Chapter 88 - Nightmare on the Battlefield (1)

Meanwhile, the Gray Wolf Corps’ numbers were plummeting. Their annihilation was now close at hand.

'Without Kaiji, it will be difficult to build a new Gray Wolf Corps.'

That was the extent of Timur Khan’s reaction to this battle. He had already forgotten the sacrifice he himself had forced upon them. What troubled him more was that he could no longer rebuild the Gray Wolf Corps.

More precisely, it was Kaiji’s death he regretted. Nothing more. With Kaiji, a great gray wolf, he had been able to command the untamable wild gray wolves with ease.

Kaiji was dead, and his corpse would be lying over there beside Mamorota...!?

Thinking of Kaiji and Mamorota’s final moments, Timur Khan glanced once more toward the distant southeast, where Dong Bongsu was. But his head, turned for what should have been a fleeting glance, did not turn back. It could not.

Something gray was flying toward him!

'Kaiji?'

Preposterous. How could a dead beast be coming here? And flying, at that?

Yet that very impossibility was unfolding before his eyes.

Kaiji was flying toward Guishui Fortress.

And on his back!

Dong Bongsu was riding him.

"How...?"

Even as he spoke, they drew steadily closer.

The ballistae were aimed at Lee Jasong’s main army, making it difficult to fire at Kaiji. Only the archers swiftly turned and loosed their arrows at Kaiji and Dong Bongsu. Timur Khan did not know how they were flying, or how Dong Bongsu had managed to tame Kaiji, but surely they could not evade this downpour of arrows.

Predictions did not always prove correct, however. Especially once things went awry, as they had now, the world had a way of tangling them further.

Dong Bongsu, who had been pressed flat against Kaiji’s back, straightened and thrust a hand forward. Something black appeared in it.

A corpse! Another monster, infected by the black monster!

Dong Bongsu hurled it toward the incoming arrows. Then he threw another. And another.

Corpses kept appearing from who knew where. Taking the arrows in place of Dong Bongsu and Kaiji, they hurtled toward the walls.

Timur Khan drew his sword and flung it at a corpse. But Dong Bongsu had thrown far more than one or two. Growing desperate, he seized nearby archers and crossbowmen who were firing and hurled them into the path of the incoming bodies.

THUD. THUD-THUD.

Dull impacts rang out as living bodies collided with dead ones. Then the living, too, fell below the walls and became corpses.

Right now, the deaths of a few soldiers meant nothing to Timur Khan. Whatever it took, he had to keep even a single black corpse from crossing the walls. He had abandoned Mamorota and the Gray Wolf Corps to stop those things. What were a few archers compared to them?

In the end, he stopped every corpse. But Dong Bongsu and Kaiji were still flying toward him. He had to knock them out of the air.

WHOOSH.

Timur Khan leaped toward Dong Bongsu, who was hurtling into the fortress at tremendous speed. Now he needed only to kill the man and kick him back outside the walls. Then it would all be over.

Not for an instant did he imagine he might fail. His opponent might have defeated Mamorota, but he was certain the man could not stop his sword. On this battlefield, only the black monster posed a threat to him.

Could an arrow released from a bowstring have flown any faster?

Timur Khan shot toward Dong Bongsu and Kaiji with terrifying speed. He stretched both arms down as far as possible to minimize air resistance. Then, as he rose close enough to see Kaiji’s belly before him, he swung his lowered arms upward with all his strength.

In another moment, his sword tip would pierce Kaiji’s belly, tear through his entrails, and emerge through his back to impale Dong Bongsu through the crotch. That would settle this affair.

But just as his sword was about to touch Kaiji’s belly—

Suddenly!

Kaiji vanished! And so did Dong Bongsu.

His sword cut futilely through empty air, and his body followed it, soaring even farther upward. Timur Khan hastily somersaulted in an attempt to check his momentum, but the force of his ascent and his upward sword stroke was so great that he could not help rising several more jang.

Meanwhile, Dong Bongsu landed safely atop the wall and slaughtered archers and crossbowmen indiscriminately. What was remarkable was how obediently Kaiji followed him, as though Dong Bongsu had always been his master.

His Man-Wolf Killing Method looked far more accomplished than Mamorota’s, despite the latter’s years of training. And it truly was.

Kaiji bit to death any nomad soldier who stood in Dong Bongsu’s way. Meanwhile, Dong Bongsu pulled out black corpses and hurled them into the fortress.

Only then did Timur Khan regain his balance and descend using the Thousand-Catty Weight technique. He witnessed the entire scene. After all his efforts...

