The Regressed Mercenary’s Machinations (light Novel)

“Graaahhh!”
Helgenique rose from the ground, black smoke billowing from his battered form as he extended his hand.
BOOM!

A massive surge of dark energy erupted, slamming into Parniel like a tidal wave.
THUD!
Even with her radiant holy aura, the force was enough to lift Parniel off her feet and throw her backward. For someone possessing unparalleled divine energy, to be overpowered like this was staggering.

Grit.
Parniel clenched her teeth in sheer fury. To think this wretched darkness could defy the sanctity of the goddess’s light!
Enraged, she poured every ounce of her strength into her mace, swinging it with crushing force.

SMASH!
“Ugh!”
Helgenique staggered as her attack connected, his head snapping to the side. Yet, he rebounded almost immediately, retaliating with his own devastating blow.

BOOM!
Parniel was forced back again, but as one of the Seven Titans of the Continent, she endured the pain, refusing to falter. She retaliated with another swing of her mace.
CLANG!

The two clashed repeatedly, trading blows in a brutal melee.
Helgenique unleashed torrents of dark magic, bombarding Parniel, but she advanced relentlessly, her divine energy shielding her from the brunt of the attacks. Her sheer durability was maddening.
“Let’s see how long you can last!” Helgenique roared, charging at her with a massive punch.

Despite her strength, even Parniel struggled to withstand Helgenique’s raw power. Each of his attacks forced her back, the ground beneath her cracking under the pressure.
Yet, Helgenique was far from unscathed.
Sizzle!
Where her divine aura met his corrupted flesh, it burned through him like acid. Holy light seeped into his being, weakening him.

The wounds inflicted earlier by Ghislain and Julien radiated with even greater intensity, black smoke pouring from the gashes as the energy of the Life Orbs leaked out.
“Julien,” Ghislain called out, eyes gleaming with resolve.
“Understood.”

The two focused their strikes on those glowing wounds, targeting Helgenique’s vulnerable points.
SLASH! CRACK!
Their attacks landed, not deep, but enough to widen the gashes.

Sizzle!
As the wounds spread, the trapped energy of the Life Orbs began to escape violently, creating bursts of black smoke.
“Damn it!” Helgenique snarled. He knew he had to eliminate these pests quickly.

He concentrated his power, summoning waves of bone spires from the ground and dozens of black spheres in the air. Narrowing his focus, he directed the full brunt of his power at the trio.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Even with Helgenique’s focus sharpening, the battle had shifted with Parniel’s arrival.

“Blessed Goddess!”
Radiant light burst forth, enveloping Parniel and extending to Ghislain and Julien. The divine shield softened the impact of Helgenique’s relentless attacks, allowing them to endure even the harshest blows.
Parniel pressed on, taking the lead. Her style was always direct and unyielding, enduring hits head-on as she closed the distance.

The battlefield became a chaotic storm of light and darkness, with Helgenique’s magic clashing violently against Parniel’s divine aura.
Even with three of the Seven Titans of the Continent fighting together, Helgenique’s overwhelming power held them at bay.
Still, the tide of the battle was turning. Helgenique, despite his apparent dominance, felt his strength waning.

‘The damn holy power is preventing me from finishing this.’
Helgenique gritted his teeth as he noticed the energy of the Life Orbs dwindling. His time was running out.
BOOM!

Helgenique suddenly leapt back, his monstrous form heaving as he gasped for air.
Across from him, the three warriors stood, battered but resolute. Helgenique knew they were stalling, waiting for his power to burn out.
“I’ll make sure you regret this.”

RUMBLE!
Helgenique began condensing his power, pulling the volatile energy of the Life Orbs inward.
Ghislain’s expression hardened. “He’s preparing something massive.”

The others felt it too—a catastrophic surge of energy building within Helgenique.
Light and shadow clashed violently as Helgenique’s body began to rupture, unable to contain the power he was amassing.
“Julien!”

“Understood.”
Without needing further instruction, Julien and Ghislain darted behind Parniel, seeking cover.
Parniel shot them a disbelieving glare.

Ghislain chuckled sheepishly. “Sorry.”
Julien, ever stoic, remained silent.
“Damn cowards…” Parniel muttered under her breath, planting herself firmly in front of the two as her holy aura surged to its peak.

She knew she was the only one who could endure the coming attack.
WHOOSH!
A colossal shield of light materialized in front of her, radiating divine energy.

BOOOOOOM!
Helgenique unleashed his pent-up power in an earth-shattering explosion. The black torrent of destruction collided with Parniel’s shield.
FLASH!

The clash of light and dark created a blinding burst, erasing all sound.
WHOOSH!
The shockwave followed, sending Julien and Ghislain flying despite Parniel taking the brunt of the attack.

THUD!
When the dust settled, Parniel lay on the ground, her massive frame scorched by dark energy. Though alive, her breathing was faint, and the divine glow around her had dimmed.
“She actually survived…” Ghislain muttered as he pulled himself to his feet, blood trickling from his lips.

Helgenique’s attack had left him staggering, but he wasn’t out of the fight yet.
Across the battlefield, Helgenique stood, his body a ruined husk. His breath was ragged, black smoke pouring from his wounds.
“Damn you all…” Helgenique growled, his voice trembling with both fury and pain.

Ghislain turned to Julien, his tone grim.
“Let’s finish this. For Parniel.”
“She’s not dead yet,” Julien replied flatly, readying his sword.

