CH 341

Duke Eima stood on top of a watchtower with a clear view of the nearby plains. Despite what he saw with his own eyes, he still couldn’t believe it.

“It’s truly… one man?”

“Yes, I checked repeatedly, but I wasn’t able to see a single person besides that man,” Trukang reported.

“Well, he can’t be a ghost.” Eima gently stroked his chin.

No matter how Eima had far exceeded the level of humans, the person that they were talking about was too far away. After squinting at him for a while, Eima gave up with a shrug.

“Send out a scout party,” he told his aide.

Trukang nodded. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“The party has permission to kill this person on site if he turns out to be an enemy,” Eima said with cold eyes.

“I’ll tell them so.” Trukang saluted and quickly ran downstairs.

In less than the time that it took to boil water for a cup of tea, the heavy, gigantic castle gates slowly opened up and two hundred knights wearing full silver armor departed through them.

“Sending two knight orders to deal with one person…” Eima silently watched the scene for a moment, amused. “Well, it does look like he’s a force to be reckoned with, so I at least hope that the fight is going to be interesting…”

“March!” the knights loudly yelled as he was musing.

The two hundred knights kicked up an opaque cloud of dust as they drove their horses relentlessly forward. Their advance ate up the kilometers in a flash—at that rate, the unidentified man was going to be crushed into pulp.

“…Huh?” Eima wasn’t sure what he was seeing. When the knights were only a few hundred meters away from the man, he broke his sculpture-like stillness and finally moved. Up until then, there wasn’t anything odd… the problem was what happened afterward. The unidentified man pulled out a long object that Eima assumed to be a sword, and then…

“That’s… aura?” The eyes of Eima, who had been focusing hard on the sight, slightly widened.

The size of the sword in the man’s hand suddenly doubled, but it wasn’t the sword that had become bigger; the ocean-like blue haze had taken the form of a sword on top of the man’s sword and made it larger.

Eima soon slightly gaped. “No, he isn’t simply using aura…”

It was much more bright and vivid than an ordinary aura. It spread all over the sword like a blazing fire…

“…Aura on top of aura!” Eima exclaimed when he finally realized what the man was doing.

At the same time, the aura’s brilliant light swallowed the world. The man swung his sword and its house-sized cladding of aura at the knights before him, tearing all of them apart without exception.

“Arghhhh!!!” the knights screamed in pain.

“Such a talented man still exists… in the current Avalon Empire?” Eima quietly muttered, his lips trembling.

The desperate screams of the knights were so loud that even Eima could hear them from far away. The unidentified man swung his sword horizontally only once, but it was enough to make half of the knights fall off of their horses onto the ground, dead. However, the man wasn’t done.

“Urgh!”

“Keugghh!”

The man swung three more times and the knights’ blood splashed in the air like fountains. The course of man’s every attack was marvelously neat and precise, like a wolf that had crept into a herd of sheep. He cut off the heads of the fallen knights—literally slaughtering them. He didn’t make a single unnecessary movement, and it took less than ten minutes before two hundred knights from two knight orders were exterminated.

After cutting off all the knights’ heads, the man lightly swung his sword, scattering the blood that was smeared across his entire sword onto the ground.

Eima’s eyes widened as he was quietly watching the scene because a memory flashed across his mind.

“Wait…”

As if he had waited for this moment, the man disappeared, then reappeared hundreds of meters closer to the castle. The man repeated the action once more, bringing him way closer to the castle than before. In fact, he was getting noticeably closer to the castle, such that Eima was able to clearly see the man even without trying.

“…Ha!” Eima dumbfoundedly chuckled.

He had definitely seen the man before: The man’s white hair was neatly slicked backward, and his saber was razor sharp. The way he always held one arm behind his back was unmistakable. His face was wrinkled, but his physique was robust, so it was impossible to estimate the age of this old man.

“Sword Emperor…!” Eima muttered through gritted teeth, shocked.

* * *

A group of people rode their horses out of the Arcadia, shaking the ground under the hooves of their horses.

“Master,” Cain asked at the front of the group, “are you really going to go to the battlefield with only these people?”

Joshua shrugged. “Is there a problem?”

“A problem? Of course there is!” Cain flicked his reins, urging his horse to move up next to Joshua. “Can you not see behind us any chance?”

“What do you mean?” Joshua said.

“Can’t you see the number of people in your group?! Even if I include those foals eating grass over there, there are less than two hundred of us!” Cain pounded his chest in frustration.

Just like Cain had said, Joshua’s group was quite small: There were only about one hundred of the Auxiliary Battalion’s knights, plus Joshua’s original colleagues like Cain and Icarus.

“I’m telling you this just in case you forgot, but I can’t die yet. Never.” Cain shook his head fervently.

“Because you haven’t been married?” Joshua tilted his head.

