Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Translator: True Detective
Chapter 17: The Victorious Engineering Unit (2)
Outside the outer castle was no longer a battlefield.
It was hell.
Corpses were piled up between the sunken ground.
Tangled limbs, broken armor, crushed faces.
Mud and blood were mixed indistinguishably, and in the moat where water couldn't drain, waves that turned red slowly swayed.
Screams of those still breathing were ceaseless.
Those crawling with broken legs, those struggling to detach their bodies while pierced by stakes, even those howling unable to move with feet torn by caltrops.
That horrific screaming rode the wind and climbed up to the castle wall.
Soldiers standing on the castle wall couldn't say anything looking down at that scene.
Everyone knew the fact of numerical inferiority.
The Northern Alliance Tribes were a kind famous for marching close to madness, and in siege warfare, they always pushed by consuming lives.
They believed that if they collided head-on, the outer castle wouldn't last long. No, they were resigned like that.
If one was in the military, if one knew that the head of the military and the owner of the land was neglecting military power indulging in gold coins and debauchery, it was natural to be resigned.
But now...
Outside the outer castle had turned into hell, and the Northern Alliance Tribes were burning in despair like moths flying into flames.
It was an unbelievable sight.
Was Hamelon's defense line this solid, meticulous, and perfect?
The sight of Northern foreign tribes, who were said to live crazy for blood and slaughter, screaming helplessly without being able to swing an axe properly was nonsensical, and it felt superior even though they had contributed nothing to that screaming.
The current screams and cries.
Even knowing that it was created solely by the Engineering Unit.
"......This."
Someone muttered with a trembling voice.
Soldiers didn't even feel like they were fighting.
They just stood on the castle wall and pulled bowstrings.
Since traps had already torn the formation to shreds, all they had to do was pick enemies still breathing and finish them.
Every time an arrow flew and stuck, another scream stopped.
From the rear of the Northern Alliance Tribes, the sound of horns rang several times and reorganization took place.
Signs of agitation were felt even from afar, but they weren't the type to retreat quietly like this.
As expected.
They attempted to advance again with shouts mixed with anger.
The second charge was a different aspect.
If the first charge was general tactics, the second charge was truly tactics befitting Northern foreign tribes.
The charging rear chose 'advance', not 'detour'.
They trampled the corpses of comrades filling the depression zone, and advanced as is using the corpses of comrades floating in the moat's blood pool as stepping stones.
If it were a normal army, they would have already given up advancing.
But the Northern Alliance Tribes were different.
Their rear guard no longer calculated tactics or losses.
Rather, they sharpened greater madness and blades feeding on the screams and blood smell of comrades.
Other shouts overlapped on screams, and death no longer became a reason to stop.
It was madness.
It was a ruthless charge.
And to that bizarre momentum, the castle wall finally began to respond.
Heavy impacts were transmitted successively.
Stones and logs flew onto the castle wall, and attacks concentrated along with the strange screams of the Northern Alliance Tribes.
Fortunately, the castle wall, which hadn't been long since repair, didn't collapse easily.
It cracked and dust fell, but it endured.
However, a huge shadow, a sound mixing beast's cry and human roar, the appearance of an Ogre dyes the castle wall that seemed like an iron fortress with fear.
The monster called the giant weapon of the Northern Alliance Tribes threw its body toward the castle wall.
Kuuung!
Once, twice.
The ground shook and the entire castle wall trembled.
Reinforced stones screamed, and stone crumbs fell from every joint.
The Ogre swept in a large breath placing its stepping foot long behind as if predicting the final collision.
Following that, a heavy impact was applied to the castle wall, the Ogre fell, and huge stone chunks poured down on top of it.
A gap was created in the castle wall.
At that moment, despair spread among the soldiers on the castle wall.
Someone swallowed breath, and someone stepped back.
In siege warfare, the collapse of the castle wall was a variable overturning the war situation entirely.
Especially in a war with beasts, that gap often became the door to death.
Commander Gelmion's expression, who was watching the situation leisurely, also hardened for the first time.
His hand gripped the railing tightly.
