Chapter 880

Chapter 880

“Chaos is the blossom of combat!”
A few infantrymen bellowed the phrase, though it didn’t escalate into a full-throated roar. The sentiment rippled through the ranks in a low tide of voices, avoiding the madness of victory shrieks.
These were disciplined professionals. Their officers, showing their quality, worked quickly to settle the nerves of the rank and file. They understood the grim reality: the work remained unfinished.
Though the enemy’s elite riders lay dead, the bulk of their host was still active. With threats still breathing, indulging in a victory celebration was a premature luxury.
If Enkrid had been in a position to care, he would have told them to find a better motto, but the distant chanting barely registered in his mind. Marcus approached him, his voice cracking with disbelief.
“How… that beast—is that truly Odd-Eye?”
The shock stripped away his usual polish. No matter how much a person prided themselves on their wit, maintaining a facade of calm was impossible after staring down a certain grave and being pulled back at the final second.
Enkrid observed the frantic movement in Marcus’s eyes. They were a storm of raw trauma and profound relief. Strictly speaking, the horse deserved the credit for the rescue, not the man.
Had it not been for a winged mount belonging to the knight order, reaching this position in time would have been a physical impossibility.
‘He would have tried regardless,’ Enkrid thought, imagining a scenario that hadn’t occurred.
‘If Rem were here, he would have found a way to bridge the distance.’
He would have pushed himself to the brink of collapse, burning every drop of mana and muscle.
‘But he would have arrived only to fight over Marcus’s remains.’
No amount of human effort could compete with a beast that ignored the constraints of the earth to fly in a straight, unwavering line.
“Give your thanks to Odd-Eye when there’s time. Right now, we deal with the remaining host.”
“Understood.”
They weren’t strangers. Recognizing that Enkrid was a man of action who required no flowery preamble, Marcus shifted his focus immediately.
“Enki.”
Aisia joined them, her expression equally stunned.
“For a moment there, I truly lost my heart to you.”
She was visibly shaken by the display.
“Between a fairy and a witch, my life is already crowded with enough women,” Enkrid remarked dryly.
“It wasn’t a literal confession!”
Enkrid turned and began walking toward the enemy lines. Leaving Odd-Eye to rest, he signaled Marcus to dismount and follow, with Aisia trailing alongside.
“What is the plan?”
Aisia inquired. Marcus also looked to Enkrid for direction.
Technically, Marcus held the tactical authority, but Enkrid was a commander of one of Naurillia’s premier orders and the savior of the day.
Regardless of the chain of command, his recent feats gave him the unofficial right to dictate the next move. If he suggested something suicidal, they would object, but they were listening.
“Disarm them completely. Take their mounts, their blades, and their armor. Confine them for three days, then release them to return home.”
Enkrid was drawing upon the memories of Crang’s actions during the Southern Front.
He adopted Crang’s tactical eye, weighing the state of the field. He layered this with Kraiss’s meticulous perfectionism and the strategic philosophy of Lua Gharne.
As his mind processed the variables, a solution for the remaining infantry crystallized.
‘Break their spirit and turn them into a burden.’
Kraiss would have beamed with pride at the logic, and Abnaier, the brilliant mind of Azpen, would likely have stood there in stunned silence.
“Is your brain as sharp as your sword? That’s almost unfair,” the strategist might have joked.
“Is that truly necessary?”
Aisia questioned. She wasn’t thinking of the long-term logistics.
While she was a veteran, she worried that managing thousands of prisoners would pin them and their allies down in this location for too long.
Marcus, however, possessed the strategic depth to see the play. He rolled the idea over in his mind until the brilliance of Enkrid’s suggestion hit him.
He hadn’t earned his reputation as a combat specialist by accident. He understood the psychology of the Southern Army; that knowledge was exactly why he had orchestrated the ambush in the first place.
Marcus spoke up once he saw the full picture.
“You want to deny them the release of a final, desperate rage.”
He intended to let them live, but in a way that served a darker purpose.
Enkrid gave a sharp nod.
What would total annihilation achieve? It would simply mean they had destroyed a single detachment.
While their own morale would peak, the enemy wouldn’t just sit in sorrow.
