Chapter 64 : Chapter 64
Chapter 64. The Roar of Evil Echoing in the Forest (3)
The subjugation was also nearing its end.
The knight orders, who cleaned up monsters beyond what Count Renald expected, now left only a few areas they had arbitrarily set.
“It’s a very excellent result.”
Noel smiled with satisfaction and looked at the tactical map.
It was a mission that might have had to cross the year.
It was a task that tricky and had many things to solve.
Noel had even thought of giving up the mission if even a few more of the conditions they possessed went awry.
“Exactly. They say if you stay next to a lucky person, you get hit by a windfall of money even if you get hit by lightning. Isn’t it because we are next to a lucky guy named Blanc?”
Hearing the joke Aubert made, Noel couldn’t laugh it off easily.
‘Certainly, Blanc is riding a momentum that is hard to express with simple luck.’
The knight named Blanc Cadmus, his brother, was one who rose from ashes.
He climbed up to this position breaking through adversities where even one would be hard to handle.
Noel was one of those who watched Blanc closely.
Some couldn’t recognize opportunity even when it came, and even if they recognized it, most couldn’t utilize it, but Blanc wasn’t such a person.
He was one who knew how to calmly roll even a little luck to create a massive reality.
If it were this person, he would know how to make small luck big and make big misfortune small to stop at minimum damage.
In other words, Blanc was one ready to rise big.
‘I shouldn’t just adore him as a younger brother.’
Aubert might not know, but Noel was a person with ambition.
His ambition was like a lion’s instinct inherited intact from his father, Stefan Tolome.
Noel harbored strong dissatisfaction toward Jonas, who had been upheld as the eldest grandson of Tolome all this time.
His uncle, Schumacher Tolome, was undoubtedly the strongest lion of Tolome with no gap to penetrate even in his eyes.
But his son, Jonas, was not.
The one to succeed Count Bartomyu next would undoubtedly be Schumacher, but if it’s the next after that.
‘Let’s ride Blanc’s momentum.’
Until now, Blanc was evaluated as promising as a knight, but since there were too many adversities to rise as one lord, many people didn’t view Blanc’s possibility of rising largely.
However, through this subjugation, Noel could feel it.
That Blanc was full of aptitude to handle an army as well as personal skill.
Blanc was a dragon still watching for an opportunity. A dragon that would fly into the sky anytime if conditions were met.
Noel thought the fame of being Aselheit’s sixth knight was rather obscuring Blanc’s potential.
If it is now when not many people recognize his true worth, he would be able to preempt a close position to ride Blanc’s momentum sufficiently.
While Noel made a certain resolution and nodded, Aubert was comfortably maintaining his sword and chattering.
“This is, if things go too easily, it’s like that. The end can get twisted, you see? The world is fair. There’s no free lunch.”
Although Aubert wasn’t a person with deep calculations like Noel, occasionally he showed insight penetrating the situation better than him.
It was so. Aubert’s words were right.
Life is not easy to get for free, and just because the beginning is good, there is no guarantee that things will go well until the end.
KRAAA—!
Scarcely had Aubert finished speaking when a magnificent and creepy roar echoed from deep in the forest.
“What! What is this!”
That sound was echoing unhesitatingly up to the plains of Bronberg.
It felt similar to the roar of Evil Blanc had shouted.
Aubert held the sword he was maintaining and stood up from the chair.
Then he looked at his twin brother who was frowning intensely.
“What is this……”
“What do you mean what! It’s what happened because your mouth jinxed it!”
Noel slapped the back of his younger brother Aubert’s head for the first time in a truly long time since childhood.
***
“What was bound to come has come.”
Blanc heard the roar echoing from the forest inside the tent prepared for the Cadmus Knights.
Not only him, but all personnel in that place had the same thought as Blanc.
That what was bound to come had come.
“I will make the final settlement in Bronberg.”
Blanc held the sword of Aselheit and stood up from his seat.
“Today, we establish the first achievement of the Cadmus Knights.”
Blanc’s eyes looking down at the knights shone.
“Our first achievement will be becoming Twin-headed Ogre Slayers.”
At the same time as finishing those words, Blanc threw open the door of the tent.
“Prepare for battle.”
At Blanc’s command, the knights bowed their heads and answered.
Blanc, having come out of the tent, walked to the twin brothers’ tent.
Billy was attending and guiding such a Blanc.
‘It’s soon night.’
Night was not the time of humans.
The clever monster and master of the forest, the Twin-headed Ogre, challenged the final battle at the time most advantageous to itself.
However, Blanc and the twin knights had already predicted that the Twin-headed Ogre would rush out of the forest and had even planned a strategy for it.
“Brother.”
“You came.”
Just in time, the twin knights who finished battle preparations were coming out of the tent.
“According to the scouts’ report, all monsters that were in the forest are crawling out. They say combined with Orcs, Goblins, and other miscellaneous things, it will be fully 500.”
Despite having pulled them out like that through the roar of Evil, that many monsters still remained.
The existence called Ogre was a monster famous for not leaving its territory while being bellicose.
If the rumor about the Twin-headed monster was true, it was clear it would unleash its ferocious instincts toward Blanc who had been stirring up its territory.
Therefore, Noel prepared to face the Ogre while making full preparations, but the Twin-headed Ogre hadn’t appeared for nearly a month.
“It seems it waited for the optimal time.”
It seemed to be rolling its brain as expected of a Twin-headed Ogre recognized as a higher individual than an Ogre.
Plus, just by rallying monsters with its presence and striking in the middle of the night, one could know the Ogre of Bronberg was an extraordinary existence.
