Ex-Class Axe (1)

It wasn’t until I was about to hurl my axe out toward the sea that the Mountain Spirit finally stopped his damned rambling.

I don’t have time to play with you right now.

The peddlers had already begun to flinch back at the sight of the flames leaping up from Chojijin.

I could understand them.

I was no different.

I’d never been a soldier, a cop, or a thug. In other words, I’d never dreamed of self-actualization through violence.

Most of my fighting experience amounted to barehanded brawling, which in this era was little more than child’s play, and I hadn’t even started using blades in real combat until recently, back in Korea.

Come to think of it, there were probably more men behind me who had actually stabbed people with knives than I had. Besides, that thing ahead wasn’t even a knife. It was a gun. A cannon, to be exact.

My hand tightened around the axe until it ached.

I could go. But should I really be asking everyone else to throw themselves into a death trap too?

That was when the Mountain Spirit spoke again.

It was so distracting, would you please shut up? Huh?

Damn it, flames and explosions were flaring here and there, and I didn’t even know where to go.

This wasn’t just because the night-vision goggles had a narrow field of view. In an actual battle, there was no aim marker and no minimap, after all. Was this what real war was like?

But the Mountain Spirit only kept talking faster.

If someone had said that to me a few months ago, I would’ve had nothing but a “What the hell are you talking about, nerd?” ready to go.

But now I was in no position to ignore words like that.

For one thing, I was the living proof of this fantasy bullshit. In the twenty-first century, time travelers were less shocking than people who studied abroad, but if time leaps were possible, there was no law saying enchanted weapons couldn’t be too.

More importantly, I had to admit, rationally, that the Mountain Spirit had just pointed out the exact movement of the French troops.

What kind of “reason” was it to deny the reality in front of my eyes no matter what? I wasn’t a flat-earther.

In the end, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I answered.

I remember.

I had the feeling I shouldn’t hear any more.

Still, when I turned and saw Won-beom’s face beside me, I gritted my teeth.

Say it fast.

Unfortunately, that “strength” did not mean that a dragon king and a mountain spirit would combine into one glorious form and unleash a tsunamijijin in front of Chojijin. It didn’t even demand a soul.

It was only enough to help me make the decision.

All the peddlers had ducked low before the cannon fire, as if they’d agreed to it in advance.

Taesu was the first to straighten his back there in front of them.

Then he pointed his axe at the shattered Chojijin.

“We go there.”

Won-beom stared at Taesu as if he’d gone mad, but Kim Sun-won, who had come along, and Jang Sun-gyu, who’d been sent by Yi Ha-eung, along with a few other seasoned men, understood what Taesu meant.

The barbarians’ target was Chojijin.

That meant they wouldn’t be firing again at the very place their own men were about to storm.

Paradoxically, that made it the safest place of all.

Sure, the Western bastards’ naval guns were a bit overpowered, but if you didn’t get hit by those, this was manageable. That was what everyone gathered here had come for, after all.

Above all else, Park Axe was at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the front—having already subdued the river god of the Imjin River, earned the backing of Kaesong’s great merchants, and, by some estimates, even become an agent of the king.

There were times when running away was the right choice, and times when it wasn’t. This was the latter.

The peddler company didn’t even need to open the gate; they slipped straight through the shattered entrance to Chojijin.

Then they flowed between broken cannon and collapsed parapets as naturally as if they were taking market stalls.

It was a hair’s breadth away from the French sailors who were climbing up the cliff from the outside.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant de Chesnay took that movement for nothing more than a withdrawal of the remaining Joseon troops, who, naturally, should still have been inside the fortress battery.

It helped that this was a moonless night.

The French troops were a modern army, so there were men with lanterns scattered here and there, but unless you had night-vision goggles like Taesu, accurately reading the battlefield with that alone was impossible even for a professional soldier.

Lieutenant de Chesnay drew his saber and climbed the cliff. The earlier bombardment had torn part of it away, making the advance easy.

A noncommissioned officer beside him said, “At present, maintaining operational secrecy is difficult. What if the Joseon men are hiding along the approach, waiting to counterattack?”

Lieutenant de Chesnay, who was also a chevalier, could not tolerate such cowardly talk. His chevalier kick slammed into the sergeant’s ass.

In the Cholera Legion, that traditional French punishment was downright brutal. The poor sergeant, now looking as if he ought to throw himself into the sea immediately to preserve his gentlemanly honor, was on the verge of tears.

“You bastard. Counterattack? What, did you come here on a picnic? Huh? Is that a question a soldier should be asking?”

“N-no, sir!”

De Chesnay swept a fierce gaze over the area. His purpose with that profanity was to keep the rest of the soldiers in line as well.

In truth, their discipline could hardly be called strict.

Not that the French Navy was lax. The lax thing was the sphincter. As the sergeant had just demonstrated with his body, it was their gut flora that was the real problem.

