Chapter 180
Chapter 180
On the day when the Imperial Army was turned into a wasteland by the poison released by Yuwon, at around four in the afternoon.
The Imperial Army, which had been moving busily to organize its internal situation, dragged the knights out and stepped onto the plain that bordered the Valaris encampment.
Clop—clop—
Well-trained warhorses at a glance, and Imperial knights proudly displaying gleaming armor atop them. Their number was around five hundred—an amount that could be considered small. However, they could not be taken lightly. They were not mere cavalry or ordinary soldiers; every single one of them was a knight who wielded mana.
“The enemies are moving!”
“What?!”
Sensing that the enemy might take action at any moment, the Valaris Alliance forces responded swiftly as well.
“Their movements are suspicious! All units, return to your positions and await orders!”
“Yes!”
With military discipline tightened to the utmost, the Valaris Alliance troops moved according to their assigned duties, strengthened their vigilance, and coated their arrows with oil as they waited.
Between the Alliance and the Imperial Army—two camps standing at a distance just barely within sight—tension coiled thickly in the air.
In a situation on the brink of eruption, the leadership of Valaris hurriedly gathered to discuss countermeasures against the enemy’s sudden move.
“It seems the enemy is planning to launch an attack.”
“There’s no need to be shaken. No matter how much they may be mana-wielding knights, with only that number, they won’t be able to cross the walls of Valaris.”
“That may be true, but… the fact that they came out with only that many suggests that from the start, they aren’t thinking of a siege. It seems more likely they came prepared for short-term engagement or a contest between knights.”
“That’s probably so. But if we simply don’t play along, isn’t that the end of it?”
“If we do that, wouldn’t it affect morale…?”
“Morale is important, and battle is important too. But what matters more to us than anything is winning this war. It will be fine.”
And at that moment, as the leadership was gathered, the tent flap was drawn aside and Yuwon appeared.
“No. There’s no need for that. I will go out personally.”
Yuwon’s declaration caused an uproar within the Valaris Alliance leadership. On one side, centered around Count Valaris, the Supreme Commander, the majority tried desperately to dissuade Yuwon. On the other side, centered around Marquis Carson, the Vice Commander, along with Yuwon’s close aides, they supported Yuwon’s decision.
Although the Count fought hard, he ultimately could not bend Yuwon’s will. In the end, Yuwon went out to the battlefield alone.
“My lord. Then please take care of yourself.”
“Your Majesty. I will be ready to rush out at any moment. If you need me, please call for me, Terrien, at any time.”
Hastings and Terrien saw Yuwon off to the very end.
“I appreciate the concern, but that won’t be necessary. I may be going out today, but I won’t let either of you rest forever, so be prepared.”
Responding to their heartfelt worry with a smile, Yuwon opened the castle gate and headed toward the plain where the enemies had already arrived and were waiting.
Tap—
Perhaps he judged that he was close enough. When Yuwon’s straight, unwavering steps toward the enemy came to a halt.
“To have the King on the chessboard come out from the very start… It seems Valaris truly lacks capable figures.”
The Imperial commander who had arrived earlier and was waiting provoked Yuwon, infusing his voice with mana. Yuwon did not rise to the provocation.
“I give you a stern warning.”
He merely delivered what he had to say, calmly.
“If you wish to live… do not come any closer.”
It was a sincere warning. However, it did not reach the knights who were blinded by the prospect of military merit. After hearing Yuwon’s words, the enemy commander hesitated briefly.
‘I was planning to indulge this a bit longer… but I can’t let such a perfect opportunity slip by.’
A golden chance to end this war at once and claim tremendous merit. Such an opportunity would not come again. Without hesitation, the Imperial commander drew his sword and raised it high.
Clang—!
“What are you all doing! The head of the enemy is right before your eyes! Do not hesitate—charge and behead the criminal who assassinated the Former Emperor!”
At the commander’s order, the Imperial knights who had been waiting yanked on their reins and accelerated their horses. Their eyes already glinted wildly with greed for the greatest achievement of this war.
“Charge—! Charge!”
“Vengeance for the Former Emperor, by my blade!”
Rumble—!
Hundreds of warhorses thundered forward, shaking the earth. Knights atop the horses lowered their lances and aimed them at Yuwon, the finely honed spearheads reflecting sunlight in a dazzling glare.
Mana gathered at the tips of the lances traced small arcs of light along the horses’ paths. Standing at the end of those arcs, Yuwon merely gazed indifferently at the countless spearheads rushing toward him.
