An ordinary profession creates the world's strongest

The only sound of metal clashing came from the black sword held by Shizuku.

She barely parried the vicious knife that attacked in the bright light.

Shizuku's eyes were also burned by the strong light, but her alertness was raised to the limit, the results of her hard training, and the experience she had gained so far enabled her to master the magical skill of resisting the enemy's attacks even without seeing.

As the flash faded and Shizuku's vision began to recover, she saw the worst scene that had ever flashed by for a moment—

All the classmates were pierced from behind by the swords of the soldiers and knights and pinned to the ground.

“How, how could this happen…”

Even if the mind can imagine it, the feeling of disbelief will not disappear immediately.

What happened? Why did it become like this? Shizuku was speechless for a moment.

The painful groans of my friends reached my ears, and the surreal scene almost made my thoughts stop.

The worst-case scenario flashed through Shizuku's mind: Could someone have died in the attack just now? However, Kouki, Ryuutarou, Ling, Yuka, and the others were covered in blood and in a miserable state, but they were still barely alive.

Although this made Shizuku feel a little relieved, the vanguard group that was initially separated seemed to be particularly seriously injured and was in a situation that could not be taken lightly at all, which made Shizuku sweat profusely.

Although Ryutaro and Jūgo were seriously injured, Kosuke was particularly seriously injured. Not only was he stabbed in the back, but his limbs were also pierced by daggers, and he was convulsing due to the pain.

In addition, they, including other classmates, were put in shackles that blocked their magic power.

This way, even recovery magic cannot be used.

What should I do? What should I do? Shizuku was extremely anxious. She looked at the soldiers and knights around her, but she unexpectedly saw a strange sight.

"Oh my~ As expected of you... isn't it, Shizuku?"

“…Eh, eh? W-why? What are you talking about—!?”

That’s right, among the classmates who were near death, there was one student who was unharmed and not suppressed, standing there as if nothing had happened.

The student spoke in a sinister tone that was completely different from her usual tone, and Shizuku was speechless for a moment due to the huge difference in impression. The fact that she was able to question him was partly out of reflex.

Then, another knight stabbed Shizuku from behind.

“Hmm!?”

Shizuku was shaken by the change in the familiar person, but she managed to dodge the attack. The student looked at Shizuku, speechless.

"You can even dodge like this... Shizuku, you're such a bother."

“So, what are you talking about—!”

The knight's attack became more intense, and other soldiers and knights joined in. The long swords stabbed out like a storm, the swords were unusually sharp and the power was perhaps even greater than usual.

When Shizuku dodged all the attacks, someone suddenly called her name and she looked in the direction of the voice.

"Shizuku-sama! Save me..."

"Nia!"

Nia was pushed to the ground by a knight, who was riding on her and was about to stab her with a sword.

Shizuku immediately used "Shrinking the Earth" with "No Beat", dodged the incoming slash, and reached Nia's side in an instant. She struck the knight riding on her with her scabbard, knocking her away.

"Nia, are you okay?"

"Shizuku-sama..."

Shizuku helped Nia up from the fallen ground, while keeping a vigilant eye on her surroundings.

Nia called out Shizuku's name and hugged her with her arms behind her back.

And then—he stabbed Shizuku in the back with the dagger.

"!? Ni, Nia? W-why?"

"..."

The severe pain from her back twisted Shizuku's face into a look of disbelief as she looked down at Nia who was holding her.

Nia didn't show her usual friendly look, nor did she have a cheerful expression. Instead, she looked at Shizuku with an expressionless "empty gaze."

Shizuku finally realized it at this time.

When I first saw that Nia looked a little strange, I thought it was because the capital had been invaded and her mind was shaken, but that was not the case.

Her "empty" eyes were exactly the same as those of the soldiers and knights surrounding her.

Nia also fell into the same abnormal state as them.

Despite noticing her friend's abnormality, Shizuku was too slow to act. Nia grabbed Shizuku's arm and twisted it, pinning her to the ground and placing the same magic-blocking shackles on her as on her classmates.

"Ahahaha, even Shizuku didn't expect to be attacked by that girl? Right, right, that's for sure, right? That's why I waited until the moment before the attack to use her as a pawn."

Shizuku gritted her teeth, enduring the burning pain in her back and the cold feeling of the ground against her cheek. She simultaneously realized that whether it was Nia's abnormality or the other soldiers and knights who had lost their minds, the culprit was that student.

She didn't want to admit it.

