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“Eek!” Gehog shrieked. “The enemy is alone! Everyone, protect me!1” He staggered away from Joshua, frightened by his strange words2.
Two hundred knights flooded in to protect their commander.
“Stand fast! This coward may have tricked Sir Wright,3 but we are the Knights of Marquis Crombell!”
“It’s 200 against one! Don’t let the rumors fool you!”
“Archers! On my signal!”
Joshua, alone, was surrounded by two hundred fully armed and armored knights. Their hushed breaths suffused the air, and behind them was a forest of readied bows.
One against many. Not just any old random warriors, but high-level knights. Joshua had never been through something like this before.4
In this life, that is.
“I’ll give you a chance.” Joshua gave his spear a few practice swings.
“What?” The knights shivered.
“Choosing the wrong lord to serve was a foolish mistake, especially if you intend to serve him for the rest of your life.”
“What?5”
“Turning a blind eye to wrongdoings is a sin. Even if you didn’t know the first time, you can’t claim innocence the second time.” Joshua stared at them with burning eyes. “I’ll give you a chance. There’s no saving that boy, but any of you can back out now if you wish.”
“This trash—!” The lieutenant gritted his teeth, infuriated by Joshua’s dismissive treatment. “Our opponent is a Master, even though he’s young!” he shouted to the knights. “Gather your mana and prepare your defenses!”
The horde of knights pointed their swords at Joshua. It merely erased any doubts he had left.
“If that’s what you want.” He pointed the tip of his spear at them and slowly gathered his mana. “There’s only one thing I need right now—the only way to make up for the numbers disadvantage.”
The air shook like it was being torn apart, sending the knights reeling from Joshua’s sheer momentum.
“The primordial stones were originally one, it’s said. Therefore, it’s possible to use Magma’s annihilation and Bronto’s growth at the same time.” On the tips of Lugia’s blades, a ball of fire and a ball of lightning appeared. Bronto’s thunder and Magma’s fire joined into one attack.
Joshua’s strength had grown greatly, but he had yet to try anything new. He simply hadn’t met an opponent who could stand up to the techniques he already had—but if he didn’t progress, he’d stagnate like fetid water. Eventually, someone stronger would come along and cut him down.
“Attack!”
The mana of two hundred knights surged forward in accordance with the lieutenant’s roar. They shook off their fear with a brandish of their swords, and their blades fell upon Joshua like rain.
“Let’s go!” Joshua narrowly scraped past a sword. Lugia was already moving. In fact, it was spinning. It left vivid red streaks in the air as it flew like the tail of a comet, and its impact was just as powerful.
There was a flash. The fire burned the sinners, and the thunder purged everything that was left. With that kind of power, even heaven would weep.
It was a famous technique of the Magic Spear Arts: the Fiery Thunderstorm6.
Lugia’s meteoric descent finally ended with an all-encompassing explosion.
Count Keiros slowly lowered his hands. The archers’ bows relaxed, forgotten as the archers stared down the walls.
The chaos of the war was suddenly gone. All that was left was silence.
A hundred men against five thousand—but it was the men in black7 who won the day.
One knight’s head rolled from his shoulders as his body collapsed. Another was trampled by a horse. None of them wore black; the battle was a complete rout. The front line couldn’t move because there was an A-Class Knight still running rampant, and the black knights were picking apart the rest.
No one knew where they came from, much less their blue-haired leader.
Their chain of command was falling apart, whilst the blue-haired knight seemed to be able to command his forces without a word.
His devastating one-against-five-hundred showdown left a deep mark on the psyche of everyone present.
“…G-God of War?” one of the Pontier soldiers whispered.
Knights fled even when his spear was idle. It gave off an aura of blinding fear, and its crackling lightning could be felt from yards away. What could he be but a god?
The climax of the war was certainly something to behold.
Duke Pontier’s soldiers were suddenly forced to take cover as they were showered by dirt thrown up by Lugia’s impact. When they finally opened their tightly shut eyes, they could only gape at the aftermath.
In the epicenter of the blast, there was only one man left standing8.
“Joshua… Sanders…”
The soldiers took in Charles’s words and were filled with an inexplicable sensation.
The blood of the Sword God; the youngest Master on the continent; the newest legend—a man higher than nobility or royalty.
Joshua Sanders.
His name was etched upon their hearts.
“WOAH!”
“The pride of the Empire is with us!”
“Let’s go! Follow the God of War!”
Count Keiros couldn’t help but clench his fists. He wasn’t the only one—everyone on the wall could feel their hearts swell with emotion. The Count barely kept his emotions in check as he infused mana into his voice.
“Follow the God of War!”
“WOOOAHHH!”
The gates of Peril were thrown open, unleashing the soldiers of Pontier.
Joshua was about to get another name.
“Ugh… Hack—!”
Joshua stared.
A man dragged himself across the ground, gasping for breath. His clothes were torn and burned, and his face was scorched beyond recognition.
“You must not value your life.”
“Please… save… m—”
“It’s rare that someone’s willing to sacrifice his own life for his superior’s.” Joshua looked down at the charcoal husk of Gehog’s lieutenant. If he hadn’t thrown himself in the way at the last moment, Gehog would have been fatally wounded. Where did this blind devotion come from?
Needless to say, the rest of the Crombell knights were no better off. It was hell on earth. Joshua had to avert his eyes from the grisly scene. He looked at the man crawling on the ground and raised his eyebrows.
“There’s no point in this battle anymore,” he muttered. Joshua lifted Lugia and then slammed it into the earth, sending a tremor through the entire battlefield.
“Am I… dreaming?”
“A god! He’s a god!”
“How are we supposed to beat that? He’s not even human!”
Fear spread like a virus; it started with the ones who could see Joshua and swept across the battlefield. One by one, Marquis Crombell’s army threw down their weapons. The Pontiers ruled the battlefield.
“The enemy is in your hands.”
Joshua’s quiet voice was carried across the battlefield by the wind. Fear and hopelessness, awe and reverence—his words incited a bevy of different emotions.
“We’ve won.”
His voice was quiet but heavy with mana.
In the deepest, darkest, forbidden depths of Count Rebrecca’s manor, the ground shook with a bestial roar of uncontrollable rage.
The beast had once heard that humans were forgetful animals. It wasn’t sure if it had actually forgotten where it heard that or if it knew and simply didn’t care enough to dredge up the memory.
All it cared about was punishing the insects who had awoken it from its long slumber.
You came into the realm. You broke your word. Britten’s descendants will pay.
An angry growl rippled through the densely packed trees.
The trees of the Black Forest.9
TLN: what a selfish bastard ↩️
EDN: I dislike your funny words, magic man. ↩️
TLN: dude he knew who joshua is ↩️
PR: “Never Tell Me the Odds.” ↩️
EDN: What? ↩️
EDN: How is it famous if this is the first time it’s ever been used, my man? ↩️
EDN: Gehog is not human confirmed. Lugia is the Noisy Cricket? ↩️
TLN: he killed his soldiers too? ↩️
PR: A new challenger has appeared. ↩️