Volume 1 Chapter 2: Chaotic Battle in the Graveyard
Translator: The Light
Edits by LazyButAmbitious
Bella had actually been watching for a while, but had been frozen in shock when she saw the scene in front of her. When she regained her senses, the two had already been restrained by the zombies. Seeing this, she signalled for a skeleton archer behind her to fire a signal arrow in the direction of the church. There were tens of thousands of terrifying monsters that Bella had created under the guidance of Angel and Mia. As soon as they received Bella’s signal they would rush to the scene.
She had originally wanted to watch the ‘old driver’ demonstrate his ‘driving’ on the scene, but was forced to hijack the ‘car’ when he was going to switch locations. Not only that, but she also recognized the knight. In Octavia Felia’s memories, the blue-haired and blue-eyed female knight was part of one of the Octavian Empire’s(Knights) four big families. She was Randall Roland, daughter of the current head of the Randall family. Her brother was renowned as the genius that was one of the youngest dragon knights on the entire continent.
The Randall family was the head of the four great families of the empire. The family’s power and influence within the Octavian empire was second only to the royal family, so naturally, Miss Roland’s proficiency wasn’t that bad. If Felia’s memories were correct, Roland was an elite knight. Of course, she could not hope to compare with her genius older brother, but it was still quite rare for someone to reach the level of an elite knight in only fifteen years.
As for the archer, her hair was golden blond and combed into a pretty, single ponytail. Her eyes were the same sky blue as Bella’s. On the bow that she had dropped was a special emblem. According to what Bella had learned about the human empires during her time searching in the church, she could confirm that this was the emblem of the royal family of the Kristoff Empire(Archers/a.s.sa.s.sins). This girl was definitely royalty.
Bella wondered why these two ladies came to this decrepit place, especially without a single guard. It was lucky for them that Bella was in the area as well. Anyone would be able to guess what would have happened to them if Bella had not intervened. Bella herself could already think of multiple scenes of different ‘flavours’. The problem was how Bella was supposed to explain the monsters that were with her. What if after she saved them they ran back and exposed what they saw here? Bella could run, but the old archbishop that gave her the recommendation to be a missionary would also be dragged into it. Randall Roland looked desperately to the girl in the distance. Roland remembered her from the knight school a few years ago. If she was right then the girl was the holy knight, Octavio Felia. Roland had heard that Felia had died during her expedition to Alfred continent at the hands of the monsters. Who was this girl who looked exactly like her? Was the news that Felia had perished false?
Right now, Roland really regretted listening to that stupid young master of the Stuart family. He had said that the resting place was just desolate and did not have any monsters. She cane here along with Kristoff Empire’s 1st princess on a walk to relax. Kris Annie was a childhood friend of hers that had played with each other ever since they were little because Roland had stayed and trained in the palace of the Kristoff Empire until she was eight.
The current emperor of the Kristoff Empire, Kristoff XI, wanted to have a political marriage with the Octavian Empire, and it was originally intended that the Octavian Empire’s 9th princess, Octavio Felia, would marry the 1st prince of the Kristoff Empire, but the plan was unable to keep up with the changes. Before Felia even received notice from her father, she had gone on the fatal expedition to Alfred Continent. After discussions and bartering between the two emperors, they decided that Kristoff Empire’s 1st princess, Kris Annie, would marry the young master of the Stuart family, one of the four great families of the Octavian Empire.
As the bride price, the Octavian Empire promised nine cities as well as the land in their vicinities. This was a purely political deal and Kris Annie, as one of the items in the trade, did not have any say in this, which made her rather depressed. She was also forced by her father to travel to the Octavian Empire so that the two of them could ‘get used to each other’. Luckily, her good friend Roland was there to accompany her, she had ignored Stuart Sidney completely in the presence of Roland.
Stuart Sidney was furious at this. The two of them were betrothed and yet she had not even looked at him or talked with him the entire day, choosing to talk with Roland instead. If she was this rebellious before they even got married, how would she act after?
