Chapter 354
Crack!
The blade of Ian’s greatsword, wreathed in white flames, slashed diagonally through the upper torso of a blackened, mutated ogre.
What a tough hide.
Ian gritted his teeth, gripping the hilt of his sword with both hands.
The heavy resistance in his grip told him everything he needed to know—the ogre’s body had fully undergone its mutation, its flesh fused with armor.
Many of the bipedal monsters that appeared after the wave of beasts bore similar characteristics, their bodies merged with weapons or armor.
They were likely minions of the so-called archdemons or demon lords who had war against humanity in ages past.
Their presence was yet another sign that the remnants of such forces still lingered beyond the Black Wall. The deep black coloration of their bodies was evidence of the madness of the Black Wall, which had seeped into and corrupted the power they held.
Of course, none of those mattered at the moment. These conclusions came from Ian’s subconscious, sharpened by extreme Concentration and bolstered by his high Intelligence and Mental Fortitude stats.
Crunch!The flame-wreathed blade tore through the ogre’s burning body completely, emerging clean on the other side. The severed upper torso spun briefly before crashing to the ground.
"Screech!"
A shadowy monster lunged at Ian from behind. Its withered, skeletal arms ended in claws sharp as daggers.
Clang!
The creature’s claws scraped against Ian’s back but failed to penetrate. Ian staggered forward slightly, but the monster’s lower half bounced upward as if it had struck a wall.
From Ian’s back, sparks burst forth—not blood, but embers from the White Phosphorus Armor covering him. The creature’s claws hadn’t even scratched the surface of the scales.
Letting go of the hilt with his left hand, Ian twisted his body to the left.
Swish—Crash!
The back of his hand—or more precisely, the Platinum Barrier above it—smashed into the monster’s twisted body.
At that moment, its blackened, contorted form crumpled under the impact.
Ian’s sharp eyes captured every detail—the grotesque, mutated body, skin like dried, cracked mud, and a face twisted as though it had been crushed.
A human?
A thought brushed through Ian’s mind, entirely incongruous with the moment. It was likely his intuition, honed by countless battles, drawing a connection he couldn’t yet articulate.
But the thought ended there.
Crash!
Flung like a rag doll, the creature rolled across the ground, as if hit by a carriage. Without missing a beat, Ian spun fully, raising his greatsword in his right hand.
Roar!
A blazing trail of white flames erupted from the blade, sweeping over a troll several meters away. The effect was caused by Wind Blade surging along the sword’s edge, a phenomenon Ian often used in combat.
While the Wind Blade alone wasn’t enough to deal significant damage to these monsters, the addition of the White Blaze changed everything.
The troll, engulfed in white flames, let out an agonized scream.
"Kreeeeaaaak!"
"Gurrrk!"
Simultaneously, a groan escaped from the severed head of the ogre lying sprawled on the ground. The creature wasn’t dead yet, even with its upper body severed. Countless writhing tendrils extended from the jagged stump, sizzling as the white flames consumed them.
Ian didn’t need to kill everything he faced. A single, well-placed strike was often enough.
"Ooooooh—"
"Kill them!"
"Advance! Follow the Great Warrior!"
The rest were up to the legionnaires.
Even without looking back, Ian could feel their presence clearly, one by one. It was a truly transcendent sense, one that went beyond normal perception.
If he focused harder, he felt he might even be able to discern how many had fallen, and how many were wounded. The exhilaration and relentless determination radiating from the legionnaires only fueled the fire in his veins.
The skill level of Blessing of Battle had increased by two during the battle, raising his stats significantly. It was likely a temporary boost brought on by the collective fervor of the legionnaires.
Is this some kind of finale of a barbarian-exclusive quest from the game? Now that I think about it, I never had a chance to properly play through the mage-exclusive quests, not back then and not now.
The thoughts that left a bitter taste followed, but it was a reasonable conclusion. At the moment, Ian was basically an incarnation of Karha.
Of course, there were limits. His superhuman senses had a defined range. When he moved too far ahead, he could feel the presence of the rearmost legionnaires fade. It was as though a zone of influence emanated from him, spanning a radius of several hundred meters.
Testing its exact range wasn’t an option—legionnaires outside his domain would no longer receive the Blessing of Battle.
Crash— Crack!
The reason he couldn’t stray too far from the legionnaires wasn’t just about maintaining their blessings.
As expected, the experience points from the monsters the legionnaires killed were flowing directly to him. In fact, he’d gained an entire level just a few minutes ago—a staggering amount of experience.
It was far beyond anything he had encountered in the game. Back then, he couldn’t command thousands of legionnaires or face off against thousands of monsters at once.
