Chapter 115
Chapter 115
Iron Emperor — Chapter 115
The paper in Jin-cheon's hand burned away in an instant, and Baron Pelson's twisted body fell still. His breath had stopped once more.
Moments later, the sound of bones twisting again came from Hwi-garam's body, lying beside him.
Pop-pop. Pop-pop-pop!
"Grrgh!"
The sound of grotesquely distorted bones realigning gave the hearer a visceral revulsion, as though their own joints were twisting. Perhaps because of that, Risel's expression was none too pleasant either.
"Risel, recovery magic."
"Ah, yes!"
When Jin-cheon looked at him as if to say, What are you standing there dazed for?, Risel seemed to snap back to his senses. He approached Hwi-garam and cast recovery magic. Only after casting it three or four times in succession could they feel Hwi-garam's breathing grow even.
"Grrgh."
"A-are you all right?"
"Huu. Still, it ended quickly."
Hwi-garam, his face pale as he caught his breath, spoke as though relieved. He closed the eyes of Baron Pelson, whose breath had ceased once more, and asked Jin-cheon a question.
"What was his final wish? It could not have been an easy one."
"He was clutching his head and thrashing from the aftereffects of the mental magic."
"..."
"Then he wished not to be in pain. So it turned out to be simple."
Jin-cheon's words meant he had granted the wish not to be in pain.
Because it was a spellcraft for attaining buddhahood, the caster could only awaken by granting the deceased's wish — but this time, granting the wish had been surprisingly easy.
"Hmm. Now that I think of it, one more thing I wanted to ask..."
Hwi-garam's body stiffened momentarily at Jin-cheon's murmur. As if conscious of Hwi-garam's gaze, Jin-cheon cleared his throat and looked at him.
"Shall I teach you this?"
"..."
Whether he found Hwi-garam's sparkling-eyed stare burdensome, Jin-cheon turned his head away. The moment his eyes met someone else's, Jin-cheon's mouth opened.
"Hm. Now that I think about it, there's no immediate need. Say, Buru, what do you say to learning it?"
Jin-cheon casually tossed the question toward Eulji Buru. Buru's face went pale, and he frantically waved both hands in front of him.
"I'm only good for splitting bastard skulls—I can't do this sort of thing!"
"Tch."
Jin-cheon spoke into the still-dark night, disappointment in his voice. And Risel, just in case of stray arrows, was quietly slipping away from that spot.
Chapter 31 — All or Nothing
Because the battle had been a blitzkrieg, prisoners had piled up. With some seven hundred captives on their hands, Go Jin-cheon's unit had temporarily halted its march. They were now in the command tent, maps spread out, holding a meeting to review several matters.
"Their upkeep's going to cost a fortune."
"That it will."
"Discarding them is a waste, giving them away is galling."
"What if we bury 'em all up to their necks and just pick 'em back up on the way back?"
"..."
Jin-cheon, Hwi-garam, and the others exchanging opinions all glared at Buru, who had spoken up. When even Uru clicked his tongue, Buru took a heavy psychological blow and quietly relocated himself to a corner.
"You ignorant bastard! Are people seeds? Why are you always trying to bury everything!"
"Enough, Uru. Focus on the meeting."
"Yes."
Buru could tolerate criticism from others, but receiving it from Uru wounded his pride.
Perhaps sensing Buru's feelings, Jin-cheon stopped Uru's reproach. As Jin-cheon turned back to the map, Uru studied it with a serious look and then spoke.
"If we drag seven hundred prisoners along, there's no denying it'll cost us at least some troop strength in the current situation."
"That's true."
"Kill 'em all. They're all just men anyway — what use are they alive?"
"..."
Jin-cheon and Hwi-garam stared silently at Uru's straightforward clarity. From behind Uru, Buru's voice sounded.
"Get over here."
Uru belatedly acknowledged his mistake and quietly slipped away to Buru's side.
The moment Hailon's reconnaissance squad had first spotted them, these men's fates had already been sealed. Outnumbered with over nine thousand troops encircling slightly more than a thousand, they had no chance of victory.
The reason they had opted for a surprise attack was simply that swift disposal before word could spread was critical. Ordinarily, Jin-cheon's way would have been to sweep through and wipe them out anyway, but this time Hwi-garam had agreed.
If these men learned the troop strength at Vihanen Fortress, it would complicate matters in any number of ways. And they had judged that this was no blind-man's unit that would fail to notice the traces left by over nine thousand troops passing through.
But now that they'd actually taken them, the seven hundred prisoners they'd ended up with were an undeniable headache. Just then, Baron Levion Gowin entered from outside.
"You're late."
"Yes."
When Jin-cheon spoke without hiding his discomfort, Baron Gowin, as he stepped inside, glanced toward one side. Sure enough, Buru and Uru were slumped in the corner like guilty men.
At the sight, Baron Gowin — who, though only a few days among them, had quickly grasped the atmosphere — smiled faintly and found his seat.
"Gowin."
"Yes."
"You'll have heard earlier, but we've identified the direction of the troop movements. We won't know the exact details until we reach the vicinity."
Baron Gowin had personally taken part in the earlier battle, so he wore an expression that said he understood Jin-cheon's words well.
Having been unable to obtain proper intelligence, Baron Gowin, who had been moving alongside them, was anxious to reach his corps before they took losses. Seeming to understand his feelings well, Jin-cheon looked at Baron Gowin and continued.
"We'll depart immediately."
"Understood."
"That said, have you found a method?"
The method Jin-cheon referred to likely meant a way to recover the corps. Baron Gowin answered with a bitter smile.
"Truthfully, I don't have any especially brilliant method. The first step, however, is to infiltrate."
"Hm."
