Chapter 19
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
‘Damn it, this is driving me crazy!’
The first time he experienced unit-scale combat, it was absolute chaos.
He didn’t feel any particular guilt about fighting the enemies before his eyes, but separately from that, he felt a sense of being overwhelmed by the sheer aura of the situation.
Seeing the soldiers charge at one another like demons, their eyes gleaming with intensity, he realized that the assessment of war being a living hell on earth was not wrong in the slightest.
“You piece of trash from the Kingdom, die!”
Deflecting a lunging spear, Taewoon stepped lightly and his own spear pierced the enemy soldier’s throat in a single strike.
Already, five Imperial soldiers had fallen to him in the same manner.
The Imperial soldiers, who had rushed at Taewoon as if he were a family enemy, began to fear his mysterious spearmanship and could no longer easily step forward.
“Urgh!”
“He’s strong! Don’t engage him alone, surround him!”
“Pincer him and kill him!”
The front lines of both sides had already collapsed, and localized skirmishes were breaking out everywhere.
Spears flew from all directions, and enemies approached Taewoon in succession, as he had become a complete target.
‘…Still, I can’t afford to fall in a place like this.’
In an instant, Taewoon’s eyes flashed. Exuding a bleak aura, he leaped and thrust his spear like a single streak of an arrow.
A spray of blood erupted. Immediately lowering his stance, Taewoon swung his spear in a wide arc, cutting off the movements of the soldiers attempting to encircle him.
Following that, he unleashed a series of rapid strikes toward the one with the most disrupted posture, completely ending their life before searching for the next target.
“Gasp! A-a monster!”
As he tore through the battlefield with such agility, a tall man in well-maintained armor suddenly emerged from the Imperial side and slammed a blood-stained halberd down toward Taewoon.
“Get out of the way, trash. You’re in my way.”
A monster who could swing a halberd that looked heavy even at a glance with just one hand.
However, what was more shocking was that the man’s entire body grew larger as he entered his combat stance, as if undergoing rapid growth.
‘This is……’
He had wondered, but the Fantasy tag hadn’t been attached for nothing.
Soon, the man, whose height had increased by a foot and whose muscles had thickened, began to charge at Taewoon, swinging the halberd fiercely.
“I’ll crush your skull.”
“…Hup!”
Taking a deep breath, Taewoon tried to clash his spear against the halberd using maximum centrifugal force, but after just one exchange, he realized it was the wrong choice.
‘He possesses monstrous strength. It’ll be difficult to face him with strength against strength!’
In that case, he would simply use his specialty—speed—to relentlessly press the opponent!
With a change in his gaze, Taewoon accelerated instantly, shaking the man’s field of vision, and began to unleash a storm of rapid attacks while dodging the trajectory of the halberd.
“…Kugh!”
To be honest, the moment they clashed, Taewoon intuited that the opponent was stronger than expected, but despite that, the man could not react skillfully to Taewoon’s speedy attacks.
This was likely because Taewoon’s spearmanship was too different from that of this era, and since the man had mostly fought knights who possessed powerful single strikes, he was unfamiliar with this kind of tactic.
Regardless, all of this was a golden opportunity for Taewoon.
“Kgh! This… this brat……”
The man was infuriated, but it was impossible for him to adapt to Taewoon’s technique in such a short combat window.
Eventually, after taking a hit to the abdomen and thigh, and being struck by the shaft of the spear on the heel, the man could no longer keep up with Taewoon’s speed and met a futile end.
“Dengkel is dead! A great warrior has pierced Dengkel’s heart!”
“Oooooh! Charge! Drive back the filthy dogs of the Empire!”
Perhaps the man Taewoon had faced was a renowned powerhouse on the Imperial side, as the surrounding soldiers cheered and, fueled by a sudden surge of morale, pushed back the Imperial forces.
Just as the brutal combat was mostly winding down and Taewoon was about to catch his breath.
“5th Division! Charge—!!”
“Ooooooh—!”
Thunderous shouts erupted again from both formations as they began to push their forces forward. The soldiers, even while gagging, had no choice but to reform their lines and clash once more with the enemy’s front line.
