Magic Caster of Destroy

“I understand! Then, I hope you will let me accompany you.”

“Good! Then, may the three of us return here safely. Don’t lose your lives without a good reason!”

Brain and Climb nodded in response to Gazef’s words.

Part 4

A crimson expanse. A barren wasteland, devoid of almost all vegetation. A bloody land of death.

The Kattse Plains ― a place where the undead and other monsters wandered, feared as a place that was inimical to life.

The most dangerous thing was the thin mist that wrapped around its monsters no matter the time of the day. This fog carried faint traces of the energies which caused undead reactions.

By itself, the mist did nothing to living creatures. It did not absorb life energy, nor was it harmful.

However, because the mist registered as an undead creature to spells, it produced false positive reactions which foiled attempts to detect other undead beings, and as a result many adventurers had been ambushed by undead while inside it.

However, there was no mist now. Visibility was excellent and one could see a long way. It was as though the land was welcoming the combatants of the upcoming war onto itself as future undead.

The undead had dispersed with the fog, and none of them could be seen. There were no living creatures present, and a deathly silence reigned over the plains.

Collapsed towers, built hundreds of years ago, jutted out from the earth like scattered tombstones.

Of course, none of them was intact.

The towers were originally six floors high, but everything above the third floor had collapsed, and the debris was everywhere. Less than half of the thick walls were left. The cause was not so much weathering as battles between monsters.

Scenes like these existed side by side with normal grass-covered plains, separated only by an invisible line. This was why the Kattse Plains were called cursed land.

The sun shone on the land which had not seen its light for nearly a year. As though to look down on this piece of unhallowed domain, a vast structure loomed high on the other side of the land ― the world of the living.

It was built with huge logs that were nowhere to be found on the surrounding plains, with sturdy walls that seemed to deny passage to everything in its vicinity. It was ringed by shallow ditches that were nevertheless carefully excavated and filled with sharpened stakes. This was to ward against unintelligent undead.

On the other side of the ditch flew countless flags. Of these, the most numerous were the Empire’s flags ― bearing the insignia of the Baharuth Empire.

That was only to be expected. After all, this building, this castrum, was the Imperial Army’s Kattse Plain garrison base.

The Empire had mobilized 60'000 knights for this operation. The garrison could house all of them, which itself spoke volumes about the base’s size. And this formidable castrum, as mighty as a fortress, was built on a piece of easily defended terrain.

It was built on top of a hill. This hill was not native to the Kattse Plains, but built up entirely through magical landscaping.

Even the Baharuth Empire, which used magic casters as a part of their national defense, could not complete work like this in a short time. This structure had been built over a period of several years.

Originally, this place was intended to be the starting point of invasions targeting E-Rantel. That was to say, this massive castrum had been built with the intention of withstanding an extended siege by the Kingdom’s hundreds of thousands of troops.

The Kingdom had no answer to the creation of this castrum, simply because they had no spare manpower or resources to attack the garrison.

Although they would unite when the Empire invaded their own country, when it came to launching an invasion, there were several problems to consider ― that each faction had their own things to worry about besides invasion, that they would not gain usable land, and that whoever did this would be paying for the invasion out of their own pockets.

In the end, none of the nobles would bother unless they were in the line of fire.

Three griffons flew in the skies above that massive castrum. They began with a wide aerial orbit, followed by a slow descent. Any knight would know that this was the way a unit of the ‘Imperial Air Guard’ ― troops under the Emperor’s direct command ― saluted while in flight, which was to say their ceremonial descent was meant to show that emissaries of the Empire had arrived.

On the surface, there were around ten mounted knights in a circular formation, each raising the Imperial flag. This was the return of the salute from the ground ― the ceremony for welcoming an Imperial agent. The griffins landed in the center of the circle, and the accuracy of the landing was a test of the riders’ skills, but all three passed with flying colors, which showed the excellence of their ability.