Chapter 894

Chapter 894

The Great Emperor let out a booming laugh.
Naurillia remained ignorant. It had no conception of the mountain of complications he had leveled just to reach this point.
Were they trials? No. That word didn’t carry enough weight.
Commoners referred to the rulers of the Demon Realm as devils, but to Rihinstetten and the Great Emperor, they were simply lords.
‘If they rule a domain within the Demon Realm, they are lords, plain and simple.’
Among those who had carved up the Demon Realm into fiefs, three specific lords who bore him ill will had been a constant thorn in his side.
When one considers that opposition, there were two primary reasons the south had finally mobilized.
First was the vacuum left by Balrog’s absence; second was the fact that every lord of the Demon Realm had finally ceased their efforts to contain him.
The cause is always visible in the effect. The Great Emperor was keenly aware of the sudden shift in the demeanor of the lords.
What had prompted this sudden change of heart?
Even a man of the Great Emperor’s stature could not possess omniscience. He didn’t know every detail. However, one reality was undeniable.
‘Someone has managed to earn the collective ire of every single lord.’
That realization was sufficient.
It was the reason the six lords of the Demon Realm had finally withdrawn the hands that had been pinning him down. They took a perverse pleasure in using the strength of others to achieve their ends—a trait truly worthy of being called diabolical.
The Great Emperor could sense the silent expectations of those six. They wanted him to leave the continent, seize his prizes, and in the process, eradicate everything they found irritating or redundant.
He would play along. He would satisfy their whims.
For the moment, at least.
‘Once this continent is crushed beneath my heel, I am coming for you.’
He would forge an alliance with one lord to consume the others, piece by piece. The Great Emperor’s ambitions were vast.
Furthermore, the intrusion of a few enemy knights did not ruffle him. They would be neutralized in due course.
What truly mattered was not the arm swinging the blade, but the intellect directing it. He needed to demolish the center, the very heart of the resistance.
“Move out.”
He had no intention of allowing the vanguard to pull back in a futile retreat. His command resonated with those who had marched to the front.
There was no such thing as a retreat for the vanguard of Rihinstetten. In this initial collision, even if the forces of Naurillia refused to surrender their monarch, they would be forced to bleed out their finest knights.
‘Let that knight order put on a performance for my eyes.’
That desire would be realized.
Such was the power of the will of a monarch who had unified the southern reaches of the continent while living on the jagged edge of the Demon Realm.

—

At the front of the line, Rophod realized—even before the opposition ingested the enhancement drug—that they would not be backing down.
‘They aren’t retreating.’
If they possessed any survival instinct or awareness of the shifting momentum, they would have paused, but there was no hesitation. They simply surged forward.
And this was immediately after they had sustained significant casualties.
The destruction left in the wake of Rem and Dunbakel’s rampage was catastrophic. This followed the fulfillment of his own premonition, made possible by Ragna.
Yet, they continued the assault?
‘The enemy leader has decided on a mindless frontal assault.’
The troops under that command followed with robotic devotion. Unless there was a hidden trump card, such a maneuver made no sense.
While the specific nature of that card was unknown, it wasn’t hard to guess. It meant they still possessed the strength to maintain such a reckless push.
Consequently, Rophod felt no shock when he witnessed the physical transformation brought on by the drug.
‘The drug is their secret weapon.’
He instantly processed this conclusion and reacted with peerless speed.
“Spear units to the front! Rotate the vanguard!”
The defensive wall he constructed in heartbeat positioned spearmen and swordsmen in a calculated mix.
Throughout this coordination, Rophod remained mindful of several factors. Primarily, he knew that intricate maneuvers were difficult to execute under pressure. These were not troops he had trained into an extension of his own body. Therefore, his orders remained blunt and instinctive.
“Switch! Rotate out, move!”
The spearmen surged to the front.
‘Those coming at us are effectively cavalry.’
He reached this conclusion based on their bloated physiques and the sheer velocity of their advance. In reality, it wasn’t a charge possessing the concentrated piercing power of actual horses. There was no need to overthink it.
‘However, they will be much harder to dislodge once they make contact.’
And once the lines met, the carnage would intensify.
True cavalry seeks to break through and move on, but these fighters would stop here and become a tangled mess of violence.
He didn’t need to know the chemical makeup of the drug; the visual evidence was enough.
A brutal slaughter was imminent. Everyone could feel it.
Rophod’s gaze darted from side to side. His mind raced, forming a new plan of action.
“Archers!”
The moment the charging mass entered the kill zone, the waiting bowmen let their arrows fly.
Their quiver counts were low after the skirmish with those griffon monsters, but conservation was no longer an option.
