Chapter 230
Chapter 230
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 230
Chapter Title: The Era of the Forged Hero (1)
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To describe a war-scale magic battle in more poetic terms, bards call it the "Battle of Silence." It was a terribly straightforward name. Fernandez looked up at the sky and thought. How the hell was that silent?
Just as cavalry are the infantry's nightmare, magic can become the nightmare of every soldier. Even a basic fireball summoned by one person could produce dozens of casualties.
It was the birth of efficient asymmetric warfare. That was why every nation poured vast sums of gold into their magical forces. The infantry's dense phalanx formations, the cavalry's beautiful wedge charges—these commander's technical feats were rendered meaningless in an instant.
And so, commanders and field officers came up with another approach. "How to exclude mages from the battlefield." Unless you could politely ask the enemy to do it, the solution was deploying your own mages.
-Rumble!
Mana flows swirled into a kaleidoscope above the sky. Mages from each camp prepared their spells, while mages from the opposing camps disrupted them.
The Battle of Silence. In reality, only a single fragment of magic ever reached the battlefield below. The mages of each side poured every ounce of their strength into battling spells with spells up in the heavens, wagering the lives of soldiers on the cost of failure.
'The magical forces are evenly matched, hanging by a thread.'
-Ravirata's buried priests are weaker than expected, aren't they?
'No. It's that the Empire's mages are better than we thought.'
Magic was mystical on an individual level, but on a national scale, it was proportional to the total amount of gold invested. The Empire possessed a magical force larger than any other human civilization, and that was what created the military disparity between the western kingdoms and the Empire.
These were mages in the conventional sense—nothing like the scholars who proved mysteries and explored the world. The Imperial Filainneil University pursued only two magical capabilities.
Disrupting enemy spells and manifesting legion-scale magic. Hence their derogatory nickname: the Imperial Explosion School. Everything focused on massive destruction spells...
-Kaboom!!
A portion of the skeleton legion was engulfed in an explosion and collapsed. Clouds of bone and dust rose up, and the flames from the blast began expanding the damage.
Amid the fierce magic battle raging in the sky, a fragment of mana plummeted to the ground, knotting into a spell. A spell pursuing nothing but destruction, nothing but ever-larger blasts.
-Roooar!!
The vast great wilderness grasslands stretched endlessly. The Ravirata Dynasty's army filled the horizon. No single entity had overwhelming mass. Yet as a whole, they moved in perfect unison at the will of a tiny few, creating thunderous tremors in the earth.
Skeletons animated by the mana of buried priests and dynasty nobles walked, wielded swords, and advanced at their masters' command. Their drill was flawlessly beautiful. Not a single step out of place.
-Thud!
Without any signal, the vanguard halted. Despite the sudden maneuver, the entire legion came to a perfect stop without the slightest disturbance. Fernandez, mounted on his horse, gazed down at the sight in admiration.
'Show them the essence of magical warfare—quickly!'
'Don't get impatient, Feizashi. We have something more important than proving ourselves.'
Fernandez soothed Feizashi as he looked down toward the imperial legion's front lines at the base of the hills. The Emperor had sent reinforcements as promised. Faster than expected, and as powerful as anticipated. However, the forces of the other elector princes were nowhere among them.
'Too greedy.'
'This is gonna backfire.'
The Emperor had no desire to share his glory or the rights to the great wilderness with the other elector princes. He had forsaken their support and dispatched the central legions instead.
Professors from Filainneil University and the combat mage legions were preparing the magic battle from the rear. About two in ten of them were faces he recognized. Imperial mages—he had scraped together every outstanding one among them.
Meanwhile, on the front lines. Reubye's forces and the beastkin tiger tribe troops were divided, with the imperial legions arrayed imposingly between them. The Radiant Holy Lance Society, the Revans Knight Order, the Oath Knight Order, the Gur's Burning Citadel Knights. These were the Emperor's main striking forces.
'Reubye won't hold out even half a day.'
'Half a day? Well, if they manage that much, it'll be fortunate.'
Right now, they faced the rebels of the Ravirata Dynasty and the beastkin tiger tribe alliance. But the moment this war ended, those swords and spears would turn straight toward Reubye.
Reubye's destruction was guaranteed in this war. That was why the elector princes stayed silent despite knowing the Emperor's greed. Reubye's fall was no loss to them.
Eight elector princes were too many to rule the Empire. They all thought so. They were beasts sensitive to profit, and the downfall of one elector prince inevitably expanded the shares of the rest. And the Emperor himself was providing the pretext.
-Kaboom!
The front lines clashed. Fernandez gripped the reins tightly, calming his horse as it reared to bolt. Behind him gathered the elite beastkin tiger tribe warriors.
War tempered heroes in the blood of soldiers. Amid the humans falling to the skeletons' spears and swords at the vanguard, an era of heroes would dawn.
Even if it didn't, they would make it so. Fernandez's sharp eyes fixed on the protruding sector of the front lines. The area where Duke Erb and his knights were fighting desperately.
* * *
"Don't fall back! Forward! Forward!!"
Kirhas Hearttaker swung her sword, crushing a skeleton. Individually, they were worthless foes, but the terror of the wraith legion lay in their numbers approaching infinity.
No limits. Literally, skeletons were bursting sporadically from beneath the earth across the entire front, disrupting the lines.
