Chapter 83 - Mamorota

The wolves’ cries, their pounding feet, and the shouts of the Gray Wolf Corps swelled in an instant. Figures that had looked no bigger than beans were now large enough to make out clearly.

The earth trembled. With their feet planted on it, Dong Bongsu and the mercenaries shook as well. Tension shuddered through them all.

‘They’re stronger than the Northern Ghosts.’

That was clearer now.

Every member of the Gray Wolf Corps was an elite of the highest caliber. The mercenaries could not handle them. In the worst case, everyone here except him might be slaughtered before Lee Jasong’s main army arrived to help.

How long had it been since he had last grumbled so pointlessly?

Dong Bongsu actually welcomed it.

The stronger the enemy, the more experience he stood to gain.

Dong Bongsu flew forward as lightly as a soaring hawk.

SHING!

WOOF! WOOF-WOOF!

A single, simple horizontal slash cut in half the two riders at the very front of the enemy’s left flank. The two gray wolves beneath them were still alive, of course. Unaware that their masters had died, they kept running. The severed upper and lower halves of the riders’ bodies parted naturally. Though bone, flesh, and skin no longer held their upper bodies in place, momentum carried them onward. Organs and entrails spilled out, scattering grotesquely through the air.

At last, the mercenaries and the Gray Wolf Corps collided. As expected—no, even more than expected—the Gray Wolf Corps was strong.

No one except Dong Bongsu could properly withstand their attacks.

Their charge had given them momentum, but even allowing for that, the two sides had never been a match. A single clash laid bare the gulf between them.

A mercenary had his head torn off in a gray wolf’s jaws. A catapult crewman was skewered through the flank by a rider’s spear. A soldier was pulped by Mamorota’s iron staff.

They were being ravaged. To borrow the mercenaries’ crude way of putting it, the Gray Wolf Corps, moving as one with their gray wolves...

Was raping them.

THUD-THUD-THUD! THWACK!

A few breaths passed.

“Aaargh! Ugh! Gah!”

Hundreds were dead.

Was this what made them Northern Yuan’s mightiest fighting force? The Gray Wolf Corps was terrifying. Unlike grazing animals such as horses and camels, the gray wolves moved with such springy agility that the mercenaries’ attacks could not touch them. Dong Bongsu had ordered every mercenary to prepare a spear in case cavalry attacked, but even that did little good. Horses would have been unable to overcome the momentum of their charge and impaled themselves on those spears. The gray wolves, however, evaded every spear with an easy change of direction or a crouch.

Moreover, each wolf rider was an expert in their own right, multiplying the pressure on the mercenaries.

SWISH! CLANG!

“Aaagh!”

Utter disarray.

What other words were needed? Mercenaries and catapult crewmen scattered in every direction, swept away. Some tried to flee, but even that proved difficult. The Gray Wolf Corps was, quite literally, a fighting force mounted on wolves. The mercenaries could never escape them with their paltry lightness arts.

THWACK! THWACK! FWOOSH!

Sections of the battle line collapsed in an instant.

Then the trebuchets in the front rank were destroyed. Some were smashed by iron staffs; others burned.

The mercenaries held out bravely, but they were no match.

Even amid the chaos, Dong Bongsu steadily cut down the riders one by one.

The Vagabond Sword moved once. Two corpses appeared.

Chopped into pieces.

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

[The player has successfully landed 5 consecutive slashes. All stats have increased by 5%.]

[6, 7, 8, 9, 10]

It did not take long to activate [Consecutive Slash Lv.2].

Not a single member of the Gray Wolf Corps could stop Dong Bongsu.

THWACK! SLASH!

Another rider and wolf met their end, gushing blood, brains, and entrails.

In that time, dozens more mercenaries and hundreds more whirlwind-catapult crewmen died. The whirlwind-catapult units had contained no combat troops to begin with, making it all the harder for them to withstand the Gray Wolf Corps. At best, the shield-bearers occasionally managed to defend themselves.

Naturally, the trebuchets they guarded fell one after another as well, burning or being smashed to splinters by iron maces.

Even so, Dong Bongsu continued to hold his position and fend off the enemy.

Dong Bongsu, what will you do if all the trebuchets are destroyed...?

‘If they’re all destroyed...?’

What else? He could simply build them again.

It happened at the very moment that thought crossed his mind.

Far away, flames shot up from the mountain slopes stretching to either side of Guishui Fortress.

As though mocking Dong Bongsu’s thoughts, Timur Khan had timed the setting of the forest fires perfectly.

It was autumn on the arid steppes.

Even without a strong wind, the flames quickly spread across the entire mountain.

Even on Dong Bongsu’s usually expressionless face, the faintest smile appeared and spread.

First a fighting force mounted on wolves, and now setting the mountains ablaze.

