128 — 13 (9)

The young shaman’s brow folded into a straight line. To him, Atila was no different from a god. His actions so far had been relentless, and toward enemies he had been especially merciless. It was the first time he had ever seen Atila pay heed to someone and agonize over a decision.

And it was not only the shaman. The other chieftains were the same. Who was Atila? He was the sort of man who boiled people alive, butchered them like chunks of meat, and personally sent them as “gifts” to his enemies. Even among barbarians, it was a brand of cruelty that made teeth chatter. And Atila carried it out without even blinking.

“Brother Atila. What will you do?”

“…We strike Gaimer’s capital as planned.”

“That’s right. Keh-heh. I’ve spent my whole life watching those bastards, but now the roles have reversed. Even if we lose our homeland, if anyone still has fond feelings for it, I’ll rip his balls off. Better land and better women are spreading their legs and waiting for us!”

Thunder Fist bellowed as if barking an order. Half-Homeland Warhammer was a man with no ears. A two-meter giant, he slammed his warhammer into the ground. When the two chieftains shouted like that, hundreds of barbarians roared their agreement. The faces of the hanging lords turned pale. Because Atila had hung them near his own camp, the lords roughly understood what was happening.

They desperately sought a god they had never prayed to before, and they prayed Louis would not form an alliance with this human butcher. It seemed their plea had been answered in part—yet Atila did not turn back. The lords knew that if Atila struck the capital, their king would fall. Atila’s tactics and impact were murderous. Even they wondered how a rabble that was not even a regular army could produce such power, despite their numbers.

Atila’s eyes narrowed. Once he decided, he had to move faster and harder than anyone. That was his rule. Atila pointed at the lords with a finger. The lords trembled, knowing exactly what it meant.

“Kill them. And send them to their king. Tell him that if he does not surrender, I will make him the same.”

A death sentence. How they would die was obvious. One of the lords fainted. Skinny barbarians swarmed the hanging lords, loosened the ropes, and lowered them one by one.

An arrow dropped from the sky like a stone. Piercing clean through his throat, it made the man gush blood as he toppled. It was fatal. Until his body sprawled and bled into the ground, the barbarians around him did not even properly register what had happened. It was a range ordinary bows could not reach. Yet as if to shatter that assumption with their own hands, arrows began to pour from the sky like a driving downpour. It was practically a strike aimed at their carelessness, and each arrow fell into a lethal spot. The wet tearing sound of flesh burst in every direction, and screams erupted everywhere. On the rocky ground, pools of blood formed.

The men who had been swaggering and mocking Louis’s army just moments ago fell into utter panic. A warrior who should have been issuing orders had been standing in an awkward position; he became a pincushion and rolled on the ground. Some died with skulls split, others with their guts spilled. With every passing second, casualties surged. But this alone could not be said to have stopped the barbarian army entirely.

It was the strike zone of Louis’s horn-bow archers that had turned into chaos—not every barbarian was suffering the same losses. The horn-bow archers were far too few for that. Yet confusion spread like a plague.

“…Damn it, there has to be magic mixed in. Giant Slayer, this is not the time to attack—”

“We’re fucked. He really wasn’t ordinary.”

“We have to charge! Deploy the gorgon unit! Crush those archers in one blow!”

“Fuck… hurry.”

In the end, the tactics held by Giant Slayer Gijik and his men amounted to one thing: close combat. Above all, the gorgon unit—monsters tamed through long-kept secrets—was the driving force that had allowed them to defend their long-term raids and resistance here. Giant Slayer himself was also thrown into confusion, his many scars and single eye twisting grotesquely. There had been a reason he had lured Louis’s army here: to take a position beyond arrow range, then, when they approached, use favorable terrain to force a melee.

But unexpectedly—no, for the first time in history—arrows were striking them from beyond the range they “knew.” There were too many arrows to ignore, falling like sheets of rain. And their power was more than ordinary. You could tell just by looking at the barbarian warriors being pierced one after another, turning the ground into a sea of blood. The leather they wore was tough enough to stop even a solid sword blow once or twice head-on.

Giant Slayer’s dilemma was simple: if he launched a full assault from this position, he would end up stepping into the very trap he had prepared. If he held the line, his men would keep dying. If he retreated, his pride would be torn to shreds. Barbarians were warriors who did not know retreat. The choice, as always, was only one.

“Charge. All of you.”

Signals spread in every direction. He had decided to charge, abandoning the terrain advantage. Naturally, the signal reached the gorgon unit waiting on one side as well. Hundreds of gorgons snorted and steamed in the rocky zone. They were controlled by a small number of shamans—so tattooed they could hardly be called human. They knew it was urgent. They could not not know: so many were dying that the thick smell of blood reached even here.

Driven into a frenzy by the scent, the gorgons drooled, snorted, and stamped, ready to run and devour people at any moment. Veins bulged on the shamans’ foreheads as they struggled to control them. Cold sweat poured down. The gorgons were a double-edged sword—once control slipped, they would attack indiscriminately.

