Chapter 94
Chapter 94
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 94
"Baron! The enemy rear is collapsing!"
"I-I can see that!"
Baron Bels stammered his reply to the soldier's voice, thick with hope. Ever since Samdopyo's shout, Baron Bels had watched the clash of the monstrous unit unfold in a continuous chain of astonishment.
The charging North Roselin knights had fallen before they could even make contact, collapsing without lasting a single exchange. And then there was the unknown unit that had pulled off a deep penetration charge—an act that, from any reasonable view, looked suicidal, the sort of thing that ought to end in encirclement and annihilation. Faced with that sheer power, Baron Bels could only sink into baffled disbelief.
And now, as the attacking North Roselin army began to withdraw, Baron Bels broke into a grin of pure elation.
"Which means Duke Perren never entered the fortress—he was waiting outside the whole time!"
A cheer burst from Baron Bels's lips.
The first rays of dawn had begun to break over this battlefield.
In the distance, hundreds of wagons were disgorging thousands of soldiers toward the North Roselin lines. Seeing it, Baron Bels recognized the moment for what it was and turned his head to the rear.
"Dupyo... huh?"
But Dupyo, who was supposed to be there, had vanished. It didn't take long to find him.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
"Uwaaah!"
"Yaaaaah!"
"Die, you North Roselin dogs!"
The inner fortress gate flew open, and out charged Samdopyo, swinging his Mukbit Bong, with the Northern mercenaries surging behind him, roaring battle cries. To the soldiers inside who still had no idea what was happening, Baron Bels barked as though reprimanding them.
"What are you standing around for!"
"What?"
The soldiers, watching Dupyo and the Northern mercenaries tear into the North Roselin troops, turned to Baron Bels with stunned expressions.
Baron Bels's exultant voice rang across the battlefield.
"Counterattack!"
"Uwaaaaaah!"
It was a roar of hope.
Chapter 24 — There Is No Nobility on the Battlefield
Eulji Buru's murderous howl crashed down on the knight blocking his path.
"Uiyaaaaah!"
The knight flinched, his momentum broken—and in that instant, Buru's great axe split the air.
Fwooosh!
Thwack!
Thud.
"......."
But the great axe had cleaved empty air. The target before him had toppled sideways, an arrow buried in his temple.
"Heh-heh-heh! Yer axe work's gotten slow, I tell ya!"
Off to one side, Eulji Uru wore a strange, mocking grin as he drew his bowstring back again. Buru flared up at the sight and let out a roar.
"Shut it! Quit snatchin' my prey, ya bastard!"
Thwack!
Thud.
An arrow whizzed past Buru's ear and dropped another fleeing enemy soldier behind him. Uru shot Buru—whose face was now blazing red—another smirk and flapped his lips again.
"Yer mouth's a lot faster 'n yer axe, I tell ya."
"......."
And with that, Buru finally detonated.
"Urwaaaaaaah!"
Duke Camillien Perren Roselin was watching a spectacle.
People were flying through the air.
The problem was, it wasn't by their own will—they were being sent flying by someone else's.
Sometimes whole bodies... sometimes just the upper half, separated clean from the rest, trailing entrails as they sailed. It was a sight no man in his right mind could easily endure.
Case in point: Duke Perren's mouth hung half-open, his pupils unfocused and glassy.
Thwack!
"......."
What snapped Duke Perren back to his senses was something that flew straight into that half-open mouth.
"Hurgh! Ptoo! Ptoo!"
Plop.
"Hiiik!"
The object he spat onto the ground was someone's finger.
"Hurrraaalph!"
Unable to hold back the bile surging up, Duke Perren doubled over on the spot and retched.
"Aaaagh!"
"A-already!"
Even as he vomited, Duke Perren's startled eyes darted toward the source of the screams closing in. There, covered head to toe in blood, Eulji Buru was swinging his great axe in a frenzy of slaughter. Duke Perren, having recovered a sliver of composure, let out a shriek that mixed terror and rage.
