Chapter 132 - Clashing Arrows (2)

The Gaidar cavalry was so widely known in the West that they were called the outlaws of the wasteland.

Even knights found them difficult to deal with, and they were masters at using their unique agility to pressure their opponents.

At a distance and speed where I can reach you, but you cannot reach me.

The Gaidar cavalry was skilled at harrying enemies through that advantage, but not this time.

"Everyone, scatter! I said spread out!"

The cavalrymen clearly showed their panic at their captain's command.

They still could not accept the reality that they had become prey, not hunters.

Evil must be met with greater evil.

Behind the outlaws now, a beast faster, more vicious, and hungrier than they were was wearing a ferocious smile.

* * *

BOOOOM!

After the massive impact came a rush of bright-red blood.

In the place where the white streak of light had passed, a thick mist of blood was already scattering.

'...!'

Gaidar 3rd Cavalry Captain Wagner looked at the cavalryman the cluster of light had grazed past.

Fortunately, he was still running.

Though his head had been taken off.

Beneath the headless corpse convulsing violently, the western horse was screaming wildly in terror.

'What the hell is this!'

Only now grasping the situation, the cavalrymen's curses spread like screams.

But the northern streak of light that had just pierced through the cavalry had no intention of giving them time.

"Enemy! He's turning back again!"

Against the flow, straight through the center.

And this time, charging in from behind, toward the right.

As they watched Vlad rampage through them in every direction, the Gaidar cavalry felt fear for the first time in a very long while.

"... Knights! Knights, gather!"

Wagner quickly tried to gather the knights under his command and prepare for the attack.

It was the best he could do, and the only move he had, but the process was by no means easy.

"Stop the one coming at us...!"

A group of barbarians had already drawn up beside them.

A fishy smile began to rise over the tattoos carved across their faces.

"Aaagh!"

"Arrows! Arrows are coming!"

Ruthless men facing outlaws.

Despite their small number, the warriors of the Budaat Tribe were blocking every side and refusing to give up space.

Just as they themselves had once done.

From the cleverly opened gaps, arrows began to fly—ones they could shoot, but their enemies could not block.

"Goddamn it!"

Wagner shook his head violently, as if he could not believe the reality before him.

Hunters being chased by prey.

The wide-open wasteland, not a narrow mountain path, was instead a battlefield more suited to the northern barbarians than to them.

"Block them already!"

But his judgment had to remain cold, and he was the commander who had to break through this difficulty.

At Wagner's urgent hand gesture, four knights hurriedly broke away from the formation.

They tried somehow to narrow the distance Vlad could use to accelerate and kill his momentum, but the black horse of the North was already an existence far beyond the knights' predictions.

"Are you insane! He's accelerating!"

Someone's shout rang out, impossible to tell whether it was a report or a scream.

At that shout, Wagner hurriedly turned back.

Despite the knights' strained pursuit, the black horse shook them off easily simply by moving forward.

On that horse's forehead, the same white streak of light as before began to gather.

"Everyone, scatter!"

At the sight, Wagner felt goosebumps rise without realizing it.

It was coming again.

That madman.

A speed that could never be stopped.

"I said everyone spread out!"

Across the desolate plain where only the pale traces of the Mother World Tree remained, the son of the plains was racing.

Following the gaps shown by Auguste's traces, wearing the body-hardening art Lamund had given him.

In a charge no one could stop.

NEIGH!

Noir, who had shared a world through the boundary where they touched, began to cry out long and loud as if nothing could stand in his way.

Along with the world growing wider and wider, the trace of a unicorn was gradually regaining its original form together with the light.

Yes.

It had followed you for this very moment.

"Now!"

At Vlad's shout, one enormous arrow began to plunge down upon the outlaws.

Speed that overpowered speed.

Along the line that swept past like parting waves, vivid red paint began to be drawn.

"Ha ha!"

Vlad finally broke through countless cries of shock and fear, passed beyond the cavalry, and emerged onto the wide wasteland.

There was no one ahead of him now.

Only the traces of dusk visible beyond the horizon were there to greet Vlad.

In this moment, Vlad felt an immense sense of liberation at the fact that there was no one blocking his path.

"Tell Godin and Count Gaidar!"

The northern knight was gripping something tightly in a sticky hand drenched with blood.

In his hand, a broken flag was already fluttering limply.

"I'm taking your flag!"

Gaidar's pride.

The outlaws of the wasteland.

A single eagle, their symbol, was hanging limply in Vlad's grasp with its neck broken.

"This is my rightful due!"

As someone had taught him, a knight had to take only his rightful due.

A piece of honor taken instead of lives.

The heavy light of dusk dripping from the flag was glinting red along Vlad's shoulder.

* * *

A city harbor in the dark night, filled with lit torches.

Between the ships burned completely black, two sailboats that seemed intact were waiting to set sail.

Galleon-class ships, which still could not be built with Bayezid's technology.

They were, without question, the most valuable of all the spoils seized this time.

"So only that bastard got separated?"

"Yes, Lord Rutiger."

But even before the shining spoils of war, Rutiger's expression was twisted.

Marcus's party had succeeded in escaping to the city of Nassau as planned.

Marcus's decision to follow the unexpected variable instead of crawling into the jaws of death had been excellent, but that did not mean everything was going smoothly.

"... What a headache. Was there really no other way, Owen?"

"It's Marcus now."

"Why don't you settle on one name? It's confusing every time."