Even if she didn't want to admit it, the person who created this tragedy was her.

An unimaginably evil smile appeared on the other person's face. She was Shizuku's comrade and good friend.

“What’s going on… Eri!?”

That's right, that person is the quiet, introverted, gentle and virtuous one, one of Shizuku and the others' important companions who have shared joys and sorrows.

Eri Nakamura.

Perhaps because the bullets had targeted areas that weren't immediately fatal, Kouki and the others, despite being severely wounded and showing signs of pain, were still alive. They stared at Eri with blank expressions.

Soldiers and knights passed by her, but none of them attacked her, or they just stood there motionless, which showed that they were under Huili's control.

Eri looked at Jūgo and the others who had fallen to the ground, Kousuke who was unconscious due to heavy blood loss, and Yuka and her group who had their eyes wide open in surprise with a happy look, and at the same time, as if to tell them the reality, she slowly walked forward with the sound of footsteps.

Eri ignored Shizuku's intermittent questioning and stopped in front of Kouki.

Then he took off his glasses, pulled up the magic-blocking collar around Guanghui's neck, and smiled sweetly.

“Eri, Eri… what the hell… what’s wrong with you?!”

Although Kōki's friendship with her wasn't as close as Shizuku, Kaori, and Ryuutarou's, Eri was a very close friend and even a companion to Kōki. Seeing Eri's completely different appearance, Kōki endured the pain of the sword piercing his body and desperately asked questions.

Eri, however, showed an enthusiastic expression and ignored Kouki's question.

Then--

"Ahaha, Kouki-san, I caught you."

“Hmm!?”

Eri said as she pressed her lips against Kouki's.

The scene was shrouded in an eerie silence, the sound of the kiss resonating louder than ever. As if releasing years of pent-up desire, Eri indulged herself in the glorious lips.

Guanghui, confused, struggled desperately to break free, but he was pinned down by several people. Besides the magic-blocking collar around his neck, his hands and feet, like the other students, were also shackled. Furthermore, being pierced by the longsword, he was powerless and could only let Huili do whatever she wanted.

Perhaps finally satisfied, Eri's lips, tethered to the silver thread, pulled away from the light. She narrowed her eyes, a dazed expression on her face, and licked her lips. Then, standing up, she looked down at her classmates lying on the ground, bleeding.

Their faces were filled with pain and confusion.

Seeing that scene, Eri nodded in satisfaction, then fixed her gaze on Shizuku and smiled.

"Yeah, that's what it is, Shizuku."

“…What’s going on… Ugh!”

Shizuku was completely baffled, staring at Eri with blood spitting out of her mouth. Eri shook her head, as if to say that Shizuku's comprehension was poor, and said, as if to instruct a child:

"Hmm~ Don't you understand? I've always wanted Kouki-san. To do that, I did what I had to do, that's all?"

“…If you like Kouki…wouldn’t you just confess to him? You actually did something like this…”

Hearing Shizuku's rebuttal, Eri's face turned expressionless for a moment.

However, she quickly regained her smug smile and spoke again:

"No, no, no. I can't confess because Guanghui-san is very kind and doesn't discriminate. Even if he's surrounded by worthless trash, he's too kind to ignore them. So, in order for Guanghui-san to belong to me alone, I must work hard to clear away the trash."

Eri shrugged, her attitude as if she was making fun of Shizuku: Don’t you even understand such a simple truth?

Even though she was being called trash, her drastic transformation was so shocking that she couldn't even feel any anger. She even changed the first-person pronoun, and honestly, Shizuku felt like she was meeting the girl for the first time.

"Haha, it's great to be able to come to another world. Cleaning up the garbage in Japan is really hard, and living here is not comfortable. Of course, I absolutely don't agree to return to Japan after winning the war, because Guanghui-san wants to be with me, and the two of us want to live in this world forever."

Eri said with a grin. A thought suddenly flashed through Shizuku's mind, and she expressed her speculation:

“Could it be…! The Great Barrier was breached so easily… because…”

"Ahaha, did you notice? Yes, it's me. I'm the one who's controlling them to destroy the Great Barrier's divine weapon."

Shizuku's worst suspicions had come true. While she couldn't figure out how the demons could invade the outskirts of the capital, the ease with which the great barrier was breached seemed to be Eri's doing. Eri looked with delight at the knights and soldiers standing around her like ghosts. She must have been the one who ordered them to attack.

