I Was a Sword When I Reincarnated

Chapter 299: Strong Monsters

We continued to engage the army of monsters in head-on combat.

I managed to recover most of my mana after a good bit of skirmishing, but it was still a bit shy of full. But of course, there was no way the monsters would know that, let alone work with us to make things more convenient.

“Grrrr!”

“Big ones coming.”

“I guess that must mean the show’s finally on the road. Alright. Let’s kick it up a notch.”

“Okay.”

A group of monsters with numbers in the tens moved through the crowd and began attacking Fran. There was a four meter tall lizard, a huge lion with green fur, and a high ogre with an iron club amongst many others.

It seemed that the mob had finally realized that it wouldn’t be able to defeat Fran with just small fry. She could cleave through hundreds of them without breaking a sweat.

The stronger monsters that approached ranked in the D to E range. Each was capable of crushing an entire village all by their lonesome. Of course, we were far superior. None of the monsters could pose any sort of threat to either Fran or Urushi in a one versus one scenario. But there were far too many of them for us to treat the battle as a leisurely stroll. We had to remain vigilant.

And of course, the weaker monsters hadn’t just up and disappeared now that their superior counterparts had come around. Those that were capable of it were still providing long ranged support.

“Listen up, Urushi! Sink into the shadows and start sniping them one by one. Your goal is to thin them out as much as possible.”

“Woof!”

“And be careful out there. Make sure you don’t get yourself surrounded. I’ll make sure we don’t get hit by projectiles. Fran, you focus on destroying everything nearby.”

“Nn!”

Fran fearlessly plunged into the mob. She slipped under a monster whose legs were as thick as her hips, and danced around another that tried to stab her with a horn that was as thick as a telephone pole.

The monsters she fought were as strong as the ones that I’d only barely managed to defeat not too long after my reincarnation. She and I had both gotten much stronger. While we weren’t able to slay each enemy in a single hit, we were still able to take them down with ease.

Agitation spread through the monsters’ ranks as their army’s members fell one by one. They didn’t seem to understand how the tiny little thing that stood in their way was anywhere near as powerful as them, let alone much stronger than they were. They looked at her as they would mere prey. But her attacks and spells were both much more lethal than theirs could ever be.

At first, they’d just blindly charged in. But now that they had calmed down a bit, they came to understand that she was much more powerful than she appeared.

Their eyes filled with fear. And from that fear, I finally came to understand the gravity of the situation we were dealing with. The fact that the monsters were afraid meant that they weren’t being manipulated. They were following orders. Whoever had amassed this army was powerful enough to make ten thousand monsters follow their commands. I really hope that they haven’t gathered under someone purely because that someone happened to be overwhelmingly powerful. I really don’t want to have to even imagine how strong anyone capable of that would be. They’d have to be A rank tier, at the very least.

Lost in my thoughts as I was, I was still actively participating in the battle. The reason I was able to manage all these thoughts while fighting was because I had activated Parallel Processing and dedicated one of my mind’s newly found branches to considering the status quo.

The situation was honestly not looking all that great. Magic wasn’t the only long ranged attack we had to avoid. We also had to somehow dodge corpses. The monsters were throwing their dead companions without a care in the world. They didn’t even mind the projectile’s final destination. They would still throw them at full force even if they were at risk of hitting an ally. This recklessness of theirs made their attacks incredibly hard to predict.

The number of monsters engaging Fran in combat gradually began to shrink. Unfortunately, our resources had suffered a similar fate. My MP, which we had oh so painstakingly worked to recover had once again been reduced to only half its maximum value. Fran was very clearly exhausted as well. She was panting heavily, so heavily that her shoulders would heave with every breath she took.

I had already healed her back up to full, but she had spent a good bit of the fight covered in wounds of all shapes and sizes. Her face and clothes were all stained by the sheer amount of blood that she had been soaked in. Not all monsters had the same coloured blood, and mixing it all together had eventually caused the stuff that coated her to turn black.

