I Became The Tyrant Of A Defense Game [EN]: Chapter 567

The Fly King’s massive head exploded into pieces.

We all held our breaths, watching the scene unfold. In the brief silence, I swallowed hard.

The Fly King’s headless body staggered. The halos rotating above its head stopped simultaneously, and the infinity symbol behind it also slowly ceased its orbit.

Then, the Fly King’s enormous body slowly crumbled, collapsing towards the ground—

Stopped.

It paused in mid-air.

The Fly King’s falling body slowly righted itself, and then,

Shhhhhh!

It began to regenerate its head.

Hundreds, thousands of flies emerged from its body, wriggling and filling the empty space where its head had been.

It was as if time was rewinding.

The Fly King, having instantly restored its head, floated back into the air as if nothing had happened. The halos and orbital wings that had stopped moving were rotating again.

“Right, of course…”

I gritted my teeth.

“There’s no way it would die that easily…!”

As if its march had only been briefly delayed, the Fly King extended its legs forward again.

This time, sixty-four.

I didn’t count them, but based on the previous increases, it was almost certainly correct. Dozens of the Fly King’s long, hairy, grotesque legs slowly began to extend forward.

Before its legs could fully extend, I commanded,

“…Retreat.”

Lukas looked at me, startled. I spoke more forcefully.

“All troops, retreat! Now! Abandon the forward base! Prepare for a counterattack at the Crossroads Fortress!”

Lukas urgently relayed my command, shouting loudly,

“All troops, retreat! Fall back to the teleport gates!”

The heroes and soldiers reacted quickly. Without question, they grabbed whatever equipment they could carry and began running towards the teleport gates.

“Burnout! Bodybag! Leave the equipment! Retreat is the priority!”

I gave them separate orders. Their equipment was too large to carry while escaping.

Besides, there was spare equipment at Crossroads.

Burnout and Bodybag, who had hesitated, eventually nodded and dashed towards the teleport gates.

The alchemists and other non-combat personnel retreated first. Then came the priests, mages, and archers. Finally, the front-line heroes retreated, guarding the rear.

We retreated in an orderly fashion, following the established sequence.

“…?!”

Except for one team.

The hero party that had recently joined our ranks, the ‘Insect Busters’.

Clack, clack, clack!

These five heroes, clad in protective suits, were still standing at the edge of the wall, crushing the swarming flies.

“Insect Busters!”

I shouted urgently.

“Stop fighting and retreat! Can’t you hear me?!”

“…Just a little more…”

But, still swinging their weapons wildly, the Insect Busters did not retreat.

“Just ten more, no, just five more and we’ll be done… !”

Even in the midst of this, the Fly King was slowly extending its dozens of legs forward.

Whoooosh-

Screeeeeeeech!

An nauseatingly large number of fly monsters emerged from the Fly King’s body, surging towards the forward base.

Even if our forces had been holding the line, they wouldn’t have been able to stop that many. And now that we were already retreating.

Staying here would be a pointless death. I let out a sharp yell.

“I said retreat! Now-!”

And with that split-second difference, they crossed a point of no return.

Before we knew it, countless flies had poured out, filling the space between the Insect Busters and us.

The swarm of flies, like a summer squall, began to tear apart the fortress walls.

The flies clung densely to the automated defense turrets that had been firing a barrage, slowly and surely stripping away their armor and destroying them.

Artifacts were being disabled one by one, and all the traps were neutralized.

The Insect Busters, belatedly turning around, stopped when they saw the flies densely surrounding them.

“…”

And then.

Chiiiick-!

The leader of the Insect Busters reactivated his equipment, which he had briefly paused to retreat, and turned back towards the wall.

“Leave us behind, Your Highness.”

What?

“It’s impossible to break through this encirclement and reach you anyway. So, we’ll just fight and die here.”

The leader chuckled.

“We are the ones who lost our families to the bugs. During the great insect outbreak in the East, we were the ones who ran away, leaving our families in the village. We saved our lives that day, but lost everything else.”

The leader looked at me, his goggles gleaming with insect fluid.

The gleaming light… looked just like the compound eyes of a fly.

The inside of the goggles, which were always clouded with a hazy mist, was clear. It was the first time I had ever met this man’s eyes.

Empty. Hollow. Dried up.

They were not the eyes of a living person.

‘Ah.’

I realized it at that moment.

Why these N-rank individuals, with no decent skills or stats, were able to fight bugs better than any SSR-rank hero.

The answer was simple.

They were fighting with their lives already forfeit.

Chiiiiick…!

The five reactivated their equipment. Flamethrowers, poison sprayers, hammers, electric staffs, and magic-engineered saw blades roared fiercely.

“We swore that day. Never again would we run from bugs. We would rather die with them.”

The leader let out a cry that was similar to the saw he was holding.

“Today is that day-!”

Screeeeeeeech!

The fly monsters poured down like a waterfall towards the five.

As I tried to turn back to bring the five with me, Lukas grabbed my shoulder urgently.

“Your Grace! You must retreat immediately!”

“But!”

“They disobeyed Your Grace’s orders! Those who disobey military orders on the battlefield are no longer soldiers!”

“But they are people! We save people! They can still return!”

As I spoke,

Screeeeeeeech!

The swarm of flies began to cling madly to the five isolated heroes.

The Insect Busters began to kill the flies by swinging their weapons. Indeed, even in this situation, they were powerful in exterminating bug monsters, enough to fight without backing down.

