As I was enjoying myself under the sparkling lights of the stars, my time of rest with the fluffballs was interrupted by a glowing assault from the east.

I couldn't help but frown as diamonds in the sky were forcefully erased by the red glow that crept up from the horizon, as our time was unfortunately ending.

With one last look around I confirmed that I hadn't missed anything important, then I made my way down below the canopy. I met up with a few of the others, and confirmed with Harja and Orphne that everyone was getting ready for the day's work.

It seemed like people were already waking up and having breakfast even before I left the fluffballs behind.

With preparations going well even without me having to give any last minute instructions, I checked myself out.

Due to the others', especially Elli and my daughters', insistence, I had changed up my usual dress for this battle. To be exact, I had lowered my usual robes so that it hung from my hips and elbows, ending up as some sort of combination between a long skirt and loosely worn stole. To make up for not covering my top, I was wearing the usual dokkalfar traditional top. In other words, the same outfit as I had worn when having my picture taken and saved.

I still couldn't say that I was comfortable having my belly shown off so blatantly, though I was the first to admit that I looked good like this. I wouldn't have had my one and only saved picture being that one if I didn't, after all.

If only it didn't turn into a statue for everyone to see every time they entered the dungeon.

I could only hope that nobody would pray to that statue. If it wasn't a statue of myself, even I would feel a touch of divineness from such an effigy. That exact fact made me double up on that deepest of desires.

Fortunately I hadn't seen any evidence of anyone doing it, though it didn't stop anyone from making fun of me for it, intentional or not.

But despite everything, I still ended up wearing the same getup, and honestly speaking, Elli simply made a convincing argument. By wearing my clothes this way, it drastically improved my defensive capabilities without needing to get an entirely new set of armour.

In the first place, I hadn't ever gotten an actual set of armour to wear, as I prioritized on speed and mobility. Even if I did take damage, it was easy for me to recover it, as long as I grit my teeth and ignored the pain.

But frankly, every time I came up short in combat was due to insufficient preparations, especially on the equipment front. While I did have my two scythes that worked wonders both offensively and defensively, I was quite lacking on the armour front. My robes were well enchanted, but there was a limit to that being that it was merely a tough cloth that gave me protection from [light magic]. And that protection wasn't that strong compared to proper [light magic] attacks.

By doubling up two sets of clothes this way, I was able to double up the enchantments to further increase my protection from [light magic].

It wasn't perfect, but considering that we didn't have time to both make some proper armour and for me to get used to wearing it, this was about as good as things were going to get without compromising on my mobility.

On the embarrassment side of things, I would just have to suck it up. Everyone already gets a good look at my midriff thanks to those damn statues, so showing off the real thing didn't make things any worse.

At least, that's what I kept telling myself...after Elli pointed that fact out first at least.

I couldn't help but feel I've been completely tricked, but for the most part Elli's arguments were sound.

Also, I couldn't come up with a good way to put on even more clothes without it getting in the way, so in the end I settled for the popular opinion.

Doing my best to ignore how hot my cheeks were, I pulled out my scythes, configured into one blade as how I liked to store the weapon. A quick inspection confirmed there wasn't any issues with it either, so I settled into waiting as everyone around me readied their weapons and fell into formation.

Harja gave some rousing speech, but my mind was more focused on my [presence detection] skill. Pushing it to its limit, I felt around for the enemies that I knew were already on approach.

Soon enough, the first distant ping appeared. If I had some sort of game mini map, the eastern side of it would have been practically filled with a wall of red as the enemies reached the outer limits of my detection.

And with the enemy army detected, I made my move.

"They're here. I'll leave the ones that get past me to you, Chieftain."

"Then show me you're not all talk, or we'll take the most kills."

My lips curled up a little from the dragonkin's words before I turned to the east and kicked off the ground.

Weaving between the huge trees that made up this great forest that was normally considered impenetrable on foot due to the large concentration of strong monsters, it only took me a handful of moments before a veritable wall of collared monsters appeared before me.

While I saw them earlier peeking through the gaps in the forest canopy, seeing this army of monsters directly in front of me gave me a whole different perception. Like I was about to attempt to hold back the tide from destroying a sand castle.

Of course, I wasn't some kid with a plastic shovel, nor the tide that from an ocean, but rather it was more like massive bucket-wheel excavator against a broken water main. At least, that was how it felt like from what I could see so far.

From the ground, the enemies appeared virtually endless, but the power I wielded to stop them was comparatively even more endless, especially considering the sort of tactics I was planning to employ.

