Chapter 95
Chapter 95
'Damn it. Where the hell did that monster come from...?'
Until the moment he witnessed the Force Blade erupting from the enemy lord's sword, Jerome had still been burning with fighting spirit.
But in the face of that inexplicable golden strike, even his will to fight evaporated.
Outwardly, the opponent's aura seemed to be at a similar level to his own...
'No way.'
Despair and helplessness surged in the void where his fighting spirit had vanished.
And that only worsened the already dire situation.
In the end.
Thud!
"Guh... cough."
A crimson Force Blade pierced through his comrade Teres's throat and simultaneously skewered his own heart.
'M-my lord... I've failed my mission...'
He wanted to beg for forgiveness, even if only in his heart, but he wasn't even granted that much time.
Swish!
Because Patrick had already cleaved his head off with a Force Blade and raised it high into the air.
"The enemy commander has been slain!"
Patrick's voice echoed across the battlefield from atop the fortress walls.
The entire command structure of one side had been wiped out mid-battle.
In a normal engagement, the outnumbered troops should have surrendered by now.
But Bifrost's knights were different.
"I'll take command! Fight to the last man! Reinforcements are coming soon!"
A blood-soaked knight who had rushed to the base of the walls shouted nonsense.
'That damn bastard...'
Logan couldn't help but be infuriated by the sight.
What reinforcements?
If reinforcements were coming, they should already be visible to those on the walls.
But whether the shouting knight held some rank or not, his maddened cries instilled false courage in the remaining troops.
The retreating footsteps halted abruptly.
"Reinforcements are coming!"
"Fight!"
The poor soldiers, deceived by their comrade's lies, reignited their resolve.
And Logan's temper flared just as fiercely.
With the situation becoming more troublesome than expected, there was only one answer left.
"I'll slaughter every last one of you!"
Logan charged into the heart of the unnecessary bloodbath sparked by a single knight's words.
The moment he learned that superior enemy forces were storming the fortress, Jerik, leading the ambush squad, forced a breakthrough through the encirclement at great cost and rushed back to the fortress.
Because of this, only fifteen of the original twenty-two ambush knights remained, but he thought even that would be enough to aid the defenders.
With that single-minded determination, he ignored the hail of quarrels raining down on his back as he sprinted toward the walls.
But the enemy was stronger than expected.
—The enemy commander has been slain!
The voice that reached him the moment he arrived at the base of the walls.
"B-brother!"
The bloodied head held aloft by a knight atop the walls was a face he knew all too well.
Rage and fury surged from the depths of his chest, clouding his reason.
"I'll take command! Fight to the last man! Reinforcements are coming soon!"
He spurred his allies to fight with blatant lies.
He knew it would only lead to unnecessary sacrifice.
But he wanted to inflict as much damage as possible on those who had killed his brother.
"Jerik! It's too late! We should regroup with the main force!"
He ignored the protests of Gale, his comrade who had assessed the situation coldly.
"You go. I'll end this here!"
"Jerik!"
As conflict erupted among the leading knights with command authority, those following them hesitated in confusion.
"Fire!"
Thwip-thwip-thwip!
As if denying them any time to decide, the pursuers from behind unleashed another volley of those damned quarrels.
"Go! I'll hold them off alone!"
Seeing his knights in danger, Jerik roared with the last shred of his rationality.
But then—
"Go? Where do you think you're going?!"
A shout from the walls, followed by a figure leaping down like a shooting star.
The golden Force wrapped around the sword was an unusual color rarely seen, but Jerik didn't even register it.
All he saw were those crimson eyes and red hair.
The same symbols of the MacLaine bloodline as the man who had raised his brother's head moments ago.
The last remnants of Jerik's reason vanished in an instant.
'That bastard!'
The rain of quarrels pouring from the soldiers chasing them.
The dozens of knights leaping down after that red-haired figure.
All of it faded from his vision.
"I'll kill every last one of you! MacLaine!"
He had already abandoned any thought of returning alive.
Surrendering fully to madness, he poured every ounce of his remaining strength into his blade.
A blazing crimson Force, more intense than at any other moment in his life, fueled his ferocity.
But—
"You're the one who'll die."
Swish.
A ghostly movement, as if compressing space itself.
The moment his eyes met those cold, crimson ones staring back at him—
Jerik's consciousness faded.
Slice.
Whether spurred by the madman's last-ditch struggle or not, the desperate resistance of Tomodo's remaining troops persisted to the end.
But the moment Heinkel slipped down unnoticed and opened the gates, allowing MacLaine's infantry and crossbow cavalry to flood inside—
The overwhelming numerical disadvantage became glaringly obvious, forcing them to stop fighting.
By then, only four Bifrost knights and about fifty soldiers remained.
In contrast, MacLaine's losses amounted to fourteen knights dead on the walls and thirty-some soldiers felled by stray arrows.
It was nothing short of a crushing victory.
"We've won!"
"Wooooah!"
"Long live MacLaine!"
The battle that had begun at dawn ended before sunset.
Considering there hadn't even been a proper clash by noon, the resolution had come in the blink of an eye.
And with such a decisive victory, the soldiers' cheers were hardly unwarranted.
But hours later, after the battlefield had been cleared, the expressions of the commanders gathered in the temporary headquarters within the fortress were far from jubilant.
