The Hero Becomes the Duke’s Eldest Son

Chapter 141

**Frost Ogre Lord.**

Originally, such an entity was a disaster that even a master would find difficult to defeat.

It possessed a body filled with magma-like boiling instincts and an indomitable physique and monstrous strength that defied common sense.

Even an aura blade couldn’t easily cut through it, and its monstrous strength could uproot stone pillars and wield them.

A being that was truly a master of the monster realm, born to reign over monsters as their king.

That terrifying existence was a monarch-level monster.

“But now, it’s our daily bread!”

“Hahaha! Who are you explaining this to, Sister Syria?”

“I just wanted to try it once, Sister Lily!”

“A monarch-level ogre… I can’t remember the last time I saw one!”

“Nya ha ha! It’s been a while since I fought so hard that my body feels exhausted! Ah, it’s refreshing!”

The fifty priests who had stayed behind to guard the Slaughter Tower.

They were currently in a festive mood.

After a long chase and battle, they had captured the monarch-level monster, the Ogre Lord.

-Uuuh, Uguuuuuh!

The ogre Ukulak, tightly bound in adamantium chains and gagged with an adamantium bit, struggled.

However, even with the ogre’s mighty strength, it couldn’t break the chains.

Ukulak had desperately fled and resisted to survive against the priests of the Slaughter Cult.

A monarch-level monster was a beast equivalent to a superhuman known as a one-man army.

However, this meant that if faced with an actual ‘army,’ it could be defeated, and the fifty priests of the Slaughter Cult were an excellent army in themselves.

Ukulak ultimately couldn’t help but be defeated by them.

To the priests, Ukulak was not only a good stress relief opponent but also ‘good food’ in the barren Wasteland of Death.

Each priest spoke up.

“I’m really looking forward to this! It’s been so long since we had ogre meat! It’s a delicacy among delicacies!”

“Whether grilled, steamed, or in a stew, it’s delicious no matter how it’s cooked. And not just the meat, but the intestines, bones, and blood—nothing goes to waste, Sister Syria.”

“Orcs are too tough and smelly, and trolls, although their meat stays tender no matter how much you chew, have limited edible parts due to their poison!”

“Ogres have been hunted to extinction around here by our brothers, so the remaining ones don’t even come near the Slaughter Tower.”

“Ah! Everyone! This must be a gift from our God of Slaughter! Let’s all give thanks!”

“Oh merciful God of Slaughter and Death, thank you!”

“Thank you for this daily ogre!”

-Uguuuuuuh!

Ukulak was a Frost Ogre, a giant man-eater who lived in the northern snowfields, treating humans as delicious prey.

The fact that he had become the food for humans instead was causing him great cognitive dissonance.

That’s why Ukulak was even more terrified of this situation.

Thud!

A high priest of the Slaughter Cult, a man with a beautiful youthful appearance, stood beside the chain-bound Ukulak, raising a large axe.

With a resounding and splendid voice befitting a priest of the Slaughter Cult, he shouted.

“Now! Since we’ve finished our prayers, let’s slaughter it here and return to the Slaughter Tower for cooking!”

“Waaaaah!”

-Uup, Uuuuup, Uguuuuh!

Ukulak twisted his body desperately, but it was futile.

When the priest chanted a sacred spell, a bloody holy power engulfed the axe.

The energy was akin to the massive power of a sword master’s aura blade.

Though it couldn’t be maintained for long, such power was necessary to sever the neck of the sturdy monarch-level ogre.

Swoosh!

Just as the priest was about to bring the axe down on Ukulak’s neck with all his might—

Rumble.

The sudden tremor in the ground forced him to halt the swing.

“Hm?”

“This tremor…?”

“Wait? Is it an earthquake?”

“Ah! Wait, everyone, look over there!”

While everyone was bewildered by the unexpected tremor, one priest pointed somewhere and shouted.

Thunk, clatter, clang.

Maces, halberds, axes, dual swords, scythes…

And they all dropped their beloved weapons from their hands.

The priests of the Slaughter Cult cherished their assigned weapons as their own, never parting from them in any situation.

But they were so mesmerized that they didn’t even realize they had dropped their weapons.

Of course, it was understandable.

