Chapter 607: How to Sever Momentum
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 607: How to Sever Momentum
Sleep was a stranger, even in the heart of the pitch-black night. Perhaps it was only natural. Few could rest easy in a plight like this, and Noah was no exception.
Unable to find peace, Noah walked the monastery grounds alone, letting the biting wind wash over him.
In their haste to erect wooden palisades, the defenders had felled every ornamental tree planted within the walls. In the process of drying, cutting, and raising the fresh timber, what had once been a serene garden had been reduced to a desolate ruin.
The devastation felt like a grim omen of the monastery’s future.
Why is the moonlight so exceptionally bright tonight?
Is God calling me? Is He holding me accountable for my sins?
Was this the price for turning a blind eye to the monastery's past? Must those currently dwelling on this land pay the debt in full?
It was a night of deepening anguish.
For a heretical sect like the Gray God to emerge, cause such an upheaval, and then target nothing more than a humble monastery where barely dozens gathered...
Who could have predicted things would turn out this way?
Noah realized they could not hold out. The monastery was besieged, and the enemy refused to entertain any proposals.
When he had offered his own life to the enemy to end the standoff...
"Cut the nonsense. Everything in this monastery, down to the last chicken, is heretical," was the only response he received.
And when he begged them to spare at least the children...
"Didn't I just tell you? Saint or not, that place is already a den of evil."
Only words of absolute refusal returned. To make matters worse, the martial monk who had gone out as an envoy returned limping, one side of his face bruised a deep, sickly blue from a beating.
"Send someone again, and we'll send back only their head next time," they had threatened.
Ah.
His worries grew heavier. The child who had been revealed as a saint would now be branded a child of the devil. Because that was what they would make him out to be.
"Are we going to die?"
Even the child, sensing the monastery's peril, had asked. Noah had offered a gentle smile.
"The Lord will protect us."
Noah lied. The child smiled at his words.
Even if he were to be cast into the Subterranean Prison after death for the sin of lying, he would not regret this moment, having seen that smile. Even if they were to die, he did not want the child to spend their remaining time consumed by terror.
Above all, he truly wanted to believe that the Lord would protect the innocent.
He didn't care if he died. But he wanted the child and the blameless to be saved.
Noah had no options, but he did not merely sit and pray. He sent pleas for help in every direction. Naturally, even slipping through the siege was a monumental task. Even if someone luckily escaped and spread word of their plight, what then? Would anyone actually come? It was just a single monastery.
The people living inside? They were strangers to the rest of the world—why should anyone risk themselves to save them? What was there to gain?
Nothing. There would be absolutely nothing. Noah was a clever man, and he understood the cold reality of the board. Everyone on the continent would view this as a mere civil war within the Holy Kingdom.
So, no one would come.
Even if those who had gathered to fight the followers of the Gray God were to arrive...
It will be after the monastery has already burned to the ground.
Ironically, the death of everyone in the monastery and the reduction of the place to ash was likely what both factions desired.
The reason was simple. The primary pretext of those gathered under the banner of the Gray God was to purge a monastery "possessed by devils." Therefore, they could never leave this place standing. They had to prove their god and assert their own righteousness. How perfect would it be if the birth of their Gray God was heralded by the purging of devils?
They needed a scapegoat, and there happened to be a place where those who opposed them had gathered.
It would be the same even if an army marched from the Holy Kingdom. They had no reason to go out of their way to save him or the monastery either.
"If those who dare to burn down a monastery are not heretics, then who is?"
A monastery burned for the sake of a holy war. People who died for the sake of a holy war. What better way to frame the killers as heretics than that?
In a way, they were nothing more than political sacrifices. Since the crowd gathered under the Gray God was already massive, the Holy Kingdom needed to secure the moral high ground.
Thus, a wholesale massacre—that was the monastery's future. And in the midst of all this, there were even people like this.
"What are you doing?"
He spotted men unwinding the heavy iron chains wrapped around the gates—chains meant to lock them safely behind the wooden palisades. They had wrapped cloth around the metal to muffle the rattle, moving without a single torch, relying solely on the moonlight.
