Chapter 110 — Echo of Salvation
On a low hill.
Calix takes in the precarious sight of Star Haven, the capital of the Astria Kingdom. The dawn sunlight bears down from behind him, but its rays cannot reach inside the walls.
The number of Corrupted lined up across the plains was double that of the Alliance Forces, and just as many had broken through the outer walls and poured inside.
In every direction, the enemy's forces were packed tight.
"……I wonder if we have co too late."
Barakh's question was the sa doubt shared by the other commanders. The bone-piercing cold permitted neither fla nor smoke, making it appear from the outside as though the city had already fallen.
But it had not yet crumbled.
Swoosh, clank!
A defensive siege weapon hurls a massive boulder.
Bang!!
"Kieek!"
Dozens of the Corrupted are crushed and sent flying. The only trebuchet still intact was a single one. But it was more than enough to announce the presence of the living.
Imdiately after, Calix ets the eyes of the Alliance commanders. The pre-battle briefing had long since concluded, yet he went over the key points once more.
With battle at hand, he dispensed with formalities.
"Belrnar, the infantry's advance must be deliberate. Given the nature of the Corrupted, once you get tangled up with them, pulling back will be no easy task."
"I haven't forgotten. Today, I shall conduct myself like a dwarf."
Beginning with the commander of Viale, he turns to face the desert warriors.
"Barakh, you ntioned you would be leading the Kalahim cavalry. Move and act on independent judgnt, but you must not miss the Mountain Rabbits' signals."
"I won't make the sa mistake twice."
"I trust you."
No further words were needed. As the two commanders returned to their respective positions, Calix also made his way toward the Mountain Rabbits.
Gregor, Basim, Hadiya, Volga, Zahira, and others — the veteran mbers stood at the fore. Sohow, a number that had nearly been fifty had dwindled to forty.
'Who will die today, and who will live.'
The sa was true for the new recruits. No matter how overwhelming a victory they won, farewells continued to pile up. Loss was sothing that never grew familiar no matter how many tis one experienced it.
This was unmistakably his fear.
Yet the night before, Calix had learned from Marik. It wasn't rely hollow comfort he had been given — he had received far more enlightennt in return.
'That is what it ans to be human.'
Neither good nor bad, yet capable of becoming either at any mont. The young man gazed toward the enemy lines, forcing himself to wear a composed expression.
The horde of the Corrupted was packed densely near the gates. The forces arrayed outside the outer walls alone numbered over twenty thousand. And they moved as though utterly devoid of emotion.
They did not flee from death — they threw themselves forward in accordance with orders, driven by instinct alone.
That, above all else, was the greatest difference between both sides. It was not a matter of emotion. Calix was reasoning rationally, with greater cold clarity than anyone.
'They are nothing like the Niboria Imperial Army. That is where I drive the wedge.'
The circumstances at hand were not unfavorable either. The powerful individuals had pushed deep inside the outer walls. The only one remaining outside was the Army Commander Midra. The battle had to be decided before the inner walls fell.
It was then.
In the mont he turned his head, Calix belatedly realized that everyone was staring only at his face. A range of emotions lingered in his comrades' eyes.
The one thing they had in common, however, was that they were wound far too tight.
'Captain……'
By instinct, he glances toward Royce — but the captain of the Mountain Rabbits simply returns a steady gaze. It seed he had no intention of stepping forward.
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
In that mont, Lunos nudges his rider forward. Moving along the front line, Calix draws thousands of cavalry behind him. Naturally, the gazes of the warriors converged as one. Eyes demanding an answer. A yearning that said — give us a reason worth risking our lives for.
'What are we fighting for?'
Calix had no certainty either. Argunts about protecting the continent, or vanquishing evil, would not reach them deep in their hearts.
In the midst of all this, steam billowed out from between the visors of the warriors' helms. Even drawing breath was being affected by the savage cold.
"……Comrades!"
And so, as he always had, he spoke plainly.
"We are afraid, for we know the weight of responsibility! But if it cos to swallowing hollow courage, I would sooner be a coward!"
Glimpses of his companions flash before him. Gregor was grinning from ear to ear. The dwarf Basim thumped his chest with a fist. Volga, standard in hand, was looking at Zahira. Vice-captain Marik stood quietly, lost in thought.
Shring.
As Calix drew his sword, the ring of tal pealed out from every direction in answer. At just that mont, the Core released its mana and lent force to his voice.