Dark projectiles traced arcs through the sky, falling like rain upon the enemy. It was rare to see a headshot against the charging line; the cone-shaped helmets, tapering at the peak, shielded their skulls effectively. Arrows that found homes in limbs or shoulders failed to halt the momentum. In some cases, the engorged muscle simply deflected the shafts entirely.
Thus, a legion of monsters that had forgotten the concept of pain came screaming in.
The first one to reach them had eyes of pure crimson. The capillaries had shattered, and he advanced while weeping tears of blood.
Rophod stood at the very precipice of the allied line. By design, he had positioned himself slightly ahead of the stopping point of the wall formation.
From that vantage, he took a half-step forward and cut diagonally. His blade connected with the throat of a man wielding a pair of longswords.
Thud!
The sound of the blade severing the neck was sharp and final.
“You think you’re the only one who can look good out here?”
It was Pell’s voice ringing out. Rophod halted, mentally measuring the gap between himself and his comrades.
“I can’t push any further forward.”
He whispered the words, his grip tightening on his hilt. This was merely the overture.
This was the exact horror the Border Guard’s standing army would have endured, had Esther not trapped the enemy in the marsh and mist back at Border Guard.
After all, the monsters charging now and the legion that had set out from Border Guard were born of the same source.
Regardless, that wasn’t a concern for the men currently fighting for their lives.
Before the chaos erupted, Rophod had made excellent use of the window of time provided by Ragna and Rem. Now was the time to prove that those moments hadn’t been squandered.
To Rophod’s flanks, spear tips suddenly erupted. This was the allied intervention. Like pikes set against a horse charge, the spears impaled the enemies attempting to flow around Rophod’s sides.
Simultaneously, a chorus of orders went up.
“Ditch the spears!”
“Release your weapons!”
Rophod had drilled every commanding officer with the same directive before the engagement.
“During the first contact, there is no room for doubt. Even if you have to abandon your gear, prioritize keeping the enemy at a distance.”
The wall formation Rophod had established was riddled with gaps. If an architect had designed a fortress wall with this many holes, you would have been justified in calling it a disaster.
Yet, those gaps were intentional—spaces for allied soldiers to lunge with spears and then retreat. What would have been impossible in a tightly packed formation was executed with fluid ease. Shield-bearers rushed into the voids left by the withdrawing spearmen.
The air was filled with a cacophony of metal on metal, crashing impacts, and explosive sounds.
“Kiyoo-hat!”
A few tribal warriors from the deep south screamed haunting battle cries.
These were men whose skin was a canvas of tattoos. Having consumed Carny Festa, their veins had distorted into bulging ridges, giving them an even more monstrous appearance.
Beyond them, the southern host that had abandoned all reason surged forward in waves. They were relentless. Even the loss of a limb didn’t slow them down. Even a battle-hardened veteran would have felt his spirit break and his blood run cold at such a sight, but the Naurillia forces held their ground.
There was a single reason for their resilience.
They weren’t attempting to fight a traditional battle of winning and losing. They were fighting a battle of endurance, shoulder to shoulder.
“Three paces back!”
Rophod bellowed, moving backward three steps himself. He was generating room and stealing time.
He served as the anchor of the wall, while the actual slaughter was carried out by other blades. That was the essence of his tactical vision.
“Absolute lunatics.”
In the heart of the allied position, Pell unsheathed the usurper-slayer. He was a man who loathed complexity, favoring the direct and the simple. It was his nature.
And Rophod’s request of Pell had been perfectly simple.
As the steel left the scabbard, Pell visualized his objective.
‘Detect the threat.’
And then, strike it down. He grasped the framework. The nuances he would fill in with his own intuition.
‘Don’t linger in one spot.’
Therefore—
‘One swing per target.’
Pell launched himself off the earth. Using every sense and raw instinct, he identified and filled the first breach in the line.
Thump!
His blurring form decapitated an enemy combatant. From the ground, the allied line looked like a loose net, but the view from above was different.
It wasn’t just a formation of holes; it was a series of groups, five or six men deep, standing back-to-back with shoulders pressed tight. If you treated each cluster as a single entity, the gaps vanished. The space only existed between the units.
Within that network, a predator was at work. Pell sprinted, pivoted, and lashed out with his sword. It was a rhythmic cycle of basic movements. He didn’t waste a second gauging the enemy’s prowess. He struck from the shadows, exploiting every blind spot.
Regardless of the drugs, the disparity in raw talent was immense. How could a frenzied soldier block an attack they couldn’t have parried even with a clear head?
Pell had sparred with Rophod enough to know his patterns intimately. This formation felt like home.
He knew exactly where to move and which path to take to clear the way.
This was the culmination of endless hours spent analyzing and refining everything he had gained from his countless duels with Rophod. It was the fruit of sheer dedication.
“Damn it—I’m hit!”
“Push inward! Move to the center!”
“Close the gap!”
