The inner city surrounding the center of Parhel.

Screams bordering on shrieks were exchanged atop the high castle walls.

“Everyone to your positions! Defend and protect the inner city!”

Carlyle, a knight of House Lester, shouted as he commanded the soldiers.

Beyond the castle walls, a massive army was surging in.

“Damn it…! What the hell is that?!”

Terrified soldiers trembled at the sight of the pale, foul-smelling horde.

Skeletons buried in the ground were walking towards the castle walls, making strange noises.

The ‘dead’, scattered in the fog and impossible to estimate in number, did not flinch even when hit by arrows.

“Th-those are undead… skeletons!”

A priest who arrived late spoke in a trembling voice.

Skeletons were the product of black magic that awakened and commanded the corpses of the dead through corrupted spells.

“Arrows cannot pierce bone. Only by breaking the bones marked with black magic will they lose their power.”

The priest shared his shallow knowledge.

Thanks to Sched Lester, how to deal with the undead had been known since the heretic hunt a few years ago.

“Where the hell did those things suddenly pop out from…!”

Carlyle gritted his teeth.

They had clearly found peace after finishing the heretic hunt.

The High Priest Dietrich had confirmed it, and the Pope had declared the end of heresy.

Yet here they were, facing that dreadful sight again.

The knights of House Lester asked the late-arriving priests what was going on, but they didn’t know either.

“How did they even break through the protective barrier…?”

Knight Hedrick muttered as he wiped the cold raindrops running down his cheek with the back of his hand.

Those disgusting skeleton soldiers had boldly broken through the protective barrier and were advancing.

They stared at the black fog emanating from the watchtower far to the northeast.

It was clear that the heretic responsible for this was there.

But there were too many skeletons outside the castle walls to reach that place right now.

“Where has our lord gone?”

They wanted to report the situation, but Sched was nowhere to be seen.

According to Werner, he had gone out at dawn to look for Riana.

‘That damn woman is always a problem.’

Carlyle thought of that detestable woman.

Whenever Sched gets involved with her, he can’t properly fulfill his role as lord.

Then, the priest beside Carlyle cautiously opened his mouth.

“Actually, Lord Lester came to the temple earlier…”

The priest explained why they had come here late.

“He collapsed the underground passage?”

“We don’t know the reason, but could it be related to the current situation…?”

The priest said, turning his gaze to the skeleton army.

Perhaps there were already skeletons in the underground passage they were headed to.

Sched may have tried to prevent those skeletons from reaching the temple by destroying the passage and resolving the issue… the priests thought.

“Then you’re saying you left our lord there alone?!”

“We also came back up to the temple to come up with a plan. But suddenly this situation unfolded…”

“Wait, this is no time to waste arguing. We need to stop that first.”

As Carlyle and the priests quarreled, Hedrick stepped in to calm them down.

The lord’s absence was significant, but they couldn’t just wait for him.

Carlyle and the priests must have agreed with Hedrick’s words as they shut their mouths.

Hedrick brushed his rain-soaked face once more before raising his head.

“Form the lines! If the inner city is breached, it’s over!”

At that, the soldiers tightened their formation with tense faces.

Before they knew it, the skeletons had reached right below the castle walls.

The eerie undead, devoid of any sign of life, quietly looked up at the castle walls in the rain.

A chill ran down the spines of the soldiers who faced death.

“What are they trying to do?”

At that moment of doubt, the skeletal bodies began to cling to the castle walls.

They crawled up the walls like insects.

The corpses crawling up the wall with twisted bodies were the embodiment of grotesque horror.

“Stop them! Don’t let a single one up on the castle walls!”

Hedrick and Carlyle shouted at the soldiers, raising their swords.

The soldiers smashed and knocked down the skeletons crawling up the castle walls.

As Carlyle swung his sword in a large arc, the sound of bones being crushed was heard.

With a single sweep, the skeletons were swept away and fell like a wave.

But the undying enemies multiplied infinitely, using each other as stepping stones to climb the castle walls.

They had no hesitation in trampling their comrades to climb, and no fear of their bodies being twisted.

Densely entangled like ants clinging to prey, they seemed to be building a tower of foul-smelling mud and bones.

“They really need to die.”

Hedrick smirked and shattered the skeletons that had crawled up the castle wall in midair.

Bone fragments scattered and fell in the wind and rain.

The soldiers’ spears and swords did not rest either.

However, the shattered bones piled up outside the castle walls, forming mounds that served as footholds for the skeletons to climb the walls more easily.

“Damn it!”

“Fall! I said fall!”

The soldiers shouted and desperately resisted.

Then a cry was heard from below the castle walls.

