Chapter 178
Chapter 178
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 178
Chapter Title: Stormcaller
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*
“Our target isn’t the Great Demon herself?”
“To be precise, we’re clearing the path to her, brother.”
Sadarkelia was sealed away. This was close to an absolute truth. She was exerting some kind of influence, and her minions still held a foothold in Hell. The Aesir gods of Valhalla had clearly fallen to corruption. Yet Sadarkelia’s seal remained unbroken.
The “Mercury Temple of the Five Towers,” guarded by the Heavenly Dragon Karadphelin. Trapped at its heart, she could only scheme from behind the seal. That seal had been destroyed in the final great war of his previous life, right as it approached. In this era, it could not possibly be broken.
But if her seal were undone and she began exerting her influence on the material world in earnest, it would be too late. There were few ways to stop a Great Demon who had regained all her power—at least not in the material world—and there was little chance she’d be the only one emerging from her seal at that moment.
Therefore, they had to act now. At this moment when Sadarkelia’s schemes were laid bare. When the enemy’s most powerful pieces were being deployed onto the board—this was their one and only chance to strike at her.
“She is sealed away, using her minions merely to corrupt this continent. To strike her true body, we must first open the path to her.”
“Is she in the material world?”
“No, brother. But the way to that gateway has been prepared.”
Fernandez rose from his seat as he spoke.
“Come with us, brothers. Local assistance is unavoidable.”
“I shall follow, brother.”
Fabiano nodded gravely. The other Inquisitors followed him out of the tent.
*
Aeren rested her chin on her hand, scanning the room. The tribal chieftains, shamans, priests, southerners, and Freyja had gathered in Yarl’s war tent. They waited in silence for one man.
Soon, ‘that man’ parted the tent flap and entered. Though he’d arrived in the North less than a week ago, he already commanded the presence of the entire tribe.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Fernandez strode boldly through the group. Thud, thud. Massive men followed in step with his footfalls, making the tent feel instantly packed. Fernandez and the Inquisitors stood in one corner, watching Aeren.
“Everyone’s here. Good. Let’s begin.”
Aeren nodded toward Fernandez. He stepped forward, surveying the room. The fear of defeat, the sticky defeatism of refugees who’d lost their strongholds, hung thick in the air.
Some legion commanders occasionally emphasized ‘morale.’ Victory in war depended on spirit. It wasn’t wrong, of course. How could you wage war if you fled before the fight even began?
But truly exceptional commanders believed victory lay not in ‘spirit,’ but in ‘information.’ Fernandez was one such man.
Morale-boosting was just mass hypnosis to make soldiers obey irrational orders amid unreasonable situations. To make them fight, you couldn’t stake everything on such secondary factors.
A vision. Fernandez gazed at the map and smiled. To lift the morale sunk to rock bottom amid defeatism, deploy it to the front, overturn numerical inferiority, and seize victory—they needed a vision of ‘hope.’
It was closer to demagoguery than strategy. From the start, Fernandez—or rather, Feizashi before him—had been more agitator than great field commander.
-Snap.
All eyes on him, Fernandez raised his left arm. The bandaged limb clenched briefly in the air. Snap, its joints cracked.
-Whoosh!
The parchment tactical map, neatly laid out on the large table, was engulfed in flames in an instant.
“What?!”
“What in the world?!”
The elders murmured. Only Aeren, Fernandez, and the Inquisitors remained silent. Aeren’s expression seemed to test him, while the Inquisitors waited with near-total trust.
‘Good. They’re not calling out the magic.’
-Those idiots probably think it’s a miracle or divine spell.
‘I burned a single runeglyph shard. Fortunately, no halo appeared.’
The black halo of the Bronze Throne was an unmistakable sign of heresy. Yet Malern’s sorcery system produced no wasteful mana leakage to the outside.
Fernandez smirked and waved his hand. The flames died down. The elders were still murmuring, but as their Yarl remained silent, they gradually quieted.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Aeren spoke quietly. A leonine arrogance and violence turned toward Fernandez. He ignored it and looked to Freyja.
“Freyja. You can do it, right?”
[This?]
Freyja smiled confidently. From the start, Fernandez had needed her for one thing: information. Nothing more. So before coming, she’d already heard what she needed to do.
-Poof!
