Chapter 113
Chapter 113
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 113
The Gauri army, the South Road Army's five thousand troops, and thirty-five hundred of the surviving soldiers from Vihanen Fortress—excluding the wounded—began their advance. The remaining forces confined the prisoners within Vihanen Fortress and established a position.
Baron Silen Bels, recognizing that cooperation with the Gauri army was now the best available course, had no choice but to accompany Jin-cheon's unit.
Yet one thing weighed on his mind: the Northern Mercenaries. Unexpectedly, they were often seen mingling comfortably with the Gauri soldiers.
Some had already begun learning the Gauri language. Perhaps thanks to that, the overall command structure functioned as smoothly as if they had always been a single unit. Of the thirty-five hundred troops from Vihanen Fortress, two thousand were Northern Mercenaries, after all.
Moreover, of the two thousand soldiers left behind to guard the prisoners at Vihanen Fortress, more than half were Northern Mercenaries.
Even during the march, Baron Bels occasionally glanced at Baron Gowin.
He wondered why Baron Gowin was accompanying these people, and why the Hawk Corps—the Haian Kingdom's finest, the only force to earn renown as a true legion—was not with him.
Vague talk of needing to find them was not enough to explain it. As a capable staff officer, Baron Bels understood all too well how crucial each small fact could become as intelligence.
Despite the movement of a large force nearing nine thousand, their marching speed was rapid. Every four-legged beast was running. Even animals not pulling wagons were driven hard. And at every halt, the most exhausted, collapsed creature became the next meal.
THUD-THUD-THUD!
A light cavalry scouting party of some twenty riders was returning toward the encampment. Though the battlefield had become an empty no-man's-land, they remained thoroughly dedicated to reconnaissance through small cavalry detachments.
"General!"
The soldier galloped in, drawing out the final syllable of his cry, then threw himself prostrate before Mong Ryu-hwa and shouted.
"A large-scale enemy force has been spotted two days' march ahead."
"Is that so?"
"Yes."
Ryu-hwa's eyes widened at the dust-caked soldier's report. They had encountered small bands of broken stragglers before, but nothing that could be called large-scale.
"How large?"
Ryu-hwa quickly asked for the size. The soldier nodded, then began fumbling to remove his upper garment. He bared his own torso.
"This many."
"......."
On the soldier's stomach, several circles had been drawn in strange symbols.
"These little circles here—each one's as many as all the fingers on both hands put together. And these big circles here—each one's as many little circles as there are fingers on both hands."
"......."
The soldier smiled confidently.
He was—
"Hailon, if you stay that ignorant, you'll never get promoted again. How do you plan to feed your kids?"
"Hurk!"
It was Hailon, the lifetime soldier.
Ryu-hwa shook his head, sorted out the intelligence, and dashed off to report. Behind him, Hailon's dejected silhouette against the setting sun painted a pathetically sorrowful scene.
* * *
Clop clop clop.
"No trace of the supply unit at all. What do you make of it?"
"Could it be they were annihilated?"
"Damn it. I should be earning merit on the front lines, and instead I'm stuck doing this."
Even the splendor of their armor was now dulled by the dust-laden wind sweeping across the open plain.
Duke Camillien Perren Roselin, who had stormed Vihanen Fortress, had attacked with only his own forces out of blind ambition and been annihilated. As a result, the North Roselin main camp, unable to endure its frustration, had organized a search party.
Baron Scully Pelson, commanding the search party, had been grumbling incessantly throughout the march as though his path to advancement had been blocked. But as the search progressed and even the supply unit's trail vanished without a trace, a creeping unease began to take hold.
"We'll set up camp here tonight."
"Isn't this terrain too exposed?"
Baron Pelson frowned briefly at his attendant knight's remark, then spoke again.
"But if the enemy approaches, we'll spot them quickly."
"Then I'll have the tents pitched here."
Finding the baron's reasoning plausible, the knight offered no further objection and began issuing orders to the soldiers.
The exhausted infantry, hearing they would soon rest, moved with renewed energy as they set up the tents.
"If they really were annihilated...."
Baron Pelson brooded on the possibility the knight had raised earlier, sinking into worry.
The force he had brought numbered barely a thousand. That was a large force for operating in the rear, but if twenty thousand troops had truly been annihilated, his thousand men would be nothing but a drop in the bucket.
"Damn it. And we can't just list them as missing, either."
