Former General Is Undead Knight

Volume 3, Chapter 49: Spinner of the Truth?

Charlobe was caught by Lambert, unable to move.

But when he escaped, Lambert had already bisected an additional two plasma beasts. Thus, he retreated.

「H-how dare you to underestimate me… Just see, I’ll read your pattern in no time…! That moment will be your last! You won’t be able to kill me with your crude sword! I can easily pierce your boorish armour and burn that rotten body inside to a crisp!」

Charlobe shouted this while putting his guard up.

He started to show an impatient look on his plasma face.

He had never expected that he would be cornered this far.

Everything would have been all right if he had escaped as soon as he felt that something was wrong.

Even if he was cornered, he shouldn’t have shown his true self. Rather, he should have continued to use

Alante’s body instead—that way his true self could at least escape safely.

And he had plenty of chances to do one of those two tactics.

Nevertheless, the reason he disclosed his trump card was that Lambert had crushed every single bit of Charlobe’s self-confidence.

「How dare you mock me…」

Charlobe’s body leaned forward.

The remaining six plasma beasts moved around Lambert at once.

「It seems you have yet to realize your current situation, eh.」

Lambert took a glance at the formation made by Charlobe and said this with a cool voice.

「NONSENSE!」

At that moment, all of the demon hounds rushed toward Lambert.

Almost simultaneously, Charlobe’s feet stomped on the ground and then closed in toward Lambert.

‘Now let’s see how you respond to this! Nevertheless, I’ll counter all of them…!’

The demon hounds entered the range of Lambert’s greatsword.

Lambert had yet to make his move.

The demon hounds’ claws and fangs had already swung down toward Lambert.

And yet, Lambert didn’t even flinch.

The demon hounds bit and struck Lambert’s leg and arms.

At that moment, Lambert raised his greatsword, which was slanting upward.

And then, a storm erupted with Lambert as its centre.

That storm knocked back the plasma beasts, scattering them to Lambert’s surroundings.

「U-urgh…!」

Lambert deliberately let the plasma beasts come into his range to kill them in one strike.

At this point, Charlobe, who drew closer, couldn’t change his trajectory anymore.

He would crash toward Lambert from the front.

The moment they intersected, a single vertical line was drawn right in the center of Charlobe’s plasma body, literally bisecting his plasma body vertically.

「GUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!」

Charlobe fell to his knees as soon as he and Lambert crossed.

The contour of Charlobe’s body was lost for a moment due to that damage.

Several lumps of ionization mana fell off his body and vanished into the soil.

「M-my soul fragments… are crumbling… B-but this is just a scratch…! For I am immortal… 『Spinner of the Truth』! Like hell am I going to die like thi—!」

Parts of Charlobe crumbled in a moment. The lost parts were maintained by sucking the ionization mana of other parts.

「I’m not done yet…」

「What are you looking for?」

The moment Charlobe raised his head upon hearing that voice, Lambert swung his greatsword down from above.

A series of relentless strikes rained down, tearing Charlobe’s body to pieces.

Though the number of slashes was overwhelming, none of them lacked punch. All of them embodied the full extent of Lambert’s power.

Each of those strikes could literally send any ordinary opponent to the afterlife.

The contour of Charlobe’s body warped even further than before.

「AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!」

Charlobe swung down his arms.

At that moment, a huge lightning pillar struck the ground before him. But Lambert retreated just before the lightning pillar struck him, deftly avoiding the subsequent pillars.

When Lambert finally increased the long distance between them, Charlobe finally stopped his lightning strikes.

「Impossible, impossible… I have been released from the constraint of my flesh. I am supposed to have an immortal and invincible body! I’ve surpassed my master. I’m the strongest sorcerer! And yet, this great me…! So this is one of the Four Demon Generals, Lambert…!」

Even though Lambert’s name had become infamous due to the stigma as a traitor, his title as the strongest of the Four Demon Generals wasn’t for show.

「No need to hold back. Give your best shot.」

At this moment, Charlobe had finally realized that he had been cornered.

He always believed that he could somehow get away even if he had to lose his right-hand man, disclose his sorcery to Lambert, or was unable to win with Alante’s body.

That was just how much faith he put in the sorcery that he perfected, 『Ectoplasm』.

His original plan was to lay low somewhere after he defeated Lambert.

That was why he fought while conserving his mana.

But then, reality said the opposite. His back was already against the wall.

He was supposed to have the advantage since swords wouldn’t be able to do anything to his prided 『Ectoplasm』.

…Or so it was supposed to be, if the greatsword in Lambert’s hands wasn’t made from Organ alloy.

「BRING IT ON! THIS GREAT SORCERER WHO HAS SURPASSED DEATH WILL GO ALL OUT! AND THE ONE WHO WILL DIE IS YOU, LAMBERT!」

Charlobe raised his arms.

Dozens of heat balls appeared around him, turning into plasma beasts that released purple lightning.

Maybe because he kneaded almost all of his mana into the spells, the light of Charlobe’s body dimmed a lot. It became more and more transparent.

「FUHAHAHAHA! NOW THEN, THIS IS THE REAL SHOWTIME!」

The demon hounds rushed toward Lambert at once.

Lambert bisected the demon hound that came from the right, leaning forward to dodge the one from the left.