‘This… this is insane……’
In the midst of that scene of hellish madness, Taewoon continued to swing his spear, over and over. Until his arm muscles could no longer contract.
“Withdraw! Withdraw! Secure the retreat path! Fall back quickly!”
When the horn finally sounded to signal the end of the battle, almost no soldiers remained alive in the vicinity. Taewoon was also so exhausted that he could barely support his own body.
‘…What happened to the war? What about the Imperial forces?’
Taewoon didn’t possess profound knowledge of warfare, but even so, he could feel that the atmosphere was not good.
Indeed, looking at the shadowed expressions of the soldiers throughout the return, it seemed beyond certain that the Kingdom’s army had been defeated.
“Excuse me. Could you tell me what the situation is?”
“…Ah, it’s you. Your skill was truly impressive. However, despite such struggles, we ultimately failed to push back the enemy. Now, we have no choice but to pull back the front line and focus more on defense.”
The soldier who took off his helmet was a middle-aged man appearing to be in his 40s, and according to him, the situation for the Kingdom’s army was very dire.
They had been pushed back, unable to withstand the Imperial forces, and now there were no suitable choke points left to block them.
“The Milev Fortress, the final bastion, still remains, but……”
He said that the moment they failed to stop the Imperial army there, the Arman Kingdom would collapse.
In other words, a decisive battle for the fate of the Kingdom was about to unfold.
‘The title of the Theater, “Final Rampart,” meant this.’
If so, Taewoon’s destination was the same as theirs. Although Taewoon was not a citizen of the Kingdom, they were now effectively in the same boat.
“Whew, I’m dying.”
“Kahaha, that’s understandable. In all my life, I’ve rarely experienced a battle this desperate. Looking at your face, you seem like a recruit. Did you manage to take any enemy heads?”
“Puhah! My friend, how would that be easy? Coming to a battlefield like this as soon as he became a soldier, it’s a great feat if he didn’t even wet his pants.”
Taewoon entered a makeshift tent with five soldiers to rest. Seeing them joke around to ease the tension, he thought the kindness of the Kingdom’s people wasn’t too bad.
“How long has it been since you two experienced the battlefield?”
“This fellow here for 4 years, and me for about 7. We had many other comrades, but most of them died in this battle. It’s a sorrowful thing.”
“It must have been that terrible of a battle.”
Certainly, even to Taewoon, who was a layman in war, this battle was truly unusual.
Taewoon held the profession of a Hunter, but in all his life, he felt he would never again see a sight where humans were ground down like consumables to such an extent.
“Come to think of it, I heard there’s an amazing spearman in the neighboring unit? They say he took Dengkel’s head.”
“Really? Kelvin and Dmiran also met their ends by that man’s hand. If it’s true, it’s something to toast to.”
Dengkel was indeed the name of the Imperial powerhouse Taewoon had killed by piercing his heart.
However, since it felt awkward to boast about achievements on a battlefield where people kill and are killed, he had no desire to reveal it.
“Still, tomorrow should be much better. After all, it’s become a fight to defend the wall……”
“I wonder if things will really go that easily? Perhaps in this fortress, we’ll be facing the enemy for a very long time. It truly is a horrific thought.”
Knowing that the Kingdom’s situation was not good, the soldiers didn’t seem at ease either.
But regardless of their feelings, Taewoon had to defend this wall. That was likely the core storyline of the ‘Theater of the Final Rampart.’
“Anyway, let’s just lie down. In a war zone, the best thing is to sleep whenever you can.”
Forcing himself to ignore the rising anxiety, the soldiers of the Arman Kingdom fell asleep, praying for a more hopeful tomorrow.
‘…….’
After everyone had fallen asleep, Taewoon shifted slightly and began to ponder the things he hadn’t been able to check.
‘I wondered, but Pedro’s name was not listed in the Companion of Memories special privilege.’
It wasn’t hard to guess the reason. In terms of clearing The Mirror Theater, the depth of the bond he had formed with him was insufficient.
‘Normally, I would have summoned Jain to be with me, but……’
To be honest, he didn’t feel like doing that this time.
