red-and-black pane of colored glass was strange, to be sure, but it was more or less comprehensible. Eventually, the sea hardened as far as the eye could see. When it had, it transitioned to the second phase of its transformation. Countless shadowy figures came squirming over the horizon. The beastfolk noticed a strange sound, and they strained their ears to make it out. What they got for their troubles were frigid shivers running down their spines. Shluck, plop, shluck, plop, shluck. The moist sound of flesh and fat sticking to something hard, separating, then sticking to it again was growing nearer. Most of the underlings from the previous waves were winged, and they'd come flying in. However, it would seem the fourth wave was going to approach by crawling with their sticky bodies. The fact that the sea had been forcibly hardened over had likely been to accommodate their mode of advance. The underlings seemed to be in no particular rush, and they crawled calmly beneath the surging black clouds and the red sunset sky. That said, their advance had a terrible sort of vigor to it. It was a contradiction that made it seem as though space and time themselves had been twisted. Suddenly, sublime cries ravaged the air. The beastfolk who had been listening to the footsteps all covered up their ears at once. They could hear screams. The screams sounded happy. They could hear laughter. The laughter sounded kind. They could hear an address. The address was silent. They could hear begging. The underlings were begging for death. The voices sounded rich in emotion, but their actual contents were hollow. They sounded meaningful, but they were fragmented, and the fragments had no cohesion. It was all incoherent and jumbled. That was precisely what made them so eerily terrifying. As they let out waves of unpleasant sound, the horrors finally revealed their full forms. The moment they did, all the soldiers save the saints practically lost their will to fight. They resembled humans. They resembled beastfolk and demi-humans, too. Yet at the same time, they were completely different from any of them. The things had body parts from all three races. In a sense, their bodies were composed of "parts" alone. There was no clear delineation between their heads and their bodies. Their arms, legs, ears, hearts, lungs, and intestines all tangled and wrapped around one another as the things advanced. If someone took a body from a member of each race, sliced them up haphazardly, then stitched them back together as sacrilegiously as they could while making sure to leave the organs and the genitals exposed, that was probably what they'd end up with. The very fact that they existed desecrated the dignity of the living. The soldiers were assailed by terror. Despair at the prospect of being captured by those things, or worse, turned into one of them, filled the beach. Several people let out moans. Some vomited, and others defecated themselves. "Ah... Ahhh... Ahhh..." "Those possessed by fear, withdraw! My army has no use for fools who'd be defeated before even making contact with the enemy!" Valisisa barked out a coolheaded order. Upon hearing her sharp rebuke, the beastfolk drew their weapons and held them at the ready. However, they couldn't stop their ears and tails from putting their fear on full display. That notwithstanding, they'd come back to their senses, and they raised a fervent cry to elevate their spirits. "Come and get us, you monster freaks!" The things responded with laughter. (And they were screaming, too.) The things sang a song. (And they were silent, too.) The things composed a prayer. (And they were jeering, too.) The things wept loudly. (And they were laughing, too.) The things responded with laugh (too.) The things (?) The (!) "Shut up already." That moment, a listless voice echoed through the air. Its speaker hadn't been there a moment ago. The vibrations in the air had transformed into a roar, but the voice had blown them completely away. "Huh?" "Whoops, easy there." One of the soldiers gave a dumbfounded grunt. At the same time, a human figure touched down on the sea's surface with a casualness wholly unsuited to the gravity of the situation. As his black uniform flitted about in the rusty wind, the slender boy raised his head. The underlings' hideous forms didn't appear to scare him in the slightest. He seemed relaxed, which was eerie in and of itself. A different kind of unrest filled the air. But the boy paid no heed to the reaction he was getting. Instead, he raised his arm. Then he gave his fingers a majestic snap. "Recreation of the Plain of Skewers: Impaled Victim." New colors danced atop the water. Azure petals and black feathers had begun raining extravagantly from the sky. The next moment, a chorus of thunks rang out. The red-and-black-stained sea had been rent, and innumerable iron stakes had shot up from beneath the waves. Their sharp points had ripped through the frozen sea like they would an ice floe. The normal, clear sea came rushing through the cracks. Then it was met with a huge amount of blood and quickly became stippled with crimson. After all, the underlings crawling atop its surface had been impaled on the stakes as well. The way they were hoisted in the air, they looked almost like skewered game. The blasphemous creatures awkwardly struggled, their mixed body parts squirming as they did. However, the iron stakes gave them no quarter. The evening sunlight washed over the stakes, the waves crashed atop them, and still, they stood resolute and immovable. In that moment, the stakes resembled countless, glimmering headstones. The person who had summoned the stakes, who'd just returned from the World Tree, was Kaito Sena. "...Oh. I guess you can just impale them normally. All bark and no bite, huh?" He nodded casually. He turned toward the soldiers, then shrugged. The gesture indicated he was hoping they'd affirm how much of a letdown the underlings had