‘Protecting everything is nothing but a vain desire. They may curse me as cowardly. Even so… I will protect myself and my people first.’
At the moment Yuwon’s eyes flashed, he began to move.
Yuwon slipped his hand into his bosom and grasped the concealed weapons he had prepared in advance. In his hands were throwing weapons of a peculiar shape, unlike anything seen before.
They were so small that they were hard to identify at a glance—barely the size of a finger joint, resembling ordinary throwing stars. Their defining features were their minuscule size and their countless number.
Even as this happened, the enemies continued to charge ferociously toward Yuwon. Judging the distance, Yuwon released the concealed weapons in his hands all at once without hesitation.
Shushushuk—!
As Yuwon spread both hands, the concealed weapons tore through the air with piercing sounds and rained down upon the enemies.
Thud—! Thup—! Thud!
The concealed weapons, faintly imbued with mana, pierced through the knights’ armor and embedded themselves into their bodies.
Because Yuwon had deliberately controlled the amount of mana, the wounds were not deep. But that was enough. Through the tiny wounds left behind, Yuwon’s poison seeped in little by little.
Even after being struck, the knights neither retreated nor panicked and pressed their attack. They, too, had something they trusted in.
“Hah, wounds like this are nothing! Is this all you have?! Such outdated poison! Fifth Prince! You should know that such trivial poison doesn’t work on those who wield mana!”
One of the leading knights shouted arrogantly as he charged toward Yuwon. The knights following behind shared the same thought.
‘Trusting in poison of all things to challenge us—how foolish, Fifth Prince!’
That belief became the cause of their downfall. To Yuwon, poison was mana, and mana was poison. Without responding to their taunts, Yuwon waited calmly for the right moment.
And when the enemies’ forms became clearly visible even without focusing mana into his vision, Yuwon gently closed his eyes and released his power.
‘I’ll be counting on you again.’
As if it had been waiting for that signal, the venom-imbued black heart within Yuwon began to pulse violently. The snake coiled within his heart once again bared its fangs.
Shaaa—!
The truly foolish ones were not Yuwon, but the enemies. Even if they blocked the poison’s corrosion with mana, there was no way their warhorses could wield mana.
Half of the concealed weapons released by Yuwon had already struck indiscriminately at both riders and mounts.
The cruel slaughter began with the warhorses. The horses that had charged forward as if to trample Yuwon suddenly lost their balance and collapsed en masse, as though their legs had snapped.
Hiiiii—!
“Ugh, ugh…! Why all of a sudden…?!”
Horses collapsed while screaming their death cries. The knights riding them could not escape either. By the time they sensed something was wrong, it was already too late. The warhorses bearing knights began to fall one after another.
“Argh!”
“Kghk!”
Crunch—! Crack—!
Gruesome sounds rang out as bones shattered and human bodies bent in directions they never should. Imperial knights who had been alive and breathing moments before had their necks snapped or were crushed beneath their mounts in an instant.
People and horses tangled together, horses and people mixed chaotically, blood gushed forth, and broken bones tore through flesh.
Of course, even amid such carnage, there were those who kept their wits about them and barely clung to life. Among the fallen knights, it was the comparatively more skilled ones who managed that much.
“Ugh! I, I lived!”
However, it was far too early to rejoice over the fact that they were still breathing. What awaited them was an even more horrific end.
Dududududu—!
From the rear ranks, closely following the vanguard, warhorses thundered across the earth.
“W-wait! S-stop! Stop them!”
“Iiik—!”
The knights who witnessed the accident at the front desperately yanked on their reins. But it was utterly futile to halt horses that had already built up tremendous momentum.
“U-ugh! Don’t come closer!”
The fallen knights stared at their allies with eyes wide in terror. The last thing reflected in their vision was an array of horse hooves that looked unusually massive. Then, hundreds of warhorses crashed straight into the knights.
Bang—!
Crunch— crack!
“Aaaagh—!”
“Kuh— cough!”
The warhorses, charging with ferocious force, used their massive weight and speed as weapons, grinding every fallen ally beneath them while they were still alive. It was a sight too dreadful to watch with open eyes.
The knights who had boasted just moments ago that they would personally slit Yuwon’s throat vanished without ever laying a hand on him, reduced to a pulpy, blood-red mash. And yet, this was only the beginning.
After that, the warhorses whose paths were obstructed by those sudden, unintended obstacles stumbled, tangled their legs, and met equally miserable ends.