The incantations they murmured were not merely ominous, but grotesque. At the very center stood a gaunt man who was, at a glance, expending the most mana. He also bore the most tattoos. The signal had come; he had to launch the gorgons. Other shamans stared at him, taut with tension. He met their eyes and began to nod—

An arrow slammed straight into the center of his head.

Kwaduk. A sound like a skull cracking exploded, and he was hurled several body-lengths back, as if straw had been flung. Blood sprayed into the air. The moment the shaman was struck, control snapped, and some of the gorgons began to bolt in different directions. The shaman who had smashed his head into the ground and convulsed was clearly doomed.

Or perhaps he was already dead. His blood spread in vivid ripples. At the same time, fear spread. They looked toward the source of the arrow. A strikingly handsome figure—oddly out of place on a battlefield—was watching them. It was Mihoff. Behind Mihoff, swordsmen of at least centurion rank were drawing their blades one by one.

Mana was so thick it felt like it could crush mana itself. Mihoff’s mana, in particular, was murderous. They were a detachment formed temporarily by Louis’s order. Their mission was to eliminate the shamans controlling the gorgon unit. A shaman, panicking, tried to command the gorgons to attack—but Mihoff was already sprinting.

This was not a normal body. With a special constitution that could accept high-tier mana, and with the battlefield amplifying everything, the speed she could unleash was lightning itself. The reflexes that had once made even Louis struggle during the clash with Marquis Gangpireu now burst forth without restraint. She pinpointed the second shaman with the greatest mana and drew her sword in a straight line.

The shamans had plenty of offensive sorcery. The problem was that this situation was abnormal. They had been ambushed, and most of their concentration was tied up in controlling the gorgons. Worse, Mihoff’s speed was leagues beyond their level.

It could not be otherwise—she was a Sword Expert. Her blade, brimming with mana so refined it was almost beautiful, split the shaman’s flesh, and his dilated pupils popped up into the air. In less than a minute, two of the most capable shamans were dead at Mihoff’s hands.

Only then did the shamans begin shouting strange words to launch a true counterattack. The instant they did, the gorgons’ control fully collapsed. Overlapping hunger with the smell of blood, the gorgons immediately rammed the nearest shamans and tore into their entrails. Most of the pack began charging toward the place where blood was thickest. That place was the battlefield’s heart—more precisely, not Louis’s line, but the barbarians’ formation.

Louis watched the barbarians swarming toward him like ants from the center of his army. It was a ferocious charge so fierce it created the illusion of a rushing current. Even Marquis Gangpireu had never shown momentum like this. In numbers, they were similar to Louis’s forces. The real-time situation meant one thing: the barbarians had grown tremendously while crouched here for a long time. With Atila leading the main host to batter Gaimer, the numbers defending the homeland were still already the scale of an entire domain’s army.

But Louis was not trying to seize this place alone, and he had support from multiple houses. Naturally, both their quality and their numbers exceeded the barbarians’ force.

Calmly, even as the enemy charged straight in, Louis drew the horn bow’s string.

Kiiiiik…

The horn bow curved into a round arc under tension, then snapped back at Louis’s will. The arrow that pierced the long distance punched through the eyeball of a barbarian wearing flamboyant clothes. Still waving his arm frantically as if urging them forward, he screamed and collapsed, only to be trampled by his own men surging behind him.

Louis drew his sword. The horn-bow archers and regular archer units were still raining arrows, but it did not look like close combat could be avoided. A massive blaze was poured into the middle of the barbarian formation, as if someone had dumped a bucket of water—except it was fire. With mages who had finished casting adding even more firepower, there was no way the barbarians could endure.

The army’s collapse was visible to the naked eye. Then, from the flank, the uncontrolled gorgons crashed in. It was absurd. The barbarians’ strategy was painfully simple, and with Atila having taken the main force away, their composition was far too weak. Louis, on the other hand, had assembled a combined-arms lineup so perfect it bordered on excessive. This was a one-sided slaughter. In less than ten minutes, hundreds of barbarians died before they even reached the lines, their bodies turning cold—and those bodies became fuel, fire spreading out of control and halting the charge.

‘No need to accept it.’

Their brave charge lasted only briefly. Realizing they were no match, the barbarian forces were visibly fleeing. Louis had only one order to give now. Pursue. The terrain was unfavorable, but there was no reason to hesitate any longer. Louis’s infantry began sprinting forward. Ironically, the still-warm corpses of barbarians they had just killed were what slowed Louis’s army.

Louis smiled as the messages rang out in succession. Preparation had taken time, but war was, as always, something that rewarded results even more heavily. He likely had not even received all the points yet. He still had to capture Gijik—and he suddenly found himself looking forward to how many points he would get if he killed Atila.