Chapter 31
Chapter 31
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 31
Chapter Title: Striking the Village
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He had poisoned all the remaining food in the well and the village.
And now, quite some time later.
No matter how barbaric they were, they couldn't have digested Kallias's deadly poison without issue. Right now was the perfect chance to butcher them.
"If you won't go, I won't stop you. It just means that's all you're good for."
Kallias ignored them and drew Devouring Sword—Roas.
Over the past few days, it had devoured so much blood that the broken section had regrown considerably, to the point where no trace of the damage remained.
*Not much longer now.*
Once this quest was complete, Roas would smoothly evolve into a spirit sword.
Its unique ability wouldn't make much difference here, but it was still better than nothing.
"I'll go first."
Kallias left the hesitating knights behind and headed for the village.
Brans, who had started to follow him, shouted.
"Hmph! What a shameful bunch. Is there anyone here who doesn't owe their life to the lord? Knights who came seeking honor and pride, wallowing at that level."
Tsk tsk.
"Even a mangy yard dog knows enough to tuck tail at its own home, but what are you lot? The title of knight is wasted on you—a damn shame! If that's how it's gonna be, toss those swords away!"
Hearing such words from a mere servant made their blood boil, and a few knights shot to their feet.
Brans startled and plastered himself to Kallias.
"Get lost, Brans."
"Yes, sir!"
A moment later.
"Hey, you gonna keep sitting there? After taking that from a non-knight servant, do you even have the pride to keep holding your sword? Embarrassing."
"I'll go too. He must have something to rely on, or he wouldn't be acting like that."
"I'll go. If the North falls anyway, nowhere left to settle. This is my home. Besides, he saved my life, so he must have a plan."
One, two.
As the knights rose, Emily gazed at Kallias with an odd look in her eyes.
Shing.
Emily drew her sword.
She strode after the path Kallias had taken. Even a child just over twelve was drawing her blade and heading toward the orcs. The knights' faces burned hot.
"Eh, damn it!"
"I'm going too, shit!"
Emily's actions served as the spark, and every last hesitating knight surged to their feet. Some were simply swept up in the momentum, but most were captivated by the sword of the man leading the charge.
As Brans had said, they all owed him their lives anyway.
There were no other options.
The man who had ended up leading these knights eyed the orcs settled in the village, his gaze sharpening.
*Quite a few still look fine.*
Some were standing guard without a care.
But the village didn't look all that peaceful.
It was quite rowdy.
Kallias quietly closed his eyes.
Soon, sounds from deep within the distant village reached his ears on the wind.
Focusing his divine power on his ears synergized with the Bard's Blessing trait, letting him faintly hear the noises from inside.
-Ughhh!
-Grrrrr!
He slowly lifted his eyelids and curled the corner of his mouth.
"I'll clear the path."
Kallias glanced back, then circulated divine power from his dantian throughout his body.
The buds of the Blossom Bone Nourishment bloomed gently, caressing his fatigue-ridden flesh and filling it with the power of the gods.
Twang!
His figure shot toward the village.
"Enemy!!"
The orc on guard screamed loud enough to burst eardrums.
But because of it.
Slash!!
It couldn't block Kallias's single stroke.
"Chaaarge!!"
Brans bellowed out of nowhere.
"Ch-charge!"
"Waaaaah!!"
The knights charged in like they didn't care anymore, throwing the orcs into panic.
But they soon grabbed their axes.
*Spreading rumors it's a surprise attack, huh.*
He'd have to chew Brans out later.
"If you survive that long!"
Clang!
* * *
"Die!"
Crunch!
Aaron swung his greatsword and laughed boisterously as he slew an orc.
His body was exhausted and his muscles throbbed all over, but his mood wasn't bad.
Oddly, dealing with the orcs felt easier than before.
"These bastards are all out of juice! Hey! Ain't that right, kid?"
Slash! Thud!
"Not a kid—I'm Allen."
Aaron slung his greatsword over his shoulder and grinned at Allen, who barely reached his waist.
Allen shook the blood from his blade and panted lightly.
"But I agree with you. Their movements are sluggish. Like they've been poisoned or something."
He had no idea what was going on, but this ambush was plenty successful.
