Regressor of the Fallen Family Chapter 150
The battle that unfolded immediately the next day was enough to pale the entire face of the McLaine army from the very beginning. This was because the superhumans, the strongest of each faction, had all appeared simultaneously at the frontlines. When the battle began, the sight of the coalition forces led by them pouring in was sufficient to spark the rise of fear in the heart of every observer.
“Damn! Why all of a sudden…!”
“They must have reached some agreement. It’s a natural progression.”
“But it’s too early to say that when our situation is this precarious.”
“No. At least not today. We still have some viable strategies left.”
“What?”
Patrick was bewildered, but Logan had no time to provide lengthy explanations.
He hadn’t anticipated the need to use his plan so soon.
‘And even if it does work, we can’t be complacent. If it doesn’t work… no, let’s not think like that.’
With veins throbbing in his neck from effort, Logan shouted.
“Clayton, take on Luther Kaihl. I’ll handle Wicken. And knights! Focus the Libertiatio firepower on the other superhumans! Understand?”
“Swiftnighters, get away from the bombs! Focus on the knights climbing up the walls with me!”
“Yes!”
As Patrick and Logan, father and son, spurred their soldiers on and ran along the walls, the knights felt a dire premonition of a desperate battle and readied themselves with a resolve to fight to the death. The soldiers too felt a tension reaching its peak, unlike the previous two days, and they tried to calm their trembling hands.
Not long after, as a hail of quarrels rained down on the forces within crossbow range and consecutive Libertiatio explosions maximized the noise on the front lines.
‘Now!’
Three Libertiatios released from Logan’s hand exploded in succession in the empty air.
Soon after, with a series of loud booms,
the localized noise from the Second Prince’s main force, along with a raging blizzard that swept through, changed the entire battlefield.
“Juan, you son of a…!”
With Duke Yordan’s outrage, two superhumans surging up the walls of Aegis withdrew from the McLaine offensive and hastily returned to the main base.
Half of the knights from the Second Prince’s army, which had been charging toward the fortress, still aimed for the walls, while the other half followed their commanding officers back to the main base in a ludicrous situation.
The same happened with the First Prince’s army that was advancing toward the western and southern walls.
Frightened by the sudden movement of the Second Prince’s superhumans, Wicken and Juan Douglas hurriedly pulled back, and amidst the troops, those who were advancing and those retreating commingled into chaos.
“Fire! Keep firing!”
“Pour it on!”
For McLaine, it was an opportunity beyond compare.
‘It worked!’
The most burdensome forces, the superhumans, had abruptly left the front lines.
“Target the retreating knights!”
Alrune in predicting the situation, Logan, who saw the enemy in disarray, gave the order to attack and fearlessly threw himself down from the walls.
“young lord?!”
“Don’t follow, keep pouring it on!”
Logan cried out like that as he landed beneath the walls.
Without the superhumans, he could escape at any time.
Seeing the trouble among the Second Prince’s army, with some escaping and some attacking, Logan wore a cold smile.
“Haap!”
With Logan’s spirited yell, a massive golden greatsword rose from the Lux.
Rip!
Twelve attacking enemy knights were simultaneously cleaved in half.
“Aargh!”
“Monster!!”
These exclamations came not from those who had fallen but from their comrades around them.
Most knights and soldiers began running away from Logan, but even in this chaos, some still charged at him.
“He’s from McLaine! Kill him!”
The Captain of the Knights of Count Cherno’s land, Oliver Ortega.
Called the Knight of Flash, this top-tier knight with his direct subordinates charged at Logan.
Unfortunately, he did not witness the fierce battle between Logan and Wicken at the southern wall the day before.
He had heard the stories but dismissively let them go in one ear and out the other.
‘A battle on par with an Aura User? Nonsense! It must have been because of that mage!’
He’d heard that there was a mage among the enemy ranks.
Having seen the half-giant Luther Kaihl retreat, he could not deny that.
But there were no mages around to aid him, not even a McLaine knight.
Yet Oliver, with caution, made his decision.
The tens of meters long Force Blade he had seen just now; this too was something he did not dare face.
Still, drained from such a blow, he might be weakened, but just in case…
“Attack together! I’ll finish him off!”
“Yes!”
At his command, the top-tier knights Ternan, Clang, and Phlebon charged ahead.
Surrounded on three sides by their coordinated attack, Oliver followed closely, drawing forth all his might, readying his secret technique.
The Force Blade on his sword tip blinked, growing and shrinking; he waited for the moment a flaw would be revealed through their combined attack to pierce right through.
But then, like a streak of lightning,
Slick.
A golden line snake-like, and the heads of the charging subordinates _utterly floated up in vain.
“What…!”
An exclamation slipped out without his realization.
However, even in the midst of that, years of training paid off as his body reacted sharply.
Simultaneously displaying his knack for instant acceleration, his condensed Force Blade shot out like lightning toward its target.
