Chapter 528: Fucking Cheat
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 528: Fucking Cheat
In war, sacrifice is inevitable.
It is simply unavoidable.
Like sacrificing a knight to take a bishop, a bishop to take a rook, or a rook to take a queen in a game of chess, victory without loss was nothing more than a distant dream.
That was why Finn had entered this mission prepared to die. That was her role in this battle. No—she believed it was, and she accepted it as only natural.
‘If a passing bard were to turn this into a story, what would I be?’
Though many soldiers fell, the victory belonged to our forces.
Would she be just one of the fallen soldiers lumped into that single, cold sentence?
A skilled storyteller might paint a more detailed picture of the Ranger Unit's exploits, but one thing was certain: Finn had accepted her end. Since sacrifice was inevitable, someone had to play the part, and she believed it was her turn.
She had steeled her resolve, fully aware that this was the end, when—
‘Huh?’
For a moment, she was speechless. Finn could only blink. Had an attack come, she would have reacted out of sheer muscle memory, but her mind had completely frozen.
What the hell was this?
Something impossible by her standards had just occurred.
Was it a dream? No. The stinging pain from her various wounds anchored her to reality. Blood trickled down her forearm from the gash on her shoulder, hot and sharp. The sense of reality was vivid.
Then what the hell was this guy?
Her gaze drifted toward Sachsen. Her subordinates were doing the exact same. At some point, the elves they had been fighting had vanished, and in their place stood a single member of that "crazy platoon."
‘Reinforcements?’
She didn't think, It's only one person. Instead, she thought, Does this even make sense?
This was the Pen-Hanil Mountain Range. To cover a half-day's distance at a full sprint, he should have made a massive racket. The place was crawling with monsters and demonic beasts that would have chased a running human like lovesick fools.
And that wasn't all. The subtle bloodlust the elves had been radiating had completely vanished. Unless they had suddenly embraced peace and love and quietly retreated, they were undoubtedly having a chat with the Grim Reaper.
‘He killed them all in this short span of time?’
The very enemies they had struggled so hard to fight? Yet Finn hadn't even realized it was happening.
Setting aside his ability to slaughter the elves, doing all of this without a sound made absolutely no sense. It should have been loud, chaotic, and messy. That was the norm—at least, according to Finn's calculations and her own abilities.
But this man had appeared out of nowhere—as if he had dropped from the sky or sprouted from the earth—and quietly cleaned up everything. He had popped up out of the blue and immediately cleared the area.
A series of events had unfolded completely outside Finn's perception. She stood frozen, having swung her sword until her limbs trembled, gasping for breath. If she had kept moving, she wouldn't have had the luxury to think, but now that her body was still, her brain began to process the visual information.
Finn felt a wave of cognitive dissonance. Nevertheless, she overcame it. A well-trained soldier always did their duty, no matter the circumstances. Otherwise, how could anyone charge at the very front, knowing they were marching to their death?
Her mind, forged through years of training—specifically, the hellish training of Audin and Sinar—accepted the reality before her and deduced what was needed.
‘So, is this a bad thing?’
Hardly.
"The enemy leader is an archer, and the elves fought in a way I've never seen before. I don't believe this group is all of them," Finn spat out the necessary information.
Sachsen did not reply. He simply stood there, perfectly still. His breathing was so quiet it was virtually silent. Though his gaze was directed forward, she felt an odd sensation that he was looking at her, despite the fact that she was staring at the back of his head.
*
"I don't want any of our allies to die."
Encrid had said it, and Sachsen didn't think it was a particularly difficult request to grant. If it failed, so be it, but he could at least try.
It was entirely possible if a small elite force decided the outcome of the battle without a full-scale clash. If they didn't fight recklessly but engaged only in the necessary battles at the necessary moments, they could minimize friendly casualties. Mathematically speaking, it was sound. Of course, aiming for zero casualties did seem a bit excessive.
"In a war?" Sachsen had asked. It was such a shameless goal that he couldn't help but question it.
"Yeah. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work," Encrid had replied in a casual tone.
His tone might have been light, but the will behind it was anything but. In other words, he wanted no friendly deaths in a war.
How utterly insane.
Yet he insisted on doing it. Even if Sachsen didn't help, Encrid would try to make it happen. The sheer determination in his words was clear.
‘He's only made it this far by doing crazy things anyway.’
