Chapter 104: The Unending War (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 104: The Unending War (1)
Baron Vasily’s decision was rooted in the latest reconnaissance report.
"The enemy is marching rapidly toward the 3rd Defense Line. The vanguard is expected to arrive in roughly two hours, with the rearguard following closely behind with their military supplies. We estimate the vanguard at two thousand five hundred men, and the rearguard at around five hundred."
A total of three thousand troops.
It was a formidable force.
If the Hector Kingdom established their positions and their Flares began raining fire, Baron Vasily knew defending the fortress would be an uphill battle. His solution was to form a guerrilla unit and strike the enemy's rearguard.
‘The Southern Front doesn't need to defeat the Hector Kingdom outright. If we can just hold out for ten days, Cairo's main army will arrive, and the tide of war will turn in an instant. Deploying a guerrilla unit is the perfect way to harass their rearguard. We’ll disrupt them enough that they can't focus solely on the siege. If that rearguard is hauling ammunition for the Flares, we can destroy it and render their siege weapons useless.’
It was a risky operation.
Five hundred men might sound manageable, but a single mistake could leave them surrounded by the full three-thousand-strong force, facing total annihilation.
But then again...
Hadn't Roman Dmitry pulled off something even more absurd?
Not only had he repelled the enemy with a mere two hundred troops, but he had also slaughtered nearly a thousand of them—an unbelievable feat. A hero complex began to stir in Baron Vasily's chest. Although he had been demoted to the Southern Front, he was still a 3-Star Swordsman who had once distinguished himself on the Western Front.
'There's no reason I can't do what Roman Dmitry did. This is a race for military achievements now. Whoever racks up the most merit over the next ten days will secure a path back to the Central Government once this war ends.'
His decision was made.
Baron Vasily handpicked three hundred of his best men.
Slipping out of the fortress undetected, they bypassed the vanguard and took up positions along the route the rearguard was bound to take.
Rustle.
"Halt."
He raised his hand, signaling his men to take cover.
The soldiers quickly concealed themselves in the thick brush.
Pushing his senses as an Aura Swordsman to the absolute limit, Baron Vasily scanned the path ahead for any sign of the rearguard. Nothing yet. However, this was the Southern Front—territory he knew like the back of his hand. Since there was no other route, he was certain they would show up.
Just as he expected.
In the distance, the rearguard finally came into view.
Even before the battle began, Baron Vasily could not suppress his rising ambition.
'The sages say that crisis is but opportunity in disguise. Today is the day I drag myself out of this gutter.'
A numerical disadvantage of two hundred men?
He brushed it off as nothing.
If the enemy was a mere rabble that had been slaughtered by a force of two hundred, his three hundred elite troops would be more than enough to wipe them out. Speed was the lifeblood of this operation. If they could set fire to the military supplies before the enemy could react, the Hector Kingdom's campaign would grind to a halt.
He held his breath.
He bided his time.
Finally, the moment the enemy entered their striking range, Baron Vasily leaped forward, his voice booming with mana.
"Attack!"
"All forces, charge!"
It was a textbook ambush.
The Cairo soldiers charging forward like wild dogs already wore the triumphant expressions of victors.
* * *
Rumble!
Aura flared.
Baron Vasily unleashed his Aura, swinging his sword at the knight leading the enemy column.
'I'll seize the initiative with this first strike.'
He was filled with absolute confidence, certain his blow would land. In his mind's eye, he had already cleaved the knight in two and was charging deeper into their ranks.
However—
Crash!
Rumble!
"...!"
The Hector knight had unleashed his own Aura.
Despite the suddenness of the ambush, he blocked Baron Vasily's strike as if he had been expecting it all along. Aura clashed against Aura. The sheer force of the impact made Vasily's head spin. From that single exchange, he instantly realized his opponent's Aura was far stronger than his own.
'He's a 3-Star Swordsman too!'
His face drained of color.
Something was terribly wrong.
Contrary to the easy victory he had envisioned, the soldiers charging in behind him were screaming as they were cut down one after another.
"Enemy attack!"
"The remnants of Cairo have shown themselves!"
The Hector Kingdom's response was seamless and disciplined.
A volley of arrows filled the sky.
Raising their shields to deflect the incoming projectiles, the Hector soldiers turned and slaughtered the charging Cairo troops in an instant. It was a one-sided massacre. Baron Vasily had been certain they held the upper hand, but his men were being decimated the moment they clashed.
"This is for our fallen brothers!"
The Hector soldiers' eyes burned with pure malice.
After burying their fallen comrades with exhausted faces, they had gnashed their teeth and sworn bloody vengeance.
A surprise attack?
They had already anticipated it.
Roman Dmitry was a monster who had slaughtered countless of their comrades using nothing but the terrain and the cover of darkness. Because of him, they had factored in the possibility of an ambush at any given moment. The rearguard was merely bait. They had dangled it to lure the enemy out onto the open plains, intending to swallow them whole the moment they showed themselves.
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
Signal flares burst in the sky.
Their retreat was cut off in an instant.
The vanguard, which they believed to be far ahead, had doubled back in the blink of an eye. While the Cairo soldiers panicked, the Hector forces completely sealed off their escape route. No matter which way they turned, Hector soldiers blocked their path. The Cairo troops tried to break through in sheer desperation, but the enemies before them were no longer the disorganized rabble they had expected to sweep aside.
"...T-this makes no sense."
Baron Vasily's head spun.
He couldn't believe what was happening.
