With the battle over in the northwest, Asmodeus gained a significant boost to his forces. His demon warriors lost over 450 n, and just under 100 demon knights fell.
But the survivors gained a great boost in their strength.
Bathing in the essence of the fallen demons, his demon knights and lovers gained an overall power increased by an average of 20-30%. The demon warriors gained a significant improvent despite their weaker demon blood absorbing less of the experience and demon essence.
Asmodeus and his n began clearing the battlefield, but over in the east.
The battle had just begun.
***
"To the walls!"
"Don't let them break through!"
"Adrian, they're burrowing!"
Demons and monsters were similar in existence, but the largest difference between the two was quite obvious.
The demons mostly took on humanoid forms—anwhile, monsters were deford, shaped like beasts, insects and other non-human forms, devouring anything and everything to survive and lacking the pride and intelligence of a demon.
Outside the repaired wooden and stone layered walls, countless holes and cracks appeared from the huge Minotaurs that ramd the walls without care for their lives, taking arrows and javelins with reckless abandon.
BOOM!
"Another... bring it down—!"
"Your Grace!?"
Alan's voice cut off with a hoarse cough from shouting for the past hour. He desperately wanted to hold the walls and avoid losing their defensive barricade.
'To think that such abominations existed...'
Despite wanting to rush out and fight them, Alan dispersed his divine aura to reinforce the walls and heal his allied units.
Without this, the casualties and deaths would be at least double or even worse.
Desperate to break through, he called out to the scouts who left to contact Asmodeus a few hours earlier and had just returned from the battle in the west.
Although ragged and weakened, they were alive.
"Any news from Asmodeus?! How fares their battle?"
His face was pale, with dark circles underneath his eyes. Unlike Asmodeus, Alan was a normal human and beca a regular hero serving Serena. He couldn't perform reckless acts like when he served under the crazed Goddess Lumina.
"Y-Your grace..." The scout staggered, clearly rushing around the longest way, taking the southern route to avoid the demon and monster armies. "The battle has been won, at a substantial cost."
Alan, in his glee didn't catch the second sentence, his mood rising.
"Will he be able to send reinforcents?"
A hopeful and bright smile painted his face, which wrung the hearts of the three scouts who saw even the Harem of Asmodeus fighting to their limits.
How could they tell him the devastation that the army they once called freaks and shunned suffered and faced? In reality, the scouts who once turned away the peasants all because they were knights vanished.
They watched the demon warriors fight desperately to clear a route to the south for them. Those who insulted and called them insignificant awoke sothing long idle and once lost.
Thier chivalry as knights of Grigor.
"Impossible, Your Grace."
One scout stepped forward, a scar across his cheek, a dirty black tuft of hair on his lips forming a curled moustache.
He stood with an impressive stance, both hands behind his back, just above his tailbone with hands clasped, and earnest eyes that shone with variance and honestly.
"What do you an, Edgar?" Alan's voice hitched. His eyes narrowed as the anger and positive feelings started to crash. The sound of beasts and monsters caused the earth to shake, almost driving him to kill the scout on the spot.
'Oh, heavens...' Alan thought, regretting the dirty and vile impulses inside his heart.
"The army that struck the west and our allies was imnse. A demon necromancer, able to cause the fallen to rise again only to explode, wounded countless troops. Then the demon commander took a trendous force to silence."
"How difficult could it be, Asmodeus fought, did he not?"
To Alan... the roles between himself and Ryuji seven or eight months ago beca reversed.
It would have been Ryuji saying such a thing in the past. An expectation of Alan to breeze through the battles and conquer everything with the swing of his sword. Now it was Alan who experienced these grand hopes and thoughts about his dear friend.
The two scouts behind Edgar held the sa posture but struggled to withstand Alan's aura.
Their shoulders trembled, but one of them, a younger knight with blonde hair and a dirty face, closed his eyes and shouted out.
"He fought an unfathomable force, alone and saved the entire army from the Necromancer!"
Alan's eyes flicked back to the battlefield. Volleys of arrows cut through the darkness, lit by flas, but they could barely damage the muscular bodies of the Minotaur or the fleshy orcs above to use their physique to endure.
"Is that all? What about the harem, surely they could aid us?"
'Your Grace?'
Edgar could feel the difference in their Duke from the mont this campaign started. He beca haggard and more human. In the past, when fighting, he seed a little divine, as if no human could approach him and although he was stronger, the casualties were much higher due to him lacking understanding of their situation.
'He's changed...'
Now he felt human, relatable with his mood swings and anger.
"The Princesses and Witch of Grigor fought valiantly, at their own expense against a monster over five tres tall with enough strength to wipe out a squad of knights with a single blow!"
Alan's hands gripped the stone wall, his teeth grinding together at this news.
He was expecting a miracle, but he didn't want to feel like this.
'Have I beco so arrogant and needy that I cannot fight myself out of a dangerous battle?'
Thanks to his divine aura, the death toll remained low, but his ntal fatigue tripled as a result, causing this situation where his mind beca empty.
No plans. No thod of victory, only frustration remained.
"Your Grace..."
Edgar didn't want to ntion these things that would hurt his lord's morale, but without the truth, the Duke might stand waiting as their army crumbles for so sort of miracle or help.
"I get it, Edgar. Don't look so worried. We must fight, and risk losing before we can win."
Countless knights could hear this conversation, their bodies filled with a chill of fear facing the nightmarish figures.
However, Alan made his choice.
A flicker of light restored to his dull blue eyes.
He rubbed the scar across his face and closed his eyes, thinking of the woman who gave him the will to fight, to keep pushing and about the child in her stomach that beca his drive to wipe out these fiends from the continent.
"My faithful knights! Listen to my command."
The knights who fought swung their swords, cutting down goblins that clung to the walls, climbing up the sides like spiders, and shooting at the fleshy orcs used as at shields by the Minotaurs and Ogres. All of them heard Alan's resounding shout and felt a sense of uplifting spirit.
All because his voice sounded... hopeful.
"We are the sons of Grigor!
Children of the blade, with endless Vigour.
Warriors of the earth, and conquerors of the Land!
With iron wills and weapons in hand.
For a Grigorian fight for Honour and glory!
And we march forth to claim our victory."
Alan began shouting his heart out with a strange song-like rhythm, igniting the hearts of everyone present as his divine aura exploded, filling their bodies and souls.
Fear, anger and doubt faded like sugar in hot water.
Their movents seed to slow, becoming sluggish and drained as if they were underwater. With each word said Alan took in their attention and filled them with a divine inspiration.
"Rember... Rember your oath, Knights.
We will not let these monsters harm those we have sworn to protect.
Let hear your battle cry.
Show your Vigour!
Show your pride as Knights!"
With his final words, Alan raised his sword as which glead with a golden light. He couldn't understand, but from the mont that he believed and put his faith in the goddess who blessed him and decided to fight.
A surge of divine energy flooded his body, and the exhaustion and fear crumbled in the presence of that like.
[That's right, you are his friend. I would expect nothing less!]
A soft, sensual voice echoed from the air, resonating in everyone's minds.
[Do not fear the enemy—fight with a clear heart. Let open the path to victory!]
"Is this the goddess?"
"The goddess is watching us!"
"Praise the goddess!"
"Praise His Grace!"
It felt like sothing awakened within Alan's soul and body.
The knights found their bodies beca lighter as if by instinct, as divine light surrounded them all.
"We are the sons of Grigor!"
The n howled into the air, the low hum of their voices now repeating Alan's speech, the rhythm rolling with their movents, the swing of a sword, the volley of arrows.
It was the mont that humanity fought back!
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