Chapter 73 - Half, and Half (1)

"S-Stab them!"

Someone shouted like a scream. It was not the voice of the spearmen's officer. However, the soldiers, who were just as terrified as the scream, did not have the reason left to distinguish whose voice it was.

The spearmen spasmodically thrust their spears.

"Agh!"

The heavy armored infantry who had somehow managed to block the Orc Warriors' charge screamed as they were struck in the back by their allies' spears. At the same time, the Orc Warriors slammed down on their shields once again.

The vaguely maintained battle line of the allied forces collapsed in an instant.

"All knights to the front!"

Just then, someone shouted.

A clear voice distinctly different from the terrified screams, it was the Second Prince, Maximilian.

A step late, the knights joined the battle. Their swords, brimming with radiance, cut down the Orc Warriors. Pushing back the battle line that had been pushed in, they filled the spots of the heavy armored infantry.

"These damn bastards!"

Bernardo Eli, who had just sliced an Orc Warrior's neck, spat.

"Leave the front to the knights and let's clear out the rear!"

The female knight, Arwen Kirgayen, shouted. The Orc Warrior whose chest was pierced by her sword flailed its entire body.

SQUELCH.

Twisting and pulling out her sword, she let out a lion's roar.

"Take care of the fallen Orcs on your own!"

Jolted awake by the majestic voice, the soldiers thrust their spears into the bodies of the Orc Warriors collapsed on the ground.

Arwen's gaze turned a ways forward.

Thanks to the knights filling the spots instead of the heavy armored infantry, they were able to form the battle line again, but the problem was the Orc Warriors who had already jumped into the middle of the camp.

In a short time, quite a few Orcs had dug in between the soldiers. Because of the Orcs running amok like that, the soldiers at the front could not properly support the knights as they were busy paying attention to their rear.

No matter how outstanding a knight was, if they were struck by an axe their head would split open, and if they were pierced by a spear their lungs and organs would tear. They had to clear out the rear as quickly as possible so that the heavy armored infantry could properly back up the knights from behind.

Arwen busily swung her sword.

She focused on targeting the Orc Warriors' lower bodies. Because ordinary soldiers would be able to handle an Orc Warrior with severed legs.

She swept around in all directions and severed the Orc Warriors' legs.

Bernardo Eli followed her around and similarly attacked the Orcs' lower bodies.

The Orcs whose legs were severed screamed before being hacked to pieces by the soldiers' spears and swords.

At the fishy smell of blood digging into his nose, Bernardo spat out a curse.

"The smell of blood! The smell of piss! The damn smell of corpses!"

An Orc's hand axe flew toward the back of Bernardo Eli's head, whose mouth had been running non-stop.

"Watch your head!"

With a *CLANG*, the axe bounced off Arwen's sword.

"Yikes! Thanks!"

Rolling on the ground, Bernardo's sword severed the leg of an Orc Warrior who had been about to strike the female knight's back.

"No need for thanks..."

SLASH.

Bernardo, who had been blabbing, twisted his waist at a chilling aura. An Orc Warrior gripping a short spear had its neck slashed by Arwen's sword and tumbled onto its back.

"What did you say?"

Wiping the blood off her face, Arwen asked.

"Nothing."

Bernardo gripped his sword with an awkward face.

Bernardo, who had been going around slicing Orc Warriors' legs for a good while, shouted.

"Seriously! Making only us suffer!"

Grumble, grumble. He constantly spat out complaints directed at someone.

"Damn Pr..."

SWISH.

A vivid blue sword light brushed past Bernardo's cheek.

"Watch your mouth."

Seeing Arwen's cold eyes, Bernardo shut his mouth.

"Man, you care for him so terribly much."

However, it wasn't long before his mouth started blabbing again. His face looked like a petulant little boy once more.

"God damn it!"

At the same time, the very person Bernardo was cursing at for lacking virtue and making only them suffer was resting in an abandoned fortress somewhere in the southern part of the battlefield.

* * *

Someone tapped my shoulder.

"Hmm?"

Wondering what insolent bastard dared to strike the Prince's shoulder like this, I turned around to see a woman with a green cloak pulled down tight.

The Elf who had opened a path for me and the knights as we retreated from the failed operation; she was one of the nineteen Sword Maidens of the Mistletoe Clan's Sword Maiden Corps, whom Sigrun had attached to me.

Was her name Gunne?

"What is it?"

When I asked her business, Gunne stretched both hands forward and moved them busily.

It was the Elves' sign language.

I ended up frowning without realizing it.

It was because I was already getting annoyed at having to interpret the hard-to-understand sign language again.

However, I didn't get angry at Gunne.

Her tongue had been cut out, so she couldn't speak. And the one who cut that tongue out was Sigrun.

She stayed by my side due to the needs of myself and the Elder High Elf, but her master was, unfortunately, a flawed personality who couldn't even trust her own subordinates.