"Even if fear holds your feet in place, press forward on will alone! Do not stop! Rain soaks the earth, the sun blankets the land — we shall not halt for even a single mont!"
Slowly, Lunos's hooves begin to move. Riding along the front line, he ets the eyes of his mbers one by one. There was not a person among them brimming with courage. Yet small fragnts gathered together, becoming one complete whole.
The cold blanketing the battlefield remained, but they were ready to et it head-on.
"Cowards — pour forth in a torrent!! Surge forward and sweep them away!"
"Hiyaaaaah!"
A thundering war cry shakes the hill. A montum sharper than any blade. Even those who could not hear his words felt the explosive energy surge through them.
And then, in the brief stillness that followed—
Fweeeeee—!
Calix sounds the signal announcing the charge. Imdiately after, dozens of whistles rang out all at once.
The Echo of Salvation.
Then the horses' heads turn toward the enemy lines, and the warhorses ripple their muscles and strike their hooves forward. There is no longer anywhere to fall back. The Alliance cavalry, the Mountain Rabbits, and Calix himself—
Rose up.
* * *
Over three thousand warhorses shake the earth as they charge forward. Even for Calix, it was a charge on a scale he had never experienced. It was the most overwhelming gallop one could feel on solid ground.
Huff.
In an instant, the horses' breath spread out like clouds. Saliva flew from their muzzles as they cried out — and monts later, as the enemy lines drew close, the beasts' muscles shuddered.
They had sensed by instinct that it was ti to give everything they had.
[Reality Acceleration 3.1x — Maintaining]
[Combat Boost — Standby]
In that instant, the Neural Accelerator's alert chis. The output had already reached '3.1', yet Calix paid no mind to the figure itself.
Mana floods into the blade extended at his side. The hallmark of a peak-rank swordsman — Falling Fire — shot straight outward.
Lunos's eyes flood with crimson. The power of the Mana Stone spreads through his hooves into the ground, and an enormous mass of weight crested forward like a wave.
"Kyaaak!"
Countless Corrupted filled his field of vision. Mouths torn open to the ears. Black blood dripped viscously from between their fangs. No emotion whatsoever lingered in those eyes. Only pure, naked destructive desire flickered there.
And they were charging straight toward them.
'How vulnerable is infantry that has failed to form a tight formation against a cavalry charge?'
Calix knew the answer.
Crackkk!!
A thunderous roar fills the air. With the first collision, hundreds of the Corrupted were annihilated. Their bodies were scattered in the most literal sense. Crude spears and axes were no match for it.
Yet even as the front ranks crumbled, the enemies behind continued to flood forward without end.
Slash!
And so he grinds through them as well.
The blade drinks blood without pause. With divinity infused into the Falling Fire, the wicked things dared not resist. The weaker ones were cut down at the neck in a single stroke; attacks aid at the horse were deflected and turned away at the tip of the blade.
Since there were those following behind him, there was no need to finish each one off individually. In the wake of the Mountain Rabbits' passage, only blood, bone, and mud remained.
Even through all of this, the Corrupted never retreated. They charged in a mass — and because of that, suffered all the greater a loss.
Yet Calix did not let himself grow excited.
'Right now, the priority is to press through in a continuous chain.'
He shatters the enemy, cuts through them, and outright crushes them, all while absorbing the flow of the battlefield one detail at a ti. Far off in the distance, a massive silhouette ca into view. A giant standing well over four ters tall.
Crack!
It trampled its own allies to death without a care. When it hurled a Corrupted through the air one after another, a rider went flying. The sound of snapping bones erupted like a thunderclap. And beyond that, throughout the battlefield, unmistakable auras of power could be felt.
Mid-tier individuals.
Worth facing in battle, but there was no need to indulge them.
"We veer right!!"
The Alliance cavalry instantly split into two prongs. The Kalahim cavalry broke left; the Mountain Rabbits went the other way.
The situation was unlike facing the Niboria Imperial Army. To put it more precisely, it was closer to the opposite. Back then, they had struck the enemy's head to bring the body down.
But now, Calix was—
'I cut off the hands and feet first. Cut and cut again, until only the head remains!'
He intended to draw them into a massive lee.
***
The Mountain Rabbits' first breakthrough carved the enemy forces into great fragnts. Like a hoe splitting open a field. At the end of it, the riders punched clear through the enemy line.
"Form up!"
"Maintain speed!"
Both people and beasts alike drew ragged breaths. Not only the living creatures, but the Mana Stones fitted into the barding had spent their strength. It would take a considerable amount of ti before they could be used again.
