Chapter 27
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 27
Chapter Title: Slaughter at the Gate
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“Listen up.”
Sharon Alter Tassalpo shouted from atop the southern gate's watchtower.
“The evacuation at the coast isn't finished yet, so there are still countless people there. We need to buy time until the withdrawal is complete.”
I remember it clearly.
Until that moment, the situation wasn't as hopeless as the history books claim.
It was true that the enemy forces besieging the city on three sides had swallowed the horizon in black, but humanity had a ‘shield’.
That shield was the defensive barrier the witches of the Verdant Rose Society had deployed over the city.
“Hold your fire until the barrier is down. Understood? Don't shoot even if they charge. They can't possibly break through.”
The Uruk army's siege weapons couldn't even penetrate its outer layer.
- *Since it's a wide-area barrier, its duration is bound to be short, but buying time was the goal from the start.*
The vice-president of the Verdant Rose Society, Grendel, had said so, and it had been a perfectly sound judgment.
In response, the Uruk devised another plan to shatter the barrier.
First, an Uruk emerged, leaning on a staff from which countless skulls dangled.
He was a hunchback, his large, thick robes, stitched together from layers of human skin, rotted like rags.
*Clothes made of human skin? They resort to such barbaric methods?*
His vile presence, so potent it felt like it could scorch my throat, suggested he was no mere shaman.
As I'd suspected, the creature was not some shaman, but one of the heads of the High Tarq.
Dozens of prisoners were forced to kneel in a line before him, and the hunchback began to sing, waving his staff.
Oh, you pitiful souls.
You who have betrayed the King's grace, who have fallen for deceitful whispers, you cursed traitors.
We shall help you wash away your curse through atonement.
The blood of betrayal can only be cleansed by blood.
May the whispers of tainted light vanish from your blood, so you may return to the King's embrace and become 'people' once more.
Our blessing shall purify your blood and bone, so you ought to rejoice.
You will be reborn with purified bodies and attain the King's salvation.
The moment the song ended, the prisoners exploded at the peak of their agonized screams.
An explosion. They simply exploded.
Something had bulged from within their bodies before they burst, scattering blood and bone fragments in every direction.
*No…*
As the hunchback looked toward the fortress walls and gave a foul smile, I felt my entire body freeze over.
What was it?
An unfathomable terror shot down my spine.
“Kafukas! Atone, you shall atone!”
The hunchback raised his staff, and a group of ragged Uruk began to climb onto the catapults.
“Atone.”
Limping, staggering—they were scum, hardly fit to be called Uruk warriors.
“Atone. Atone.”
They stammered, mimicking the hunchback's words, and in that instant, a great terror seized my mind.
“Those things...”
It was the brand.
The same brand that had been seared onto the foreheads of the prisoners who had exploded was now glowing on the foreheads of those ragged Uruk.
“Ria!”
And that.
Was our first encounter with the Tahup Madmen, a unit infamous even among the Uruk.
“Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone!”
In that moment.
The moment the armored trolls swung their great axes and severed the catapults' heavy chains, the nightmare began.
“Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone! Atone!”
The bodies of the madmen, launched endlessly toward the top of the barrier, collided with it and exploded in a burst of darkness.
The explosive force was considerable, but the real power lay in the corrosiveness of their blood.
A gruesome feast of blood coated the barrier's surface in crimson, sending up a heat haze.
Pzzzzzzzz...
The blood inflicted continuous damage on the barrier until, finally, cracks appeared and it began to crumble.
“In-insane.”
“Wh-what is that!”
One by one, the soldiers on the walls began to panic.
If the barrier was breached, the walls were next. The madmen were still climbing onto the catapults.
I frantically looked for Ria.
She was leaning against the ramparts with both hands, her body stretched out as she stared blankly beyond the barrier.
Her hands were trembling uncontrollably.
“Ria, are you okay?”
“I-I'm fine, but the city's defense strategy is not. The walls of Kerknude have no way to stop those suicide attacks. Even the Verdant Rose Society's barrier couldn't hold.”
“...!”
“The moment we fail to defend the southern gate, humanity will lose access to nearly ninety percent of its tactics. The defenders at the other gates will be annihilated without a fight.”
Spouting tactical theory as if possessed, Ria was clearly in a state of panic, but her way of showing it was different from an ordinary person's.
Yes, different from mine, too.
That's why I'd sought her out immediately.
What Ria needed right now were words and actions to calm her chaotic thoughts.
“So if we just stay on the walls like this?”
“...!”
“You have a way, right? Something you've already thought of?”
The trembling in Ria's hands stopped.
Still pale, but with her tremors calmed, she nodded.
I nodded back, and Ria suddenly leaped down from the wall.
Her action was the perfect answer. I immediately drew Aradamanthel, which had been humming coldly at my back.
“All eyes on me!”
The crimson radiance emanating from Aradamanthel instantly captured the attention of the panicked soldiers.
This is enough.
I caught Sharon's eye, my superior, asking for permission to speak, then continued.
“From this moment, all forces will withdraw from the walls in an orderly fashion, following the command of the Black Rose Corps.”
“The walls...”
“We're abandoning them...?”
“Are you serious right now?”
“As you can see, there's no point in defending the walls as they are. If we insist on holding them, we'll just get caught in those explosions and die.”