"Normally, if I killed you, I wouldn't be able to stay in the kingdom anymore, right? So I contacted the demons and asked them to help me enter the capital, kill the aliens, and offer the knights as puppets in exchange for leaving me and Kouki alone."

"How is that possible... How are you going to contact the demon..."

Guanghui finally recovered from the shock of the kiss and murmured with an expression of disbelief.

Eri had been training with them in the palace, and since demons couldn't enter the Great Barrier, it shouldn't be possible for her to come into contact with them. Kouki's rebuttal was based on his desire to believe Eri.

Huili easily shattered his hopes.

"I took advantage of the female demon who attacked us in the Orcus Labyrinth. Before she left, I briefly performed a necromancy on her corpse. As I expected, the demons came to reclaim her body, and that's when I came into contact with them. That incident gave me a cold sweat. To avoid being killed, I offered to meet the demons' terms, but you refused... and I couldn't help but use necromancy... I wanted to make it seem like I couldn't use it because I didn't want to arouse suspicion, but in the end, it worked out fine."

As Eri said, she performed a spirit summoning technique on the female demon, thereby leaving a message for the demon who came to look for her.

The reason why the demons knew the truth about Cattleya's death was because of this reason.

Furthermore, if the demon wanted to contact Eri, he could just find a random human corpse. As long as it was a human, the great barrier wouldn't react.

After hearing Eri's words, Shizuku remembered her spirit summoning technique, and her already pale face became even paler.

Necromancer is a magic that acts on the lingering thoughts of a deceased subject. Eri's statement that she had intended to conceal her ability to use it suggests that she has already mastered it. Considering the situation, the zombie soldiers and knights surrounding Shizuku and the others, and Nia suppressing her, leads to the worst possible outcome.

"Their unusual behavior...is because..."

"Of course it's necromancy~ They died a long time ago, ahahahahahaha!"

Hearing Eri's ruthless answer, Shizuku gritted her teeth and fought back desperately:

"You're lying! If this is a necromancy... they won't answer!"

"Is this my strength? I imbue my memories and thought patterns from my past life into my necromancy, allowing them to communicate with humans. This is my own necromancy technique, 'Soul Binding'."

Originally, the art of necromancy works on the remaining thoughts, from which one can read the deceased's thoughts during his lifetime; or use magic power to cover the remaining thoughts, giving them a physical body and obeying the orders of the sorcerer; or let the remaining thoughts attach to the body and thereby manipulate the body.

The controlled person's abilities are naturally inferior to those of a living being, and since they lack the ability to think, they won't move without the operator's command. Of course, if a continuous command such as "continuous attack" is given, the controlled person will continue to move without detailed instructions.

In other words, since they lack the ability to think, it would have been impossible for Nia and Jose to have a normal conversation with Shizuku and the others.

The reason why Nia and Jose were able to have a normal conversation, with only a slight sense of strangeness, was all due to Eri's "Soul Binding", a technique that can extract memories and thought patterns from the soul and then attach them to the body.

This could be considered interference with the soul. In other words, although Eri's magic was terminal, she had, through her own power, entered the realm of Age of Gods magic.

It was pure cheating. She had previously claimed she was afraid of necromancy. Huili's dedication to it and her genius-level talent were truly astonishing. Perhaps her driving force was a terrifying obsession.

Also, the reason why Eri didn't kill her classmates right away was because Soul Binding could only be used on one recently deceased person at a time.

That being said, it would take quite a while to kill so many soldiers and knights and turn them into puppets, and it's unlikely that the higher-ups would be unaware of this during that time.

A not-so-good idea flashed through Shizuku's mind.

"... Could it be... that Ai and Lily were also... by you..."

"Hmm? Ah, that's another matter. It has nothing to do with me."

Shizuku originally thought that they were killed because they discovered Eri's conspiracy, but looking at Eri's attitude, she seemed to have nothing to do with the two people's disappearance, and Shizuku was slightly relieved.

A cunning smile appeared on Huili's face.

"Isn't it too early to be relieved?"

"what?"

"Because the person who took Ai away was quite terrifying. Not only did she know my plan, but she also willingly assisted me, even single-handedly controlling the core of this country. Don't you have any impression? For example, the king and his close ministers seemed like completely different people?"

"!"

Shizuku wasn't the only one who gasped. Yuuka and the others, who had been searching for Aiko and had negotiated with the higher-ups numerous times in recent days, also showed expressions of astonishment.

Indeed, the words and actions of the top management are not right.

But who could have imagined that the core of this country had fallen?