Even so, the hooves never stopped.
"Rear — forty paces!"
"Enemy cavalry!"
With the Corrupted in pursuit from behind, so mounted on wolves had closed tightly onto the Mountain Rabbits' rear.
Swish.
Calix imdiately sends a hand signal, and the cavalry splits once again into two groups. Those led by Royce swung wide to the left, while the main body drew the enemy cavalry in and broke away in a straight line.
A mont of chaos.
And then imdiately after, the separated allies looped back and bit the wolf cavalry from behind.
Crunch, crash!
Sword light flashes, an enemy rider falls, and blood splatters beneath the hooves. But Calix had already changed direction to target the enemy moving on foot.
"We drive straight back in!"
There was no telling when the enemies who had entered the outer walls would return. In other words, ti was on the enemy's side. Mana from the Core was poured in without reserve.
Enemies whose bodies swelled as if about to burst were crushed flat with a pressure field; those at a fair distance were t reflexively with a sweep of the blade.
Crack!!
In the mont a mass of force shot from the tip of the blade, the leader of the Corrupted burst apart without a single word. It was not a self-detonation — the impact point was the epicenter, and from there the body was torn as if being flayed apart.
Even as Calix marveled inwardly, he postpones unraveling the principle behind it for later. There was sothing far more pressing at hand.
"Airien!!"
The elven woman draws her bow without a word. The string is pulled taut, and with a sharp twang, a blazing arrowhead split through the air.
Thwooooosh.
An arrow — a weapon of an older age — passes above the heads of the Corrupted. A giant with a grotesquely distorted face had been charging toward them when it felt sothing graze its ear and stopped dead. But it left behind only a scorched sll. The fire arrow had already reached its destination.
Landing in the middle of a pitched battle made it all but impossible to look up at the sky — and so she had fired with the intention of just barely missing her allies. Any human using a Neural Accelerator would never be caught by a re arrow.
Clang!
"……Turn the horses! You've pushed in far too deep!"
With that, she delivered a warning to the desert commander on the far side of the battlefield — Barakh. The first fire arrow had been to alert him; the ones that flew in rapid succession traced the path he needed to take.
The Kalahim cavalry promptly changed direction and pulled out.
With that, a brief silence drifts around Calix. From the back of his hand, the blood of his enemies dripped steadily. The sll of tal and the sounds of shrieking clashed against his senses. His field of vision seed to narrow — yet his concentration grew all the sharper.
Crackle!
And then, just as quickly — as the Mountain Rabbits slipped past the very feet of the giant, a heap of earth and fragnts of the Corrupted's body erupted directly beside them.
Volga clenches his teeth before he even realizes it. Fear, rage, and resolution were painted across his face all in the sa instant. His mind felt as though it would shatter from the razor-thin tightrope they walked.
But that was Calix's way. It was what the Mountain Rabbits believed in. To throw themselves into the most dangerous place of all, and turn the impossible into reality.
And then, they charged into the enemy once more. They seize the enemy's attention and tear open the battle line. Before the horses' stamina could run dry, they carved the enemy into groups — like a cook breaking down raw ingredients.
They drag the army that has forgotten the fear of death outward, slice it apart, stretch it long and thin—
"All forces— shields up!!"
"Kieeeeeek!!"
Bang!
And feed it neatly into the waiting mouth of the nearby infantry.
They devour fear and chaos with swift, relentless movent. The strength of cavalry lay precisely in this rhythm. And in the course of it all, the Mountain Rabbits ca to understand just how much stronger they had beco.
A young man who has reached the peak-rank blazes the trail. Behind him, Gregor, Royce, Marik, and Airien — four upper-rank swordsn were pouring out Falling Fire in an unbroken stream.
Their bodies heaved from the physical strain, but there was almost no mont that was lethally dangerous. The old joke — 'are we not a knightly order ourselves' — could no longer be made.
But no one among the Mountain Rabbits laughed.
Even as the Alliance main force closed in to cut the Corrupted down, and the tide of battle was turning decisively in their favor, they caught their breath and looked out past the battlefield.
"Calix."
"……Yes."
"There's sothing out there."
At that mont, the old man bearing a shield called his na. 'Indomitable Gregor' had awakened. The crisis pricking at his instincts had brought him back to full alertness.
And then—
[Kh-hh-hh.]
It laughed.
Low and unpleasant — like a crude imitation of a human voice.
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