The Southern Army functioned differently. They would turn their grief into a holy crusade for vengeance, vowing to fight until the world ended.
‘The two knights are gone.’
Power on this continent was measured by elite individuals. The count of available knights was the metric of a kingdom’s strength.
While a massive standing army was necessary for defense, they were effectively chess pieces without the knights to lead them.
A tiny, insignificant kingdom on the western edge of the Central Continent had survived solely because an ancient knight held the pass.
‘The remaining grunts are irrelevant.’
However, simply releasing them with their gear would be a tactical blunder.
‘This is the superior move.’
Their own troops would recover while the enemy was stripped of every tool and kept in the natural cage of the cliffs.
They would provide the bare minimum of food, allowing hunger to sap their strength, before releasing them on the fourth day.
‘The High Pontiff shows no mercy.’
He was a leader who would hunt down his own men if they broke rank and fled.
The shadow of that High Pontiff’s cruelty would loom over the prisoners.
‘If they are physically capable, they will crawl back to their main force.’
Desertion wouldn’t even be a viable thought for most. Perhaps a few cowards might try to disappear into the wilds.
But the world was unforgiving. To wander the wilderness without a blade or a crust of bread was simply a death sentence by the local monsters.
They would return. An army of thousands, starved and broken, would march back to their superiors.
They would become a massive, breathing weight—thousands of mouths to feed who were too weak to fight.
And they would do it without the bitterness of seeing their comrades executed. They were sent back whole.
‘Weaponize the culture of the Southern Army.’
If they were slaughtered, their deaths would fuel the High Pontiff’s war machine.
Enkrid knew the man would capitalize on that martyrdom. He wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
Marcus only reached this conclusion because Enkrid paved the way; on his own, he never would have considered such a psychologically brutal maneuver.
“And you’re moving on?”
Marcus asked, seeing the look in Enkrid’s eyes.
“This wasn’t the only detachment sent north.”
Enkrid surmised that the southern threat was a multi-pronged spear.
The task now was to hunt down the other points of the attack.
He put himself in the enemy’s shoes, using Kraiss’s method of psychological projection.
‘If I were them, I’d have another force currently pillaging the countryside.’
A secondary group meant to sever logistics, seize minor hubs, and raze local estates.
Enkrid wouldn’t personally favor such a cruel tactic, but the ruler of Rihinstetten certainly would.
Even if he was wrong, he couldn’t take the risk. He had to be certain.
If left unchecked, those forces would become Jaxon’s dagger.
A blade that slips into your ribs before you even know there is a shadow behind you.
“I don’t follow your meaning,” Aisia admitted, tilting her head.
She was a master of the blade and capable of executing orders, but the high-level politics of continental warfare were outside her focus.
This was the realm of kings, their high advisors, and supreme commanders.
“You truly are a proper commander,” Marcus noted, his mind drifting to the past.
The realization sent a chill through him—one more intense than the sight of Enkrid slaying the knights.
‘Just how far does he intend to climb?’
Would he actually succeed in purging the Demon-lands and ending all war? Was that impossible dream within his reach?
He followed the king’s vision and knew Enkrid’s brand of obsession.
Even so, Marcus had never believed it would happen within his lifetime.
‘Such a task takes generations.’
It required a lineage of intent, passed from one person to the next.
Because Marcus believed this, he had dedicated himself to training the next wave of soldiers.
‘I cannot even measure the depth of his ambition.’
Marcus accepted his own limitations.
He realized that he must not stand in the way of this man’s trajectory.
“Go, Enkrid. Follow your path.”
“I will.”
Enkrid nodded, his gaze shifting to the enemy lines.
“But first, I need to discipline the troublemakers over there.”
A ripple of unrest moved through the enemy host.
There were those who still felt the urge to fight, even with their leaders dead.
“Kill him!”
The heavy unit of the Southern Army surged forward from the edge of the smoke.
Enkrid walked calmly toward the giants. There were thirty of them in total.
It was a solid wall of massive warriors, a sight that would make even the fiercest predators flee.
‘A battalion of giants.’
The south had managed to weaponize a race that previous conquerors could only dream of taming.