A woman was being carried onto the ship on a stretcher, gasping for breath.

The green-haired boy who had been following that woman with a face full of tear tracks came to a halt when he saw Rutiger.

"That child is the last Ravnoma."

"Hmm."

Karl looked at Rutiger, who was speaking with Marcus.

The highest-ranking person in this group.

His shoulders were proudly squared, and though he was close by, his gaze seemed to be looking somewhere far away, reminding Karl of his father, who had been a proud ruler.

"Are you going to wait for Sir Vlad?"

"..."

Beyond Rutiger's shoulder, the city walls could be seen burning in the distance.

The western allied army's struggle, sent to save fallen Nassau, was now battering fiercely against the walls.

They had barely managed to hold them off until now, but with Nassau thoroughly burned, there was no way they could endure any longer.

"You'll wait, right? I have to give him this."

Karl held out a black cloak folded neatly.

Rutiger looked at the cloak Karl offered and clicked his tongue.

The cloak his stepmother Oksana had given out.

Rutiger clearly remembered the young knight who had worn that cloak while roaming the mansion in Sturma.

"... Those who are ready, board first. Send them to Soara first."

"You're not waiting? You're not going to wait?"

A commander carrying out his mission without paying any mind to his plea.

At Rutiger's cold attitude, Karl glared at him with eyes that had no tears left.

"Are you saying you won't bring him back? You're knights, aren't you!"

In that instant, the knights of Ravnoma who had been with him, only to disappear one by one, rose in Karl's memory.

Young Karl remembered the last moments of those who had fallen to save his life, and he did not want to suffer another such farewell.

"You have to wait! I'm telling you, he'll be here soon!"

"Marcus. Escort him."

The young Ravnoma began struggling before the moment of another farewell.

Rutiger quietly looked down at Karl, then handed him Vlad's cloak.

"Give it to him yourself. Karl Ravnoma."

"..."

Black eyes, firmly set without the slightest wavering.

Seeing the sincerity within them, Karl had no choice but to be quietly held in the arms of a member of the secret intelligence squad and board the ship.

Unlike himself, who could only shout, the knight before his eyes had already gripped his sword.

"What will you do?"

"I plan to send everyone off first, then leave just one ship to get that bastard out."

"Will there be any captains willing to stay?"

Marcus's question was reasonable.

Bayezid had no naval forces to speak of.

The ships they had brought down now were merely merchants' vessels requisitioned for the landing, so in the current situation, where their lives were at risk, there would be no captain willing to stay behind gladly.

"Still, I bet one guy will stay."

But Rutiger merely smiled deeply, as if confident.

Rutiger already knew one captain who would wait for Vlad even without a generous reward.

"A stupid young brat has gone and shown up late! Any volunteers to wait for him with me?"

He was a boy his younger brother had picked up, and Bayezid had brought in, fed, clothed, and washed.

Though his blood was not theirs, at least his flesh and his sword were things Bayezid had put into him.

They could not give up on such a child so easily.

"He was good at running like hell!"

"He'll probably be here soon!"

Unlike the crumbling walls of Nassau in the distance, hands rose here and there.

Every one of them belonged to those who remembered Bayezid's finest dragon driver.

* * *

"This way!"

Vlad and the Budaat Tribe were riding along the coast, following the member of the secret intelligence squad Marcus had left behind.

Riding across the sandy beach under the faint moonlight, Vlad gritted his teeth at the flames burning in the distance.

'Am I too late!'

He might have been able to kill every last cavalryman, but there was a reason he had stolen only the flag and come.

Because he knew very well there was no time.

"Have they already fallen!"

"... I don't know!"

Marcus had told him to keep the worst-case scenario in mind and arrive as quickly as possible.

But despite doing their best, the flames of the western allied army were already crossing the walls and advancing toward the harbor.

'Maybe even now, I should...'

Rather than enter a city packed with enemies, would it not be better to turn their horses and flee?

After all, with barely more than ten people, they could not face an army.

'...!'

As Vlad hesitated between advancing and retreating, a faint sound began to reach him.

The keen hearing he had been able to boast of since childhood.

At the tips of his sharply raised ears, he could clearly hear the sound of sword striking sword.

"There are still people left!"

"Run! Ride!"

Vlad and his party leaped over the rocks leading toward the harbor along the coast.

As they charged into the harbor on horseback, they saw soldiers swarming in and a few men blocking their path.

"You goddamn brat! Could you not have come faster!"

"I knew there was something wrong with that bastard!"

There were fewer than ten of them, yet the knights were driving back hundreds of soldiers with shining aura.

Among them, drenched in blood, Rutiger was laughing.

"Get on the ship!"

Vlad turned his head in the direction Rutiger's finger pointed.

Above the harbor filled with burned ships, there was one small ship raising its sail alone.

Even amid the malicious shouts coming from the distance, on that ship standing firm by itself, someone was still waving both arms wildly.

"Vlad! Over here!"

Though he stood crookedly as if something were uncomfortable, the man was busy waving both arms.

When Vlad recognized the man, a smile spread across his face.

The ship's hull looked familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere before.

And the voice of the man shouting at the top of his lungs toward him from atop it was welcome.

"What are you doing, you punk! I said get on already!"

A single ship had remained waiting for Vlad alone, even after every other ship had fled from danger.

The man wearing a stylish captain's hat was clearly leaning on a cane.