The Wave
The Wave.
In other words, a tide of monsters.
The reason Habun Castle was called a battlefield hell was this Wave, which crashed against its walls twice a year—once in summer, once in winter. Fighting the beasts that poured out of Sterin Mountain and the North Sea for five days and nights straight was enough to make even veterans who had spent their entire lives at the fortress wish they were dead.
The cause of the Wave had never been fully explained. Some claimed it was a scheme of the Five Demons. Others said the monsters, their numbers exploding in summer and winter, simply surged forth on instinct in search of prey.
Raon had come to the commander's office to help plan their defense against it.
"How many?"
"Even counting only the ones we could see, it's over ten thousand. Just a hunch, but there look to be more than last year."
"I still can't figure out where they all keep coming from."
Milland crumpled the paper in his fist, his brow furrowing.
"When will they arrive?"
"Judging by their speed, they'll be visible from the walls by dawn, the day after tomorrow."
"Anything unusual?"
"We spotted a large number of monsters capable of using Battle Qi. Ice Troll Warriors, Orc Champions… near the North Sea we also saw Mantakun, Oxstol Killers, and Krats. And…"
Barti, captain of the 1st Scout Squad, recited every elite-class monster they had identified. There was a certainty in his voice that said this was not his first time delivering such a report.
"Plenty of elites, too."
"Looks like we'll be staking our lives on this one as well."
"We will. We need to prepare thoroughly."
Milland nodded and rose to his feet.
"Maintenance Officer."
"Sir!"
"Inspect every gate and every stretch of wall by dawn the day after tomorrow. There will be no gaps."
"Understood!"
"Armory Officer."
"Sir!"
"Check the weapons, and prepare stones and oil that can be thrown from the walls."
"It will be done!"
He issued orders to every officer in the room, and those who received them hurried out of the chamber.
"Terian. You'll take over overall command in my place."
"Yes, sir!"
Once Vice Commander Terian had left as well, only Raon remained.
"Raon."
"Yes."
"Do you know what the Wave is?"
"I know enough."
"Every time we weather a Wave, the casualties are beyond counting. The reason we keep sending out scouts and launching sorties is to cut those losses even a little."
The unshakable light in Milland's eyes wavered. The quiet sorrow of an aging general settled over him like a shadow.
"A shattered wall can be rebuilt. A smashed gate can be made anew. But the dead do not come back."
"You're telling me to protect them."
"That's right. Save as many soldiers as you can. That is your mission—yours and Dorian's."
"I'll do everything I can."
"I'm counting on you."
Raon bowed his head to Milland and left the chamber. The commander seemed to place genuine faith in him—the one who brought everyone back alive from every sortie and every mission.
"Y-Young Master! How did it go?"
Dorian, who had been waiting outside headquarters, came running. Cold sweat was pouring off him; he was clearly wound tight with nerves.
"What do you think? It's obvious. Our job is to stop the monsters climbing the walls and protect the soldiers."
"Aigoo!"
Dorian dropped to his knees and pounded the ground.
Unlike the terrified Dorian, Wrath was stoking a cold, simmering rage.
"Damn this Wave. This King shall have vengeance for the apple meat pie I never got to eat."
"I'm so dead. How am I supposed to survive a Wave?!"
"I told you a month ago it was coming."
"I thought I'd luck out and miss it! My life is over!"
"And here I thought you'd improved a little."
Raon clicked his tongue and grabbed Dorian by the scruff of the neck.
"H-Huh? Where are we going?"
"If you keep this up, the other soldiers will be in danger. It's been a while—let's have a little attitude adjustment."
"A-Attitude adjustment…?"
"What do you think? You're going to play with me while I use the Mad Fang Sword."
"Wait! I just started feeling better—"
Raon shook his head, a chill smile on his lips.
"I haven't."
Clang, clang, clang, clang!
The ear-splitting peal of bells tore open the dawn. Raon, who had been meditating with his back against the wall, opened his eyes slowly.
"They're here."
It was the first emergency bell he had heard since arriving at Habun Castle. The frantic ringing alone was enough to tell him what waited outside.
"Y-Young Master."
"Get ready properly and come out."
Raon clapped Dorian on the shoulder, took up his sword, and stepped outside.
"Move faster!"