As it impacted her ability to see, I made sure to clean the stuff off of her face every once in a while, but my efforts were fruitless, as it didn’t take very long for her face to once again be dyed a shade of black.

That was just how intense the battle had been. Being as exhausted as she was was only natural.

“You still good to go, Fran?”

“Nn!” Fran gave herself a light shake to get back into the zone before glaring at the monsters around her. The overwhelming aura that radiated off her body caused them to momentarily freeze in place.

Again, the monsters were made to recognize that Fran was no pushover, that she was more than what her form suggested.

Whoever was in control of the army seemed to come to understand that it was time for a change in strategy, as the monsters began to fight in a bit of a different manner. I guess they really are watching, then. Hmm… they might even be somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Or maybe there’s a commander or something that was taught a bunch of different strategies ahead of time. That might be possible too. And just how are all these orders being issued in the first place?

The only thing I knew for sure was that the monsters were moving to support one another. They were working as a team.

“Master.”

“Yeah. Looks like this’ll be a pain in the ass to handle.”

The monsters around us pulled back as would a receding wave as five monsters of an even higher power level stepped forward. These guys are probably this army’s most powerful monsters.

All five were C ranked threats; each was strong enough to fell Greengoat on its own. The fact that there were five of them gathered meant that the country as a whole would have met an unprecedented amount of trouble had we not discovered them.

They would have had to fight a war on two fronts. The Basharians would have been attacking from one side, while this army attacked from another. And it all just happened to occur while the Beast Lord was away. Does that mean that this monster army is something the Basharians put together? Man, I just don’t know. But alright, enough thinking. I need to focus.

The biggest problem was that each of the five C ranked monsters was of a different type. The largest was a multi headed snake known as a Graphite Hydra. Its scales shone with a black lustre, as could be guessed from its name. Each of its six heads were wide enough to swallow Fran whole, and all in all, the oversized snake was at least twenty meters long. It had the ability to rapidly regenerate, but that wasn’t all. It was capable of spitting breaths of fire, poison, and darkness.

Beside it stood a Crimson Wolf, a canine with deep red fur capable of casting flame magic. It seemed like it was more or less the same species as Urushi, except that its primary element was fire as opposed to darkness. Its stats were the most well rounded of the five.

Like the second, the third monster was also a type of beast. Namely, a Steel Titan Bear. The ten meter tall mammal had skin as hard as steel covering its entire body. It didn’t really have any special skills, but its stats, especially its defenses, were incredible. Its strength sat at a whole 1286, meaning it could output even more brute force than the Graphite Hydra.

Next to the bear was a giant bug known as an Adamantite Beetle. It basically looked like an eight meter long hercules beetle. Its exoskeleton was absurdly hard, and it even had level 8 magic resistance. Its High Speed Flight skill made it look like it would be extremely difficult to deal with.

The last monster was a humanoid with jet black skin, a demon. Its species labeled it a Demonic Baron, meaning it was weaker than the Demonic Earl we’d fought back when we first started adventuring. Its stats weren’t as good, but it had skills that seemed to cover all its weaknesses. It looked like it would be harder to deal with than the Demonic Earl we’d fought back then, but only because it didn’t need to protect an idiotic dungeon master.

Even just a single one of the five monsters that stood before us was enough to pose a threat on its own. And to make matters worse, the army had once again started to move. It looked like it was planning to advance while Fran struggled with its elites.

Fortunately, I had managed to glean a bit of information. Demons were a type of monster that could almost never exist outside of a dungeon unless very special techniques were employed. In other words, the monsters were likely the product of some sort of labyrinth.

“This is looking bad.”

“What now?”

“Let’s see… We’re not going to be able to keep the army in check if we’re going to have to take these guys on, so…”

It was just far too dangerous. We wouldn’t have a fighting chance unless we went all out and focused all our resources on the opponents we had before us.

“Then will just win quickly.”

“Yeah, seems like our only choice. Welp. Let’s do this!”