Crrrrumble…

Their sanctuary, the headquarters of their cult, their symbol, and their home.

The Slaughter Tower was collapsing to the side.

***

At that moment, in the eastern Wasteland of Death.

The battleground where the priests of the Slaughter Cult and the immortal Grey Army clashed was truly intense.

“For the God of Slaughter and Death!”

“For the God of Slaughter and Death!”

Children of the God of Slaughter and Death.

The Slaughter Cult, tasked with punishing and managing the monsters of the wasteland.

-Kurtilla, Seir Ashak…!

-Kurtilla, Seir Ashak…!

The immortal race of trolls, trying to break free from the tower that bound their race to this land.

When these two forces fully confronted each other, the entire wasteland was filled with frenzied shouts and screams.

The wardens of the wasteland wielded their weapons to punish the prisoners they managed, tearing and slashing whatever they saw.

The immortal Grey Army was torn apart and slaughtered by those hands.

One high troll had its head cut off by a priest’s slashing sword, rolling on the ground.

-Arararal, Larara.

But the hundreds of high troll shamans of the Grey Army.

Their sorcery spread, and the trolls who had been torn apart and killed reattached their bodies and rose again.

Bizarrely, the high troll whose head had been cut off picked up and reattached its head.

-Seir Ashak…!

Then, with its head reattached, it struck with its rocky fist.

The priest wielding the slashing sword was instantly killed on the spot.

-Kruaaaaaah…!

The revived army roared.

This was the immortal Grey Army.

The priests of the Slaughter Cult were strong, but the troll army overwhelmed them with their persistent regeneration and sheer numbers.

In the process, hundreds of priests of the Slaughter Cult died, and thousands of trolls were crushed and torn apart, unable to revive, dying in heaps.

Death piled up in the wasteland.

If the barren land was called the wasteland, now the term seemed inappropriate.

Although there were no lush mountains or rivers teeming with fish, the countless bodies of trolls and priests formed mountains, and the red and blue blood flowed instead of water, forming rivers.

Blood flowed from streams to rivers, gathering to form a sea.

Mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.

The multitude of deaths colored and stained the wasteland.

At this very moment, it was no longer a wasteland.
And right there stood the woman who created the most gray mountains and the stickiest blue sea, the Usurper Saint Spica.

“She’s still standing even after facing all of us…”

“A monster…”

The High Trolls, entirely covered in blood, muttered like wounded beasts growling.

“All our subordinates have been taken down…”

“As expected, the Queen of the Western Demons…”

“So strong…”

The leaders gathered there were all High Trolls at the rank of lords, and their subordinate chief-class Trolls were equivalent to knights.

However, the eight hundred chief-class Trolls who were their subordinates had all become part of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood because of her.

Three of the lord-class High Trolls had died, and the rest were barely holding their ground.

“Indeed, a fearsome sword…”

“That sword is devouring our lives…”

The Usurper Saint held a strangely shaped red sword in one hand.

Every Troll cut by that sword rapidly lost their life force and died.

Only the High Trolls were barely holding on thanks to their immense regenerative abilities.

But even the Usurper Saint was not unscathed.

Drip, drip.

Blood seeped from various parts of her body, trickling down, revealing red lines beneath her robe.

Her entire body was covered in blood.

The blood was a mix of her own and the Trolls’.

The undying Grey Army was a force that could kill even a Sword Master.

No matter how much power she wielded as the holder of the demonic sword Lavolas and the saint of the Slaughter God, it was a difficult battle.

“Why is this happening?”

An old High Troll chief, who had lost an eye and an arm, asked.

That High Troll was the leader of the largest of the forty-eight Troll tribes and represented the High Troll chiefs.

“Queen of the Western Demons, agent of the God-Slayer who toppled our god and brought our race to ruin, the master of the stakes that pin us to this wasteland. I know you can understand our words. That’s why I ask you. Why?”

“……”

“The tower you built is the stake driven into this wasteland, and you are the leash that binds us. For hundreds of years, you fulfilled your wretched and damned duty, imprisoning us in this land, watching us, binding us.”

“……”

“But you have now abandoned that duty. Why?”

The High Troll spoke.

“You may be able to annihilate us, but you cannot exterminate us. However, while we cannot defeat you, we can exterminate you.”

