The End of the Defense Battle (1)
"Daddy will take good care of you!"
It might have been an unwanted child, but at this point, that hardly mattered anymore.
In fact, with a reliable insurance policy to support him in his old age suddenly appearing before him, it was only natural that he should at least shout for joy.
When I looked ahead, Dialuria was still standing there with her mouth open, unable to find the words. Her face was a tangle of complicated thoughts, the expression of someone trying to figure out how to solve this situation.
But the answer had already been decided.
“Well, it was an unfortunate situation, but I’ll do my very best. This is... really... well...”
“Ugh...”
“Ah! For now, please go inside. I’ll wrap things up here and follow you in shortly. Pfft. See you in a bit. And our little one should listen to Mom, too.”
“W-who’s little one? T-that’s... not a little one...”
“Who else could it be? Anyway, let’s discuss the details after this is over. As I said before, please don’t make a scene for no reason. I’d rather not resort to rough methods either. What kind of parent would want their child to get hurt? Puh-hheh-heh.”
“……”
It went without saying that I left her dazed expression behind and moved quickly.
If the defense battle was already nearing its end, there was no real need for me to stay by her side, but I was still the overall commander responsible for this defense operation. It was only right that I be there to celebrate the victory.
I hadn’t done all that much, but I still needed to take credit where credit was due.
I wanted to stay with Dialugia, of course, but securing her and the child’s safety was more than enough for the Red Mercenaries to handle.
I gave the men who had taken care of the busywork a nod of thanks, and they nodded back as if to say not to worry. The sight warmed me a little.
Hmmm...
As I slowly made my way onto the battlements, I saw the corpses of monsters piled below.
There were still some creatures staggering up the walls, drunk on the smell of blood and unable to think straight, while others had already grasped the situation and were fleeing to the far side of the ramparts.
It felt like the wave had finally stopped. No, as long as her status was firmly in my hands, there would be no more waves. The humans on the wall were mostly exhausted, but after seeing how drastically the number of monsters had fallen, they were squeezing out their last reserves of strength.
“Don’t let them through!”
“Stay sharp to the very end!”
KWA-AAAAAAANG!
It was impressive, really, the way everyone was shouting as they desperately held the monsters back.
Off a little farther away, our party was also racing back and forth across the wall, blocking monsters wherever they appeared.
Jung Hayan was still biting her lip hard as she flung out spell after spell, and Kim Hyunsung was swinging his sword, cutting down the necks of anything that tried to climb over.
For someone like me, who had comparatively little experience to feed on, it was only natural that I’d get desperate too.
The spell was nothing special, but I kept forming hand signs and attacking the monsters below. And of course, I kept baring my teeth the whole time.
“Frontline tanks, move to block the remaining monsters from entering through the collapsed western wall!”
I had to make it look like I was doing something too.
The finishing touch mattered.
Crack!
Crunch!
“Kruaaaaaah!”
Whoosh.
“Aaaghhh!”
“Stop them!”
The giant hand I had summoned came crashing down, and the monsters screamed in agony.
I didn’t have much physical stamina left, but my mana was still holding up. It was only natural that the supreme commander, panting while casting spells, should serve as an example for everyone else.
Thanks to all the grinding and roughing it I’d done, my appearance wasn’t bad either. My whole body was covered in dirt and dust, and I had fresh wounds from running around everywhere—scratches, mostly, but not so different from the way the others looked after fighting so hard to defend the city.
It showed that the commander himself had gone out onto the battlefield and led by example.
Of course, the truth was somewhere far, far away, but who cared about the truth?
Unlike the command staff, who still looked comparatively clean, I was absolutely filthy.
I edged myself closer to the front of the wall and decided I should show off the fact that I was still swinging my sword with Yuliena in hand.
Even though Kim Hyunsung had taught me back when I first obtained Yuliena, the way to hold a sword still felt awkward.
To be exact, it was more accurate to say that my body simply followed the direction in which Yuliena moved.
After neatly severing the neck of a small monster climbing up the wall, I once again used a voice amplification spell and shouted loudly.
“We can’t let our guard down until the very end! The mages who’ve run out of mana, take up your swords and spears! The priests who’ve run out of divine power, throw stones down from the wall if you have to. This is our home!”
Of course, it wasn’t my home.
“Victory is right before our eyes!”
That much was undeniably true.
Victory really was right there in front of us. Beside me, the regular soldiers were also gripping their spears and stabbing down with everything they had.
Honestly, even I thought my frantic figure mixed in among the soldiers looked a little cool.
Good.
“Let’s do this! My comrades!”
“Commander!”
And of course, I didn’t forget to encourage them. I patted shoulders, offered words of support, did everything I could.
“Don’t let Small Rock’s sacrifice go to waste!”
It was only right to mention Song Jungwook, who was already fading from everyone’s memory.
That was when a small monster lunged at a soldier standing right beside me.
I hesitated for a moment, but it didn’t look like it would hurt much even if it bit me.
I shoved the soldier aside, and naturally the monster’s attack came toward me instead.
I lifted my arm. I could feel its sharp teeth sink into my flesh, but there was also a strange sense of satisfaction in having done something worthwhile.
Fuck, that hurts like hell!
It was the first wound I’d taken in this defense battle.
The moment I let go of the Yuliena in my hand, the sword flew out and pierced straight through the monster clamped onto my arm.
The look of panic on the face of the soldier whose life had just been saved was obvious.
“Lee Kiyoung-nim! Let me heal that wound—”
“It’s nothing. Please conserve your divine power.”
“B-but the potion—”
I had one in my pocket too, but I wasn’t stupid enough to use it right away.
