Chapter 99. The Baron of Runestone City! The Curtain Falls!
Sabda’s hoarse roar echoed across Windrest Plain.
“Hold the line! Turn your weapons! Form ranks and meet the enemy!”
But his command was like a stone cast into a raging sea, swallowed in an instant.
The routed soldiers flooding toward him had already been scared completely out of their wits. There was only one thought left in their minds—run for their lives.
Wailing, they crashed into the defensive line Sabda had only just barely managed to organize like headless flies.
In their eyes, there were no comrades—only obstacles blocking their path.
“Get out of the way! Let us through!”
“The devils are coming! Run!”
The routed soldiers slammed into the formation of Runestone City’s troops.
“Raise your spears! Thrust!”
Thud! Thud!
Orders were orders. The dense forest of spearpoints drove brutally into the bodies of the routed soldiers at the very front.
Screams rose again, but even more of the routed men, like crazed beasts that had lost all reason, still threw themselves forward desperately, clawing and shoving.
The formation of Runestone City’s army inevitably descended into chaos and hesitation.
And that fatal hesitation, for the Golden Lion Knights charging close behind the routed soldiers, was an opportunity.
“KILL—!!!”
Ron’s roar sounded like the trumpet of assault.
The Golden Lion Knights not only maintained their speed, but increased it. Their gleaming lances lowered flat as they crashed savagely into the most chaotic flank of Sabda’s formation.
“Meet the enemy! Hold them back!” Sabda roared, waving his sword.
Yet his eyes were fixed on that striking figure of white hair at the rear—Ili Pendragon.
The two men’s gazes met briefly amid the dust and blood, as though time itself had frozen.
BOOM—!!!
The torrent of steel and bodies collided with a deafening crash.
The terrifying impact of the Golden Lion Knights was like a warhammer, instantly tearing open Sabda’s flank.
Well-equipped and rigorously trained Golden Lion Knights against Runestone City’s soldiers, whose formation was already in disorder— from the very start, the battle became a one-sided massacre.
The courage of Runestone City’s troops crumbled swiftly before the absolute gap in strength.
The front ranks fell in swathes like wheat flattened beneath a hurricane.
Every thrust of a golden lance brought up a spray of blood, and every slam of a heavy warhorse cleared an entire patch of battlefield.
“Hold the line!” Calvin Medici’s hair and beard bristled as Gold-Tier battle aura exploded from his body.
He had seen Ron for what he was: a blade driven into the heart of their army. That blade had to be broken.
With a furious roar, he charged toward Ron like a berserk chariot, a knight’s longsword in each hand.
Two Golden Lion Knights tried to stop him.
They did not survive even a single exchange.
Calvin moved like a phantom. His left-hand sword knocked aside the thrusting lance.
His right-hand sword swept out with a shriek that tore through the air.
Slash! Slash!
Two heads wearing golden lion helmets flew into the sky.
“Die!” Calvin’s momentum did not slow in the slightest. His twin swords became crossing bolts of lightning as they hacked viciously toward Ron, who had just flung aside another enemy soldier.
“Good!”
Ron’s pupils contracted as he felt a pressure unlike any he had known before.
With a furious roar, he drew out every bit of his Gold-Tier battle aura.
Gripping his massive lance in both hands, he raised it to block as though trying to hold up a mountain.
CLANG—!!!
A deafening crash of metal rang across the battlefield, and sparks exploded everywhere.
A violent shockwave burst outward from the two men, throwing several nearby soldiers to the ground.
Ron felt a terrifying force, impossible to resist, surge along the shaft of his lance.
The warhorse beneath him gave a shrill cry and collapsed to its knees.
Both his arms shook violently, and the skin of his palms split open at once, blood staining the shaft of the lance red.
With a single blow, the difference in strength was plain.
House Medici of the ducal line had endured for a thousand years, its history older even than that of the Kingdom of Orlando itself.
Its deep legacy and supreme breathing technique gave Calvin a level of battle aura quality and explosive power beyond compare.
It was far beyond what a knight like Ron, born of a rising noble house, could match.
“Ugh!” Ron let out a muffled grunt, and a thread of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
But Calvin pressed his advantage relentlessly. His twin swords became a storm of steel, the sword-light continuous and merciless, every strike aimed to kill.
Ron staggered left and right under the barrage. Though he swung his lance so tightly that not even water could slip through, he was entirely on the defensive.
Danger followed danger. Every block made his blood and breath churn violently.
“Captain Ron!” Buck had been watching the battle the entire time.
At that moment, Eli’s order rang in his ears as well:
“Buck! Go aid Ron!”