And through the crumbled gap, some troops of the Northern Alliance Tribes broke away and invaded.
Soldiers shouted.
Someone lifted a sword to fight back, and someone looked back to retreat.
The gap in the castle wall was about to overturn the war situation and cause a crack in the military force.
But it was then.
The vanguard of the Alliance Tribes troops squeezing through the gap stopped.
Those following behind bumped and murmured, and their gazes fixed on one place.
A person was standing.
A man wearing the Engineering Unit uniform stood behind the debris of the collapsed castle wall as if he had been guarding that spot for a long time.
Five-colored mana was winding around both hands.
Lights, not mixing with each other, rotated slowly and wound around the air.
In his pupils, strange joy different from battlefield madness and turbulent fighting spirit were contained.
1 year.
Time buried in documents and construction, calculation and responsibility.
Time forgetting the wild vitality felt in rupturing muscles and fluctuating pain.
The mana in his dantian, to be liberated after a long time, slowly begins to surge.
He was predicting.
If the second march starts, where the point that collapses first would be.
Although he repaired all sections to the point of seeming perfect, in the limited time of 1 year, he had no choice but to place grades on the degree of that 'perfection'.
And among the grades he scored himself, he blocks the lowest place directly.
That was the plan.
He took a step forward.
Thick lines began to be drawn under his feet.
Powerful mana burns the ground and draws a huge summoning circle centering on him.
Complex patterns were completed quickly, and the air sank heavily in an instant as a gust swirled.
Iden raised his head.
The Engineering Unit uniform hat flies away, and blue-grey hair flutters.
Flames on both burning hands soar into thick pillars.
Summoner of the Dark Night.
He returned to the battlefield again, and the moment the five-colored summoning circle was completed, the battle was moving to a new phase.
Soon.
A huge collision occurred.
**
Around the time the confusion of the battlefield was continuing, suddenly the sound of horns rang three times.
The retreat signal fired from the rearmost filled the battlefield.
Groups that hesitated as if unbelievable at first soon began to step back, and the troops that advanced began to retreat hurriedly.
Stepping on corpses, leaving the wounded behind.
The Northern Alliance Tribes, continuing meaningless attrition warfare without attacking the gap of the collapsed castle wall nor finding a new breakthrough, decided to retreat.
It was only half a day since the air raid started.
From the castle wall, shouts like thunder burst out.
"Wooooaaaaah—!!"
"They are retreating! The bastards are retreating!!"
Someone's shout became the fuse.
Soldiers who were pulling bows with clenched teeth until that moment put down weapons one by one.
Checking each other's faces as if unbelievable, soon laughter and shouts mixed and exploded.
"We lived! We lived—!!"
People hugging each other with armored bodies appeared, someone sat down as is and laughed hitting the castle wall floor, and someone sat leaning against the castle wall with loosened legs and sighed in relief.
Pupils trembling in fear of rushing madness were now shaken with the joy of victory.
The shouts on the castle wall didn't stop.
Spreading like waves, they flowed into the inner castle beyond the outer castle.
In the streets of the inner castle, people raised their heads with puzzled faces at first.
However, the moment they heard that sound, that momentum ringing from the castle wall side, everyone realized.
That they won.
When someone shouted cheers, the closed doors opened, and people poured out onto the streets.
"We won? Really?"
"Oh God... we lived...!"
Mothers hugging children and bursting into tears, strong men shouting towards the sky clenching fists.
There were those spinning round and round holding each other's hands, and people kneeling in front of the temple offering prayers of gratitude.
Someone danced, and someone jumped up and down.
Laughter and tears mixed, and the entire street shook.
The shouts started on the castle wall were now covering the entire city.
The bell of the bell tower rang, and that sound spread to the sky as if declaring victory.
Today, Hamelon was not captured.
Everything flowed according to Iden's plan, and the hard work of 1 year poured by the Engineering Unit Senior Adjutant shone.
Iden.
Engineering Unit members gathered where he was before anyone knew it were chanting that name.
Name of the Summoner of the Dark Night dyed in blood color while blocking the collapsed gap.
Name to be revered as the war hero of this one-sided victory.
It was his perfect victory.