“…Well, you know why really well. In fact, I’m glad you mentioned that.” Cain managed to smile with difficulty, but his expression quickly changed into a frown so hard that veins popped up on his forehead. “Why are we acting like fleas that are biting an elephant?! There are two hundred thousand enemy soldiers waiting for us at Einberg, but this is what we have to fight with! Are you really going to let your only first knight die as a bachelor?”

“Cut it out,” Cazes interrupted. “The Captain must have his reasons.”

“Reasons, my ass!” Cain pouted.

Cazes sighed quietly. It would have been a lie if he’d said he wasn’t worried at all.

“Captain, do you have a plan?”

“Once we reclaim Einberg, we’ll attack Reinhardt right away,” Joshua immediately answered.

His answer wasn’t just shocking—worse, it was outright petrifying.

“Ha, hahahaha…” Cain dumbfoundedly chuckled. He thought he had gone mad.

Joshua paid him no mind.

“That place was ours to begin with,” Joshua continued. “The Wilhelm Knights and numerous other people might still be waiting for us.”

“But in order to do so, we need to take Einberg away from the enemies since it would be impossible to get to Reinhardt by land without going through there,” Cazes said.

Joshua stopped to think for a moment.

“What’s the shortest route to Einberg?” he asked.

“We need to go straight ahead and climb over about three mountain ranges, but it’ll still take at least three weeks. Of course, it’s only possible if we ride our horses non-stop.”

Their situation was so bad that just thinking about it made the group immediately dispirited. The situation eventually compelled Icarus to step forward.

“Can’t we use a warp gate?” she suggested.

Cazes shook his head. “It’s impossible because since Einberg is considered part of the border, no warp gate was installed in case an enemy country invaded the fortress—as the Swallow Empire has done.”

“But doesn’t Werner have a warp gate?” Icarus asked. “That place is pretty close to Einberg.”

“Even if we use the warp gate there… it’ll take at least a week. Besides, I’m not sure if the Imperial Family will allow us to use the warp gate in Werner,” Cazes said with a shrug.

“Why so?” Icarus tilted her head in confusion.

“During wartime, the Imperial Family has complete authority on deciding who uses warp gates, and since they’re afraid of getting backstabbed…“ Cazes glanced at Joshua. “…they’ll never allow us to use the warp gate.”

“Ah, my head.” Icarus grabbed her aching head.

“Isn’t a divine signal to take it slow?[1]” Cain randomly said.

“What are you talking about now?” Icarus frowned.

“What do you mean what am I talking about? I’m saying, let’s wait for Lady Charles. She’s going to come back soon!” Cain explained. “ Wouldn’t we have better chances fighting two hundred thousand soldiers with seventy thousand people, rather than one hundred people?”

“I have a solution,” Joshua quietly said.

“Yes, this is a solution—! Huh?” Cain gaped goofily “Ma-master?”

“It takes three weeks to get to Einberg, but I have a way to get there in half a day at maximum,” Joshua informed them with a sharp gleam in his eyes. The people around him boggled.

“Captain, what do you mean…?” Cazes cautiously asked.

“That man will make it possible.” Joshua pointed at a man wearing a robe who had been following their group.

“Aren’t you making me work too hard even from the beginning?” The man had been trying to blend in with the group rather than stand out, but when everyone’s eyes landed on him, he sighed and took off his hood. “I had no intention of meddling right this moment.”

Everyone, especially the Auxiliary Battalion, was taken aback when they saw the face hidden by the robe. The handsome man had hair that resembled wind and an eyepatch over one eye. It was not easy to find another man that had such a unique appearance as him anywhere on the continent.

“To-Tower Master…!”

“I’ve never teleported this amount of people at once…” Theta trailed off for a moment but broke into a grin. “But I must pull this off since I’m the Class 8 mage, right?”

After that, Theta turned to Joshua and said, “I’m going to write down every single thing and charge you for all of it. I’m not going to cut you a deal—you know that right?”

“Of course, I’ll pay any amount. And…” Joshua trailed off for a moment and took a look around his group. “Don’t worry about the size of our unit.”

“Pardon?” Cain asked.

“I’m with you,” Joshua said. “It doesn’t matter if there are two million soldiers or two hundred thousand soldiers.”

As if nature was answering to his will, a wind blew against Joshua, setting his hair aflutter.

“I’m not going to let anyone here die,” he declared.

“Master…!”

They had forgotten whom they were with right now. Joshua Sanders was the hero that had defeated several million soldiers of the two empires’ united armies on his own. He was the new symbol of the Avalon Empire, and his name was now a legend on the continent.

“Then shall we begin right away?” Theta answered with a wide smile. “My colleagues in the Magic Tower must be eagerly waiting for me too.”

“Yes, please.” Joshua nodded.

“Good,” Theta said, and then chanted, “Mass Teleport.”

A pool of radiant light engulfed Joshua and his group in seconds.

1. This saying comes from a Korean idiom: “급할수록 천천히 돌아가라” (The more you’re in a hurry, the more you should take it slow.), emphasizing the importance of patience. ☜

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