The black monster had finally flooded into Guishui Fortress.

Killing archers and crossbowmen as he went, Dong Bongsu crossed the wall and leaped into the fortress. He moved from place to place, spilling corpses throughout Guishui.

Mamorota had not been the only outstanding general under Timur Khan. Several others barred Dong Bongsu’s way, but he did not bother fighting them himself. If he wasted time on them and found himself surrounded inside Guishui Fortress, he would have no way out. Riding Kaiji, he moved like the wind, seeking gaps to slip through.

It was unlike Dong Bongsu, yet entirely like him as well. He killed none of them, saving them for later.

"The corpses! Clear away the corpses!"

Timur Khan followed after Dong Bongsu, shouting like a madman.

Dong Bongsu took particular care to avoid Timur Khan. The reason was simple. From the moment he first approached the wall, Spirit Eye had been warning him to stay away from that man.

Still, he raced back and forth, determined to throw every corpse into Guishui Fortress. No one except Timur Khan could readily stop him. And Movement Art, which became available once every five minutes, made him even harder to catch.

Meanwhile, with Timur Khan gone from the walls, Lee Jasong’s main army tightened its encirclement and attacked Guishui Fortress directly. They might lack a battering ram, but having the gates under attack was never a good thing. Several ladders had already been set against the walls, too. Unless they were pushed over, the enemy might find a way inside.

'At this rate, one loach may do more than muddy the water. It could ruin the entire rice paddy.'

In the end, Timur Khan stopped pursuing Dong Bongsu and returned to the walls.

After that, Dong Bongsu had a much easier time scattering corpses in every direction before leaving Guishui Fortress at his leisure. Getting in had been difficult, but getting out was far easier. All he did to escape was climb a relatively quiet stretch of wall and leap outside.

And so Dong Bongsu’s busy day came to an end, as did Timur Khan’s nightmare of a day.

Dong Bongsu’s delivery of his “corpse biochemical bombs” into Guishui Fortress brought a dramatic reversal.

While the spread of plague slowed drastically in Lee Jasong’s camp after its relocation to the Yellow River, the disease rapidly ran rampant in Guishui Fortress, where the wells inside were the only source of water.

In particular, Dong Bongsu had thrown corpses into those wells, greatly accelerating the spread of infection. No human could live without drinking water. Every well was contaminated, but they could not simply stop drinking.

Even after that day, Dong Bongsu frequently flew into Guishui Fortress, tossed in more “newly produced” biochemical weapons, and disappeared. He killed dozens of nomad soldiers along the way as an added bonus.

Time passed, until even Timur Khan could hold out no longer. The war’s finale was fast approaching.

Far from the camp, Dong Bongsu sat alone with Kaiji atop the throwing arm.

He still wore tattered clothes, with the Vagabond Sword that had all but become his trademark resting at an angle across his shoulder. His indifferent eyes had not changed in the slightest, yet something about him spoke of strain.

"I really can’t hold out much longer now..."

Dong Bongsu’s words came in a low murmur. His mind and body were as weary as his voice was subdued.

The reason was that [Status Ailment: Plague] had set in.

In truth, the plague had been eating away at him for quite some time. The real reason he had been slipping in and out of Guishui Fortress every night, changing his point of entry each time, was to use [Blood Drain]. Unless he replenished his dwindling HP that way, he felt he would soon die.

But now, even that no longer seemed enough to keep him going. The HP he lost to the plague was outstripping what he could recover by killing enemies.

The enemy was exhausted. Lee Jasong’s main army was exhausted. Dong Bongsu was exhausted, too. Even so, he was still preparing for what came next.

And Timur Khan would likewise be preparing for the end. Dong Bongsu knew exactly what Timur Khan was waiting for, even in a situation where he could not safely drink water.

It was nearly time for them to arrive. Once they came, Timur Khan would open the gates for the decisive battle.

How much more time passed?

THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD.

"Finally here?"

Far to the southeast, a host of riders too numerous to count appeared amid clouds of dust. They were Salakat’s twenty thousand nomad cavalrymen, the force that had captured Datong.

These were the men Timur Khan had been waiting for. Staying isolated inside the fortress meant ruin. But simply opening the gates and giving battle would end in ruin just the same.

So he must have waited to even the numbers somewhat. He must have known full well that once Salakat learned of the situation at Guishui Fortress, he would eventually bring his troops there.

RUMBLE.

As if on cue, Guishui Fortress’s thick iron gates swung open, revealing what lay within.