Chapter 209: The Triumph of Politics
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 209: The Triumph of Politics
Encrid rested his hand on the hilt of his sword and steadied his breathing.
The vanguard, the tip of the spear, the edge of the blade—no matter the name, he stood at the very front. He had stepped onto a massive battlefield.
The terrain was flat, a perfect stage for an open-field engagement. He had expected the cavalry to charge. In fact, anyone could have foreseen it. Which was exactly why stepping out like this was nothing short of madness.
To the enemy, it must have looked as if there wasn't a single sane soul on this side of the field. Still, he hadn't expected them to commit to a full cavalry charge right from the start.
Thud-thud-thud!
Even though the riders were still a distance away, the ground trembled under their approach. Despite the earth-shaking thunder of hooves, they were still far enough that he didn't need to begin his dance of blades just yet. Nevertheless, they were fast. The distance was closing rapidly.
The wild ferocity radiating from the horses, the choking dust kicked up by their hooves, and the sight of the uniformly armored riders were enough to strike terror into the heart of any man.
"Hah, look at that bastard. Grinning like a damn fool."
The sharp-eyed Rem spoke as he watched the approaching cavalry commander. The man wore a helmet that completely obscured his face, making it impossible for a normal person to see his expression.
"You can see that?" Encrid asked.
"I can just feel it," Rem snorted.
Was a barbarian’s intuition as terrifying as Sachsen’s? Or was it simply a primal instinct that triggered whenever he felt someone looking down on him? Regardless, Encrid felt something similar.
He estimated the number of charging cavalry. Over fifty.
Standing on the front line were himself, Rem, Ragna, Sachsen, and Audin. Finn, Dunchabel, and Esther had been ordered to fall back.
"I can fight too!" Dunchabel had protested right before they stepped out.
It was hardly a convincing argument coming from a beastman who had just returned with a cracked skull after trying to keep up with Audin. She currently had bandages wrapped from her left ear all the way across her forehead.
"Haha, sister. You nearly crossed over. If you’re so eager to reach the heavens, just say the word. I’ll gladly send you there myself right now."
At Audin’s polite death threat, Dunchabel shut her mouth. She had followed Audin, acted cocky, and paid the price. Even if she hadn't been injured, Encrid had no intention of bringing her along.
"She’s far too weak," Rem muttered from the side, leaving her with a promise to "see her later."
Just because Rem’s usual demeanor was light didn't mean his words lacked weight. A "we'll see about that" from Rem was, to put it mildly, terrifying. Though Dunchabel didn't seem to realize the gravity of it at all.
Encrid cast aside his brief thoughts. The cavalry was now upon them.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
The ground groaned as the charging riders bared their weapons. They held long spears with broad blades that gleamed in the sunlight, angled diagonally toward the earth. They were glaives—weapons designed more for wide, devastating slashes than simple thrusts.
The day was exceptionally clear. Encrid thought the bright sunlight suited the edge of his sword perfectly. If so, all he had to do was use it.
Chring.
He drew his sword, gripped the hilt with both hands, and gave it a slight twist.
"Wall, my ass!" the lead rider screamed as he bore down on them.
Encrid responded with a technique of the Valen-style Mercenary Sword.
Valen-style Mercenary Sword Offensive Technique: Blinding Flash.
The lethally honed blade reflected his face like a mirror. He angled the steel to catch the sun, reflecting a concentrated glare directly into the opponent's eyes.
"Ugh!"
As the brilliance struck the rider’s eyes, he flinched and instinctively raised a hand. Even so, his horse didn't hesitate, and their charging speed remained unchanged. Still, their momentum felt slightly blunted.
Regardless of the glare, the approaching glaive sliced through the air, aiming to sever Encrid’s neck. The broad blade cut a diagonal arc through the sky.
The reflected sunlight, his razor-sharp sword, the enemy, the sun, the earth, the horse, the dust, the battlefield, the vanguard—for a brief moment, Encrid took in everything around him, only to let it all fade as he plunged into absolute focus.
He forgot himself. He forgot the world. There was only the enemy and his sword.
In sync with the incoming glaive, his Heart of Monstrous Strength hammered in his chest. If the courage gained from the Beast’s Heart kept him from blinking at the oncoming steel, his sharpened senses allowed him to read the timing perfectly.
Encrid swung his sword vertically, striking the flat of the glaive.
Clang!
That crisp, ringing sound was the beginning. The muscular strength of his two hands harmonized with his masterpiece sword.
Crack!
Facing a wall of aligned blades, Encrid shattered the very first spearhead.