He stopped the one that came from the front with the blade of his greatsword and used the residual force to change his position, preventing the rest of the demon hounds from striking at once.

「SPLENDID SWORDCRAFT! Though I used to sneer at you, who was hailed as the strongest swordsman of the unification war era, it seems that title wasn’t an overstatement. But how long are you going to stay in that kind of situation? MY ALL-OUT ATTACK HAS CORNERED YOU! IN THE END, YOU CAN’T FINISH ME OFF. THE REASON WHY YOU CAN’T DEFEAT ME IS JUST A MATTER OF AFFINITY! AND THERE’S NO NEED FOR ME TO TAKE THE RISK OF ENTERING YOUR RANGE EITHER!」

Lambert swung his sword wildly, cutting down the demon hounds around him one after another, and right at that moment, a giant pillar of lightning struck where he stood.

Lambert barely dodged that lightning strike by a hair’s breadth by jumping backward, but lightning pillars from all directions had already surrounded him.

「EAT THIIIIIIIIIIIS!」

The lightning pillars struck right in the center where Lambert stood.

It was a clean hit. And yet, Charlobe didn’t dare to let his guard down.

「ONE MORE STRIKE!」

Two lightning strikes struck down in less than a moment. At the same time, Lambert, who forcefully broke through the cage of lightning, bisected three demon hounds that were standing by outside the cage in a single strike.

The fatal strike hit the ground, scattering clouds of dust.

Seeing that, Charlobe raised his guard even further.

After all, there was a possibility that Lambert would use the cloud of dust to charge toward him.

He raised his arms, ready for any situation.

And just as he expected, Lambert’s figure rushed out of the cloud of dust while warding the demon hounds with his gauntlet.

He clearly chose the shortest route toward Charlobe with the least demon hounds.

But Charlobe deliberately prepared that way for Lambert and laid his trap right there.

He believed that he could cope with any situation as long as he knew where Lambert would come from.

This was the moment to decide the victor of this battle.

Although he managed to land a lightning strike on Lambert, it was far from enough to decide his victory.

This was in fact Charlobe’s first experience firing a spell toward a lump of Organ.

He used his everything to fire his spell toward Lambert.

「THIS STRIKE IS PROOF THAT I HAVE SURPASSED TESLAGOZ!!」

Lambert’s figure was swallowed by a lightning pillar.

「I’M NOT DONE YET! I CAN FIRE AS MANY AS I WANT!」

A greatsword suddenly shot forward, piercing the abdomen of a demon hound and heading straight toward Charlobe.

「…Eh?」

Charlobe couldn’t dodge the incoming sword. It gouged through his abdomen.

The sword pierced through Charlobe’s body, only stopping after it stuck into the wall behind Charlobe.

The greatsword left a gaping hole in Charlobe’s abdomen.

Due to using large-scale spells nonstop and his mana dispersal due to the barrage of slashes from Lambert, Charlobe was close to hitting his limit.

Charlobe’s body flickered as if it was about to disappear. The gaping hole in his abdomen looked like a dark hole, which devoured his body from inside.

「I see… That time, you’d already thrown your sword with the cover from the cloud of dust… You used your body as bait to distract my attention from your sword, eh.」

After that, Lambert used the crowd of demon hounds to hide the sound of him throwing his sword.

Charlobe, who came out in the arena to finish the fight as Lambert intended, had failed to notice the incoming greatsword till right in the last moment. It was simply much much faster than his expectation.

「N-NO, I DON’T WANT TO DISAPPEAR! I-I’M AN IMMORTAL WISEMAN… THE 『SPINNER OF THE TRUTH』! FOR I AM THE REAL SORCERER ON THE EDGE OF THIS CONTINENT!」

Charlobe’s plasma body crumbled.

His figure crumbled to dust, starting from his hands and becoming smaller and smaller.

Soon, that phenomenon spread to his entire body.

Lambert stood behind Charlobe, pulled out his greatsword that was stuck on the ground, and slashed toward the plasma body that became smaller and smaller, accelerating the crumbling process.

After several heavy strikes, all that remained was a white lump with cracks on its surface.

Lambert stabbed into Charlobe’s back as he tried to escape desperately, pinning the latter to the ground.

His mutilated body that had already been dismembered into numerous parts slowly vanished altogether.

「MERCY, MERCYYY! YES! IF I DIE, THE RESULTS OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF HUMAN EXPERIMENTS WILL BE LOST FOREVER! YOU MURDERER! YES, MURDERER. YOU’RE A MURDERER! Y-Y-YOU GENOCIDER!」

「Look at yourself. Despite your exaggerated alias, you can’t even make a proper argument now.」

The blades then slashed Charlobe’s head.

His head fell to the ground and crumbled to ashes. And yet, his lips didn’t stop moving.

「I’M TOO IMPORTANT TO DIE IN THIS KIND OF PLACE! I SHOULD GET MORE PRAISE AND BE HAILED AS A GREAT SORCERER! YES, I’M SUPPOSED TO BECOME AN ARCH-SORCERER WHO HAS SURPASSED TESLAGOZ-SAMA, MY TEACHER! I SHOULD GET MORE PRAISE, BUT… WHY—」

Lambert’s greatsword pierced Charlobe’s forehead before the latter could finish.

Thus, Charlobe vanished once for all.