There was a reason Alex had gone out of his way to gather everyone into a single area and have them fight together.
Just as before, there were conditions the protagonist had to fulfill in order to acquire skills in this game.
The exact conditions had never been explicitly stated, but after repeating the game hundreds of times, Alex had been able to deduce them accurately.
And through that, he had learned that Oath of Loyalty had exactly two requirements.
‘Maintain Loyalty at 50% or higher, and participate in a joint battle with at least fifty people.’
The skill he had obtained by fulfilling those conditions was essential for this second wave.
Truthfully, Alex was just as afraid as anyone else to stand before these Magical Beasts.
But acquiring this skill once was not the end of it.
The conditions also had to remain fulfilled in order to activate it, so there was no room for him to retreat.
In a sense, being forced to put on a pointless show of bravado in front of his soldiers was Alex's fate.
[Loyalty 50%]
Right now, he could not afford to make a single soldier in this battle doubt him.
Alex reorganized the front line and brought the soldiers, still intoxicated by their brief victory, back to full alert.
“The sun still hasn't returned!”
The world remained nearly pitch-black, and only the first wave had passed.
Hearing the heavy footsteps approaching from the distance once again, Alex tightened his grip on his sword.
“But as long as I'm here, we can do this!”
Alex raised his sword high and shouted, and everyone answered with an exhilarated roar.
A fair amount of time had passed since the wave began, yet the source of the approaching footsteps still had not revealed itself.
Then, through a field of vision wavering with tension and excitement, something suddenly appeared beyond the ice barricade.
CRASH—!
The ice barricade, already half-melted by the fires burning all around it, shattered completely from a single impact.
Ice fragments scattered in every direction.
What emerged was a massive, moving cluster of rock.
More than ten Golems.
Name: Golem
Trait: Body of Rock, Immune to Ordinary Physical Attacks
A Magical Beast formed from underwater rocks and organic matter that have clumped together and begun to move.
Its body is composed of hard stone, making ordinary blades ineffective against it. It moves extremely slowly, but every attack carries overwhelming force.
“Dear God....”
At one soldier's mutter, Alex gripped his sword even tighter.
Perhaps it was not something someone who possessed the power of Divinity ought to think, but....
“The only thing I can rely on is myself.”
Alex trusted the plan he had made.
***
From atop the wall, where the Golems had been spotted earlier, Aroha was preparing a massive spell.
For this exact moment, Alex had asked Aroha to build up her fundamentals as much as possible, even if it was difficult.
But when Paul saw what Aroha was preparing from where he crouched trembling beneath the wall, his face twisted in shock.
“Lightning...?”
The energy he could sense within the mana was pure electrical current.
What exactly was she planning to accomplish by striking rocks with lightning?
Of course, those lumps of stone had crawled out of the sea, so they would be drenched in saltwater.
And saltwater conducted electricity well, but....
“S-Stop! What kind of stupid idea is that?!”
If she wanted to damage stone, freezing it would be far more effective.
Paul sprang to his feet without even realizing it.
Aroha, however, immediately handed him a note from her pocket.
She could hardly do anything else without breaking the concentration required to cast the spell.
“What is this....”
[There was once a rumor that even gold could be found beneath the sea around Carcosa. Fools. Just because something came from Carcosa and shone yellow, they assumed it was all gold. Large quantities of pyrite mined from the seabed were disguised as gold and sold....]
“What am I supposed to do with.... Huh? Pyrite?”
Paul had been staring at the contents in disbelief, but soon blinked as realization struck him.
Aroha handed him another note.
[Something I saw in a Lord's diary from several centuries ago. Just trust me for now. - Employer]
“Haa....”
Paul froze for a moment after reading the note and sank into thought.
The information was fragmentary, but after reading it, he understood why Aroha was preparing lightning magic.
The Magical Beasts of Carcosa were fundamentally born from Carcosa's environment.
These Golems formed near the sea and were composed of rock.
And mixed into that rock was pyrite.
Pyrite conducted electricity well and could oxidize and corrode under a powerful electrical current.