"Someone cut down that mad dwarf!"
To Duke Perren's eyes, he was nothing more than a relatively tall dwarf gone mad with bloodlust. But Duke Perren's misfortune lay in having shouted it aloud.
"What mangy mutt's runnin' his mouth off about me!"
"Hurk!"
Buru had... heard him. Duke Perren shouted at the wizard beside him.
"Attack, now!"
"O forces of mana that shape the world, grant me a share of your power. I beseech the smallest yet most needful of your might to grant my wi— glrk!"
The bodyguard wizard's incantation never reached its end. An arrow had flown in from somewhere and lodged itself in his mouth.
"Watch yerself, Buru! Didn't ya hear the orders—take out the wizards before they start flappin' their gums!"
The moment he sensed power gathering, Uru—who had been killing every wizard the instant he noticed their presence—put an arrow through the man's open mouth. Feeling thwarted yet again, Buru bellowed.
"Shut it and leave this lot to me!"
"Stop him! Stop that mad runt!"
"......."
Duke Perren was industriously pouring oil onto a burning house. Under the sudden torrent of killing intent, the soldiers lost their will to fight.
Clang.
"Aagh, that's no dwarf!"
"Spare me!"
"Where do you wretches think you're going!"
Even as Duke Perren screamed at his soldiers scattering in utter panic, his own feet were steadily backing away.
"Say that again, I dare ya."
A voice thick with killing intent reached Duke Perren. The moment he saw Buru closing in, Duke Perren's pupils dilated.
"It's a demon dwarf!"
"That right. Means ya want me to take my time killin' ya, I reckon."
Buru nodded as if the words made perfect sense to him, advancing with his blood-dripping great axe hanging low.
"Your Grace!"
"Oh! Viscount!"
In this crisis, the voice of Viscount Hyuen Belmaron—who had led the vanguard and now appeared behind Duke Perren—came as salvation.
"What in the world happened here!"
"Deal with that demon dwarf first, quickly!"
Duke Perren hastily retreated behind the knights who had arrived with Viscount Belmaron and pointed wildly at Buru, shrieking.
"A demon dwarf?"
Viscount Belmaron cocked his head and looked at Buru.
Thunk!
Thud.
And then he died.
"Viscount!"
"Viscouuunt!"
Hyuen Belmaron, who had dreamed of earning recognition by breaching the fortress in the vanguard and using that honor to rise into central politics, departed this world with a hand axe buried in his skull.
"Die!"
"This is for the Viscount!"
"Come on, then! Every last one of ya!"
The clash between the enraged knights and Buru began anew.
Blood sprayed....
Flesh was rent....
Screams echoed in every direction.
Before Duke Perren, now cornered to one side, only Buru remained.
"You. Get over here."
"Uuugh."
Duke Perren, his face a mask of terror,
shook his head furiously.
"Come on yer own two feet, and I'll just take yer head. I catch ya myself, I'll cut off yer arms and legs first, then take the head after."
"Either way I die!"
Duke Perren's wretched cry rang out, gouging deeper into the morale of the North Roselin troops.
The North Roselin army, already split in two, could not stop the charge of the Gauri soldiers who had dismounted from the wagons.
"Break through!"
"Uwaaaaaah!"
At Giyul's command, the Gauri soldiers—their morale already sky-high after witnessing the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry in action—charged in with a roar. The five thousand guards, unable to halt the main force's assault with Giyul at its head, collapsed beyond all control.
Crash! Crack!
Boom! Ba-boom!
"Aagh!"
North Roselin soldiers, sent flying by the shieldbearers' charge, had their bodies carved apart and skulls split open by the axes of the axemen raining down from above. Even those who blocked the axes could not withstand the spearmen thrusting in right behind—not in their already shattered formation.
"Hap!"
The twin axes in Giyul's hands crossed, simultaneously hewing the wrist and waist of two enemy soldiers attacking from both sides.
"Gurk!"
