The Mythical Hero's Otherworld Chronicles: Volume 11 by Tatematsuri

Author:Tatematsuri [TATEMATSURI]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: J-Novel Club
Published: 2025-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4: Cursed Ties

The seventh day of the eleventh month of Imperial Year 1026

The snow had fallen thick, carpeting the ground in white. One, three, five sets of footsteps carved through it at desperate speed. Crimson droplets spattered on the snow to be churned into mud by heavy footfalls, leaving behind blots of sickly black. Soldiers stumbled and fell into pools of scarlet liquid, splashing it high, and their weapons crashed down with them, adding to the growing stain.

Black smoke blanketed the sky. A foul stench hung over the earth. Fires burned high as far as the eye could see, melting the snow to water that ran from cracks in the wall. Blood joined the flow, painting Friedhof red with the lives of its defenders. A horde of monsters swarmed up from below, and the garrison fought to push them back, but there was no hope. They were outnumbered, exhausted, barely able to keep hold of their weapons. Willpower was all that kept them going.

For five hundred years, Frieden had stood unbreached. Now, portions of the wall were falling before its defenders’ eyes. The collapse swallowed soldiers atop the battlements and crushed the invaders below under falling rubble, but neither side paid it any heed. They were too busy fighting for their lives. Beneath pitiless rains of arrows, men dueled with monsters to kill before they were killed.

“What a sorry sight,” High General Hermes muttered. He cut down the monster before him and looked around, chest heaving. There were only foes nearby. The corpses of his men sprawled wretchedly at their feet. The battle was the enemy’s now; it was only a matter of time before the rest of the defenders were wiped out, and that was not the worst of it. He glanced down from the battlements. A current had taken hold of the horde of monsters, turning them from a wave into a river.

A soldier ran up, gasping for breath. “Sir! The gate has fallen!”

Hermes nodded. “Aye, I figured.” There was only one reason the monsters would move as they had: They had found a gap in the wall.

There existed one passage through Friedhof to the Sanctuarium. Why it had been constructed was a matter of some debate. Some believed the twenty-second emperor had used it to stage extermination expeditions into the untamed lands beyond, while others posited that the empire had once traded with the yaldabaoth in centuries gone by. Naturally, the portal was not undefended. It was sealed by three gates of sturdy iron, with broad access corridors to aid in defense.

At that, something twigged in Hermes’s memory. “Why didn’t you seal it?” he asked.

The passageway was rigged to collapse in case of emergency. As a last-ditch defensive measure, the defenders could bury it under tons of rubble, blocking it permanently.

“We did, sir, just before the third gate fell, but the monsters are clearing the rubble. At the speed they’re going, it won’t be long before they make a path.”

“Blast it. I’d hoped to make time, but it seems I’ve failed at even that.

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