Chapter 131
Chapter 131
Iron Emperor — Chapter 131
Haidia, who had been walking the shores of the Central Lake in the Reganza Mountains, came to a halt. Her eyes, which rarely lost their composure, were wavering.
Into her ears came the clamor of other beings. Dwarves.
"You felt it too!"
"Hwain Stone—that power just now, it was unmistakable!"
Galling Stone asked Hwain Stone, as though seeking confirmation. But instead of answering, Hwain Stone looked at the High Elf Haidia. In her wavering eyes, he found certainty that what they had felt was not mistaken.
"A spirit...."
Haidia's lips parted, trembling.
The gazes of the dwarves and Haidia were directed toward South Roselin.
* * *
"That's impossible—that is clearly!"
The wizards, too, seemed to have noticed, staring wide-eyed alongside the astonished Siaron Risel.
Spirits—beings treated as legend.
The occasional appearance of elves had made it known that they were not merely legend. Through the spirits that elves commanded, their existence had been made known to humanity by way of wizards.
But at present, spirits were the sole domain of elves.
Yet records remained suggesting that the humans of antiquity had also commanded spirits.
Though they were only records....
Wizards doubted the reliability of some of those texts.
Occasionally, half-elves or others displayed rudimentary levels of spirit magic. But what was now unfolding before their eyes was not a matter of a human merely handling a spirit.
"Why does a spirit's aura emanate from a human! Are the legends true, then!"
The voice of one horrified wizard rang out. Even the other wizards, who had not dared to voice the words, could only stare at Hwi-garam with helpless eyes.
"Heh-heh..."
Even Risel, who had thought there was nothing left about these people that could surprise him, could only let out a hollow laugh.
"Is the Great Return beginning...?"
Someone's murmur stirred the air.
The object of this return was ambiguous here. The wizards, however, could only cautiously speculate that it might be the ancient people who had vanished from the continent in ages past.
The astonished eyes of the wizards had, before they knew it, grown calm. All of them held their breath and fixed their gazes solely on Hwi-garam—though their eyes held a complexity entirely different from the worry-filled stares of the Gauri soldiers.
A passage from the legends seemed to resound in Risel's ears.
'On the day the spirits return to humankind, their Great Return shall....'
"The Great Return shall commence."
Haidia's lips, which had been shut as though frozen, parted.
At that, the shoulders of the three dwarves trembled slightly. Her quiet voice rang out with utter clarity.
"Is that truly the aura of an ancient spirit!"
Mawin Stone shouted at Haidia, who was staring into empty space, as though demanding an answer.
Haidia's head moved, just barely, ever so slightly, up and down.
A gesture of affirmation.
Though their races differed, it was a line from a legend they shared. The only difference was that the wizards knew only the line that spirits would return to humankind, whereas these beings knew it as the reemergence of the ancient spirits.
Just then, slow footsteps approached from behind them.
"Has General Yeon released his power...?"
The words were spoken as though to himself, but they reached the ears of Haidia and the dwarves with perfect clarity.
The eyes of the dwarves and Haidia turned involuntarily toward the owner of the voice.
"Master!"
It was Elder Jang.
"What do you mean by that?"
The dwarves could hardly fail to know who Elder Jang meant by General Yeon. Yet their eyes were wide open, as if refusing to believe it.
Whether Elder Jang did not understand their astonishment, or was deliberately ignoring it, he kept his lips sealed despite Hwain Stone's question.
* * *
The momentum of the two armies' charging horsemen was so fierce that neither could be called inferior. The Gauri cavalry, as ever, charged fiercely with Go Jin-cheon at its head, and the knight orders of North Roselin met them with the pride of being elite troops.
But results can differ from momentum.
"Gwaaaak!"
Whether a knight of noble virtue or a nobleman claiming the blood of the high-born flowed in his veins, their reactions to foreign matter piercing their bodies were no different from those of common soldiers.
"Turn about! Withdraw!"
"Gurghk!"
Red blood embroidered the earth. The throats of the North Roselin commanders had long since been torn. Only hoarse voices spilled out in desperation.
"Kugh, this can't be happening!"
Looking different from the common soldiers on a battlefield simply means becoming a target. It means becoming the objective of those hunting for feats of valor. But conversely, it can also strike terror.
"Is that man a devil!"
From the lips of Marquis Malain Ferguson, the commander-in-chief of the North Roselin army who had boldly led his knights into the clash, curses streamed without end.
"Kreaaaaaghhk!"
With a final cry less a scream than a shudder torn from the depths of hell, yet another North Roselin knight came apart at the torso and scattered across the ground.
He had been torn apart and killed.
"Kuah-hahahaha!"
A blood-soaked mad laugh, as though savoring the sight, was shattering the fighting spirit of the North Roselin knight order.
From the five horns adorning Go Jin-cheon's armor as he erupted in that mad laughter, steam rose in wisps. The blood had no time to cool.
If many a knight had met death on an ordinary battlefield, they would not have felt such terror as this.
One knight's gaze abruptly turned toward Jin-cheon's surroundings.
"Kugh."
A small groan.