There were five of them. Even on this early winter night, the five were sweating profusely as they worked.
"We are opening the monastery gates," one of them replied.
Noah wasn't even dumbfounded. He felt as if he were hallucinating from exhaustion. Of course, he knew he wasn't. His reason, as clear and cold as the moonlight, laid bare the reality.
The man who answered straightened his back. He was a head taller than Noah. The short sword in his hand glinted.
Why?
Why were they doing this when opening the gates changed nothing? Because they were ignorant. They did not know that the enemy would never accept them. They did not know the monastery was destined to be a scapegoat. They did not know that to the world, this place was already a den of devils.
Are they doing this out of foolishness?
Or were they simply crushed by the fear of death? It was likely both.
"Do you think they will accept you if you open those gates and declare your surrender?"
"...We must repent."
This was exactly why Luagarne had suggested smashing the heads of all the disobedient fools before they left. But this was only because things had gone awry. If the monastery had been running smoothly under Noah's guidance and they had spent more time together, they wouldn't be doing this now.
Noah wanted to believe that. Though the future was always uncertain, and even if things had gone well for years, they might still have done the exact same thing.
Are all humans evil? Or are they good?
It was an eternally unresolved conundrum. Noah simply wanted to cast his vote for the side of human goodness.
"Why are you out here in the middle of the night doing this?"
Another man, who had been trying to open the gate, asked as he pulled a dagger from his sleeve.
"Killing me won't change anything," Noah said.
"That's just your opinion."
They seemed to have stopped thinking altogether. Was he supposed to feel relieved that there were only five of them?
I never expected to die like this.
Noah concealed his thoughts and looked at the five. Not one of them would meet his eyes.
It was then. A dark mass suddenly vaulted over the palisade. The figure hit the ground, rolled, and sprang upright.
"Abbot Noah?" the shadow asked.
"...Who are you?"
"I am an unnamed crusader of the Heresy Purging Priests."
No matter what the world said, there were still those who moved by their own will and conviction. One of the Heresy Purging Priests had come for Noah.
He joined Noah, swiftly knocking down the men who had half-opened the gate.
Several more things happened after that. They blocked the gate with thorn bushes, and after one final failed attempt to send a messenger, they gave up. Now, so many enemies guarded the perimeter that not even an ant could slip out.
"You should escape, at least."
Noah tried to send the Heresy Purging Priest away. He was a man of too noble a spirit to die here.
"No. I am fine," he refused.
Until the moment Encrid's group arrived, Noah held out in the monastery for six more days. During that time, all he could do was pray.
O Lord, help us. Watch over Your lambs. Gather the fallen fruit into Your basket.
Surely, someone would help them. Someone would help the child.
It was noon on the day they had gone without food for forty-eight hours due to the shortage. It was a day when he wondered if the enemy intended to simply starve them to death.
The sunlight brightly illuminated the surroundings.
Beyond the thorn bushes blocking the monastery, there were those cutting through the army of thousands that had formed a wall.
*
On the battlefield, the simpler the orders, the better. Encrid knew this well, and he acted accordingly.
"We break through."
The objective was to pierce the enemy lines arrayed before the monastery and secure the safety of Noah and his people. Otherwise, there was no reason to come all this way. Just because the walls looked intact from the outside did not mean everything was fine within.
Rem was the first to move. Stepping lightly to the front-left, he swung his axe with an easy stroke. With that single, effortless swing, four soldiers of the so-called 'Gray Divine Army' fell dead. Rem's axe traced jagged lines in the air, and within those trajectories, the necks of enemy soldiers were invariably caught.
"I'll take the front."
Ragna stepped forward as well. Contrary to his claim, he darted out to the right flank, but he charged nonetheless. His longsword of Ink Gold thrust, slashed, and struck, ruthlessly carving through the enemy ranks.
Gah! Urgh! Argh!
Enemy soldiers collapsed in heaps. The entire group fought exceptionally well even while mounted. Rem, in particular, stopped swinging his axe midway, snatched a spear thrusting at him, and began stabbing wildly with it. Not a single soul could block his strikes.
