Chapter 128
Chapter 128: Shadow of the Backflow
The hour when the sun hung directly overhead.
A tense silence fell across the battlefield. On the plains, the Silver Shield Legion and the Mountain Rabbits stood in formation side by side. Banners fluttered in the wind, and shields and speartips gleamed in orderly rows.
Morning dew still clung to the ground, and only the footprints pressed into the mud continued on without a sound.
Clank.
Gregor slowly raised his head. Old comrades stood shoulder to shoulder, completing an airtight shield wall.
A silver fortress, built by veteran soldiers.
The front line would not be breached.
With that, he turned his eyes left and right. Where the Mountain Rabbits' banners rippled in the wind. The key to victory, as always, lay in the hands of his cook comrade.
At the same time.
On the right flank of the formation, Volga muttered while glancing at Calix.
"Some kind of snake bastard is flying through the sky……"
Indeed, beyond the front lines, strange aerial creatures held everyone's gaze. They resembled snakes in appearance, yet had no wings. Even so, hundreds of them drifted through the sky.
Thud, thud, thud.
Beneath them, massive beasts asserted their presence with characteristic gravity. Merely hearing their footsteps was enough to make faces harden. Regardless of experience, an instinctive sense of crisis took hold.
An unpleasant viscosity crept across the skin. The texture of the earth twisted, darkening black in the wake of the Corrupted's passage. The wind, which had been blowing in a fixed direction, began flowing upward from below.
An ominous sign.
But Calix took in the overall situation rather than any single beast.
'They're threatening, but not numerous enough to turn the tide.'
Then Marik and Basim added their voices.
"The numbers are nearly equal. This is a fight worth having. The question is how much we can reduce casualties on our side."
"In the end, we'll need to take out the head of the enemy. That's what true victory looks like."
Correct observations.
The strategy had already been decided.
"We'll wrap around the enemy from both flanks in a pincer formation. However, we won't be the first to charge."
Following this, Calix humbly acknowledged his own limitations.
"Making complex or unreasonable demands of mercenaries does more harm than good. Since this is their first encounter with the Corrupted, the chain of command won't function properly."
Control was meaningless.
What the enemy aimed for was chaos in their ranks.
'Rather than forcing commands, leave it to their autonomy. Just set the broad framework.'
And so, no horns and no banner signals.
"However, Sir Calix? All that is well and good, but… what if the mercenaries flee? I'm a mercenary myself, and by nature, they're the type to run when their lives are at stake."
The Grima mercenary captain offered his reservations with care, but fell silent when their gazes met. Calix's eyes held conviction.
So long as he showed them hope of victory, they would not crumble.
He knew that to be true.
***
For the Mountain Rabbits, the balance of the fight rested on the performance of both wings. Six thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry apiece. But enduring the first clash was the Silver Shield Legion's responsibility.
Screeeee!!
Barely an hour after both armies had taken formation, the attack began. With hollow eyes and mouths torn wide, tens of thousands of the Corrupted surged in, packed dense as a wall.
Crash!
Cold steel of a foul hue came crashing down on the shields. After the dull thud of metal and spirit stone colliding, shockwaves radiated outward in all directions.
"Hold the shields! Brace!"
The veterans' cries rang out, short and sharp. The front line was shoved back hard, but comrades from behind planted their weight and held firm.
Black smoke seeped in through the gaps, but no one flinched. Instead, they counted numbers in their heads, timing their counterattack.
One, two, and three.
"Pull!"
In an instant, the shields lifted and the lower gap opened. The Corrupted, losing their balance, toppled forward, and the rear-rank warriors rushed in to slash and thrust. Like men who had endured scores upon hundreds of battles, they cut through necks in a single breath.
Then, the ground trembled in fine vibrations.
Craaash!
A massive beast four meters in height charged into the dense formation. It threw its body forward in a direct collision, and part of the defensive line caved inward.
The front rank was briefly emptied in an instant, but the rank behind immediately rushed in to seal the gap. The line buckled, yet it did not break.
In the meantime, those who had taken the enemy's blows withdrew to the rear.
At the far side of the battlefield, Calix watched the entire scene. The Silver Shield Legion was performing far better than expected, enough to make him regret having attached five thousand additional mercenaries as reserve forces.
By contrast, the newly joined mercenaries fought in an entirely different manner.
"You hideously ugly bastard, how dare you—!"
"Don't stab, slash! If the blade buries into flesh, it's hard to pull free!"
"Handle the fliers with throwing spears!"
As the Corrupted poured onto the right flank, a man covered in scars across his torso swung a hand axe and split a skull right down the middle.
Grima's mercenary captain, Zoltan, swung a chain with a weighted end and severed an enemy's ankle.
Swords and clubs, spears and nets, and even the rare modified bow with arrows. The forms of their weapons and the movements of their wielders were all completely different.
Naturally, their armor was thin and their organization even poorer, so fighting in tight formation was out of the question.
"Get clear! I said get clear right now, you idiot!"
"Damn it, a monster's grabbed my ankle!"
"Then stay there and roll around with it!"
But they were light.
When threatened, they scattered quickly; when they spotted an opportunity, they swarmed in like a shot.
"Over there!"
"Three-eyed coyote!"
They were perceptive. Those who lacked judgment of their own followed the higher-tier mercenary bands nearby. Even without anyone commanding them, experience ingrained in their bodies and survival instinct moved the newcomers.
And so Calix's role was decided accordingly.
He led the Mountain Rabbits and struck at the enemy's flank. The energy in his Core stirred, and flames surged up along the edge of his blade.
Crackle!