“Roar!” Abandoning the enemy before him, Buck drove his heels hard into his horse’s flanks and shot forward like a streak of black lightning, thrusting his sword straight at Calvin’s back.
Calvin’s emerald-green pupils shrank sharply. He felt the deadly threat at once.
He had no choice but to abandon his continuous suppression of Ron. Spinning his body like a top, he knocked away Buck’s fatal thrust with perfect precision using the sword in his left hand, while his right-hand sword slashed backward toward Buck’s ribs.
The motion was smooth, swift, and utterly without pause.
Clang! Clang!
Buck’s and Ron’s weapons crashed against Calvin’s swords almost at the same instant.
Sparks burst again.
In a blink, the three men were locked in fierce battle.
Facing two Gold-Tier opponents alone, Calvin’s twin swords whirled so tightly that nothing could penetrate them.
Emerald battle aura flowed around his body, at times fierce as thunder, at times soft and elusive as silk.
And in that moment, he truly held off the combined assault of Buck and Ron, both Gold-Tier fighters, forcing the battle into a deadlock.
Meanwhile, on the main battlefield, Sabda’s army—having lost Calvin, their sharpest blade—
was completely exposed beneath the iron hooves of Eli’s main force once the Golden Lion Knights had torn open the gap.
Eli personally led the Black Crow Knights, armed with weapons mixed with mithril, together with the veteran soldiers of the Black Territory and the wolf-kin warriors under Wolfgang.
Wherever they passed, the ordinary weapons of Runestone City’s soldiers were severed like rotten wood.
Blood and flesh flew everywhere.
This was a complete disparity of levels.
The battle had become a one-sided slaughter.
Though Sabda’s soldiers still possessed the courage of men making a final stand, before the absolute gap in strength and the terrifying killing power of the wolf-kin warriors, they melted away like snow under the sun.
Their lines were punched through, shattered, and broken again and again.
Soldiers fell in droves, while screams and pleas for mercy rose without cease.
Sabda swung his longsword and managed to cut down several soldiers of the Obsidian Territory who charged at him, but more enemies surged toward him like a rising tide.
At his side lay Luke, one of his followers.
He had just taken a blow in Sabda’s place with his own body, only to be pierced through by several spears that followed immediately after, crying out as he collapsed into a pool of blood.
Ragnar guarded Sabda’s flank with grim determination, but his body too was already covered in wounds.
“Sabda... watch out!”
Ragnar slammed into Sabda and knocked him aside.
He himself, however, was struck through the chest by a heavy crossbow bolt.
“RAGNAR—!!!”
Sabda let out a howl of grief that tore at the heart.
Ragnar’s body swayed. With the very last of his strength, he drove his longsword into the earth to steady himself.
He turned his head with difficulty and looked at Sabda. On his blood-covered face, he seemed to want to force out a smile, but in the end it froze there.
His gaunt body slowly fell backward, and the last light in his eyes went out.
The Windrest Plain was now carpeted with corpses, and blood flowed like a river.
Fewer than a hundred soldiers of Runestone City remained alive.
They surrounded Sabda tightly in the center, where he knelt clutching Ragnar’s cold corpse in his arms.
Eli’s army encircled them layer after layer, like an island in the middle of an endless sea.
“No—!”
Not far away, Calvin, still locked down by Buck and Ron, naturally heard Sabda’s despairing cry.
At once, a desperate light erupted in the eyes of the Gold-Tier Knight.
“Get the hell away from me!!!”
Calvin let out a furious roar, and his emerald-green battle aura flared up like a blazing fire.
He took Buck’s sword and Ron’s lance head-on, paying the price of fresh wounds to force the two men apart for a single instant.
And in that instant—
Calvin poured every last shred of his remaining Gold-Tier battle aura into the knight’s longsword clenched in his right hand.
The sword instantly burst into a blinding emerald radiance, so bright it almost scorched the eyes, while the blade itself let out a strained hum under the unbearable burden.
“Eli—! Go to the grave with my nephew—!”
His face twisted, Calvin used every last ounce of strength in his body to hurl that emerald sword of light—carrying the final force of his life and endless hatred—straight at Eli, who stood protected behind the army.
The emerald sword-light tore through the air with a shriek so piercing it was almost unbearable.
“No—!!!”
Buck’s eyes nearly split open as he roared and drove his battle aura to the limit, trying to intercept it.
But the distance was too great.
The sword of light was too fast.
Though he charged forward with all his might, he could only watch helplessly as that green beam of death drew closer and closer to Eli.
