"Trouble."

The knight captain dismounted and looked out at the dense, sprawling sea of white skeletons in the distance. A single glance made his scalp crawl.

The original plan had been to push a little farther before making camp. Nobody expected this many slumbering bones buried beneath the soil.

While clearing the road earlier, his knights had casually shattered a few skeletons blocking the path, nothing they thought twice about.

They had assumed those were scattered stragglers. What they didn't know was that these damned things shared some invisible connection between them.

Smash one, and every skeleton in range woke up at once. Now they were closing in slowly from every direction.

"Captain, do we charge?" His lieutenant rode up, hand already on his sword hilt.

The knight captain didn't answer. His gaze moved to the supreme commander of this subjugation army, the priest Angela Burke.

"Pass the order: all mages attempt spellcasting. See if we can clear these skeletons out." Angela Burke's voice was as calm as ever.

Naturally, the mages in question did not include Eva of the Three Heroes.

All three of them had to preserve their strength. They needed to face Geist, the Great Demon who had occupied the City of the Dead for a century, at full power.

Mopping up mobs and clearing the road was the duty of everyone else on this expedition.

The ideal outcome was letting the three of them reach the Great Demon without spending a drop of energy.

The knight captain understood this perfectly well.

He exchanged a few quiet words with the accompanying old butler, then they both turned to gather their respective people. The captain handled the mages under the nobles; the old butler headed toward the adventurers' camp.

Mobilizing the nobility's mages took almost no effort. They had prepared for combat before departure, and a single command had them in formation within moments.

The adventurers were another matter entirely. Their ranks were unvetted and thoroughly mixed. Even the guild master couldn't quickly sort out which ones were actually useful mages.

"Massive horde of monsters at the front of the column! All mages capable of casting, we need you now!"

The moment the old butler finished speaking, people stepped forward from the crowd in scattered numbers.

Among them were Banxia, who had only just caught up with the column, and Roxy, clutching her staff with a tight, anxious grip.

It made sense. The mages had been told before departure that they'd only need to cast from a safe distance to clear the skeletons. No real danger. So nearly every mage among the adventurers stepped forward.

The old butler worked his way down the line, inspecting the volunteers one by one. When his gaze landed on Banxia's physique, clearly not the build of a spellcaster, he stopped.

"Excuse me, sir adventurer. We need mages. Not warriors."

"You're right, that's what I am." Banxia raised a finger without changing expression. A small tongue of flame snapped to life at the tip.

The flame was so faint it looked ready to die at any moment. But it was genuine magical fire.

"..."

The old butler closed his mouth and said nothing more, utterly baffled that someone built like that could actually be a mage.

...

Time was short. The task was heavy.

Just assembling the mage ranks had eaten up considerable time, and the skeleton army had already advanced to within a thousand meters. The flat ground ahead was choked white, bone on bone, a rough count put them at no fewer than a hundred thousand.

Each of these magically enhanced skeletons was worth a Bronze-rank adventurer. Divided evenly across the expeditionary force, counting the retainers, every single person would have to handle nearly a hundred skeletons on their own.

"There's... this many..."

Standing behind the knights' defensive line, staring out at that endless expanse of ghostly white, more than a few adventurers felt their knees begin to buckle. They had lived most of their lives and never seen monsters in these numbers.

What sent a deeper chill through their guts was this: the skeletons weren't swarming aimlessly. They were locked into tight, orderly ranks, advancing like an actual army.

At that density, even a full charge from the entire knight order would gain nothing.

But every trade had its specialty. Area attacks were exactly what mages were built for.

To avoid exposing themselves to the Great Demon's senses too early, the Three Heroes had already concealed their presence and handed full battlefield command to the knight captain.

But he was a swordsman. He had no idea how to direct spellcasters through a battle of this scale.

"Does anyone... have a plan?" The knight captain turned around and looked at the mages behind him. They all wore the same blank expression he imagined was on his own face.

"..."

Silence. Even if area attacks were a mage's domain, the scale of the bone sea ahead had exceeded everyone's imagination.

"...That's a lot of monsters." In the back, Banxia muttered under his breath.

"...Mr. Banxia."

Roxy hugged her staff tighter.

So even Mr. Banxia finds this troublesome.

She didn't understand why a warrior like him had insisted on coming with the mage division. But she knew he wanted to help. The problem was, he had only been studying magic for less than half a month. His mana reserves were what they were. Even with the best intentions, what could he actually do?

"I'll handle it."

Four quiet words, delivered without inflection. They fell clearly on every pair of ears in the formation.

"Huh?!" Roxy felt every eye in the vicinity swing toward her. She waved her hands frantically. "N-Not me—"

"Me." Banxia stepped out from the crowd.

