Chapter 35
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 35
Chapter Title: The Battle for the Red Mountains (3)
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Year 1697, September.
The main forces of the six great demon tribes, massed on the central front, annihilated all of humanity's strongholds as they advanced north.
Starting with the western strategic point of the old republic, Aristafo, the eastern capital, Tervenople, was crushed.
With the fall of Aurelinople, the last of the old republic's seven great cities, humanity lost all its key positions in the southern continent.
Unimpeded, the demons carved a path straight north across the continent, violating all living things…
But their seemingly endless rampage of madness was brought to a halt before a fortress of natural impregnability.
The name of that fortress was the Red Mountains.
“Kke──────!”
The counterweights of the catapults dropped in unison.
The launching arms tilted sharply, striking the crossbars with immense force.
Crimson lava bubbled and boiled from the objects hurtling through the sky.
“Kuh, kuaaaaaah…!”
“The—the walls are melting…!”
Mirngadia commanded.
[Iron Cross Knights, stand by to charge. Ten minutes.]
The Iron Cross Knights were concealed in the 13th Forest, located at the western foot of the mountains.
Beyond the thicket, the sky was nothing but ash and steel. Massive stones and iron endlessly crisscrossed the air.
Each time a massive stone slammed into the long, thin barrier wall running across the plains, screams of crushed flesh and bone followed.
The siege of the western plains was in full swing.
A great army, led by the High Kun Tark and the Nuwigin Clan, had gathered like a black tide at the base of the wall.
Ladders were placed against the ramparts, only to be sent tumbling down by bullets and boiling oil…
The ferocious catapults, twice the standard size, were hurling entire furnaces at the wall.
[This is Seira Alter Solang of the Iron Fortress corps! We can't hold on much longer! The wall is melting and creating a breach! We need more FakeWarriors!]
The western plains were the weak point of the Red Mountains' defensive line.
This land, where the mountains ended and the plains began, had originally been a trade route between the Empire and the old republic.
The vast, green expanse stretching to the sea was a great boon in times of peace, but in war, it became a perilous structural flaw.
Mirngadia's solution to this was to approach it with brute simplicity.
He had a long barrier wall constructed to block off the plains, but installed no gates anywhere along it.
Like a man-made mountain of stone.
Without gates, there was no way to use battering rams. Only ladders and siege towers.
The battle would thus be decided not by close-quarters combat on the walls, but by a ranged firefight.
In a static, long-range engagement, humanity's forces could fight the demons on equal terms.
*If their opponent hadn't been the Nuwigin Clan, that is.*
High Kun Tark, Nuwigin.
The name secretly meant ‘Black Volcano.’
The Nuwigin Clan, based in an ancient volcano called ‘Nuwigiriodo,’ was the best among the Uruk at forging and extracting iron.
“Wow, they’re not letting up for a second.”
Tval said.
Roberis replied.
“The Nuwigin Clan has over an eighty percent success rate in sieges. They're unique among the Uruk, who are typically weak at siege warfare.”
“The stone wall has collapsed. The real fight is about to begin.”
Mern said.
For a brief moment, Kaisen recalled his training from the Wiyonggeomjeon.
- *Nuwigin. They use weapons forged from an unusual type of iron called Molten Iron. It's incredibly hot. The slightest touch will inflict severe burns on a human body.*
The terrifying reason for this stemmed from the lava boiling within the Molten Iron.
The Nuwigin were capable of creating iron that could contain lava, a technology that had been a nightmare for humanity since the ‘Black Summer.’
The Nuwigin were also famous for their heavy shock infantry.
- *Unlike other Uruk tribes, who wear leather or go bare-chested with mismatched gear, the Nuwigin have standardized equipment: Molten Iron armor, greatshields, and poleaxes.*
Their stopping power, derived from the lava that explodes on impact, had already proven its martial prowess in numerous battles.
[Five minutes. Prepare to charge.]
*Clank.* Roberis Alter Scherpang closed her helmet's visor.
Golden roses were beautifully interlaced on her plate helm and armor, the symbol of the Page Margrave family.
A chorus of metallic rings sounded as visors snapped shut, closing off sight but securing the skulls within.
“Iron Cross, wedge formation.”
As the two thousand heavy cavalry emerged from the forest and assembled in a wedge, the knightly order was divided into three units.
Roberis led the main body.
Kaisen was assigned to the left flank, Tval to the right.
[This is the 4th Infantry Brigade! We have less than five hundred survivors! Cannot maintain the line!]
After countless furnaces had fallen, the wall finally crumbled.
At last, the Uruk warriors let out a roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the wall and surged through the breach.
And finally, a crystal-clear voice was heard.