‘How the hell did the Lord know Golems were going to appear...?’
That one question remained, but Paul was intelligent enough to organize his thoughts within mere seconds.
Right now, that was not important.
What mattered was that a perfect countermeasure for the current situation had already been prepared.
“No! In that case, you can't use such a crude method! I refuse to accept it! You there! Rearrange everything from the middle onward in this order!”
Paul spoke urgently, grabbed a random stone nearby, and began scratching formulas into the castle floor.
Such a crude brute-force application of mana for a strategy this perfect!
Besides, with talent on Aroha's level, she could produce something far more powerful and refined.
‘As long as she knows how!’
The moment that thought occurred to him, Paul forgot his fear and began furiously writing out equations.
He knew the method.
All he had to do was teach her.
“....”
Aroha frowned at the complex formulas rapidly appearing across the floor.
What Paul was writing was like asking someone who had only just learned the alphabet to recite poetry.
However, Aroha's talent was hardly ordinary either.
Slowly, mana began surging around her with explosive force, clearly different from before.
***
Feeling the mana rippling behind him, Alex looked back.
At one point, after becoming accustomed to playing the game, he had read every document obtainable from the Domain's study.
The enormous amount of scripted text had all fascinated Alex, who had already become deeply immersed in this world.
Some of it had been useless information, but other parts became valuable clues depending on how they were used.
The information about the rocks beneath Carcosa's sea in particular had come from a diary left behind by a Lord several centuries ago.
“Everyone, fall back and stand by!”
With the preparation taking longer than expected, Alex moved the uneasy soldiers farther back.
Considering Aroha's level, the spell might end up far stronger than Alex had anticipated.
And as if answering his expectations, an enormous flash erupted like a burst of white light, bright enough to blind them.
RUMBLE—!
The instant Alex squeezed his eyes shut, a deafening roar followed.
Even from some distance away, a prickling sensation remained at his fingertips as though static electricity were crawling across his entire body.
The sudden flash had left a white afterimage across his vision, and Alex forced himself to blink several times.
Finally, the scene in front of him came back into focus.
The nearest Golem had lost all four limbs and had become nothing more than a pile of rocks.
“Damn it... Six are still moving!”
Apparently Elizabeth's absurdly durable body had already recovered its vision.
Alex used her voice, which had even counted the remaining Golems, to assess the situation and shouted.
“Attack!”
At the same time, Alex activated the skill he had just obtained.
Even though they were Golems, the lightning strike had weakened their bodies from within in multiple places.
Moreover, since they were being animated by the power of a curse, attacks from ordinary soldiers could harm them as long as those attacks contained Divinity.
Alex had finished large-scale battles without a single casualty many times by using this skill.
[Oath of Loyalty Lv.1]
[Holy Sword Lv.11 is shared with allies.]
[Gain a 200% increase in attack power against evil beings.]
Oath of Loyalty was a skill that became extremely useful during large-scale events the earlier it was acquired.
The only regrettable thing was that Alex had still never figured out how to level it up.
The desperate battle cries of the soldiers and Dark Elf warriors began turning into exclamations of a different kind.
“Th-This is....”
“How in the world....”
A faint blue glow shimmered from their weapons.
It was the same light of Divinity they had often seen through Alex.
Sacred light shone brilliantly through the darkness.
It would have been faint enough to barely notice beneath the sun, but in the pitch-black darkness, it somehow seemed far brighter.
“Cursed creatures cannot withstand Divinity! Drive those Magical Beasts back!”
Alex's sword shone brighter than anyone else's, making him the most conspicuous person in the darkness.
Everyone could clearly see him become the first to confront a Golem as it swung its heavy arm.
The slow-moving Golem hurled a massive fist toward Alex, but he maintained his running speed, lowered his body, and slid forward.
Slipping deftly beneath the Golem's fist, Alex thrust his glowing sword into a cracked gap in its arm joint.
“Ugh....”
Because he had stabbed so hard, the impact that traveled into his hand felt as though he had struck solid rock with his sword.
But the attack worked.