Enkrid met the eyes of the attackers.
He had encountered a crazed giant on his trek west, and the aura was similar.
However, these were far more dangerous—they were disciplined and armored.
Enkrid didn’t have the words to talk them down, so he chose the Audin-style of communication.
He unsheathed Dawn and struck.
In a single flash, a giant’s head was severed from its shoulders.
The sheer scale of the enemies made the speed of his movements look surreal.
In less time than it took to finish his previous duel, the thirty giants were sent to the afterlife.
“Unbelievable.”
Aisia was the only one present with the skill to actually perceive the level of power Enkrid was wielding.
He seemed to evolve into a greater calamity every time she looked at him.
The gap between them felt insurmountable.
Yet, she didn’t fall into despair.
Aisia had learned how to keep her feet moving.
She would continue to train and fight, just as she had always done.
With the giants neutralized, Enkrid returned to grab a few bags of rations and supplies before mounting Odd-Eye.
“Leaving so soon?”
Aisia called out.
The enemy soldiers were frozen in terror, watching in silence as Marcus began coordinating the disarmament plan with his officers.
No one questioned the orders. A man who could fly a horse and slaughter giants had spoken.
Enkrid looked back at Aisia one last time.
“Stay sharp, Aisia.”
With her arm out of commission, people might see her as a target.
In his absence, she was the primary deterrent keeping the prisoners in line.
“I know my duty.”
Having just witnessed his display, a fire was lit within her.
She knew Enkrid had a natural talent for inspiring those around him, but today he had transcended his own legend.
‘A power that dwarfs even the elite.’
His movements were the definition of absolute certainty.
He didn’t need to worry about her.
“Haa.”
Once he was out of sight atop his mount, Enkrid finally let out a long breath.
The fatigue was real.
He wasn’t acting.
He had lived in the saddle for days, and the moment he arrived, he had engaged in a life-or-death struggle.
Any man, even a knight, would be near his limit.
But there was no time for a break. He nudged his companion.
“Let’s go, Odd-Eye. Just a bit further.”
The horse let out a snort, seemingly telling Enkrid that he was the one who looked tired.
Odd-Eye thrived on the exertion.
For the beast, this was barely a warm-up.
“Clear the path!”
“Move aside!”
“The commander is taking flight!”
“Chaos is the blossom of combat!”
The surviving soldiers parted like the sea to let him pass.
It wasn’t a commanded maneuver; it was a spontaneous show of respect.
Enkrid galloped through the corridor of men.
Odd-Eye picked up speed, then leaped into the sky.
The ground cracked under the force of the jump, and with a powerful beat of wings, they ascended.
Even after several trips, the feeling of his stomach dropping never quite became comfortable.
As they soared, Enkrid set his course for the lands of Viscount Harrison, the region most vulnerable to the next southern wave.

—

“Why are they moving past us?”
A contingent of Rem’s forces was stationed at Viscount Harrison’s estate.
They had been acting as a local guard.
Some of the scouts had spotted the sudden appearance of foreign infantry.
Battle seemed inevitable.
“Those colors belong to the south.”
A soldier identified the enemy by their banners.
The Southern Army utilized a five-colored heraldry: Crimson, Violet, Azure, Ochre, and Sable.
They were the legendary Five-Color Army of Rihinstetten.
Each color represented a historic knightly order, named after the gems found in the southern mines.
The flag appearing now was the Ochre of the Mud Order.
“They are the most stubborn fighters in the southern ranks.”
A wave of dread hit the estate’s defenders.
“We need to retreat. This position is untenable.”
The leader of the unit made a cold calculation.
If there was a knight leading that group, they would be wiped out in minutes.
‘How do we handle this?’
He considered leaving a small rearguard to die while the rest escaped.
“I will not abandon this land.”
Viscount Harrison stood firm. His vineyards and the pending harvest were his entire legacy.
To him, they were as vital as his own blood.
“I am staying.”
As it turned out, the fear was unnecessary.
There was no clash.
The troops flying the Ochre banners ignored the estate entirely, marching steadily northward.
Everyone knew what lay in that direction.
Border Guard—the fortress city that Enkrid and the Mad Order of Knights had left behind.