“I’m fine. Divine power and the remaining supplies should be used for the seriously wounded. I can endure this much.”
“Lee Kiyoung-nim...”
“We have to live long enough to see our precious families again, don’t we?”
“Y-yes...”
If my durability stat had been just a little higher, I might not have been able to pull off the image of blood flowing from the wound.
That was enough to complete the look for now.
The sight of me clutching one arm and swinging my sword with the other would look utterly desperate to anyone watching.
Good.
It hurt like hell, but that only made the picture more beautiful.
My arm was still moving, but keeping it hanging limply was definitely more effective.
I didn’t need to tell anyone to watch me. Instead, I kept fighting as hard as I could from the relative safety of the area.
I wasn’t some lovable regressor or anything, but I was at least putting on a decent show of running around everywhere.
Whenever a priest offered to heal me in the middle of it all, I shook my head.
“This much is fine.”
“Commander...”
Instead, I even pulled out the potion in my pocket and healed others first. It was nothing impressive, but I knew perfectly well that these little acts of goodwill would add up and become strength later.
Whoa, there are a lot of them.
Still, the monsters had apparently started to get cleaned up too. Before long, the screams of monsters were drowned out by the cheers of humans.
Everyone could feel it—the victory was close.
By the time I joined in, you could already say the outcome was decided to some extent. Unlike the people who were too busy fending off whatever was directly in front of them to notice anything else, I had already seen with my own eyes that the overall battle was tilting in humanity’s favor.
“Waaaaaaah!”
“Don’t let your guard down!”
Even the archers who had run out of arrows had drawn their swords and were stabbing at the monsters, while the warriors, who were now so worked up they might as well have been broken axes with handles, were hammering away at the medium-sized monsters that had climbed up.
“Wooooooaaaaahhh!!”
Most of the soldiers were already certain of victory.
The troops on the now-cleared Third Wall dropped their weapons and let out cheers, and the people on the Fourth and Second Walls were doing the same, throwing down their weapons and hugging one another.
I wanted to celebrate too, but it was still the right thing to return to the area that hadn’t been fully secured yet and keep showing at least a little of that desperate struggle.
The cleanup looked like it would be over soon, but I still needed to stay until the very end.
I was a little out of breath from overdoing it, but what did that matter?
Our party members, unlike me, were acting from pure motives as they ran over with all their strength.
The moment I sent Yuliena flying again, the sword shot forward and pierced the neck of the monster fighting with a soldier.
Hyah!
Where the soldier turned his gaze, he would see my figure with one arm hanging down, having saved him from danger.
I didn’t even need to force my breathing—my breath naturally came rougher on its own.
I really must have been tired, because I couldn’t help gasping for air, but that too was part of the performance, part of the good story.
Good deed secured!
The more good stories you could stack up for later evaluation, the better.
“T-thank you.”
“It’s nothing.”
Kim Hyunsung was surely running around just as hard.
One by one, monsters were falling, and cheers were beginning to rise from nearly every wall. Even the monsters on the western wall, the section that had been breached, were mostly being finished off.
We won.
Now I could say it with complete confidence. No, even saying it had tilted felt awkward. There were almost no monsters still standing.
Very nice.
Of course, for someone like me, the real trouble came after the battle. There was a mountain of work to handle.
I still had to deal with Heera noona’s situation, and I also had to finish things with Xiao Lin, who had helped us out once before.
There was a lot I needed to explain to Kim Hyunsung, and most importantly, I had to bring out Dialugia and our adorable child.
Of course, the other guilds in Castle Rock wouldn’t be able to claim ownership of her, but that just meant I’d have to think carefully about how to compensate them.
And her class... I need to decide that too.
There was also the matter of postwar cleanup.
We had to tally up all those monster corpses and hold meetings about the damage, about what assets we could extract from this, and what kind of leverage we could gain from the whole mess.
In situations like this, people like me were always busier before and after the war than during it.
“Wooooooaaaaaah!”
“We’re alive! We’re alive!”
“Shit! We did it!!”
“Waaaaaaah!”
Even then, the cheering only grew louder.
Everyone was reacting differently.
Some were crying because they had lost comrades, while others were shouting with joy.
Most, of course, were the latter.
At a time like this, it was also my role to throw in one last line and help bring things to a close.
I had to declare the war over.
“We—”
As soon as I began to speak, all eyes naturally turned to me. It was right then that I suddenly felt a little dizzy.
Huh?
My head felt like it was spinning and spinning. I tried to open my mouth again, but my lips wouldn’t move.
Shit...
For a moment, I was frightened that someone might have killed Dialugia, but that wasn’t the problem.
Did I lose too much blood?
I hadn’t even lost that much. That was when I realized just how battered Dialugia had been.
Some of the damage must have already been transferred to me. And after bleeding, running around like a dog, and burning through mana like it was nothing, maybe it wasn’t so strange that I looked like this.
Ah...
Still, I thought I should at least declare the end of the war before collapsing, but the world in front of me was growing hazy and dark.
I kept swaying on my feet. I tried desperately to hold on to my senses, but it was no use.
No... maybe this picture is good?
Everyone was already watching me... so maybe collapsing from exhaustion wasn’t such a bad image after all.
“Oppaaaaaa!”
“Hyung!!!”
“Kiyoung!”
Listening to the voices of my party members shouting as they looked at me, I closed my eyes in a rather pleasant mood.
What a good picture.
While I was at it, I also hoped that by the time I woke up, all the postwar mess would already be sorted out—just a useless little thought as everything went black.
The Castle Rock defense battle had claimed an enormous number of dead and seriously wounded.
And the overall commander, who had fainted from exhaustion and become an example to everyone, had suffered nothing more than a single bite wound from a small monster.