Wilhelm gingerly walked out of one of the auxiliary entrances to the Great Dungeon. His clothes were tattered, with smoke coming from some of their holes. He also bore some wounds, but a healing potion he had ingested earlier was taking care of most of the effects.

  He took a swig of whiskey from his flask, before withdrawing it inside his coat.

  “Why does she not want a full rematch with me? What a let-down.”

  He eyed a pack of demonic goblins ahead of him. All of them had their short swords ready, and they were glaring at him with great bloodlust. He turned to his right, watching as massive strands of black hair tore through one of the buildings.

  Then, he looked back at the advancing goblins.

  He groaned.

  “I suppose that means I’ll have to settle with Plan B instead,” he mumbled. “It is what it is. I chose to use those girls to bring them here…I don’t get to complain about inconveniences now…”

  They were getting close to him. As a mage who was only at the fourth circle, barely even finishing the Formation Stage of his manaheart, Wilhelm was quite weak. At least, of course at first glance.

  To be fair, he was weak, relative to someone of his rank and influence.

  But…

  He more than made up for it with his other skills.

  He fished out a thick black book from his coat’s internal pocket. It glowed ominously, as he opened its pages. Three pages automatically detached themselves from the book, flying in front of him.

  One of them activated its glyphs, causing a bluish shield to appear around him. Then, the two other glyph papers also activated, and sixteen glowing rods of flame appeared in the sky.

  “Die,” Wilhelm coldly said, sending all of them straight at the goblins that charged at him.

  In a split second, all of them were skewered by the blazing rods. The surviving ones burned with great intensity, and they were ashes in just two seconds.

  However, two throwing knives flew in Wilhelm’s direction. None of them got through though.

  They bounced off harmlessly.

  Just then, behind Wilhelm, four shieldguards and eight crossbowmen appeared out of the dungeon's auxiliary entrance. Two more casters appeared. One of them was seriously injured and the other caster had to support him.

  One of the shieldguards approached Wilhelm.

  “Sir. What now?”

  Wilhelm looked back at the mass of black hair tearing through this section of the city.

  He breathed in deeply.

  “Since we failed to acquire a sample of Sloth’s hair with Plan A, we’re going to need some heavier firepower. We’ll link up with the rest of the brigade, and I’ll organize a follow-up operation.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’ll finish the work of bringing a hundred-year-old prophecy to reality.”

  The soldiers didn’t seem convinced by Wilhelm’s words, but they obeyed nonetheless. The loyalty of his men sometimes made Wilhelm wonder about their intellect, but he supposed that a commander with a hundred percent win rate was someone no one could really object to.

  When he ordered them to go in a certain direction, they went there. When he ordered them to stay put in the face of death, they would stay put.

  Somehow, no matter the casualties, that truth remained the same. They followed him to hell.

  That just makes attaining ultimate victory all the more important.

  He couldn’t fail all those who believed that he would triumph.

  Therefore, he shifted his priority to check if his gamble about that brat and naive girl would truly pay off.

  +++

  “We’re surrounded?” Alexa angrily asked the Imperial Army officer in front of her. “Can’t you just organize your men to attempt a breakout then? Why are you all simply sitting in this place, waiting to die as demon food? You have to fight, damn it!”

  “Your Highness, the men I ordered to that task already died!” the officer in front of her broke down fearfully on the floor. “The only thing we can do now is to stay put until relief arrives. Otherwise, it’s over. This is the end of the line for us. Demons…we’re not supposed to fight them…that’s the job of those bastards. This is their only job and they failed us! Damn it all!”

  “You bellyache instead of fighting? And you call yourself a soldier?”

  “Your words and conviction don’t matter. You and I will be in the gullet of a demon soon…”

  Alexa frowned. This man was far gone. He was useless. The fact that the two did this arguing in the safety of one of the houses told her enough.

  He wasn’t interested in fighting for his life anymore, because he had already left his men to do the work alone, unsupervised, on the streets below.

  “I knew it,” Adele sobbed at the side. “We should have taken the other route.”

  Alexa turned to Phoebe, ignoring her other friend.

  “Phoebe. You can heal people, right?”

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  “Yes, Lady Alexa.”

  “Then come with me. We shall motivate the soldiers on the streets to keep fighting.”

  “What are you saying?” Adele asked. “I’m out of mana. You are out of it too. How will you even fight anymore?”

  “...Giving up is no option either,” Alexa said. “Phoebe, will you please give me that book? I need to do something.”

  Alexa fished something out of her skirt’s pocket. Wilhelm handed this to her earlier—a sample of the blood of a so-called ‘Sin Archdemon’, turned into ink and placed into her prized fountain pen.

  As Alexa sat on one of the tables, Phoebe placed the book in front of her. Then Alexa got to work.

  She began drawing glyph after glyph on the papers, tearing them and placing them on the side when she was done. She couldn’t do much but prepare basic spells, like fireball attacks aimed at whichever opponents attacked her, but no matter. She did what she could do.

  Fight. Fight. That’s what I have to do as the next Empress.

  If I don’t fight, we won’t win.

  If we don’t win, my peasants will die.

  If my peasants die, I will die with them too.

