Chapter 229 – To the Dungeon (1) 

This expedition lacked the emperor’s grand speech or a triumphant march through the city.  

Even the imperial knights and court mages did not join us.  

The few knights and mages who had survived were now desperately needed to defend the capital.  

Thus, the only forces accompanying us were hastily assembled knights and soldiers—some forcibly conscripted from noble houses, others little more than civilians handed spears.  

On the surface, it was a pitiful force that would make anyone sigh. But I wasn’t worried.  

These troops were just for show.  

What mattered were the officers leading them—and the empire’s chancellor, who commanded those officers.  

The empire’s second-in-command, the emperor’s own brother, leading such a ragtag army was unthinkable.  

The imperial court, the nobility, and even the strategists vehemently opposed it, but the emperor and the chancellor ignored them all.  

“The emperor’s daughter, the princess, is joining the battle. Why shouldn’t I? And if I don’t go, who else will rally the troops to fight the Demon King’s army?”  

As the chancellor had shouted at the dissenters, his presence was meant to lend legitimacy to this force.  

Despite the imperial knights being nearly decimated, they had still managed to scrape together a semblance of an order and thousands of soldiers—all because the chancellor was leading them.  

Without him, even the conscripts would have been uncontrollable.  

Though I had been granted the title of hero, that alone wasn’t enough to command these knights.  

But the chancellor’s role wasn’t just about controlling the troops.  

It was about issuing orders to those far stronger and more influential.  

Like Count Sponheim, the first noble we met after leaving the capital.  

“This is too dangerous, Lord Chancellor. For you to lead the expedition personally… Now that I’m here, shouldn’t you return to the capital?”  

The count’s face was stiff as he spoke, but the chancellor only smiled and shook his head.  

“That’s exactly why I’m coming. We’ve gathered all the Sword Masters this time.”  

The count’s expression turned troubled.  

If all the Sword Masters had been assembled, only the chancellor or the emperor could command them.  

Under normal circumstances, the emperor would have appointed a commander, but there was no time for formalities now.  

The powerful had to step forward themselves. With the emperor unable to leave, the chancellor had no choice.  

“We nearly doomed the empire—no, all of Ea—by acting recklessly before. We were lucky to buy time, but the imperial knights and mages were almost wiped out. This is a true last stand.”  

“Now that the hero has stepped forward to slay the Demon King, the imperial family must do its part.”  

The count sighed, glancing at me. He couldn’t deny the chancellor’s words.  

The original plan—to send Sword Masters to stall the Demon King’s forces while the hero, knights, and mages crossed dimensions to buy time—had seemed reasonable at first.  

But in hindsight, it had been dangerously naive.  

Splitting their forces and assuming everything would go smoothly? Of course it had failed. Three dimensions had nearly been destroyed because of it.  

The empire wasn’t foolish enough to repeat the same mistake.  

This time, they were gathering every soldier and Sword Master they had for a direct assault on the Demon King.  

That was why they had conscripted knights from the capital’s nobility, why they were rallying Sword Masters as they marched east—and why the chancellor himself had joined.  

But now, it seemed another reason for his presence was me and my party.  

The way he had been observing me since the capital, the way Count Sponheim had immediately sought him out after joining the army—it was obvious.  

Was it because I wasn’t from the empire?  

Or because I had declared I would claim land outside it after this was over?  

Maybe both.  

Not that I cared.  

Fighting the Demon King was hard enough without worrying about politics.  

As we raced east, we absorbed more forces.  

After Count Sponheim came a shaman, a female Sword Master mage, the elderly Sword Master I had fought alongside on Earth, and even Duke Charl.  

With terrifying momentum, our army soon reached the empire’s eastern border.  

Near the collapsed wall, we would normally have crossed and continued east—but instead, we stopped at a lone surviving territory.  

Amid the wasteland of the eastern territories, this one had held out.  

Though its central castle was the only intact structure, most of its people had survived by sheltering within.  

Unlike the other territories, this one had a powerful lord who had repelled the undead assaults.  

This was a marquisate, and its ruler was Marquis Kolbe—a Sword Master.  

On the plains before the castle, over ten thousand soldiers were moving.  

Knights, nearly a thousand strong, crushed the skeletons charging at them, while the infantry shattered any undead that slipped past.  

“Aim for the bones! Shatter the legs—halve their mobility! No need to waste time on a single undead!”  

“Stick with the knights! If you can’t keep up while fighting, just run with your spear! Fall behind, and we’ll leave you!”  