"Mr. Banxia?!" Roxy stared at his back, uncomprehending.

The knight captain's brow creased.

"Adventurer. This is not the time for jokes. We need mages capable of long-range casting, not a well-built warrior."

Under normal circumstances, he might have appreciated the young man's nerve, maybe even considered recruiting him into the knight order down the line.

This was not normal circumstances.

Banxia ignored the doubts at his back and kept walking.

His gaze settled on the boundless sea of bones ahead, and nowhere else.

"Hey — what do you think you're doing!" The knight captain moved to stop him. A hand came up gently and blocked the way.

"Let him try." Among the ranks of noble mages, Jill, dressed in ornate robes, lowered a staff. Having just surfaced from a daze, Jill's gaze drifted back to that broad, unhurried silhouette at the front.

"It might actually work."

The knight captain started to say something more. Then the sudden blaze of scorching light beside him snapped his mouth shut.

Standing at the head of the formation, Banxia raised both arms into a flawless archery stance.

Flames coalesced out of thin air, shaping themselves into a blazing white arrow. He held it steady between his fingertips.

The mana he was drawing on, unshielded, fully open to maximize the charge, surged from his entire body like a tide breaking outward, spreading in layers, warping the air with heat until it shimmered.

Even the oldest veteran mage present, a man half a step from the grave with clouded eyes, couldn't help but stare.

The kid was young. And yet the mana pouring off him left an old practitioner of most of a lifetime far, far behind.

"This spell..."

Throughout the noble mage formation, brows furrowed. They had seen this spell before, more than once. Was this young man also a noble who had come from the royal capital with the Three Heroes?

Nobody answered them.

Two hundred and one full years of pure mana, every drop of it condensed at Banxia's trembling fingertips.

The scorching white light painted his face in shifting brightness and shadow. Beads of sweat rolled off his jaw and vaporized before they could reach the ground.

His entire body was shaking. Anyone watching could see it. To maintain this spell, he had to be running on his very last reserves.

"Come on —!" Someone in the crowd shouted first.

Then a second voice, and a third, building into a roar, cheering for that arrow of fire coiled and ready to release.

Wave after wave of shouting rolled through the formation, one crest following the last, dry timber thrown onto open flame, until the air across the entire line was burning with it.

...

➤ Next: Out of Mana, What Does That Have to Do with Me Being a Warrior?

Chapter 48 - Out of Mana, What Does That Have to Do with Me Being a Warrior?

Wrath of Finality, a military-grade spell legendary for its power to slay Great Demons.

Humanity had been delving into magic since the days of the Unified Empire, a thousand years ago. Yet even now, fewer than a hundred spells existed that could go toe-to-toe with a Great Demon.

Wrath of Finality was among the most devastating of those, the undisputed pinnacle of fire-attribute magic.

If a caster could complete the charge under a warrior's cover and land a direct hit, even someone with ordinary human mana reserves would have enough firepower to topple a renowned Great Demon against all odds.

Provided, of course, it actually landed.

With two centuries of accumulated mana behind him, and Wrath of Finality sitting at lv.2 proficiency, the force Banxia unleashed after ten seconds of charge had long since blown past anything the human sages who created this spell had ever imagined.

Facing that rising "sun," the skeleton army still had no idea what was coming. On the human coalition's side, people were already going pale just from watching the blazing light spread across the sky.

A tenth of a second after Banxia released his fingers and fired that arrow of divine fire, a roar like the earth splitting open tore through the air, and the sun detonated a kilometer from the coalition's front line.

"Take cover!"

The knight captain barely got the words out before a golden barrier swept open, racing ahead of the shockwave.

The cleric hidden in the shadows was forced into the open, both hands raised high with the holy scripture, holding the defensive barrier in place with everything they had.

In an instant, a blinding white brilliance erupted from the heart of the skeleton army and swallowed everything. The shockwave followed immediately after, powerful enough to tear the ground apart.

BOOM,

Where the skeleton army had stood, the earth cratered into a vast, bottomless trench. Smoke and dust erupted skyward like a dragon heaving itself out of the soil, and shattered stone mixed with splintered bone rained down in a torrential cascade.

Two figures who had been concealed in the shadows gave up on hiding. They strode quickly to the cleric's side and stared out at the devastation ahead, their faces still pale with lingering shock.

"Thank god Angela Burke's barrier deployed in time. A direct hit from that shockwave alone would have put more than half the expeditionary force out of action."

Kilian Black gazed at the hellish ruins in the distance, expression grave, voice carrying something that couldn't quite decide between relief and sheer disbelief.

Because of this spell, all three of them had been forced to reveal themselves. Every effort they'd spent concealing their presence, wasted.

