Chapter 163
Chapter 163
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 163
Chapter Title: 51. Roaring Lions of the North (2)
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"I get that it's an insult that feels strangely off-putting, but it doesn't seem like something worth throwing such a tantrum over."
Ilai asked if that was such a massive insult among the orcs.
I shook my head.
To the vast majority of orcs who had never even glimpsed the shadow of the Fire Dragon, my words were nothing but empty nonsense.
If it were an orc that had survived a battle with the Fire Dragon, it would have taken pride in it instead.
For orcs, clashing with a mighty foe was something honorable, even in defeat.
But the Overlord was furious.
As if he'd suffered some grievous humiliation.
If he'd truly fought the Fire Dragon and gotten lucky enough to survive, there'd have been no reason for such a meltdown.
That's when I realized it.
How the orc overlord who had fought the Fire Dragon managed to survive.
He must have fled in terror before the Fire Dragon. And for the proud dark-green tribe, that was something they absolutely must never do.
Especially not as the leader of the horde.
"I was a little worried, though."
Ophelia asked me why it mattered so much how the Overlord had survived.
She had a point.
The most important thing right now was driving out the invaders who had breached my territory.
That said, I couldn't completely ignore it.
If the Overlord had some special ability I didn't know about that let him survive the battle with the Fire Dragon, I needed to find out what it was.
But it was just groundless worry.
The Overlord hadn't survived because he was special. He'd simply hung back farther than the rest and bolted quicker.
His rampaging reaction to my words, that half-melted hideous flesh—those were the proof.
If the giant legion commanders had taken the Fire Dragon's melting breath head-on, they wouldn't have left behind even that much of a corpse.
With my concerns dispelled, I could finally focus on the battle.
"This war."
I looked at the knights surrounding me.
"We capture the leader and end it."
I declared in a low voice.
Ilai immediately piped up in objection.
With that many monsters gathered on the snowfields, how did he think we could catch the leader?
I let out a smirk at that.
"One master can halt an advancing legion. Two masters can break through the enemy. Add a third, and you can annihilate the legion."
And here, we had not three, but five masters.
Annihilation might be impossible with their sheer numbers, but punching through their ranks wouldn't be hard.
I looked at the knights.
Arwen, steadfast and unyielding.
Adelia, fidgeting with her sword like she was ready to charge at any moment.
Ilai, brimming with excitement.
And the Old Knight, who for some reason had been strangely pumped up since earlier.
With them, taking down the Overlord wasn't out of the question.
But there was a problem.
After taking concentrated fire from the matchlocks and crossbows, the Overlord had hidden himself away. His distinctive aura and presence had vanished.
Even after hurling an unbearable insult and lighting fires to provoke him, he showed no sign of poking his head out.
He was definitely hiding on purpose.
"Survived a battle with the Fire Dragon, huh? Guess he does have some tricks."
An orc overlord skulking behind his minions—it was almost laughable.
"We'll have to wait for now."
We needed to thin out the monsters filling the snowfields first, anyway.
Only then could we reach him while conserving our strength.
It'd be pathetic to fight our way to the front of his horde only to collapse from exhaustion.
So I decided to hold off.
A day passed, then two more.
Winter Castle's forces were holding the monsters back astonishingly well.
The Overlord still refused to show himself up front.
Two more days went by.
The monsters seemed endless.
Kill them through the night, and ones crawling from the mountains filled the gaps by morning.
Corpses crushed by matchlock fire littered the snowfields. Bodies torn by arrows, magic, and crossbow bolts filled every direction.
The monsters slain by the knights' swords and shields had piled into mountains below the walls.
Now the monsters were scaling those corpse heaps to climb the walls with ease.
Masters scattered everywhere blocked the intensified monster assaults. Knights rotated in to support them.
Winter Castle was utterly impregnable.
It looked like they could hold off not fifty thousand monsters, but twice that.
Yet the battle dragged on without end.
When hungry, the monsters devoured their comrades' corpses scattered across the snowfields, then withdrew to sleep sprawled out wherever.
Meanwhile, fresh monsters crawled from the mountains and charged the walls.
It was an absurd number.
As if not just the Blade Mountains, but every monster from the Frost Mountains had swarmed here.
A rough estimate put it at nearly a hundred thousand strong.
Then again, compared to the Wrath Flame Legion the Overlord had mobilized during the Great War, this was small potatoes.
Back then, he'd commanded dozens of elite war legions.
But this wasn't the time of the Great War.
The Overlord had only just reemerged into the world, and the dark-green wave that once swept it was no more.
The flourishing greenskin kingdom was now ancient history.
The problem was that we were in the same boat.
Winter Castle's forces were at an all-time peak, enough to claim as much—but they still fell short of the old humans' elite fortresses.
Time would see them reclaim that former glory, but for now, they needed more of it.
The Overlord, however, had no intention of waiting for humans to regain their strength.
Perhaps that's why the cunning overlord had revealed himself so prematurely, before his legions could recover their old might.
He must have already seen through it.
That the heroes who once barred the glorious war legions' path were no longer in this world.
He probably thought he could crush us easily.
It was a blatant misjudgment—a colossal mistake.
This place was crawling with knights and soldiers battle-hardened from fighting monsters.
Forget the elite fortresses on the front lines—even during the Great War, finding troops this experienced wasn't easy.
I'd fill in whatever gaps remained.
I'd bet my life he hadn't factored me into his plans.