Because the Theater of the Final Rampart required stats focused on melee combat, it wasn’t a battlefield where Jain could excel, and fundamentally, it was a place that clashed too much with his values.
‘As a Solver of the Dawn Assembly, Jain has always strived to protect innocent people.’
But in this Theater, the act of killing one another for their own desires is repeated.
Jain would likely have readily offered help, saying Taewoon’s survival was more important than the circumstances of the characters within the Theater, but even so, wrong was wrong.
This time, Taewoon intended to be stubborn and follow his own convictions until an unavoidable situation arose.
‘Let’s try it, with my own strength.’
And, quickly enough, the vague anxiety the soldiers harbored became reality the next morning.
“Block them! Defend the gate!”
“Ladders are coming! Hurry and pour the boiling oil!”
The Imperial attack was incredibly fierce from the start. He had heard that in a defensive battle, one could easily handle ten times the number of troops, but no matter how he looked at it, the Imperial forces were beyond that level.
‘Moreover, those monster bastards are……’
Like the man named Dengkel who possessed beast-like strength, unlike the general troops attacking via ladders or arrows, powerhouses with extraordinary abilities were mixed in between, disrupting the front line.
There was one who climbed the wall while half-transparent and slaughtered soldiers, and another who threw stones with his bare hands, carving away the wall like artillery shells.
With the addition of archers who fired invisible arrows of wind, Taewoon couldn’t keep his composure and had to keep his body’s tension at its absolute limit.
“Kugh, huff, the numbers are truly disgusting!”
“Dorban, are you alright?”
“Kha! I won’t tire before you do, so just keep firing your bow with peace of mind!”
Taewoon had formed a squad with the soldiers he shared the tent with last night, and unfortunately, two of them had already died, leaving only Dorban as someone he had spoken casually with.
How many arrows had he fired mechanically?
Suddenly, a shadow fell over the sky, and the screams of terrified soldiers began to be heard.
“A-a Knight! Get out of the way!”
KWA-BOOM—!
With a sound like a shell exploding, a massive impact was delivered, and a portion of the fortress wall could not hold and collapsed.
A pot-bellied man, almost entirely covered in armor, stared at Dorban, who had not yet regained his balance from the impact, and began to slam a giant axe down toward his head.
“…Ho? And you are?”
“Seo Taewoon.”
“An obscure name. Well, no reason to care.”
The axe, possessing immense mass, drew a beautiful arc and split the spot where Taewoon had been standing exactly in half.
The strength of Dengkel, whom he had faced before, was considerable, but this man before him was on a different dimension.
Above all, he was responding perfectly to Taewoon’s further improved movements without showing any sign of struggle.
‘This is… a Knight……’
Only then did Taewoon realize. Why skilled individuals like Dengkel were mixed in with other soldiers, swinging weapons like consumables without much difference.
From the start, they were merely ‘usable’ troops; they were never beings at a level that could be called the Empire’s true strength.
“Kugh!”
It was no use. Every single strike was too heavy.
Furthermore, it felt as though the modern spearmanship, which would be unfamiliar to the people of this era, had no particular effect on him.
“I’ll help!”
“Kuaaaaagh!”
Dorban rushed in, aiming for a gap from behind, but uselessly, he was hit by the shaft of the axe and was sent flying, crashing into the wall’s passageway.
And Taewoon, as well, found that his elbow joints had stopped obeying him a while ago.
“It’s over. Farewell.”
As if announcing the end, the axe slammed down hard, reflecting the sunlight.
Watching that sight, Taewoon quietly summoned the Red Wax Mask and placed it over his face.
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It’s a decent story but I still feel like I’m watching someone participate in a no-holds-barred fight and struggling with his fist when he has a loaded gun hanging on his waist. Why? Because the Red Wax Mask feels so under utilized. We had a whole theater where two guys were sacrificing other people to activate the power of the mask, we also found out that offerings can be made in advance and activate the Level 3 Miracle later on. The MC’s been going through dungeon and a literal war, yet he’s still treating the mask like it’s a trump card. The dungeon monsters and these theater soldiers are like a bunch of unclaimed miracle stacks. Also, the mask comes with physical recovery… He can be a literal meat grinder in this war….