A flower bloomed impossibly from the wooden table. Poof, poof. Roses, forsythia, mistflowers, tulips—buds of every color burst forth haphazardly, heedless of seed or season, covering the table.
“Oh...”
The elders gasped in awe at the goddess’s miracle. Aeren and Gunnarr groaned for different reasons. This was... a map.
Surpassing the crude, hand-stitched parchment tactical map they’d made by human hands—this was a divine map. The North as seen by the gods unfolded before their eyes.
“We’re outnumbered. Even gathering every warrior, we barely scrape five hundred. Almost all infantry.”
“The tribe’s warriors are heroes worth a hundred men each!”
“The enemy has tribal warriors too. Even demons among them.”
Ignoring the elder, Fernandez continued. He pointed to a cluster of blue flowers in one corner of the map.
“Hazat Palan. Hazat Turan. Even pooling both tribes’ warriors barely gets you that number. If we overextend our combat forces from here...”
“There’d be no future. Unlike them, we need one.”
Aeren cut in, murmuring. Exactly. Victory wasn’t everything. This was a fight for survival, and the North’s winter was long and harsh. They couldn’t commit the tribe’s full strength to war.
“You suspected their goal wasn’t unification?”
“Yes.”
“Quick on the uptake.”
-Excellent.
Feizashi admired, gazing at Aeren. Sardiel of strength and justice. If Pieranel handled the Pantheon’s strategy, she oversaw its tactics as an archangel. If her talents had awakened, this insight made sense.
‘Satisfactory. This will make things easier.’
-Catching the Great Demon? Haha, bolder than I thought, Fernandez.
‘Better than rescuing an incompetent woman. Teaming up with a shieldmaiden to break through beats that.’
-True enough.
Fernandez betrayed no admiration, pointing to the red roses splayed like branches at the map’s center.
“As you say, their goal is indiscriminate slaughter and the North’s total ruin. That means other tribes won’t join their horde voluntarily or form political alliances. They’ve made too many enemies. That’s our opportunity.”
“Unite the scattered lesser tribes. Yes, the ideal picture we envisioned. But how? In this winter, huddled in some mountain hideout, starving—how do we rally those fools, spread the word, form a coalition army, and oppose them?”
Fernandez shook his head.
“Forgot? We have a goddess. Meaning the whole North is in view. No one’s easier to find than those hiding in the mountains.”
“Time’s the issue, southerner. Say we reach out and gather them. Three? Four? Generously, from here to here—this range, maybe five. Where do we find time to gather refugees, select warriors, arm them, and march to battle?”
Aeren scanned the map, yellow forsythia dotted around the blue flower regions. As she said, rallying tribes on foot had physical limits. The limit of ‘time.’
As always, time was a precious strategic resource. The time to gather tribes and swell their ranks—those bloated tribes would just be tasty tactical targets before fully prepared.
If a demon-led host hit refugee zones tangled with civilians and wounded, scattering them again—there’d be no recovery. Would those routed ones submit to Aeren’s authority again?
“So. We shift our gaze.”
Fernandez pointed to the map’s opposite side. Red roses stretched roots across the North. They marked the northern domains they’d burned. South of that long front lay Hazat Turan; at the far northern end, a wasteland.
Further north across the continent lay ‘Jotunheim.’ Land of the frost giants—not literally giants’ home, but a place of cold and death alone. No life could fully survive the biting chill and endless nights of terror lurking there.
Amid it, purple flowers bloomed.
“What’s that...?”
“Vanaheim. The gateway to the land where half the Einherjar sleep. Not the material world—the one we stand on—but a realm beyond dimensions.”
“...What nonsense is this?”
“Nonsense? Then you thought demons were native wildlife?”
“...Hmph.”
The gateway to Vanaheim lay inside an ancient dwarf dungeon, per Freyja’s intel. Even if one fell, the other remained pure—so Freyja’s and Vanaheim’s gates were sealed at the North’s opposite ends.
Vanaheim held her Einherjar. Folkvang’s warriors. Spears and swords prepared solely for demons over millennia slumbered below. A vital means to reverse this war.
“Einherjar... Fine, say the myth is real. With the goddess among us, it’s likely. Then just have them crush the demons, no?”
“No, they have equivalent forces too. Not out in the North yet, but definitely exist.”
