Chapter 172: The Final War of the Northern Continent
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 172: The Final War of the Northern Continent
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The castle wall shook with every swing of my sword. I could feel the vibrations under my feet. Some of the enemy soldiers surrounding us staggered from the force.
It was as if an earthquake had struck.
Stone dust, once part of the wall, rained down ceaselessly from above. The falling chunks of rock grew larger and larger, until they were the size of a man's torso.
Through the thick cloud of dust, I could see the wall growing more and more skeletal.
When my sword struck a key structural point, massive stones, on a completely different scale than before, came crashing down like a landslide.
Naturally, the hole in the wall grew even larger—so large that I could see dozens of torches pushing back the curtain of night on the other side.
It was our allies' camp.
“S-Stop him!!”
If the gate won’t open, I’ll just break through the wall. The one most shocked by my brutish actions was the Pope, who was in the gatehouse.
The Pope, having barely escaped the area of impact with the help of the prostitutes, belatedly shouted an order. The enemy's assault, which had faltered for a moment, resumed with renewed vigor.
“Baron!”
For the knights, who were already at their limit, this was terrible news.
“Haaap!”
Instead of looking back, I took a deep breath and brought my sword down with every last ounce of my strength. They needed action, not words.
CRASH—!
The impact was louder than ever before. The result was just as dramatic. The hole, once the size of a fist, was now large enough for a person to pass through.
CRASH—!!
I struck again, and massive stones tumbled down as the wall collapsed. The hole had now become something more fittingly called a path.
Hope was in sight.
“This way!”
As if they had saved just enough strength to escape, the knights swung their swords wide to create an opening and pulled back.
“Don't let them escape!”
The enemy soldiers, scrambling to obey the Pope's command, couldn't block my wide swing. I sent three heads flying with a single strike and immediately turned my back.
The fearless undead army didn't even flinch as three of their comrades were sent to their graves in an instant.
“Push a little harder!”
There was no reply. They didn't even have the strength to speak. It was no surprise, given they had just crossed a large city like the royal capital of Aran while fighting off hundreds, even thousands, of enemies.
In contrast, the Pope's army still had hundreds, even thousands, of fresh troops who hadn't yet joined the battle.
The distance between us closed quickly.
As the one with the most stamina to spare, I took up the rear to hold off the enemy. The problem was that for every one I killed, three more took their place.
“Do not let them get away alive!!”
More and more enemy soldiers began to slip past me, intending to surround us again. Meanwhile, the knights' pace slowed until they finally came to a halt.
Pant. Pant. Pant.
Standing back-to-back, they watched the enemy warily, completely drained of the strength to even swing their swords. As we became half-surrounded, the Pope roared with laughter.
“Haha! Did you really think you could escape!”
I stood back-to-back with the knights, pointing my sword at the soldiers encircling us. Then, with a smirk, I shouted to the Pope, who was now some distance away.
“We weren't running away.”
“What…”
Before the Pope could finish his sentence.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud
The ground began to shake again, as if another earthquake had struck. The cause was an army charging toward us, pushing back the darkness.
“Pope! I, Signir, have arrived!”
The Duke was at the head of the charge. The flickering torchlight cast shifting shadows that made them look all the more intimidating. To the enemy, of course.
The enemy forces, completely unprepared to face cavalry, were simply swept away.
After the cavalry charged through, the undead army—feeling no fear and recovering quickly from anything but a fatal wound—tried to get back up and resist.
“Waaaaaah!!”
But before they could regain their footing, infantry swarmed in behind the cavalry. The well-drilled foot soldiers made sure not to skip the finishing blows.
The result…
“R-Retreat! Retreat!”
The Pope gritted his teeth and ordered a retreat.
“Duke! Do not enter the city!”
The Duke, who had pursued the enemy right up to the city walls, hastily pulled on his reins. He made a U-turn and rode back, his expression clearly one of disappointment.
“Why did you stop me? If we had continued the pursuit, we could have dealt them a fatal blow. Isn't it true that an army suffers its greatest losses during a retreat?”