To Encrid, this would be no different. Sachsen had decided to play along, though it felt incredibly awkward for a professional killer like himself to be tasked with saving lives. But then again, hadn't he resolved to live that way when he reformed the Dagger of Geor?
"Can't we be greedy? Can't we win without killing? Why? Why not?"
Those were the words Encrid had spoken before they set out. Feeling mischievous, Encrid had smirked and repeatedly questioned him. Sachsen hadn't answered with words; he had only shaken his head. But in his heart, he had already agreed.
"How about 'Crazy-Headed Knight'? Seems like a fitting nickname."
Beside him, the barbarian had, for once in a blue moon, uttered something Sachsen actually liked.
At any rate, Sachsen was doing exactly as Encrid wished. Having spotted the Moonlight Elves, he had flanked them and personally slaughtered them all. Now, he was searching for the archer who had vanished the moment he began his work.
The opponent's stealth skills were top-tier; he couldn't hear a single breath or sense a thing, which was why he had intentionally revealed himself. Otherwise, the scouting Ranger Unit would be in danger.
‘Is it a spell?’
No, it was pure, honed skill, much like his own. Sachsen deliberately let more of his presence leak out. Though it was his first time working like this, being unfamiliar didn't mean he would be sloppy.
Revealing himself to protect someone... He had used decoys to lure and kill targets before, but this was a first.
Finn spoke in the meantime, but Sachsen showed no reaction despite hearing her. He had assessed the situation long ago. He wasn't some barbarian who fought by rough instinct. Nor was he some directionally challenged fool who charged blindly regardless of getting lost. And he certainly wasn't some dependent soul who did nothing but call upon God every day.
‘And I'm definitely not the type to blindly rush forward claiming I'll protect something.’
Sachsen had already listened closely on his way here, pieced together the situation from the sounds, and secured the best possible position to fight. Since the Moonlight Elves were targeting his allies, he had struck them from behind and then revealed himself. This was the most advantageous position to achieve his goal: a position to protect Finn and the Ranger Unit.
"Nobody move," Sachsen spoke.
True to his word, Finn and the scouts held their breath, barely daring to inhale. He would have told them to stop breathing entirely if necessary, but it wouldn't come to that.
The opponent, the archer, was not a knight. But they were certainly a troublesome foe. They even felt somewhat familiar. Was it because those who awakened their talents as hunters generally felt similar?
No. It was different from that.
‘Hawk's Claw?’
The name surfaced in Sachsen's mind. When was it? The battlefield where the Captain got kicked by Frok? There had been an archer by that name back then. Was it him? No. This one was a cut above. His intuition told him so.
Though Sachsen didn't know it, Hawk's Claw had long since crossed the Black River after taking a hit from Rem's axe. The woman currently hiding, even deceiving Sachsen's senses, was Hawk's Claw's master.
Half of the blood in her veins was elven, though she was a half-elf who outwardly retained only human features. She had hidden herself by tapping into the talent inherent in her blood and instincts.
None of this was anything Sachsen needed to know. Whatever her methods, she was hiding, so he just had to find her. That was the nature of assassination. All it took was driving a piece of metal into a person's body, but actually finding the target was the real headache.
Well, if Frok were the target, it wouldn't end with a single slash anyway. They were a safety-first race who wore heart armor even when they slept. In fact, since Frok had been sensitive to the very word 'heart' from the beginning, that was only natural.
If it wasn't Frok, what was the most troublesome part of an assassination contract? Finding those who hid themselves away. Some dug holes and hid like moles, while others slept in a different room of their mansion every night.
The Dagger of Geor was highly skilled in gathering intelligence, so they sometimes located targets by piecing information together, but whenever Sachsen faced such situations, he made up for any shortcomings with his own abilities.
Because he relied on his innate talent to do so, the former master who once claimed to be his teacher had left him with these words:
"Fucking cheat."
It wasn't quite a cheat. A 'cheat' was a term reserved for looking at someone like his Captain.
‘An endless supply of Will?’
Fighting with something like that was what you called a cheat. Was Pel really the only one shocked to see the awakened Encrid? Sachsen had been stimulated as well. Perhaps it was because of that stimulation that he had agreed to the absurd demand of keeping every single ally alive.
‘If one can become a knight even when forsaken by the heavens and abandoned by talent...’
"Why can't we keep a single ally from dying on the battlefield?" Encrid's words echoed in his ears.
