Chapter 130
Chapter 130
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 130
"Kwaaaaah!"
BOOM! CRASH!
Like reeds flattening before a rolling boulder, the soldiers in Go Jin-cheon's path couldn't even gather their wits. Once the formation collapsed, the Gauri infantry's breakthrough that followed left them scrambling simply to stay alive.
"Fall back! Reform on the third defensive line!"
Helmet lost somewhere, a long gash torn across his forehead, Baron Serian Henson's voice was laced with despair as he tried to rally the soldiers.
When word of the first line's collapse reached him, Baron Henson had blamed the lax discipline of the rear-echelon troops. No other reason could explain such a swift breach.
That judgment was a mistake. Watching the first line crumble, Henson let out a mirthless laugh of disbelief.
A lone rider, drenched in blood so thick it was impossible to tell whether it was black or red, had punched straight through the First Defensive Line and, without pausing, charged directly into the Second.
Throwing himself forward without pausing even to reform—that was sheer lunacy. When a defensive line was set, the normal course for an attacker was to reorder their ranks before charging.
'Wait... Did he break through the center?'
Baron Henson's eyes widened.
This defied all principles of cavalry employment.
Frontal attacks weren't unheard of, but standard cavalry doctrine dictated striking the formation's most vulnerable flanks. Moreover, the enemy main body's numbers now surpassed his own. It was an action he would never have even attempted himself.
Baron Henson swept his gaze over the collapsing flanks of the First Defensive Line.
The line was giving way, but no enemy cavalry had managed to break through.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Baron Henson's eyes snapped back to the front. A cavalryman in armor crowned with five horns, cloaked head to toe in gore, was hurtling toward him.
Behind him, ranks unbroken, came black-armored horsemen in a wedge formation, following their leader as they punched through...
This meant they hadn't failed to reform—they'd never needed to. It meant the dead soldiers of the First Defensive Line had amounted to nothing, and that the cavalry now bearing down on them was a force far beyond them.
Behind them was hell. Shuddering, Baron Henson pulled his troops back.
"Someone!"
"Baron!"
An apprentice knight staggered into view, his body armor crushed inward as he fought to run.
"Go to the Marquis now! Tell him the Third Defensive Line might not hold! Quickly!"
"Understood!"
The moment he saw the apprentice knight sprinting away, Baron Henson drew one last breath, as if his duty were now complete, and collapsed.
His back had been cleaved in two, gushing blood. A thunderous roar rose from behind him.
"Don't slow down—keep pushing through! Kill every last one of the bastards!"
Eulji Buru's face, alight with frenzy, gleamed as if drunk on blood.
Marquis Malain Ferguson, commander-in-chief of the North Roselin army, was stupefied. Racing to the scene upon hearing that the Second Defensive Line was in danger, the first report to reach him was a dying message from an apprentice knight, arrows bristling in his back like a hedgehog's quills: the Third Defensive Line was also in danger.
And before his very eyes, he saw that Third Defensive Line collapse like snapping dry stalks.
"Lord Marquis, the situation is urgent!"
"What in the world is happening? How can three layered defensive lines crumble so pathetically?"
It defied all sense.
The time it had taken him to ride from the temporary command tent nearly matched the time it had taken for the Second and Third Defensive Lines to disintegrate. He couldn't believe it.
At Marquis Ferguson's bellow, Viscount Howl—who had been the one to flee back first as commander of the Third Defensive Line—hung his head low.
"It's... there's a monster at the enemy's vanguard."
"A monster?"
Marquis Ferguson furrowed a brow and echoed the word.
"From the moment he struck the First Defensive Line, a single rider charged in alone. And that rider... no one could stop him. That pattern repeated all the way to the Third Defensive Line."
"You're telling me one man opened the road?"
At Marquis Ferguson's incredulous question, Viscount Howl hesitated a moment before carefully opening his mouth.
"...Yes."
"...."
The man was stupefied.
Marquis Ferguson asked again.