"Their training is pathetic."
Ropode kicked his horse's flanks, spun around, and lashed out with his sword. Compared to the Border Guard, this rabble couldn't even be said to have a proper formation. With his slash, an enemy soldier's helmet split open, spilling blood and brain matter. The man collapsed to his knees and fell forward.
Just as Ropode said, the bastards of the Gray Divine Army had had no time for formal drill. They had only just gathered; where would they find the time to train? This was only natural. How could a crowd that would struggle against a flock of crows block the martial might of knights?
Encrid also swung his sword while riding Odd-Eye. Wrapping his legs around Odd-Eye's belly to maintain his balance, he held his newly received Truesilver sword in his right hand and Spark in his left. He was fully prepared, just moments away from unleashing his blade.
Naturally sensing his surroundings and assessing the caliber of the enemy, Encrid thought:
Do I need to kill them all? No, there is no need.
An army possessed something called momentum. If he could disrupt that momentum, they would naturally scatter.
How? By raising an Iron Wall like before? Having trained repeatedly since his first attempt, the act of raising an Iron Wall was well within his capability. However, it would not crush the enemy with the same overwhelming pressure as before.
Everything is influenced by the situation and the environment.
That was Luagarne's teaching. Therefore, even if he manifested the Iron Wall of that moment, he could not make it feel like the exact same wall. Above all, they needed to break through right now; what use was raising a wall?
Encrid honed the blade of his senses. Then, he unraveled that blade, spreading it wide like fine threads. In the realm of intuition, Encrid looked at the mass of the enemy army once more and split it apart within his mindscape.
United, they were a single army. Scattered, they were individual men. What bound an army was its momentum.
The net of his senses unfurled, draping over the surroundings. Eyes, posture, center of gravity, the direction of their weapons—everything served as a point of judgment. Judging who would attack, who would flee, and who would hold their ground through his sensory net, he swung his sword.
Those with high momentum, he cut down.
"Gark!"
A man whose throat was slashed rolled on the ground, spewing blood. Encrid had lightly struck the nape of his neck with the Truesilver sword as he passed. Next, those trembling under the weight of his presence, he bypassed. Those who made a clumsy attempt to hold their ground, he lightly deflected.
With a sharp clack, a soldier struck on the helmet by the flat of the blade tilted sideways and fell.
Encrid distinguished between when to apply force and when to release it, meticulously distributing his Will. Guided by his senses, he slashed, bypassed, and deflected. As he repeated this cycle over and over, no one was left standing around him.
A spectacle unfolded where the quietest battle yielded the greatest number of fallen enemies. Rem's gaze drifted in that direction.
Well, look at that.
Rem could kill anything caught by his axe. Granted, he wasn't fighting in earnest right now, so he wasn't going all out. Thus, there was no reason to be surprised by mere slashing and stabbing.
But what Encrid was demonstrating now was something quite different. Striking and slashing could be done by anyone with strength, but this was not something achievable by raw power alone.
You knew how to do that too?
He was surprised, and a little pleased. He could see his own teachings woven into the technique Encrid was displaying. By advancing boldly, he reduced the time spent hesitating, using that saved time to judge and move. It could be called an art of stretching time. What Encrid was doing was based on that very principle.
Yet, there was someone watching Encrid who was even more astonished than Rem.
What on earth is he doing?
As the number of enemies Encrid struck down grew, the collective entity known as the army seemed to disintegrate. Sachsen felt it through his senses. Surely, everyone else was vaguely sensing it too.
He understood the general principle, but how was Encrid distinguishing between the soldiers who would project momentum and those who wouldn't?
Just by looking?
If asked, Sachsen could mimic it, but he wouldn't be able to do it to this extent. It was precise and detailed. That was what Encrid's blade traced.
What Encrid was showing now was something only he could achieve. It was thanks to the experience he had accumulated by crawling up from the very bottom. Sometimes, a lack of talent allowed one to understand things in far greater detail.
It was the reward of having lived as a mere soldier for so long.
Encrid was showing the enemy soldiers exactly what it meant to be matchless.