As Roland was also a member of the four great families, her influence and power weren’t weaker than his own. Sidney wasn’t able to confront her about this to her face so he planned to scare Roland off by finding a place with lots of monsters, while he would be the one to accompany Annie throughout this wasteland. He wouldn’t have to be wary of doing anything to Annie anymore. He would make sure that she would be unable to ignore him anymore.
What happened after was exactly like what Bella saw. This group of adventurers entered the Adris resting place and their horses were killed by the zombie surprise attack while Sidney got scared and ran off with his escorts. The two girls couldn’t flee as fast and were quickly encircled. Sidney did not even turn back to look at the fiance that he had abandoned and had probably forgotten.
“Bella! Don’t push your limits, this is my territory, you have no right over what happens here.”
“This is your territory? Well it’ll be mine soon enough”
“You’ve forced my hand! Today we’ll see who this graveyard belongs to.”
Duke Adris saw that Bella had not left any room for negotiation and driven by his shame, he let out a loud roar. Zombies started to break through the ground of the graveyard and crawled out. Bella estimated that there were several thousand. The newly risen zombies outnumbered Bella’s skeletons.
“How about it Bella? If you back off now, I can give you one of them.” Duke Adris exposed everything that he had in order to try to scare off Bella, but her face was still calm and showed no signs of panic. She might still have something up her sleeve. Although he didn’t know why Bella wanted the girls for, he could tell that Bella came here for the two of them.
“Duke Adris, it seems to me that we can’t complete this agreement. Just give me the two livesto... the two girls.” Behind Bella came a sound like rolling thunder as she looked at the undead duke. An army of skeletons soon came into view, from what could be seen there was at least ten thousands of them. All of them were strengthened skeleton soldiers that wore dark-grey armour.
Their entire bodies were covered by armour, only exposing the red flames that danced behind the visor of their full face helmets. They carried on their back a large spiked s.h.i.+eld, and in their hand, a long pole-axe. Their equipment was already on the level of a regular soldier in the human empire.
“Bella, what kind of hero are you to bully few with many. If you truly have ability, come 1v1!” Duke Adris knew that he would be unable to defeat Bella’s skeleton army. Even though he could easily take on several hundreds of them, there were definitely stronger monsters leading them.
He had yet to see the leader of this skeleton army, but to be able to command this number of skeletons meant that he wasn’t up against any simple foe. It seemed that his best choice right now was to keep provoking Bella into a duel. He would use his special toxic smoke on her and escape into his base with his prey while she was jumping out-of-the-way.
“You want a 1v1? Sure! I’m coming, just you wait.”
Bella got into the position for a charge. Adris thought that she had finally fallen into his trap and was excited as he thought about taking Bella as a prize with his smoke. He didn’t notice at all that Bella had turned behind her for a split second and nodded towards a giant spherical shaped shadow within the ranks of skeletons.
As he saw Bella charging, Adris prepared to spray his toxic breath, but before he could do so a giant ball flew towards Adris and knocked him back several meters. The giant ball intercepted his toxic breath and was unaffected by it.
When Duke Adris managed to peel himself off the ground, he saw an almost spherical muscular monster that was the height of a medium-sized ogre, around 6m. It looked as if its entire body was in some stage of decomposition, it’s internal organs were clearly visible through some of the openings in its body
The monster let off a wretched scent that was sure to suffocate any living human that stood near it.
“What a delightful smell of death Miss Bella. This zombie is very suited to my appet.i.te, are you giving him to me to play with? Heh heh”
“【Warden Maltz】, I’m leaving him to you. I have some stuff to attend to so do whatever you want.”
Bella was holding down her nausea as she looked at the deformed monster holding a butcher’s blade before her. This warden was based on a monster from a game that she had played in her past life, a high-cla.s.s ghoul.
Warden Maltz’s hobby was to disa.s.semble corpses and collect different parts. Because of this messed up hobby, Bella was scared to let him out normally and made him the warden of the underground prison;he would be best suited amongst Bella’s followers to deal with Duke Adris, someone messed up in the head can only be dealt with by someone who was even more messed up in the head.