Me arriving at this castle on the very first day he showed himself? That was his first stroke of bad luck.
Invading my land out of all human territories? His second.
I bided my time.
Waiting for that moment to sever the cunning overlord's head.
But as time dragged on, he still didn't appear.
He merely drove his horde to hammer Winter Castle day and night.
The castle's forces began tiring bit by bit.
Their morale and will to fight held strong, but physical limits were unavoidable.
The monsters were tenacious.
They attacked without regard for night or day, without reforming ranks.
The weary fell back, replaced by fresh ones straight from the mountains clinging to the walls and clawing away.
Even now, the mountains were relentlessly vomiting out more monsters.
The corpses piled higher.
Ogres and trolls began stacking the monster corpses from the snowfields in front of the walls.
Rangers loosed volleys of arrows to disrupt them, but the massive monsters ignored it.
The corpse mound, once nearly half the wall's height, now threatened to crest it.
Boom!
Battle mages hurled fireballs to topple and incinerate the pile.
But with corpses everywhere, the fallen heap reformed in no time.
I was getting antsy.
I wanted to draw my sword and plunge into the monster swarm right then.
I suppressed every impulse.
I'd draw my blade the moment the Overlord showed himself.
"That's not like you, Your Highness."
As we watched the endless battle, Vincent approached and said.
"What is?"
"Having the leisure to think about other things mid-battle. Back then, you'd have been dashing across the walls, bellowing at me to open the gates."
I couldn't deny it.
"Neither you nor I can go back to how things were."
Vincent held out his baton before me with a wry smile.
"You've risen above crown prince now, so it's only natural to preserve yourself. Charging around the front lines like before just wears out your subordinates."
Before I could respond, Vincent continued.
"Believe in your men."
He gestured toward the walls.
Rangers firing arrows without cease, knights shoving monsters off the battlements.
They looked fatigued, but their faces burned with fighting spirit—no trace of fear anywhere.
"Thanks."
Only then did my mind settle.
Winter Castle would never fall.
The conviction took root, and my impatience vanished like a lie.
My narrowed vision suddenly widened.
My gaze, fixed on the walls, extended to the snowfields and mountains.
That's when I realized it.
The monsters ceaselessly pouring out were no more.
The mountains' monsters that the overlord could muster had finally run dry.
The battle raged on.
Orcs surged up the corpse piles right at the walls.
More monsters than ever scaled the battlements.
Rangers dropped their bows for swords and spears. Knights slashed wildly in all directions to hold them back.
Right then, the Old Knight dropped to one knee before me.
"Your Highness! Permit the central army and Royal Knight Order to join the fray!"
No reason to hesitate.
I nodded, and the Old Knight sprang up, barking orders to a Royal Knight behind him.
"Push the enemy back with the central army."
"Yes, sir!"
The Royal Knight snapped a crisp salute and descended the walls.
Minutes later, he reappeared atop the battlements with the central army's infantry.
Royal heavy infantry, clad head to toe in plate armor—unpopular in Winter Castle for freezing in the brutal cold—and draped in red cloaks.
Clack, clack, clack.
Precise footsteps, out of place amid the chaos, echoed across the entire wall.
The heavy infantry filed into line behind the rangers.
Curses and shouts rang out ahead, blood sprayed everywhere, but the heavies didn't flinch.
They merely gripped their shields and heaved ragged breaths.
"Your Highness. His Majesty resented how it was taken without a fight."
After issuing orders to the Royal Knights, the Old Knight guarding my side suddenly spoke up.
"But His Majesty didn't simply let it be taken."
Before I could respond to his out-of-place words, the central army moved.
"Raise... shields!"
"Yes, sir!"
Two thousand central troops at the cramped rear edge of the wall lifted their shields in unison.
Thud!
Heavy footfalls utterly unlike the light rangers'.
"Advance!"
"Yes, sir!"
The heavies pressed forward, shields to the fore.
"Grab 'em!"
On a Royal Knight's command, the heavies twisted their shields sideways and seized the rangers by the necks.
Snap!
"Gah!"
"You mad bastards!"
The rangers spat curses as they tumbled backward.
"Close up!"
The heavies who'd surged forward thrust their shields ahead once more.
Click.
Two thousand shields moved as one sound.
It was a rare sight.
Monsters howled savagely and charged the shield wall.
Thud.
The heavies slammed their shields down and dropped into low stances in perfect sync.
Savage monster blows rained down atop them.
Boom!
The heavy infantry line wavered.
But no gaps opened. It was solidity leagues beyond the central heavies I'd seen on the midlands' defensive line.
"Thrust!"
The heavies angled their shields askew. Swords flashed through the gaps in unison.
Kraaaagh!
The struck monsters screeched in agony.
But that was it.
Piercing the tough, resilient hides for a one-hit kill wasn't easy. Few monsters dropped.
The survivors rampaged even more ferociously from their wounds.
Right then, a thunderous boom rang out.
The monsters beyond the shield wall flew back all at once.
"That's the real reason His Majesty so desperately sought friendship with the dwarves."
The Old Knight's voice reached my ringing ears.
"The royal family's most treasured swords—the unbreakable ones."
I spotted the heavy infantry slinging hook-laden black cylinders over their shields.
Acrid smoke billowed from the ends.
The sharp tang of gunpowder pierced my nostrils.
"The Royal Heavy Armor Gunner Corps."