The Battle for Leyta

The journey to Ytrea - 3

The village of Gyera, soon to be a capital city of its own country, had accumulated over half a million residents that are not only villagers from other places, but also travellers, the exiled, adventurers who were seeking for a place to rest, but decided to stay.

The village elder, soon to be the ruler of his own country, spoke to Dromer:

"Dorian, I've got something I want to know from you."

"Go ahead, I'll reply to the best of my abilities."

"Well, you said you'd make Gyera a safer place, but now, it seems we are going to have to assume the status of a city. What should we do?"

Dromer thought a bit and then replied:

"Well, that was my plan from the beginning. Right after I destroyed the church, I decided I'd make Gyera into a city, then, make it into the capital city of its own country. And you'll be the one running things around here."

The elder seemed shocked and immediately said:

"No, no, no! I CAN'T be the ruler of a country! You're about to create it, you should be the ruler!"

Dromer chuckled and replied:

"You see, there's a difference between a founder and a ruler of a country. The founder only creates a country. A ruler is the one who leads it. You will have to take care of that since you're leading the village of Gyera. Also, tomorrow we should receive a confirmation of Gyera's status changing to that of a city. After that, we can demand that Gyera and the other seventy villages get sovereign rights, and thus, we'll create our own country. If the Kingdom refuses, we'll be going to war. I'll be at the forefront of the defence. I'll destroy anyone who dares to attack Gyera."

The elder, known as Freed, thought a bit, and then said:

"If we're able to defeat the Kingdom's army, we might be able to take over the whole Kingdom."

Dromer immediately exclaimed:

"Hold your horses, Freed! I didn't develop Gyera just to destroy the Kingdom! You will do no such thing. If the Kingdom attacks, I'll defend any village it comes close to. Tomorrow, after we receive the confirmation, I'll be leaving Gyera and going to Ytrea to demand that Gyera, and the seventy villages around it, become a country of its own. That is all."

"Oh, alright then. Well, either way, thank you." Freed seemed appreciative.

"One more thing. If your army attacks Ytrea, I'll be coming for you. Remember that..." Dromer said with coldness in his voice.

Freed nodded and left. The next day, the acknowledgement of Gyera as a city, arrived.

Dromer took the acknowledgement and went to Freed.

"Freed! The acknowledgement has arrived, here." Dromer said enthusiastically.

Freed took the paper, read through it and said:

"This is perfect!"

"Now, I'll be leaving this city, and continuing my journey. I hope you won't get swallowed up by greed. Farewell."

Dromer was about to leave Gyera when the guard stopped him.

"Dorian. I thank you for helping us," the guard said "With that, I'd like you to turn around and look behind you."

When Dromer turned around, he saw all the people from the village, he got to know over these three months. All of them, in unison, thanked Dromer, and he left with a smile on his face.

After Dromer was about an hour away from Gyera, he checked his map once again.

'Alright... The next settlement is Uirga... This is gonna take a while...'

In three days, he was already halfway to Uirga. It was evening, and he decided to make camp for the night.

'Hmm... A bit too peaceful, but I don't have a choice.' Dromer thought to himself.

As he began to fall asleep, he heard footsteps right outside his tent. He quietly sat up and got ready to defend himself against an attacker.

The tent opened and Dromer quickly rushed out. There were two people. One was lightly armoured, the other one was heavily armoured and carried a shield with a short sword.

"Who the f**k are you? What do you want from me?" Dromer asked.

"Uhh, we're uhh... Travellers looking for people to join us." the one in light armour replied.

"Y-Yeah! No need to be so cautious of us!" the one in heavy armour said.

Dromer sighed deeply and said:

"Why the f**k are you right outside my tent, fully armed, in the middle of the f*****g night!? If you don't want to die, get the f**k away from here and NEVER come back!" Dromer screamed.

The two men looked at each other, nodded and leapt towards Dromer.

The man in light armour pulled out two daggers and thrust them at Dromer. Dromer dodged the daggers and tripped up the heavily armoured man. The two of them were shocked that their usual farce and attack didn't work this time.

"What the hell, Nard?! You said this guy wasn't anything special!" the man in light armour screamed at the heavily armoured man, whose name, was apparently, Nard.

"Oh, shut up Kloy! You're just too slow!" Nard replied to the man in light armour, whose name was Kloy.

Dromer chuckled menacingly and in a cold voice said:

"Kloy and Nard, huh? Good. Now I know what to write on your graves..." Dromer glared at them with anger and grabbed his sword from the tent.

As soon as Dromer unsheathed his sword, Kloy and Nard both started to run away.

"There's no escape from me!!!" Dromer shouted and appeared before the two of them.

Nard put his shield up and tried to tackle Dromer, but he failed. Miserably. Dromer kicked Nard's shield and Nard flew back about five metres before crashing on the ground.

"Agh!" Nard screamed in pain as his heavy armour bent inwards and was now stabbing into his back.

Kloy sprinted at Dromer with the two daggers and got hit with the hilt of Dromer's sword in the right temple. Dromer just tried to block the daggers, but Kloy mistook that as an attack and tried to dodge.

Dromer sighed again and asked:

"Are you two retarded? Well, at least there will be fewer dumbasses in the world after I kill you both."