“What the hell is that smell! Did you shit yourself again?”

“Who’s climbing above us? What the hell is dripping onto my head?”

“D-don’t talk to me... I lose strength if I do...”

“Mon Dieu! N-no!”

Taesu was starting to think he really should’ve brought the night-vision goggles after all. He felt like he could locate the French troops by smell alone.

But if he charged around blindly without the goggles, he’d kick a cannon, break a toe, or miss his footing and tumble down—just like the peddlers were doing right now.

Most modern people had never seen such overwhelming darkness outdoors. In an environment like this, night-vision goggles offered an overwhelming advantage.

As a result, Taesu was able to wait for them at the approach before the French troops arrived.

Just as Westerners saw any Mongoloid and immediately shouted “Nihao” while slanting their eyes, whatever the Frenchman was, the language Koreans used when facing a Caucasoid was all basically the same.

Taesu lifted his axe.

“Welcome to Korea.”

The axe blade flashed in the lantern light.

The lead soldier became the glorious first Frenchman to enter Chojijin.

The fact that only his head came in did not diminish the feat. On the subway, after all, the one who throws the bag gets the seat.

The soldiers following behind him recoiled in horror as they were crushed beneath the rolling corpse.

“Aaaagh!”

When the head rolling along the inside of the parapet finally came to a stop, Taesu heard a meaningful voice.

Though the leader’s neck was taken off with one swing of the axe, that wasn’t some tragic surprise the way the commander de Chesnay had said. In a siege, it was the sort of thing you expected.

Neither de Chesnay nor the French navy lost momentum. They surged upward and downward like a raging current, pressing hard into Chojijin.

With firearms, this darkness and rough terrain were nothing but obstacles.

So in the end, it became close combat. The peddlers, each holding their assigned position like Taesu, swung their wooden staves and clubs with all their strength.

“Where did these stinking barbarians come from!”

“Firing cannons in the dead of night to kill men—just like the behavior of infidels!”

In this era, even as the West and East first came into contact, no country had looked at the imperialists and immediately decided to rip out and chew their livers.

Usually, hatred boiled over only after Europeans or Japanese fired cannons or plundered homes.

In Joseon’s case, that meant the Byeongin Yangyo and the Oppert tomb-robbing incident. Before that, there had been caution, yes, but for the most part, relations had been amicable.

It wasn’t as if everyone was some incarnation of righteous anti-Western principle, ready to kill the first human being they laid eyes on. You can’t hate what you don’t know.

But now things were different.

France had ruined first contact and made a complete mess of its first impression.

In this era’s eyes, foreigners were close to another species. If an orc already had a bad image and then did something truly orcish, all you could do was slaughter it for the honor of the human race.

So the peddlers took to it with real enthusiasm as well.

The thing peddlers carried for stabbing people at times like this was the wooden peddler’s staff. The iron tip at the end had no hesitation in gouging out French eyes or piercing their throats.

Especially notable was the performance of Jang Sun-gyu, who, although not technically a peddler, was a giant among men.

Jang Sun-gyu was the only man here with a longsword, and on top of that, the only one who knew how to use it.

Each time Jang Sun-gyu’s blade reflected the light of a French lantern, one Frenchman after another tumbled off the cliff.

The authority of a longsword, so clearly distinct from a spear, a sickle, a rake, or a dagger, is the same in East and West. The French, paying respect to Jang Sun-gyu’s aristocratic swordsmanship, gave ground.

With a moment to catch his breath, Jang Sun-gyu spun around and flourished his blade.

The red silk robe that should have billowed there had, regrettably, been stolen by unjust violence. Jang Sun-gyu threw a blade-like glare at the culprit.

“How about that! Back at the market, I was ambushed and knocked flat, but this old man’s martial skill is by no means—”

But Jang Sun-gyu’s speech could not continue.

Just as he turned, Taesu’s axe, faintly illuminated by a distant torch, split through some barbarian—he couldn’t even tell which number now—from the forehead all the way down to the navel in a single blow.

Beneath the pakjji-like helmet that covered the brow, a flicker of animal-like light writhed in its eyes. The glow seemed to pierce the darkness itself.

Jang Sun-gyu swallowed.

He remembered something said by one of the hangers-on who frequented Prince Heungseon’s house, a man famous for his gossip.

“They say that’s what happens to a man who’s taken by the swordsmanship of the southern savages of Wa-guk, the Satsuma Jigen-ryu or whatever. I thought it was just nonsense...”

Jang Sun-gyu wondered, for a moment, whether he could do that with his own sword.

Being a man who knew swords, he reached a pessimistic conclusion immediately.

But then he found a better explanation.

The blade just isn’t sturdy enough!

Having made up his mind, Jang Sun-gyu shoved his Japanese saber straight through the next French sergeant who rushed at him.

It was so fast there had never been any intention of taking the sword back in the first place.

Jang Sun-gyu ripped a cutlass from the fallen sergeant’s hand.

