The ominous news of the Evil Soldier Division's total annihilation spread across the entirety of the Evil Army in the blink of an eye.
Although the Evil Soldier Division was of the Pawn class, it served as the vanguard of the Evil Army in actual warfare. Its importance went without saying. Furthermore, the Evil Army was an assembly of formidable warriors renowned throughout the world—and there were over twenty thousand of those mighty fighters. Up until now, the only force that had ever given them a hard fight was the Heavenly Army, and even then, they had never once suffered total destruction.
That was precisely why, to the Evil Cavalry Division—the vanguard boasting the greatest mobility in the Evil Army—the report of the evil soldiers' complete destruction sounded like nothing more than a bad joke.
"All twenty-five thousand of the Evil Soldier Division wiped out? Preposterous!"
"Indeed! There is no way we could be annihilated by a mere swarm of grasshopper monsters!"
"There's no chance the mighty Evil Army could ever be brought down by a bunch of worthless small-fry monsters."
Inside the command tent, the gathered subordinates voiced their disbelief, insisting the report had to be false.
"Even if it's just an enemy ploy to disrupt our intel, we can't simply sit on our hands. We have no choice but to move out regardless."
Stroking his long, pure white beard, Major General Furcas of the Evil Army rose from his throne of skulls.
Even if this were merely a petty trick by the enemy to sow confusion, failing to mobilize the Evil Cavalry Division could jeopardize the command structure of the entire army if things went awry.
Good grief, he had expected this to be an effortless battle, but it had turned into a massive disappointment. All of this had happened because that incompetent Maru had bungled things up.
(That's why you should never entrust the command of an army to a mere colonel!)
To be sure, it was no exaggeration to say that Maru's raw strength alone was on par with that of a major general. Currently, only five major generals had manifested in this realm. That was why Lord Ose had entrusted the command of the Evil Soldier Division to Maru, the only officer comparable to a major general.
However, it had been obvious from the start that the bastard possessed virtually no command ability. It was entirely foreseeable that he would fall into disarray depending on the enemy's strength and maneuvers. In particular, they had clearly witnessed those grasshopper monsters slaughtering the evil soldiers. The enemy could very well be immensely powerful. If they stayed idle and left things in Maru's hands, the Evil Army risked suffering catastrophic casualties.
"We shall sortie as well! Inform His Excellency Lieutenant General Ose at once!"
Bellowing the order, he strode out of the tent and mounted a colossal, two-headed blue evil dragon. The Evil Cavalry Division commanded these evil dragons with unmatched speed. Sweeping across the land and soaring through the sky, they would strike at the enemy's heart and bring this ridiculous battle to a swift conclusion.
Glancing back at the five thousand evil dragons hovering in the air behind him,
"Quite a magnificent sight, isn't it...?"
He let out an admiring murmur. The combat prowess of the evil dragons far surpassed that of common evil soldiers. A single rider among these five thousand possessed the fighting strength of five hundred evil soldiers. Now that the Evil Cavalry Division had taken the field, defeat was out of the question—they wouldn't even struggle.
"M-Major General Furcas!"
He turned around at the sound of his aide's panic-stricken cry—a sound he had never heard the man make before. The aide's face was completely drained of color, pale and trembling violently from head to toe.
"Hmm? What is the matter?"
Looking around with a frown,
"What...?"
A dumbfounded sound slipped past his lips. And with good reason. Before anyone had realized it, a thick black fog had rolled in, and beyond the gloom, countless gigantic creatures towering like mountains had completely encircled Furcas and the Evil Cavalry Division.
"Wh-What on earth are those?!"
He rasped out the question through a bone-dry throat. As if in answer to his cry,
GUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH—!
A sky-rending roar erupted, blowing away the surrounding black mist in an instant.
Catching sight of the colossal entities surrounding them,
"Eek?!"
The sound that tore from his throat was entirely unbecoming of an Evil Army Officer. It was, plain and simple, a shriek.
It was pure instinct—a primal alarm that made every hair on his body stand on end. Beings capable of making one's heart seize up with just a single glance were exceedingly rare in this world. And what was more—what was truly terrifying—was that this wasn't just a single monster. There were well over a hundred of them.
His teeth clattered together in an unsightly fit of shivering. The sensation was horrifyingly similar to the dread he felt whenever he was granted an audience with the Six Great Generals, the absolute symbols of despair.
(How could such an absurdity be happening?!)
Being surrounded by more than a hundred entities that surpassed even His Excellency Lieutenant General Ose went far beyond a joke; it was utterly ludicrous. Even if he were to report this to Lieutenant General Ose, the general would likely never believe him.
A dragon-headed man clad in golden garments, who had been standing on the shoulder of a massive black dragon, leaped down to the ground and drove the butt of his Green Dragon Crescent Blade into the earth.
"By order of our Great One, we shall exterminate you all. Hmmm, I wonder, will you put up a resistance?"
He called back to the great dragons behind him.
"Pointless struggles are most welcome! However—fleeing is utterly futiiile!!"
The surrounding great dragons raised their voices in unison. At that thunderous shout, the soldiers of the peerless Evil Cavalry Division cowered, and their evil dragons shivered in terror.
"Indeed, indeed. It is futile. Resistance is futile. But that is war! That is precisely what makes it war!
Tell me, is that not so?"
"Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! Aye! It is sooo!!"
The fervor of the great dragons flared to an even greater pitch.
"Then I shall declare it here and now! For the King in whom we believe, we shall utterly destroy anything and everything that dares oppose him!"
The dragon-headed warrior raised his Green Dragon Crescent Blade high overhead.
Then, with a casual sweep of his arms, he swung it horizontally. That was all it took. With just that single strike, one-third of the Evil Cavalry Division floating in the sky behind him was sliced cleanly in two, detonating in a catastrophic chain reaction of explosions.
"No... It can't be..."
Furcas felt all the strength drain from his limbs. One-third of the Evil Cavalry Division, which boasted the highest mobility in the entire Evil Army, had perished without even having the chance to flinch. And it had all been done with a single, incomprehensible blow.
Now, there was only one thing Furcas and his men knew for certain: they could never defeat these foes, nor could they ever hope to escape.
Paralyzed by the sheer terror crashing over them in relentless waves, unable to even scream as they trembled uncontrollably, they could only watch as the dragon-headed man leveled the tip of his Green Dragon Crescent Blade straight at Furcas and the survivors.
"Trample them into dust!!"
At last, the merciless command fell, and the great dragons surged forward, crashing into the Evil Cavalry Division, which had already lost every shred of its will to fight.