[Commence the charge.]
Tval raised a massive iron horn. With his great lung capacity, he blasted a deafening call to advance.
*Bwooooooo...*
As the warhorses thundered down the mountainside, shaking the very earth, a thick cloud of dust rose into the air.
The lesser demons, like goblins, scattered in terror, showing neither ferocity nor fighting spirit.
But the High Kun Tark, the Nuwigin Clan, immediately formed a shield wall.
Their imposing presence was like an iron fortress.
The suffocating pressure of a black wall instantly rising on the horizon.
The warhorses, kicking off the ground to propel themselves forward, sucked breaths of fear through their flared nostrils.
“Jeolwon.”
But the Supreme Holy Sword Scherpang.
This holy sword, to which even Aradamanthel deferred, had left its mystical mark on even more battlefields and legends.
And on this day, it added a new pattern to its legacy.
“Sigongseom.”
As if drawing a single stroke in the air with a brush.
Calmly.
Slowly.
But decisively.
Roberis, riding at the vanguard, drew a straight horizontal line with the blade of her greatsword.
“...?”
“...?”
“...?”
Then the iron wall began to waver, like a writhing mirage, and in the next moment—
—it was cut in two.
*Crack, cr-crack... Shaaatter.* The dimensional pane broke like glass, scattering fine white particles.
The dimensional rupture generated immense waste heat, voraciously consuming everything in its path.
Molten Iron armor and shields were pulverized, and the Nuwigin warriors, whose boiling point was below 800 degrees, melted and boiled in the lava that burst forth.
[Incredible... Roberis Alter Scherpang has completely shattered the Nuwigin shield wall!]
Immediately after.
A gust of wind, rushing in to fill the void of annihilation, spread the heat of the lava low across the ground.
“Alidona.”
“I know.”
Alidona opened her mouth.
From the tip of her tongue, words took form and gained the substance of power, manifesting as what is called a spell.
Suddenly, the lava-seething earth subsided, and a solid path formed over it.
“Ka z ku shi rak!”
The Nuwigin warriors scrambled to form a new shield wall to block the path.
“Mern.”
An arrow of blue light.
Scattering clear, bright particles, it pierced through the heart of their formation.
Where the particles landed, verdant roots shot up from the ground, ensnaring the limbs of the Nuwigin warriors.
“Tval.”
And Tval.
Swung the heavy weapon on his shoulder—less a spear and more a pillar—the Dragonbone Spear.
A dozen Nuwigin warriors, clad in Molten Iron, could not withstand its overwhelming mass and were sent flying nearly twenty meters.
“Iron Cross!”
What they had created was a path.
A corridor for the knights to advance.
A breakthrough that struck the vital point of the battlefield.
“Trample them all!”
Five hundred lances, each boasting a murderous length, were enveloped in a hazy light.
And they slammed into the flank of the enemy, who had not yet recovered from their broken formation.
A tide of steel, the Iron Cross banners fluttering majestically.
The tips of its raging waves pierced Uruks two and three at a time... its hooves trampled those rolling on the ground...
*They say this is the party that most embodies what a hero's party should be...*
It was a truly impressive sight.
Kaisen unconsciously mulled over the nickname given to the Iron Cross Knights—Roberis's party.
The second coming of the legendary hero's party that ended the Age of Turmoil 600 years ago, Rista Alter Scherpang's party, was it?
*This is no time to be impressed.*
This is just the beginning.
A mission even more critical than carving this path had been assigned to Kaisen.
The prelude to all-out war,
The Battle for the Red Mountains (3)
“What did you just say?”
Kaisen asked.
This wasn't so much a question as it was a way of emphasizing his bewilderment.
Roberis answered.
“My strength lies not in subjugation, but in breaking formations. It’s because Scherpang’s power is specialized for one-versus-many, not one-on-one.”
This conversation took place before the charge began.
Before the battle had even started.
In short, it was while they were moving to the 13th Forest.
“They say the legendary FakeWarrior Rista could use Sigongseom with ease, but I can't. In all of its long history, not a single successor has been able to do that.”
“...!”
“Sigongseom can only be manifested through Jeolwon, which draws out the ultimate power of a Supreme Holy Sword.”
Jeolwon symbolized reaching the pinnacle of martial prowess as a FakeWarrior.
It also symbolized the individuality of each FakeWarrior, and sometimes, like Sigongseom, it was passed down as a secret technique.
Needless to say, Kaisen had not yet mastered Aradamanthel's Jeolwon.
- *Jeolwon is the very essence of mastery. The path to it only opens when one's power to wield a Dragon Spirit and a Holy Sword reaches its absolute peak.*
Camilla's Jeolwon was her swordsmanship of drawing the blade.