SLASH!
Julien wiped the thin line of blood trickling from the corner of his lips, showing no sign of faltering.
Ghislain, meanwhile, acted swiftly. Grabbing the unconscious Parniel, he hurled her clear of the battlefield.
“She’ll just get caught in the crossfire if we leave her here,” he muttered, a trace of guilt flickering in his expression.

The two warriors returned to the fray, guilt set aside for now.
SWISH!
Every strike now made an impact—Helgenique’s body could no longer withstand the onslaught.

“GRAAAHH!”
Helgenique howled in agony, his corrupted form succumbing to the aftereffects of his own power surge and the relentless blows dealt by his foes.
However, his monstrous strength hadn’t been completely extinguished.

BOOM! BOOM!
He unleashed torrents of devastating magic across the battlefield, forcing Ghislain and Julien to fight harder than ever to keep up. But they didn’t falter.
Each blow they landed served to deplete Helgenique’s remaining energy faster, and they were determined to bring him down.
As the desperate clash raged on, the tide of the battle elsewhere began to turn.

“HYAAA!”
BOOM!
Elena carved a fiery path through the undead, her seemingly limitless stamina propelling her forward. The Mobile Corps, bolstered by her ferocity, crushed the reanimated forces with precision.

Without Helgenique directly controlling the dead or summoning reinforcements, the once-terrifying army was reduced to mindless husks.
Holy weapons burned through them like paper, leaving piles of ash in their wake.
“Just a little more!”
Gillian’s rallying cry pushed the Mobile Corps onward.

A little farther away, Kaorman was battling undead solo, grumbling to himself.
“C’mon, Aura Blade! Manifest already! Why won’t you come out?! Ugh, these corpses are way too weak!”
Behind him, mages unleashed spells without restraint, reducing the tightly packed hordes to scattered clusters.
The once-overwhelming undead force had thinned dramatically, sparse enough that individual units began to scatter and mop up the stragglers.

In the rear, Piote and the priests worked tirelessly to heal the injured.
Among them was Jerome, brought back by Bellinda. His body was riddled with wounds and tainted by Helgenique’s dark magic.
Piote frowned, sweating as he purged the shadowy remnants from Jerome’s system.
“Dark mana is deeply entrenched in him. This will take some effort…”

Only after the black energy was eradicated did Piote’s holy magic finally begin mending Jerome’s physical injuries. But the mage didn’t wake.
Piote’s voice rang out sharply.
“We need mages! Someone skilled in mana transference, now!”
Vanessa arrived with a group of mages, stepping forward without hesitation.

“I’ll handle this. The rest of you, keep supporting the Mobile Corps.”
She knelt by Jerome’s side, gently clasping his hand. A soft glow emanated as she guided a controlled flow of mana into him.
Jerome stirred, his eyes fluttering open.

“Where… am I?” Jerome’s dazed gaze fell on Piote, transformed by Juana’s blessing into a vision of divine beauty.
“Am I… in heaven? Are you an angel?”
Piote, unamused, deliberately deepened his voice.
“No.”

Jerome, still groggy, muttered, “Even angels have rough voices, huh…? Figures… This must be heaven, though. I’ve lived a decent life. Well, mostly. My sins are pretty minor, I think. Let me confess…”
“Save your confession for later,” Piote interrupted flatly. “The battle isn’t over yet. We’re the allied forces.”
Jerome’s bleary expression sharpened as he took in the scene around him.
His eyes widened in disbelief at the sight of the undead legions being obliterated.

“This… this can’t be real… How is this even possible?”
Helgenique’s forces, unassailable by ordinary armies, were falling before the might of the allied force.
“How… what happened to Helgenique?”

Piote replied matter-of-factly.
“Lord Fenris is handling him with Julien. The undead will soon be wiped out entirely.”
Jerome’s eyes lit up.
“The Duke of Fenris… So he’s here…”
Jerome remembered why he had set out for Ruthania in the first place—to seek Fenris himself. Now, here the duke was, doing the impossible.

But Jerome’s face darkened with urgency.
“We have to help them. Helgenique is hiding something. I know it.”
Piote gave him a skeptical look.
“Look at you. You can barely stand. What do you think you can do in this state?”
“I’ll manage if one of the mages transfers a bit of mana…”

Enter Alfoy.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Alfoy strutted up with his trademark arrogance.
“You mean me, right? I’m the perfect candidate. As ‘The 5th-Circle Sorcerer Who Defeated a God,’ I—”
Jerome interrupted politely, “Are you really a 5th-circle mage?”

“Of course I am,” Alfoy boasted. “Unlike you amateurs—”
Jerome seized his wrist, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“What are you—AAAAH!”

Jerome drained Alfoy’s mana at an alarming rate, leaving the self-proclaimed sorcerer unconscious and shriveled.
Vanessa gasped in shock.
“How did you…?”
Forcefully extracting mana required overwhelming the donor’s will—a feat supposedly impossible against a mage of higher circles.

But Alfoy’s so-called power was a facade, built on borrowed strength.
Jerome stood, mana coursing through him once more.
“Sorry for the rough handling. I’ll explain later. For now, I need to deal with Helgenique.”
He extended his senses, expanding his vision until he located the monstrous necromancer.

WHOOSH!
With a single breath, Jerome vanished, the air around him distorting as he blinked toward the battlefield.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A trail of azure lightning streaked across the battlefield as Jerome reappeared behind Helgenique.
“Let’s finish this.”