His earlier complaints had faded, but his worries had grown in their place. The sight of the supply unit's appointed rendezvous point cleaned spotlessly was more than enough to make Baron Pelson's unease bloom.
Of the North Roselin search party's thousand-odd men, all but a dozen or so cavalry were infantry. As darkness fell over the camp, the soldiers collapsed like corpses and sank into sleep.
"I'm losing my mind."
"Why?"
"Because I'm sleepy."
"......."
The sentries on watch, unable to overcome their crushing fatigue and drowsiness, yawned incessantly and fought desperately to keep their upper and lower eyelids from meeting.
"How long has it been since the shift change, that you're this wrecked?"
"I don't know. I can't even remember that anymore."
Perhaps to stave off sleep, the two soldiers murmured to each other in low voices.
"Is it going to rain?"
One soldier lifted his head to gaze at the sky. Dark clouds must have gathered, for even the moon and stars had been swallowed by the blackness.
"I must be sleepier than I thought."
The sky-gazing soldier heard his companion's hollow mutter at his ear. He pulled his eyes from the sky, looked at his comrade, and asked,
"What now?"
The other soldier clicked his tongue and grumbled as if in disgust.
"The mountains are walking over."
"That's not sleepy—that's crazy."
Shaking his head, the soldier tossed off the retort—and then, without thinking, turned his head in the direction his comrade was staring.
"Huh?"
He had the sensation that the silhouette of the mountain range was gradually drawing closer. Sensing something wrong, the soldier suddenly threw himself flat on the ground. The first soldier cocked his head and spoke.
"Hey! You can go in and sleep later. Don't just flop down here. Heh heh heh."
Unlike his jokester comrade, the prostrate soldier's pupils dilated wide. What he had taken for a mountain range was a massive force advancing with the mountain's darkness at their backs.
"W-wake them."
"What?"
Unable to catch the words muttered as the prone soldier slowly rose, his comrade leaned in as if he hadn't heard clearly.
"Unidentified hostile force! Wake them, now!"
Whoosh!
The moment the soldier's harsh voice burst out, flames shot up from behind. They were surrounded.
Blazing light filled the sky. Before the still-disoriented soldiers' eyes, three riders broke from the mass of cavalry and came charging in as though racing one another.
THUD-THUD-THUD!
"Now this is more like it!"
"I'll splatter them to pulp!"
"Hmph, I'll smash them down like a gale!"
The figures hurtling toward the North Roselin position were none other than Buyeo Gi-yul, Mong Ryu-hwa, and Samdopyo.
"Stop them!"
CRASH-CRASH-CRASH!
Before the desperate shout of a single soldier could even fully sound, Dupyo, who had already crashed through, shattered a torch-mounted post and began ringing out the overture of death.
"Kuahahahat!"
Dupyo's hideous laughter echoed as his staff swept from left to right in a scything arc. The skulls and chests of soldiers who failed to dodge were crushed and torn apart. Ryu-hwa and Giyul's cavalry, arriving an instant later, fell upon the soldiers scattered by Dupyo's onslaught.
"Huyaa!"
WHOOSH!
Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack!
Ryu-hwa's spear blade split into six strands like a mirage and punched through the bodies of the soldiers who tried to resist. Six streams of blood, robbed of their paths, sprayed simultaneously from the soldiers' hearts, planting terror in the minds of those still fighting.
"Don't panic! Form ranks!"
"If you want to live, scatter!"
"Eeik!"
Giyul sneered as he charged at the North Roselin knight who had mounted up and appeared to rally the soldiers. The North Roselin knight raised his shield and sword, radiating killing intent toward Giyul, and spat out a single word as he rushed forward.
"I'll kill you!"
"Huyahaaa!"
Roaring a battle cry in answer to the knight's bloodthirsty voice, Giyul charged. The twin axes in his hands, caught in the torchlight, became streaks of crimson.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!
Sparks flew as axe and sword clashed. The North Roselin knight deflected the axe that came down as if to split his skull, using his shield to divert it. When he swung his sword again, Giyul's form, which should have been astride his horse, had already vanished.
"Where—!"
Consternation flickered across the face of the knight who had failed to recover his sword in time. From above the head of the knight, who had instinctively pulled his shield in close, a cold voice rang out.
"Where else? Right here!"
"Hut!"
The startled knight looked up. His eyes met Giyul's face, inverted and suspended in the air, arms spread wide in a reverse-cross as he whirled.
The knight's sword cut empty air. In the split-second it took him to desperately swing his blade overhead, a chilling sensation sliced past both his sides.