A war involving six hundred priests and ten thousand of the undying Grey Army.

It was a war that was never meant to happen.

For the Slaughter Cult, there was only inevitable defeat and mutual destruction, never victory.

“We will die here, but our race will be freed from this wasteland. The stakes will be broken, and we will gain freedom. We will devour everything. You must have known this undeniable truth.”

“……”

The old High Troll’s eyes blazed like fire.

“We are the race of ‘hatred.’ We are the ones who endlessly thirst and crave, who hate the sandstorms and cold of the wasteland, who hate the world that defies us. We are a race of hatred.”

A race of hatred.

“That’s why we can understand, Queen of the Western Demons. You are filled with hatred. But that hatred is not directed at us. You have merely used us for your hatred. Then, what do you hate so much?”

“……”

The Usurper Saint said nothing.

Only the murderous aura thickened, and the crimson holy power shimmered darkly.

Seeing that, the old High Troll’s mouth twisted into a grotesque smile.

His ghastly fangs were bared, exposing his gums.

“Yes, it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that your hatred has freed our race!”

The High Troll shouted.

“We thank your hatred! In return, we will sever your throat here! Our eternal enemy and adversary!”

Paahhhh.

Dozens of lord-class Trolls gathered the remaining regenerative power and strength in their bodies.

An overwhelming murderous intent rose from them, and their muscles and veins swelled to the point of bursting.

Judging that they couldn’t survive due to the life-devouring demonic sword, they decided to kill the saint who would be an obstacle to their race and then die.

They grinned with madness.

“Our eternal enemy! Let’s fall into hell together!”

Just as the Usurper Saint aimed her demonic sword at them and the High Trolls charged at her like beasts.
“Ah, this is so annoying.”

Suddenly, a voice was heard.

Kuuuuuu!

Simultaneously, a pressure of murderous intent spread out like a tidal wave.

“……!”

-……!

The Saintess of Usurpation and the High Trolls had no choice but to momentarily halt their actions due to the third-party killing intent that interrupted the murderous aura between the two sides.

The owner of the killing intent spoke.

“The Winter Queen was like this, and now this too. I don’t understand why this chaos keeps happening. If I had been a little later, this mess would have become an irreparable disaster, damn it.”

The owner of the grumbling voice was Aden.

Behind him stood a wooden door that didn’t match the surrounding scenery.

‘If it weren’t for Hetos, this would have been a real disaster.’

Just like when he first moved to the Slaughter Tower, he connected the door from the Prisoner’s Underground Labyrinth to this troublesome battlefield in the eastern wasteland.

‘Hetos doesn’t know the coordinates here, but since I do, it’s possible.’

The Dwarf’s workshop key was a token of partial authority transfer, allowing the keyholder to open a door to the coordinates they knew.

Thanks to this, Aden had instantly arrived on this battlefield.

He filled the space with Master Fear, radiating from his entire body.

Neither the High Trolls nor Spica were weak enough to be completely suppressed by his Master Fear alone, so he couldn’t entirely stop their fight.

However, the sudden appearance of a strong presence instinctively made them cautious and pause for a moment.

– A human…?

– And a strong one at that…

– Is he reinforcements summoned by the demons of the west?

The High Trolls revealed their menacing fangs and remained on guard.

“……”

Spica’s face was covered with a white cloth, making it impossible to read her expression.

However, Aden could sense faint confusion and deep wariness in her silence.

Even though the future had changed, Aden, who had watched her closely for years, knew what her silence meant.

‘Who are you? And how did you get here? What is your purpose?’

His eyes calmed and cooled down.

Iron-Blooded Saintess Spica Runias.

Aden wanted to answer her silent question this way:

I am Aden Albireo.

I am the companion and friend you betrayed. I am the avenger who has sleepless nights and nightmares because of your betrayal and that of our companions. That’s why I have returned to take revenge on you, Iron-Blooded Saintess…

But since he had traveled back in time and his body had changed, Aden couldn’t say those words.

They would all be meaningless.

So instead, Aden answered with different words.

Though it was a bit, no, a lot of damned nonsense.

“I am Aden Remes. The savior from the prophecy who has come to stop you, Saintess of Usurpation.”