He had no time to watch the shards fly. In a world where only the enemy, the sword, and himself existed, the only thing left to do was swing. He deflected, parried, and slipped past the rushing blades, slashing whenever an opening appeared.
Thud!
Slicing through the horse armor, his blade severed the animal's front right leg. Hot, fresh blood sprayed, accompanied by a pained, high-pitched whinny. The scream quickly faded into the distance, but more blades relentlessly followed. Such was the nature of a cavalry charge; once the momentum began, there was no stopping it.
Within Encrid’s mindscape—that world where only the sword and the enemy remained—the words Ragna had once spoken slipped through a split-second gap.
"When you move on to the applications of the Heavy Sword Style, you will train in two forms of slashing."
Normally, an instructor would explain the utility of a technique first, but expecting that from Ragna was futile.
"They are the Lion Slash and the Steel Slash."
The explanation had been crude, but Encrid understood it perfectly. The Lion Slash did not mean literally cutting a lion; it referred to cleaving a highly dynamic target in a single blow, as if striking down a leaping predator. The Steel Slash referred to cutting through refined, solid hardness, even if it was stationary.
Dynamism and solidity—at first, practiced separately. Later, it meant cutting through both at once.
"If you wish to grasp 'Will,' you must master both."
Ragna’s final words had left a deep impression. Encrid knew that the technique of 'Severing' Ragna had shown him before began with these two Heavy Sword Style slashes.
Encrid recalled the Lion Slash as he cut down the charging warhorses. The traces of swordsmanship etched themselves into his mindscape. His body, reacting through his Sense of Evasion, guided his hands, feet, and sword to cleave the charging cavalry.
Whoosh, thud, craaaack!
Three distinct, chaotic sounds rang in his ears simultaneously. The horse and rider, sliced clean through from head to forelegs, collapsed onto the ground behind him.
"Argh!"
The scream of a rider thrown from his mount echoed. He was an unfortunate soul; that final cry was his death rattle. He had landed awkwardly on his head, his limbs twitching once before he drew his last breath.
And just like that, the first wave of the charge passed. Naturally, not a single person on Encrid’s side had fallen.
*
For cavalry, the horse itself was a weapon. Facing a charge head-on was suicide. A Giant or someone like Frok might pull off such a stunt, but was it really a smart move? Even if you blocked one, what about the swarm pressing in right behind it? If being crushed to death under the weight of horses and barding was your hobby, then sure, it was an excellent method.
Indeed, facing a cavalry charge head-on was sheer madness. No matter how confident one was, that was the rule.
So what on earth are these people?
Marcus watched them react to the enemy charge. From Encrid parrying the blades to the largest soldier among them, his eyes darted across the field. Perhaps due to his sheer size, that man caught Marcus’s eye first.
Was his name Audin?
A devout soldier who began his day with prayer, yet a man who was exceptionally good at beating humans and demonic beasts to death.
He stood directly in the path of the charge. He deflected incoming glaives with a short, forearm-length club, caught the head of a charging warhorse with his bare palm, and twisted it aside.
Was a blade supposed to bounce away like that just from being swatted? And was it even possible to redirect a charging warhorse using nothing but raw arm strength?
Neigh!
But redirecting it wasn't the end. With that single move, the horse collapsed helplessly to its side. He had absorbed the full momentum of the charge and redirected it. Watching someone handle a cavalry charge like that, Marcus went beyond admiration—he was utterly flabbergasted.
This makes no sense.
It was an astounding feat. In truth, though Marcus couldn't see it clearly, Audin hadn't even struck the blade itself. He had struck the shaft of the spear, right at the joint of the blade. The enemy cavalrymen had secured the shafts of their weapons to the sockets behind their saddles, merely holding them near the middle to brace themselves. It was a tactic designed to slash in tandem with their charging speed.
Yet Audin hadn't retreated a single step. After dispatching one rider, the devout bear of a man ducked to avoid the next incoming blade, then smashed his club into the head of the third warhorse he encountered.
Smash!
This time, the horse died instantly without even a whimper. Its head exploded right through its armor, spraying a mist of blood. Through the crimson haze, Audin wore a benevolent smile, though Marcus was too far to see that terrifying detail.
Audin wasn't the only one standing out. If he was the anchor, next was the axe-wielding madman.
"Hah!"
With a shout, Rem struck a glaive’s blade with his axe. Strangely, the axe and the glaive seemed to stick together, refusing to separate. Entangled like vines, he seemed to be pushed back by the horse's momentum, but he quickly displayed an astonishing trick.
Maintaining his backward momentum, he grabbed the middle of the spear shaft, stepped onto the horse’s head, and vaulted himself up onto the rider. Marcus watched, unable to comprehend how such a thing was even possible. In truth, it was a feat that required footwork and reaction speeds faster than a galloping horse, combined with absurd physical strength.
