Chapter 7
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: Childhood, The Eve of Summer (6)
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Some twenty years ago.
The Abyss, which ravaged the entire continent under the name of the “Black Summer.”
Through that turmoil, humanity realized they could not win by confronting the demons head-on.
Thus, humanity borrowed the power of the dwarves to construct a “Wide-Area Fortress System.”
Its name: the Inferno Line.
A line of steel fortresses built north of the Velisor River, trisecting the former republic's territory into eastern, southern, and western regions.
Though it had the structural limitation of abandoning the southern territories south of the river, the Inferno Line secured four years of peace in the face of the Uruks’ blitzkrieg.
In other words, the battles of the four years following the start of the war were stained by the sieges of this very Inferno Line.
The place where Camilla's White Skull Corps was deployed was also the central-western front of the Inferno Line. A place invariably mentioned when listing the fiercest battlegrounds of the war's early days.
“Fire a volley! Don't let those Uruk sons of bitches cross the river!”
At the battery commander's command, dozens of steam cannons aimed at the river roared and recoiled.
For a moment, hulls were shattered by cannonballs and bows were tossed by rising plumes of water, but soon the shells were deflected by a dark blue curtain spread across the air.
The faces of the observers, who were checking the battle situation in the middle of the river through their spyglasses, turned deathly pale.
“Enemy dark magic barrier confirmed… The volley was blocked!”
The flag fluttering at the vanguard was a dark blue banner with a white eyeball drawn on it.
And beneath that flag, an old Uruk was floating serenely in the air, legs crossed in a meditative pose.
Dudigal, chieftain of the Holdrim Clan, one of the Uruks' top 21 clans—the High Tarq.
“Fire, I said, fire! Until the barrier breaks!”
“It's no use, Your Excellency! We can't even crack the barrier!”
Camilla, who was looking down on this skirmish from a hill, clicked her tongue.
“They're just stupidly wasting cannonballs. A barrier like that can't be pierced by ordinary shells.”
Johan sighed softly.
“The Holdrim Clan, huh. Looks like the High Tarq are finally starting to take the lead in breaking through the Inferno Line.”
Holdrim, a strange word meaning “Black Star.”
They, who drew wisdom from the stars, were famous for the fact that even their common warriors could use dark magic.
This was not a pleasant development.
Normally, Uruks were divided into classes of either shamans or warriors, but these ones used both powers simultaneously.
Countless warships from eight clans, united under Holdrim's lead, were already approaching the riverbank, shielded by the Holdrim barrier.
The number of their warriors was roughly twenty thousand, while the defenders of Fortress 7 numbered just under eight thousand.
Realistically, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered.
“Landing! The enemy is landing!”
As soon as the bows of the first wave struck the riverbank's breakwater, Uruk warriors leaped off with a roar.
Taking the vanguard was a great honor for the Uruk race, a role filled by warriors of the highest standing in their caste.
“Riflemen, ready! Fire!”
Even amidst the riflemen's hail of bullets, the Uruks used their comrades' corpses as shields and scaled the fortress.
Their first objective was the battery protruding from the front of the fortress.
Humanity had to drive the Uruks back before the battery fell, and the Uruks had to neutralize the battery to support the main force's landing.
Since these two opposing goals converged on a single location, it was bound to become a fierce battleground.
“U-Ha!”
The Uruk's laughter-filled war cry.
The bodies of the humans defending the battery were sliced into chunks of flesh, brains splattered, and bone fragments scattered.
Just then.
Shing…
As if to cut through the blood-stained clamor, there was the sharp scrape of metal against a scabbard.
The cry of a blade, chillingly clear even amidst such frantic chaos.
At the source of the sound stood a boy, his jet-black hair swaying quietly in the wind.
“Asu-dubari (Who goes there)?”
The Uruk, clutching a corpse crushed into a bloody pulp, looked into the human brat's eyes and snorted. In that instant.
A flash.
The boy's sword drew a lightning-fast arc.
Slicing off the laughing Uruk's head.
Piercing the heart of the Uruk behind him.
Parrying the axe blades swinging in from both sides with his scabbard, then severing their wielders' wrists.
“…?!”
“…?!”
“…?!”
To feel bewilderment is to reveal an opening. The boy cut down those who stared blankly at him.
One by one.
Methodically.
As if tending a farm, without haste.
On a path of cutting and cutting again, drenched in Uruk blood and slipping in the gore.
