Chapter 165
Chapter 165
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: The Ancient Old King
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After the battle ended, the humans laughed, intoxicated by the afterglow of victory.
But not everyone could afford to do so. Even after perfectly luring the enemy into a trap and launching an ambush, the humans had suffered considerable losses of their own.
In the few short minutes of Arsen and Myushu's clash—not a long time at all—three knights and twenty-five regular soldiers had met their deaths.
Among the casualties of this battle were two of Arsen's own men.
The pair had been manning the arrow launchers when they were slain by Myushu's wing blades.
“Jisto... Resi...”
“Damn it all, to come this far and die here.”
The soldiers sat slumped in a daze around their comrades' corpses.
It was a journey so perilous that ten lives wouldn't have been enough, yet they'd made it without a single sacrifice until now. That alone was tremendous luck.
This time, fortune simply hadn't smiled on them.
‘These two, of all people.’
Arsen gazed down at the bodies of his fallen subordinates.
Jisto and Resi had originally served under Bazkal before joining Arsen along with him.
Which was why Arsen turned to Bazkal and asked,
“In Narvik, you just bury the dead in the ground and call it done, right?”
“Yeah. Nothing special about it.”
“You satisfied with that?”
Deep down, he wanted to give them a proper funeral with full rites, but the situation didn't allow for it.
Even now, they were pressed for time like never before. They couldn't afford to stand idly by the corpses of their dead comrades.
There were captured Olmu stragglers still clinging to life whose throats needed slitting, injured allies who needed rescuing despite their wounds, usable weapons to gather up—endless tasks.
At Arsen's question, Bazkal shook his head and let out a deep sigh.
“Back in the old days, maybe, but now that it's happened... doing it that way just feels wrong.”
It seemed the various cultures and funeral customs he'd witnessed on their journey had changed Bazkal's outlook.
People change as much as what they see and hear, after all.
Arsen nodded at his desire for something more formal, then gave orders to the soldiers.
“Bury them for now and cut off a lock of their hair to preserve. We'll hold a proper funeral later when we have time. The most honorable kind, befitting my men's service.”
At Arsen's command, the soldiers nodded silently, severed locks of their comrades' hair to keep, and buried the bodies.
Bazkal dug the graves himself. Arsen noticed droplets falling from his chin.
Everyone pretended not to see.
* * *
Once the cleanup was finished, Arsen met with Timak and the other leaders to talk.
Everyone who saw Arsen bowed their heads in respect.
“That was truly an incredible showing.”
“No injuries, I hope?”
They seemed even more concerned for his body than he was. Arsen shook his head and declared himself unharmed.
He had twisted one wrist, but that was nothing a healing spell couldn't fix in moments.
Timak nodded in relief.
“We won, but... this proved it beyond doubt. We stand no chance against them in a straight fight.”
“Agreed. This battle only succeeded because they let their guard down. We won't get another opportunity this favorable.”
Judging by the wounded Olmu heroes' overwhelming prowess, a head-on clash would have ended in defeat for the humans.
The thousand-odd regular Olmu alone would have crushed the other knights and warriors. And no matter how mighty Arsen was, if he'd been surrounded by Myushu and dozens of Olmu heroes, he would have died without putting up much resistance.
Timak nodded gravely at the point, then asked as if the thought had just occurred to him,
“By the way, did you check the spoils? There looked to be some impressive items.”
“Yeah, I looked them over some. Didn't have time to test them, though.”
Commander Myushu had left behind a trove of relics.
Not just the wing blades that had flown freely through the sky slicing soldiers' throats, but every jewel adorning his body was a one-use relic. He was a walking treasure chest.
On top of that, he wore a snug undergarment that must have protected him from projectile attacks.
‘Can't use it anymore, though.’
It might have rivaled the wing blades in usefulness, or even surpassed them—but the undergarment had exhausted its power.
It had been all but torn in half by Arsen's mace, its embedded magic spent.
A true shame.
“We've sorted things enough for now, so we should move. We'll need time to prepare for the next phase.”
Timak's settlement had burned to the ground, making it uninhabitable. They had to relocate to a smaller one stocked with enough food to feed hundreds of warriors for weeks.
Their next objective was singular.
The moment the enemy opened their defenses to launch a proper counterattack—strike straight for the heart.
They had to land the perfect counterpunch at the perfect timing to claim victory.
* * *
“Myushu is dead?”
“Yes, the thunder beast split him clean in half.”
Honorifics were quite foreign in Olmu society.
Human slaves often used them with their Olmu masters, but Olmu never used them with their own kind.
Even the lowliest foot soldier spoke casually to a commander one rank below the king—that was their way.
Yet right now, this Olmu was reporting in a polite tone he would never normally use.
Because the one before him deserved it.
The parent of all Olmu, the great king, was present.
“Myushu was my proudest creation.”
The sigh that escaped was faint. Almost as if proving its owner was female.
At a glance, the king resembled a human. Specifically, a human woman in her thirties or forties.
But guessing she was human from her appearance would be quite the stretch.
She stood nearly three meters tall, blue veins bulging across her body, with four arms—who in the world had ever seen such a human?
“Out of a thousand, only four survived?”
“Yes, please forgive...”
