Chapter 369
(Kyle Calendar Year 515: Age 22)
Northern Front ⑦ – The Arrival
of a New Ally
Translator : PolterGlast
Driven by an ironclad resolve to safeguard his beloved Rosa
and the innocent citizens she was desperately trying to guide to safety,
Viscount Durul, his eyes burning with a fierce intensity, led his 1,000
elite cavalry in a charge straight into the marching columns of warhorses led
by the King of Ville. Among his ranks were numerous warriors who had
originally been saved from the brink of death by Rosa
and the others during their captivity at Teigoon—men who had now risen
to become intermediate commanders within the Empire Army. Their
souls blazed with an unyielding fury, steeled by the singular purpose of
rescuing their lifesaver, as they threw themselves into the enemy ranks,
hacking and slashing with terrifying ferocity.
「 Hiiiiieee! 」
The sheer violence of the impact was so staggering that the
King of Ville, despite holding an overwhelming numerical advantage, let
out a pathetic, high-pitched shriek of pure terror. Similarly, the Ville
Kingdom army, which just moments
prior had been casually hunting down the Demon Territory Dukedom
soldiers from the position of a hunter, was instantly thrown into total,
uniform panic all at once.
「 Intercept them! Reorganize the
formation immediately! 」 「 E-Eek, pull back! Retreat! 」 「 W-Which way?! Where the hell are we supposed to go?! 」
The chaos was total; they had just emerged from the narrow
highway passing through the forest into a crossroads where vast grasslands
spread, expanding their army largely, but that very expansion had now sealed
their doom, leaving them conversely trapped and unable to move. Having completely
spilled into the sprawling, wide crossroads, attempting to reverse their
trajectory into the narrow southern highway to secure a retreat was an
agonizingly slow process that demanded a massive window of time. Worse, as the
entire unit dissolved into a frantic panic, every single soldier
aggressively rushed and clawed their way toward the narrow highway entrance all
at once, creating a catastrophic, suffocating overcrowding that left the army
completely frozen and unable to move.
※
Despite being overwhelmingly outnumbered, Viscount Durul's
highly motivated army assumed a razor-sharp Wedge Formation, violently
slicing through the absolute center of the enemy lines to split their force
wide open. The exact instant the rupture formed, they forcefully wheeled their
mounts to the north and south, aggressively compressing the fractured remnants
of the Ville Kingdom army
from both sides.
「 I'll leave the south to you! I
shall personally annihilate the enemy army deployed to the north and save our
allies! Entire army, become death-defying soldiers and charge! 」
Viscount Durul personally led half of his army,
surging northward like a massive drill prying open a hole, systematically
suppressing the highway extending to the north. He rode at the absolute front
of the vanguard, his blade thoroughly dyed crimson as he brandished his
blood-stained sword through the field. The sheer, unbridled violence of his
fierce attack was extraordinary, successfully pushing his lines all the way to
the coordinate where their allies were desperately holding out.
「 Allow us to extend our deepest
gratitude for your timely assistance! 」
「 Think nothing of it—it is only a
matter of course. Tell me…… is Rosa-sama safe?! 」
「 Yes! She preceded us and is
currently hurrying north at absolute full-speed, Rosa-sama taking along
nearly two hundred innocent children! 」
「 Mm…… did she make it in time……
Thank goodness. 」
Even while exchanging this brief conversation, Viscount Durul
and the commander responsible for Rosa's escort were both continuously
swinging their swords in perfect, frantic synchronization to confront the
swarming enemy army.
「 We will take over this place! Take
your remaining men, proceed north immediately, and protect the children and Rosa-sama!
」
「 Gratefully…… my thanks will be for
another time! 」
Saying so, the commander gathered the battered remnants of
his remaining cavalry and hurried northward along the highway at top speed. The
battle would continue to bleed forward, and these men, completely covered in
horrific wounds all over their bodies and exhausted from fighting to their
absolute limits, probably wouldn't last much longer. Yet, if they could
successfully link up with her who wielded the supreme miracle of the Goddess's
healing…… surely she could save them. Exactly as he himself was saved once;
Viscount Durul chose to let them go ahead driven entirely by those
profound thoughts.
「 I am Durul of the Imperial
Army! From here on, I will not let a single living soul pass! 」
Shouting his thunderous challenge, he aggressively drew the
miscellaneous soldiers to himself, standing as an unyielding bulwark in the way
of the highway. While his heroic stand successfully guaranteed the safe
withdrawal of the escort unit from the battlefield, it brought a swift,
hazardous misfortune upon his own head. In the midst of the swirling melee, the
archers who were still hiding in the shadows of the forest, upon knowing that
the enemy army's general was right before their eyes, began to release a
simultaneous, concentrated volley of arrows uniformly aiming for the Viscount.
