19. Someone Who Can Turn a Battle Alone

I took a quick look around and confirmed the overall status of the battle.

The adventurers were clearly exhausted to their limits, but the monsters were still being cut down one by one. The problem was that the moment they defeated a monster, a brand-new one instantly sprang out from the summoning point. Every so often, an exhausted adventurer was overwhelmed and killed, and because there were no reinforcements to replenish their ranks, the human side was slowly being pushed back.

If that’s how it is, then──I’ll just thin out the numbers!

I rushed out toward the frontlines with Eleanor in hand. I smashed a skeleton straight in half right as it was trading blows with a struggling adventurer.

「And you are……?」

The ragged, exhausted adventurer stared at me in bewildered curiosity. But I had no time to chat. I quickly sprinted over to the next monster. Whenever I found myself near a skirmish, I intervened and obliterated the target with a single blow. By rapidly thinning out the herd, I ensured that no more adventurers would suffer fatal injuries.

I tore through the battlefield like a gale-force wind. In my wake, the carcasses of monsters piled up high.

As I repeated this routine, the rhythm of the battle slowly shifted. The adventurers who had been freed up by my sudden interventions were now able to double back and support their comrades. With more hands available, they could easily take down monsters through coordinated attacks.

The tide of battle had officially turned. The adventurer vanguard was pushing forward.

Just then, a frantic adventurer lunged blindly at me.

「Onoreeeeeeeee!!!」

It was a young male adventurer. Eleanor effortlessly parried the longsword swung down from above.

「You’re the leader of these monsters, aren’t you?!」

「What are you even talking about?」

「Don’t play dumb! You’re giving off such an ominous, dark aura!」 the man snarled in frustration.

……

Ah, right. I suppose she is.

Eleanor’s jet-black aura looked menacing no matter how you sliced it. More importantly, this entire army of monsters technically originated from her powers. It was only natural that I’d be misunderstood. To be completely fair to the guy, his deduction wasn’t entirely off base.

「Wait! That’s not who he is!」

Another adventurer came running up from behind, grabbing the angry man’s shoulder to stop him. It was one of the spellcasters I had rescued just moments earlier.

「What the hell are you talking about, defense-girl?」

「It’s true! You have to believe me, he saved us!」

The man froze, hesitation clearly washing across his face. I didn’t have time to stick around and explain my life story, so I simply stepped past them and pressed forward.

I knocked them down. And knocked them down. And knocked them down.

After wiping out a massive wave of foes, I finally noticed something strange. The newest batch of monsters appearing on the field looked completely different from the earlier ones. Unlike the previous waves, I couldn’t sense any lingering combat damage on them—meaning they had just been freshly generated.

「Does this mean our eradication speed has completely outpaced their generation speed?」 I muttered.

(Looks that way.) Eleanor chimed in.

「So how do I stop them from being born altogether?」

Now that I had a moment to breathe, I asked Eleanor for a solution.

(Well…)

「Well, this was your magic to begin with, wasn’t it?」

(If this were still under my direct control, I could shut it off as easily as breathing. But this is the first time a runaway spawn has happened independently like this, so…)

「……」

I was utterly speechless. It was a very delicate subject, leaving me with zero room for a witty retort.

「We need to seal it,」 a female adventurer called out, jogging over from the side. It was the robed spellcaster I had saved earlier.

「Seal?」

「There’s a specialized sealing squad on standby. Once we completely wipe out the active monster wave, we’re supposed to advance to the core summoning point and seal it off permanently.」

「So all I need to worry about is erasing everything on the field right now?」

「Yes!」

The female adventurer nodded vigorously, her eyes staring straight into mine with an expression filled with absolute expectation and trust.

「If that’s the case, let’s kick it up a notch.」

「Eeeeeh? You mean you weren’t going all out yet?!」

「Yeah, well.」

I nodded casually. The woman looked even more shocked. Up until now, I had actually been holding back quite a bit. I had spent most of my time carefully darting around to rescue adventurers who were cornered in melee combat. While coordinating close-quarters saves was easy enough, dealing with mages and archers who were already grappled by monsters was tricky. If I used my full strength, the blast radius would have caught our own allies, so I had to rigidly moderate my power.

But with the green light to go all out, things were going to get messy.