At Baron Gowin's words, Jin-cheon folded his arms and rubbed his chin with one hand. He rubbed his stubbled chin, looked at Baron Gowin once, then glanced briefly outside the camp.
"Have you thought of something good?"
Hwi-garam, who had been watching him, spoke with a faint smile. At that, Jin-cheon looked at Hwi-garam, and the corners of his mouth began to curl upward.
"Heh heh heh heh."
A distinctly pleased-sounding laugh rang through the tent.
After the war council ended and he left the command tent, Go Jin-cheon's steps paused briefly.
"A new training method, it seems."
"Huh?"
Jin-cheon, who had stopped to quietly watch the soldiers training, uttered a single remark and passed by. Mong Ryu-hwa, puzzled, turned his head in the direction Jin-cheon had glanced — and an unusual sight caught his eye.
A soldier was giving a battle cry, but instead of an ordinary shout, he was muttering something completely different.
"Tchaat! A hundred is ten tens, so a thousand!"
Ryu-hwa walked toward the man who was swinging an axe while doing strange arithmetic.
"..."
"Tchaap! A hundred plus ten is a hundred ten!"
When Ryu-hwa stared at him without a word, the axe-swinging man paused his motion and carefully opened his mouth.
"Is my form wrong?"
"...No, Hailon. Work hard. And get yourself promoted."
"Yessir!"
At Ryu-hwa's encouragement, Hailon's axe swings grew increasingly fierce.
The last place Go Jin-cheon's steps halted was where the prisoners were bound. As Jin-cheon approached, the soldier guarding the roughly tied captives dropped to his knee and shouted.
"Salute!"
Jin-cheon gave a slight nod at the soldier's salute and slowly surveyed the prisoners.
The captives, having seen the commanders trailing behind Jin-cheon as he approached, kept their heads deeply bowed, afraid any spark might land on their own lives. Yet the human instinct of curiosity made them raise their heads from time to time.
"H-hik!"
One soldier among the prisoners lifted his head — and his face went deathly pale with shock.
'I've lost my mind!'
He had met Jin-cheon's eyes dead-on.
Unable to evade Jin-cheon's stare while his face was frozen blue, feeling all the strength drain from his body, the soldier was inwardly replaying his entire life, one scene at a time.
"Fufu."
A low laugh slipped from between Jin-cheon's lips. The soldier, in his panic, felt that laugh physically strike him, a chill running down his spine.
"Good."
CRASH!
In the soldier's mind, Jin-cheon's single word struck like a thunderbolt.
'Good?! What on earth! Why!'
The questions swirling chaotically in the soldier's head brought a complete reversal from the feeling he'd had just moments ago that his world was ending.
The smiling faces of the commanders surrounding Jin-cheon slowly seeped into the soldier's pupils.
"Strip 'em quick!"
"H-heurk!"
Despair filled the soldier's eyes.
'A dwarf who goes for men!'
The soldier looked at the bizarrely massive dwarf who was giving orders while staring straight at him, and at the images his imagination conjured, he felt goosebumps erupt all over his body.
The last thing the soldier saw before his mind's thread snapped was the sight of his comrades being stripped naked — and his own figure among them.
* * *
Swish-swish-swish-swish-swish!
Clatter-clatter-clatter!
Supply wagons and the rest trailed in a long tail behind the massive force of twenty thousand. Beyond the combat troops, some eight thousand slaves were hauling the provisions. In this grand march of some thirty thousand souls in total, the soldiers' faces, by contrast, were etched with exhaustion.
"Pick up the pace! You slow down, supper gets hard to come by!"
A knight clad head to toe in plate mail that had not lost its gleam despite the long journey was weaving through the column, raising his voice at soldiers and slaves alike.
The knight's shouts, repeated up and down the column, seemed to have some effect — the overall pace of the march quickened somewhat.
"Damn it all. We've basically crossed the border and stepped onto a battlefield, and those pigs just order us to keep marching... Dammit! Bastards."
"Shit. If we get ambushed in this worn-out state, am I supposed to die barely managing a swing of my sword?"
"Stop wasting your breath and hurry up. The sooner we go, the sooner we can get some rest."
Watching the mounted knight ride toward the rear shouting the same words, the soldiers spewed curses and sighs.
Clatter-clatter.
"Still, they say our unit's the best in the Haian Kingdom!"
The young slave driving a cart had apparently overheard the soldiers' grumbling. He waited for their reply with a reassured expression. At the young slave's words, the marching soldiers gritted their teeth.
"The best is the best, all right."
"That's right, kid. Don't you worry."
"Heh-heh!"
Whether it was because he didn't understand war or because the soldiers' bravado had set his mind at ease, the young slave grinned broadly and drove his cart with renewed effort.
Behind the figure of that young slave boy, the faces of the soldiers who turned back toward the front of the march were dark.
"Fuck. What good is being the best unit when the bastard in command is an idiot?"
"Careful. The noble pricks will hear."
"Let the crazy pigs hear. What do you expect from leadership when the scum who swapped out every squad leader and above to suit themselves are calling the shots?"
The soldiers' discontent rose from their throats and spilled out unfiltered.
Perhaps their voices had carried past the noise of weary footsteps and rattling wagons, because a soldier walking by in comfortable attire on one side scowled and yelled.
"You there! Quiet!"
"Eek."
"Sorry, sorry."
That single shout proved remarkably effective — the harsh scowls of the soldiers who had been pouring out curses moments ago brightened in an instant. But among themselves, heads bowed, the conversation continued.
"Goddammit. A pig's pet dog acting big..."
"Careful. The old squad leader got his leg cut off and discarded for mouthing off to that bastard."
"..."
The soldiers' faces grew even bleaker than before. And at the same time, their already sluggish footsteps lost even more of their strength.