Suka-kak, seogeok!
Giyul's body completed one full rotation, planting a foot on the rump of the knight's horse before leaping back onto his own mount. The knight's upper body, his eyes still brimming with disbelief, quartered apart and scattered onto the ground.
"Uwaak! A demon!"
"Huuuaaak!"
In the brief time since only three men had descended upon them, a single knight and more than twenty corpses already littered the ground. Horror dawned on the soldiers' faces.
The soldiers who glimpsed those three faces lit by the firelight had long since lost all will to fight.
"Those aren't human!"
"Their faces are deathly blue—they're demons!"
With their bruises still unhealed, their faces were more than enough to appear demonic. And the three, hearing the soldiers' screams, rampaged all the more wildly.
As the cavalry charged toward the spearhead of the collapsing enemy line, Risel soared into the air.
"Oum Sala di Krei Um Taha. O powers of mana that form the world, grant me a share of your strength. Borrowing the smallest yet most needful of your powers, I beseech you... Mana of the earth and mana of space... Mana Hold!"
WHOOOOSH!
The incantation unfurled through the sky and began to dominate the battlefield.
Thanks to the mana domination, unless a North Roselin wizard surpassed Risel in ability, magical communication would be impossible. Moreover, as a 5th-circle spell, no wizard on an ordinary battlefield could overcome it.
Below Risel, suspended in the air, the Gauri army pressed forward toward the thousand-odd enemy soldiers with the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry in black scale armor at the head. In the rear, as if by prearranged signal, the South Road Army's cavalry was storming in.
As some four hundred cavalry broke through the North Roselin formation, an enemy knight caught Risel's eye.
"Oum Sala di Krei Um Taha."
Risel, who had received special orders from Hwi-garam, chanted his spell while keeping those instructions firmly in mind.
'If you spot the enemy commander, you must take him alive as swiftly as possible.'
'You mean me? But earlier His Majesty said he would capture one himself alongside Uru and Buru....'
'Long habit is what surfaces first on the battlefield.'
'.......'
Risel tilted his head as if he could not understand, then sensed an enemy wizard enter his awareness.
Whoosh!
"Huh!"
Three streaks of Fire Arrow shot up. Risel clicked his tongue once and used Fly magic to launch himself higher.
The three Fire Arrows, which had dissipated midway due to range limits, seemed to have been bait from the start. Two wizards soared into the air.
Risel moistened his dry lips and glared at the pair. This was his first battle against wizards since his Awakening. No, to be precise, it was the first magical duel of Risel's entire life.
"Oum Sala di Krei Um Taha."
As the two wizards began their simultaneous incantation, Risel focused his mind and began drawing up his mana.
"Magic Missile!"
"Bind!"
Three bolts of light-arrows and magical ropes that seemed intended to restrain Risel's movements closed in from every direction, seizing the space. In his panic, Risel discharged the mana he had gathered and shouted.
"Hold Magic!"
Light radiated outward with Risel's incantation. The three light-arrows dissolved, and the Bind magic that had been constricting around Risel's body vanished without a trace.
A spell that existed but was used by no one.
Though classified as a 6th-circle spell, its practical mana consumption was so high that only a 7th Circle wizard could wield it comfortably. This was the wide-area Magic Domination that he had just deployed.
The reason no one used such a spell despite its decisively clear results was the existence of Dispel magic. But in his panic, Risel had missed the chance to cast Dispel before the enemy spell manifested, so he had resorted to Magic Domination, a spell barely taught anymore.
"I-it worked!"
Risel parted his trembling lips and let out a dazed cheer of success, his expression one of bewilderment. The two wizards, on the other hand, could only scream in horror—coughing up blood as they did.
"Aaaaagh!"
The reason was that Risel's overbearing Magic Domination had seized control of even their Fly magic.
Thwack!
"The wizards have been struck down!"
"They're falling—get out of the way!"
Risel watched the two wizards, who had plummeted from midair and splattered into bloody pulp. Feeling a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead, he murmured,
"A-a miscalculation."
There, beneath the fallen wizards, lay the enemy commander whom Hwi-garam had so insistently urged him to capture—his neck twisted at a grotesque angle, reduced to a bloody smear on the ground.
"Baron Pelson's neck is twisted!"
"The baron isn't breathing!"
Siaron Risel.
In the very first battle of his life, he had accomplished the brilliant feat(?) of personally claiming the life of the enemy commander.