Chapter 182
Chapter 182
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 182
The incident had already erupted.
Baron Cale felt dizzy and could only shut his eyes. As if he had anticipated something like this, a guard knight had secretly come and gone bearing a message from King Bera Han. The message had said that under no circumstances must there be friction. But there was only so much he could do.
How could he possibly stop imperials whom even the King of Haian could not control?
Baron Cale opened the eyes he had weakly closed, determined that he must at least clean up the aftermath. And then he saw it.
"Gyaaah!"
"My leg!"
Blood spraying alongside screams.
People collapsing helplessly in every direction. But the ones falling were completely contrary to Baron Cale's expectations. Like a pack of wolves rampaging among sheep, they were running wild everywhere.
"This is impossible!"
Baron Cale's eyes flew wide open.
There is a saying on the continent that nothing exists outside the Three Great Empires.
All the many nations of the continent had collapsed under the logic of force, and the result was the Three Great Empires. Yet here were soldiers of those very empires spraying blood. He had shut his eyes for only a moment and opened them, yet already fifty-odd soldiers from each empire were rolling on the ground.
Thwack!
"Gurgh!"
He saw a knight whose body bent into an L-shape as he was launched into the sky. The distinctive silver-white armor of the Holy Empire was crumpled like waste paper, and the knight seemed to have lost consciousness even before hitting the ground. Baron Cale felt goosebumps rising on his arms.
"Hap!"
Each time Gye Ung-sam's battle cry burst out short and sharp, the arms and legs of the charging enemies flew into the air. When two men's arms, still gripping their weapons, soared skyward in a single exchange, the terrified soldiers stumbled backward. But soon knights armored in plate mail began charging in.
"Die!"
"Damn it. Whether it's this one or that one... they all shout 'die' and charge in the same way."
Muttering at the knights who rushed forward shouting lines you would only hear in a Chinese opera, Ung-sam's body swirled, wreathed in wind.
Whirrr!
The wind wrapped around his collar with a clamorous noise. But what was truly dangerous was not the sound.
"Look out!"
The blade-light, amplified by rotational force, swept across the charging knights' lower bodies. A warning tore from someone's mouth, but it was already beyond blocking.
Crrk!
"I-I blocked it!"
The knight who had planted his sword vertically to shield his lower body broke out in a cold sweat and breathed a sigh of relief. Ung-sam's long blade had passed him by without achieving anything.
'But what was that noise just now?'
A faint sound, like metal being finely scraped, stirred a question in his mind. But knowing full well that idle thought in the middle of battle was forbidden, he threw himself forward.
"Hut!"
The moment he took a step, the knight felt the ground give way beneath him and sucked in empty air. As he frantically clawed at the ground with his hands, something familiar entered his vision. His own two legs, already severed.
"Aaaaargh!"
Despair echoed. A sound tore through the air—impossible to tell whether it was a scream of pain or a cry of despair at the prospect of living out the rest of his days as a cripple.
While Gye Ung-sam and the Gauri Swordsmen ranged and rampaged in all directions, the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry, clad in Chalgap armor, was pressing forward like a herd of bison. Forming trios, they maintained their formation and drove the imperial troops back on three fronts. With only thirty men, they were collapsing a formation built by three hundred.
WHOOSH!
A Gwimadae soldier's Hwandudaedo tore through the air and crashed down. A soldier threw himself sideways to escape the cascading killing intent, only for a blunt impact to slam into his flank.
Crrrack!
"Kugh!"
The sound of a tree trunk snapping burst from the imperial soldier's side. With a scream cut painfully short—his lung must have been punctured—he was sent flying three mir and went tumbling among his comrades.
"Cough. Gurgle."
The focus faded from the soldier's eyes as bloody froth and air leaked from his punctured lung, bubbling out of his mouth.
'What in the world hit me?'
Even as he felt his vision dimming, he turned his gaze toward the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry as if curious, and saw yet another imperial soldier sent flying, his waist bent double by a kick.
"Gurk, mon... monsters. Gurgle."
Even as bloody froth spilled from his lips, he could not stop trembling and muttering in fear. As the soldier's eyes weakly slid shut, the last thing he saw was a comrade who had been struck by a body slam, flying even faster than the one who had been kicked.
Viscount Mabel's sword moved in a wild blur.
Clang cla-clang!
The sound of metal scraping against metal rang harshly against the eardrums.