On the ground, severed limbs lay scattered in a mess, impossible to tell whose they were, and even torsos lay torn and rolling about.
He had ripped every one of them apart.
They hesitated.
Before his figure, coated in blood upon blood—as though he were enjoying a bloodbath—not one of the knights, who were supposed to symbolize strength, could bring himself to approach.
"We must pull the line back!"
"Kugh!"
A sound like a scream burst briefly from Marquis Ferguson's mouth.
The brutally savage man alone was not the problem. Everything rolling on the ground belonged solely to the North Roselin knight order.
"Your Excellency! The forward line has collapsed!"
The report that the front defensive line had crumbled under the Eastern Army of South Roselin shook Marquis Ferguson.
"Damn it."
The marquis's face crumpled wretchedly.
According to the original plan, they were supposed to shatter the enemy vanguard here, stabilize the rear, and then crush South Roselin's main force. But now everything had gone completely awry.
The sight of even their main knight order failing to stabilize the rear and continuing to die only further sapped the soldiers' morale.
"Escort His Excellency back toward the main camp! The 1st and 3rd Units, take the marquis at once! The rest of you, wipe out those traitorous scum!"
"Understood!"
The adjutant's voice, which had burst out even before the marquis's own order, was commanding, but its content was tantamount to announcing a retreat. He had judged that so long as the marquis himself remained unharmed, the rest would be manageable, even if the blow was severe.
"Huh!"
"What's that?"
A sharp gasp from a Black Armored Ghost Cavalryman reached Eulji Buru's ears as he swung his great axe without pause. Buru frowned and turned his head, his eyes narrowing.
"That 'un's runnin' away!"
"We have to catch him!"
At the urgent voice, Buru shouted back irritably.
"I know! I know!"
Crunch!
"Kuaaak!"
An enemy knight, his body split by the great axe, fell from his horse with a scream. Unlike the enemies they'd faced up to now, these had an organized structure, so the commander could not be easily caught.
"Dammit, might as well just kill 'im!"
Buru's axe stroke shattered the shield of the knight blocking his path, but the North Roselin knight, perhaps having never intended a direct confrontation from the start, simply pulled back.
Because the Gauri army had shown clear superiority from the opening clash, they continued pressing forward and slaughtering the enemy. But once Marquis Ferguson began his retreat, the remaining North Roselin knights avoided direct engagement.
Watching the enemy commander-in-chief's banner grow farther and farther away because of this, Buru could only click his tongue in frustration.
"Were we not told not to kill him?"
At Buru's angry-sounding remark, the voice of a Gwimadae member swinging his sword beside him replied.
"What's that baldy Uru doin'!"
In his frustration, Buru's voice exploded across the battlefield. And an answer came back.
"What else? Readying an arrow."
"So you finally made it!"
The voice of Eulji Uru, who had arrived late from the rear, sounded utterly lovely to Buru's ears.
"Drop 'im, quick—he's gettin' away!"
Buru forced out the words in an urgent tone, but from Uru, who was drawing back his bowstring, no answer came.
Marquis Ferguson's thigh slipped faintly into Uru's vision. At the same moment, the corner of Uru's mouth crept upward, and the strength went out of the fingers pulling the bowstring.
Twang!
WHIZZ!
With a sound that ripped the air apart, the arrow left the string and flew toward Marquis Ferguson's thigh.
A thunderous impact rang out from the thigh of Marquis Ferguson, who had been grinding his teeth and falling back surrounded by his escort knights.
THUD!
"Kugh!"
Marquis Ferguson, who nearly fell from his horse in that instant, expertly snatched the reins and righted his posture. But he was forced to furrow his brow at the pain he immediately felt in the back of his thigh.
"Marquis!"
"I said shield the marquis and get him clear, now!"
Unlike a moment before, the scene had erupted into chaos in an instant.
Feeling the pain, Marquis Ferguson looked down at the back of his thigh with dumbfounded eyes—and felt the sweat that had been pouring down his spine turn instantly ice-cold.
"Escort him, quickly!"
The knights' commotion was understandable.
The thunderous sound from moments ago had been the magic circle engraved on his armor shattering. A ward capable of repelling arrows and even most sword strikes had broken—and still failed to stop the arrow.
It had not pierced deeply, of course, but the shock was considerable.
"Who in blazes could have...?"
The marquis's head turned backward.
"No—could it be?"
Only a single bow-wielding figure filled his vision.
"On horseback... and a dwarf, at that?"
Beside the dwarf slaughtering knights by swinging a massive axe stood an identically built dwarf, setting an arrow to his string. Under any other circumstances, he would have laughed at the sight, but in his mind, his instincts were screaming a warning of danger.
WHIZZ!
"Block it!"
He must not have been the only one to see. As the sound of air being torn apart rang out once more, an escort knight's shield moved nimbly to intercept it.
THUNK!
"Aaak!"
A scream burst from the mouth of a knight who would have trained dozens, perhaps hundreds of times to deflect arrows with his shield.
"Heok!"
The arrow pierced through both shield and arm, drawing a cry of horror from everyone. And after seeing the knight hurled from his horse by its force, Marquis Ferguson and his knights drove their mounts onward in blind panic.