That might not even be the last level up, Ian mused.
If he survived this battle, further growth seemed entirely within reach.
"Roar—"
A giant with a single bulging eye let out a guttural howl as it clambered over the sloped wreckage of the fortress. Its grotesquely swollen muscles rippled unnaturally, making its towering form even more monstrous. Ian, however, had already launched himself forward, pushing off the ground with explosive force.
Crack!
Before the giant could react, his greatsword swung in a wide arc, slicing cleanly through its forearm and embedding deep into its chest.
Boom!
An explosion erupted silently from within the giant’s chest, tearing it apart from the inside.
Ian felt the vibration through his weapon—a sign of its durability rapidly deteriorating as it absorbed both divinity and magic to fuel the attack.
Crash!
The giant’s mutilated body tumbled down the rubble. Ian, still gripping the sword, braced against the explosive recoil and steadied the blade mid-air before landing firmly atop the ruins.
As the crimson mist settled, his vision cleared, revealing the scene beyond the crumbled fortress wall.
Beyond the collapsed wall, the battlefield stretched before him. Black mist writhed in the distance, with monsters emerging from it. Scattered remains of the fortress and shattered walls littered the landscape.
The moment Ian took it all in, the heat blazing through his body surged even higher.
What am I, some kind of rechargeable battery?
Despite cursing inwardly, Ian didn’t resist the rising heat. Instead, he embraced it and let it flow freely.
"-----!"
A roar erupted from Ian’s throat, so raw and primal it was hard to believe it came from him. At the same time, the searing heat within him surged outward, spreading as a wave of crimson divinity swept across the battlefield.
At that moment, nearly every legionnaire’s gaze snapped toward him.
There he stood, atop jagged rubble, his golden shield blazing and his flaming greatsword raised, roaring into the chaos.
"Ooooooh—"
"For the Great Warrior!"
"The Great Warrior calls us!"
The legionnaires answered with a thunderous cry, their voices shaking the battlefield. The divinity enveloping their bodies burned brighter, and new strength coursed through them—along with renewed exhilaration and unyielding determination.
If this keeps up, we could fight endlessly, right up until we drop dead, Ian thought as he spat on the ground.
It was a cycle, plain and simple. The legionnaires’ battle spirit flowed into him, and he converted it into blessings that he sent back to them.
It wasn’t a virtuous cycle—it was a system designed to keep them fighting until death claimed them.
For the first time, Ian fully grasped why Karha was known as the God of Battle, and why his epithet was The Butcher.
He must be having the time of his life right now.
Ian inhaled deeply, filling his lungs, and turned his gaze forward again.
His vision felt broader now, as though the haze of battle had finally lifted. He realized belatedly that he had been in a state of overexcitement, his perception unnaturally narrowed.
Fwoosh.
The ruined fortress perched on the left cliff side and the remnants of the wall rising on the right finally came into focus.
"Don’t stop! Keep firing!"
"Aim for the head!"
He spotted a row of soldiers precariously lined up along the edge of the collapsed wall, relentlessly firing their crossbows downward, clearly intent on stalling the advancing monster horde.
"Sir! Please, halt your advance! Sir!"
The desperate shout, loud enough to strain one’s voice, pierced Ian’s ears from somewhere near the wall.
Behind the wall, a knight descended a precariously hung ladder made of linked chains, shouting as he climbed down.
"Sir! You must reorganize the front lines! Halt the charge!"
The knight, his armor caked with blood and dust, was none other than Lucas. He had clearly decided he could no longer watch from the sidelines. As Ian’s battle cry thundered across the field, Lucas abandoned his post on the wall and made his way down.
"Sir!"
Lucas landed with a roll, his momentum carrying him back to his feet in an instant. Without hesitation, he sprinted toward Ian’s position at full speed. It took only a few seconds for a different desperation to etch across his face.
"Graaaargh!"
"Gaaaahk!"
Monsters that had spotted Lucas let out deafening roars, charging after him. Lucas had thought he could outrun them—an assumption that had quickly proven wrong.
Damn it. Oh, Lu Solar.
The monster horde was far faster than they had appeared from the safety of the wall. Their bulk had been deceptive, leading him to underestimate their speed. Compared to these creatures, the mutated harpies and gargoyles that had occasionally ambushed the wall seemed almost quaint.
"Kraaaaah!"
Not far into his mad dash, Lucas felt an ominous chill crawl up the back of his neck. Without thinking, he hurled himself to the ground.
Boom!
Something heavy slammed into the spot where Lucas had been standing just moments before. A massive axe buried itself into the ground, wielded by a towering minotaur with spiraling horns jutting chaotically from its head.