It had taken a week to march from the capital to the eastern border—far too little time for an army of this size without portals.  

But the imperial forces had done it.  

Partly because the Demon King’s command structure in the east had collapsed, but also thanks to the chancellor and the elite troops—including the Sword Masters—who had joined along the way.  

The Sword Masters led the knights and mages by example, while the veterans whipped the conscripts into shape even during the forced march.  

As a result, this imperial army now seemed little different from the allied forces I had fought alongside before.  

And so, the undead charging at them were swept aside like chaff.  

Zombies, skeletons, corpse golems, even undead monsters—none could stop our advance.  

We swiftly crossed the territory and arrived at the lord’s castle.  

The gates opened immediately, and the lord and his mage came out to greet us.  

“Hahaha! I won, didn’t I? Holding out was the right call!”  

The marquis laughed heartily, extending a hand to the mage beside him.  

The mage sighed but took it.  

“You just got lucky. This clearly isn’t a relief force.”  

Grand Mage Schröder, the lightning mage and Sword Master, earned a snort from Marquis Kolbe.  

“What does it matter? I still won. Pay up.”  

“Sigh… Making bets when people have come to help you… Fine, I’ll honor it.”  

The marquis clenched his fist in triumph.  

“Yes! A decade of waiting, finally over!”  

His gleeful laughter turned into a bright smile as he spotted me and approached.  

“Oh, if it isn’t Knight Eger! Have you come to join my territory, like our mage here?”  

I shook my head at the old man, who had spread his arms wide.  

“No.”  

“Eh? Really?”  

The marquis’s nonsense was just that—nonsense.  

The fact that the grand mage had apparently agreed to something so absurd was baffling, but I had no reason to humor it.  

Especially since someone far more important was present.  

I gestured to the chancellor as he stepped forward.  

An official announced his arrival:  

“The brother of His Imperial Majesty, the chancellor of the empire—”  

“Enough. As if I wouldn’t recognize the chancellor. What brings you here, my lord?”  

I had expected the marquis to be blunt, but this was beyond my expectations.  

The chancellor’s expression hardened as he replied.  

“I’m here to rein in unruly Sword Masters like you.”  

The marquis’s face stiffened.  

“So things didn’t go well, I take it.”  

“No. I’ll explain on the march. We have no time. Leave some troops behind and join us immediately.”  

The marquis glanced at me, the other Sword Masters, and the chancellor before sighing.  

“This is no time for stubbornness. Understood.”  

Brash as he was, the marquis wasn’t a fool.  

With him and the lightning mage now part of our forces, we crossed the ruined wall.  

By then, we had six Sword Masters running alongside us.  

An army that had absorbed most of the empire’s remaining defenses had become something terrifying.  

A force that dwarfed the allied armies that had once fought the Demon King.  

This army ground through tens of thousands of zombies, elite skeleton troops, and even liches as if they were nothing.  

The same went for the human deserters who had joined the Demon King’s forces.  

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!  

Shells rained from the sky.  

RATATATATATA!  

Machine-gun fire poured down like rain ahead of us.  

KABOOM!  

Buried mines erupted from the ground.  

It was a deadly barrage—one even a Sword Master would struggle to survive without prior knowledge.  

But those weapons weren’t aimed at Sword Masters or knights.  

They were aimed at the hero—Eger—who possessed the strength of a Sword Master and the memories of Earth.  

“Hold the line! He’s just a brute from a primitive world! Pour on the firepower, and we can win!”  

The officer’s shouts from the front lines were silenced by a few sword slashes.  

The hail of bullets stopped, and the buried mines were detected and destroyed by my heightened senses before they could touch me.  

I breached the defenses at blinding speed, reaching the command post and beheading the stunned officers before they could react.  

Even with my strength as a hero, dismantling an entire unit so easily shouldn’t have been possible—but these soldiers, like Ea’s forces during Earth’s invasion, knew nothing about me.  

They didn’t know who I was.  

They didn’t know how much I knew about them.  

That was their fatal mistake.  

The humans who had sided with the Demon King had entrenched themselves east of the empire, beyond the wall.  

On the plains, even further east than Posen and the empire’s other satellite states.  

With their connection to the Demon King severed, they had stopped attacking the empire and instead retreated, occupying the ruined territories.  

Perhaps they had planned to carve out their own warlord states or nations if the Demon King never returned.  

But unfortunately for them, their territory lay directly in our path.  

The plains they occupied were where the Demon King would return.  

The plains bordering the canyon—where the Demon King’s dungeon lay.