“Sir Carlyle! The gate is about to be breached!”

While dealing with the skeletons clinging to the walls, on the other side, skeletons were intertwining their bodies to form a massive clump and charging towards the gate.

Thud, thud, thud!

Like a drum signaling danger, the huge castle gate shook.

When the undead in front shattered from ramming the gate, the corpses behind stepped forward and charged at the gate again with all their might.

The thunderous sound that seemed to break the gate shook heaven and earth.

“I’m scared, Mommy…!”

The people inside the castle shed tears of fear and embraced each other.

“How can mere skeletons do this…?”

There was no way the undead could come up with a strategy to move in such unison.

Clearly, this was the work of an intelligent being commanding them.

“Set up supports at the gate! Cast additional barriers!”

The priests chanted prayers and created new barriers to protect the city of Parhel.

But the barriers were shattered by the horde of skeletons before they could be completed.

They seemed to know how to break the barriers while they were still being constructed.

‘Unless it’s a priest well-versed in barriers, they wouldn’t be able to exploit weaknesses so easily…!’

The priests were flustered as they were thoroughly exposed.

“Where is the High Priest?”

Hedrick asked the priests.

If not Sched, they at least needed Dietrich who could deal with black magic.

But no one knew the whereabouts of the High Priest.

And then.

“What is that?!”

“Watch out!”

The soldiers screamed as they saw skeletal corpses flying through the sky.

“Aaaah!”

“Ugh!”

The skeletons that couldn’t climb over the castle walls used each other’s bodies as catapults and hurled themselves into the air.

The undead, feeling no pain, fell like hail along with the rain on top of the castle walls.

Despite the heavy impact of falling on the walls, the skeletons got up without hesitation.

They wielded thighbones, sticks, or discarded weapons from other corpses.

Their movements were unskilled and dull, but the soldiers were terrified of them who felt no pain even when counterattacked.

Some soldiers gagged or tried to run away at the sight of their pitch-black empty eye sockets, foul-smelling bodies, and twisted limbs.

“Hold them back! Smash their heads and even the undead won’t be able to use their strength!”

Carlyle calmed the fear-stricken soldiers and confronted the skeletons falling like hail.

Crunch!

The wind created by a single strike of the sword stretched out as sharp as a blade.

Along with the sound of bones scraping against the castle walls, the skeletons shattered and split to either side.

But once the defense was breached, it widened like a burst bladder, allowing more intrusion.

‘Damn it, at this rate…!’

Hedrick thrust his sword at the monsters endlessly crawling up the castle walls.

It was like trying to cut water with a knife. That expression fit the situation perfectly.

No matter how much he cut, they seemed to take no damage at all.

Cold rain and sweat mixed, drenching his entire body. As the day grew late, the air, cold as an icy wind, cut into his flesh.

Fatigue weighed heavily on his wet body, and his vision blurred in the downpour and fog.

The living grew weary, while the dead knew no weariness.

Would there be an end to this battle?

Could they win?

Hedrick gripped the hilt of his sword tightly with his wet hand.

‘If only our lord were here…!’

As the battle dragged on, the tide turned against them.

At that moment, the skeletons climbing the castle walls stopped their attack.

‘Is this the end?’

In that fleeting moment of thread-like hope.

The bones lying on the ground began to move little by little, gathering towards a spot where a dark energy was rising.

The skeletons that had stopped attacking were the same.

The remnants of death clumped and piled together, beginning to intertwine in a strange form.

Before they knew it, the mountain of corpses mixed with black smoke, fusing together like a single body.

“Wh-what is that…?!”

A skeletal army corps that surpassed the height of the castle walls.

They had woven their bodies together to create a single gigantic revenant.

Faced with that overwhelming size, the soldiers forgot to even raise their swords and stood there, mouths agape, in a daze.

A sense of unreality hit them before fear.

As the skeletal revenant raised its huge arm, countless bones clattered together, making an eerie rattling sound.

“R-r-run away!”

Only then did the soldiers regain their sense of reality and scream as they fled.

‘It’s going to collapse…!’

Carlyle had a premonition.

That massive attack would bring down the castle walls.

Once the walls collapsed, the undead would swarm in without a moment to spare, killing the people inside the castle and dragging them to their side.

‘Damn it…!’

With a whoosh and an eerie sound of wind, the shadow of despair rapidly approached.

Just as they were about to be engulfed by the shadow of the dead.

A massive flash of light shone through the rain.

At the same time, the clumped skeleton mass exploded and fell to the ground with a crash.

The sound of wind scattering in the rain sounded like the scream of a giant skeleton.

The knights of House Lester could tell.

Sched Lester had returned.