Chapter 34
Chapter 34
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 34
Chapter Title: Operation Lightning
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“Still, it’s a bit of a shame. I wanted to train them for another ten weeks.”
No matter how I thought about it, the regret lingered, so I voiced it aloud. Kalserik, riding beside me, stared at me as if I were some monstrous thing.
“…Is it your preference to kill off all the soldiers before they even see a battle?”
It seemed the training had been quite harsh.
It wasn't just his words; the shock and horror etched in his eyes were quite vivid.
“Was the training that intense?”
“Honestly, it was enough to make me regret calling my brothers over. They'll have to go through the same training, won't they?”
“Of course, they will.”
“Hah… They're going to resent me so much.”
Kalserik shook his head. He said it like a joke, but it seemed he was at least partly serious.
“Why? Want to back out?”
“…Who said I would? I've already called them, so don't even think about suggesting otherwise.”
He was quick on the uptake, that one.
Just my style.
The boldness to drop to his knees and beg for his life.
The decisiveness to entrust his future to me.
Kalserik, who had been deliberating ever since the Glowingsteel ruins were discovered, finally yielded when I announced the warriors' salaries.
He'd acted as if he'd leave the moment his year was up, even if it killed him, but he did a complete one-eighty, pledged his loyalty to me, and called his entire family to Kushan City.
And just like that, the Kalserik Brotherhood pledged themselves to me in their entirety. Thirty-five Experts, one hundred elite warriors, and their two hundred and fifty-odd family members.
They'll probably all arrive in Kushan City by the time this monster subjugation is over.
“Still, your brothers are lucky.”
I scanned the marching soldiers.
Was it because they were free from the brutal training? Even though their packs were being carried by the supply train's wagons, their armor and weapons were still heavy, yet every single one of them had a bright expression.
Ignorant of the future that lay before them.
Kalserik asked again with a serious face.
“Are we really… going with that plan? The one called ‘Lightning’ or whatever damned thing it is?”
“Of course. Plans are made to be followed.”
“Good heavens…”
“You said ten weeks of training was too much, right? I guarantee you, those ten weeks will feel like heaven in comparison.”
“…I can't deny that.”
Kalserik looked at the soldiers with an expression of utter pity.
The poor souls,
The soldiers truly all looked to be in high spirits.
We had passed through the inner wall, then the outer wall,
And had now reached the rural outskirts.
It was due to the beautiful scenery unfolding in the rural area.
Gentle hills were covered in lush green pastures, and beautiful trees formed small forests.
The scent of warm sunshine mingled with the fragrant aroma of wildflowers, and a fresh breeze from the woods awakened the senses.
There were quite a few soldiers smiling brightly, stretching out a hand to enjoy the gentle breeze.
“Seeing those faces… how can you still do it?”
Kalserik resented me. But his resentment was misplaced.
“Your resentment should be directed at the Gale King.”
How dare he insolently covet *my* Kashu City?
Thanks to him, our soldiers were the ones about to die.
Operation Name:
Lightning.
A strategy I devised to reduce the monster subjugation period, which normally takes over a month, to a mere week.
Usually, monster subjugations in Roverland are carried out by systematically suppressing monsters from the outskirts of their habitat inward. It's a method of whittling them down from the outside to reduce the pressure of their overflowing numbers… which naturally takes a lot of time.
So I took a different approach.
Instead of chipping away at the outskirts of the habitat, we would concentrate our forces on a single point and break through to the center in one fell swoop.
The core of this operation was to seize the center of the habitat and then wipe out all the monsters that would frenzy and charge at the sight of humans.
A new concept in strategy: exterminating the monsters from the inside out, not the outside in.
“Uh… new isn't always better. There's a reason people don't do it this way, isn't there? The monsters are fearless… they'll all charge at us, ready to die…”
“That's what makes it great, isn't it? No need to hunt them down one by one.”
“But we won't be able to sleep.”
“We'll just kill them quickly and then sleep.”
I know it will be hard.
But I believe that the soldiers I've handpicked and my brothers have trained will surely be able to overcome it.
“Borderlands sighted ahead!”
“Borderlands sighted!”
The warning was relayed down the line from the vanguard, passed from soldier to soldier.
I lifted my head.
I could see where the beautiful landscape came to an abrupt end, as if cut off at a certain point.
The watercolor-like green scenery ended, and from that point on, a barren, gray landscape began.
The borderlands, a place where people cannot live.
*'Yes, maybe this is for the best.'*
After we've been to the very depths of that place, my army will be more than worthy of being called elite.
A week more valuable than ten weeks of training lies ahead.
* * *
Why did Roverland become a lawless continent?
The reason lay in its borderlands.
Roverland is a vast continent, but in truth, only about forty-five percent of that vast land is habitable for humans.
And that forty-five percent included mountainous regions, deserts, marshes, and forests that were difficult for people to actually live in… so the actual habitable area was much smaller.
In any case, such places were roughly called the ‘Living Lands.’
And then there was the remaining fifty-five percent: the ‘Ashen Lands.’
The Ashen Lands were truly lands where everything was the color of ash.
The soil, the plants—all of it was gray.
Crops planted in the Ashen Lands would grow bizarrely twisted and emit a foul odor, rendering them inedible.
Occasionally, animals driven by extreme hunger would eat even those plants, only to suffer immense pain and eventually turn into monsters.
The Ashen Lands were the lands of monsters.
Here, monsters grew three times faster than in other regions, rapidly increasing their numbers, and powerful mutants not found on other continents frequently appeared.
For these reasons, kingdoms like those in Gloryland could not develop in Roverland.
