Chapter 69

Lambert looked down at the corpse of the man he had just bisected.

Then he stepped on and destroyed the black crystal that had fallen to the ground.

Next, he turned his gaze to the men and women bound with ropes and wearing burlap sacks, who seemed to be the surplus sacrifices for the man attempting to resurrect the hero from the tomb.

"……"

What Lambert felt was a sense of unease.

Something about the current situation felt off.

(Am I overthinking it…?)

For a moment, Lambert stopped moving.

Indeed, it was inconceivable that the man who had been cut down had been acting.

Moreover, in this situation, it would be almost impossible to suddenly appear, single-handedly eliminate the enemy forces, and then pinpoint and trap Lambert in an ambush.

In a battlefield, there was no such convenient magic that could provide the necessary information for the necessary location, and Lambert, who had been a general in the Eight Nations Unification War, knew this clearly.

If such a technique existed, it would make one a god of death and a hero in its own right.

Therefore, Lambert temporarily put aside the distrust he felt.

The man who appeared to have been brought as a sacrifice began to twist and writhe in agony.

He let out a groan of pain.

Lambert turned his attention to the man, crouched down, and forcibly tore open the burlap sack covering his head.

"What's wrong? Were you under some kind of magical interference?"

The man, with a pained expression, twisted his mouth and clung to Lambert's body.

"What…?"

"Lord Adamaria! Please drown me too!"

The man who was supposed to be a sacrifice shouted.

"Earth, become a swamp!"

Following this, the chanting of magic spells could be heard from all around.

It wasn't just one person; there were five mages.

Almost simultaneously, the ground beneath Lambert turned to mud, and the heavy magical metal armor began to sink into the earth.

Lambert instinctively jabbed the forehead of the man who had clung to him with the fingers of his gauntlet, shattering his skull and killing him instantly.

"Strangle him, flesh tentacles!"

The five mages chanted in unison.

They were coming from five directions, surrounding Lambert.

The burlap sacks that had been tied around the heads of the dead villagers lying around were torn from the inside.

What emerged were whips of flesh, released to surround Lambert.

Using the dead bodies as a medium, they had created and controlled flesh tentacles.

The grotesque tongues, taking advantage of the moment when Lambert's foot was caught in the swamp while he was crouched, seized the joints of his armor, restricting his movement.

Lambert, who had become undead, was particularly sensitive to mana, especially the mana of the living.

Therefore, he should not have been caught off guard by such an ambush.

The mages who had ambushed Lambert had been mixed in with the sacrifices.

They had pretended to be restrained, waiting for the moment when Lambert would show a critical opening.

"I never thought that the great axe-wielding Hildias would be so easily breached… but in the end, the multiple layers of traps we set up proved useful."

Lambert slightly tilted his helmet towards the voice behind him.

She was pale and beautiful, but the right half of her face was burned and disfigured.

Adamaria, the assistant to the Wise One Mancie, was a first-rate strategist and alchemist.

As an alchemist, she was skilled at manipulating bodies, creating and playing with the dead, and turning them into weapons.

Lambert made a show of trying to tear off his restraints.

However, his arms only trembled, and the flesh whips did not break.

"It's futile. These are not makeshift creations but ones that have been prepared in advance. By manipulating the bodies with magic, crushing and reorganizing them, and making them strong and resilient, I turned them into platforms that could only release a single whip of muscle. It's quite a labor-intensive process, but the effect is tremendous. Moreover, I already knew about your extraordinary strength. I've made the ground beneath your feet turn to mud to prevent you from using your strength, and the tentacles are wrapped around your joints to immobilize you."

"……I see."

Lambert groaned in a low voice.

"If you are extraordinary, then the strategy must be based on that premise."

Adamaria stated calmly.

"Lord Adamaria, what should we do with this man?"

"Let's torture him a bit before handing his body over to Lord Mancie. This man is far beyond the realm of ordinary humans and might be useful for Lord Mancie's research."

Saying this, Adamaria held a long, thin needle in her hand.

"Well, since I'm in a hurry, I'll have to be rough."

Adamaria turned her well-formed left eye and her right eye, which had been burned and discolored, towards Lambert.

Her gaze was cold, almost inhuman.

"Tell me one thing… Why? How could you grasp my movements so accurately, even when I was acting alone?"

A crucial part of strategy is the means to grasp the enemy's movements.

Adamaria's meticulously planned trap was possible because she had detected Lambert's strength and controlled his movements.

Adamaria's lips twisted into a smile.

"Did you not see any unusual insects?"

"……"

Synthetic beasts, bio-alchemy, or stone golems.

Whatever it was, Lambert realized that it must have been a weapon that had been transformed for sensing.

It was a powerful weapon.

Lambert was restrained because he had assumed such a convenient thing did not exist.

The unease that had nagged at him began to take shape.

The excessive number of surplus sacrifices.

And the man who had tried to resurrect the hero, Hildias, seemed to be calling for help from someone nearby.

"Let's keep the unnecessary talk to a minimum, shall we?"

Adamaria said.

Lambert nodded deeply.

"I can't hear any more. This farce is enough."

With that, Lambert twisted his body and raised his arms, which were bound by the tentacles.

"Since the ground is mud, you can't apply force. Besides, the even distribution of force on the joints prevents you from using your strength…"

The flesh tentacles wrapped around Lambert's legs and arms burst and spewed blood as they were torn off.

Adamaria's asymmetrical eyes were fixed on Lambert.

Lambert threw the torn tentacles aside, and with his freed limbs, easily shook off and destroyed the remaining tentacles.

"To think you could feel so confident with such toys."

"S-Squeeze him, flesh tentacles!"

Adamaria chanted hastily.

The grotesque flesh masses burst through the burlap sacks on the heads of nearby corpses and aimed at Lambert.

Lambert smashed them with the flat of his greatsword and used the momentum to leap into the air, escaping the magical swamp.

Lambert kicked one of the mages near his landing point, as if it were a greeting.

The mage, hit by the kick with the weight of the magical metal, had his chest and spine broken and his heart ruptured, turning into a grotesque, folded corpse.

"You said you planned based on knowing me. Is there more to come?"

Lambert planted his greatsword in the ground and asked them.

Lambert had put aside his suspicions and deliberately taken a step back in the trap to uncover the true nature of the overwhelming information advantage of the trap's master.

He had allowed himself to be restrained to make Adamaria complacent and to try to extract information about the source of her information.

Recognizing Adamaria as a threat was merely a means of gathering necessary information on the battlefield.

To Lambert, who had survived the Eight Nations Unification War, filled with malice to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible, Adamaria's schemes were child's play, even if she was somewhat skilled in alchemy and strategy in the modern era.