Wagner was a Holy Warrior just like Lisette, but unlike her, he readily accepted his fate and took great pride in it.
“Those disgusting, terrifying monsters dare to invade the Great Forest, and you're just going to stand by and watch?!”
Wagner brandished his spear, rallying his comrades.
His mood was currently terrible.
The unit centered around his power had been preparing to destroy the Great Devourer's nest and march north, but they had been completely halted.
This was due to reports that an invasion colony, which they had failed to eliminate in time, was launching a surprise attack directly aimed at the Great Forest.
There's no other choice. I'll just have to slaughter them all right here.
Furious at being deprived of his chance to achieve military merit, Wagner bit his lip as he watched the Great Devourer approach in the distance.
Such pent-up rage, as expected, could only be vented by tearing the enemy to shreds.
At the thought of fighting valiantly on the battlefield, slaying his foes, earning achievements, and basking in glory, the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.
“...Hm?”
However, Wagner would not get to fight the way he wanted.
This was because the Tyrant approaching them—one with a broad, heavy carapace—carried a massive, all-too-familiar cannon securely on its back.
“It's a Prism Cannon blast! Those things are using our own weapon against us!”
The firepower of the world's strongest weapon was now flying in the exact opposite direction of its usual target.
A weapon that should have been fired by the elves was now in the hands of the Great Devourer, being used to slaughter them instead.
“No, wait...”
Wagner happened to be directly in the path of the incoming blast. He was utterly shocked, yet he could not dodge.
Instead of instinctively spreading his wings to escape, his body was forcefully propelled by an external power into the trajectory of the blast. Blocking the attack, he mobilized all his strength, preparing his body to self-detonate.
“Elven God, aaargh!”
Realizing he was being forced to sacrifice himself to neutralize the Prism Cannon's blast, Wagner was filled with sheer terror, but he could no longer utter another word.
In his effort to weaken the blast, Wagner was vaporized alive. Not a single strand of hair remained; he was utterly erased from existence.
“Quite an interesting sight.”
Watching this, Elise found it reasonably satisfactory.
To a colony, reckless expenditure was entirely natural. This was true for both Elise and the Great Devourer, which was why she had always found enemies who did not operate this way to be utterly useless.
Yet now, pushed to the brink, this kind of decisive sacrifice was finally beginning to manifest.
“H-How is this possible? Lord Wagner actually...”
But Elise had failed to consider that the living beings making up the Elven Empire's army were different from the Great Devourer, who was born this way.
They were sentient beings with their own independent consciousness, each possessing their own world.
To the Great Devourer, who viewed serving the colony as a matter of course, sacrifice was nothing to make a fuss about. To the elves, however, sacrifice was sacred and noble—not something just anyone could achieve.
It was only natural that they were shocked.
The foreign race units within the Elven Empire's army, in particular, were already highly dissatisfied with being treated as disposable assets.
As these scenes occurred one after another, the tower the elves had built with divine power began to crack.
“The Prism Cannon takes time to recharge! Attack!”
“Fire our Prism Cannons as well!”
The battle commenced instantly.
The Elven Empire's forces attempted to destroy the Great Devourer's Prism Cannon before it could fire again, while simultaneously firing their own in retaliation.
“There is no need to sacrifice the life of a precious Holy Warrior.”
Celia, alongside the Lictor mages gathered around her, raised her staff and aimed at the incoming Prism Cannon blast.
Once again, Celia dispersed the power of the Prism Cannon blast by generating a magic prism.
Hundreds of Great Devourers died from the scattered light beams, but the Great Devourer colony remained completely unfazed, even as their comrades fell around them.
For them, this was entirely normal.
Compared to losing a thousand Great Devourers, losing only nine hundred and ninety-nine was clearly more advantageous for the colony as a whole.
“Among them, there is no being capable of making such calculations, nor is there any individual willing to accept such a sacrifice.”
Wearing her mask, Lisette looked on with a grim expression. She drew a long sword from the back of her hand and watched the scene unfold.
“Traitor!”
She had drawn her weapon to deal with the Holy Warriors rushing forward to destroy the Great Devourer's Prism Cannon.
Having already received information about Lisette from their god, the Holy Warriors made no attempt to hide their hostility as they swung their weapons at her.
Even though Lisette had grown stronger with the Great Devourer's power, she could not easily withstand a coordinated assault from several Holy Warriors who were boosting their strength regardless of the damage to their own bodies.
“W-What are these things?”
However, other creatures intervened to help Lisette, blocking the Holy Warriors.
They were Lictors, wielding their sharp talons as if they were long swords.
But the ones appearing this time were different from those of the past, who could not withstand the power of a Holy Warrior and were slain in a single blow.
“That pattern, that magic stone... Could it be?!”
A Holy Warrior froze momentarily upon seeing a purple reinforcement stone embedded in the forehead of the Lictor knight who had blocked his sword.
The reinforcement stone was a power device from a different civilization than the magic heart. The energy it generated flowed along circuits drawn around the stone, thereby enhancing the individual's strength.
This technology, widely used by the elves and throughout the Elven Empire—including by their foreign race units—had now been reborn in the hands of the Great Devourer.
“Elven God Sword Style.”
One individual blocked a Holy Warrior's sword. At the same instant, another appeared from the side, crossing its arms and swinging talons imbued with a cyan-blue energy, ruthlessly slicing the shocked Holy Warrior's body in a cross-shaped slash.
It was not just their physical bodies that had grown stronger.
Through Lisette, the Great Devourer had mastered portions of the Holy Warriors' Elven God Sword Style, using these absorbed elven techniques to turn the tide and slaughter the elves in return.
“Let them die quickly, before more are forced to sacrifice themselves.”
Lisette watched a worker ant approach and hand her a reinforcement stone. She quietly installed it into the abdomen of the symbiotic carapace ant she wore, whispering coldly as she watched the Holy Warriors fall one by one.
Rate on N.U.
