novelraw Chapter 78 : Chapter 78
Chapter 78 : Chapter 78
Chapter 78
The next morning after camping in the clearing.
Ian, who hadn't slept a wink, sought out Vergil and Hoodwock with a dark face.
“Commander, are you really okay?”
“How many times do I have to say it, I'm fine.”
“Your complexion is exactly like an undead right now……”
“I didn't come here to be worried about, so just give me the report.”
At the two's gazes, which were filled with an uncomfortable amount of worry, I frowned and spoke, and Hoodwock, who had quickly stopped talking, began his report in a serious voice.
“There are a total of 12 wounded among the troops.
None of them are seriously injured.
Two decads are missing, but both squad leaders are smart, so I think they'll be back soon.”
“They probably won't come back.
They ran away as soon as Hlyundeyrr appeared.”
Hoodwock, who was commanding the soldiers at the time, hadn't noticed, but both squads had taken advantage of the confusion the moment Hlyundeyrr appeared and had deserted the ranks.
“What?!
That can't be……!”
It was.
There were plenty of factions that would have been displeased by Moner's sudden rise.
“Well, they were probably just spies who got lucky.”
“Then we must catch them immediately……”
I shook my head at Hoodwock's tense voice.
“You want to search that forest just to catch a few spies?
We'd have to divide all the troops here to find them, and the risk is too great.
Besides, if they do something, that would be a welcome thing in its own way.”
This time, Vergil narrowed his brow as if he didn't understand and asked.
“If they do something?”
“They must have run away, convinced that we would die here, but we survived, didn't we?”
It would be good if we could catch them, but there's nothing we can do about the ones who have already fled.
“For now, don't worry about those two decads and just keep a tight lip.
If the soldiers find out there were spies, the morale we've worked so hard to raise will be shaken.”
That was enough for the soldiers.
Since they were in the rear, they weren't seriously injured, and they hadn't moved deep, so they were able to evacuate safely.
As I turned my head to look at Vergil, he reported in a straightforward voice.
“All the members of the Knightly Order have also returned.
Most of them were seriously injured, but thanks to the medicine you gave us, there are no knights who need to return immediately.”
Hmm, if that's the case, the Knightly Order is also fine.
Due to the unimaginable overwhelming victory, the overall morale of the unit is also not bad.
No, considering that it was a unit that had fled from a powerful enemy called an Ogre, their morale was sky-high.
But that wasn't the answer I wanted.
“Is that all?”
“Yes?
Is there anything else you need……”
I had asked Vergil just in case, but as expected, the answer I wanted didn't come back.
In the end, the only one whose battle wasn't over yet.
Was just me, it seemed.
***
Contrary to the original plan, Ian decided to stay for another day for the treatment of the Knightly Order and to retrieve the supplies they had left behind during the retreat.
“My lord, if you wish, the Knightly Order can move at any time!”
The clueless Vergil raised his voice, saying that a wound of this degree would heal while walking.
“A Stimpack is not a panacea.
It can't solve the accumulated fatigue, so tell them to rest when they can.”
Ian, who was forcing his eyes open, which seemed like they would close at any moment, barely continued.
“In the meantime, the scouting party will reconnoiter the forest and retrieve supplies and arrows.
We can start when the Ogre calms down.”
“Yes.”
“Then you two can leave.
I'm tired, so I'm going to get some rest.”
At Ian's words, which were dripping with fatigue, the two expressed their concern with worried expressions and carefully left the tent.
Thinking that his fatigue must be considerable, as he had moved in the most dangerous part of the battlefield.
***
After confirming that the two had left, he gently pressed his brow to relieve some of his fatigue.
Even after all that trouble, he hadn't slept a wink all night, so his body ached as if he had been beaten, and his eyelids were as heavy as if they were tied to iron bars.
The moment Ian, who had been wrestling with the demon of sleep with a serious face for a while, fell asleep, the damned battle began again.
***
It started with a momentary mistake.
-How dare you, insignificant things!
At the beginning of the battle, a few knights, ignoring the order, charged at the Orcs, and a few groups of Orcs that had entered through the gap rushed towards the soldiers.
‘Don’t panic, stay calm and move only a small number of troops……!’
In the urgent situation, he looked for Hoodwock and shouted, but no sound came out of his clogged throat.
-The Knightly Order has been breached!
-Kill those bastards first!
The moment the scouting party, panicked by the group of Orcs that had broken through the Knightly Order, lost their nerve and turned their arrows, the formation collapsed beyond repair.
The Knightly Order could not handle the advancing legion without the support of the scouting party, and the soldiers without a barrier were no different from meat shields with bows.
A one-sided massacre unfolded before his eyes.
-Uwaaaak!
-My arm!
My arm!
-No, no!
The soldiers died in vain.
‘Ah……’
The bitten, torn, and crushed soldiers, with eyes stained with anger and hatred, glared at the culprits who had caused their deaths as if to kill them and shouted.
-You, you!
-You damned scoundrel!
Why do I have to die because of you!
-Why are you alive!
You did this to us, so why are you!
─That was the beginning of this damned dream.
The scene of the Knightly Order being annihilated by the axe of Hlyundeyrr, who had made the Knightly Order his ‘prey’.
The scene of the scouting party, who had fled after losing the Knightly Order, being unable to shake off the legion's pursuit and being helplessly trampled, unfolded in succession.
“……”
Receiving the hatred of the Knightly Order and the soldiers all at once, he just stared silently at the dying.
“……”
As he was standing in the center of the dying, he heard a somewhat familiar shout from a distance.
-□□□□□□!
The moment his body froze at the soul-binding cry, he realized.
This was all the ‘worst-case scenario’ that hadn't happened, and what would happen next was…….
-Krrk!
You were unlucky this time.
