[Programming] was a Vocation that could become the sharpest blade and beat all enemies, as long as it was used properly. Only in the hand of a programmer like me would it shine the brightest.

For some time, the sounds of explosions reverberated in the air. Alongside it was the faint screaming of Axiom Order members that had caught in the explosions. There was no sign that the stifled moans and tearful cries would stop anytime soon.

Fires burned the wooden stronghold down, leaving behind a charred dilapidated structure that could break down at any moment.

The eagles didn’t stop with one wave of bombardment and returned to the transport golems to replenish and sweep away their remains. Luckily, I’d brought enough for three to four waves in the instance that one wouldn’t be enough.

Zooming through my phone, I saw the remaining Axiom Order members looking up in despair upon seeing another wave of eagle bombing. They didn’t know what else to do other than to keep looking up, though some desperately tried to shoot them down with bows and crossbows. They must have thought that I would order my golems to advance, so they heavily defended the perimeter, and instead that itself would backfire.

“Well, I kind of misdirect them into thinking like that. Although, it’s not within my intention…” I was almost unbothered at the sight of this genocide — such was the thin moral scruples of a Dungeon Master and the pragmatic thinking that backed it up.

Since I was about a kilometer away, I didn’t know the state of the post-bombing, but the faint cries of the bandits had started to subside ten minutes in. However, before I was able to celebrate my victory, ice waves surged out from within their main base, and numerous sharp icicles were shot out at the flock of eagles in midair, killing them in the dozens.

Oh, no! That must be their boss. In haste, I ordered the eagles to rise even higher in the sky to continue with their bombing and making chaos.

There were no longer any large ice constructs being made to extinguish the fire. It meant that the rest of them probably retreated deeper into the mine.

“Let’s clean ‘em up. Strike the iron while it’s hot,” I said, climbing onto the transport golem.

I had the eagles pull back to the transport golems and ordered the golems to advance. Attacking them while they were in chaos and not giving them any moment of respite would be the key to success here since they were holding a numerical and geographical advantage.

Odds were, they would escape instead of making the last line of defense. They weren’t so stupid that they didn’t have some secret passageways around the foot of the mountain, so I had the eagles drop a pouch or two of the gunpowder balls to close those shafts and mines up. Luckily, I had scouted them beforehand with the phantoms, so I had known about this fact.

As we neared the narrow path leading up, the golems had to stick closer together so ten of them could pass at the same time.

Some stray bandits were spotted hiding in plain sight, camouflaging on the cliff, behind the rock, or among the bushes. Upon noticing our advance, they pulled out their weapons and started attacking.

“Die!”

“Glory to the Axiom Order!”

They raised their battle cries and charged toward the golems.

Hmm… So even after witnessing something like that, they still have the will to fight back. Zero does raise his subordinates well, I thought, a bit interested in their leader.

Of course, their futile struggles were nothing in front of the iron golems equipped with integrated guns in their hands. They had such high accuracy and stability that when any of them raised their heads to peek, they would be shot between the eyes.

Some that were faster and charged at the golems had an even more miserable end since they got rained by more shots. I was thinking of capturing them for later use as laborers, but I discarded the thought since there were too few golems to spare.

I wanted to take them down in one fell swoop. It would be troublesome if they attempted an escape when I wasn’t looking, and sparing some golems to watch over them would be cutting my forces thin when I needed them the most. Consequently, I put the idea on hold until when there was really a chance to do so.

We trekked the long incline path without any trouble and finally reached the dilapidated wooden stronghold. This was the main target of the bombing, so this was the place where I could see the aftereffect of the explosions the most.

It was like a place straight out of an apocalyptic world.

The ground was charred black. Some of the woods were still burning, causing smoke to rise high into the air. Rubbles of buildings along with corpses of the Axiom Order members were strewn all over the place with nearly all of them killed. The rest were still twitching, looking like they had yet to completely die. They seemed to be among the stronger ones, which was the worse fate in this scenario for the longer they lived, the longer they felt the fire and thus writhed in agony, slowly dying.

I had known that this wouldn’t be pretty, but even I couldn’t help but feel awful…

Amid the scene, I spotted a legless man with burns on his face sitting on an ice wave near a pile of corpses, writhing in pain.

“Eek! G-Golems?!” He paled upon seeing my army of golems.

I wore my mask and walked out of the transport golem toward him.

“What are you? Agh… How c-can there be countless large explosions?”

“Where’s your boss?”

The man didn’t answer my question and shouted, “A-Are you a demon? You’re a monster! Monster! Don’t kill me!” He screamed, snot and tears trickling down his face.

It seemed that he had lost it, and the effect of the mask was not strong enough to reverse his state… But a demon, huh…

Finding that this wouldn’t go anywhere, I ordered one of the phantoms nearby to possess him. In an instant, his miserable state calmed down, and he put on a blank face as if in a trance.

Phantoms barely had any tangible body, and if they wanted to hide, no one would be able to detect them without magical means. Only through my connection as their master could I know they were nearby.

“Speak, Phantom...”

The possessed man answered dully, “It’s Phantom B.”

I’d assigned the five phantoms an alphabet to distinguish them, though their appearance was an almost indistinguishable hazy gray that formed a human-like silhouette.

“Master, this body’s owner has been abandoned by his comrades… They are hiding inside the limestone cavern and had sealed up the entrance. They’re likely trying to escape through some secret passageway.”