"Ah, damn it, the maintenance isn't even finished!"
"Open the armory!"
"Infantry and spearmen to the walls!"
It wasn't only the soldiers. Maintenance crews and blacksmiths were racing about in the freezing cold, sweat streaming down their faces.
Raon steadied his breathing and headed for the walls.
"The scent of blood. Today, it shall flow like a river."
Wrath drew in a deep lungful of the frigid air, a cold smile playing across his face. Raon ignored the self-proclaimed Demon King still ranting about meat-pie vengeance and climbed the wall.
He swallowed dryly, unbidden.
Across the snowfield that had piled up through the night, a tide of green and blue rolled and heaved. Orcs, trolls, gnolls, Sharkmol, Krats, Shamir—an endless procession of monsters stretched beyond the horizon. Even for someone with senses as sharp as his, the numbers were enough to make his fingertips tremble.
The stench of madness and hunger pouring off them was enough to numb the nose. To those beasts, the humans inside this castle were nothing more than prey packed in a box.
"Hah—!"
"Ah…"
"Th-This is insane!"
"Shit! No matter how many times I see it, I never get used to this…"
The soldiers on the wall gripped their weapons with shaking hands and bit down on their lips. What lived in their eyes was unmistakable fear.
Elite monsters, a full head taller than the rest, flared their Battle Qi with crushing intensity, and the soldiers' trembling only grew worse.
Then, from the center of the wall, came the ring of a sword leaving its sheath. An auspicious energy bloomed from a blade that seemed to pierce the sky. The madness the monsters had been radiating settled, and a calm, righteous force took its place.
"Form ranks!"
It was Milland. He had already taken his place atop the wall, and his voice—vast enough to shake the earth—began to pull the soldiers' morale back up from the depths.
"Shield-bearers and spearmen to the front. Archers, stand ready behind them!"
The sight of their commander moving in person put courage back into the men. They unlocked their frozen legs and began to steel themselves.
"Hold!"
Even staring down a tsunami of monsters filling the snowfield, Milland did not give the order to attack. He waited, and waited again.
Only when the reek of blood and raw meat rolling off the horde was close enough to sting the nose did his sword erupt with light.
"Loose!"
The immense energy packed into that silver blade surged forward.
A wave of sword aura crossed the distance and smashed into the vanguard, and behind it came the sound of arrows leaving the hands of scouts and archers.
A silver rain poured down across the dark navy sky.
Monsters struck by arrows toppled backward, but the tide did not stop. They trampled their own kind, tore through them, and kept pushing toward the walls.
"Loose!"
Quickly reloaded crossbows and bows breathed wind again. A second volley, then a third—and still the monster ranks did not halt. They began to sprint toward the walls in a frenzy.
At last an ogre reached the castle and raised a massive fist to smash the gate—and Milland's blade flipped over.
Sword strikes wreathed in Ganggi crashed down in succession, ripping the ogre and the orcs around it to shreds.
Bolstered by his overwhelming martial power, the soldiers swung their swords and thrust their spears at the marine monsters clinging to the walls and climbing.
Everyone swung their weapons until their fingers split and loosed arrows until they could no longer feel their hands, but the monsters' madness did not abate. They scaled the frozen walls as if they were level ground and raked down with hunger-sharpened claws.
A troll bounded up the wall like a locust and reached for a soldier's head—and Raon moved.
The Mad Fang Sword sheared through the troll's ankle and sent it tumbling. He turned to pull the fallen infantryman to his feet, but a gnoll came climbing up on a hook right beside him.
He took the gnoll's head as it tried to thrust its spear, then shifted right and split the chest of an orc raising an axe.
Something burst. He looked back to find brown smoke spreading across the top of the wall—the poison mist of a marine monster, a Swellfish.
"Aagh!"
"Gyaaaah!"
Soldiers exposed to the poison mist clutched their faces and staggered back.
Raon stepped into the mist and brought his sword down. A crimson blade-wind shoved the poison fog toward the orcs.
The orcs who inhaled it clawed at their own skin and tumbled off the wall.
"Th-Thank you."
Raon nodded to the soldiers offering their thanks and ran toward the next scream. It was going to be a long, long day.
