Chapter 121
Chapter 121
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 121
Chapter 33 — War God of the East
Does the devastation of war strip even the land bare, and enrage even the sun in the sky?
The sunlight hammering down onto the heads of the dozen-odd men racing across the wide plain became dozens, even thousands, of dagger points stabbing at the backs of their necks.
"Shit, it's fucking hot!"
Samdopyo's feet never stopped moving, and despite his entire body being drenched in sweat, his steps were light. The soldiers running behind him were bathing in their own sweat as well, but their pace neither slowed nor grew heavy.
"Huff, huff, huff, huff, huff!"
Amidst all this, there was one man desperately running with trembling legs, gasping so raggedly he looked ready to keel over any second. It was Baron Silen Bels, who had joined them from Vihanen Fortress.
"Tch."
Dupyo glanced back while running and scowled with a snort.
The most important person, Baron Bels, had the weakest body. The situation annoyed Dupyo, while the soldiers were just happy to get more breaks.
"Halt! We rest here for a moment!"
Under the scorching heat that made the bone-dry grass scattered everywhere seem ready to ignite into ash at any second, Dupyo's order to rest was like an angel extending its hand to Baron Bels.
"Hrrghh, haaah, haaah, haaah."
"Tch. You're about to keel over."
His face flushed crimson, his whole body heaving as he gasped for breath — seeing him like that, Dupyo handed him a water flask with a faint trace of sympathy in his eyes.
"Just sip a little."
It meant that gulping down too much water all at once when severely dehydrated was poison. Baron Bels snatched the flask as if he meant to drain it dry, but in fact he only wet his throat with a small amount and held the rest in his mouth, cooling the inside of his mouth.
"Hoo, hoo, hoo."
"Baron Bels, you're having it rough too. Heh heh heh."
Once he'd finally gotten his breathing under control, Dupyo let out a deflating laugh. Baron Bels leaned back against the stump of a dead tree. The heat shimmering before his eyes felt like a dream revealing the events of a few days ago.
A few days ago, Baron Bels had...
"I beg your pardon, but could you say that again?"
He was asking back, as if he suspected his own ears had failed him. At Baron Bels's question, Go Jin-cheon furrowed his brow slightly, then spoke again, enunciating each syllable clearly.
"Go."
"......."
At Jin-cheon's answer, Baron Bels could not say a single word.
The second time he heard it, subject and object had been omitted, but it also proved that he had not misheard the first time.
"That is absurd!"
Baron Bels's voice wavered awkwardly, pitching somewhere between high and low. He was not such a fool as to raise his voice carelessly at Jin-cheon, who already commanded no small force.
But his sense of injustice unconsciously pushed his voice just slightly higher.
Jin-cheon's next word.
"It can."
Baron Bels thought he had never seen such pigheaded stubbornness in his entire life. Yet from his position, he could not simply nod along with Jin-cheon's words, say, "Then I trust you'll take good care of our soldiers," and return alone to the Eastern Army camp.
"If you're so set on it, take him with you."
"Truly!"
Color rushed back into Baron Bels's face.
"Hailon."
"Aye!"
Hailon, who had been standing off to one side, came running immediately.
Jin-cheon glanced briefly at Baron Bels's face, then began issuing orders to Hailon.
"Tell Hwi-garam the plan has changed."
"Understood."
Hailon answered Jin-cheon in a crisp tone and turned to sprint out, but Jin-cheon's voice caught him by the ankle.
"Aren't you going to tell me how the plan changed?"
"Gah!"
His eagerness had gotten ahead of him and he'd left out the substance. Hailon, through and through.
But since this was Jin-cheon, who showed relative leniency (?) in ordinary times, he didn't scold him further.
"The change is to return his troops to Baron Bels here."
Only when those words came out did Baron Bels's expression ease into relief.
"And."
But the relieved expression instantly began to harden.
"Tell them we're packing up and getting ready to go home."
"At once!"
"Your Majesty!"
His hardened face shattered to pieces, and at last the voice he had been holding back burst out. Jin-cheon stared at him blankly as if he were being noisy, and opened his mouth.
"You're being noisy."
"What will we do if you withdraw!"
"I'm not dead."
A brief side effect of the language-translation magic occurred here, but it was soon smoothed over, and Baron Bels began clinging to him again.
Unlike before, the Gauri force had now grown to a total of forty thousand troops, including the twenty thousand elite soldiers and supply units from the Kingdom of Haian. It was a great army that had to be held onto by any means necessary.
The news that such a great army was turning back struck like a bolt from the blue. Trapped in a situation with no good options, Baron Bels simply wore himself out trying to persuade Jin-cheon.
What Jin-cheon had originally proposed was the absorption of the remaining forces.
And then, when attacking the North Roselin unit, they would send Baron Bels to the main camp of the South Roselin Eastern Army as a diversionary feint. At that point, Baron Bels had said he would stay and take charge of the unit while sending someone else. Jin-cheon's reply had been that he should go himself.
Whoever delivered the message, delivering it at all would be fortunate. The problem was that the remaining troops might be permanently absorbed. The Northern Mercenaries, thanks to their similar appearance to the Gauri soldiers, had already been welcomed with great enthusiasm and were beginning to mingle with them almost seamlessly. Along with them, the troops from the South Roselin forces at Vihanen were blending into the South Road Army and the Gauri recruits.