And that flawed personality had the power to ruin other people's lives.

This time, what had been ruined in such a way were the Sword Maidens' tongues.

Sigrun, that lunatic Elf, had cut out her subordinates' tongues out of fear that the Sword Maidens might steal my poem first.

It was a tragedy created by a true harmony of obsession, monopoly, and wickedness.

Thanks to that, the ones who became pitiful were the Sword Maidens, and the one who became exhausted was me.

"South? Enemy? Hmm... Warrior? No, battle?"

Having barely managed to interpret her sign language, I furrowed my brow.

『Just now. Contact.』

Gunne's hands moved busily.

『Right behind, different, Orc.』

And my eyes and mind also became busy in tandem.

She stood the edge of her hand up and waved it a couple of times.

This meant 『War』.

CLASP.

That gesture of bringing both hands together and bowing her head as if praying meant 『Monarch』 or 『King』.

"War... Lord?"

And when those two words were combined, it became the name of that bastard who wouldn't satisfy me even if I ground him up and drank him.

Warlord. The King of Orcs who had brought down Winter Castle had almost reached the defensive line at the Raintes River.

"Everyone, pack up!"

The expressions of the Rangers and knights, who had been lounging freely and resting nearby, changed.

Their eyes asked me a question. I gave them a nod.

A vivid blue gleam erupted from the knights' eyes. A flash of fire ignited in the Rangers' eyes.

"If we catch him, we'll chop him into pieces and scatter them over Winter Castle."

"Let's stuff his head and hang it on the castle gates."

The knights said, grinding their teeth.

"His eyeballs are my share."

The leader of the Black Lancers, with one eye hollowed out, suddenly chimed in.

Seeing the knights completely disregarding their past defeat, I said inwardly that things would go their way.

I would make it so.

Someone might ask me.

Saying that a guy who barely managed to keep his life even while fighting alongside a knight with four rings is all talk.

They wouldn't be wrong.

It was true that I was defeated, and it was also true that I barely survived after almost becoming a cripple, my insides mangled by the Warlord's Fighting Spirit.

However, that didn't mean my words were a vain resolution.

The previous me considered the Warlord to be an entity I had to fight and defeat.

I had intended to fight fairly, overcome him, and finally obtain a status equal to his.

That was an extremely fair and upright thought process, and a mindset stemming from the half of my life spent as a Divine Sword.

Thinking about it now, how pathetic it was.

My essence was not a Divine Sword, but a Demonic sword.

My goal was not to fight and win, but the annihilation of the enemy.

I would not fight and defeat the Warlord to take his status.

I would kill him and extort that status.

I would tan his hide to make armor and grind his bones to make a sword.

I would strip away the status and everything he possessed and take them as spoils of war.

Yes. So to speak, this was a hunt.

"Revenge for the Commander!"

"For the reclamation of Winter Castle!"

"Death to the Orcs!"

I looked at the knights, whose overflowing fighting spirit was even flashing with madness.

The herding had just come to an end, too.

Both the prey and the hunters were all ready.

All that remained was to slit the prey's throat.

"Move out!"

At my words, the men of Winter Castle let out a battle cry.

* * *

Maximilian twitched his brow.

"The casualties suffered over the past week alone are enough to dismantle an entire legion. Eight hundred and twenty-three soldiers have died in battle, and the number of wounded is well over double that."

"We must gather more troops. At this rate, we cannot maintain the defensive line."

The staff officers, who just a short while ago had claimed they could easily fend off mere Orcs even if their numbers doubled, were now unanimously shouting for the need for reinforcements.

It was a strange feeling.

He felt so deeply sorrowful for the fallen that it felt like a large boulder was sitting in his chest. But at the same time, a bizarre sense of vindication raised its head.

"We must send a messenger to The Capital to request additional deployment of the Central Army, and make the Central region families who have not yet participated join the war even now!"

The reinforcements they so desperately wished for were the very things the soldiers of Winter Castle had eagerly awaited; watching the fear and despair starting to spread spot by spot, his mouth itched to speak.

To say that the soldiers of Winter Castle had faced an enemy more than double this size, fighting for months with a force equivalent to half the troops gathered here.

"The knights' fatigue has reached its limit. Rest is desperately needed. We need troops to relieve them."

To say that the Iron Lions, the knights of Winter, and the knights of the Black Lancers had also desperately wanted rest just as much. That they had to fight while enduring the agonizing pain of their stomachs tearing apart from depleted mana, without any troops to relieve them.

"The soldiers' morale has dropped. No one is willing to stand in the battle line."

The Rangers' faces came to mind. The faces of those who had stood their ground on the walls, completely frozen from the cold, their faces all cracked and split. The sight of those stubborn fools who hadn't stepped down from the walls since the battle began flashed before his eyes.