Just as I prepared to unleash my real strength—

「I-It’s really bad!」

「Uuwaaa, what the hell is that?!」

Shouts of absolute terror erupted from the adventurers around us. Everyone instinctively whipped their heads around to look in the same direction.

I turned my gaze toward the source of the commotion. Standing in the distance was a colossal giant with massive curved horns, razor-sharp fangs, and a terrifyingly fierce expression. It was a monster I had never laid eyes on before.

「What the hell is that thing?」

(Sandros, the King of Hell. My…… well, I suppose you could call it my old trump card.)

「Hell──that’s a pretty dramatic name.」

(And to be fair, it has enough raw destructive power to single-handedly flip the outcome of a war.)

「Oh, come on…」

I was left momentarily dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe she had brought a secret weapon of this caliber along for the ride.

As we watched, the vanguard group of adventurers who had been holding that sector turned tail and sprinted back toward us in sheer panic.

「Nobody said anything about a monster like that being out here!」

「There’s no way we can fight something on that scale!」

Adventurers who had refused to budge even during the worst of the attrition warfare were now fleeing in absolute disarray. If someone told me that was literally the emperor of hell, its overwhelming presence made it entirely believable. Panic is deeply contagious, and the front lines were on the verge of total collapse.

「The spot where it just emerged… that’s right near Mari’s cave, isn’t it?」

(Looks that way.)

「If that’s the case──」

There wasn’t a single second to lose. If this continued unchecked, the entire guild force would be wiped out.

I activated my Warp Feather and instantly teleported straight to the clearing near Mari’s cave.

「Uwa!」

I recoiled in shock. It felt like a massive stone wall had suddenly materialized right in front of my face. I instinctively jumped back a step, looked up, and realized I was staring directly at Sandros’s massive leg. Up close, it genuinely looked like the side of a building.

As my vision cleared past its limbs, I saw a dozen unconscious adventurers scattered across the ground around me.

Sandros took them all out, huh…… and it hasn’t even been that long since this guy spawned.

Suddenly, Sandros lowered its massive head, locking its glowing eyes directly onto me as if it had finally registered my presence.

「Guooooooooooo!」

It let out a deafening roar that shook the sky, its gaze fixed entirely on me.

「Is it just me, or did it get mad all of a sudden?」

「Guooooooooooo!」

「And it’s glaring right at you. Wasn’t that thing supposed to be your subordinate? What did you even do to it?」

(I suppose locking it into a binding contract and forcing it to work for free for several hundred years might have ticked it off a little.)

「That is definitely the cause!」

Anyone would be furious! It was only natural for the so-called “Emperor of Hell” to hold a grudge after being treated like slave labor for centuries.

Sandros raised a massive weapon and swung it down. It was an enormous, cleaver-like greatsword nearly five meters in length. Eleanor automatically parried the blow.

Gashin!

The sheer kinetic impact sent a violent shockwave rippling through the clearing, blowing away a nearby pile of fallen debris. Being purely defensive wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to take the initiative.

I surged forward just as Sandros wound up for a second downward slash, leaping in close and severing its arm in a single fluid motion. The colossal arm went spinning off into the distance, snapping a thick pine tree in half like a toothpick.

「Guooooooooooo!」

Sandros roared even louder, its eyes bloodshot with rage. It threw a heavy punch with its remaining fist. I dodged to the side and literally ran straight up its massive arm in one smooth motion. Reaching its shoulder, I vaulted directly toward its face.

「Guooooooooooo!」

More deafening roars rattled the air, the shockwaves violently fluttering the hem of my clothes. I gripped Eleanor tightly in both hands.

「I’ve got nothing personal against you, but you need to disappear from here!」

Putting my entire body weight behind the swing, I brought Eleanor down in a devastating overhead chop straight into Sandros’s skull.

CRACK!

The massive beast collapsed heavily to the earth, its bloodshot eyes staring blankly up at me until the very end.

「Is it going to resurrect itself, too?」

(Given enough time, yes.)

「Great, now all the local monsters are really going to hate me.」

I sighed, though I knew I had no other choice. After that, I spent some time hunting down the remaining scattered stragglers. The battle wound down at an accelerated pace, and soon enough, the Guild’s specialized sealing squad arrived to secure the monster spawn point permanently sealed inside Mari’s cave.

With the crisis officially resolved, cheers of victory echoed all around me.