"Aagh!"
"Do not stop! Keep attacking!"
Giyul's voice filled the new recruits with confidence. The enemy soldiers, who had once seemed so formidable, were now backpedaling in fear at the mere sight of them. And the prowess of the Gauri elites who had charged in ahead of them was entirely different from what they had known before.
The number of those fleeing kept growing larger than the number of those resisting. In the end, this was no longer a battle of twenty thousand against three thousand five hundred.
That was precisely why Go Jin-cheon had waited for the fortress to fall. His plan had been to let the enemy's main strength pour into the fortress, strike their rear first, then re-enter the fortress to seize the enemy command. The plan had been possible because the enemy had no way of knowing the Gauri army even existed.
"Do not hesitate—capture any commander here alive and bring them to me!"
"At once!"
At Jin-cheon's order, a Black Armored Ghost Cavalryman soon returned, dragging a knight who had been beaten ragged.
Thud!
"First off, this area's cleared out! But if we don't stop the enemy pourin' out of the fortress right now, we're in trouble!"
Buru came running over, still slick with blood that had no time to dry, carrying three or four severed heads by the hair.
"We must locate the enemy command and capture them as swiftly as possible."
"Got it."
Jin-cheon looked at the knight who had been dragged before him and spoke.
"Do you know where in the fortress this army's overall commander is?"
At Jin-cheon's question, the knight trembled violently. Sensing something off, Jin-cheon studied the kneeling knight's face. His pupils were dilated to their fullest—he had seen something that shocked him.
"......."
Jin-cheon asked no further. He followed the knight's gaze and turned his head. There, dangling from Buru's grip, were the severed heads of enemies. They roughly fit the look of commanders. That was why Buru had brought them along—to hang them up as a sort of display to break enemy morale when they went to capture the overall commander.
Jin-cheon could understand the knight's shock. But he had no time to humor the man's despair.
"The overall commander's appearance and location. Tell m—"
"H-His Grace the Duke!"
"...me."
The word that had cut off Jin-cheon's sentence made him look back at Buru.
"A duke—is that not a high-ranking position?"
"That so?"
Buru's blank reply gave Jin-cheon an ominous feeling. Buru, too, noticed the knight trembling and shuddering at the sight of him and sensed something had gone strangely wrong.
"A duke—so he was a high one, then."
"You vile fiend! As if murdering His Grace the Duke weren't enough—you dare parade around with his severed head!"
The knight shook with fury. Buru and Jin-cheon's faces both crumpled. They had never imagined that the overall commander would be loitering out here even after the fortress had fallen.
"So this here's the duke?"
Buru hoisted the head up higher, as if to confirm.
"Hurk! Even Lord Viscount Belmaron!"
"......."
"You caught a nice assortment, Buru."
Jin-cheon let out a sigh.
He had borrowed Risel's ring (so to speak) and given it to Buru precisely for situations like this. Little did he know it would backfire. Truth be told, even when they had first fallen upon Duke Perren, Buru had been thinking of taking prisoners—but hadn't Duke Perren's reckless mouth earned him the example-making treatment, his head lopped clean off along with the rest?
At any rate, they had now confirmed that this was indeed the command element. Even if the remaining officers were lower in rank than the overall commander, they still needed to find someone who could order a surrender. Unable to say anything to Buru, Jin-cheon shot him a pointed glare, then looked back at the kneeling knight.
"No help for it. Bring that prisoner along. We need to find a ranking officer who can issue a surrender."
"At once!"
Jin-cheon remounted his horse and gave the order for the next-best option. As the soldiers repeated the command and hauled the slumped knight to his feet, the man rose and cried out toward Jin-cheon.
"Lord Count Muen!"
"......."
Mounted on the tip of the lance standing upright from Jin-cheon's saddle was the severed head of Count Muen—the man who had been commanding outside—placed there to break enemy morale.
"Well. At least this confirms this is indeed the command post."
Jin-cheon looked up at the sky and turned his horse.