Still, as far as results went, it couldn't have been more ideal.

Not a single soldier lost. Most of the force hadn't even taken a dip in condition. And just like that, they'd burned through a century's worth of Geist's carefully accumulated trump cards and turned them to ash.

The one responsible for all of it...

Was currently shuffling back from the front lines looking utterly hollowed out, mumbling something strange under his breath.

"Skeletons... aren't... monsters..."

It seemed the spell had drained him completely, mana and energy both, down to nothing.

Kilian Black raised a hand with unmistakable respect and brought it down firmly on the young man's shoulder.

"Great mage. Leave the rest to us."

"Rest. The kingdom will not forget what you've done today."

Banxia ignored them. Enduring the reverent stares pressing in from both sides, he trudged back to the corner he'd started in, sat down heavily, and stared at the ground.

"...Skeletons... don't count as monsters..."

"...Mr. Banxia?" Roxy was still caught in the lingering aftershock of that fire, the kind that scorched the sky and boiled the sea. It wasn't until his broken-record muttering reached her ears a second time, then a third, that she snapped out of it.

She crouched down and leaned in carefully.

"What did you just say?"

"...Why don't these skeletons count as monsters."

She didn't understand why he was fixating on this particular point. But looking at that face, the one that was always so composed, always so unbothered, now wearing an expression of genuine anguish, she found herself explaining without thinking.

"Strictly speaking, those skeletons were all magical constructs created by the Great Demon Geist. They're fundamentally different from naturally born monsters. Though under ordinary circumstances, we still classify skeletons as monsters."

"...How can something that cruel even exist in this world."

Roxy opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

Was classifying skeletons as monsters really something cruel?

She didn't quite follow. But looking at this man, always so powerful, always so quietly gentle, now wearing an expression so wretched it was nearly broken, she found that she no longer cared what the answer was.

"Mr. Banxia, you've already done more than enough." She rose gently and wrapped her arms around him from behind.

She was so small. But in that moment, she seemed to glow.

"...Roxy."

"What is it?" Her voice went softer than usual.

"So flat."

"..."

...

"Now is the time to take down Geist!" The warrior of the Three Heroes wrenched his greatsword up and swung onto his warhorse in one motion.

The blade angled toward the ruins where smoke was still climbing. His voice rolled across the entire formation like a thunderclap.

"The bones he spent a century hoarding are ash! Move before he runs! Knights, adventurers, with me! Grind this pest that's plagued humanity for a hundred years into nothing!"

"OHHH—!"

The answering roar surged like a tidal wave. Swords and spears cleared their sheaths in unison, and iron hooves shattered the silence.

The entire expeditionary force became a flood, pouring toward the City of the Dead that had haunted the south for a century.

The camp was left to the retainers watching over the provisions and equipment, the old butler who knew he'd only be in the way, and a handful of frail mages.

"Well. Guess I should get moving."

Banxia watched the main force disappear over the horizon, let out a sigh, and pushed himself to his feet.

His shot at riding the momentum was gone. But even the smallest mosquito was still meat.

If he showed up late and those Three Heroes snatched the Great Demon's head right out from under him, that was the kind of loss that would genuinely hurt.

"Huh?" Roxy was pulled onto her tiptoes when he suddenly stood, scrambling to catch her balance.

"Mr. Banxia, you still need to rest! Running out of mana is serious. If you don't recover properly, "

"I'm out of mana. What does that have to do with me being a warrior."

"..."

Roxy shut her mouth.

It hit her then, before this young man had ever possessed that terrifying mana, he was first and foremost a warrior. One who hunted demonic dragons with his bare hands.

And the image still wouldn't leave her: him standing at the front of the whole formation, drawing the bow, holding the charge.

A warrior without equal. A mage hiding in plain sight. A gentleness toward people that didn't fit either. Profound magic mastered in under half a month.

This man was a labyrinth with no visible bottom. The deeper you went, the more there was, and she couldn't help wanting to keep walking.

"Mr. Banxia, I'm coming with you!"

"Sure." He swung onto his horse in one clean motion, and looked back just long enough to add, "Don't steal my monsters."

"Got it!"

My monsters. Roxy had stopped being surprised by that particular phrase.

She realized she'd already grown used to the rhythm of this person, the way things just went with him. She lifted her leg and climbed up onto her own horse.

"Um — Sir Mage! You really should rest—" A retainer spotted the commotion and rushed over to intercept them. "The Three Heroes are on the front line. There's no way the demon escapes."

"Then I need to go even more."

"Huh?"

The retainer stood frozen.

What did that mean?

Before they could work it out, the two had already kicked their horses into a gallop and were gone, racing after the main force.

➤ Next: A Mage Without Mana (3,000-Word Mega Chapter)