He had never imagined that he, an Intermediate Sword Owner—a rank on the sword path that challenged the Master—would be pushed back this far. If he had been attacked in a combined assault, he could at least have understood. But was he not being utterly toyed with by a single soldier from gods-knew-where?
"Gah!"
"Viscount Ishie!"
"Get the Viscount to the rear! Now!"
Viscount Mabel heard the scream of Viscount Ishie, captain of the Maritime Empire envoy's guards, and then the frantic voices. He did not need to turn his head to know that Ishie had been taken down.
Was it because of that?
His sword work grew erratic. And the Gauri Swordsman facing him was not one to let that opening pass. The improvisational skill of the swordsmen under Gye Ung-sam—the very flower of chaotic melee—was always supreme.
"Ptoo!"
"Gurk!"
Liquid filled his vision.
Almost as if flinging a hidden dart, the saliva spat from the swordsman's mouth struck Viscount Mabel squarely in the eyes.
"You filthy bastards!"
Shhk.
Feeling heat bloom across his wrist and thigh, he cried out in a voice thick with resentment.
"Graaah! Just kill me instead!"
The sight of himself crumbling from nothing more than a spat wad of saliva—not even a hidden weapon—was simply laughable.
Thud.
As Viscount Mabel collapsed, fountains of blood spurted from his forearm and thigh, soaking the ground.
"Everyone stop!"
"Gyaaah!"
Viscount Mabel heard the footsteps of countless soldiers approaching. And seeing the soldiers of the Haian Kingdom—whom he had always looked down upon—he felt a thing called regret. But in this moment, the Haian Kingdom's soldiers were swiftly bringing the battle to an end.
King Bera Han and the nobles, who had rushed over upon hearing the chamberlain's report, could say nothing at the sight of the devastation before them. Arms that should have bent inward were now folded backward as well, and the imperial knights' armor was crushed like waste paper, compressing the organs within. At least they were the fortunate ones. The floor was scattered with countless arms and legs whose original owners were impossible to identify.
"Viscount Mabel!"
A cry of horror burst from the lips of the Holy Empire's envoy leader, who had come here wearing a smile and expecting favorable results. He could not tear his eyes away from the commander of his own guard knights, rolling on the ground with one arm and one leg severed.
"Huk!"
Another cry.
This time the sound came from the high-ranking noble leading the Federal Empire's envoy party, and his hand was pointing at the wounded strewn about the floor. The nobles, momentarily confused, were forced to share the same shock. On the floor where more than two hundred people lay sprawled, there was not a single Gauri among them.
"How can this be..."
The Holy Empire's envoy, muttering in a trembling voice, slowly turned his head.
"Hup!"
Standing there was Yeon Hwi-garam, smiling coldly.
Chapter 56 — Declaration of War
Dead: 0.
Seriously wounded: 235...
For the result of a single accidental clash, it was absurd. Not a single death, yet 235 of the Three Great Empires' 302 troops were seriously wounded. Had the Haian Kingdom's army not rushed in to stop the fight, there might well have been 302 seriously wounded. And the peculiar point was that out of those 235, 198 had lost one of their four limbs—even if they fully healed, wielding a weapon again would be difficult.
On the Gauri side, by contrast, only 19 lightly wounded in total.
The outcome of a battle fought against roughly three hundred men, including sixty imperial knights, was such that anyone could see the Gauri side had deliberately spared their lives. Otherwise, with arms and legs being severed, how could there not have been a single death?
In short, it meant that roughly fifty Gauri troops had faced three hundred soldiers from the various empires and still had strength to spare.
Amelie de Can Vish.
The emperor of the Federal Empire stared at his nobles with a dumbfounded expression.
"So they all became cripples, and on top of that, you couldn't even manufacture a justification?"
"Well, as it happens, magic footage of the clash was recorded, making it awkward to say anything. Moreover, with the Maritime Empire and the Holy Empire having suffered the same damage, the Holy Empire admitted their fault and withdrew, and the whole affair turned farcical."
"Has the Holy Emperor gone mad?"
Emperor Bishu could not understand it. Emperor Millior, the most violent of all the Holy Empire's past emperors, had pulled out far too easily. In this situation, if the Federal Empire or the Maritime Empire were to press an attack by force, they would only be handing the Holy Empire a pretext.
"Then have we at least clearly identified what this nation called Gauri is?"
Perhaps because they had been dealt a bitter lesson?
The continent's perception of Gauri was shifting. It had been only a single official clash, but the incident in which all three Great Empires had simultaneously been humiliated was sending shockwaves across the continent.