Chapter 410: The Fall of Kronos (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 410: The Fall of Kronos (1)
Alvaro, Captain of the Capital Guard, raised his pale face.
Though covered in grit from the sandstorm, his wretched state was the least of his concerns. All that mattered was the sight unfolding before his eyes.
"…W-what on earth is this?"
The Iron Fortress—the pride of Kronos—had been utterly demolished.
A massive section of the wall had collapsed into a gaping void. Crushed bodies lay strewn among the rubble of the ramparts. His head spun. Kronos had prepared flawlessly for this war. They had boasted their walls could withstand any siege, yet they had been brought down not by a siege weapon, but by a single sword.
It defied common sense.
His entire understanding of reality was crumbling.
For a moment, Alvaro stood dazed by the sheer, overwhelming spectacle Roman Dmitry had unleashed.
With just a single blow, our plans have been rendered useless. We intended to use the sturdy walls to drag this out into a war of attrition, but if a melee combat begins, we won't even last a single day.
Gritting his teeth, Alvaro forced himself to his feet.
Blood trickled down his forehead from a blow to the head, but the adrenaline surging through his veins masked the pain. In the distance, the soldiers of the Kingdom Alliance were flooding in. Even if this was the worst-case scenario, they couldn't just collapse like this. Alvaro had no choice but to play his final card.
"Dark Mages. It is your turn to step forward."
Sss.
At his command, figures clad in black robes stepped forward.
Under Alexander's teachings, the Kronos Empire had secretly trained a legion of black mages. It was a secret meant to be kept from the outside world at all costs. Deploying them wasn't something Alvaro had the authority to order lightly, but Marquis Memphis, the current commander, was absent.
So, he made the call.
Since Alexander's true identity had already been exposed, the empire's use of black magic was an open secret anyway. To Alvaro, the survival of the empire took precedence over complex political fallout.
"Dark Wave."
"Dark Wave."
Whoosh.
Rumble!
The black mages unleashed their magic.
Dark mana surged from them like a tidal wave, cascading down the walls and sweeping over the Kingdom Alliance soldiers. The faces of those caught in the dark tide turned pitch black. Those who knew how to wield mana managed to shield themselves, but ordinary soldiers trembled violently before collapsing one by one, their bodies completely drained of life and moisture.
Next,
"Summon Zombie."
"Come forth, dead ones."
The dead stirred.
Crimson light ignited in their empty eye sockets. They rose from the ground, baring sharp teeth at the men who, mere moments ago, had been their comrades in arms.
"Argh!"
"The enemy is using black magic!"
"Stay calm and fight back!"
In an instant, the area outside the walls turned into a living hell.
Black magic specialized in slaughter; a single practitioner could drive countless people to their deaths. These two spells alone proved it: sapping vitality with Dark Wave, then raising the fallen as undead. Reassured by this overwhelming display of power, Alvaro returned to his command post and shouted at his dazed troops.
"Everyone, to your positions! Defend the wall!"
It wasn't over yet.
The war was not lost.
Only a section of the wall had fallen; the areas Roman Dmitry hadn't directly struck remained intact, creating a natural bottleneck. If they could just plug the gap and hold out until Marquis Memphis returned with reinforcements, they could survive this crisis.
But that was a foolish delusion.
Just as Roman Dmitry’s vanguard carved a path through the undead, a brilliant light flashed in the sky.
"Bless."
Rumble!
The blessing of God.
Divine power.
* * *
The masters of this divine power were the priests of the Luna Church.
Hands clasped in fervent prayer, they amplified their holy aura beneath the brilliantly shining light.
"Bless."
"By the power of God, we shall push back the darkness."
Flash!
Just a few years ago, manifesting divine power of this magnitude would have been impossible for them.
The Luna Church had once been little more than an entourage serving Saintess Isabelle, but recently, the priests' power had surged. Mother Elf had theorized this was an aftereffect of the dimensional rift. The boundaries between dimensions were supposed to be absolute, but as the Demon Realm exerted its corrupting influence on the Earthly World, the divine power of those who served God naturally amplified in response to the growing darkness.
It still couldn't compare to Isabelle's holy power, of course.
But it was more than enough to purge the dark mana of the black mages.
Whoosh.
The darkness receded.
A faint, holy luminescence coated the Kingdom Alliance soldiers, purifying the taint of black magic. Simultaneously, the undead began to falter. As the corpses shrieked and recoiled from the divine light, the soldiers surged forward, severing their heads in single, decisive strikes.
"Die!"
Thud.
The counterattack had begun.