"Was he some kind of Sword Master?"
"Well, that..."
"I am asking whether he charged in blazing streams of Aura."
"No, he did not."
Viscount Howl's voice shrank even further. Marquis Ferguson's, by contrast, only grew louder.
"Do you honestly think what you're saying makes any sense?"
At Marquis Ferguson's roar, Viscount Howl dropped his head, as if there were nothing more he could say.
"What was Baron Tylen doing instead of stopping him?"
At the mention of Baron Tylen, the highest-ranking warrior on the Third Defensive Line, Viscount Howl parted lips that seemed unwilling to move.
"He charged in to block the bastard and was... killed."
"What!"
Baron Tylen was ranked Advanced Sword Owner, a key military asset. The news that he had been unable to stop the enemy and had died brought a wary gravity to Marquis Ferguson's face.
"How powerful must that man be for Baron Tylen to be killed?"
Contrary to the slightly softened tone, Viscount Howl's expression twisted into something ghastly.
Sensing something amiss, Marquis Ferguson pressed him.
"I asked you a question!"
"The horse..."
"The horse?"
A single blurted word.
The answer spilled from Viscount Howl's grim face.
"Kicked by the man's horse. He was killed."
"What?"
At Marquis Ferguson's rejoinder, Viscount Howl spoke, his voice thick with mortification.
"That man's horse—it leaped as if it were flying and killed Baron Tylen in a single blow."
"A horse... Do you expect me to believe that?"
"That is exactly what the horse did."
Marquis Ferguson no longer felt grief or regret for the fallen Baron Tylen.
Jackass. He silently cursed the dead man, nothing more.
"Aaaagh!"
BOOM!
Just then, a thunderous crash from the Third Defensive Line sent soldiers flying through the air.
"Run!"
"Somebody save me!"
Panicked soldiers scattered like spiderlings in every direction. Marquis Ferguson's face hardened at the sight.
"Is that him?"
Amid a rising chorus of screams, Marquis Ferguson's mouth opened.
"That's him."
On the armor of the man who had carved his path all the way to the rear stood five horns, stained red with blood.
* * *
Go Jin-cheon and Gangsoe's advance halted momentarily.
"Hmm."
Around him the chaos of snapping bone and silenced lives still churned, yet not a single North Roselin soldier dared approach him where he stood, calm and imperious. Instead, as if seizing their chance, they simply ran in every direction, desperate to survive.
"Your Majesty!"
"Mm."
Before he knew it, Eulji Buru and Uru had finished clearing their immediate surroundings and drawn up beside him. Jin-cheon kept his gaze fixed forward despite their call.
"Looks like the main camp, I reckon."
When Uru followed Jin-cheon's gaze forward and spoke, Buru adjusted his grip on his great axe and bellowed a hearty cry.
"Let's slam right into 'em and finish this!"
"Those are some fancy banners."
Jin-cheon's eyes remained fixed on the spot where Marquis Ferguson stood.
Ornate banners. The commander-in-chief's standard of the North Roselin army.
"That's the enemy commander-in-chief's flag, no doubt about it!"
The banner that both the Southern Army and the Hawk Corps had described—the standard of the North Roselin commander-in-chief—was right before his eyes.
"Good."
Jin-cheon's lips twisted into a strange smirk.
Cut off the head.
It was the approach Jin-cheon favored most in war. And now, obligingly, the head had presented itself right in front of him.
"But is that bastard really standin' out front on purpose? Got some guts, don't he?"
As Buru cocked his head and muttered, Uru, at his side, clicked his tongue.
"Tsk, tsk. Unless you want to give the folks watching a heart attack, quit rattling that decoration you've got sittin' above your shoulders."
"What'd you say!"
Buru flew into a rage on the spot.
Uru just snorted and continued.
"Look here. All this time the front lines been locked in a standoff, so you figure their defenses are nice and solid, yeah? On top of that, if the crack troops they had facin' us come charging in, you gotta make it so they feel good and ready to fight."