Like Noel’s words, the sun that hung over the grasslands sighed its last breath and disappeared beyond the darkness.
A dark night where even the moon emitted faint light hidden by clouds.
From now on, it was not the time of humans. It was the time of Evil.
As soon as the Ogre’s roar was heard, Tolome’s elite soldiers instantly constructed a defensive position using wooden fences and traps installed within the Bronberg plains and the facilities of the encampment as they had prepared.
“Light the fire!”
At Aubert’s instruction, soldiers lit torches everywhere and began to secure vision against the approaching darkness.
“It’s the final battle. Blanc.”
The Ogre’s terrible roar was heard once again from deep within the forest.
And at the same time, the forest holding darkness vomited out pitch-black Evil.
“They are coming!”
“All personnel prepare for battle!”
Hundreds of Evils began to rush out from the darkness-covered forest.
They were neither frightened nor rushed recklessly like previous monsters.
The monsters roughly unleashed their ferocious instincts and clung roughly to the wooden fences soldiers installed.
At their charge, the wooden fences rippled.
Soldiers were doing their best to endure using supports so the wooden fences wouldn’t collapse.
Monsters whose bodies were pierced by wooden spears and traps installed on the wooden fences, but rushed ceaselessly without minding it.
Monsters stepping on their kin’s corpses and jumping over traps were things that moved instinctively no matter how one looked at it.
As if to confirm Blanc’s prediction, the Ogre’s roar was heard once again.
“Finally revealing yourself.”
A massive green body revealed itself on a low hill at the entrance of the forest.
The Ogre holding a club as massive as its body placed two heads on its shoulders and looked at the small wooden castle humans made with arrogant eyes.
Blanc could instinctively know that the Ogre in front of his eyes was looking for him.
Blanc, who dared to stir up the forest of Bronberg and claimed territory in front of it.
Blanc looked at the Ogre, drew his sword, and raised it high into the sky.
The Peridots scattered on the sword of Aselheit emitted green light even in the darkness, catching the Ogre’s gaze.
Blanc felt his eyes meet the Ogre’s momentarily.
“Right, here.”
Blanc gathered the energy of Evil, put it into his dantian and vocal cords, and shouted with all his might.
“I am here—!”
He unsparingly displayed his presence.
The Ogre began to roar again against Blanc’s shout.
Then, lifting the massive club, it pointed exactly toward where Blanc was.
At that moment, everyone on the battlefield could accurately grasp the Ogre’s intention.
The master of the forest had come here to kill the challenger who dared to oppose its authority.
Listening to the Ogre’s rough roar, Blanc came down from the top of the wooden fence.
Then he sent a look toward his knights who were waiting.
“We move.”
***
Tolome’s soldiers initially dealt with monsters shooting arrows from behind the wooden fences, but that alone was insufficient to block those intoxicated by the energy of night.
The installed wooden fences shook roughly and were exhausting their utility.
CRACK.
And finally, the wooden fences that ran out of durability collapsed making rough sounds, and monsters began to squeeze through that gap.
It was time for slaughter.
Monsters giggled soaked in madness at the thought of drinking freshly squeezed human blood, but Tolome’s soldiers were not weak humans they thought of.
“All personnel raise spears!”
At Aubert’s instruction, Tolome’s soldiers raised spears and set them sharply toward the monsters.
The monster leading at the front tried to stop at that ferocious momentum, but pushed by the momentum of kin rushing from behind, it had no choice but to bring its neck to the spear tip.
“Hold!”
The wooden fence was a defensive means but also a trap guiding the monsters’ flow.
The cleverly collapsed wooden fences gave way to monsters, and that path guided the things dyed in Evil exactly to the point Noel set.
“Fire the fire arrows!”
However, what was waiting for the things intoxicated by the energy of night anticipating slaughter ahead was fire arrows shot from the unit Noel commanded.
“Burn the encampment! Push those things into the fire!”
Tents soaked in oil burned up roughly just as Noel said.
The encampment that monsters were anxious to enter became a sea of fire in an instant.
Monsters trapped in the sea of fire exerted all their strength to escape, but in front of them were Tolome’s soldiers who had solidified a firm defensive formation.
Tolome’s soldiers, rooted firmly where the fire’s energy didn’t reach, slowly pushed monsters into the fire hell.
Noel’s stratagem fit perfectly.
The soldiers’ encampment was not a place to protect.
It looked like a defensive position at first, but in fact, it was bait luring monsters, and now it had become a burning trap.
Screams of monsters struggling in the fire hell echoed fully in the grasslands of Bronberg.
“KRAAAAA!”
The Ogre felt something was wrong listening to the screams its subordinates uttered and spat out a roar of rage.
However, the monsters were already in a situation of great confusion where they couldn’t follow the Ogre’s instructions.
Definitely, the monsters that could be called the Ogre’s subordinates were stronger ones than those outside the forest.
But Tolome’s soldiers dealing with the Ogre’s subordinates now were those who could be called elite even among humans.
The humans present now were humans of a different dimension from the soldiers in Adams territory that monsters had experienced so far.
They were strong soldiers that couldn’t be breached by a few hundred monsters rolling around in the forest.
As the battle situation didn’t flow as intended, the Ogre decided to step in personally, grabbed the club, and came down the hill, but.
“Finally moved your heavy ass.”
What was waiting for the Ogre under the faint moonlight was the Cadmus Knights led by Blanc unbeknownst to the monsters.
“I am here. Master of the forest.”
Faint moonlight shone on Blanc’s face, creating a pitch-black backlight on his face.
However, the Ogre could see.
Blanc’s smile coldly sneering at it.