I continued to zig zag between the trees, closing the distance with the monster army. The moment I got a clear sight of them, my eyes widened a little. The variety of monsters were immense, making it quite obvious that they were being controlled. It didn't make sense for such differing species to be together after all.

But what surprised me was how lanky they were. It reminded me of those old war footage of people after being released from various internment camps. Those huge and bulky bodies transformed into little more than skin and bones.

The sight made me understand a bit of how they managed to bring such a large army all the way through this vast forest.

But the how didn't matter at this moment. Without slowing my momentum in the slightest, I approached the first monster, an orc, and let loose a fast swing of my weapon. While I knew there was a massive difference in stats between us, the result made me blink for a moment.

Rather than cleaning cleaving through the monster's torso, for a brief moment to my focused senses, what happened to the first enemy I had attacked a little seriously between the momentum of my charge and the strength of my swing, couldn't be even called a cut. Instead, due to the speed and difference in durability, my scythe blade forcibly pushed out a section of flesh the width of the thick blade rather than cut and separate the upper and lower halves of the monster's body. Like that daruma otoshi game, where you have a Buddha on top of a block tower, and you knock the blocks away without the Buddha falling over.

Except the Buddha was the ugly orc head, and the block was a chuck of its midsection. The monster's upper and lower body had separated by the width of my scythe's blade, for the fraction of a millisecond that stretched out as if time had stopped. But as if time was catching up with causation, the orc's body rippled from the point where I had struck it, the seams unravelling like shrink wrap plastic under a heat gun.

As I twirled my weapon behind my back and readied it for my next attack, the orc's body atomized, its low stats not even able to keep it from dispersing into the wind from the supersonic shock wave of my blow. The quickly expanding mist that was once a living monster a fraction of a second before had been broken down to its constituent parts to the point that my [blood magic] had nothing to use as ammunition. Even the blood had broken up and dispersed leaving only a trail of the molecules that the life fluids were originally made of.

My eyes widened at the results of my slightly serious blow.

(Umm...kay. Let's hold back a bit then.)

Easing up on the force of my next swing, I held my scythe at the end of its shaft and sliced through the next monster, a razor bear. As I did so, I infused some mana into my weapon before loosening my grip. The orihalcum layer separated from the adamantium core before reshaping itself into my second weapon.

I lightly flicked the smaller shaft with a finger before reasserting my grip on the black metal shaft. The orihalcum scythe spun as it flew off, leaving a high pitched whine along with an echoing rumble as sonic booms followed along its trajectory of indiscriminate death.

Bodies collapsed one after the next, spraying a beautiful crimson mist where my weapon sometimes sliced, and sometimes smashed right through whatever stood in its way. Unfortunately, scythes only made mediocre throwing weapons when you couldn't control when it would impact against its target, as a large portion of the spinning contact points was the shaft.

Though, this wasn't really much of an issue in this situation, more of an annoyance that the weapon made a different sound whenever it crushed a monster rather than cleanly sliced through it.

With my adamantium scythe, I took a casual hop forward while spinning it around my body with a flourish. The monsters in my immediate vicinity scattered into red chunks as I bathed in the warmth of their blood sprays.

Once, long ago, I dreamed about being able to bathe in blood. Even then I hadn't really taken that thought seriously as the work needed to fill a nice, large tub with blood was quite a lot more work than I was willing to put in. Especially back when I originally came up with the dream.

Since then, I had mostly forgotten about the dream. And while I wasn't exactly bathing in blood, I was able to enjoy a nice shower of it. Though it wasn't like I was about to strip down and rub this ruby vital fluid across my body, no matter how much I wanted to.

But after a suitably arbitrary amount of time, I folded space on top of itself and caught the orihalcum scythe as it flew up from the ground. This wasn't like inside of the dungeon. There were no walls for my weapons to stop them from continuing to fly off and get lost.

Or for that matter, this was the first time my scythes were able to cut through so many enemies so quickly.

The scent of blood from that direction was coming on strong, compounding the tasty scent that filled my immediate vicinity. I couldn't help but lick my lips, to get some of that delicious blood on my tongue.

Though, in retrospect, this was the blood of weaklings.

It wasn't like it tasted bad, but it was like a fine wine that had been watered down to the point that I could only get a vague idea of what kind of wine it originally was.

Or maybe it was better to compare it to a beer. A cheap lager that only the barest minimum of taste to be inoffensive, not a whiskey that filled your nose with its scent as you drank it.

Of course, such blood was filled with such a meagre amount of mana that I'd have to drink barrels of it to get any meaningful recovery. But even then, somehow, it was energizing to have it splash all around.

The sound of rumbling made me turn my head. It wasn't the sort from the countless footsteps from the monster army that surrounded me. It was more of a series of large collisions.