proven to be, but he received no such response. He blinked as he gazed over their stiffened bodies. Eventually, he clapped his hands together, then called out to them in a loud voice. "Hey, sorry about this, but I'm gonna need the saints to start firing. The fourth wave is still attacking. Normal weapons should be good enough to fight them. I'll cut down and skewer as many of 'em as I can, but I'm counting on you guys to deal with the ones that get away from me. Their exposed organs look like they should be weak points, but their mana actually comes from an eyeball hidden inside them, so watch out for that." "You heard him, everyone. If you can destroy them, then do so. We gather and wait." La Christoph solemnly raised his arms as if nothing had happened. His expression didn't even have vestiges of confusion in it. He had just been calmly waiting for everyone else to settle down. In accordance with his directions, the saints began chanting in unison. Their bodies were clad in pure light. A bit of confusion remained among the soldiers, but they got into formation. After making sure everything had calmed down, Kaito nodded with a gentle expression on his face. However, it faded before long. The Mad King turned back to his fleshy foes. As he raised his arm once more, blood dribbled from the corner of his lip. Then the Mad King murmured as the Torture Princess once had. "La (oh ye, born of death, return from whence you came)." And with that, he gave his fingers a sonorous snap. "The enemy's moving differently now. I want to go make the rounds and check up on a couple places; you mind if I head out?" "You butcher a thousand of those things on your own, then pose that question like you're making small talk? You have my permission. Go." "Y'know, I love how brief these conversations of ours are. It's a real lifesaver." Kaito nodded to Valisisa, then placed his blood-filled glass orb down on the sand. As the teleportation circle knit itself together, he cast his gaze out over the Northernmost Shore. The fourth wave had been successfully wiped out. A number of red-and-black shards that had been shattered by the stakes had washed up onto the sand. Underling corpses were scattered around them like beached jellyfish. A medic grabbed one of them with a hook, then struggled to pull it in. By analyzing the carcasses, they might be able to devise a counteragent for the venom the underlings had been spewing. A wolf-headed beastman went over and gingerly helped them pull the heavy corpse. Elsewhere, crimson-clad attendants and uninjured soldiers were working to transport the freshly fallen saints and the wounded. On the other hand, the healthy saints who'd just returned to the battlefield were gathered together and receiving a status report. They'd become rather adept at substituting people in and out. The soldiers and saints were even starting to intermingle to the best of their abilities. Perhaps it was because they'd successfully dealt with their horrific foes, but the soldiers' faces were all brimming with confidence. Even though he saw things had changed for the better, Kaito still furrowed his brow. His thoughts raced vigilantly. Those things looked creepy as hell, but the bodies of the fourth wave's underlings still fell within this world's rules. By the sixth or seventh wave, though, they'll have overcome that restraint. Normal soldiers won't be able to resist them, let alone react accordingly. Despite knowing that, Kaito pushed that unsettling reality deep within his heart. Dampening the soldiers' spirits right now wouldn't do anyone any good. The underlings were only going to get more horrific from here on out. It wouldn't take much to break their will to fight. Kaito needed their resolve to be as high as possible when the fifth wave hit. To that end, he said nothing as the azure light swallowed him up. The moment after the cylindrical wall surrounded him, his consciousness cut out. The pain ceased, then came back. Kaito died from shock. After automatically resuscitating, he slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the mellow glow of the sunset. "...Looks like the sky's cleared up over here." After letting out a faint murmur, he looked to the side. He was standing atop a long bridge stretched out wide over the blazing, golden desert. Or to be more precise, the stone structure wasn't actually a bridge. It was one of the walls that divided up the demi-human territories. In the demi-human country, the places people lived were determined by the purity of their blood. Its citizens weren't allowed to travel freely within its borders. Kaito was on top of the wall surrounding the second sectorâ€”more specifically, he was in a passageway designed for lookouts and repairmen. At the moment, though, it was home to an imposing line of cannons. The sound and tremors of cannon fire rocked Kaito's surroundings at fixed intervals. "Ready, aim, fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire!" As directed, flames burst from the entire front row of small cannons at once. The pterosaur-like underlings who'd been struck let out annoyed cries. The damage they'd suffered was minimal. The demi-humans didn't pay that fact any heed, though, and pulled on the ropes connected to the wheeled cannons in order to draw them backward. As they reloaded them with shells and gunpowder, the second row began firing. "Ready, aim, fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire!" GYAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAAAA! Their bones broken by the successive fire, several underlings fell out of the air. All the while, more cannonballs were being brought up on pulleys. Any damage to the cannons was being taken care of atop the wall, too. Thanks to how efficiently the repair and transport teams were working, the repeated bombardment was being sustained for a length of time that hardly seemed possible. It was an impressive technique, one that took full advantage of