  Therefore, there was no other option left! She had to fight for these damned peasants and herself.

  After twelve minutes of hard work, Alexa looked down at the table. Her fountain pen was empty of its contents, but there were nearly three dozen papers in front of her, all of them containing glyph spells.

  It seemed that practicing drawing glyphs a lot using demon blood netted her a lot of XP. She knew that because she felt her drawings practically becoming uniform in their quality after the first dozen earlier.

  Level 7 glyph drawing, huh…?

  Wilhelm told her that once she neared Tier III and IV of the Glyph Drawing skill that her ability to decipher and copy glyphs would reach such a level where she could easily inscribe them accurately after only twenty or thirty tries.

  And he certainly was right at that.

  Her previous effort at understanding and training this skill was paying off.

  Now, it’s time to put this to the test.

  Alexa prepared the pile of glyphs and called on Phoebe to exit the building with her.

  “We’re going to fight back,” Alexa staunchly declared. “We won’t just die like this. I refuse to accept that!”

  “You’re right, Lady Alexa!” Phoebe said, following her with tears. “I don’t want to die too, so I’ll fight!”

  +++

  When she finally stood in front of the barricades and activated her first two glyphs, Alexa was amazed.

  Due to the power of the demon blood as ink, each fireball coming out of her glyphs was beyond broken. The hordes of demonic wolves and demons swarming them were struck and killed in just a single shot by her glyph-borne fireballs.

  All she had to do was tear the papers while aiming the glyph at the general direction of a hostile entity, and it was as if the magic did the job itself of hitting and killing her targets.

  It made sense!

  The fireball glyphs that Wilhelm taught her had an automatic targeting command sigil in them. Once torn, the glyph takes into consideration what the eyes of the person who tore the glyph were targeting. Using that as guidance, it then launches one to three fireballs straight at the user’s targets.

  Its effectiveness was astounding!

  In the first twenty seconds of her presence, the soldiers watched in awe as fourteen demons lay dead on the streets. And she had only used four of her glyph papers. Therefore, she had more than enough to turn the tide of this battle.

  “T-those glyphs,” one of the sergeants could only mutter in shock. “Your Highness, how are you taking down demons with paper glyphs? Even the finest mana ink barely has enough magic in it to do that!”

  “Simple,” Alexa spoke, as the soldiers behind her cowered behind their barricades. “I was taught by the finest glyph user out there, and supplied by his finest materials.”

  She tore another paper glyph, sending three fireballs at three goblins approaching them. They were incinerated in an instant.

  “So I ask you. Are you still hesitant to fight back beside me?”

  Of course, Alexa was only able to say such boisterous words because she had the finest shield spell of all people around her. But to the nervous soldiers, who had been hiding behind their defenses while barely fighting with their crossbows or magic, it was more than enough.

  “D-damn it,” the sergeant behind her suddenly shouted to his men. “Soldiers of the Empire! Watch! The Crown Princess herself is in front of you. How can you let this happen? Why is she in front of you?”

  The soldiers continued to cower, as another wave of demons charged at them.

  But then the sergeant shouted again.

  “If you can’t accept that, then take back the forward barricades! The Crown Princess must be behind us, not in front of us!”

  Like maniacs possessed, the soldiers emerged from their cover instead of cowering. Some were hit by bolts of light coming from demonic goblins who were firing enchanted arrows at them.

  But the rest of the soldiers, most of them swordsmen, charged forward while cutting through the demons ahead of them.

  Many of them managed to kill one or two demons, but many also fell.

  At the rear, crossbowmen and casters began firing everything they had, and of course, Alexa supported them, using two more glyph papers with fireball spells on them to clear out six demons on the street.

  Within a few minutes of battle, at least forty demonic corpses littered the streets. At the very least, the forward barricade line was captured. Alexa couldn’t believe the amount of blood she was seeing, even more so when she looked at her back and saw Phoebe desperately trying to cure injured soldiers with tears in her eyes.

  War…it looks so awful…

  She looked down at the pile of remaining glyph papers in her hand, as she trembled. But she controlled herself.

  No, this wasn’t the time to be weak. She had already had enough of that when this battle started and her knight had to drag her dazed self through all that horror.

  She could cry later.

  “We have to attempt a breakout now,” Alexa said to herself. “We have to keep moving to the eastern gate of the city.”

  She curled her fist, walking toward the sergeant she had talked to earlier. But before she could speak to him, she noticed something on the other side of the darkening streets.

  Behind the wave of demons that was about to attack them appeared lines of heavily armoured soldiers. No, Alexa recognized them from earlier! They were Wilhelm’s shieldguards, members of the Fuchs Brigade!

  Finally! What took them so damned long?

  There were easily three dozen shieldguards advancing on the street with brutal discipline. The group of demons themselves froze, seemingly in fear after looking at the shieldguards behind them.

  But then, Alexa noticed something. She looked up at the sky, realizing that two green flares were burning above the group of demons. Alexa recognized them from earlier. Whenever those things appeared above something, usually, all those below would be—

  Fireball artillery spells! They’re about to send them near us!

  “Everyone!” she shouted at the soldiers ahead of her. “Duck low to the ground!”