Zeus shot the wealthy jeweler a disdainful sidelong glance.
"Hmph, I'm not like this blasted gnome, only daring to send his men into battle while never taking the field himself.
"This great iron hammer of mine will smash those Jatu soldiers' brains out in a moment. Apprentices, am I right?"
As he spoke, he looked at the four or five burly dwarves beside him.
"Master Zeus is the bravest of all. We're sure to win our first battle."
Zeus laughed in satisfaction at their response.
Val rolled his eyes beside him. "Hmph, a dwarf with nothing but muscle stuffed into his head. Do you have any idea how much I spent to get these eight personal retainers to risk their lives for me?
"Besides, I'm a gnome. I've always been frail, and I wouldn't be much use on a battlefield. Only you could say something so ignorant."
"You!" Zeus was about to retort when Kebi hurriedly waved his hands. "Gentlemen, gentlemen, we have a powerful enemy before us. Let's not argue. Come help me defend the town."
At that, the two stopped arguing, though they turned their heads away and snorted at the same time.
Then Val looked at Kebi. "I'll head back first, then. This little body of mine really can't take all this exertion."
"Please hurry back and hide at once," Kebi said, waving a hand.
After Val left, Kebi led the muscular men and dwarves up onto the walls.
Kebi looked even more delighted. "Your support couldn't have come at a better time. I'll record everyone's contributions after the battle. In a moment, you men..."
He pointed at the eight muscular men. "Go to the western side of the wall and support Captain Fisher. Follow his orders, understood?"
"Understood," the men answered in unison.
The group then passed through the corner tower to report to Captain Fisher.
Next, Kebi looked at the dwarves. "Zeus, how about you defend this section with the witcher Dick?"
"Got it," Zeus answered heartily.
Before long, a long horn blast sounded below the walls again. The Jatu had begun another assault.
Dick frowned deeply as he surveyed the ground outside the town, for he realized that the worst had happened.
Behind the shield wall, dozens of staggering Jatu soldiers appeared one after another. Black veins bulged on their faces, and they walked as though drunk.
Their temples kept swelling and contracting, swelling and contracting, just like what he had witnessed when fighting the Broom Witch in the courtyard.
Dick thought that this was bad:
Could the potion this witch gave the soldiers enhance their constitutions and self-healing abilities?
Now we're in trouble!
"Dick, what's wrong?"
Kebi looked puzzled. He had seen no siege ladders and had secretly felt a little relieved, but the witcher's grave expression told him something was wrong.
"Look." Dick pointed toward those soldiers.
"I can't see very clearly, but why do those soldiers look like the zombies in the stories? Their movements are so uncoordinated."
"They drank a potion. They'll turn into monsters any moment. Try shooting them down with a volley now. We might still have a chance."
Kebi was just about to give the order when the witcher beside him sighed. "Too late. I didn't expect the potion to act so quickly. In just over a minute, those thirty-odd Jatu soldiers have begun slowly transforming."
Below the walls, the now-visible Jatu soldiers clutched their heads and roared in agony. They grabbed the skin covering their bodies and tore hard, exposing dark red knots of sinew and flesh beneath.
But something else lurked beneath that flesh.
The dark red flesh could no longer contain the things bursting out from deeper within, constantly rising and falling across the Jatu soldiers' bodies like waves that would never cease.
At one point, the flesh on one Jatu soldier's shoulder ruptured, and a withered claw thrust out.
Then the same happened to his other shoulder.
The Jatu soldier roared, and his entire body burst apart, splattering flesh and blood across the ground.
From within, a withered, emaciated figure emerged.
Skinless and dark red all over, it had no sheen at all, like old cured meat left drying in the sun for decades.
The soldier had turned into a desiccated corpse!
Another Jatu soldier was likewise "burst out of like a cocoon," but the monster he had nurtured was not a desiccated corpse. Instead, it resembled a giant insect with thin wings on its back and raptorial forelegs.
With a slight flick of its raptorial forelegs, bone blades gleaming with dark silver light appeared beneath its forelimbs.
Only the lower limbs on which they stood proved they had once been human.
These soldiers had actually turned into giant mantises.
A quick count showed that the desiccated corpses and giant mantises each made up roughly half their number.
The soldiers atop the walls were stunned by the sight, their eyes wide. Some of the younger ones even began trembling all over.
"What's going on, Dick?" Kebi's voice was trembling too.
"I don't know either. But as I said before, we've lost our terrain advantage. Now, loose arrows! See if we can shoot down the giant mantises."
As he spoke, the giant mantis soldiers were already beating their wings, soaring into the air before diving toward the walls.
Kebi shouted, "Loose! Loose!"
Even without his orders, the surrounding soldiers were already frantically shooting arrow after arrow into the sky.
But the giant mantises nimbly dodged the arrows. They seemed to have adapted to their new identities.
Their sharp-toothed mouthparts could visibly still form human speech as they shouted, "Kasa Jatu!"
At the same time, the zombies below began racing toward the battlements. Upon reaching the walls, they scurried up like geckos, as easily as walking on level ground.
Not far from Dick, a soldier was cleaved in two by the bone blade growing from a diving giant mantis's front limb. His hot, reeking organs splashed across the wall, and an atmosphere called fear spread along the battlements.
"Monsters! They're monsters! We can't defeat monsters like these!"
A young soldier shouted and threw down his sword. He covered his ears, as though unwilling to hear his fellow soldiers' agonized wails.
Then he ran toward the stairs like a headless fly. He wanted to desert.
Kebi shouted, "Stop! You can't run! Pull yourself together..."
Before he could finish, another giant mantis drove the bone blade at the end of its forelimb into the soldier's armpit, then beat its wings and carried him into the sky.
Dick looked up and clearly saw it bite into the still-struggling soldier's neck, tearing away a large chunk of flesh along with the membrane.
The soldier's windpipe lay naked in the open air, and his eyes instantly lost focus.
Then, with a gulp, the giant mantis swallowed the flesh mixed with cartilage.
Only then, still unsatisfied, did it fling the dying soldier down from high in the air.
There was a thud.
The soldier smashed into chunks of flesh beside Dick.
Just then, another giant mantis flew over. Its target was Kebi.
His face pale, Kebi watched the mouthparts draw ever closer, then drew his sword and shouted, "For the honor of knights! For the Order of the Falcon!"
He was about to charge forward and fight for his life.
But Dick seized the opening while the giant mantis was distracted by Kebi and off guard, sending a cone-shaped Mental Shock from his hand straight into the creature's head.
In an instant, its gaze went blank and the thin wings on its back stopped beating. It fell to its knees and skidded to a halt several meters in front of Kebi.
The nearby dwarves reacted as well, rushing to the creature with their iron hammers and swinging down hard.
These dwarves lived up to their blacksmith backgrounds. Though short, they had thick bones and knotted muscles, and smashed the giant mantis to pieces in only a few blows.
Before anyone could breathe a sigh of relief, a dark gray, withered claw reached over the outer edge of a battlement, followed immediately by another.
Accompanied by low, rasping howls, pairs of blood-red eyes appeared above the battlements. Several desiccated corpses had already climbed onto the wall.