How truly pathetic was this?

It had only been a week. Only seven days had passed since the battle began. Yet they were acting like nonbelievers facing the apocalypse.

"If we had sent support to Winter Castle back then..."

Someone mentioned Winter Castle. The expressions of the nobles looking at a certain lord, who covered his mouth in shock before he could even finish his sentence, were as cold as ice.

To them, Winter Castle was like a reverse scale.

A symbol reminding them of an irreversible mistake, and the starting point of the disaster they brought upon themselves. At the same time, it was a brand stamped on the foreheads of fools.

To mention Winter Castle was to drag out the truth they had tried so hard to look away from.

The disaster that came to the Central region, that was a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster.

But what could they do? The real disaster hadn't even started yet.

"Early this morning, an unusual aura was sensed across the river at a distance of one or two days."

The Silver Lion, Count Richter Liechtein, who had never once attended a meeting until now, suddenly opened his mouth.

"If it's an unusual aura..."

"It was a presence that could only be exuded by a knight of at least four rings, maybe more."

The nobles asked the Count for details with pale faces. However, instead of answering, the Count stared intently at the Second Prince.

It was a look that seemed to ask, didn't he know what that was?

Maximilian let out a heavy breath.

"Warlord, it seems the King of Orcs has finally arrived here."

A voice as heavily sunken as his breath.

"That is the monster who defeated the previous Count Ballorhard."

At those words, the atmosphere in the meeting hall froze over.

Warlord.

A name they had already heard several times, yet a disaster whose true form no one had acknowledged, had loomed right before their noses.

"B-But, still, it's such a relief that Count Liechtein is here."

One of the nobles said, forcing a calm smile.

"I have never crossed swords with the previous Count Ballorhard, but seeing him from afar, he was definitely not beneath me."

However, that forcefully fabricated hope crumbled away far too vainly in the face of the truth spat out by the old knight.

It meant that if the previous Count Ballorhard couldn't do it, he himself wouldn't be able to either.

"We must request support from the kingdom immediately."

The Commander said. Requesting support again when they had already requested troop reinforcements; the nobles could instantly realize what the support the Commander was talking about meant.

Although he didn't mention it directly out of consideration for the person in question's face, it meant that if one Silver Lion wasn't enough, they would request one more.

The nobles shut their mouths. They all knew.

The fact that even if they requested the support of a Silver Lion from The Capital right now, he wouldn't be able to make it in time.

Disaster was right around the corner, yet the hope to stop it was so far away that it was out of reach.

It was as if a monster called silence had come and swallowed the tent whole. Everyone kept their mouths shut.

"I have a method."

At that moment, someone's voice leaked out, piercing through the monster's belly.

It was the voice of the Second Prince, Maximilian.

"If he happens to appear, Count Liechtein, please face him."

Since the previous Count Ballorhard had already fallen to him, depending on how one heard it, the Prince's words could sound like an order to hold him off even if it meant dying.

"If Your Highness says so."

However, the Count's response was merely nonchalant.

Whether he was confident he wouldn't die, whether his loyalty to the royal family transcended even death, or whether he was just personally detached from death, Maximilian couldn't tell.

However, if there was one thing he was certain of,

"I'm not telling you to fight a duel to the death."

It was only the fact that his request would never exceed the Count's abilities.

"You literally just have to hold him down."

The Count's eyes shone.

"Sounds like you're telling me to buy time. Do you happen to have another plan?"

Maximilian nodded.

"I do."

"May I ask what that is?"

The Commander interjected, lighting up with joy.

"There are others who will face the Warlord."

At Maximilian's words, the nobles cheered.

However, that was only for a moment, and one of the nobles asked cautiously.

"If there are such people, why didn't they catch the King of Orcs sooner?"

The excited atmosphere instantly sank. It seemed they also thought the question was valid.

At that question, Maximilian made a thoughtful face.

["It's dangerous! Didn't you almost suffer a terrible fate once already!"]

He recalled the conversation he had with his older brother before leaving.

["I should have fought my way from the start, but I paid dearly for trying to do a ridiculous imitation."]

He had asked again at those incomprehensible words. His brother's explanation for that was...

["It means I couldn't do it back then, but now I can."]

It was equally confusing.

But he couldn't say that to them, so after pondering, Maximilian answered.

"It is a sword that could not be used back then, but can be used now."

He couldn't tell them everything anyway. The nobles' distrust of his older brother was so blind that it made even the truth seem like a lie.

It was better to just vaguely gloss over it like now.

"Were there perhaps outstanding hermits in the North?"

Fortunately, the nobles managed to come up with an answer that they themselves could accept.

"Hermits..."

To Maximilian, the noble's deduction sounded quite plausible.

If someone with ability hiding their true form and not revealing themselves was a hermit,

Then his older brother was definitely a hermit.