His opponent stayed one step ahead, almost as if to mock him. Dong Bongsu loved it. He might die because of this, but at least he was enjoying this very moment.

Facing predators...

Had always been something he enjoyed.

Dong Bongsu lowered his eyes indifferently and moved his sword mechanically.

At the same time, Mamorota’s iron staff was moving savagely, reducing mercenaries to bloody pulp.

Without clashing with each other, the two rapidly disposed of their respective opponents. But Dong Bongsu was at a tremendous disadvantage.

He was alone, while Mamorota was not the only member of the Gray Wolf Corps getting his fill of blood.

Dong Bongsu could not manage it alone. Every member of the Gray Wolf Corps was an elite worth a hundred men, and the mercenaries fell short of them. That went without saying for the whirlwind-catapult crewmen and the soldiers carrying corpses. They were not entirely hopeless, but compared with the Gray Wolf Corps, they were no more than a rabble.

In the end, even the rear-rank trebuchets could not hold out and came crashing down one after another. Fewer than five remained now, all of them near Dong Bongsu.

Despite their overwhelming numerical advantage, the mercenaries and catapult crewmen found themselves surrounded by the Gray Wolf Corps instead. The riders circled them, slaughtering the allied troops.

“Kill that bastard! Kill him, and it’s over!”

After this continued a little longer, Dong Bongsu was finally cut off from the other allied troops. Inevitably, he too was surrounded by the Gray Wolf Corps.

Timur Khan’s plan had worked perfectly. By sending out the Gray Wolf Corps, he had destroyed nearly all the counterweight trebuchets without even opening the fortress gates. A few remained, but it was only a matter of time before they were all destroyed.

SWISH. SWISH.

Dong Bongsu cut down another two riders. At that moment, several others swung their iron maces at a trebuchet.

Dong Bongsu had only one body, two hands, and two feet. His enemies numbered in the hundreds, with thousands of hands and feet between them. He could not stop them.

He raced back and forth, but he was hopelessly outnumbered.

Another trebuchet collapsed.

Judging Dong Bongsu too difficult to kill outright, the enemy was concentrating on destroying the trebuchets.

The battle raged fiercely until, at last, Lee Jasong’s main army, which had gone to the Yellow River, appeared in the distance.

‘If I can just hold out a little longer...’

Might he just barely save one trebuchet?

What could he do with only one?

That was a question for later.

‘For now, protect it.’

Dong Bongsu’s sword silently took off another gray wolf’s head. A wolf was no different from a human in that regard. Beneath his sword, it departed for the Yellow Springs without even letting out a dying cry.

THUD. CRASH.

At the same time, Mamorota’s iron mace brought down the thirty-first trebuchet. Riders carrying torches immediately set it alight. Then, watching Lee Jasong’s main army approach through a distant cloud of dust, he spoke.

“We’re out of time. Finish this quickly and return to the fortress!”

Yet Dong Bongsu continued stubbornly to hold the Gray Wolf Corps at bay. Whatever anyone elsewhere might think, everyone here felt he was a warrior who could stand against ten thousand men.

Mamorota had not really intended to intervene personally. He knew his men would handle things well enough, and annihilating the enemy was not their objective.

They had only one objective.

The complete destruction of the counterweight trebuchets.

Yet the sight of Dong Bongsu fighting had kindled his fighting spirit.

‘How can he move like that?’

He had spent decades on the battlefield, encountering and cutting down just as many commanders. Most had been Han Chinese.

Their swordsmanship had invariably been ornate and steeped in formalities. To put it kindly, it was beautiful. To put it harshly, it was rigid swordsmanship trapped within forms and moves—no, swordsmanship consisting of nothing but formalities. In short, one might call it dead swordsmanship.

But this man was different. Very, very different. Different enough that Mamorota almost wanted to call it wrong.

There seemed to be forms and patterns to his movements, yet there were none. And there was not a single unnecessary motion among them. When he thrust, he did nothing but thrust; when he cut, he did nothing but cut. It sounded easy, but it was a level few could readily attain.

It was not a level one could reach simply by wielding a sword for a long time.

“Is he... attacking the flaws?”

Somehow, each movement had a ‘reason.’ Though it was unclear when the sword first extended, by the end it invariably reached a definite ‘conclusion.’

It thrust or cut precisely at the opponent’s opening.

Mamorota could not do that. No, no one in Northern Yuan could do that. It was not a question of whether they could win.

It was a question of whether they could do it at all.

And that thought developed into a consideration of whether he could win.

But...

‘Do I even have time to fight him?’

Mamorota’s gaze briefly shifted to Lee Jasong’s main army. The men looked no bigger than mosquitoes’ eyes. They still had a long way to go before reaching this place. He turned back to Dong Bongsu.

He shook off the blood on his body and loosened up.

“Enough time to tear off a morsel or two of meat, I reckon.”

GRRR!