Victory against this many orcs with less than half as many knights.
Even measured in merits, it was more than enough.
"After today, Kallias's name and our knights' tale will spread through the bards' mouths across the North!"
"Hahaha! Now that's good!"
Boom! Crunch!
"Hey hey! Die! Die! You gotta die for my name to spread far and wide!"
Slash!
Another orc crumpled. As Aaron caught his breath, he spotted the man at the vanguard sweeping away orcs.
"As expected of Jerban stock, huh."
"Who knows. You can't pretend you haven't heard the rumors about Lord Kallias."
"But rumors aren't all that trustworthy, it seems. Right now, my eyes see no braver or more honorable knight than him!"
Enemy corpses and overflowing blood were all that surrounded him as he charged, red cape billowing, butchering the oncoming orcs.
"Maybe he didn't even need our help..."
"Foolish talk. Look closely, kid. No knight, no matter how strong, has infinite stamina. Look at Lord Kallias."
He dominated even as he faced two or three at a time.
Of course, the orcs weren't in normal shape, but no other knight here matched that footwork or sword handling.
Yet even he occasionally dropped his sword to an unexpected orc ambush, rolling on the ground in fierce combat.
When he lost his grip, he hastily forged a new sword from a nearby corpse and drew a spare, fighting on without so much as a breath.
"Lord Kallias is overexerting himself. He must be anxious. He doesn't show it, but he's leading us."
"He's pushing that hard for our sake?"
"Then why else would he charge to the front and swing like a madman?"
It was then.
"You lot! Instead of chatting, kill one more! Don't you know our lord is overexerting himself to save even one extra one of you? He poisoned their well to set the stage, and you show no gratitude—just yapping!"
"P-poison? Really poison?"
"While you fools were slacking, the lord dumped poison in the well! Idiots!"
Pat-pat-pat!
Brans spat his curses and ducked behind Emily.
"It's as Brans says. Our time isn't infinite! If you've got breath to yap, use it to kill one more."
"Yes!"
"Like that... Understood, Lady Emily."
Allen and Aaron gripped their sword hilts fiercely, glanced at Kallias up ahead, and thrust their blades faster than before.
*Didn't realize... thought he was reckless...*
*Sure enough, there was a plan.*
An indescribable swell of emotion rose in Allen and Aaron's chests.
Clang!
Metal flashed once more.
Swoosh! Slash!
It felt good cutting them down.
Roas seemed to feel it too—the more it cut, the sharper it grew.
Soaked full of blood, Roas became even keener and lighter than before.
Clang! The knack for parrying axes was starting to stick.
*Definitely easier than the start.*
Orcs' unique brute strength.
The arcs of their axe swings.
Their brutish movements.
All of it had become quite familiar now.
He knew that swinging his sword like this made it hard for them to block, and like that, they charged without guarding.
Having grasped their fighting style in broad strokes, cutting them down felt much smoother.
Thud.
Kallias stepped over the orc that had collapsed bleeding and looked back.
"Huu-"
He left the orcs too weakened by poison to put up a fight to the knights.
He focused on slicing down the hale and hearty ones.
"You're doing well."
Looking back, Brans and Emily had joined in, felling orcs.
Brans wielded a hefty dagger, using nimble footwork to whittle away at the orcs' limbs bit by bit, while Emily deflected their axes with superb swordsmanship.
*Their teamwork's pretty solid.*
Brans's swordsmanship was utterly dismal, but he had sharp instincts, and Emily created perfect openings for him.
She drew the orc's attention while he stabbed into the gaps.
The dagger in Brans's hand had a bluish blade—it was a famed-sword-grade carcass sword Kallias had forged from a slain orc warrior. Skill didn't matter; a hard thrust sank it to the hilt, gouging out chunks of orc flesh.
Kallias nodded and calmly surveyed the surroundings.
The tide had already turned.
The remaining knights joined in, cutting down the groaning orcs.
Even villagers could probably finish off orcs that were mostly dead from poison.
"By now, you'd think they'd flee."
But the orcs showed no such sign.
No matter what, they hurled their bodies forward, straining to kill just one more.
No—they went all out as if, since they were doomed to die anyway, they wanted to go down fighting.