Whatever stood in his path was trampled beneath the warhorses' hooves, and aerial beasts were seized alive and torn apart by the pressure field he deployed.
Falling Fire was reserved for the massive beasts.
"Shriiieek!"
Four muscular legs carried a heavy body forward. Where eyes, nose, and mouth should have been, only a mass of torn-looking holes covered its surface, from which insects and smoke poured without end.
A creature that allied mercenaries could not hope to face.
Then, energy gathered with intense focus toward the tip of his blade.
Whiiish!
What followed was a single slash. As the projectile carrying the power of destruction carved through the air, the beast's skin suddenly split open and countless tentacles lashed outward.
But they dared not resist.
Biological tissue came apart in an explosive dissolution. Chaos permitted nothing to touch its source of power, obliterating everything thrust before it.
Tentacles and hideous grasping hands, even the beast's upper torso—all turned to a spray of blood.
With a tremendous crash, the massive beast collapsed. The mercenaries who had been saved raised a cheer, but the cavalry's pace did not slow in the slightest.
Calix sheathed his sword and cast his gaze to the far side of the battlefield.
The mana signatures of Captain Royce, Adrian Deconti, and Cleric Isabela caught his eye. Their positions were neither too deep nor too shallow.
'So far, things are flowing according to plan.'
At that moment, as though by prior arrangement, the battlefield fell quiet.
***
Fierce breathing and savage cries, even the clang of weapons—all sank beneath the surface. The shadows cast across the ground stretched long toward the center of the enemy formation.
A harbinger of something extraordinary.
The fine hairs on his forearm stood on end, and the back of his neck went cold of its own accord. Calix wheeled the cavalry around and pulled out toward the outer edge.
But from beginning to end, his gaze remained fixed on a single point.
Tssssss—
Across the mud, blood and shadow traced a strange pattern as they crawled up against the earth. In those gaps, a formless darkness coalesced, and a faint silhouette soon emerged.
It had neither face nor body. Only a hollow outline, flickering like a shard of shattered metal.
Calix sensed instinctively that the gaze of that nothingness was aimed directly at him. In that instant, warmth spread outward from his chest.
The necklace gifted by the mage Minebris—'Return of Oros'—delivered a faint warning.
And then.
[So it is you.]
A deep, parched resonance spread through the air.
[The mortal who brought Midra to ruin.]
He felt familiarity and alienness at the same time.
'That is not a human voice.'
It was a malevolent whisper, as though echoing from somewhere unimaginably distant. The fact alone that it disregarded the constraints of mana and distance was enough to convey the other's strength.
'It can't hold a candle to Midra, but it's comparable to Draug's presence. I need to finish it here.'
The conviction that this was not Legion Commander Kohtan made his reasoning all the more solid.
[Do not grow arrogant.]
Just as he was about to resume fighting, his breath stopped at the edge of his throat.
Something had brushed against his senses.
[It was not you who brought the Legion Commander down. A lowly creature simply threw itself to the ground of its own accord.]
Even Calix, with his resistance, felt a wave of revulsion—those without it couldn't possibly be unaffected. The warhorses foamed at the mouth in terror, and mercenaries stepped back without realizing it.
[Kohtan covets even the seat of the Lord, and thus cannot be measured by the standards of mortals.]
It was no mere hallucination. The air, the temperature, even color wavered faintly, encroaching beyond his perception.
But the Mountain Rabbits had not spent that time in vain. White light surged up from both sides of the battlefield. Ella and Isabela's sacred arts drove back the profane force.
Calix made a swift decision.
"Volga, stay close! We charge into the enemy formation!!"
"Leave it to me!"
He drew his sword and prepared to unleash his full power. With the bulk of the enemy concentrated at the front, it was more than worth the attempt.
It was at that moment.
[The end is not yours to determine. This one is not Nergas either. Only Kohtan holds dominion.]
In an instant, the shadows that had gathered at the enemy formation turned back. Blood rippled across the ground, spreading outward across the entire battlefield.
Sluuuursh!!
Things that had met their end long before began to stir. Broken bones, severed flesh, crushed skulls—all took form once again.
Death and dissolution flowed in reverse.
The elf Airien pressed a hand over her mouth, fighting back revulsion. The dwarf Basim drew a quiet breath and muttered under his breath.
"The corpses…… Have come back to life."
Between the gaps in the formation, rotted and festering hands shot up, seizing veterans by the ankle. The Silver Shield Legion, having encountered this before on the eastern front, fared somewhat better.
The less experienced mercenaries simply screamed outright, or stood ashen-faced, reciting nothing but prayers to Kriya. Fear of the unknown had brought a crisis upon them.
Calix stood still and bit down hard on his lips.
[A wretched tomorrow draws near—despair that today was granted to you at all.]
The malevolent being mocked him, but what mattered most right now was something else entirely.
'Do I aid my allies, or do I kill Nergas.'
The former was certainly possible; the latter was uncertain.
"Calix, that bastard is running away!"
"……"
At Volga's shout, his head turned left and right. Remarkably, this was a dilemma he had faced before.
Can means be justified for the sake of ends?
His exhaled breath felt unusually cold. In his mind, the advice of Great Chief Yoman passed through him.
'Bearing the weight of one's choices.'
He knew that there would be losses. People always live giving something up.
But—
"Change direction—charge toward the enemy's rear!"
The moment the command fell, Basim shrugged and gave a quiet snort through his nose, and Marik gently pulled the corner of his mouth upward.
Calix chose trust and solidarity over the victory before his eyes.
'I will not trade my comrades lives as currency. That is the one thing I will never give away.'
There were things that would never change.