Chapter 332
Chapter 332
Iron Emperor — Chapter 332
The same easygoing voice as always rang out.
The axe, swung upward from below, had cleaved through the sky and was now arcing over his opposite shoulder, and Buru, his body slightly twisted, was grinning at Avilrun, who stood behind him.
"Whoaaa!"
Avilrun couldn’t help but cheer at the sight of Buru emerging from the flames without a single hair singed. Even as fresh fireballs crashed down, shaking the walls of Gaemun Mountain Fortress, Avilrun's shout spread like an epidemic through that terrifying moment.
"Waaaa!"
"Long live the Great General!"
Buru's commanding voice rang out, cutting through the soldiers' cheers.
"Muhyul! Start the Sparrow Catch!"
The wizards who had finished their second incantations were entering the final phase of casting, but Owen—the one who'd hurled a fireball at Eulji Buru—couldn’t close his gaping mouth, repeating that he couldn’t believe it. Some of the wizards around him couldn’t even think of casting their spells.
"Does that even make sense?!"
"A Master!"
"Since when did dwarves have Masters?!"
"Damn it, let's just blast that bastard away again!"
They'd heard that beings called Masters could overcome magic, but seeing it firsthand was a first. Hell, they hadn't even imagined a Master would be here. Any Master, even if one existed, wouldn't do something so crudely brazen as taking magic head-on.
"Wh-what are those?"
Large logs shooting up toward them.
"Goddamn it, dodge!"
The huge nets tied to the ends of the logs came crashing down over them.
The nets themselves inflicted practically no damage, but the problem was the force of the logs plummeting down. With nothing to keep them aloft, the wizards were tangled in the nets and dragged down by the falling logs, one by one.
"This is absolute bullshit!"
Some wizards barely managed to escape thanks to the relatively small number of logs launched with nets. But a significant number had been working in groups of two or three, dividing offense and defense, and they were the ones who got tangled together and dragged down.
They had never imagined anything so absurd, let alone experienced it.
Furious shouts erupted from the enraged wizards. Chanting faster than ever, they unleashed their magic at Gaemun Mountain Fortress.
Owen, who had attacked Buru, dodged the net and began chanting a spell at Buru again. But another danger was already hurtling toward him.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh!
"That lunatic!"
A wizard positioned ahead of Owen, who was preparing an attack, let out a horrified cry. The dwarf who had blocked the magic earlier had hurled his axe. And that axe was now flying straight at them, emitting a sound so chilling it made their skin crawl just to hear it.
KA-KABOOM!
"The—the Shield!"
The Shield—which they'd thought would protect them from any attack—shattered to pieces, and the axe came flying through. It turned two bodies suspended in the air into four chunks.
"Cough... im-impossible..."
Whoosh!
Staring at his severed lower body, Owen was engulfed in flames of his own making and plummeted down.
"Next!"
Eulji Buru stretched out his empty hand and shouted, and Avilrun, looking at him as if he were a monster, pressed another axe into his grip.
"H-here!"
"Good. That one this time!"
Fwoosh!
Buru's axe, a new target locked in, tore through the air with a shriek.
"Tch! Quick, give me more!"
Buru's brow furrowed.
When Buru's axe shattered the Shield, the wizards scattered in panic. Buru took the axe Avilrun handed him and let out an exclamation.
"Oh!"
A long arrow had flown in and pierced the heart of a wizard who'd left himself exposed while fleeing. Buru turned his head to see Geom Muhyul standing there, bow in hand, smiling.
"This much is basic for a Gauri soldier."
"That's right!"
Buru shouted back, cheerfully chiming in as if adding a refrain to Muhyul's words, and hurled another axe. It shattered another group of wizards' Shields without mercy. And dozens of arrows rained down toward them.
"Attack!"
"There!"
Even without orders, the soldiers rose and began loosing arrows. Battle cries that pierced the sky and volleys of arrows rained down relentlessly on the Holy Empire soldiers and on the wizards fleeing every which way from Buru's thrown axes.
"Don't let a single one escape!"
Muhyul's booming shout filled the soldiers with strength. The wizards, who had rendered them utterly helpless until now, had become nothing to fear—at least in this moment.
Earl Pelloman, who had been calmly observing the battlefield, stared in shock, his mouth agape. His eyes fixed on the nets spreading across the sky. Two nets, each trailing a log, entangled the wizards and dragged them down.
The enemy's defensive weapons had been heavily depleted, but more than enough remained to fire at the wizards. They didn’t need direct hits; they only had to catch the wizards somewhere in the nets, so the effective hit rate was high.
"M-Marquis!"
The stunned earl turned and called for Marquis Luchia. But Marquis Luchia, who always wore an expression as cold as ice, was now standing with his mouth half open, looking utterly flabbergasted.
"Pull..."
"Pardon?"
"I said pull the wizards back, now!"
Earl Pelloman had asked blankly, thrown off by seeing Marquis Luchia in a state he'd never witnessed before. What came back was an order laced with fury.