Simultaneously, a massive wave of enemy soldiers also began swarming him from
all sides all at once. Even so…… due to the Viscount and those he led fighting
furiously like a wrathful Asura, it was just when the enemy army was almost
entirely swept clean from the highway—
「 Guh…… 」
A single heavy arrow pierced deeply into the chest of the
Viscount, who let out a short, muted gasp of agony.
「 What of it, I cannot permit myself
to die just yet! 」
Forcefully snapping the heavy arrow that pierced through his
armor and stood upright, the Viscount readied the highly improved crossbow
given by Takuhir, equipped on his horse gear. And locking eyes with the
enemy archer nocking an arrow within the forest lines, they released their
shots at each other at the exact same fraction of a second. At that moment……
the enemy's arrow grazed the Viscount's cheek and dripped blood down his face,
while simultaneously his own mechanical bolt struck the archer who aimed at him
dead-center between the eyebrows, dropping him instantly into the dirt like a
stone.
「 Maintain absolute vigilance against
the ambushers hiding in the forest! One unit will remain here and mop up the
ambushers while securing the highway; all others turn south with me to utterly
strike the rest of the enemy army! 」
Issuing those sharp instructions, the Viscount advanced his
horse forward to confront the other half of the divided enemy army.
※
Confused by the sudden, unexpected appearance of the enemy
army and completely overwhelmed by their explosive, vigorous fighting spirit,
the Ville Kingdom army,
despite being overwhelmingly superior in numbers, had already lost over 1,000
allies, and was truly on the absolute precipice of a catastrophic rout.
「 Why can we not advance south?! The
miscellaneous soldiers are blocking my absolute path of retreat, are they not! 」
The King of Ville shouted in pure frustration, but
the narrow highway leading back to the Lorelei area they had passed
through so far was completely choked off, rendering an escape in that direction
a supreme impossibility. If calm, the highway possessed enough width for over
fifty people to run parallel with absolute ease; however, with a panicked horde
of thousand-scale men and horses violently rushing into the bottleneck all at
once, they got in each other's way and became packed like sushi, falling into a
suffocating, gridlocked state where they could no longer move at all.
「 Your Majesty, right now your
honorable self is what matters above all else! I believe it is best to change
course to the highway leading east and join General Golpa's army! There
are also confirmed scout reports that the General is moving to solidify our
right flank…… 」
「 Tch, to that guy's place……?! 」
It felt terrible to flee and seek asylum under the command
of that nagging, insufferable old general, but the reality of the situation
didn't allow for pride. Reluctantly making the bitter decision, he abandoned
his confused, chaotic allies and began to systematically withdraw from the
warzone. The exact instant his guard broke into the eastern highway, a
thundering storm of fresh hooves erupted from the path ahead, as a cavalry unit
raising the military flag of the Ville Kingdom appeared.
※
「 Golpa! Why did you not come to help immediately?! You were
confronting that army, were you not! 」
Upon successfully joining the cavalry unit led by General Golpa
and catching his breath, the King of Ville instantly unleashed a torrent
of vicious curses right to the old general's face. Beholding that sight, the
King's close aides trembled with pale faces, while Golpa's close aides
conversely flushed deep red with silent, unbridled anger.
「 Your Majesty, despite commanding an
army more than four times the enemy, you have managed to fight a rather
wretched, poor battle. 」
Golpa, who
answered only that dispassionately, also had a highly distinct set of
unyielding circumstances.
※
He himself had personally confirmed the exact instant a military
force of nearly 1,000 cavalry slipped out from the enemy army they were
confronting. And he was also fully aware of the movements of his lord, who stepped deep into hostile territory without a shred of
prior notice…… Responding to this, he tried to move his army east just in case,
but the 7,000-strong military force he was confronting was also not
straightforward. The enemy commander moved their army ingeniously with supreme
capability, executing a relentless sequence of blocking maneuvers to continuously
obstruct their movements. Faced with this ironclad containment, Golpa
proceeded with countermeasures on his own independent judgment.
「 It cannot be helped, shall we use that.
」
「 Um…… is that alright? As a siege
weapon, you were explicitly told to keep it secret until capturing Kusanagi……
」
「 There is no longer any need to mind
such trivialities! When the Cain Kingdom army was unsightlily defeated,
it must have been captured by the enemy as spoils! Then, what earthly point is
there in keeping it secret now? Much less…… 」
Golpa, who
paused his words there, knew a harsh, unyielding truth. Not a single person in
the expeditionary army knows the true, terrifying caliber of the Archduke called the Demon King and the peerless army he leads. In
this campaign, let alone capturing Kusanagi, they will probably face a
wretched, unsightly defeat midway through the battlefield…… Based strictly on that grim prediction, Golpa was
moving with the intention of minimizing the sacrifices of his allies to the
absolute limit.