Cut, cut, cut, and cut again.
In the boy's wake, a path of blood, bone fragments, and marrow was formed.
The moment the warriors, momentarily overwhelmed by the festival of blood, came to their senses and charged the boy in unison, bullets tore through their heads.
“Bullets suit a pissant's ass better than a blade!”
Jin's company of riflemen. Under their covering fire, Kaisen, soaked in blood, gazed at the edge of the red world.
‘An enemy. The commander of the vanguard?’
His appearance was anything but ordinary.
He looked like a cunning beast, and he was clad in the ceremonial robes said to be worn only by the high-ranking warriors of the Holdrim Clan.
As the creature chanted a wicked spell, a malevolence spread out like a jet-black fog.
“Wh-what is this thing…!”
“Shoot him! Fill him with lead so he can't chant!”
“I-It's not working!”
When that malevolence clung to the skin, flesh and fat melted into a gooey mess, gruesomely exposing the bone beneath.
“Wahahahahaha! Weak, so weak! You pathetic humans!”
The moment he spotted the creature, the boy was already crossing the battlefield.
He deflected axe blades flying from all directions with his longsword, and evaded the tidal wave of malevolent fog by kicking off a wall and launching himself high into the air.
Then, he sheathed his sword.
Drawing the sheathed sword behind his head, he contracted his muscles to their absolute limit.
Finally, he manifested a Mana Chain in his right hand and a Mana Heart in his left.
This series of actions enveloped the sword and scabbard in an edge of mana, sharper than any edge in this world.
─ Sipmunjado Fourth Form, Bal (Release).
Sipmunjado is a sword art of combinations.
When initiating a combination, one of four basic forms is used: Won (Circle), Chung (Thrust), Dun (Blunt), and Bal (Release).
However, the only basic form Kaisen could—and had to—use for his combinations was Bal.
─ Sipmunjado Tenth Form, Cross Decapitation.
The instant Kaisen landed, the power of the form, amplified by the force of Bal, carved vertical and horizontal cuts across the Uruk warrior's body.
As the steel blade sliced through flesh to open a path, the blade of mana exploded the organs beyond.
The corpse, spewing what were once organs and fresh blood from the cuts, was quartered and collapsed onto the battlement.
“Whoa, did you see that?”
“Awesome, one hit!”
That was the turning point.
Emboldened by the boy's fighting, the soldiers began to drive the Uruks from the fortress and reclaim the battery.
“Kaisen, old Jin here will take care of this! You go to the Lady!”
Is there even a need for me to go over there…?
The surface of the great river had already been turned into a frozen wasteland by Johan, known as the Empire's greatest cryomancer.
From that deep blue, frozen surface, *chink, chink, chink, chink, chink…* ice spikes shot up at random, smashing the warships and skewering the Uruks to death.
Across the ice field where chaos had descended, Camilla strode, leading Eltram and the other beastman soldiers.
She did not run in haste.
As if there were no need to waste stamina closing the distance, she simply walked, and no one could stop her advance.
The Uruks who stood in her way simply met their deaths, five or six at a time, with a single swing of her sword.
Each time the Supreme Holy Sword Aradamanthel was swung, headless bodies staggered and fell, and those cut in half at the waist screamed.
The long sprays of blood froze on the ice, becoming crimson shards.
Chieftain Dudigal finally descended from the bow of his ship onto the ice. Still in his cross-legged, levitating posture.
—The most powerful sorcerer in Holdrim is Chieftain Dudigal. They say he can freely manipulate lightning, attraction, repulsion, and gravity.
Kaisen recalled what Johan had told him before the battle. And also that Camilla had said she would handle him.
‘So he's a High Tarq, too. I heard he's ranked pretty high.’
Dudigal struck the ground with a hammer, and bolts of jet-black lightning raged, shattering the ice and throwing up sprays of water.
One, two, three, four.
Waiting for the successive lightning strikes to target her, Camilla launched herself forward, leaving deep footprints in her wake.
‘She's so fast. Too fast to follow with my eyes. I can't even compare.’
A sphere summoned by Dudigal's dark magic emitted waves that manipulated attraction and gravity, but it couldn't keep up with footwork that surpassed all limits.
There wasn't even time to be amazed.
Because just as he thought that, the fight was over.
At first, he couldn't discern the beginning or the end of her slash. It was only later, through review, that he could grasp a rough understanding.