By his logic, the Hector forces should have been a disorganized mess, but their swift, coordinated response left him breathless. This wasn't just a matter of being prepared. The Hector Kingdom had thoroughly trained their soldiers for this war from the very beginning. They were on a completely different level compared to the Cairo soldiers, who had grown soft and complacent on the peaceful Southern Front.
Baron Vasily had failed to realize one crucial truth: that previous miracle was only possible because it was Roman Dmitry.
Roman's staggering victory had bred fatal overconfidence in the rest of the army. Pushed back at every turn by the Hector knight, Baron Vasily felt the last of his strength drain away.
Crash!
His sword arm was violently deflected.
His face went pale as a blinding Aura filled his vision.
'Fuck.'
Slash!
That was the last thing he ever saw.
* * *
The Cairo Royal Court had finally breathed a sigh of relief.
With just a single victory report, they believed they had seized the upper hand against the Hector Kingdom.
But their joy was incredibly short-lived.
Barely a day later, a series of shocking and devastating reports flooded the royal court.
"Baron Vasily, the commander of the 3rd Defense Line, has been killed in action!"
"Your Majesty! The 3rd and 4th Defense Lines have fallen to the enemy! Only the 2nd Defense Line remains. If that falls, the entire Southern Front will be completely in the hands of the Hector Kingdom!"
"We have just received an urgent transmission from the 2nd Defense Line! They report they won't be able to hold out much longer against the enemy's assault!"
Just one day.
It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since they received word that the Hector Kingdom had begun attacking the frontline defense posts. The disparity in military strength was obvious. While the Southern Front was at a clear disadvantage, the court had believed that Roman Dmitry's stunning victory bought them enough momentum to easily hold out for ten days.
But what on earth was happening?
Daniel Cairo could not wrap his head around this sudden, catastrophic collapse.
'Did some unforeseen variable crop up?'
There was no other logical explanation.
Yet, even that assumption was far from the truth.
A defeated soldier who had barely survived the Hector Kingdom's onslaught had cried out in his final transmission to the royal court:
"[The Hector Kingdom's Flares have finally run dry! Yet, we still can't stop them! They aren't even blowing up the walls anymore—they're just throwing up ladders, scaling the ramparts, and slaughtering our men! We can't stop them! Please, save us! We can't hold out for ten days! At this rate, it's only a matter of time before the entire Southern Front falls into enemy hands!]"
It was a shocking revelation.
Because of the Southern Front's outdated facilities, magic defense systems capable of warding off Flares had never been properly installed.
In truth, the court had assumed their initial defeats were solely because the Flares had rendered the defensive walls useless.
The Hector Kingdom, plagued by financial ruin, had been unable to secure a vast stockpile of military supplies. The Flares they had used to seize the initiative had quickly run dry. Yet, the outcome remained unchanged. The sight of enemy soldiers scaling the walls with sheer, brutal force forced the Cairo Kingdom to face a harsh reality.
There was an overwhelming disparity in raw military strength.
The Southern Front was crumbling.
Only now did Daniel Cairo realize the true weight of Roman's single victory.
'It wasn't that the Cairo Kingdom was strong, nor was it that the Hector Kingdom was weak. An anomaly named Roman Dmitry had simply conjured an unprecedented miracle. We were fools. We should have acknowledged the gap in our military strength and ordered the commanders of the Southern Front to avoid a direct confrontation at all costs.'
Perhaps, deep down, he too had harbored a foolish hope—a hope that Roman's miraculous victory meant similar miracles would occur on other battlefields.
Reality had shattered that delusion.
In his utter despair, Daniel Cairo naturally found himself looking for the only man who could save them.
"Where is Roman Dmitry right now?"
* * *
Roman Dmitry.
The Cairo Royal Court was desperately searching for him.
Upon receiving the royal summons, Henry Albert immediately sought out Chris.
"Chris! Did Lord Roman say anything about when he would finish? The Southern Front is on the verge of falling into enemy hands! I don't care what he's doing right now, we have to deliver the royal summons to him!"
Henry was practically bursting with anxiety.
Down the mountain, the frontline defense posts were burning. This was the perfect opportunity to rack up legendary achievements, yet Roman had completely vanished from the face of the earth ever since their battle ended.
Chris replied calmly, "This is exactly what my lord anticipated."
"...What?"
"My lord said that our victory against the Hector Kingdom was largely due to luck. If the enemy hadn't pursued us into the mountains, and if they hadn't stubbornly insisted on capturing him until the very end, the Hector Kingdom would have conquered the Southern Front much faster than this."
Roman Dmitry had never been drunk on victory.
He saw reality for what it was, and he knew exactly what disaster would await them if they rushed down the mountain to block the Hector Kingdom's advance.
That was why Roman had ordered them to rest.
He had anticipated Cairo's defeat and chose to preserve their strength.
"I... I don't understand."
Henry Albert was utterly speechless. He simply could not comprehend Roman's mind.
When everyone had predicted defeat and called his guerrilla warfare an absurd suicide mission, Roman had acted alone to forge a miraculous victory. Yet now, when everyone believed they had a fighting chance, he did the exact opposite. He was truly a man who existed outside the realm of common sense. No matter how dire the situation grew, he had severed all contact with the outside world, leaving them unable to even guess what he was doing.
Henry's anxiety gnawed at him.
He desperately needed to show the royal court that he was aligned with Roman, but faced with Chris's unyielding stance, there was absolutely nothing he could do.
He looked toward the distant peak where Roman was said to be.
'What on earth is he doing up there all by himself?'
He had no way of knowing.
He had no way of knowing that even at this very moment, Roman Dmitry was taking yet another step forward.