Chapter 16
Chapter 16
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 16
Chapter Title: Crisis is Opportunity is Crisis (7)
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***
“All troops—double time!”
Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack!
Once they started moving, the regular army followed orders with such precision that just watching them made my stomach full. Commanding an army like this wasn’t an experience you could get every day. Maybe after this battle, I’d pick up a command-related trait or a leadership stat?
'Hmm, as expected of the regular army. It’s on a whole different level from getting mercenaries to hold formation!'
We were heading to support the central army right next to us, but since we had to swing wide from the end of the line to create space for the knights to wheel around and charge, it would take a little time before we reached the front lines.
‘Oh, right, I still have the chat window open.’
We had some time to kill anyway. Might as well check it real quick—
Ping—
- Deer Drug Please: Big sis! Big siiiiiiis!!!!!!
- Soy Sauce Gaybar: It’s Charlotte! The real Charlotte sis! Shaaaa! Crank all the streams to full pooooower!!!
- Highway Nacho Man: Kughaaaaa!
- Number Three: I-I gotta work harder. If I knew it’d be like this, I would’ve bought a premium login device for GG! These cheap Dome-made login devices can only access the community and auction house!
- Highway Nacho Man: No way, this is insane. I turned on player sense-sharing just to see it myself and thought my head was gonna explode! How the hell does Professor play like that?
- Deer Drug Please: Hey, no chit-chat. Focus on sis.
- Holy: Wow, she’s so pretty....
- Jokass: Professooooor!!!! Manage the stream alreaady!!!!
- Soy Sauce Gaybar: No! Focus on the game!
- Deer Drug Please: She’s coming closer! She’s right in front!
- Mukaba: Killer angle. No way, how does she look that gorgeous in plate mail?
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- Jokass: Whoa.
- Take a Look: What the hell. Thousand Cohort Captain? Isn’t that super high-ranking?
- Speed Wagon: ‘Temporary’. It’s not actually that high an authority for a royal knight. At best, it’s immunity privileges, a license to kill, autonomous coercive investigation, and execution rights? She has military command authority but no appointment power, so it’ll be revoked after this battle.
- Soy Sauce Gaybar: That’s badass. Royal knight.
- Number Three: Sis is a really big shot.
- Deer Drug Please: Anyway, getting to see her face like this is something. Kingsland stalkers usually never leave the capital, let alone the royal castle.
- Mukaba: Yeah. There were even rumors she was the king’s hidden concubine because he kept her so close.
- Jokass: Impossible.
- Take a Look: Totally impossible. Unconquerable character.
- Speed Wagon: Yup. Famous incident where I maxed charm at 94, spent 90 days hitting on her like a walking pheromone bomb that knocks out women by the battalion every time she glances over, and her favorability dropped even more. Not called Iron Wall for nothing.
- Deer Drug Please: Flower on a cliff! Beloved of all men! Love it even more!
- Soy Sauce Gaybar: Kweeeee! F-Fuck, that huuuuurts! It’s not just my head, my whole body’s killing meeee!!
- Highway Nacho Man: Told you not to turn on sense-sharing.
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“....System. Chat off.”
Ping—!
Shouldn’t have looked. Now I’m even dizzier.
While I was distracted for a moment, the troops had already closed in sufficiently on the front lines.
“This should be close enough. All troooops!!! About face!!”
Clack! Clack!
The left flank’s forces had approached to within about twenty paces of the rear of the mutants fighting the central army. What we had to do now was hold the central army in place while the knights smashed the mutants’ backs after they’d been half-wrecked.
“Full advance! Attack at will once the enemy enters range!”
It looked complicated, but it was the most basic hammer-and-anvil tactic. The central army’s job was to hold and endure. We’d complete the encirclement....
“....Engage!”
And smash the crap out of the enemies!
Even when we got close enough to touch, the mutants, focused only on the foes in front of them, had no choice but to get blindsided by the attacks pushing in from behind.
“Don’t get drunk on the heat of battle! Anyone taking even a minor wound, fall out of formation immediately! Don’t get their blood on you! You’ll get infected!”
We swept up the mutants thrown into confusion by attacks from both front and rear,
“Left flank! Cease attack! By the cadence, ten paces back!”
“Ten paces back!”
“Keep step! Make space!”
And before we knew it, we’d cleared the enemies all the way to the right end, turning to create space again for the accelerating knights.
Kwarung! Kwarururung!
“Kraaaagh!”
“Keeeaak!”
“Wooooar!”
“The knights have passed! Advance ten paces agaaaain!!!”
The knights thundered through, and we charged once more at the half-broken mutant horde.
“Heh heh heh. Hey, old timer. You were right on the money. This isn’t even a battle. It’s closer to a one-sided slaughter!”
“Kid! Drinks on me when we get back!”
“You bet! Gotta buy ‘em! Thanks to this guy, our bonuses are gonna multiply! One drink? Nah, a whole barrel!”