“Jeolwon, Daehonggyeonseommucham.”
Jeolwon, an ultimate technique usable only with the Holy Sword.
It began with Camilla sheathing the blade of Aradamanthel into its pure white scabbard.
The moment crimson currents and particles began to roar fiercely around the scabbard.
She drew.
The sword tore through the horizon, faster than sound.
Shhhhhh—
The blade was so fast that he could barely trace its trajectory by the afterimage of deflected light.
And only when Camilla sheathed Aradamanthel once more did the sound of the slash belatedly follow.
Only after the metallic sound of the slash stimulated their hearing did the bodies of the slain seem to realize they had been cut.
Dudigal's body, dozens of ships, the bodies of hundreds of Uruks—all were sliced apart along the path of her draw. As easily as tearing a blank sheet of paper.
─────ng.
Amidst a shudder that shook his entire body, Kaisen stared at Aradamanthel as if mesmerized.
‘Mother's sword.’
Mother must have fought with that sword, too.
And Camilla, having learned swordsmanship from his mother, was using its power perfectly.
As the lead FakeWarrior who succeeded his mother.
‘Will a day like that ever come for me?’
It probably wouldn't.
A man could not become a FakeWarrior, and besides, he was not Camilla's disciple.
***
That afternoon, the Uruks retreated.
Resistance was futile in the face of the overwhelming martial prowess displayed by the lead FakeWarrior.
The artillery, having reclaimed the battery thanks to Kaisen's valiant efforts, resumed their bombardment, and without Dudigal, the Uruks could not erect a barrier to completely repel the cannon fire.
And so, the undefeated White Skull Corps created another legendary tale of heroism that day.
The corps suffered only 127 injuries and a mere 35 deaths.
While Fortress 7 had a total of two thousand casualties, the demon army had suffered four times that number—eight thousand—before turning tail and fleeing.
“And get this, Kaisen here took the head of one of Holdrim's top bastards! In a single blow, I tell ya!”
As Jin raised his beer mug, the corps soldiers chattered boisterously and raised their own mugs in response.
Kaisen was uncomfortable in this kind of situation.
He felt like an amateur showing off to a master; compared to Camilla's martial feats, what he had done seemed truly insignificant.
As if reading his mind, Eltram slapped Kaisen on the back with a hairy hand.
“Lady Camilla is a FakeWarrior. A Hero. It's disrespectful to even try to compete.”
“It's not like that.”
“Don't give me that! I can smell a lie, little Kaisen.”
“…”
“You don't know. What she sacrifices to wield such power.”
Right, he didn't know.
Looking back now, perhaps he should have wished that the day he learned the truth would never come.
The fact that FakeWarriors shave away their own lifespans to exert superhuman strength, and that Camilla had little of that lifespan left.
“You pushed yourself too hard today, Camilla.”
Far from the clamor of victory.
On a grassy field where the volcanic ash had not yet encroached, under a moon that brightened the sky, Camilla looked up.
“Wolf.”
“Using Jeolwon, the Holy Sword's ultimate secret technique… Was that really necessary?”
“Of course it was. You expect me to go easy on a High Tarq? Besides, it was important to seize the initiative this time.”
“Why?”
“Something felt off. It didn't look like they were actually trying to break through Fortress 7.”
“Then what?”
“Hmm, how should I put it… It felt like they had another objective. That's why I needed to get rid of them quickly. Jeolwon was a show of force.”
“Camilla, Holdrim is a High Tarq. And not some new, run-of-the-mill High Tarq, but one with a long history. Are you trying to say they were sent out as bait for a diversion?”
“It didn't even seem like the High Tarq's main force was here… No matter how I looked at it, something was strange.”
“You mean he passed the tribe on to his successor and came alone?”
“I can't be sure.”
“No, Camilla. Isn't it just that you've gotten as strong as the Commander, so it felt anticlimactic? To me, it looked like you were pushing yourself to show Kaisen a demonstration of your ‘newly created’ Jeolwon.”
“Demonstration, my ass.”
Camilla shrugged.
Wolf sat down next to Camilla and bitterly stroked the hair at his friend's temple, which had now turned completely white.
“How much time do you think you have left?”
“Fuck all.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
It would be nice to have more time, even just a little.
Enough time to teach that pathetic kid perfectly, to guide him just a little bit more, just as Master did for me.
But this body has no more time to spare.
Soon, the moment we must part will come.