“Give them back, you bug bastards!”

The leader cried out with a bloodcurdling voice.

“Spit out my daughter that you chewed up, you shiiiiiiit!”

Clack, clack, clack, clack!

The saw blade spun relentlessly, cutting all the clinging flies in half.

I instructed the heroes who had not yet entered the gate.

“Help intercept until they return! Damian! Junior!”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

“Hooo… !”

Damian took out [Venom Fang] and began firing, and Junior, taking a deep breath, summoned a tornado.

The flies approaching the gate were torn apart by Lukas’s longsword and Evangeline’s cavalry spear.

I erected a magic barrier to support the Insect Busters and continued to shout.

“Come back, Insect Busters! You can still retreat! We’ll open a path for you! You have to live to get revenge! Hurry… !”

But.

They did not look back.

And that decision was correct. Their return had already become impossible.

The Insect Busters’ resistance at the edge of the wall was only momentary. The flies, completely surrounding them, gathered into a giant whip and lashed down.

Whoooosh-

Thud!

And the swarming flies… grabbed their limbs and forcibly lifted them into the air.

“Let go, you bug bastards!”

The leader held on, swinging his saw blade, but,

“Let go, let go! Let go of me!”

“Ugh, ugh, ugh!”

The rest of the Insect Busters were captured one by one, their bodies seized and pulled into the air.

The flies tore through their protective suits with their clumsy feet, then plunged the tubes on their mouths into the gaps.

Then, the resisting heroes all lost their strength and slumped.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Damian desperately fired his gun to shoot down the flies, but new flies quickly came and filled their places again.

Before we knew it, the heroes of the Insect Busters had been dragged high into the sky.

Crack!

The leader’s saw, which had been struggling until the end, broke.

The leader, staring blankly at the saw that had snapped in half, finally turned around. Towards us.

“You don’t need to try to understand us.”

The leader muttered, laughing hollowly.

“It’s like how a person can’t understand a fly.”

Whoooosh!

The next moment, the flies that rushed at him tore his protective suit to shreds, plunged their stingers into his body, and began to drag him into the sky.

“Your Grace!”

Lukas shook my shoulder violently as I stared blankly at the scene.

“We can’t hold out any longer! Hurry!”

“Ugh… !”

I closed my eyes tightly and turned away.

Torkel, who remained at the rear next to the gate, nodded heavily. I gritted my teeth and threw myself into the teleport gate.

In the sky I looked back at for the last time.

All five of the Insect Busters were captured by the flies and were being dragged into the air.

And at the end of that sky…

The giant Fly King, with hundreds of arms spread wide in all directions, was hovering in the air.

“…”

Incomprehensible.

The actions of the monster, and the hearts of men.

Flash-!

The teleport gate activated, and a white flash filled my vision.

***

“…Ugh.”

The leader of the Insect Busters slowly opened his eyes.

“Ugh… what, how long have I been asleep…”

He was sure that he had been fighting the flies…

…He had been captured by them and dragged away.

“… !”

The leader opened his eyes wide in horror. He frantically waved his arms around, looking for his weapon.

But why?

There wasn’t a single bug around. This was a clean, white space.

“Huh?”

Suddenly, a voice reached the leader’s ears as he let out a bewildered groan.

“Daddy!”

The leader, his eyes wide, looked in that direction and saw his young daughter running towards him with a bright smile.

His precious daughter, who had been captured by the bug monsters decades ago and whose body had never been found.

That child he had abandoned and fled to save his own life, was alive and radiant, without any wounds, just as he remembered her.

“Ah… Aaaah… !”

The leader stammered, unable to speak properly, and then burst into tears, hugging his daughter tightly.

“My daughter… my, daughter… I’m sorry, Daddy is sorry…”

The small, warm daughter in his arms giggled. The leader desperately savored the sensation as he begged for forgiveness.

“This time, I didn’t run away like I did back then… Daddy did well, right? You’ll forgive Daddy, right?”

“Of course, Daddy.”

The daughter wrapped her short, chubby arms around the leader’s neck and replied cheerfully.

“Daddy is so yummy!”

***

Inside the Fly King’s belly, somewhere.

A hatchery filled with countless eggs.

The heroes of the Insect Busters, who had been moved here, were smiling and giggling as they hallucinated, affected by poison and paralysis.

Newly hatched maggots wriggled and poured out like a wave towards the five heroes.

The maggots, having found fresh food, slowly covered the bodies and faces of the five heroes.

The face of the leader, who had been smiling with a bloodied face until the end, was soon completely covered by the monster’s larvae and disappeared from view.

Whoooooooooosh-

In addition to the five heroes, the flies that had gone out to find food brought back anything that was ‘edible’ and piled it up in the hatchery.

From the corpses of their own kind who had been burned to death, to deer, squirrels, and birds, as well as trees and grass.

An infinite number of flies were turning the area into a wasteland, storing resources inside the Fly King’s body.

The Fly King, slowly moving while floating in the air, storing food for its young inside its body, let out a slow cry.

Booooooo…

A carrier that transports adult flies, and a hatchery that raises young flies.

A living seed ship that exists to preserve and spread the species of flies, traveling the world while changing generations.

The Fly King, Baalzebub, did not rejoice at his first victory in the mortal realm, but calmly resumed his northward march.

The monster knew well from his distant past experiences.

Unless he killed and devoured all humans, his species was destined to be persecuted forever.

So, he had no choice but to kill.