Hiiiiiing—!
“N-no—!”
“Kraaaagh!”
Following the dying neighs of the warhorses came the unmistakable screams of men. A warhorse’s crisis was a knight’s crisis, and the knights who followed were forced to experience exactly what the vanguard had suffered. The price was death.
Blood, flesh, and what had once been human bodies were grotesquely mixed together, leaving only faint traces behind. It was sheer pandemonium.
The area swept clean by Yuwon’s poison turned a deep crimson, soaked with blood. Only the ground behind where Yuwon stood retained its original color.
The corpses were already difficult to recognize, yet even those remnants failed to remain. The venomous energy overflowing from Yuwon, despite having slaughtered the enemies, dissolved even the fragmented bodies like bubbles, erasing them completely.
Even so, there were still knights who survived. Out of the roughly five hundred who had charged at Yuwon, fewer than two hundred remained.
The knights who had miraculously escaped death abandoned their horses, which were melting away in real time, stood up, and directly leveled their swords at Yuwon. Among them, the commander who had ordered the charge moments earlier shouted hoarsely.
“Y-you… you demon! So this is your true nature at last! Yurion, you bastard! The rumors that you worship demons were true! Today, with this sword, I will take your head and restore the sullied honor of the Empire and the Imperial Family!”
Screee—!
With those words, he raised his sword sharply and rushed toward Yuwon. It was a fairly swift and precise strike. But it was still far too slow to reach him. Yuwon knew the blade would never touch him, so he did not take a single step.
With cold eyes devoid of any emotion, Yuwon stared at the approaching sword tip aimed at him. Even so, the blade continued to surge toward him at high speed.
Soon, it would reach him. Yet at that very moment, another bizarre phenomenon began. People started to melt—here and there, simultaneously, slowly.
The commander who had raised his voice, and the knights who followed him with renewed courage, not a single one was spared. Like the horses that had melted away moments before, they too began to dissolve.
“U-ugh…! My body… my body…!”
“Aaaagh—!”
Watching one’s body melt away like ice before one’s own eyes was a terror even battle-hardened knights could not endure.
Whether fortunate or not, that time of terror was brief. Soon, the screams subsided.
Thud—
The sword that had been closing in on Yuwon fell weakly to the ground right before his nose, its owner having melted away.
Thud— clatter—
As the people vanished, the armor they had worn dropped one by one from midair. Starting with the commander who had come closest to Yuwon, and extending through the ranks behind him, there were no exceptions.
To see people disappear, leaving behind only their weapons and armor after dissolving into a handful of bloody liquid was terror itself.
The land that had echoed with warhorse hooves and the cheers of both armies just minutes earlier was now filled with a chilling, oppressive silence.
Whoosh—
A wind swept across the battlefield where not a single corpse remained, brushing over sand stained red.
Yuwon had slaughtered five hundred mana-wielding knights all by himself in an instant. Faced with a spectacle so horrifying and unbelievable, both the Valaris Allied Forces and the Imperial Army were left speechless. Only faint sounds escaped—neither quite admiration nor quite screams.
“So… they said His Highness the Fifth Prince was the true sword of the Empire. It seems that wasn’t an exaggeration.”
“The owner of the White Dragon Sword truly is different… As expected, the choice of the Empire’s guardians is never wrong.”
The Valaris Allied Forces could not even bring themselves to sing of victory.
“D-did you see that? Does that even make sense?”
“What kind of madness is that…?”
“How are we supposed to fight something like that… Yurion Aphahiel is… what kind of monster is he?”
The Imperial Army froze solid.
All eyes present focused solely on Yuwon. Thousands—tens of thousands—of gazes converged upon him.
Whether he noticed or not, Yuwon remained standing tall, unmoving from the very spot where he had first stood.
Without turning his gaze even once, he engraved the cruel scene he himself had painted clearly into his eyes.
‘…I will neither forget nor run away. No, instead, I will look straight at it and remember. What kind of sacrifices were made in the name of protecting me. What price of blood I paid to survive.’
Yuwon knew all too well that the sacrifice of the few for the many he had chosen was, to the dead, nothing more than an excuse. No—precisely because of that, his resolve was even firmer.
‘It was something I had already prepared myself for… I will not waver anymore.’
Despite the heaviness in his heart, Yuwon did not avert his eyes. Reflected in his blue pupils was the crimson-stained land.
Yuwon stood there alone.