The mercenaries were already lost in happy fantasies of how to spend their post-battle pay. It was that much of a repetitive, low-tension operation.
‘Easy.’
That fact had been nagging at Professor from the start. In this game, if something felt easy, something was seriously wrong.
‘Even with an asymmetric force like Charlotte de Agate, it’s too easy. These guys are powerful monsters by my standards, but to the regular army, they’re just individuals lacking combat power enough to handle 1v1 as long as they watch for infection.’
Sure, we’d exploited the situation well, devised the optimal strategy, and luck was on our side, so maybe. But if they were enemies that could be handled like this, Molludic Castle and Pellas wouldn’t have fallen.
Throb. Throb throb!
The Mental Fragility alarm was ringing faster the more enemies fell.
‘Something I missed. What? What’s it warning me about so hard? Half-broken shield? Meaningless. Fallen mutants? Meaningless too. Central army? They’re allies. Knights? No, why, why do these keep catching my eye?’
From my experience so far, the [Mental Fragility] trait lowered focus, caused headaches, and disrupted casting, but in exchange, it injected info into my head about nearly every potential threat around. Once was coincidence, but repeated entries into Mental Fragility range meant something was definitely there.
‘Something I overlooked. Mysteries I noticed but glossed over.’
Once I started suspecting, the facts that had seemed flat began approaching in 3D.
Why had Charlotte, the king’s First Knight—a tactical weapon in her own right—come to this place, Turan?
The bisected kite shield. A large shield made for knights, reinforced with iron plates inside and on the edges. Neatly sliced in half.
The central army soldiers, whose faces were starting to become visible now that the mutants were mostly cleared. The battle’s ending, so why those expressions? They survived a desperate crisis—why are they still terrified?
And the right flank soldiers, who shouldn’t have crumbled so fast against this force, yet collapsed in an instant once the battle started.
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Slish—
Cutting through my chain of thoughts like a sharp knife slicing paper was a quiet sound of flesh parting.
“Wha....wha?”
The soldier’s head faced the sky. Boots caked in blood and dirt, chainmail half-torn by their claws, the flail he’d been swinging wildly at the mutants, and....
“Wha....whaaaaaaa!!! ”
A neck left with only a clean-cut stump, head gone.
Plop plop plop plop!
No pain, no screams. Heads and torsos sliced at an angle slid off, and in an instant, it cleared a section of the battlefield. It lifted its head, eyes languid.
A monster with an unnaturally white body—as if all color had been drained—sat atop a small mountain of corpses made from the central commander and knights. It didn’t fit the blood-soaked battlefield.
“....You’re late.”
“...!!!!!”
Chill!
Professor instinctively staggered back. Every organ in his body was blaring alarms. Flee, hide, or if that fails, die before ‘that thing’ catches you.
Clack—
The bone-white body, like ground bones, rose from its seat. Thin limbs, similarly gaunt torso, around 3 meters tall. It looked fragile at first glance, but his instincts whispered: You won’t even know you’re dead the moment it moves. You won’t get a chance to see its spear-like arm move.
“How.... very late. I’m quite busy, you see. Mother is starving even now, and this hunt has.... been delayed far too long.”
I hoped I’d misheard. Prayed it was a Mental Fragility hallucination or my fear-driven delusion. But from that long, white, Tosa hound-like mouth came words unmistakably in our language.
‘Bipedal. Alien appearance utterly unlike other specimens, intelligence to speak language. Immeasurable combat power. Above all, dog-like face and sleek all-white body.
It’s him. Slightly different look from community info, but everything else matches.’
A named mutant exhibiting at least Grade 3~1 combat power depending on the phase.
An elite specimen capable of autonomous thought without the queen’s orders.
White Death. Queen’s Hound. [Edeorna]
The endpoint of the minor clues Professor had overlooked was quietly stepping toward him.
***
“Mother is a most respectable being.”
Rustle, rustle.
Not even footsteps. Even stepping on corpse-strewn ground or blood-slick mud, its gait was light as wind.
“The black mages’ schemes have left most of Mother’s consciousness asleep, but even those remaining fragments let her instinctively know what she needs most.”
Rustle, rustle.
“She asked for much flesh. To repair the horrific atrocities the black mages committed to steal Mother’s power.”
Rustle.
“She asked for the bodies of the strong. To grant strong flesh to my frail siblings.”
Rustle.
“And she asked for the blood of the intelligent. To bestow intellect like mine upon my siblings lost in haze.”
Thud.
Edeorna’s steps halted. The crouching monster lightly trailed its claw down Professor’s frozen chin, scooping a drop of leaking blood to its mouth. A smile curved its Tosa hound-like lips.
“I’ve been watching you. From the moment you arrived on the battlefield until coming here. Surviving that wave of violence with your unbelievably frail body, leading lowly rabble to slaughter my siblings before me with that wisdom.”