The genius of this formation lay in the fact that the soldier groups acted as walls—they were there to obstruct. The goal was to survive the friction of the battle.
Simultaneously, the groups could merge or separate with ease. This allowed the injured to be pulled into the safety of the circle. If a unit became overwhelmed, they simply fused with the nearest cluster.
There were no complex maneuvers to fail. Lean on your comrades, form a ring, and never show your back. That was the mandate. From there, they used shields to weather the storm and blades to retaliate.
Because of this, they didn’t buckle, even when faced with red-eyed demons with pulsing blue veins.
Any sudden threat was swiftly neutralized by a blade that seemed to appear from nowhere, carving through the danger.
“Pell!”
Rophod screamed, the strain visible in his neck.
He had just watched Pell launch his body horizontally, thrusting his sword to pierce the throats of three enemies in a single motion.
And he wasn’t finished. After the triple kill, Pell hit the ground and rebounded. Boom! He pivoted and unleashed a wide sweep. In his wake, six more enemies were left clutching severed throats.
These opponents wouldn’t stop even if they lost arms or legs. To stop them, you had to take the head or destroy the heart. There was no need for a lecture on the subject. Pell just did it.
Through his high-speed intervention, soldiers who were marked for death survived. Circles that were on the verge of collapsing held firm.
Rophod’s shout was thick with pride and encouragement for Pell’s performance.
“What do you want!”
Pell barked back, annoyed at being interrupted while he was busy.
‘That tone-deaf idiot.’
Rophod’s moment of appreciation evaporated. Pell was currently in a trance of violence, barely aware of the magnitude of his own actions. It was best to let him work.
The Great Emperor’s ambition had been thwarted. Does the will of a king always manifest as reality?
“We!”
Rophod, having dismantled half of the enemy’s lead unit, let out a roar. The allied soldiers, who had been gritting their teeth, roared back.
“Hold!”
While Pell flickered across the field like a bolt of lightning, Rophod anchored the front, absorbing every charge with his own strength. Since the initial contact, he hadn’t yielded an inch.
Once the line was set, he became the immovable object. Endurance was the soul of this strategy. Pell was the sword, but Rophod was the shield.
Even a knight can fall. In his own way, he had performed feats that mirrored Pell’s brilliance.
Of course, the enemy wasn’t entirely blind. A knight from Rihinstetten spotted an opening. He lunged at the split-second gap that appeared when Rophod moved to support his men.
Rophod didn’t flinch. He took the hit. A blade bit into his side, and a spray of blood followed. He flexed his core. Was it fatal? No, but it wasn’t a scratch. He torqued his torso, and the blade went no further.
He would have to offer his gratitude to Audin later; that specific defensive twitch was a technique he had picked up from him.
“You actually avoided that?”
Leaving those words behind, the enemy knight delivered three more rapid strikes. Each one exploited a moment where Rophod’s mobility was restricted. The man was a master of leveraging his position.
Most of all—
‘He’s fast.’
Even including the entire Madman Knights, Rophod had never encountered such velocity.
‘Even if I hadn’t been compromised…’
Could I have parried that cleanly?
The adversary wielded a blade so thin it looked fragile. It didn’t have the whip-like flexibility of some rapiers, but it looked like it would shatter under a heavy finger.
“This is as far as you go.”
He inflicted five puncture wounds on Rophod’s body and stepped back. If even one of those strikes had been a fraction of an inch to the side, Rophod would have been meeting the deity Audin served.
Just as Rophod prepared himself for the end, the knight retreated with grace.
And so, Rophod kept his ground. He had lost a significant amount of blood, but he felt a sense of grim satisfaction. Standing against the very knightly order he had once dreamed of joining, Rophod turned his back on them.
“We!”
Most of the enemy’s first wave was dead. Rophod screamed to the heavens. As he thrust his hand into the air, a steady stream of blood soaked his side. Under his armor, it remained largely hidden.
“Stand fast!”
The collective response shook the air.
“Sir Rophod!”
The officers cried out his name. They understood the truth. No member of the Red Cloak Order of Knights could have replicated this. Not Ingis, not Lien, not even Cypress.
They could slaughter ten men in a heartbeat, but in this specific meat-grinder, even if they killed dozens, the charge would have continued unabated. The allies would have been trampled.
This battle required something different. Rophod was the savior who had checked the tide with minimal casualties. It was the result of his formation, his placement of knights, and his role as the living dam at the front.
His name echoed across the field.
“Madman Rophod!”
And with his name, his allegiance was made clear to all.
As that roar peaked, a sound like the world breaking apart followed.
KWA-RUNG!
In the distance, a bolt of lightning descended from a cloudless sky. The pillar of electricity didn’t just strike once; it seemed to root itself in the earth.
This was the manifestation of the storm where Ragna was locked in combat.