Trivial thoughts overlapping and concepts coalescing to forge intent—that was Will. To Sachsen, who had been born with highly sensitive senses, Will was also something tangible. While the elf Sinar discussed Will in terms of vital energy, and Rem accepted it as a part of sorcery power, to Sachsen, it was simply something he could feel.
Just because it was invisible didn't mean it didn't exist.
Sachsen visualized his senses and infused his intent into them. He contracted the wide circle centered around himself, deepening its color. Some used Will to execute slashes that could cut through anything. Others manipulated Will to launch formless blades.
Sachsen possessed no such tricks. Instead, his talent showed him how to channel Will into his five senses.
The trees with pointed leaves blocking the sunlight overhead, the pitch-black shadows, the fainter silhouettes, the scents drifting through the air, the direction of the wind. His five senses coalesced, throwing open the gate of the sixth sense. Having overlaid Will onto his sensory techniques, Sachsen perceived everything within his visualized circle.
The anxiety of his allies behind him. And the presence of the archer up in the tree, who had already nocked and drawn an arrow.
Thrum.
Though it was a distance where the snap of a bowstring shouldn't have been heard, the sound reached him first. Then, an arrow transformed into a beam of light came flying.
The arrow targeted Finn, not Sachsen. Even in that split second, the archer had used her head. Her intention was to exploit the opening created by targeting Finn.
Sachsen grabbed Finn's wrist and yanked her aside.
With a sharp thud, the arrow embedded itself in the dirt, sending a nearby pebble flying. As the pebble clattered to the ground, in the briefest instant when Finn felt the pulling force on her wrist vanish, Sachsen disappeared once more.
Like smoke dissipating—whoosh—he slipped right out of Finn's range of perception. At the same time, the archer lost track of Sachsen as well.
*
Ateroz's mother was an elf, and her father was a human. Though the man who was her father had abandoned her and her mother, Ateroz was fortunate enough to be accepted into elven society.
Around that time, elven society was in need of reform, and she was lucky enough to play a key role in establishing the Moonlight Elf combat unit. Once she gained power through various trials, she set a goal.
‘Kill my father.’
Every man who carelessly sowed his seed was her enemy. After killing her father, she set an even greater goal: kill those who fathered bastards. To achieve this, she borrowed the power of Azpen and hunted down her father to kill him. Along the way, she made several vows and formed a combat unit with a portion of the Moonlight Elves.
When a portion of that elven unit was wiped out, Ateroz immediately hid herself and gripped her bow. Then, she shot an arrow at the woman she presumed to be the commander of the survivors.
‘An opening.’
What she hoped for was an opening from the terrifying monster that had suddenly appeared. But no such thing presented itself. When the arrow flew with a sharp twang and missed its target, Ateroz concealed her presence once more.
She entrusted herself to the shadows and darkness that had protected her since childhood, but before she knew it, she felt the cold touch of a blade against her spine. Reflexively, she tried to twist her body and strike back with her bow, but the blade plunged deep between her vertebrae first.
Her opponent was someone specialized in the art of killing. Having spent years killing those who fathered bastards, Ateroz knew that art all too well.
Every death has a story. The half-elf who sided with Azpen had a story of her own. But once you die, it's just the end.
And so, a half-elf who had once defined men who fathered bastards as her enemies and indulged in slaughtering them met her end. It was no time for sentimentality.
‘Was she a decoy?’
The moment he killed the archer, Sachsen felt eyes on him. His senses told him this wasn't the end. Beyond, he sensed presences similar to the elves he had just killed.
There were three times as many as before. Dozens of elven swordsmen.
‘I don't think she was meant to be a decoy from the start.’
Seeing their allies fall, they had adapted their tactics, effectively turning the deceased archer into a decoy after the fact. Sachsen had revealed his position again to kill the archer, showing a glimpse of his abilities in the process.
Sachsen cracked his wrists, loosening his joints. The previous clash had been a decent warm-up; now, it was time to exert his real strength.
The elven swordsmen did not rush him. Instead, they began to group up and disperse, which, to Sachsen's eyes, looked like a highly organized formation. Even though she hadn't started as a decoy, whose doing was it to turn the archer into one in an instant?
The movements of the elven swordsmen made it clear: they had a proper commander. Sachsen sensed the commander's presence and pinpointed his location, but he judged that charging straight in would be difficult. Layers of elven swordsmen blocked the path ahead.
In other words, the time had come to truly unleash his power.
The enemy seemed to perceive Sachsen as merely a skilled assassin who fought from the shadows.
Naturally, they had miscalculated.