He’d heard good things about Nammancheol, Western iron, too. Whether one favored enlightenment or anti-foreign conservatism, the Joseon logic was to adopt advanced weapons the moment they were needed.

Surprisingly enough, Jang Sun-gyu’s analysis wasn’t far off.

Taesu’s axe looked so absurdly effective that one might have wondered if it was really just a cheap hatchet bought online. A Frenchman being split in one stroke along with the cholera bacteria was like watching Alsace-Lorraine itself get cleaved in two.

The Mountain Spirit laughed wildly. He was, in every sense, a mad god.

The last part left a bad taste in my mouth, but there was nothing to be done about it. The fight was urgent.

Taesu grabbed a French soldier whose left clavicle had just been blown clear off through his right ribs.

For reasons I didn’t understand, it did seem to be true that the thing, which had only been a chromium-alloy hatchet, had gained absurd sharpness and hardness.

When that material property combined with Taesu’s monstrous strength, bodies like this impossible corpse could be made.

Taesu threw the corpse. The French troops, shocked by the force capable of making such a corpse, hesitated.

No matter how you looked at it, the god that ought to be exorcised with holy power by Choe Yang-eop Thomas in the rear boat or Kim Dae-geon on the mothership was this evil deity.

At any rate, Taesu had no intention of refusing even the power of a devil.

Not everyone was like Taesu or Jang Sun-gyu. Already, one or two men had fallen, pierced by French bayonets.

And when the French troops sensed they weren’t to be underestimated, they began firing suppressively as well. None of the shots landed, but it was enough to make everyone instinctively duck.

At the points where those gaps overlapped, the French troops finally began stepping onto Chojijin one by one.

“Aaaagh!”

At the familiar scream, I clicked my tongue and hurled myself forward.

The man who barely blocked the Frenchman’s swung gun with his axe was Won-beom.

“Y-you barbarian bastard!”

Won-beom’s defense was honestly astonishing. It was enough to say that before Taesu had shown him the dream of a harem, the man’s sheer refusal to die had worked a miracle.

Taesu, rushing in immediately before reality could recover, swept out with a calf kick and knocked the soldier off his feet.

He snatched the gun from the falling soldier and drove it down at once. The bayonet pierced the soldier’s throat, killing him on the spot.

Of course, with a muzzle-loading musket, the attacks Taesu could actually make were obvious.

Taesu tossed the gun aside. Bang! Lieutenant de Chesnay, who had somehow finished reloading, lost his posture and the shot fired harmlessly into the air.

Like hell it was your problem.

Yeah, this really does seem like someone else’s problem.

How do you know?

But then the other French troops seemed to realize that what they were holding was a gun, not some strangely shaped club.

As they fumbled to reload, the Mountain Spirit abandoned all rational explanation.

Short and sweet. Nice.

I was going to kill him anyway.

As Taesu threw himself forward, the two commanders finally faced each other.

With dawn still some way off, there was a fair amount of light around Commander de Chesnay. Taesu ripped off the night-vision goggles, which had only a narrow field of view.

Lieutenant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠de Chesnay was not afraid at all.

The gun the French were carrying now was the Charleville musket, a French standard model as steady-selling as the British Brown Bess.

It even appeared in Liberty Leading the People, a painting especially beloved by schoolboys in art textbooks. Pure-hearted youngsters weren’t interested in weapons, so no one had paid attention to the gentleman in the back holding exactly that gun.

Contrary to common misconception, the subject of that painting was not the French Revolution.

Eugène Delacroix hadn’t even been born yet at the time. The painting commemorated the July Revolution, the glorious uprising against the current July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe.

Accordingly, the Charleville musket in de Chesnay’s hands was not obsolete either. It was the latest improved model with percussion caps—a weapon that could be called the final form of the muzzle-loading firearm.

That made it perfectly suited to close combat as well.

With its proper weight and length, the buttstock, shaped like a cow’s leg, became a fine killing weapon when held and swung in reverse.

Because it was night, de Chesnay hadn’t been able to watch the earlier fighting closely.

So he snorted at the posture Taesu struck as he raised his axe overhead.

Trying to split a gun with a hatchet? Not even an Indian would be stupid enough to do that!

Block, kick, and thrust. That would be the end of it. Inferior natives would have to receive the baptism of modern civilization.

That thought wasn’t all that wrong. Compared to de Chesnay’s ultra-modern Charleville musket, an axe was one of mankind’s earliest weapons.

The newest and the oldest collided fiercely.

And in the next instant, modern civilization lost to primitive violence.

Reason folded in half, spraying fragments like a groan. De Chesnay was aghast.

“Wait—”

Of course, Taesu couldn’t understand French.

The axe that shattered the gun split the lieutenant’s cap and skull like tofu.

That was the end of a man who had once expected, through this voyage, to climb steadily through the ranks and receive even the Legion of Honor as a naval expert for East Asia.