On each of the isolated Living Lands, which were like islands, closed-off spheres of life formed around a single city. Each city functioned like a small kingdom, repeating cycles of conflict and cooperation.
It was difficult to integrate into a larger political system because just crossing into a neighboring region meant encountering a different culture, different vegetation, and a different economic structure.
In such a situation, criminals and fugitives from Gloryland and Oldland flocked here for hundreds of years, continuously causing social, political, and military turmoil… Indeed, this place became a land worthy of being called a lawless continent.
The explanation was long, but in the end, it was the ‘Ashen Lands’ that had made Roverland what it was today.
In the cities, these Ashen Lands were called the 'borderlands.'
The idea was that once you left the 'inner territories' where citizens lived, you entered the 'borderlands' teeming with monsters.
Naturally, people feared the borderlands, but they didn't tremble in terror.
To survive in Roverland, one always had to face the borderlands.
If they didn't go out into the borderlands to subjugate monsters and prevent waves, or secure the trade routes to receive supplies, the cities could not exist.
The warriors of Roverland, in particular, were as familiar with the borderlands as they were with their own homes.
A place that made them tense every time they went, but one they didn't need to fear because they entered it so often.
But today, the three thousand warriors who followed me into the borderlands were unusually tense.
“The borderlands near the trade routes weren't like this… why is it like this here?”
“Freelance warriors frequent that area. They take on a lot of subjugation requests. But this area is so vast and remote…”
“Even so… in my ten years as a warrior, I've never seen anything like this…”
“I've seen it once.”
“When?”
“Five years ago, in Gesht City.”
“…Isn't that the city that was destroyed by a wave?”
“That's right. I once escorted a merchant caravan heading there, and the atmosphere was just like this. That's why I fled as soon as the mission was over.”
I could hear the warriors murmuring.
I nodded to myself.
It was my first time seeing something like this, too.
Usually, you'd have to go quite deep into the borderlands before monsters appeared, but this time, monster attacks had been continuous since the moment we entered.
Ksias had already been lax with managing the borderlands in his later years, and on top of that, the political turmoil of the last two months had caused them to miss the subjugation window.
“Rokuu herd sighted ahead! Estimated three hundred!”
At the warning from the vanguard, the warriors' mood turned icy.
“Rokuu… three hundred of them?”
“We're not even deep in the borderlands, just at the edge, and there are three hundred?”
Rokuu were four-legged monsters resembling water buffalo.
They had large heads and thick, short necks, but boasted slender, long horns like a deer.
They weighed around 150 kilograms and were notorious for the explosive speed generated by their long, thin calves and thick thighs.
A simultaneous charge could crush a sizable village like a sandcastle.
Three hundred of such Rokuu.
A formidable enemy.
“…This is tough right from the start.”
“But are we really supposed to fight the way we trained?”
“We haven't even tried it for real yet.”
“I'm nervous…”
These were warriors who had traversed the borderlands countless times, but today, everything felt unfamiliar.
The weapons in their hands were different from usual, and so were the tactics.
They had spent the last month diligently learning and practicing, but they had yet to experience whether it would actually work.
The warriors were wavering.
And that is why,
I saw this as an opportunity.
*'If we win this battle with ease, their confidence will soar.'*
The perfect opponent for them to experience the results of their own achievements firsthand.
“First and Second Brigades! Form a phalanx at the front! Squad leaders to the fore!”
My shout, infused with Aura, made the ground tremble.
The wavering warriors snapped to attention.
As if to prove the harsh training hadn't been for nothing, the one thousand heavy infantrymen rushed out, their bodies remembering what to do, and formed a tight formation.
While the squad leaders, who were elite warriors (Aura users), held the front with their shields, their four squad members quickly dug into the ground with simple shovels, buried shields, and propped long spears upon them, fixed at varying angles.
The first rank was a wall formed by the shield-bearing squad leaders standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Beyond that shield wall, the five-meter-long spears held aloft by the squad members in the second, third, and fourth ranks bristled densely like the quills of a hedgehog.
The shields were kite shields.
The round shields typically used by freelance warriors barely covered the torso, but kite shields extended down to the shins, offering better protection.
“Third and Fourth Brigades! Javelins, ready!”
Shhhk!
At the next command, the remaining one thousand heavy infantrymen lowered their shields and drew their javelins.
My heavy infantrymen were, as their name suggested, a troop type equipped with a variety of armaments.
Each was armed with chainmail and a shield, a five-meter long spear, a 2.5-meter spear, a javelin, a sword, and steel-plated gauntlets and boots.
Since they carried three spears in total, they marched with specially made bags slung over their right shoulders, designed to hold all three.
Their equipment was cumbersome, but it made them an all-purpose troop type, able to act as sword-and-shield infantry, pikemen, or spear-and-shield infantry depending on the situation.
Although their training period was short, the warriors of Roverland were naturally experienced in combat, and thanks to a rigorous selection process, they were already fully capable of being deployed in a real battle.
Kreeeeaaaaak!
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-!
Just as we finished forming up, the distant Rokuu herd spotted us.
The beasts let out a terrible shriek and charged with insane ferocity.
Monsters, by their very nature, were the kind of creatures to foam at the mouth and charge at the sight of humans.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-!
A gray cloud of dust billowed up.
Despite the considerable distance, the immense power of their charge could be felt, and tension crept onto the faces of the heavy infantrymen.
That pleased me.
*'The boys did a fine job training them.'*
Their faces were stiff with tension, but the soldiers' movements and stances were fluid and textbook-perfect.
*'This is what it's all about.'*
I've waited a long time for this.
Ever since I was young, I've always wanted one.
An army just like this.
Unlike the soldiers, who were tense as could be, I felt a throbbing excitement.