"Pull all magical forces to the rear!"
Boom!
Earl Pelloman didn't even think to acknowledge the order and immediately commanded the wizards to withdraw. But a thunderous roar carried clearly even to their distant position. Yet it wasn't the sound of magic striking the fortress wall.
"How can this be?!"
A milky-white Shield shattered, and the wizards sheltering inside were torn in two and fell in sprays of blood. The remaining wizards raised individual Shields and fled, only to fall one by one to the deafening impacts and the ensuing volley of arrows.
"This is a nightmare!"
The Holy Empire's proud magic force was crumbling in an instant.
"Give the order! Every soldier is to scale the enemy's wall! We will accept heavy casualties! Stop wasting time!"
Marquis Luchia, the whites of his eyes gone red, bellowed at the top of his lungs.
The wizards who had already fallen to the ground were arguably in better shape. But it was plain to see that the strength of the magic corps had been reduced by roughly one-third in a single devastating exchange.
Bwoo-woo-woo-woo!
The horn's long, death-hastening note blared. Marquis Luchia's cheeks quivered as he issued the command. A cornered rat might bite. But the cat that gets bitten grows far angrier in return.
That was exactly the situation Marquis Luchia was in now.
"Commit even the reserve troops without restraint and crush them. We cannot allow the enemy's morale to rise any further!"
"Understood. Baron Regiang and Viscount Pallow, lead the rear guard and support the vanguard's advance!"
"Yes, sir!"
As Earl Pelloman rapidly issued orders, some twenty riders split into two columns and galloped toward their respective forces. They raised their command banners and began advancing on Gaemun Mountain Fortress.
Chapter 113 — A Day, a Night, and the Dawn That Followed
The hastily repaired section of wall couldn't withstand the swarm of soldiers clinging to it and collapsed. Holy Empire troops were buried with it, screaming—but undeterred, even more soldiers poured into the fortress, howling.
"Waaaa!"
"The wall is down! Don't stop—keep pushing!"
The Holy Empire soldiers surged forward like a tidal wave, but it had been expected from the start that the improvised wall would collapse.
"Wh-what the?!"
The soldiers who flooded in were forced to halt before yet another surrounding barrier. It was a barricade thrown together from furniture, broken carts, and debris, but standing over 2.5 mir high, it was more than enough to stop their advance. And even more than that, sharp blades driven into the ground like a hedgehog's spines in front of the palisade halted the soldiers' feet.
"S-stop pushing!"
The soldier at the front shouted belatedly, but who was going to hear that?
The soldiers who'd stopped, afraid of the spear-points and blades, were shoved forward by the momentum of their comrades, regardless of their own intentions. With their eyes wide open, they impaled themselves helplessly on the cold metal.
"N-no! Aaagh!"
"Don't stop—attack!"
Screams echoed, but the knights behind them only shouted to advance. The soldiers had no hesitation either.
Better than dying yourself, isn't it?
On a battlefield, in a place where countless lives are snuffed out, if your comrade's sacrifice lets you live—that alone is enough.
That was the battlefield.
The broken spears and sword blades mounted on the barricade had been counted on to slow the Holy Empire soldiers' advance, but they didn't buy enough time to so much as drink a cup of tea.
The frontline soldiers, expected to halt, couldn't withstand the pressure from behind. They simply became another human barricade before the blades and spears.
"Damn it. Archers, fall back! All spearmen, form up beside the shieldbearers!"
At Geom Muhyul's command, the archers receded like the tide, and spearmen filled their places. As the spearmen climbed onto the barricade to lock their spear-points toward the enemy, they came face-to-face with Holy Empire soldiers pinned alive to the barricade's spikes and blades.
"S-save me."
"Ughhhh."
Some were already dead, but others were struggling, squirming and trying to pull the spears and blades out of their bodies—exactly like insect collectors pinning down living specimens...
"Don't dwell on it."
A shieldbearer's voice reached the ears of the shaken spearmen.
"These are the bastards who were charging at us to kill us not even a minute ago."
The shieldbearer spoke through gritted teeth, and the spearman who had been momentarily flustered regained his composure.
THUD! THUD-THUD-THUD!
"Urk!"
Enemy weapons hammered against the shields. That meant the enemy was close. Even in that desperate moment, the spearmen glanced back and forth between their comrades holding the shields without giving an inch and Muhyul, who was raising his Hwandudaedo high behind them.
Their eyes pleaded desperately for him to give the order.
"Thrust!"
"Yaaaaah!"
The moment Muhyul's command fell, a roar erupted from the spearmen who had grown exhausted from waiting. The roar immediately drew screams.
"Gah!"
THWACK!
A dull, bursting sound erupted simultaneously across the line of Holy Empire soldiers at the barricade. In this moment, even the armor that protected their bodies was useless. The spears, driven downward from above, carried more than enough force to punch clean through.
"So that's the Wall of Lamentation, eh."
Buru watched from the command tower atop the wall and muttered with a wry smile. Then he turned back to survey the battlefield.