At that instant, Eli’s whole body went rigid, like prey pinned beneath the gaze of a venomous serpent.
He could not move at all.
And then, at the very last possible moment—
A gray figure exploded upward from Eli’s rear flank like a phantom.
It was Wolfgang.
At that instant, the wolf-kin leader’s beastlike instincts and speed reached their absolute limit.
He did not try to block the terrifying flying sword.
Instead, in that split second when there was barely enough room to act, he used every bit of strength in his body to drive a savage kick into Eli’s mount.
“Ah!”
Neighhh—!
The warhorse cried out in pain and reared backward violently.
Just as Eli’s body pitched forward with the collapsing horse—
WHOOSH—!!
That fatal emerald sword of light screamed past, brushing Eli’s hair by the narrowest possible margin.
The razor-sharp sword aura even sheared off a few strands of it.
The sword of light slammed into the ground over ten meters behind him and exploded, blasting out a charred crater.
Thud!
Eli crashed to the ground with the warhorse, a sorry sight—but still alive by a hair’s breadth.
“My lord!”
Wolfgang and the surrounding soldiers rushed forward in panic to help him up.
And in the distance, Calvin Medici—who had exhausted the last of his life-force and battle aura—
swayed once, then fell powerless to his knees, the light in his eyes quickly dimming away.
He cast one final glance toward Sabda’s direction, where the latter stood trapped beneath layers of encirclement.
At the corners of his mouth there seemed to appear the faintest trace of a smile, one filled with endless regret.
“Sabda... when you were little... you said you would build... a great legacy... heh... what a pity... what a pity...”
Within Calvin’s gradually clouding eyes, there seemed to flash the image of a stubborn, proud boy.
“You should have just... stayed safely at home... you foolish child...”
With the last thought fading away, this pillar of the ducal house of the Southern Frontier—
his massive body crashed face-first to the ground and moved no more.
A generation’s great warrior had reached his end.
With Calvin’s death in battle, the last spark of resistance on the field vanished completely.
Of the nearly thousand troops Sabda had brought with him, aside from a small number who knelt and surrendered as prisoners, all were annihilated.
Supported by Wolfgang and several soldiers, Eli slowly rose to his feet.
He brushed the dust from his body, his face somewhat pale. It was the first time he had ever stood so directly before death.
Surrounded by soldiers, he walked toward Sabda, who sat in a pool of blood amid the remnant soldiers and the corpses.
Sabda knelt there, holding Ragnar’s already cold and stiff body tightly in his arms.
Luke and the other loyal subordinates lay not far around him.
Eli stopped a few paces away from Sabda.
He looked at this ambitious enemy, the man who had once caused him enormous trouble.
After a moment of silence, Eli spoke in a calm voice.
“Sabda Medici... you were a worthy opponent.
“I will remember your name.”
Sabda’s body seemed to tremble ever so slightly.
Slowly, he raised his head.
That once handsome, delicate face was now smeared with blood, and his eyes were empty as two dried-up wells.
He looked at Eli and let out a hoarse laugh.
“Heh... heh heh... I... lost...”
He breathed heavily, each word seeming to drain all his remaining strength.
“But... you... didn’t win either...”
After speaking that deeply meaningful sentence, Sabda seemed to exhaust the last of his strength.
He no longer looked at Eli.
Instead, he lowered his head and gently used his fingers to wipe away the blood staining Ragnar’s face.
Then, with that hand stained in both their blood, he firmly gripped the hilt of the sword at his waist, the sword bearing the crest of Runestone City.
Watching his movement, Eli spoke again.
“I will bury you and him together in Runestone City.”
Sabda’s hand froze abruptly in the middle of drawing the sword.
He raised his head once more. Those hollow eyes, like empty wells, fixed themselves on Eli as though trying to see through to his soul.
In the end, he uttered only two faint words.
“...Thank you.”
The instant those words fell, Sabda suddenly drew the sharp blade across his own throat.
There was not the slightest hesitation.
He used the last of his strength and pulled hard.
Slash—!
Hot blood bloomed like scarlet flowers in full blossom, instantly staining the tips of his hair and Ragnar’s cold armor red.
The light in his eyes went out completely, and his body slowly collapsed beside Ragnar’s corpse.
Even in death, his hand still gripped the sword hilt tightly, as though it were his final shred of dignity.
The wind over Windrest Plain wailed as it swept across mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, carrying the heavy scent of slaughter with it.
The ambition of Sabda Medici, Baron of Runestone City—
together with his young life—
came to its complete end upon this blood-soaked land.