Thrown by the impact and covered in dirt, Lucas gritted his teeth.
"Stay still."
A deep, resonating voice pierced through the chaos, halting Lucas mid-motion. He froze, only lifting his head.
Whoosh—
His vision was filled with the enormous blade of Ian’s greatsword, blazing with white flames as it swept diagonally over him. The suffocating heat from the flames washed over his face in a rush of wind.
Crunch!
The greatsword swept past Lucas, its momentum unyielding as it cleaved the face of the minotaur reaching for its axe. The strike split its head in half, leaving only the lower jaw intact. Where its skull should have been, white flames flared fiercely, consuming the remnants.
Without missing a beat, Ian redirected his sword, raising it high before driving it down on a troll charging from the side.
Slick—
The blade cleaved the troll from the crown of its head to below its navel, the white flames cauterizing the wound instantly, preventing a grotesque spray of fluids.
Crunch!
The greatsword completed its cut, slicing through to the creature’s groin before emerging cleanly. The troll’s body collapsed in two, the flaming edges of its flesh writhing as if still alive.
Lucas wouldn’t have known, but the White Blaze prevented the mutant creatures from regenerating.
"Phew." Ian straightened, standing tall as he rose from his crouched position. Lucas, still sitting where he had fallen, found himself momentarily awestruck.
Ian’s figure, cloaked in blazing crimson divinity, gripping a golden magical shield in one hand and a flaming greatsword in the other, was overwhelming.
It was then that Ian turned his gaze to him.
"It’s been a while, Sir Lucas. I’m glad to see you’re alive." His voice low voice resonated.
"Sir!" Lucas’s voice trembled as he instinctively dropped to one knee. The realization that the Great Warrior of the North remembered him filled him with profound emotion.
"Why did you come down here? It’s dangerous." Ian’s next words, spoken in a dry tone, snapped Lucas back to reality.
"I, I thought you wouldn’t stop the advance unless I told you directly, so I hurried here."
"Stop the advance?"
"Yes. Our mission is not to annihilate the monsters, but to hold the frontline. If we regroup and fortify this area, we can hold the line until the erosion ends." Kneeling, as if the significance of the moment weighed heavily upon him, Lucas spoke rapidly, without pausing.
Ian’s lips curved into a faint smirk.
Risking his life for the mission, even in this chaos, was admirable. Lucas’s reasoning was sound; it aligned with the most straightforward way to complete several of Ian’s quests.
"I can’t do that."
"What?" Lucas instinctively looked up at him, confusion etched across his face.
Ian turned slightly, raising his greatsword as if to gesture beyond the wall.
"Charge—"
"The Great Warrior awaits us! Charge!"
The shouts of the advancing legionnaires, accompanied by the thunder of their footsteps, echoed in Lucas’s ears as his gaze instinctively shifted beyond the wall.
His eyes widened, and his body froze.
High in the distant sky, the swirling black-red vortex still churned ominously. Its core, which had momentarily narrowed after disgorging the meteor shower, was bulging downward as if something even more massive were about to emerge.
It was a detail Lucas hadn’t noticed earlier, with his focus locked on the battleground.
"The priest’s ritual is still ongoing," Ian commented nonchalantly.
At that moment, the legionnaires surged past them, shouting with fervor.
"The Great Warrior commands us to advance—charge!"
"Forward! Keep moving forward!"
The elite soldiers who had broken through the vanguard alongside Ian swept by. To Lucas, they appeared almost like vengeful spirits.
Their wounds, gruesome as they were—missing eyes or chunks of flesh torn from their arms—seemed to matter little to them. Their only focus was pressing forward, their gaze fixed unwaveringly on Ian’s raised greatsword.
Clearly, they had interpreted Ian’s raised greatsword differently than Lucas had.
"Advance—!"
"Don’t fall behind! Better to die than to stop!"
The ground seemed to tremble under their charging footsteps, their voices a chaotic symphony of battle cries growing closer.
"A-Another spell like that won’t be possible!" Snapping back to his senses, Lucas blurted out as the battlefield grew brighter, an unnatural light creeping over it. "That terrifying spell took hours to prepare! So, for the next spell, it’ll—"
"That time was likely spent establishing the domain," Ian interrupted curtly. "Not the spell itself."
This meant that the next spell would be prepared far more quickly, but Lucas, blinking in confusion, didn’t seem to fully grasp the implication. However, there was no need to elaborate further.
Whoosh—
A bone-chilling wind howled from the sky.
Lucas snapped his head upward, his eyes widening as he saw it—the eye of the vortex was opening again.