Kuro no Maou

“...What happened?”

After the loud shattering sound and the tremor that shook the castle walls had both subsided, I clumsily managed to get back on my feet . Lily was on my left, and Fiona on my right, both on all fours trying to get up as well . They didn’t seem to be hurt somehow .

However, some of the other adventurers weren’t as quick to react, as it seems that some of them had lost their footing due to the impact and fell down . You could hear their groaning all over the place .

But more importantly, what happened to the castle walls?

“Wow, looks like it pierced right into the wall, doesn’t it?”

The Taurus under our very eyes seems to have punched through the wall . Its drill arm was plunged deep up to the elbow into the wall . Considering the length of its arm and the thickness of the wall, it seemed that it would be able to pierce through the wall completely with one more punch .

Its drill seemed to have stopped spinning, and it looked as if the Taurus itself had come to the conclusion that it cannot push it any further as it was not making any movement to do so .

However, the chances of the walls being completely pulverized if they were to receive another blow like that were too high . We could definitely not allow it to punch the wall a second time .

“Lily, Fiona, if we jump onto it now, we should be able to destroy it before it can attack again . ”

“Wait, Kurono! Those guys haven’t finished their attack yet . ”

Lily quickly grabbed my right arm so as to stop me from firing the ‘Bind Arts’ I was preparing to use to climb back onto the golem .

Before I was able to ask her what she meant by that, the Taurus moved again .

Instead of holding that drill arm high up again, this time it came right off . With a loud mechanical noise, the drill arm neatly disconnected itself from the golem at the elbow . The drill itself was still plunged deep into the wall .

“What? Is it broken?”

“No, I think it’s armed now . ”

Having accomplished its duties after leaving its own drill arm stuck at the wall, the Taurus turned on its shining white boosters and quickly began its retreat . The snow whirled up by the Taurus reached as high as the top of the castle walls .

“Damn, we can’t go after it... it’s too fast!”

The Taurus, who boasted tremendous mobility thanks to those boosters, got far away from the castle walls in no time . If I had jumped onto it in time, I would have been taken all the way back to the Crusader’s Headquarters in a snap .

Then, the Taurus went back using the same path it took to reach the walls in the first place, leaving us without any chance for a counterattack . The Taurus on the left that had approached from the south also started to retreat in the same way . There seemed to be more vigorous adventurers over there, and many tried to climb on the retreating golems, but were sadly shaken off .

No matter how much snow has fallen onto the ground, no one can come out unharmed after falling from a height of over 20 meters .

“We shouldn’t be trying to chase them . The walls have already been breached . ”

Then it happened, as soon as Lily had finished talking .

The roaring sound of an explosion . At the same time, a tremor shakes through the castle walls . The walls themselves are no stranger to explosion sounds and being shaken due to the several wars they had stood against, but this time it was on a whole different level . It was louder and it felt closer than ever . That’s because this time, the explosion must have happened right next to the wall– no, it was from inside the wall .

“Ack! No way! The drill exploded!”

We could know the moment it exploded without even directly looking at it .

Lily had said, “It’s armed now” . In other words, the Taurus’ giant drill wasn’t just a regular excavator, but a bomb that would explode after piercing into its target . An armor-piercing projectile, so to speak . It wasn’t a pile driver, it was a grenade burst... damn it!

The wall was shaking and making ominous thunderous sounds, and I could not walk over it without stumbling several times .

However, since Lily was still holding my right arm, and Fiona grabbed my left arm without me noticing, we were somehow able to keep our balance and, through great effort, to stand as firm as possible . We might have been able to prevent each other from falling, but perhaps... no, without a doubt, these castle walls were no longer safe .

I looked into the wall where a cloud of thick black smoke was fiercely rising up .

“This... this is bad...”

There was a huge hole in the wall .

I couldn’t make sure if the hole went all the way through the other side of the wall from where I was standing . Though I couldn’t see it, given the amount of black smoke coming out of the wall behind my back, the situation was very clear .

I couldn’t know the actual size of the hole for sure, but given the size of the drill and the magnitude of the explosion, I couldn’t be mistaken by calling it a “huge hole” . Fortunately –or perhaps, they were aiming for that– the hole was made around 10 meters above the ground, approximately in the middle of the wall . At least the soldiers on the ground would not be able to swarm us by using the hole . But an invasion of their chimera soldiers, who can freely roam vertically around walls, would be inevitable .

At that very moment, we understood that the impregnable defense that this Galahad Fortress was so proud of had been destroyed .

The wall was barely able to withstand the drill attack but was no match for the subsequent internal explosion . The Great Walls of Galahad, made from this ancient relic, had been attacked by a force that simply exceeded its defensive capabilities . A simple but inexorable example of absolute power .

“There’s still one of them over there . ”

Lily pointed at one of the Fulltune Taurus that, far from making a move since their appearance, was standing quite imposingly on the spot . It was facing the wall, but neither on its left or its right side . It was right in the middle of it .

Then it suddenly dashed forward to slam into the middle section of the wall, which up until that point had stood unscathed . There was a front gate there, with thinner armor than the actual walls .

“This... this is bad! If they break through the main gates...”

The castle’s weak point that even a fighting amateur would have thought about striking first . If they were to be breached, Galahad would be done for .

That Taurus was aiming for that huge steel main gate, which matches the great walls that barely covers the heavens . No one could have failed to notice it was making a beeline for it .

“Hey, hey! That’s a little too dangerous, isn’t it?”

“A little? Don’t be an idiot!”

“At this rate, it’s going to break through in a single slam!”

The voices were making no effort to hide their impatience . The Spada soldiers here and there were getting just a little noisy, but the less disciplined adventurers were just shouting out at their own discretion . The commanding officers were getting worried about deserters among their ranks .

However, though there were many adventurers fleeing the castle, I had no intention to take a single step back .

“Now we’ll get them for sure– Hitsugi, ‘Barrel Change’!”

“Eeehhhh!? If you use ‘Plasma Breath’ now, you’re going to break the gun!”

“It will be far worse if they breach through the gates! Do it!”

I held out ‘The Greed’ a second time as Hitsugi yelled “Okaaaay, I’ll do it!” and started to move her tentacles about, beginning the ‘Energy Charge’ .

Before grasping the gun’s foregrip with my left hand, I quickly reload it with one of the remaining five ‘Gil Bullets’ .

“‘Gil Bullet’ reload complete! Umm... about fifty seconds until energy is fully charged!”

In this situation, it wouldn’t matter if I waited until it was fully charged or not . If I were to shoot at the last possible moment, I would still get a considerable amount of power out of the gun .

“Lily, Fiona, I’ll aim for its eye . ”

“I’ll break its lens . ”

“Then I’ll use ‘Line Kris Sagitta’ . ”

Both replied instantly . Lily was holding her ‘Diamond Heaven’, which was shining in white light, while Fiona wielded her ‘Ainz Bloom’ with both hands . Everything was prepared as if both of them knew what I was planning to do before I even said a single word .

That red lightning attack that had felled the Taurus in a single strike . An attack aimed at weak points based on the assumption that if a strong enough electric shock could be sent inside the fuselage, the golem’s entire body would be short-circuited due to its structure .

Earlier, I wasn’t able to lay a single scratch on the rushing Fulltune Taurus, but I was sure Lily could manage to destroy the lens that covered its eye . Above all, Lily’s light bullets have impressive self-guidance properties . Even if the Taurus tried to dodge Lily’s attack at that speed, she would still be able to hit it easily .