The tide of battle violently shifted.
Freed from the dark mana, the soldiers swiftly eradicated the undead. Unable to raise new corpses, the black mages' initial spells lost their teeth. In a panic, they rapidly chanted new incantations, preparing to unleash offensive magic. But Edwin Hector had already locked onto their positions.
"Fire Rain."
Whoosh.
Roar!
A torrent of blazing meteors rained down from the heavens.
The black mages aborted their attacks to hastily erect magical barriers, but the moment Felix layered an additional spell over the bombardment, everyone atop the wall was swept away in a fiery explosion. These black mages were not Alexander. Against the combined might of Edwin Hector and Felix, they stood no chance in a magical duel.
Dmitry’s magical corps was top-tier, even by continental standards.
As the black mages faltered, Alvaro’s worst nightmare unfolded before his eyes.
"Attack!"
"Follow the Lord!"
Without a moment's hesitation, Roman Dmitry's private soldiers charged through the breached wall, flooding into the fortress.
* * *
The troops following the vanguard felt no hesitation.
They knew no fear.
Whenever Roman Dmitry led the charge, the devastation he left in his wake filled them with absolute, unshakable confidence.
Crash!
Rumble!
Annihilation.
Every inch of space swept by the Heavenly Demon Sword Technique was reduced to absolute ruin.
The desperate defenders who rushed to block him were erased without a trace, drawing every eye on the battlefield toward Roman Dmitry alone. This was the source of their courage. Believing they were fighting alongside the god of their past lives, Dmitry's private soldiers scattered in all directions, mercilessly hunting down the survivors.
"Argh!"
"Urgh!"
Among them, Kevin's bloodlust shone the brightest.
Those fortunate enough to escape the walking disaster that was Roman Dmitry immediately found themselves face-to-face with Dmitry's Evil Ghost.
"D-Die!"
The imperial soldiers screamed in desperation.
Pale-faced, they thrust their spears, but Kevin slipped through their guard with ghost-like movements, slicing their chests wide open. Blood sprayed into the air. Kevin glided through the ranks, slaughtering indiscriminately and carving a bloody path of his own, far from Roman Dmitry's wake.
Slash.
Shiver.
A Kronos knight trembled.
Seeing their comrades butchered so effortlessly, the remaining knights swarmed him in unison.
"Pincer attack!"
"It's Dmitry's Evil Ghost! Ignore Roman Dmitry for now—kill this bastard first!"
They quickly shifted their strategy.
Roman Dmitry was an impossible target. Unable to fathom a way to defeat the monster leading the charge, the knights focused entirely on Kevin, against whom they believed they had at least a sliver of a chance. If they let the Evil Ghost run wild, their casualties would be catastrophic. The sharp clatter of armor rang out from all sides as dozens of knights converged on Kevin simultaneously.
Crash!
Rumble!
"Die!"
Dozens of knights.
All of them Aura Swordsmen.
Ranging from 3-Star to 5-Star, these men were outstanding warriors in their own right. Yet, acknowledging Kevin's lethal prowess, they felt no shame in ganging up on him. The battlefield flashed brilliantly. A violently swirling storm of Aura threatened to shred Kevin to pieces, but his response was shockingly bold.
Tap.
Rumble!
He didn't retreat.
He stepped straight into the center of the Aura storm.
Miraculously, he found the eye of the tempest. As the chaotic energy tore up the ground around him, he zeroed in on a split-second opening in his opponent's guard.
Flash.
"Argh!"
He moved like a wild beast.
With a ferocious gleam in his eyes, he tore open a knight's chest, then melted back into the storm of Aura, parrying the flurry of strikes aimed at his vitals. It was a suffocating, lethal encirclement. Yet, having survived countless hellish battlefields, Kevin viewed this level of danger as completely ordinary.
To him, this wasn't even a threat.
He dodged every strike with dazzling agility, retaliating from their blind spots with lethal precision.
Thud.
Another knight's head flew into the air.
Face drenched in blood, Kevin butchered every enemy that dared approach.
He swung his sword like a madman.
Before long, the massacre neared its end.
As the last remaining knight charged at him with a terror-stricken face, Kevin severed his arm in a single, fluid strike.
Flash.
Splatter.
Blood sprayed.
The knight's eyes bulged in shock.
He had been so certain that their combined might could crush Kevin, but after witnessing the slaughter firsthand, his mind simply refused to process reality. The empire was an impregnable iron fortress. As a proud knight of Kronos, he had never once imagined such a pathetic end—being utterly dismantled even after launching a cowardly, coordinated ambush.