The claw slowly stroking down his cheek finally reached his throat.
“Your blood is a feast fit for kings.”
‘Move! Damn it, move, you worthless body!’
But Professor’s body refused to budge. Like a frog facing a snake, paralyzed by the overwhelming combat power gap.
“Fear not. I’ll use every drop of your blood and flesh preciously, without waste.”
‘Damn it!!!’
Professor squeezed his eyes shut. The white claw sliced into his frozen nape like butter—
Kaaaaang—!
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“Remove those filthy claws. Monster.”
“....My, so impatient.”
Just before Professor’s head could fall, it was blocked by Charlotte’s sword, which had charged in like lightning.
***
Creeeang—!
Kwarururung!
“Cough! Kek!”
I lived. Or did I? I got flung back by the shockwave from Charlotte and Edeorna’s clash, but
“Cough, kuhk, grk, grrrk!”
The massive impact that sent my body flying wrecked my internals; blood refluxed up my esophagus, choking my breath.
‘Damn it, blade, anything sharp....!’
Vision blurry too—cornea damaged probably. Good thing this was a battlefield. Desperately groping around, I grabbed a broken blade.
Pffuk!
“Grrrk!”
Hiss— hiss—
Too choked to care about blade phobia. I jammed it into the trachea below my Adam’s apple. Wind whistled through, securing some breath.
Hiss— hiss—
‘Battle, how’s the battle going?’
Violent clash sounds signaled ongoing fierce combat, but damaged eyes meant I couldn’t see a thing.
‘Damn it. If only I had one potion....!’
In that moment, Professor’s hand swept the blood-and-filth-smeared ground. Body already a wreck. Mutant blood splashed everywhere had probably already unleashed infection agents inside him from last night.
‘Mutant blood, with its excellent regeneration, undergoes tricky alchemy to remove infection agents and make high-grade potions. Body’s already infecting anyway—adding a bit to my eyes won’t drastically speed it up.’
Of course, applying mutant blood directly to wounds without treatment meant even priest purification couldn’t restore infected parts, possibly requiring eye removal. But now wasn’t the time to worry about consequences.
Splat splat.
Smearing a lump of gathered blood-mud into one eye, vision sharpened soon after. Professor turned toward the clamor of metal and tearing air. Eyes healed, but he saw only struggling Charlotte; endlessly moving Edeorna was too fast to track visually.
‘....Even match, for now. But the longer it goes, the worse for us.’
Edeorna was a monster the queen personally birthed for one purpose: ‘strong prey hunting.’ Its exoskeleton, muscles, and endoskeleton perfectly served strength and cushioning while weighing like a feather, granting unmatched speed. And speed itself was the sharpest spear and sturdiest shield.
Hero optimized for army battles vs. named optimized for single combat—matchup disadvantage inevitable. She defended well so far, but damage accumulated steadily, and Edeorna waited for the moment that created defensive gaps.
‘Then it’s over for everyone. Somehow, make Charlotte win....’
“Cough! Grrrk!”
Professor tried to move somehow, but rising made his right leg buckle powerlessly, toppling him.
It hurt. Blood kept flowing into the makeshift trache hole, hindering breath. Shaking legs, scraped-and-torn skin, organs squeezed like a vise—all agony. Just a game. Hit log out now, and the world blacks out instantly.
Rustle.
“.....”
As sweet temptation tickled his brain, something snagged Professor’s foot as he painfully crawled from the combat zone. A wooden hilt from a shoeless shortsword.
Professor smashed the hilt’s pommel with his blade shard, then jammed the hilt into his throat hole.
“Ugh! Uuuugh!!!”
Whiiish! Hiss— hiss—
Air rushed through the scabbard hole, easing breath. Pain of flesh parting dizzied his mind, and amid precarious consciousness, the sharpest old memory pierced through.
[Never give up. Even the fragments of life you deem most worthless are part of you. Peel them away one by one, and surrender becomes habit; someday, you’ll lose the strength to hold what matters most. So cling to your life, filthy, humble, wretched as it is. Love your life, my son.]
Father was a poet. Unlike his boisterous looks, delicate sentences flowed from his fingertips—even his last words poetic.
That’s why they stuck so vividly.
Father’s voice putting a gas mask on my face after being stranded in a chemical bomb zone amid enemy lines, his expression visible even through his own mask.
Father’s gas mask lacked a filter. Unlike mine.
Ziiiip—
Professor bound his broken leg with a nearby spear haft. Draggable, but enough to crawl.
‘Status window.... No need to check. All red-flashing: infected, worsening, etc.’
But that was just the system’s labels. What moved his body was his mind linked to the login device. Professor resolved not even to think he couldn’t move.
‘Don’t give up. Move. No problem without a solution. Somewhere here, the answer I must find exists.’
Professor’s crumbling body began to move, slowly.
***