Bella had already seen through Adris’ plan of disabling her with his toxic breath, apart from the warden Maltz, she had also brought 【Bonecrusher】 Adrian and【Banisher】 Mercedes. With so many subordinates she didn’t need to fight herself, she from the beginning, had never intended to actually strike a deal Duke Adris.
Apart from the two beautiful girls that needed saving, Bella had a more pressing question. Where did this old ‘gentleman’ procure his tools? The rope could be explained, but the collar and ball gag were definitely something from her previous world, how did it appear in this one?
“Thank you Miss Bella, come on baby! Let me show you what I’ve got!” Maltz shouted out some weird stuff, and the horrible shrieks of the duke travelled into Bella’s ears. She turned her head away from the scene of ‘philosophical discussion’ (H: you know, the deep[♂]dark[♂]fantasy kind). When they saw that their leader, 【Warden】 Maltz, had charged, the skeleton soldiers quickly followed suit.
The graveyard was thrown into a chaotic battle as Bella’s skeleton forces clashed with the zombies, it was hard to see who was who. Bella arrived at the side of the two girls, the zombies that had surrounded them had already been dealt with by Adrian the Bonecrusher, Adrian was a monster in the form of a gentleman, he wore a black trenchcoat as well as a skeleton mask, he bowed deeply when he saw Bella and left to cut down more zombies.
When they saw Bella approach, both Annie and Roland treated her with caution, especially the latter as she could now confirm that the female knight in front of them was Octavio Felia; only she no longer had any of the holy aura that was customary of a holy knight. After seeing the monsters that had come with Bella, Roland was suspicious that she had fallen and been corrupted by the dark.
There were legends that when holy knights were unable to resist the devil’s temptation they would fall from grace and become an unholy knight. Throughout history there were several recorded unholy knights, and they all required large numbers of dragon knights to subdue, the last unholy knight was killed by Roland’s brother, Randall Shawn, just three years ago. It was an unpleasant surprise that another had appeared so soon.
“What kind of glares are those, if you want I can leave you two here.”
Bella pretended that she was angry at the suspicious glances that the two girls gave her. The two girls finally gave in, they tried to call out for Bella to save them, but their voices were blocked by their gags and they could only continuously shake their heads.
“That’s more like it, let me see this rope, that’s strange, I can’t undo it? As Bella touched the rope, she could feel a strange power emanating from it, and when she applied force to it, it tightened even further.
“Miss Bella, the rope is enchanted with some strange power, you best not carelessly try to open it or it might strangle the two girls.” Right as Bella was about to attempt cutting the rope with her sword, an old granny dressed in black appeared beside Bella.
“Mercedes, you’re just in time, can you identify the power on this seal? See if you can open it.” Bella wanted to take off the ball gags, but they were also sealed by a strange power and were unable to be opened as well.
“I’m unable to break the seal, the caster’s power must be at least on par with Miss Mia, you should take them to her and see if she can do something about it Miss Bella.” 【Banisher】Mercedes shook her head after studying the rope for a while.
“So that’s it! If I remember correctly you’re Roland right? You girls have two choices, either wait here for your escorts to return and save you, or I can take you to see my little sister Mia can undo your bonds. If you guys nod your head I’ll take you, if you don’t I’ll leave you girls here.”
The two girls immediately agreed, it was almost guaranteed that something would happen to them if Sidney found them like this; If he chose to blackmail them after seeing their nude unclothed bodies, they would be helpless. Bella didn’t exactly seem like a good person either, but at least she was a female as well.
“Oh, and there’s something else; as you girls can see, I’m not a holy knight anymore. I don’t want any humans to find out where I’m living. Is that fine?”
Roland and Annie knew what Bella was going to do after she had picked up the two strips of black fabric that had dropped earlier. They hesitated for a while before nodding their heads; to place their lives in the hands of Bella was evidently better than those of Duke Adris, at least there was a chance that they may survive.
“You guys made the right choice! Don’t worry, everyone is a girl here, I won’t do anything to you guys. Mercedes, prepare a carriage and horses, leave the rest to Martz and Adrian.” After placing the blindfolds the two girls, Bella got her subordinates to prepare a carriage for her, and left the rest to her subordinates.