If half the Einherjar swore loyalty to Freyja, the other half obeyed Bōtan. With Valhalla corrupted and Aesir worshipping Sadarkelia, those warriors were demon minions.
The barrier around the material world was called ‘Balance.’ A sensitive scale—if one side dipped, the other rose. Opening Vanaheim’s gate would surely open Valhalla’s too.
-Even if not, they won’t sit idle.
‘Right. They’d rally forces to counter, even ripping Valhalla’s gate by force.’
-Especially calling in the Aesir... Brilliant.
Then the warlines paralleled again. Still unfavorable stalemate across the North. Purple flowers bloomed, red ones following, dyeing Jotunheim.
Red flowers branched toward the blue ones south, combat buds blooming across the southern front.
“If it plays out like this, we’re still overly disadvantaged, right?”
“Of course. Jotunheim stalemated, unfavorable fights across the south—attrition ends in annihilation.”
“What’s the point?”
Aeren frowned, arms crossed. Fernandez drew his dagger, slashing straight through grass and buds at the center.
“Because encirclement or stalemate isn’t our goal.”
The dagger halted at one point amid the red rose field. Scraaape—the wood table screeched.
“When Valhalla’s gate opens and Bōtan appears personally, we intercept them.”
“In the heart of enemy lines?”
“Depth strike. Inquisitor combat is always like that.”
“Madness. You all itching to die? Support the southern front instead. Your southern might rivals demons—useful for holding lines.”
“The front can collapse.”
If blood flowed there. And chaos. Fernandez’s specialty wasn’t encirclement or stalemate. Hammer and anvil didn’t suit him.
Only chaos. More complex, chaotic battlefield. Tangled mess without defined fronts. Where grand strategy meant nothing—that was his taste.
Not encirclement. Not hammer and anvil. Spears, spears, spears. Long fronts, bloated enemy. Scattered potential allies. Rally them for set-piece battles? Impossible, time short.
Into chaos then. Deeper, antlion-pit chaos!
“They won’t fixate on one front. Skirmishes endlessly from all sides. They’ll think Jotunheim’s Einherjar our only wildcard. Of course not. Just one spear. Never our anvil. We don’t hammer. We just stab, harass.”
“Catch Bōtan... Killing a god sounds ridiculous, but say you southerners can. You’re just isolated assassins in enemy heart.”
“By then, blood of gods, demons, humans will flow plenty.”
Einherjar clashing in Jotunheim. Humans fighting humans along the endless southern coast. Inquisitors striking enemy depths.
Unlike general theory, his grand strategy held no feints and real moves. No hidden discards and intents like cunning stratagems.
Every move was real, every play checkmate on the board. If Freyja’s Einherjar win Jotunheim, war ends. Even if they just buy time till exhaustion, fine.
That time lets southern remnants rally successfully, organize resistance, seize momentum? War ends. Even if resistance just diverts eyes, alerts enemies, amplifies losses—fine.
Then the follow-up: Fernandez and Inquisitors’ depth strike. War ends. Fernandez never plays one move. Every is setup for next, yet fatal blow.
And amid it, rivers of blood, death, sacrifices. Demons’, gods’, humans’ blood, flesh, deaths, souls piling into hills.
Chaotic war forcing sealed Sadarkelia to manifest, slashing her power. Her strongest puppets, Aesir, crumbling atop those hills—her panicked manifestation.
That completes his grand strategy. Myriad fatal mates for that instant. Fernandez’s play: checkmate tearing Great Demon’s throat.
Valhalla’s gate would open. And Valhalla reeked of Sadarkelia’s influence. Meaning somewhere inside led to her seal.
Perfect. Nearly identical to catching Mumto. Weaken her sealed power maximally, then strike her true form directly.
-Scraaape.
The embedded dagger twisted, grating loudly. Aeren was overwhelmed by those fierce, gloomy blue eyes blazing.
“Make more blood flow. We’ll be the dagger severing their roots.”
“Hah...”
Aeren met Fernandez’s eyes briefly. Sparks seemed to fly. After tense eye contact, Aeren laughed shortly.
“No one lives forever.”
Only glory is eternal. As Aeren said, Fernandez nodded. No one lives forever.
Not even a Great Demon.