*If they must die, then on the battlefield.*
It was one of their creeds.
Under the belief that only those who died in battle went to the gods' embrace.
The orcs swung their massive axes, yearning to perish amid combat.
They sought lofty honor.
It had a certain rough charm to it, but...
"Rather convenient."
The more orcs charged in like moths to flame, the higher the grade of rewards that dropped.
"Huu-!"
After a single steadying breath, Kallias launched himself at the next oncoming orc.
* * *
At the same time.
"Wow, he really fights well. Now he's drawn a second sword—dual-wielding!" "...Is that so."
Orphin kept clenching the hand that kept drifting toward her sword hilt.
Unable to resist Rini's insistence, she had shifted a little from their original hiding spot.
They had come closer to the place where he waited alone with her. Rini's eyes were special—even scenery others couldn't glimpse from a slight shift was visible to her.
It held true even in the dark predawn, so Rini and Orphin held their breath and watched the battlefield pilgrim in his billowing red cape fight alongside the knights.
"It's over now. Kallias's victory. He really wiped out twice their number in orcs with those misfits!"
Rini watched with sweat-slick palms, then cried out like she was exhaling.
"Impressive..."
Orphin could hardly believe it.
But Rini had no reason to lie to her.
If they had lost, she and Rini would be in danger right away.
"But the orcs looked off. Super feeble, kept puking even before the fight. Gross."
"...Is that so."
"Yeah, it's not like orcs all got food poisoning together. Probably Kallias did something ahead of time?"
"No way. They wouldn't have had the spare time for that."
"But he still picked a fight in a situation where they should've been overwhelmed—and won."
You couldn't move like that without some certainty.
All the more so for untrained wandering knights who hadn't even been properly knighted.
Plus, they were all nursing big and small wounds; fighting the orc horde, the outcome would've been obvious.
*Yet he pressed on anyway.*
Something you couldn't do without certainty.
Putting together the orcs' condition and the situation, ways Kallias could've prepared in advance naturally came to mind.
"It really might've been poison."
No other method made as much sense for crippling them so badly without proper combat.
"Swordsmanship and tactics too? Handsome and smart on top of that—how'd he end up the Jervan wastrel?"
*That's exactly what I'd like to know.*
Orphin stifled a laugh at Rini's mutter. Who could look at that valiant figure and believe he was Jervan's one-of-a-kind wastrel?
"What is he doing now?"
"Sitting on a pile of orc corpses, raising his sword with the knights. Quiet down and you might hear it?"
Closing her eyes for a moment, she could hear it.
The faint cheers of the knights, carried on the chill wind through the forest.
Victory cheers resounding across the battlefield.
*Ah.*
Orphin hugged her arms tight.
Longing bloomed in her eyes.
Her knightly soul boiled over.
She wanted to taste victory on a blood-soaked battlefield too.
She wanted to belt out the surging cry of triumph from her dantian until her throat burst.
"Ah..."
But unlike the pleasant cheers reaching her ears, she was left a wretched soul buffeted by the North's biting winds.
A knight of Jervan, yet unable to swing her sword freely.
Orphin's fists clenched without gap.
Why couldn't she draw her sword there?
Why couldn't she charge at the North's archenemies—the magic beasts and orcs!
Orphin suppressed the impulse to rush out and bare her blade right then.
Crunch.
Her hand gripping the hilt snared the burning emotion.
"We need to go now. Dawn will break soon—Killaban might show up."
"Eh, uh!?"
It was then.
Rini's pupils dilated.
"What is it?"
"Red hair!"
Orphin's eyes widened like saucers.
"Is that real?!"
"Yeah! Red, red hair. Red hair means... Orphin!"
"Why would a great warrior..."
Orc Great Warrior.
The elite of elites among orcs, said to possess several times the power of a normal warrior.
"Wh-what do we do!? Great warriors are insanely strong! I read about it in books. Kallias is gonna die... Orphin!!"
Even as Rini pleaded for help, Orphin's face filled with despair.
"A great warrior..."
Even if she went, nothing would change. Escaping a great warrior after that battle they'd just fought was a pipe dream.
Orphin spoke with a shadowed expression.
"They all..."
...are dead meat.