The Olmu hero knelt before the king, trembling violently. Like a child caught misbehaving by a parent, or a heretic come face-to-face with their god.
This wasn't mere learned behavior—it was instinct etched into the very blood of the Olmu race.
The mental compulsion she had personally imprinted affected not just the first Olmu but their descendants with unyielding force.
The king muttered impassively, showing no interest in her subordinate's shaking.
“It'll take time to replenish those numbers. I'll have to cull fewer females for a while.”
Olmu reproduction differed vastly from their close kin, humans—so much so that it resembled insects far more than mammals.
A few males mated with a few females before exhausting themselves to death, while the females gave birth to a handful of sexual individuals and hordes of asexual ones until they themselves died.
Those asexuals were the regular soldiers and heroes.
Even this twisted form was her design.
Compared to the mammalian method of sexed breeding, this allowed rapid population booms when needed and easy control of breeding rates.
All it took was adjusting the number of breeding females in the home nest.
“What were their numbers? How did it come to that?”
“They attacked at first, but...”
The explanation followed. They'd dug traps, herded them in, then unleashed a flame barrage that killed most. The king scowled.
‘The magic weakness is finally coming back to bite me.’
The Olmu's vulnerability to magic wasn't a natural flaw from their creation—it was deliberate.
In case her creations ever rebelled, the master mage that was she could suppress them herself.
She should have removed the weakness once the pre-injected 'loyalty factor' proved effective, but by then she'd already lost the ability to alter Olmu traits.
Because the magical tool she'd unearthed with her husband—the ancient relic for manipulating life—had broken.
Had the relic survived intact, she would have restored her body and attained true immortality by now.
‘Radus.’
King Yerika murmured the name of her lover, unseen for countless ages.
The lover she had betrayed. The lover who had betrayed her.
“Your Majesty?”
Her subordinate's question snapped her from her reminiscence. Waking from a pleasant dream always soured the mood, and the six pupils in her two eyes gleamed with irritation.
As the hero shuddered anew in terror, she looked down on him pityingly and issued her command.
“Relay this: To commanders Locke, Taem, and Batta. Assemble the armies for subjugation. The thunder-making human must be captured alive. Do not slaughter the humans to the point they can't sustain themselves. Kill guardians and mages as you please, but spare ordinary humans and let them return to the wild as much as possible.”
The Olmu hero listening to the orders felt a surge of inner resentment. Such leniency toward foes who'd already slain over a thousand kin? Far too soft.
They deserved extermination or wholesale enslavement.
But the thought evaporated the instant he beheld the king before him.
Dare he resent the great and terrible king's command? Had he lost his mind?
“Understood!”
He berated himself, nodded politely, and left the chamber.
“Hmph.”
With a snort, the king gazed at her own hand, pale and slender with no trace of wrinkles, blue veins protruding.
The youth she forcibly maintained by cycling through hundreds, thousands of humans.
To preserve it, humans had to persist.
But she couldn't capture them all as slaves. The Olmu needed a constant foe to keep them on edge.
Only by fighting enemies and honing their arms could they stand ready for a potential invasion from the surface someday.
The obsession that someone would attack had dominated her for centuries.
“Yes, I must live. On and on.”
She muttered as she reclined into the bathtub.
It brimmed with liquid squeezed from dozens of freshly captured humans or select slaves.
Her unique secret recipe, born from devouring ancient biological tomes: the essence of life, known only to her.
“Haa...”
Yerika smiled languidly as she immersed herself. A ecstasy as if every cell in her body was reborn.
In that grotesque, wretched pleasure, her unfinished words scattered into the air.
‘But... for what?’
* * *
After relocating, the humans rested for a few days.
They ate their fill, healed wounds with magic, and slept away their exhaustion.
But the rest—pleasant enough they'd have wished it endless—was cut short by a messenger bearing fresh news.
Timak's face hardened as he asked,
“Is that true?”
“Yes. Word from a distant settlement. The Olmu are mobilizing in force. From the tales, it sounds like thousands are on the move...”
Anxiety clouded the messenger's face.
The previous battle, where they'd incinerated a thousand Olmu, had bolstered human courage—but it had sown fear as well.
Even trapping them for a one-sided slaughter had cost dearly, a stark reminder of the gulf between Olmu and human capabilities.
The leaders voiced a flurry of opinions.
“Good, our chance.”
“Is this really the right call? I mean... maybe we should take more time to think.”
“Don't mince words—you're scared.”
“What did you just say?”
Fear etched every arguing leader's face.
Arsen didn't call them out for revisiting a settled matter. He knew full well what they feared and why they acted this way.
What if they failed to kill the king? What if the Olmu didn't scatter as planned even with her dead, but rallied instead to avenge her and exterminate the humans?
Visions of doom always bred hesitation.
History brimmed with those who'd botched critical moments out of fear. Backing off at the pivotal juncture was practically human nature.
Arsen had no intention of following their example. He raised his drill spear—now his signature weapon—and slammed its butt into the ground with a thud.
The leaders' eyes turned to him.
“We depart in three days as planned. We'll smash through every obstacle swiftly, then...”
He flipped the drill spear and stabbed at a section of the map drawn on the floor.
The widest passage in this underworld, reached via the central route: the vital heart of it all.
The Olmu capital lay there.
“We strike the Olmu king.”