"Right."
Buru, his anger already forgotten, was now listening to Uru's words.
"If that's what they're doin', then their rear's gotta be secure, don't it. In other words, they mean to finish us off quick."
"Hmph. That so."
Buru nodded as if he accepted the reasoning.
As a decision from the enemy commander-in-chief, it was sound. What he didn't know was that he had ultimately fled the wolf only to step right into the tiger's jaws. The tiger's roar shook the battlefield.
"Kwa-haaaaaah!"
Somehow, in Jin-cheon's hand now blazed a banner as red as the sun, the three-legged crow of its emblem gazing down from within.
"Charge! Forward!"
At Buru's ringing cry, the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry began to move, Jin-cheon at its head.
"They're moving!"
"What does that banner symbolize?"
"I've never seen it before myself."
Marquis Ferguson's voice, watching the Gauri forces charge in with a tremendous war cry, had already settled into calm. Was this the composure of a veteran commander hardened by long campaigns?
"We go too. Follow me!"
The moment Marquis Ferguson's horse began to move, his Royal Guard Knight Order surged alongside him. The elite cavalry of North Roselin rode straight toward the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry's spearhead.
Chapter 37 — A Passage of Legend
Vwooooong!
Siaron Risel, his complexion slightly pale from overexertion, raised his lowered head at the resonant hum of mana.
"Our forces are returning!"
The first to appear, wreathed in brilliant light, were the swordsmen who had departed with Yeon Hwi-garam. As the bright light faded, the first sight to seize Risel's eyes was Ung-sam and Hwi-garam, who was leaning on him for support.
"What on earth..."
"Light the fires!"
Risel rose and tried to put the question to Ung-sam, but before he could even finish, Ung-sam's shout erupted.
"Damn it! Move, now!"
Curses suddenly flew thick and fast. Amid the chaos, Risel began to sense a strange power emanating from Hwi-garam.
"This is... what in the world is this power...?"
Rather than concern for the faintly bluish tinge of Hwi-garam's complexion, astonishment dominated Risel's thoughts. Meanwhile, the swordsmen and the waiting soldiers were piling up branches and setting them alight.
"Light it, hurry!"
The movements were almost practiced in their urgency. Risel and the other wizards could only stand and watch, speechless.
Whoosh!
"Somebody boost the fire!"
"I'll do it."
As Ung-sam yelled at the top of his lungs, veins standing out on his neck, the wizards—who had been merely spectating—used magic to ignite the piled wood. When the wood seemed insufficient, the swordsmen stripped off their blood-soaked garments and hurled them into the growing blaze.
"Bring him here, now!"
The naked swordsmen, clad only in loincloths, carried Hwi-garam into the center of the roaring flames and then bolted back out as if fleeing.
Ssssss.
"Krrk!"
"Aaargh."
The swordsmen's bodies were red, as if lightly seared by the heat, and their black hair was singed white in patches where the flames had licked it.
"What in blazes are you doing?"
The moment the swordsmen ran from the inferno after depositing Hwi-garam inside, the wizards cried out in shock. Only Risel, convinced there must be some reason, watched the scene intently.
The change was not long in coming.
Sssssssss!
"Whoa!"
"What is that?"
SSSSSssss!
Suddenly, steam began to billow up from between Hwi-garam and the pillar of flames. At the same time, the wizards' eyes went round as startled rabbits.
"Hell! There's not enough fuel. Bring more, right now!"
Ung-sam's voice drove the exhausted bodies of the swordsmen and the bewildered bodies of the soldiers who had been standing guard into motion. All the while, Risel's lips moved, as though trembling.
"That... a spirit?"
Around Hwi-garam's body, a blue energy rose like heat haze, spreading outward as if locked in battle with the surrounding firestorm.
It was clearly not magic.
Nor was it what one would call Sorcery.
Purity.
The power of pure nature.
The fragrance of what one might call spirits was seeping from Hwi-garam.