A Knight's Valor Knows No Recklessness (3)
Clack. Thud. A long, grinding rattle.
Mordred's palisade held firm.
They had carried on as if they were only patching the places that needed patching, but in truth the wall Mordred had raised stood taller and sturdier than most castle ramparts. The ground around it bristled with traps, and the variety of them was nothing short of exhaustive: artificial marshland and sinkholes, and beyond those, poisons of every kind and mine-like snares strewn without end. The palisade looked, at a glance, like mere timber, yet at set intervals they had packed it with mud and worked monster bone into the build, raising its endurance until it could proudly bear the weight of dozens of great monsters.
That human hands had made a fortress like this was enough to drag a gasp of admiration out of anyone, though in another light it was only natural. This was a stronghold that had been shut in here not for a mere five years, but for decades that leapt far past them, holding back the flood of the wicked races all the while. Once a place had kept evolving for the sake of killing those races, it stood to reason that not only the warriors' individual might, but the majesty of the fortress itself, would grow.
The Wailing Fortress. The fortress steeped in decades of Mordred's history and blood had always set an unshakable faith in its warriors—the faith that, whatever might come, this fortress would not be breached.
"—We'll be lucky if it holds for a single hour."
Which was why it could be said outright. Today, this fortress would fall.
Small wonder.
KUGUGUGUNG!
...Because against that host, it could not last more than an hour.
Kieeeek!!! Goblins.
Krrrr...! Kobolds and gnolls.
Haaak!! Hellhounds.
It was the first time. The first time he had seen so vast a pack of monsters gathered in one place. Packed until they seethed, they were revolting even to look at, and the sight alone bled the will to fight straight out of a man. The more dreadful truth was that this was only the beginning.
"There's still a long way to go, back behind them."
The genuine articles—the ones people called mid-grade and large-grade—had not moved. They were still waiting. Strangely, though, they refused to stir, and the reason was...
"Ha. Filth of the wicked races, and you dare look down on Mordred?"
The arrogance of things that believed this wave alone was already enough, or that they would move only after it had been wiped out. People said the bigger a monster grew, the cleverer it became, or the more bloated its pride, and the mid- and large-grades proved that pride to a one, sending only the small-grades forward and choosing to sit as spectators.
"Does the filthy wicked race not carry itself exactly like some arrogant noble?"
...And yet, however the fury rose, it had to be admitted. Even if they had committed only the small monsters, the end of this fight was already despair. The small-grades alone had surged well past a hundred thousand, and that by itself teemed and crawled until it became terror. More terrifying still was the fact that behind those hundred thousand, another hundred thousand remained....
"......"
A few of the soldiers kept their silence, but their mouths and hands had begun to tremble. Over the long years they had come to believe they had forgotten what fear felt like, yet before a host this overwhelmingly vast, even holding on to one's composure was brutally hard. The killing intent and malice pouring off hundreds of thousands of monsters lay thick beyond measure, and that alone bestowed a vast terror and a crushing pressure. For any human being, fear was simply the natural answer.
Even so.
"All of you, take aim!"
"Get the guns ready to blaze! I don't care if the barrels melt! Don't rest till the end—fire, and fire again!"
"Same for the Flame Cannons! Don't think about what comes after! I don't care if they break! Keep firing to the last—!!"
Even as the fear took hold of them, they refused to lose the will to fight. They dropped into battle readiness at once and trained muzzles and cannon on the front.
And in that hair-trigger moment—
Kaaah━━! Haaak━!! ━━!
The monsters howled as one.
"!?"
"Ugh—!"
"H-hold...!"
A force that set the whole body prickling. Monster Fear. The Fear unique to monsters burst out all at once. They had endured it before, up to the scale of ten thousand, but the Fear poured forth by fully a hundred thousand monsters was something even they had never met. A hundred thousand human throats shouting together would already be overwhelming, and the roar of a hundred thousand of the wicked races came on as a mighty attack in itself. Some felt their guts turn with a sickening revulsion until their bodies swayed; others spouted nosebleeds one after another.
Even so, this was too much....
BOOOOM!!
"......?"
For an instant, something impossible to understand—no, something impossible to believe—occurred. A voice far too huge for any human throat, a roar, cracked out like a cannon and canceled the monsters' Fear. An unbelievable thing....
A low, rolling hum.
Even the monsters went still, and some of them twitched and spasmed instead.
And the man who had canceled roar with roar moved first, under every eye.
"—My lord Margrave. I know it's presumptuous, but may I be the one to declare war first?"
"...Since when do you speak so politely? It doesn't suit you."
"Take the courtesy while it's offered. You're the supreme commander, aren't you? In wartime you ought to be treated properly."
"......"
It was so ordinary a remark that no one could believe it had come from the man who had just unleashed that overwhelming spirit, and Cain felt bewilderment and a hollow letdown at the same time.
What was that?
He had known the man was strange, but really—what an unplaceable specimen.
A human pouring out a spirit to match a hundred thousand monsters....
In the five years we were gone, did men like that become common out there?
Cain even entertained that absurd fancy, but one thing was certain. The impossible man before him was on his side.
That's reassuring!