“Because inside the city, it would inevitably become a chaotic melee. That's the environment the enemy wants.”
An undead army that knows no fear and doesn't die easily becomes even stronger in a melee. In fact, the Pope clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“The Pope will have to come out on his own eventually anyway. That wall can't be fixed in a day or two, and he certainly won't have the leisure to repair it.”
The Duke nodded and looked around. Just then, the sun peeked over the horizon, illuminating the hundreds of corpses strewn before the city wall.
“Still, we've seized the initiative quite effectively.”
The enemy, who fell for our lure and started the battle unprepared, suffered heavy losses. In contrast, our side, which had been waiting, had almost no casualties.
It was a great victory.
After commending the members of the special forces, who had forgotten their knightly decorum and collapsed onto the ground, the Duke returned and spoke.
“By the way, wasn't the original plan to go for the gate?”
“The gate was too sturdy.”
“Haha. And the wall wasn't?”
I turned away from the Duke's incredulous face. The moment I sheathed my sword, my hands began to tremble. My entire body, every joint, ached like crazy.
Smashing a wall that had stood for centuries was a reckless act, even for me. Now that the excitement of battle was fading, the aftereffects were setting in.
“Baron…!”
I didn't even have the strength to greet Isabel, who was waiting in the tent. Without even taking off my armor, I collapsed onto the bed. I closed my eyes, sensing Isabel pacing anxiously beside me.
When I opened my eyes again, it was still dawn, just as the sun was beginning to rise.
“How long was I asleep?”
The aftereffects of the battle hadn't completely vanished, but my body felt significantly lighter, telling me that quite some time had passed.
“You slept for a full day.”
Isabel, who had been slumped over the bed, rubbed her eyes and lifted her head. Only then, with her help, did I unfasten my armor and leave the tent.
The damp, crisp dawn air greeted me. In the distance, I could see a contingent of troops encamped before the city wall.
“They tried to repair the wall somehow, but when Father had archers fire on them and threatened them with cavalry, they finally came out of the city and made camp yesterday afternoon.”
So, we had succeeded in drawing the Pope out of the city. All that grueling work had paid off.
“There are a lot of them.”
But I couldn't be entirely pleased, because there were a great number of tents. I estimated there were at least three thousand men. Still twice our number.
“Three thousand against fifteen hundred.”
And since they were an undead army armed with drugs and Holy Water, we were still at a disadvantage in terms of military strength.
Fortunately, thanks to seizing the initiative with yesterday's lure, the morale of our soldiers standing watch wasn't too bad.
“Um... Father asked that you come to the command tent as soon as you woke up.”
The fact that he hadn't woken me by force, even with the enemy camped right on our doorstep, was likely out of consideration for my success in a near-impossible mission.
“I'll go right now.”
Despite the early hour, the command tent was bustling. A voice greeted me as soon as I entered.
“Encirclement and annihilation is the only way!”
A knight was speaking loudly. It seemed they were discussing how to deal with the enemy.
He seemed to be quite respected among the Duke's advisors, as other vassals nodded in agreement with his words.
“You've arrived.”
The knights who had carried out the mission with me were also in the tent. Wepilder greeted me warmly on their behalf. His eyes were sparkling as he looked at me.
The gaze of the knight advocating for encirclement briefly fell on me before moving away.
“That's Sir Bontak.”
I gave Wepilder a grateful nod for telling me the knight's name and found a place to stand.
Sir Bontak continued.
“A pitched battle on an open plain is bound to become a contest of strength versus strength! Therefore, there is no tactic more suitable than encirclement and annihilation!”
A pitched battle is an environment where it's difficult to use tricks like ambushes or surprise attacks to overcome a disadvantage. However, it wasn't as if there were no ways to overcome numerical inferiority.
The so-called encirclement and annihilation tactic, best represented by the hammer and anvil, was one such method.
Once surrounded, it becomes difficult for an army to leverage its numerical superiority. The soldiers who should be fighting the enemy are instead surrounded by their own allies.