“Just as I expected. Give him the coup de grace…”

“Yes.”

The man’s body suddenly stopped breathing and went limp, his eyes white. Unable to hold the pity, I closed his eyes. This was the least thing I could do to a scum like him, to give him a swift and painless death.

The ability of the phantoms included killing the individual they possessed as well, but it wasn’t limited to just that. If ordered, even giving them endless torment wasn’t impossible. What a monster.

“Continue.”

Along the way, I spotted the several man-made caves at the side of the path where the kidnapped villagers were reported to be kept. Nevertheless, I wanted to focus on taking care of the remnants of the Axiom Order before anything else.

It was dawn when we reached fifty meters away from the cavern entrance. The area around the limestone cavern was free of any obstructions and wide enough that twenty golems could stand side by side and the visibility was good.

However, as was said, they did seal the entrance up. The entrance was closed using an earthen wall, indicating that there were a number of elementalists among them. There appeared to be some peepholes used to check the situation outside placed in various spots of the wall. There were also larger holes that a single person could crawl through.

When I zoomed in with my phone, I confirmed the enemy’s presence peeping from the eye holes. Moreover, the thickness of the earthen wall was almost half a meter, making it hard for golems to just destroy it through brute force.

Heh… Such is useless when I use the gunpowder balls. There were still a few dozen sacks left filled with gunpowder balls, so I just had to have the golems throw them at the earthen wall.

Several golems near the transport golems began distributing the gunpowder balls to the twenty golems in the front before returning to their positions.

Next, the golems threw the balls at the earthen wall once I issued my instruction. The moment the balls hit the wall, explosions rang out incessantly, deafening my ears. A wave of pained and miserable screams followed immediately after. The heat of the fire was felt well even more than fifty meters away from the explosions, needless to say about the Axiom Order members standing behind the earthen wall.

The explosions had blasted a large hole with a diameter of more than ten meters at the cavern entrance, looking like it would cave in at any moment. Now the golems should be able to get in without much difficulty.

“Attack!” I didn’t let them recover since they should have incurred massive casualties by now. Besides, the iron golems were somewhat resistant to fire.

The golems were about to advance into the cavern but were stopped by a large ice wall along with the shout of a man.

“STOP!!”

Some distance away, at the entrance, a bald, large man, larger than even Rowan and clad in rough clothing with an eyepatch on his right eye, was standing in the midst of the ice-covered ground. What stood out like a sore thumb about him wasn’t his frightening look that could scare children for days but the fancy great sword that was the center of all the ice, looking like it had been stolen from somewhere. Upon closer inspection, the sword had a fist-size mystical-looking light blue gem inlaid on the blade.

While maintaining a mysterious figure vibe, I came down from the transport golem while wearing my mask and backpack, asking, “Are you Zero, the leader of the Axiom Order?”

“Ho… quite young, aren’t you? Yeah, so what? Are you the one responsible for taking down Jackie and Shadow?”

“That’s indeed me.” I offered him a nod and introduced myself, “I am Astra Argentum… You may call me Lord Argentum.” Uh… It’s always embarrassing to do this…

He harrumphed. “Like I’d call ya that for someone hiding behind a mask and dressed gaudily in silvery white. To have sealed our path of escape, you sure are determined to exterminate us. Listen here, let’s stop with this needless bloodshed. So many of my men have died. I can give ya anythin’ you want as long as you let us go. We’ll never step foot and cause chaos here from here on. How’s that?”

Like hell I would let him go after going this far!

Plus, it sounded like I was the bad guy here, so I retorted, “You wish! How many people do you think have fallen victim to your conduct? If I let you and your cronies go, then what will the others say?” Except that there weren’t any “others.”

Releasing him here would just invite troubles later on with my information leaking to more dangerous individuals, so I had to finish this right here, right now. Or else.

“Thought so.” Zero drew his greatsword from the ground and announced, “Alright, I challenge you! My sword against yours. Victor takes all! What say you? For a figure such as you, you won’t mind sparing these men, right?”

“…Sorry, but no.” Are you insane?! It has been more than a month since coming to this world, yeah… But I still only have an F+ evaluation. Come on!

He was standing within the golems’ line of fire, and once I ordered the golems to shoot — unless he possessed queer abilities like Shadow — he would certainly become a beehive. There wasn’t any reason to go along with his offer.

“You can’t back out. I’ve figured out your true intention of attacking us. Ya see, among the places here, there’s only one specific spot that you avoided with your earlier attacks.” He looked at the man-made caves on the way below and chuckled.

Shoot! I underestimated him too much. To start with, Zero had built an organization of more than six hundred strong all by himself, so while he might not be a brilliant commander, he was by no means stupid and possessed a certain level of skill and intellect, other than exceptional strength. Really, you couldn’t judge a book by its cover.

“And what if I refuse?”

“Of course,” he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I can’t guarantee that my men won’t hurt the women and children we keep with us here in case of an emergency. I’m a pretty determined guy even if I look like this, y’know.”

The heck. He’s pretty cautious and not acting like your typical villain at all. Well, this is troublesome…

I shut my eyes in deep thought and rubbed my forehead, though the mask was in the way for me to do that. There obviously was no way that I could win, but… Who said I didn’t have one or two aces in the hole when this kind of thing happened?

“Ugh! Okay, fine! I accept your challenge.”