While some faces were flushed with the excitement of battle and victory, none wore carefree smiles—a peculiar sight.
The very first words of the meeting, held under the moon and stars, held the reason for this.
"We've cleared one hurdle, but Bifrost's main forces will come next. What's our next move, Logan?"
At Patrick's question, all eyes turned to Logan.
But his brief reply was enough to replace their hopeful gazes with bewilderment.
"We hold out."
"...What?"
Patrick spoke for everyone, but—
"Whether it's a day or a few at most, Bifrost will retreat on their own. We just need to hold out."
Logan's follow-up only deepened their confusion.
Yet his gaze remained fixed on the full moon rising in the night sky.
"Grand Prince... What do you mean...?"
"You must explain your reasoning."
"Why would Bifrost retreat?"
"...You'll find out naturally."
He spoke as calmly as possible, but no one was more uneasy than Logan himself.
'There can't be any variables. Please!'
Suppressing his anxiety, he maintained his composed facade.
"Now, let's prepare for the siege!"
—Prepare for the siege!
The soldiers, who had been cheering in victory, were baffled by the sudden order under the moonlight.
"A siege? Defense?"
"Huh? Isn't the war over?"
"We won, didn't we?"
The simple-minded, who only saw what was right in front of them, were bewildered.
"So... we're really at war with the Count's family..."
"I knew something was off."
Those with a bit more foresight sighed, thinking of the near future.
Of course, the soldiers' biggest concern was elsewhere.
"What kind of nonsense is this in the middle of the night?!"
"Damn it! My whole body's already aching!"
"Does this have to be done now?!"
Namely, the grueling labor forced upon them right before bedtime.
The quiet night of Tomodo Fortress was soon filled with the curses of thousands.
"We don't have time. Faster, faster!"
Grick sighed at his master's words but moved busily nonetheless.
In his and his disciples' hands were dozens of Collapse Scrolls.
Each worth a thousand gold, these precious items were now being absurdly planted into the ground.
'If we had more time, I'd have stored these separately and tried to manage with magic...'
But time was indeed short, as his master had said.
Only the leftover scrolls from the dam construction made this possible.
Moreover, the Grand Prince's request required precise calculations of the scrolls' destruction range—a delicate task that couldn't be entrusted to the soldiers.
'In the end, it's up to us.'
Grick sighed and prepared for the moonlit gymnastics—no, magic.
"Grick! Ready?!"
"Yes, Master!"
"Enan! Turs!"
"This side's ready too!"
"Good! Three, two, one!"
Flash.
At Grick's signal, the scrolls planted at regular intervals along the base of the walls lit up simultaneously.
And then—
Rumble...
A deafening roar, as if an earthquake had struck, and cracks began spiderwebbing across the solid ground.
The earth swelled as if about to burst.
The compacted terrain collapsed, pushing dirt outward from the scrolls' epicenters.
The displaced earth, guided by prearranged magic, moved to patch the gaps in the walls, smoothing their uneven surfaces.
Rumble...
The vibrations continued until, finally, a deep trench—five meters wide—had been carved around the base of the walls.
In other words, a moat.
A pit deep enough to bury dozens of people now encircled the fortress.
Even more astonishing, the excavated earth had moved on its own to repair and reinforce the walls.
Both the spectators and the mages who had executed the feat stared in awe at this marvel.
'Somehow, I feel like our school is specializing in construction...'
As he directed his golems to tamp down the moat's edges, Clayton felt an odd twinge of discomfort.
Of course, he didn't have time to dwell on such feelings.
"Come on, move quickly! We need to finish by tonight!"
The moment he shouted, his disciples' faces twisted, and Clayton's mood soured too.
Somehow, his original goal of settling down and increasing his disciples' training time had gone awry without him realizing it.
'Ah, must be my imagination.'
With an annual support promise of ten million gold, this much work was only natural.
If MacLaine fell, the Golem Tower would fall with it.
They were practically one entity now.
'Surely he didn't plan this from the start... Ah, no, I was the one who proposed the tower. Paranoid delusions, Clayton. I lack discipline.'
Shaking off his bitterness, he forced a bright expression and urged his disciples onward.
At dawn, the soldiers who climbed the walls under their superiors' orders could only stare in astonishment.
"Whoa, were the walls always this high?"
"They're completely smooth now!"
"Mages really are something. To do this overnight..."
To the MacLaine soldiers, it seemed as if they had gone to sleep and woken up to find the walls miraculously smoother and taller.
They couldn't help but marvel at the power of magic.
Of course—
"Spread the oil on the walls! Make sure it flows down without gaps! Squad leaders, check thoroughly!"
"Yes, sir!"
They, too, had to contribute to this grand work, so their admiration soon turned to grumbling.
But no matter how disgruntled they were, their moods couldn't possibly be worse than those of the Golem Tower mages who had worked through the night and now faced Logan.
"You want us to fill the moat with water?!"
Clayton's rugged face twisted at the absurd request.
"Even if the plains and river are close, the straight-line distance to the Luther River tributary is at least 5 km!"
"The enemy could arrive as early as today!"
"This is absolutely impossible!"
"You dug through mountains. You've dug endless canals. It's just 5 km to the river—just connect the water flow. Is that so hard?"
"......."
In the end, their perfectly reasonable rebuttals were silenced by the authority of power.