「 Orders to the ballista unit! Shoot
the exact coordinate where the enemy army checking us will move next at our
normal maximum range! It is fine even if we cannot totally annihilate the
enemy, as long as we can create a physical opening for the cavalry unit I lead
to pass through! 」
That order was executed in perfect, terrifying
synchronization matching the departure of the cavalry unit he led. The
monstrous, simultaneous firing of well over 500 ballistas violently gouged the
earth at the exact point where Dlements was about to move his army to
check them, trampling the area with a catastrophic rain of heavy spears. The
sheer scale of the onslaught vividly echoed the past, as if to recall the exact
tragedy when the former First Prince of the Imperial Army was
ruthlessly repelled by the combined Lute, Ville, and Cain
Kingdoms…… Although a small number, Dlements, whose soldiers who had
gone ahead to the destination were utterly annihilated, hastily pulled back his
army to preserve his strength. Because against an overwhelming, unilateral
long-range attack conducted so one-sidedly, there was absolutely no effective
means of counterattack. Utilizing that exact window of opening, Golpa
also led 1,000 cavalry and aggressively chased after the enemy army. But…… the
precious time Dlements bought by devoting himself to ingenious
obstruction had, as a result, successfully given Rosa and the escort
soldiers the vital time to be saved, and was also the absolute reason why Golpa
was delayed.
※
「 Then Your Majesty, I intend to show
you what a true, legitimate battle looks like from here on! Please, take your
time comfortably here…… 」
「 U-Uh…… Mm. 」
The old general floated a ghastly, chillingly intense smile,
took his leave from before the King, and galloped his warhorse at absolute
full-speed straight to the active battlefield.
※
Viscount Durul's furious, unyielding fighting
continued without stopping, and it was just when everyone thought their
absolute victory was mathematically certain. The Ville Kingdom army had
already lost nearly 1,500 of the 4,200 men who aggressively invaded this
direction, and that catastrophic damage was growing exponentially larger with
the passage of time. But here, at that exact critical juncture, the war
situation completely changes once again.
「 Your Excellency! A brand-new enemy
army is charging towards us! 」
「 Guh…… retreat temporarily! Lay an
oblique order with your back firmly anchored against the highway leading north,
and parry the enemy's pressing momentum! 」
While enduring the agonizing trauma of his injuries,
Viscount Durul squeezed the commands through his lips and issued
accurate, flawless tactical instructions. But…… his army, which had been
unilaterally cornering the enemy taking advantage of their victory, had
overextended their cohesion and could not rapidly reorganize its formation to
parry the new enemy as desired.
「 It's no good, they're already
coming! 」
「 Guh! 」
Realizing with absolute clarity that his own instructions
would not make it in time against the speed of the charge, the Viscount let out
a short, guttural voice of agony. When both armies clashed head-on with
bone-shattering violence, horses and horses, people and people violently
collided and were sent flying, but the overwhelming majority of the carnage was
borne by the Imperial Army led by Viscount Durul. There is an
absolute tactical reason for this as well: the Imperial Army had
forcefully retreated and killed its own momentum, while the Ville
Kingdom army violently charged while riding its momentum. Furthermore, the Imperial
Army was thoroughly exhausted from the brutal battle so far, but the newly
participating Ville Kingdom army
was completely fresh and not exhausted at all.
「 Damn it……! But…… we haven't lost
yet! 」
Even while their lines were violently cut to pieces in
various places by the first strike, the Viscount's army fought with terrifying,
desperate tenacity, stubbornly defending only the part leading to the northern
highway like a vice. But…… the Viscount himself was completely spent, having
suffered deep wounds all over his body; his whole body was dyed completely crimson
with the blood he himself shed rather than the enemy soldiers', and the
absolute final light of his life's lantern was flickering out and
extinguishing.
『 I wonder…… did Rosa-sama
manage to escape safely……? My life was saved by her
grace once before…… to die while shielding my beloved her above all else……
perhaps that isn't a bad way to go……
』
While that quiet thought drifted through his fading mind,
the Viscount slipped from his beloved horse, collapsing heavily into the dirt.
「 YOUR EXCELLENCYYY!!! 」
While his close aides raised frantic screams resembling shrieks of absolute despair, there was an army making the earth violently roar with horse hooves, charging from the west side of the highway. Billowing proudly at its absolute head was the unmistakable, notorious military banner of the Bottakuri-na Trading Company…… no, rather, Viscount Kamin's banner was raised! The trajectory of the war situation was about to violently alter towards a new direction once again.
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