In this situation, if he as their commander were to leave, the soldiers who remained would be wholly absorbed into the Gauri army and then some. That was why Baron Bels was desperate.
Yet even in the face of Baron Bels's desperate efforts, Jin-cheon did not budge in the slightest. No — if anything, two sharp furrows between his brows were deepening moment by moment.
"Hailon."
"Aye!"
"Inform them exactly as I said!"
Hailon, who had been waiting for Jin-cheon's final order, dashed off without looking back. Baron Bels's heart was torn apart.
"This cannot be!"
Grab!
"Gkhk!"
Baron Bels, who had been bowing his head low, suddenly saw Jin-cheon's face as he was hoisted up by the scruff of his neck.
"Ghkk!"
It was the visage of a demon — not because his face itself was demonic. An indescribable rage was coiled within it. The terror before his eyes was more frightening than the pressure he felt on his nape.
"Is your country important, but my soldiers' lives are not?"
"Gkhk!"
The voice seemed to echo up from the netherworld.
"Do you think a fool who frets over trifles can accomplish anything great?"
"Hrrgh!"
Baron Bels's face had gone pale, and he could feel his consciousness fading.
"You send a soldier and expect them to trust you? Do you imagine the commander of the Eastern Army will coordinate operations based on nothing more than the word of some soldier you dispatched?"
"Haaagh!"
His consciousness was dim, but Jin-cheon's voice, hammering home syllable by syllable, pierced clearly into his mind.
Flutter.
"Please restrain yourself."
Into the ear of Baron Bels, who was half out of his mind and trembling uncontrollably, a rescuing voice reached him.
Worry for Jin-cheon was etched into Yeon Hwi-garam's gaze.
Thud!
"Kgh-haack! Haaahhh!"
Dropped onto the ground, Baron Bels sucked in lungfuls of air and stole a glance at Jin-cheon through bloodshot eyes.
Jin-cheon's demeanor had somehow already returned to calm, and Baron Bels felt a terror even greater than before.
"Baron Bels, let's go."
"Khak, hah, hah."
When Hwi-garam helped the seated Baron Bels to his feet, he barely managed to stand on trembling legs. Baron Bels wanted nothing more than to put distance between himself and Jin-cheon as quickly as possible.
Once he was outside the door, Hwi-garam's calm voice reached him.
"Are you all right?"
"Th-thank you."
Looking at Hwi-garam, Baron Bels thought that this man might help him. He'd been watching all along, and Jin-cheon never treated Hwi-garam carelessly.
"To His Majesty..."
"I'm glad you're all right."
The moment Baron Bels opened his mouth to ask for help, Hwi-garam's voice cut him off artfully. As Baron Bels tried to speak again, Hwi-garam's voice continued.
"So, as you proposed, Baron Bels, we send a soldier, and you yourself join the battle here..."
"That's right."
Baron Bels's eyes flew wide open as he interjected into Hwi-garam's murmured musing. In Hwi-garam's tone he had glimpsed a ray of possibility.
"You are brave, Baron Bels..."
At Hwi-garam's composed words, Baron Bels produced an awkward smile.
'But this chill...'
It was night, yes, but feeling a chill while heat still lingered in the air was strange.
"And when we strike the rear of North Roselin, the Eastern Army's main force could perhaps delay its timing just a little, thereby drawing both us and North Roselin into a mutual battering. Moreover, you, Baron Bels, will have braved danger and fought alongside us, so you'll have things to say."
It was a voice laced with a chill. If Jin-cheon had exuded a suffocating terror, Hwi-garam made one feel a bone-deep cold.
Baron Bels backed away from Hwi-garam, faltering in retreat.
"Hmm, and now that I think of it, if our forces were to take damage that way, you could even maneuver to appease us afterward. Urge us to fight together."
"That's not..."
Baron Bels shrank back and tried to get the words out like an excuse. But what met his eyes was a blaze of flames wreathing Hwi-garam's body.
WHIRRRR.
"Gah!"
Baron Bels stood with his mouth agape, unable to utter a word before the flames in front of him. The blue flames that coiled around Hwi-garam's body as if in a phantasm did not feel hot — rather, they radiated an even deeper chill, one that froze the very bones.
Hwi-garam's palm, turned toward the sky, slowly rose before Baron Bels's face.
Fwoooosh!
"Gahk!"
The instant blue flames shot up from his hand, Baron Bels fell backward onto his rear with a shriek. The fire, reminiscent of ghostfire, flickered above Hwi-garam's palm.
Still wearing a smile, Hwi-garam's lips parted again.
"Bear this in mind. We are not fools. If you ever try to use us again, even once more, I promise you this: the Eastern Army will meet its end at our hands..."
Whoooosh!
As Hwi-garam's words ended, the flames coiling around his body were sucked into him and vanished.
Watching Hwi-garam's figure return to the command tent, Baron Bels had felt the thread of his consciousness snap.
And in the end...
"Tch. Don't doze off. Let's run again."
"Ah! Nngh."
They were running in concealment across the battlefield. The one consolation was Dupyo and his party, who were running alongside him.
If Jin-cheon had assigned men of such uniformly outstanding martial prowess as his escort, then at the very least, the joint attack with the Eastern Army was sincere. And the troops Baron Bels had been leading from Vihanen Fortress had likely been reinforced as a contingency.
In the end, it came down to this: Baron Bels had to convince the Eastern Army led by Marquis Helios Baikal, instilling enough confidence in them that they would launch a coordinated attack.