The horrifying sound of the barrier melting was now directly audible. Its outer surface had been breached.
“But FakeWarrior! How are we supposed to retreat?”
“If we abandon the gate, they'll swarm in instantly, and we'll be pig feed before we can even form up.”
I don't possess the strategic intellect to respond effectively to irregular situations.
But that doesn't mean I can't do anything.
In situations like this, there's only one thing Camilla ever taught me.
“I'll hold the gate alone. Until you've formed your lines.”
To cut, and cut, and cut again. To use the time spent thinking to cut some more.
The apex of slaughter.
A miracle forged from slaughter.
Did they feel the same thrill I felt when I watched Camilla's back? The soldiers fell silent.
“Gatekeeper!”
And did she see something of Camilla in my resolve? Sharon, to whom I had yielded command, shouted.
“Open the gate. Let those idiots charge straight for it instead of thinking about ladders.”
The soldiers still looked as if they couldn't trust the decision, but soon, with the metallic clang of chains, the gate began to rise.
The steam cannons and artillery were moved down from the walls first, followed by the other soldiers, regiment by regiment.
Before she left, Sharon placed a hand on my shoulder.
“That reckless nature of yours, wanting to crush tactics with brute force—you're the spitting image of Camilla.”
“I still have a long way to go to catch up to her.”
“Heh, are you trying to imitate her curt way of speaking, too? I wish you good fortune. Don't die.”
The pre-battle calm descends.
An inviolable silence where all the world's noise vanishes from my mind, leaving only the sound of my own breath.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly placed my hand on the hilt of Aradamanthel.
“...!”
“...!”
“...!”
They are coming, heralded by countless war cries and banners.
Countless crests bearing the image of an unknown winged beast fluttered in the wind. It was the Zekra Clan, a new High Tarq.
They were the ones who centered their forces around wolf cavalry, I'd heard.
- *Your FakeWarrior predecessors killed so many High Tarq during the war that their entire membership has been replaced four times over.*
The sinews of my body, the marrow of my bones.
To the point of tingling.
They drew closer, spewing a violent, collective bloodlust like a rainbow.
Half a year.
It's been half a year.
And now, I have returned, here before you.
- *You must all learn the characteristics of every clan.*
Drawing the pure-blooded blade from its pristine white sheath, I murmured the words.
Softly.
Quietly.
Reverently.
And desperately.
“I am Kaisen Alter Aradamanthel.”
It was the sword's prayer.
The call that awakens the holy sword, causing it to creak and glow red in response to its agent's summons.
The command that makes a blood-red phosphorescence dance upon the drawn blade.
And, the same prayer my dead master had cried out so sorrowfully throughout his life.
“I am going to kill you all.”
Even the drops of saliva falling from the maws of the Blashwulfs vying to break through the gate were crystal clear.
Good.
My condition is excellent today.
The war cries of the wolf riders atop them, fiercely swinging their maces and axes, sounded incredibly slow.
Thirty of them.
Fifty.
Seventy.
No, more than a hundred.
The wolf cavalry, leading the enemy vanguard. A force of wolf riders is considered large starting from a hundred.
“Batus! You think you can stop our Zekra Clan alone? Kuhaha! Fine. We'll trample you!”
The magic condensed inside the scabbard, unable to contain its explosively concentrated flow, generated a repulsive force that tried to push the sword out.
—Sipmunjado Fourth Form, Release.
To suppress that repulsion, I forced the hilt to stay fixed in the scabbard, and the entire sword began to rattle madly.
Wait.
More.
Just a little more.
It was astounding to realize I could gather tens, even hundreds of times more magic in the scabbard than before.
If I hadn't undergone the physical modifications, if my sword wasn't Aradamanthel.
Either my arm would have broken from this explosive internal pressure, or the sword would have shattered.
*Drrrrrrrrrr...*
As the external and internal pressures reached their limit, my entire body began to tremble.
Distance to the enemy, ten paces.
The flow of magic, condensed to its absolute extreme, swirled red around the scabbard.
Distance to the enemy, five paces.
Manifesting a mana chain from my fingertips, the vortex of magic spewed forth by my rampaging mana heart was drawn into the blade in an orderly fashion.
Distance to the enemy, a single pace.
In that one moment, the iai draw.
With a sonic boom, the holy sword's blade shot out of its scabbard.
Like paint flicked from a brush.
A red line drawn along the trajectory the blade had swept.
—Sipmunjado Sixth Form, Flash Dance Slash.
A wolf's snout, an Uruk's lower body—anything that entered that line was severed from the flesh.
Cleanly, as if tearing paper.
Scattering fresh blood the same color as the line, countless wolf riders were butchered, plummeting to the ground.
“You, what...”
The screams of the dying and not-yet-dead beasts swirled around me.
“A swordsman with a single-edged blade and the Valkrush brand on his cheek... you couldn't be...”
I stomped my boot on the muttering Uruk's head, crushing it.
The enemy charged on, their war cries replacing the sound.
I swung the blade to flick off the blood running down its fuller, and Aradamanthel hummed coldly.
The words the Uruk had uttered just before its head exploded lingered in my ears for a moment, an echo on the battlefield.
“Kaisen, Kaisen Kishunkalihats (Kaisen who slew Kishun)...?!”