A surprise attack on the vast plains. It couldn't be more lethal. In this wasteland with thousands of years of history, finding land without corpses beneath was the harder task.
They had to anticipate not only the enemy masses in front but also the forces erupting from below. It was as if traps lay everywhere, and the resulting chaos and morale drop among the soldiers was inevitable.
"Gaaah!"
A spear erupting from the ground pierced the heart of a beastkin rampaging right beside her. Bad luck. The weapon held by the skeleton slumbering beneath his feet happened to be a spear, leaving no time to dodge. The beastkin twitched for a moment before closing his eyes and collapsing.
"Tch!"
Kirhas swiftly decapitated the fallen beastkin. Not to desecrate the corpse. A body falling into enemy hands became an enemy soldier wholesale. In battles against the wraith legion, death was not the end. It was the beginning of eternal service.
Such scenes unfolded across every front line. This was vivid proof of why the Sultanate and the Empire left the wraith legion of the great wilderness untouched.
And also why the beastkin tiger tribe alliance—united as one race—had failed to unify the great wilderness. The wraith legion was like a beehive. Disturb it, and it exploded.
"Don't fall back!! Warriors of the alliance. Victory lies straight ahead!"
"Hearttaker! Hearttaker! Hearttaker!"
"Tear out the enemy's hearts! Your great chieftain fights alongside you!"
"Glory!!"
"Honor!"
"Victoooory!!!"
At Kirhas's shout, the beastkin tiger tribes roared in unison. At least this front wouldn't collapse. Kirhas's renown already encompassed the entire beastkin populace.
The undefeated of the wilderness, prophet of the forgotten god. She had forcibly unified the beastkin tiger tribes with a handful of troops, repelled the Ravirata Dynasty's ambush in the process, and achieved the feat of uniting the wasteland. A great hero.
However, not every front could fight so fiercely.
* * *
"We must retreat!!"
"Discussing retreat at the outset? And you call yourself an imperial knight!"
"This is madness! Casualties are catastrophic!"
The Empire's potential enemies were the Kirzhat Sultanate, the great wilderness tiger tribe warlords, the occasional rebels and bandits, and the eastern kingdoms. Their commonality was being human, meaning strategies assuming rational warfare worked on them.
But this battlefield defied common sense. While every front formed phalanxes to hold, enemies ambushed from beneath those very phalanxes. In other words, it was like every line was being hammered by enemy cavalry.
Formations were impossible. The front was one line, but they were effectively surrounded. Even if the enemy hadn't raised all their forces at once, the sporadic underground ambushes were eroding soldier morale in real time.
-Crash!
A skeleton soldier rose, crumbling one corner of the command tent. A knight who saw it smashed the skeleton's skull in a single stroke. Even in the safest command area, this happened. What must the soldiers feel in such chaotic fields?
"Holding is becoming impossible. Ravirata's wraith legion replenishes endlessly! With our own soldiers! This is insane!"
"It's a war ordered by the Emperor himself. Shut your mouth!"
"What are the mages doing? They can't block the resurrection spells or even detect them!"
"At least be grateful the enemy's magic isn't raining down on our soldiers' heads!"
The imperial command couldn't unite around a single commander. The Empire's knight orders and marshalate nobles vied for the Emperor's favor independently, lacking a central great noble like Duke Erb.
The command's arguments and confusion directly impacted soldier morale. The imperial legions were undoubtedly peerless powerhouses, but a sword moves according to the hand that wields it.
However, not every soldier lacked a commander. Where a great noble who could unite them led personally, the skeleton soldiers were merely weak, moving scarecrows.
* * *
"Uahaha! These frail things! Is that all you've got!"
"Bora, protect the soldiers!"
"Yes, my lord!"
The massive knight known as the fire bear Bora—swinging a greatsword as thick as a man's thigh in all directions, battering skeleton soldiers away—nodded and returned.
The most protruding sector of the front lines. Duke Erb's Reubye forces and Kirhas Hearttaker's beastkin tiger tribe legions were slowly penetrating the wraith legion's depth from both flanks.
Advancing was good. But protrusions inevitably drew higher enemy density. Thus, Erb and Kirhas's desperate fights directly led to greater friendly losses.
And in this surreal battlefield where one loss became an enemy reinforcement, that was catastrophically fatal.
"My lord! We've pushed too deep! We must fall back!"
"We can't! Preserve the troops as much as possible!"
"The great chieftain's concubine might have tricked us!"
"You think that man would stake his life just to increase our losses? Bora, trust me and advance. He's not the type."
-Bang!
While the imperial legions sluggishly maintained phalanxes below the front. That would be the perfect opportunity. Gazing at the skeleton troops pressing in with ever-greater mass and density, Erb regripped his sword hilt.
'I wonder how long it's been since I personally entered the fray.'
Erb grumbled. He was rough with people. But his blood boiled all the same. In his youth, the young Erb had been the fiercest knight charging ahead on the 50 Years' War battlefields. It felt like returning to those days.
"Advance!!"
The soldiers moved as one. Erb's troops were bound by decades of camaraderie—eating, fighting, and sleeping together under his command.
Hardened in the war's fiercest hotspots. Erb trusted them. And the soldiers trusted him in return.
* * *
The man overlooking the battlefield's chaos from above nodded.
"Cavalry. Forward."
He raised his greatsword with one hand, pointing straight ahead. Time to forge a hero.
"Let us teach death to the dead. Advance."