Perhaps that was why his pride shattered.
"P-please... spare me."
Thud.
He fell to his knees.
He begged.
The battle was still raging. All around them, men were locked in life-and-death struggles, but the knight, crushed by an unbearable sense of despair, blurted out his surrender almost unconsciously. He just wanted to escape this nightmare. He couldn't accept that the life he had built through decades of fierce competition and grueling training was ending so pointlessly.
Kevin merely sneered.
"That's why you shouldn't have started a war in the first place."
Flash.
His blade flashed, cleanly severing the knight's head.
Expression perfectly calm, Kevin turned and followed the bloody trail left by Roman Dmitry, who had already pushed far into the enemy lines.
* * *
The situation was catastrophic.
With slaughter unfolding everywhere he looked, Alvaro’s ability to think rationally was slipping away.
But above all else...
Clang!
…He blocked this?!
A blazing Aura erupted.
Alvaro was a 5-Star Aura Swordsman, yet a man who appeared to be a mere nameless foot soldier had just blocked his Aura-infused strike. Though the soldier's face contorted in pain, he held his ground. It was a mind-boggling impossibility. A 1-Star Aura was weaker than a 2-Star, a 2-Star weaker than a 3-Star, and so on—this was the absolute hierarchy of Aura established by Alexander.
Yet, watching a lowly grunt block his attack with an Aura so crude it was pathetic by comparison, Alvaro gnashed his teeth in fury.
"You miserable insect!"
Clang!
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Alvaro unleashed a breathless onslaught, pressing the soldier hard.
He wasn't fighting Roman Dmitry, the First Sword of the Continent. He wasn't fighting Chris, the Flash of Dmitry, or Kevin, Dmitry's Evil Ghost. He was fighting a grunt whose face he didn't even recognize. The soldier's stubborn refusal to fall, despite teetering on the edge of collapse, grated on Alvaro's nerves. He didn't care what special status Dmitry's private soldiers held within their own ranks.
The cheap armor the man wore proved he was just a common infantryman.
Yet Alvaro's stomach churned with humiliation because he couldn't strike him down in a single blow.
Slash.
Blood splattered across Alvaro's face.
It had been a hair's breadth.
After narrowly deflecting a desperate, suicidal strike from the soldier, Alvaro finally cornered him.
Crash!
Rumble!
He shattered the soldier's crude Aura.
Snapping the man's blade in two, Alvaro slashed open his chest, his face twisting in malice as he finally slit the throat of the stubbornly struggling soldier. The soldier's body was left in a wretched state. Staring down at the tattered corpse, mangled beyond recognition by his Aura, Alvaro exhaled a ragged breath.
"Whew, whew."
Joy of victory?
There was none.
Only a chilling bewilderment.
Having struggled so bitterly to kill a single common foot soldier, Alvaro finally faced the despairing reality of his situation.
So this is Dmitry.
Only then did it truly click.
In all their past wars, the reason Dmitry had been able to overturn impossible odds wasn't just because of the anomaly that was Roman Dmitry. It was because the sheer capability of the men who followed him was monstrous enough to back him up. The battle was already over. The moment their supposedly impregnable walls collapsed and their black magic was neutralized, there was no longer any way to stop the Kingdom Alliance's onslaught.
Just what kind of dark sorcery had Dmitry worked on his men?
Alvaro couldn't comprehend how a mere duchy had grown strong enough to corner the empire in such a short period of time.
Alvaro hurriedly retreated.
Pulling back as far as he could from the chaotic frontline, he grabbed his adjutant, desperately searching for his sole remaining hope.
"Marquis Memphis! Where the hell is Marquis Memphis?!"
Right before the battle began, Marquis Memphis had received reports of an attack on the imperial palace. He had immediately mobilized his elite troops and left to reinforce it.
But subsequent reports confirmed there were no intruders.
If it was a false alarm, the Marquis should have returned by now. Marquis Memphis was the one who should be commanding this defense, not him. Alvaro clung to the hope that the brilliant Marquis would see a solution to this nightmare that he couldn't. Furthermore, the empire's elite forces were with the Marquis. Desperate for their return, Alvaro looked at the communications adjutant with pleading eyes.
But the adjutant, his face pale and stricken with despair, delivered the absolute worst possible answer.
"…I've tried contacting him over a dozen times, sir, but he hasn't answered once. It seems… Marquis Memphis has abandoned the fortress and fled."
Alvaro froze.
His mind ground to a complete halt.
Abandoning the defense.
It was the ultimate betrayal—the one nightmare scenario that never, ever should have happened.