Along with Hlyundeyrr's voice, which was full of ridicule, a dull axe filled his vision.
Udeu-deuk!
Even as his vision flickered and the sky and the ground changed places several times, he tried to close his eyes, but the head that had left his body did not listen.
At the end of his vision, he saw a dull axe flying towards Reina's neck.
Kwa-deuk!
“……”
Death.
Death.
Death.
The faces that rose without rest, all with expressions like evil spirits, cursed as they died, and the endlessly repeating ‘worst-case scenarios’ sharpened their blades and shouted.
-You said you were ‘certain you wouldn't lose’?
-Do you still think so?
-Can you, who is not even ‘Ian’, really lead them?
You, who is ‘nothing’?
“…Ha.”
Ian's eyes, looking at the nightmare, sank deeper and deeper .
***
How many scenes and deaths had passed?
After losing his sense of time, he had counted the number of the dead, but he had lost track of that at some point as well.
The nameless official who had been tied up in the square and had died of dehydration.
Baron Malfoyeu, the healer who had suddenly disappeared.
The corrupt priests and officials.
All those who had died at my hands.
They shouted and cursed in frustration, and Ian looked at them with deeply sunken eyes.
Receiving groundless blame and hatred was, at least for this body, not such a new thing.
Compared to the fear that had been binding his body since the moment he entered this nightmare, the deaths of others were really no big deal.
Therefore, Ian quietly observed the deaths.
Smiling scornfully at the sight of those who deserved to die and considering the screams of those who hadn't died as praise.
Then, he saw a familiar room.
The room, submerged in darkness, was so dark that its shape could not even be discerned, but it was an unforgettable 10-pyeong room.
“Ah.”
For the first time, Ian opened his mouth.
Because this was a part of the imagination he had feared the most.
‘No.’
The moment he thought that, the monitor on the familiar desk lit up with a faint light, and a chat appeared on it.
-Did you think you had become something?
-Did you want to see the ending ‘like that’?
He instinctively tried to turn his head and close his eyes, but he couldn't move anything.
As if to mock that small struggle, the chat on the screen continued to scroll up without stopping.
-Look, no matter what you struggle with─
Thud!
With a sound, the light turned on, and the ‘King of Strategy’ hanging from the ceiling, as if he had been waiting, spread his arms wide and greeted Ian.
“─This is reality.”
The cackling, dangling corpse shouted.
An even stronger fear began to bind his body.
‘This is a hallucination.
This is a hallucination.
This is a hallucination……’
The ‘King of Strategy’, who was looking at the frowning Ian as if amused, laughed louder and louder.
“Really?
Do you really think so?”
Full of ridicule, he raised his hands and covered his face as if genuinely wronged.
“This is so unfair─ Of all people, ‘I’ am ignoring ‘me’.”
His laughter, which had been flowing from between the two hands that covered his face, died down.
Kikikik, kikik…….
At some point, in the silence that had settled in the darkness, he lowered his hands and shouted with a face contorted like an evil spirit.
“How dare you!
You!
Call me a fantasy!
Was it not enough to kill me, that you would even defile my death!”
A bag and a scabbard appeared like an illusion over Ian's body.
“─Die!”
Hearing the scream that was close to a shriek, Ian's unfocused gaze turned to the bag.
***
Only after seeing Ian, with his unfocused eyes, rummaging through his bag did Rihaltan let out a small sigh.
“To think I'd take a loss at this age……”
To avoid a loss, he should have returned the moment he confirmed that the ‘requested’ soul was alive.
Because this land was the first farm of the demonkin and the nest of the damned bird-brains, and it was a land where just maintaining his main body consumed no small amount of demonic energy.
But it was just an insignificant soul.
Seeing the sweet scent emanating from the soul, it was a soul that had committed all sorts of evil deeds, and he had thought it would be that much more vulnerable to demonic energy.
No, before that, Rihaltan, the count of the demon realm and the lord of nightmares , was just confident.
Confident that he could kill the target as requested and harvest its soul.
“Tsk, if I had known he would resist my nightmare this much, I would have just gone back.”
There was no loss like this.
The demonic energy consumed in this dimension could not be recovered, and he had used no small amount of demonic energy to tear through the dimension, and he had poured demonic energy into that insignificant soul for over a night.
And to boast to the minister, he didn't even know what to boast about.
That he had found a dead soul, that it was alive, so he had kindly tried to kill it, and in the process, a huge amount of demonic energy was consumed to corrode the mind of a single insignificant human?
“If it had been the soul of a hero or a champion, it would have been different, but this is just……”
If it had been the soul of a saint who had made a noble sacrifice as he had heard, he would have thought it a plausible excuse, but that sweet-smelling soul was tainted with an evil that would slap the cheek of a decent demonkin.
“Haa……”
Well, since the minister had promised a not-insignificant reward and had given him a ‘vacation’, he could just spend some time there and recover.
“Don’t resist and just die.”
Because once you enter his nightmare, where he brings out the deepest fears hidden in a soul and makes them reality, you can never get out.
Just then, the human who had been rummaging through his bag took out a black bottle.
“Oh my, is it poison?”
It was a troublesome matter, but since the ‘requested’ soul was said to have committed suicide with a dagger, Rihaltan waved his hand and moved his demonic energy to create at least a similar appearance.
“Don't be a bother and just hurry up and……!”
Finally, the human, who had taken out something similar to a sword from his bag, muttered quietly.
“Oh for fuck's sake……”
And then he trudged over and grabbed Rihaltan's shoulder.
‘Wha-what?’
The moment Rihaltan, who had confirmed Ian's still unfocused eyes, thought it was a movement in the nightmare and was relieved.
Ian, who was standing right in front of Rihaltan, held up the symbol of the Holy Nation and smiled bitterly.
“Go to hell, you evil spirit!”