Was it based on that enlightenment that she had passed on the secrets of the draw to Kaisen?
“Three times is the maximum in a single battle. And that’s a generous maximum—use it three times, and I’ll definitely pass out. Even using it once tangles up all the mana chains in my body so badly I can't even swing my sword.”
Sigongseom had always been regarded as the most powerful of all the Jeolwon in the history of the twelve Supreme Holy Swords.
*Perhaps great power comes with a price.* The thought didn't seem the least bit unreasonable.
It was only natural that a fake body wielding the power of a true hero would have to pay a fitting price.
“I don't even use a second Sigongseom unless it's a dire emergency. Every time I use it, I feel like I'm shaving months off my lifespan. It'd be stranger if it *didn't* overload my body.”
“Then how...?”
“It's pathetic, I know, but I'm entrusting you with the mission of taking the Nuwigin chief's head during this charge.”
He could feel numerous gazes turning toward him, heavy with a burdensome sense of shock.
Kaisen's eyes, however, were calm.
As if to emphasize its wielder's will, Scherpang exhaled a breath of pure white, and Aradamanthel, hanging at his back, responded with a crimson cry.
“Good eyes. Don't worry, my subordinates will support you with all their strength.”
“And you?”
“I am originally the eldest daughter of the Page family. The Page family is descended from the first great sage, Emitsa Page. Do you not know what that means?”
There were five great magical houses in the Empire, and each family possessed its own secret arts.
The Page family was known as the ‘Drawing Mages’ due to their unique way of using their power.
Just as now, when Roberis traced her fingertips through the air, a beautiful rune was born.
“Normally, I fight with magic, except when I use Sigongseom. Why else would I put that musclehead Tval in the vanguard?”
* * *
[Threatening Abyssal factor approaching. Probability of it being the Nuwigin chief calculated at 98%.]
The Nuwigin chief, Dimartek Aidroshe, flaunted his murderous presence from a great distance.
That killing intent—heavy and deep.
A tension like a sharp needle piercing the spine hinted at the presence of a great and fearsome enemy.
Coming.
Coming.
It's coming.
Above the sandstorm that blanketed the battlefield, a tribal banner depicting a volcano fluttered blackly.
Dimartek Aidroshe.
Dimartek of the Iron Hand.
Dimartek appeared, leading the vanguard of the Nuwigin chariot corps.
The blades spinning savagely from the chariot wheels severed the ankles of his foes.
The lava that dripped in the wheels' wake prevented the enemy's formation from regrouping.
“Al kru te! How dare these insects cause a disturbance on my volcano!”
Dimartek leaped from his chariot.
The mace gripped in his iron hand, ‘Pandemonium,’ looked like a furnace itself, with lava boiling fiercely within.
Tval immediately leaped from his horse, intercepting the blow to prevent it from shattering their formation.
“Foolish human! Do you truly believe you can stop a volcano with something so pathetic!”
In that instant.
As Pandemonium clashed with him, web-like cracks spread across the ground where Tval stood.
The red heat that danced and seethed wickedly from those cracks—this was the power of an ancient king.
“Nothing can stop a volcano! I shall grant your filthy bodies new armor with the volcano's blessing!”
It was the eruption of a volcano.
A mass of catastrophe forcing its way out of the fissures.
Those reddish evils greedily devoured the earth…
“...!”
The warhorses at the front collapsed, their legs melting beneath them.
A few squires and attendants rolling on the ground were engulfed in lava, their bodies dissolving amid their screams.
The warhorses following the vanguard lost their composure, and the charge formation began to break.
“Roro!”
“I know!”
A sheet of ice, born from Roberis's magic and Alidona's spell, cut off the rampaging lava.
The sound of steam exploding in a white cloud.
The sound of lava bubbling beneath the ice, creating black blisters.
And *ting...*
The sound of a safety pin being pulled.
For an instant, an arrow Mern had imbued with deadly force flew to pierce Dimartek's chest... but bounced off.
Dimartek, who was overpowering Tval, glared at Mern with a sinister, triumphant smile.
Mern snorted coldly.
“Tough, aren't you? But I wasn't aiming for you, you idiot. I was aiming for the path.”
The arrow, cutting through the swirling air currents, carved a path through the mist of steam.
That path was a road.
An arrow that prepared the way for a lightning bolt.
In this very moment.
A path for that crimson light, which slithered and coiled like lightning engraving its pattern on the night sky, to reach its kill.
—Ten-Character Sword, Seventh Form.
Camilla had drastically modified the forms of the Ten-Character Sword she taught Kaisen, taking into account the differences between the sexes.