Hopping up to see past the monster horde, my eyes were drawn to the path my thrown scythe had taken, and I was able to catch the sight of trees falling over.

"...Oh."

I really wasn't used to fighting in real outdoor conditions. The dungeon really had a tendency to leave the terrain pretty clear. And that didn't take into consideration that you never really worried about damaging something, as everything fixed itself up on its own.

But here, deforestation was bad. Not due to environmental concerns, as it seemed like nobody cut down trees at a rate that could be a concern even centuries down the line, but because this forest was out first line of defence for the Hourai Commonwealth.

Just going through it alone was difficult, to the point that it was quite amazing that this army even made it this far.

Normally, people wouldn't even bother trying to send an army and just give up. Or send an elite strike team at most, like last time. But due to this advantage, carelessly attacking and damaging the forest would only increase the risk of another army trying to attack us in the future.

Once again, I threw the orihalcum scythe, but this time I stuck my shadow onto it, pulling it left and right to avoid the trees while it continued to mow down my foes.

Another part of my brain circulated and expelled my mana, grasping the blood in the air, on the ground, and even inside of the fresh corpses. Blood swirled through the air as it collected into a sphere above me, like some perfectly round ruby that was quickly ballooning to be larger than I was tall.

From the orb, blades of blood shot out, cutting down monsters in all directions. Due to the low mana density in the blood, the blades didn't travel far before the mana contained in them was expended and they crimson projectiles withered away into nothing.

Fortunately, that also meant that I didn't have to worry about collateral damage, as they wouldn't travel far enough to be a serious threat to the forest even without me paying much attention to their trajectory. As long as I didn't aim towards any of the closest trees, it would be fine.

Of course, that also meant that the orb of blood was being rapidly consumed, but that was offset by the new blood that I gathered in the wake of the living meat grinder I had become.

Tugging on my shadow a bit harder, my orihalcum scythe further altered its flight and eventually returned to me. A mangled mess of bodies lay in its wake, and the intense smell of blood as such a large amount had become a mist filling this space made me feel a little light headed.

"Ah, this is nice."

Before I knew it, a smile had pushed my cheeks up.

A part of me understood that I must have looked like a dangerous person, smiling while being covered in blood.

I shook my head.

I was wasting time. While I loved blood, and the scent of it being so pervasive that it literally stuck to the back of my nose as I breathed, I had a job to do.

Kicking off the ground once again, I pulled the orb of collected blood with me, firing hardened sanguine blades in all directions while I rapidly swung my scythes. I drew a wide line of pure destruction through the enemy army, their stats being far too low to even react. Even the moment the monsters saw me, I had already finished cutting it into two and moved on as it tried to raise an arm against me.

These monsters just weren't a threat to me anymore. Not even their numbers meant anything.

It really made me come to realize that the old adage 'there's a quality to quantity' only applied when the quality of the two sides weren't so drastically different.

A trillion axe wielding barbarians just couldn't beat a single nuclear bomber. That was the fundamental truth of warfare.

And unlike a nuclear bomber, I didn't release radioactive fallout when attacking.

An environmentally friendly solution, so to speak.

And I was capable of continuous attacks, to ad nauseum in this situation.

Thanks to [blood magic], the mana used to attack at range came entirely from the blood I was gathering, not even having need to consume it myself first. And I was mostly using physical attacks to do the rest of the damage to the monster army. What little mana I was using was negligible and quickly recovered naturally.

Though part of the reason why I was fighting this way was because of those who were at the rear of the monster army. They were definitely suspicious and had some sort of plan in mind.

That damn cold iron sword as well. I could even see the pitch black void it created through the canopy during my scouting the night before. There didn't seem to be any other cold iron weapons in the area thankfully, but that didn't mean that they didn't have some other sort of trick up their sleeve.

So it was imperative that I keep up my strength and not let it fall unnecessarily.

While I had only made it for convenience's sake, I was glade I had created [blood magic]. It was a great skill that was helping me out quite a lot.

And so, I continued my path of destruction, slicing and dicing as I dashed through the monster army, occasionally throwing one of my weapons, as well as spraying an endless number of blood blades all around me while collecting fresh blood all the while.

After a short while, the skies that was growing into that annoying clear blue were replaced with the chaotic rainbow of colours.

Even while I continued my play as an oversized food processor, I looked up and gave the ones floating above a smile. Everyone was doing their duties, filling me up with even more confidence.

Whatever surprises that the enemy had in store for us, I was sure that we would be able to overcome them.

Because we had each established our own responsibilities, and we were all diligently executing them.