They become even more neutralized as they are packed tighter and tighter with their comrades, to the point where they can't even swing their swords.
In other words, aside from the soldiers directly facing the encirclement, the rest can no longer exert any influence on the battlefield.
And that's not all.
Conversely, the surrounded force has to face more enemy soldiers per man.
If you picture the two forces as two circles, the outer, encircling circle is naturally larger.
This means that no matter how large the surrounded force is, the number of men actually crossing swords with the enemy will inevitably be smaller.
And what about the psychological pressure? Morale is bound to plummet, and troops in that state can't even perform at half their usual capacity.
There were countless other reasons why the encirclement and annihilation tactic was so highly regarded.
“If the enemy weren't an undead army armed with drugs and Holy Water, Sir Bontak would be right.”
Only after hearing Sir Bontak's argument to the end did I step forward. The gazes that fell upon me were quite favorable. Wepilder even gave me a thumbs-up.
It seemed the five knights who had crossed the line between life and death with me had spoken well of me to their comrades.
“Do you have a different opinion?”
Bontak's eyes twitched, but he remained polite. I took the opportunity to nod to the Duke before addressing his advisors.
“The undead army's morale won't drop even if they're surrounded. They don't fear death. They are also so aggressive that they won't stop attacking unless they suffer a fatal wound.”
“In contrast, our forces are only half the size of theirs. This means if we try to encircle them, our lines will naturally be thin. The undead army will definitely break through.”
“If that happens, the situation will be completely reversed. We will have spread our already small force wide to form the encirclement.”
While I paused to catch my breath, Wepilder and the other knights from the mission stepped forward.
“The undead army was more difficult to deal with than we thought. There were more than a few who, even with a sword in their neck and their head hanging loose, would grab my leg and try to bite me.”
“There was one who closed the distance by pushing my own sword deeper into his chest, then swung his own. Ugh. At that moment, I really…”
“That's nothing. One of the ones I fought swung his own severed arm to attack me with the sword it was still holding.”
These vivid accounts from just two days prior were enough to bewilder the advisors in the command tent.
“Hearing you describe it, they sound like an army of devils.”
“Considering what they've done, you're not wrong.”
“Ugh.”
As Wepilder and the knights described the atrocities in the royal capital of Aran in detail, those with weak stomachs or vivid imaginations even began to gag.
Then, someone spoke up.
“Doesn't this truly feel like a holy war…”
All eyes immediately turned to the speaker, who blushed and raised his voice.
“No, isn't it true? Baron Allen here has no connection to the Northern Continent, yet he stands here as our Commander-in-Chief. And the Archbishop has returned after ten years to reclaim the holy land and purify the church.”
“Hmm... They say heroes are sent from the heavens. Perhaps all of this is the Lord's providence. A plan so grand we couldn't perceive it until this moment of its completion.”
“Ooh...! That makes sense. And the existence of the Saintess, too. The Saintess, who was persecuted under the evil Pope, was rescued by the Baron and has lent us her strength…”
As if they truly believed it made sense, the atmosphere in the tent shifted. A few even made the sign of the cross and began to pray.
Feeling their fervent gazes upon me, I spoke again.
“The bigger problem is that soldiers conditioned by drugs will not surrender until the very last man is dead.”
“…We would have to accept enormous losses?”
A furrow appeared on the Duke's brow.
As he himself had said before, the greatest losses occur during a retreat. But if the enemy doesn't surrender, the pursuing side will also inevitably suffer heavy casualties.
“Opportunists won't miss that opening. The war would only drag on longer.”
There are opportunists everywhere.
The mention that we might be doing all the hard work just for someone else to reap the rewards made the expressions of the Duke and his advisors harden.
It was then that Sir Bontak spoke.
“Anyone can point out a problem without offering a solution. Since you seem to have grasped the issue so precisely, I assume you have prepared a fitting answer.”
I just grinned at his slightly sarcastic tone.
“Of course. We're going to exploit the weakness of the undead army.”
Was there anything perfect in this world? Even the seemingly invincible undead army had a weakness.