A hundred thousand monsters stood before his eyes, and yet he had the sudden sense that their own camp held a warrior equal to a host of a hundred thousand.
And so.
"Rampage as you please."
"I'll take that as permission."
The moment leave was given, he lifted a foot at once, as if he meant to kick something. For a second it looked as though he might be kicking at empty air, but only then did the soldiers' eyes find the great boulder in front of him. Crushed beneath the weight of his presence, they had not even noticed the thing was there, and they were still wondering what on earth he meant to do when—
Whoom—!
...the boulder sprang skyward like a ball full of spring, tracing a huge arc as it flew.
"...?"
Before yet another unreal sight, the soldiers stood dumb, mouths hanging open like fools, and it was not only the soldiers. Even the monsters blinked and gaped like idiots.
The thing that came flying out of the sky without warning drew a thoroughly splendid parabola—slow, and with a fierce spin—
because it fell on them.
KRA-A-AANG!
In the next instant a boulder, no cannon at all, vomited a tremendous shockwave and swept the ground around it.
"......"
"Well? As declarations of war go, that's decent enough, isn't it?"
"......"
"My lord Margrave?"
"...Just speak plainly."
"Sorry?"
"Hearing you use honorifics gives me the chills."
"?"
"......Unbelievable."
What was that?
...Terrifying.
He kicked.
Boom!
He kicked again.
Boooom!
Lee Han kept kicking boulders as if he were drilling mid-range shots. Fortunately, there were plenty of balls to kick—no, boulders.
More useful than most heavy equipment, this fellow.
The moment he told the muscle-brained brute that he needed rocks, a steady stream of boulders began arriving without end.
"This Felix will carry out the mission!!"
At times like this, even that bullheaded stubbornness seemed to help. Alone, and without pause, he was hauling boulders that easily cleared one ton, or two, or three. Whatever else one might say of him, that stubbornness and that diligence, at least, had to be granted.
So—
I ought to show him a return worthy of the trouble he's gone to.
Boooom!!
The boulder Lee Han had kicked shot up into the sky, as if he were loosing a catapult.
The trick that made such a thing possible was simple. The knack that was not quite a knack was to strike not so as to shatter the stone, but with the feeling of loading nothing but force into the kick. Catch the sense of it, and it was easy, and the principle was much the same as Piercing-One Spear.
He could not, however, put out his full strength the way he did when he struck with Piercing-One Spear. If the enemy were few, perhaps, but with this many, rationing one's stamina was essential. In that sense, the force of Piercing-One Spear that Lee Han was putting out now remained at about ten percent of his usual.
Well, even so....
For trash that low, this is plenty.
KRAAANG!!
Every time a boulder—a flung stone—came down, monsters were swept away with a mighty boom. Dozens of them burst apart like mincemeat the instant they were struck, so neatly it almost looked like a play whose actors had rehearsed their cues. The monsters were dying as if they had chosen not to block at all, so if that wasn't theater, what was it....
David didn't beat Goliath for nothing.
To put what Lee Han was doing more simply, he was not merely throwing stones. He was working a kind of slingshot. The boulder's full weight and speed, and the might of a stone carrying Lee Han's Gyeong, did not fall short of a cannon; if anything, because he had pushed the boulder's mass to its limit, it would unleash a force beyond imagination.
And a mere goblin was going to stop that?
Laughable. Even a large-grade would have its head burst if it took the blow head-on, so there was no way goblins could block it, no matter what they tried....
But—
Crack!
Monsters might be arrogant, yet that did not make them fools.
Uoooo—.
A large-grade, the Mountain King, showed itself for the first time, lightly trampling the goblins already reduced to meat paste, and smashed the boulder outright. Had it been careless, that would have been another story, but a Mountain King without carelessness was a terrible thing—terrible enough to pulverize an incoming boulder-slingshot as it came.
The tyrant of the mountain, as expected.
Arrogant, and yet not emptily so, the king of the mountain bared a mighty spirit and was the first among the large-grades to rise. It even felt like a king's progress, stepping forward in place of worthless vassals, and at the ogre's appearance the goblins and gnolls immediately bowed like fawning lackeys paying a vassal's courtesy.
Puff!
Even as the bowing goblins were stepped on by the ogre and burst like balloons....
Mighty violence, and mightier strength. A high-grade monster even among monsters, and the one best known among common folk. But that was not because the thing was commonplace. It was well known because it possessed strength to match. Meet one by chance, they said, and you either ran for your life on the spot, or else you gave up on living.
And so the Mountain King let out a huge roar and made its presence known, lifting both hands high.
From here on, it would see to things itself—.
Crack!
...Krk?
One goblin blinked.
...Why was the Mountain King's head gone?
The answer was simple.
"How can you loose an arrow like that?"
"Well."
"......"
"Monster brains only go so far. It's not as if anyone announced we'd only be throwing rocks. Easy bastards to fight, anyway."
"......"
"What?"
"...Nothing. It's nothing."
Launching an arrow barehanded at two hundred miles an hour—321.87 kilometers—was surely not a question of intelligence. For the first time, Felix let a crack show in his faith in common sense.