the Black Armor Company—
and from that day forth, the name of the *Black Prince* would be whispered with awe and dread.
—
—
Around the same time, the Britannian Independence Army surged across the old kingdom’s lands, reclaiming lost territories with unstoppable momentum.
Under the leadership of the “Divine Maiden of Salvation,” *Aurelia*, they overcame overwhelming odds and achieved victory after victory.
Their morale was sky-high—unshakable, radiant.
Soon after, Aurelia proclaimed *Charles VII*, rightful heir of the Britannian royal bloodline, as King.
With the restoration of the monarchy, their campaign to drive the Empire from Britannia Island began.
The Britannian Kingdom reclaimed its fortresses, cities, and fiefs,
and for the first time since the Empire’s unification, a nation succeeded in redrawing its borders on the map.
An unprecedented feat.
But the Empire, nursing its bitter defeat, was already preparing an immense new military expedition—
for none understood better than they
the storm that would follow if even *one* independence succeeded.