Like a ripe watermelon splitting after the first cut, the Golem's forearm snapped cleanly apart and fell away.
At the same time, Elizabeth charged in behind him, stepped onto the fallen stone arm, leaped upward, and drove her sword into the Golem's waist.
“Aim for the gaps between the joints!”
Before Alex had even finished shouting, Elizabeth twisted her sword and ripped it free.
The Golem split in two and collapsed.
As yet another Golem turned into nothing more than a pile of stone, the soldiers found their courage and charged in.
Their swords were pitifully weak compared to Alex's or Elizabeth's.
But with the aid of Divinity, they were no longer useless.
“It... It split...!”
“B-Be careful!”
“L-Look! I cut through stone!”
And their movements were not completely crude either.
All around, voices of amazement and disbelief rang out as they managed to damage the Golems with their own hands.
Each group naturally moved according to the roles they had been assigned.
“Move with your squads! You there! You're in Squad Three, you idiot!”
Elizabeth shouted at one soldier who had become flustered and was running around in confusion.
Three days earlier, Alex had made a single request of Elizabeth while she was training the guards.
‘It'd be best to organize the soldiers and Dark Elf warriors into mixed squads of around ten people.’
‘...Squads? Do I just divide them up?’
‘No. Once you've split them up, assign half of each squad to defense and half to offense.’
“So that even if a powerful Magical Beast appears, we can overwhelm it with numbers....”
Without realizing it, Elizabeth murmured the words Alex had told her.
Just as he had said, the guards, each weak on their own, were now fighting the Golems like proper soldiers.
Ten against one.
By surrounding a Golem and attacking together, they were producing clear results even amid the chaos.
Pieces of the Golems' bodies, struck repeatedly by their swords, were gradually breaking off and rolling across the ground.
Elizabeth watched them with an oddly swelling feeling in her chest before moving again.
“Go back to the sea, you damned Magical Beasts!”
Elizabeth charged toward a Golem whose forearm had been severed by the soldiers' attacks.
With a thunderous shout, her sword once again cut through the Golem's waist.
The sense of achievement that came from bringing down massive Magical Beasts together drove the soldiers' morale even higher.
“M-My Lord...!”
“If you keep getting distracted, I might just fire you.”
Alex was also struggling on one side as he coordinated with the still-inexperienced soldiers.
But the Golems were slow, and when ten people moved together, they inevitably ended up helping one another.
The Golems had already been sluggish, and as the joints throughout their bodies were severed by Divinity, their movements slowed even further.
“Damn it, my hand's going to give out first....”
Unlike Elizabeth, Alex did not possess an absurdly powerful body.
His palm ached from repeatedly striking stone.
Grumbling quietly for no particular reason, Alex drove his sword into the waist of the final Golem and poured Divinity through it.
[Proficiency has increased.]
[Holy Sword Lv.12]
“....”
Once the final Golem returned to nothing more than a pile of rocks, silence settled over the surroundings.
“...Is it... over?”
A Dark Elf warrior muttered from one side.
That single voice broke the silence, and everyone began murmuring among themselves.
Mixed in among them were a few pained groans.
“Anyone injured? Report all injuries immediately!”
Hearing them, Alex spoke urgently.
“Squad One... I think one person in Squad One has a broken arm!”
“Two injured in Squad Four!”
“Squad Three has....”
No matter how carefully they had watched out for one another, and no matter how slow the Golems were, these were still people who had spent their entire lives as ordinary farmers.
As reports of injuries began coming from every direction, Elizabeth looked toward Alex.
‘There's still one left.’
She only mouthed the words, but Alex understood her and briefly looked up at the sky.
With the sun still obscured, the sky remained pitch-black.
Alex had warned them in advance that there would be three attacks, so Elizabeth knew as well.
The final wave still remained.
[Oath of Loyalty]
[Time Remaining: 02:45]
“....”
[Futile. All is futile.]
[O weak ones.]
[You still dream of possibility.]
At last, narration announcing the beginning of the final phase filled Alex's vision.
Then another massive tremor shook the ground.
This time, something even more powerful than the Golems was coming.