Then, Dromer appeared before Kloy and cut his head off with one swing. After that, Dromer went up to Nard and slowly started to push his sword into his stomach and slowly twisted the blade for maximum pain.

Nard screamed in agony until he passed out and, eventually, died from extreme blood loss.

'Now that that's done, I'll have to set up a barrier, I guess... Ugh... Hate doing that...' Dromer sighed deeply but kept his composure because setting up a barrier needs extreme concentration. If there's even one mistake, the barrier caster could die.

"Protective, physical barrier: Area - 25 square metres; Density - Physical wall; Duration - 10 hours! ACTIVATE!"

As Dromer activated the barrier, the surroundings of the campsite were lit up with a dim, blue light.

'This should be enough. Although, that took quite a lot of mana...' Dromer sighed and went back inside the tent.

The next morning when Dromer stepped out of the tent, he was greeted by a horde of monsters, scratching against the barrier.

"This is gonna be a pain in the ass, but what can you do..." Dromer said quietly before proceeding towards the barrier and preparing for the battle ahead.

Right before exiting the barrier, he stopped and looked at the different monsters and he spotted something weird about them.

'Huh? Their eyes... Doesn't seem like they're doing this of their own volition, they don't even seem alive... This is bad...'

The monsters in front of him were all puppets of one person. That was one of the skills that were forbidden across the three realms - Surge of The Dead. The reason why it was forbidden, is that its main power circulates around the dead, meaning you either had to resurrect an already dead target or, you have to kill a living being to be able to control it.

'If someone's controlling this many dead, that person HAS to be strong. Definitely not a human, but probably a demon... Or, a demi-human... Oh well... No need to think about it right now. All I have to do is kill these and then continue.'

There were around fifty monsters altogether surrounding the barrier. Dromer sprinted towards the monster group and slashed at the monsters right before him. As soon as he cleared a path, he ran out of the circle and attacked the monsters from the outside. He stabbed and slashed one monster after another, seemingly never getting tired. Then, there was a huge surge of magic power coming from his left. When he turned his head in the direction of the power surge, he saw a huge dark sphere flying at him with immense speed.

Dromer quickly switched his target from the monsters to the sphere. He jumped at the sphere and slashed it in two.

"WHAT?! That's impossible!!" A man screamed a bit further away. Dromer looked at the man and sprinted at him full speed. Dromer appeared right in front of the "Surge of the Dead" caster and put his sword on the man's neck.

"You're gonna tell me who the f**k you are, and what the f**k do you want from me..." Dromer said with tremendous malice in his voice.

The man, scared to the bone, replied:

"M-My name i-is Nerfald. I-I was sent h-here under the c-command of Mieft, the a-archbishop of the Yingia church. Please, d-don't kill me."

Dromer looked Nerfald in the eyes and said:

"But YOU wanted to kill me, no? I'm guessing you were offered a huge sum of money."

"U-Uhh... Y-Yes, that's exactly it! I was offered a huge amount of money. He offered me one thousand gold pieces! If it weren't for the money, I wouldn't have taken this job! I just want to feed my family." Nerfald replied.

Dromer sheathed his sword and spoke:

"You have a family, huh? Alright. Look. This isn't something I do all the time. I'll give you twice, no, three times as much money, if you tell me which direction the main church building is. And also, while you're at it, tell me who taught you that forbidden spell..."

Nerfald looked at Dromer with confusion and asked:

"What forbidden spell?"

"The one you used to control those undead beasts... And looks like, I still have some to clear out. Give me a moment..."

Dromer turned around and saw fifteen of those monsters rushing towards him. He unleashed his skill "Divine Judgement" and destroyed those monsters. Nothing was left of them.

"Now then... That spell is called Surge of The Dead... It can easily make you crazy... It puts immense pressure on the psyche of a human."

"O-Oh, the archbishop gave me a scroll and told me to use it."

Dromer sighed deeply and said:

"Good thing I woke up when I did... Otherwise, you'd be either dead right now, or you might've lost your mind."

Nerfald was shocked. That was something he didn't know about that spell. Either way, he used it.

"A-Alright, gotcha. Anyways, the location of the archbishop is right over there," he pointed behind himself, "if you go that way, you'll eventually stumble upon a small town called Uirga. That's where the archbishop resides."

"Thank you. Come with me. As I understand, you live in Uirga, right?"

Nerfald nodded.

"Alright then. Let's go." Dromer egged Nerfald on.

'I hope I don't run into any unnecessary trouble while travelling with the dumbass...' Dromer thought to himself quietly.

Soon, dusk came, and they decided to set up camp once again.

"This seems like a nice place, doesn't it?" Nerfald spoke to Dromer.

Dromer looked around and replied:

"Yes, yes it does seem like a nice place. By the way, since we're travelling together, I think I should tell you my name. I am known as Dorian of the Sacred Sword. An S-rank adventurer out of the Great Empire. I'm with the adventurer's guild - Chronicle. My mission right now is to travel to Ytrea, the capital of the Kingdom of Frugr, in which we currently are."

Nerfald nodded and then said:

"Well, since you already know my name, I won't introduce myself to you a second time. Anyways, let's make camp."