9 (5)

Jerome, having finished what he needed to do in a short time, turned pale. The situation had been so urgent and tense that he had overstrained himself. It was, no doubt, the kind of pressure such a situation imposed on him. His expression looked as if his soul had been blown out by excessive mana consumption rather than relieved, and he seemed on the verge of fainting. Just as he was becoming hazy about what on earth he had even done, praise-filled exclamations from the cavalry reached Jerome, whose ears were the only part of him still open.

That was how powerful and efficient the magic had been. Boromir had been one of those who vehemently opposed Louis when he first placed Jerome in the heavy cavalry. Boromir trusted Louis, but he had not believed Jerome could exert great power in such an unstable place. Yet once again, Louis had been right. Their lord, who had a feel for war, seemed to have prepared even the worst possible gambit in order to make this strategy certain, and it had hit the mark without fail. Boromir looked ahead. The confusion of the enemy, shocked by the sight of their comrades frozen into statues, was almost tangible even from here.

Boromir immediately raised his hand and meaningfully shifted their formation, then drew a deep breath and shouted a single word of command.

The heavy cavalry, who had been losing a bit of momentum, had their morale sharply boosted by the results Jerome had created, and, following Boromir’s order, they increased their speed. Kaiser and Boromir, who were at the very front, finally crashed into the infantry. The blocks of ice shattered to pieces, and the shards stabbed into other soldiers’ flesh. Screams. And with the heavy, crushing blows, two or three infantrymen at a time were hurled into the air. Just from the way their bodies floated, you could tell there was nothing normal about them.

Some had been run through, others seemed to have their joints dislocated from colliding with the warhorses, leaving their arms or necks twisted at grotesque angles. In an instant, everything turned into a slaughterhouse. Thanks to Jerome’s feat, the heavy cavalry’s penetration into the rear went in as a direct hit without taking damage. The impact and the howls were so tremendous that they carried past their commander, Marquis Gangpireu, all the way to the front line. The shouts erupting from the rear, along with the drums and horns announcing battle at the back, resounded so violently that the troops at the front fell into confusion.

In a pitched battle, if power from behind did not support them, the soldiers pressed flesh-to-flesh at the very front could be annihilated in an instant, and so the confusion only deepened. Before the instinct called death, the habits drilled into them through countless trainings vanished from their minds. The ominousness carried by the cacophony of frantically ringing signals drove the morale of the front-line infantry into the abyss. Chaos was coming, and the soldiers’ chain of command was being severed. It was not good. The centurions, and the officers above them, fully realized that the balance of the battle was tipping. It felt like hell.

Strategically, this place was in some ways an excellent position, but when attacked from both directions like this, it was also the worst position imaginable, with nowhere to run. The thought that there was no rear to fall back to could serve as a magic spell that made soldiers fight harder, but Marquis Gangpireu had far too few capable officers with the leadership to guide them. Several key figures had departed this world in the decisive battle against Fred, and that loss was now revealing itself plainly.

In the end, the weight of the chaos kept growing. The torrential rain pouring down only worsened the situation. Visibility was limited; ominous sounds spread; and in such a muddy quagmire, the idea of retreat was even more unrealistic, so Marquis Gangpireu’s troops were plunging into ruin, while Louis’s infantry, by contrast, grew ever more emboldened. Even before this, thanks to the rumors surrounding Louis, their morale had been very high, but now it had gone past its peak and the men were all in a state of extreme excitement. For soldiers, rumors that their lord was blessed by some god often played a crucial role in war. There had even been rulers in history who fabricated such rumors just to enjoy this very effect.

Louis was, knowingly or unknowingly, reaping that effect in full. The rough weather, with the rain thrashing about, did not act as a minus for Louis’s high-morale army but instead created a synergy. It was hell for the enemy, yet for his own troops it was an element that lifted their spirits more than ever. The collapse of the front line was visible even to Louis, and he bared his white teeth in a grin, drew his sword, and sprinted forward. His quiver was already empty, so archery no longer had any meaning, and in close combat the sword was an overwhelmingly efficient weapon. Louis cut down two soldiers who came screaming toward him. Dark blood ran down along his blade, but the rain washed it away with ridiculous ease. The soldiers kept coming at Louis one by one. In a chaotic melee like this, with their morale shattered, ordinary soldiers were far too outmatched to face Louis.

Before he knew it, three or four soldiers who had charged at him were now sprawled around his feet. Two of them had died instantly to Louis’s blade. Even if the tense, rain-soaked situation could be called exhilarating, it was not easy. At some point he had taken a great deal of rain, and an insidious chill was creeping into him; with every breath, the white mist that escaped his mouth made him feel the temperature of the air around him. Because of the rain soaking and weighing down his entire body, his equipment was now a burden on Louis heavier than its original weight.

However, if Louis was starting to feel his strength lag, then the other soldiers were in even worse shape. One infantryman in front of him, seemingly terrified by the sight of Louis, stood frozen like prey before a predator. Even as blood splattered to the side and infantrymen grappled with one another, Louis boldly took in the overall outline of the battle once more through the battle status window. The cavalry in the rear had thrust deep in to capture the “King” known as Marquis Gangpireu, but their numbers had not diminished as much as he had expected. That meant Louis had a high chance of taking the King; and even if he failed, the confusion in the front alone would be worth the price.

As Louis was studying the situation for some time, the infantryman who had been frozen in fear let out a scream and charged at him, and Louis deftly brushed aside his sword. The moment the blade struck the mud with a futile sound, the last thing the man saw was the tip of Louis’s sword. Puhwak! Louis drove his sword straight down into the infantryman’s head, feeling the grotesque sensation of the man’s skull, then kicked him away. Sticky blood ran down along the blade, and the soldier whose face now had a hole in it lost all strength and rolled across the ground, dead on the spot. There was not even a convulsion; blood welled up from the wound, but the rain pouring down was greater still, and so it all ran off into the earth.

While Louis and the infantry were crushing the foremost line, the heavy cavalry that had driven deep into the rear were fighting a battle that was chaos in all but name. Once the square formation had been blown wide open, the infantry, perhaps more afraid of turning into ice blocks somewhere under the wizard’s attacks than of the heavy cavalry themselves, failed to mount any proper response, and bits of flesh were flying in all directions. Even under normal circumstances, a heavy cavalry charge was different from that of ordinary cavalry, and when the infantry also had to worry about the extra variable of a wizard, it was only natural that they were being mercilessly cut down.

Yet even in the midst of all this, there was only one man who was steadily chopping the heavy cavalry to pieces. Mihoff.

Mihoff sprang up in a sudden leap and brought his sword straight down across a rider’s face. The blade, laden with mana and guided by his exquisite swordsmanship, smashed through the helmet and into the man’s face, sending the cavalryman flying backward. Mihoff’s face, splattered with blood like a fountain, was a ghastly sight, but the rain rapidly washed it away—so quickly that he seemed reluctant to lose it as he stuck out his tongue to taste the blood.

The heavy cavalry were already piled up on the ground. Unlike infantry, heavy cavalry were the elite of the elite, a branch that should never be dying this easily. With things having come to this, the heavy cavalry pressing Mihoff’s side were so frightened that they could not bring themselves to charge. Perhaps because he had tasted blood, Mihoff grew even more excited, his pupils darting about as he began searching for the wizard. He was intensely curious to see what kind of expression a wizard would make at the moment of death.