The battle that had begun before sunrise raged on until the sun hung on the western ridge. The monster tide seemed endless—enough to make one wonder where on earth such numbers had been hiding.
Soldiers who had stood on the walls pouring out their courage now flailed exhausted arms and legs, worn down by cold and fatigue. The fingers of the archers who had been loosing arrows like machines were soaked in blood. Even the swordsmen and knights who had been circulating aura without rest to hold the walls were showing signs of depletion, their faces gone a deathly yellow.
Every one of them bit their lips and said the same thing: of all the Waves they had ever faced, this one was the most vicious.
Ironically, the person in the best condition on this hellish battlefield was Raon, who had not even been at Habun Castle for three months. With the Ring of Fire and the Cultivation of Ten Thousand Flames—two peerless cultivation arts—he burned away his physical fatigue, restored his aura, and moved across the battlefield as if it were his own backyard.
The soldiers he had saved numbered over a hundred. The monsters he had killed or thrown down approached three hundred.
Raon took the head of a troll climbing the wall and shoved the body over the edge. He stretched a waist that felt as if it had turned to stone. The sun was setting, and still the fighting had not ended. If this was going to last for days, it truly was a hell unto itself.
"Hrah!"
At some point Dorian had set his sword aside and was hurling the same logs he'd once used to torment the Snow Strike Squad down at the monsters below. Raon had always known the boy could lift heavy things, but the kid was a monster of raw strength. Orcs and gnolls struck by the logs dropped like autumn leaves in a gale.
A sound like the earth itself twisting roared from in front of the gate. Milland. He was slaughtering the monsters charging the gate with a presence that had not changed in the slightest from the first moment of the battle. Because their commander held so unshakably, the gate and the walls around it had not taken even a scratch.
Raon lifted his head. The sun was sliding toward the ground. The real fight would begin once it fell. He flicked the blood from his sword and hoped everyone would hold.
He drew a slow breath and circulated the Ring of Fire. He was about to move again when a presence he had never felt before snagged in the sea of his senses.
On the far right flank—where the knights had briefly withdrawn to service their weapons and armor, leaving only scouts and a handful of swordsmen—something pitch-black was flying toward the wall.
What is that?
It was a bizarre-looking monster, roughly the size of a troll's head and covered in black fur. It sprinted with everything it had, as if reaching the wall were the sole purpose of its existence.
No one else seemed to have noticed its movement. They paid it no mind at all.
Something about this feels wrong.
A monster he had never seen before, aiming for what was currently the weakest point on the wall. It sat badly with him.
Raon kicked off the ground and sprinted for the right-hand wall, loosing a blast of sword aura at the black creature.
He cut it down before it could touch the stone—but it was already too late. An ominous energy erupted from the split body and detonated.
The hairline cracks that had webbed across the masonry burst open, and the wall collapsed from the middle down.
"Aaaaaagh!"
"Guhhh—!"
Some thirty soldiers and swordsmen on the wall screamed as they plunged onto ground packed with monster flesh.
"Aaaaaah!"
"M-My leg! My leg!"
"Hnnngh!"
"S-Save me! My arm's pinned! I can't move!"
Soldiers crushed under the fallen wall or who had landed badly tore out screams soaked in blood.
Raon started to move—and Milland's voice cut through the air.
"Do not go down!"
Milland bit down on his lip as he looked at the soldiers who had fallen below. It was not the choice of an ordinary swordsman or soldier. It was the choice of a commander.
He was right. If they tried to protect those men, the half-collapsed wall would shatter completely.
But I…
Raon looked at the monsters baring their teeth and adjusted his grip on his sword.
Every one of those men was a comrade he had gone on missions with, a fellow soldier whose stance he had personally corrected. The stories he had overheard in passing, the goals they had shouted with such spirit—they hammered against his heart.
I'm not a commander.
What Milland had asked of him was to save even one more soldier's life. Raon decided to follow the mission he had been given first.
"Raon!"
"Raon!"
With Milland's and Dorian's voices striking his back like blows, he leapt down from the wall.
"A madman, this one."
Wrath let out a metallic snicker of a laugh.
I have a way.
Raon faced the thousands of points of madness burning in the dark, and a faint smile touched his lips.
If I make it out of this alive, I can't wait to see how much I'll grow.
"…A true madman, this one."