Because men, with their inferior ability to manipulate mana chains, could not perfectly master the Ten-Character Sword, a dance of linked movements.
As a result, the individual forms lost their connective power and were separated into single, powerful strikes.
In exchange for giving up the linked movements, he gained power.
Every form began only through the ‘Fourth Form - Bal (Release).’
An overwhelming power that achieved the kill with a single swing.
The Ten-Character Sword was not originally meant to achieve a perfect kill with a single form.
The Ten-Character Sword is the blade of a sword dance.
It builds momentum with the flow of the dance, and with that flow, it reaches the kill.
But Kaisen's Ten-Character Sword.
The Ten-Character Sword of a man who could not dance like a woman.
Was designed to channel immense destructive power into a single form, based on the art of the draw.
And that augmented destructive power was perfected through Kaisen's unique ability to draw out the Dragon Spirits of the Divine and True Dragons to their very limits.
—Bal (Release) - Jinnoeryong (Advancing Thunder Dragon).
As if a dragon were spewing lightning.
The blade, as it left the scabbard, was wreathed in crimson lightning.
And with the speed of a thunderbolt that no eye could follow, it devoured its target.
A single flash.
The trajectory the sword had taken.
Half a beat later, a red afterimage followed, tracing the pattern of lightning.
A full beat later, the metallic ring of the slash following the blade cut through the momentary silence.
───Charrrrrrrrrrng!
The blade, having wielded the absolute power of a soul, vibrated fiercely.
The sword was agitated.
It was struggling with the recoil from wielding a transcendent power.
*If this had been a sword made by human hands.*
*It would have shattered into pieces from the recoil before the slash even landed.*
*I'm sorry for pushing you so hard, Aradamanthel.*
Kaisen elegantly twirled the pure-blooded blade and calmly sheathed it in its pure white scabbard. The sword's cry gradually subsided.
*Click...*
When the sword's cry ceased with the sound of the guard hitting the scabbard.
Dimartek Aidroshe's massive, helmeted head was cleanly severed, toppling onto the lava.
His upper body collapsed, spewing blood from the stump of his neck, letting go of the violently pulsating Pandemonium.
[In... a single strike...?!]
[Confirming loss of the Nuwigin chief's life signs...!]
[The Nuwigin Clan's ranks are in disarray...!]
The lava seething within the Pandemonium, now stuck in the ground, went dormant.
Almost simultaneously, the volcanic eruption that had been raging beneath the ice, threatening to tear the world asunder, began to subside.
The king's authority had lost its connection and begun to dissipate.
“Kaisen Alter Aradamanthel has defeated the Nuwigin chief. The enemy formation is collapsing. Requesting deployment of the 2nd Area Army as a subjugation force.”
Roberis reported this amidst the fierce victory cheers rising from the human defense forces.
[Denied. The 2nd Area Army cannot be deployed to mop up remnants. Neutralize the siege batteries as per the second operational objective and focus on maintaining the defensive line.]
As always, only the voice of cold reason returned from Mirngadia.
“Send reinforcements, Lord Blue Star. We can wipe them all out right here.”
[Your formation is in disorder. Further petitions on this matter are denied. However, have Kaisen Alter Aradamanthel rest immediately.]
“Your Excellency, the battle is still ongoing.”
[Follow the order.]
Roberis found Mirngadia's order strange, this passive stance in the face of an overwhelming advantage.
She didn't know that Mirngadia, at that moment.
Was seeing a battlefield situation that those drunk on the news of victory on the plains could not possibly imagine.
“2nd Area Army, 3rd Infantry Regiment, annihilated...!”
“Serpent Shadow Corps, annihilated! Ophelia Alter Verumpeira's life signs have also vanished...!”
“Unable to get a clear reading due to the storm of volcanic ash... Focusing multiple views on the 2nd Area Army's front.”
Finally, the enemy's presence surfaced on the World Tree's view.
The volcanic ash swirled violently, obscuring the enemy's silhouette deep within.
Nevertheless, its ancient form, its ancient glory, made its identity instantly clear.
The primordial darkness was letting out a piercing cry.
An ancient volcano had manifested in the world, borrowing the body of a demon.
Before its transcendent martial might and the raging torrent of its power, countless soldiers were trampled, crushed, and melted into bloody pulps.
[So, what was bound to come has finally arrived...]
Mirngadia's body, which had not so much as twitched for ages, his eyebrows trembled in a shudder.
[Mauna Roa...]
And he uttered the name of his nemesis.
Mauna Roa (Incarnation of Kings).
Those who did not know that ancient name, or its meaning, referred to that enemy of the world as this:
“Abyssal concentration immeasurable... A Demon! It's a Demon! An Incarnation-class Demon has appeared!”