Crunch!
From atop the horse, he gifted the rider’s head with his axe blade. As he leaped sideways toward the next horse, another rider tried to draw the estoc at his waist. Before the rider could even clear the scabbard, his shoulder was severed. It was magic wrought by a flashing axe blade.
Having killed two cavalrymen, Rem rolled onto the ground. Miraculously, he avoided being trampled by the hooves, dodging to the side with practiced ease. To Marcus, it was incomprehensible. They were no different from an acrobatic troupe one might see in the central territories.
Encrid was equally eye-catching. He shattered the first incoming blade with sheer force, then slashed and slashed again. The way he cleaved through horses and riders alike amidst his dodges seemed crude at a glance, but his slashes were so clean they were deeply satisfying to watch.
Beside him, the man named Ragna displayed similar movements. However, unlike Encrid’s heavy, sweeping strikes, Ragna neutralized the cavalry’s charge with subtle thrusts and deflections. His skill was no less remarkable.
The sight of Encrid’s heavy slashes shattering the cavalry’s charge was exhilarating. Meanwhile, one of them was nowhere to be seen, but what did that matter? No one paid him any mind anyway.
The important thing was this: the cavalry had charged, yet more than a dozen of them had been wiped out, while their targets remained completely unscathed.
A long trail of horse and rider blood stained the ground. It was blood spilled by horses that kept running even with dead riders on their backs. Those whose heads had exploded or who had been sliced in half left fountains of gore on the earth. The dust kicked up by the hooves mixed with the blood, turning the air a hazy, rusted red.
Having witnessed all of this, Marcus spoke.
"Adjutant."
"Yes, sir."
"Who was the one who gathered them all in one place?"
The adjutant recited the facts he had gathered. "It was the former battalion commander, sir."
"So that fool actually did something useful for once."
The former battalion commander certainly hadn't intended for things to turn out like this. He had likely thrown all the troublemakers—guilty of everything from assaulting superiors to various other infractions—into a single unit, intending to use them as meat shields to reap some easy benefits. That bastard had always enjoyed stealing his subordinates' achievements, so he probably figured that if they died fighting, the credit would naturally go to him.
They were too valuable to discard entirely, yet too troublesome to keep close. He had intended to use them as a disposable blade.
And then a fellow named Encrid joined them, completing the picture.
Marcus, the politician, deduced the origin of the Troublemaker Squad right then and there. Yes, the former battalion commander was an idiot, but...
"A good deed is a good deed. I honestly feel like pinning a medal on him."
Grouping them together and appointing Encrid as their squad leader was truly a stroke of genius. Look at them. Was it not magnificent?
While Marcus felt awe, the enemy commander who had ordered the charge was utterly dumbfounded. The commander of the infantry-slaying cavalry under Viscount Vantra’s army had no choice but to halt. He had to wheel around and reorganize his formation, as twelve of his fifty riders were already dead.
His own survival? Pure luck. Had he been within their reach, he would have been the one dying. The commander had seen the blade that brushed past him. He had also seen the man wielding it.
The name was Encrid. He had first heard that name attached to some fortress wall—the subject of absurd rumors.
I thought it was just a bluff. I thought it was nothing but wild rumors. A trick to make our army retreat by exaggerating their strength, right? They should have been shredded into meat by our charge.
"What kind of bullshit is this?" the commander muttered.
For a moment, he almost lost his will to fight. But he couldn't afford to. The battle had only just begun. As they wheeled around to reform their line, he saw the four survivors. He saw the blue eyes of the black-haired man wearing a crude helmet.
The man seemed lost in deep thought. Then, he saw him mutter something to his side. He couldn't hear what was being said.
It was at that moment, just as the commander was steeling his resolve once more—
Thrust!
"Gah!"
Suddenly, a blade plunged deep into his neck. It felt as if someone had shoved a burning torch into his throat. A searing pain radiated from his spine, spreading throughout his entire body. His muscles froze instantly.
"Commander!"
He heard his subordinate shout from behind. He tried to open his mouth, but no coherent words could form. That was simply what happened when one’s vocal cords were severed and a hole was punched through their throat.
"Gurgle!"
Bloody foam bubbled from the commander’s mouth as his head slumped limply to the side.
The cause of death: a stab wound to the nape of the neck.
The one who had delivered this parting gift was Sachsen, the man with reddish-brown hair.
The sound faded. There was no murmuring. In that single, stunned moment, while everyone watched in disbelief, Sachsen quietly went about his business.