However,
Whirl.
Click.
The attack that should have been inescapable was ensnared by the golden snake, lost in thin air, and almost immediately, he sensed a scorching pain on his forehead as his body started to disobey him.
‘Am I… to die so vainly?’
An unthinkable reality.
However, he was no longer able to entertain such thoughts.
A top-tier knight slaughtered in the blink of an eye, the other knights who planned to charge in began to backpedal.
“It can’t be!”
“Flee!”
Still, the limitations of an army without a proper commander were clear.
“Let’s die today!”
Logan, gritting his teeth, squeezed the Force core, pulling out his full strength from the start.
Flash.
Scheeear.
He wasn’t targeting all the gathered forces but only sought out superior knights or higher using transcendental Ki sense, moving like a ghost, reaping their heads.
As a result, not long after jumping down by himself under the walls, Logan made an unbelievable war effort, slaughtering over thirty top-tier knights including Oliver Ortega.
But had his targeted sniping been too conspicuous?
“Kill that man first!”
“He’s from McLaine!”
The top-tier knights that had been controlling the troops each came charging at Logan’s presence.
‘It ends here for today.’
Already drained of much energy, his face pale, Logan sensed the enemy shifting and retreated like the wind back up onto the walls.
“The young lord…!”
“Of course…”
“What are you staring at the young lord for! Finish off another of those bastards before they get too far!”
As such, McLaine’s forces gazed anew with admiration at the returning Logan.
The best of the knights who had eagerly followed could only dumbfoundedly stare at the fading figure.
What followed in the battle for McLaine was nothing short of a comedy, granted that genre could describe scenes abundant with bloodshed, screams, and corpses.
Boom!
“You son of a bitch!! Are you out of your mind! You imbecile! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!”
[It was not my intention! Didn’t we agree on this yesterday! Why would I…!]
“An idiot at the scene used ice magic, you son of a bitch! A division in enemy ranks is one thing, but what is this stupidity! Are we to fight amongst ourselves first? You worthless…!”
[I’m telling you, get a hold of yourself, Yordan! If I sabotaged it, wouldn’t I have done it less carelessly!]
It was a strained excuse, but made a valid point in a way.
That statement brought Yordan Valdermaine’s sense back to him, even if just a little.
Phew.
“…After the war is over, I will collect on the promise from yesterday. Additionally, if…”
Crunch.
“…there’s any sign of the First Prince’s forces faltering or retreating in this battle, that’s when we’ll settle things here first.”
[I’ll keep that in mind. And I will also find the traitor who messed things up and present his head as a gift.]
“Hmph. Yeah, right.”
A crashing sound came from the receiving end of the orb, but…
[Just let it slide this time.]
For once, Juan showed a rare concession, and because of that, Yordan could suppress the rising anger somewhat.
* * *
“How did you pull it off?”
“I simply exploited the inherent distrust within their ranks.”
“And how exactly did you do that?”
“It was a person I bribed while in the capital. Someone drowning in gambling debts. With a rather large family to support.”
Logan shrugged his shoulders.
“And the explosion?”
“I used a scroll. They were being sold en masse. From the Ice Tower.”
“…And if they had caught him alive, wouldn’t that have been a disaster?”
“It doesn’t matter. He must have thought the order came from the First Prince’s side.”
“…”
Logan’s voice remained nonchalant, but Patrick grew solemn and kept silent.
“It was initially intended to be used when a stalemate occurred on the central front. But it’s fortunate we could deploy it now. Having just reached a difficult agreement and now shattered trust once again, it will be hard for them to fully trust each other.”
“…It really is fortunate.”
“Yes. We were lucky.”
“That’s true. We were lucky. There were hardly any occasions where a plan you laid out turned out better than the initial intention.”
“Ugh! Father, that’s…”
Stung by the pointed comment, Logan trailed off, and Patrick sighed softly again.
“But it’ll be hard to use it again, won’t it?”
“Yes. They are not fools, after all.”
* * *
The drama that followed ended with two days of silence.
And the war that resumed thereafter carried on similarly to how the second battle had transpired.
the Second Prince’s forces had Luther Kaihl safeguarding the main base and Duke Yordan Valdermaine at the forefront.
The the First Prince’s army, with Wicken Callian taking the lead—there was no trace to be seen of Juan Douglas, who had previously been at the forefront with him.
The silence of the past two days had been a period for both factions to draw one conclusion:
– The attack on the Second Prince’s main base was McLaine’s doing.
Yet despite reaching such an apparent conclusion, the all-out combat from two days earlier was not to be seen.
The evident mutual distrust was present in abundance.
While McLaine beheld hope in that reality,
“Advance the whole army! We end McLaine today!”
The onset of the battle took a different course.
Regardless of the reason, the determination of the faction leaders was clearly different.
– Dragging this out any longer might add new variables, whether McLaine’s doing or the opposing faction’s.
It was a fact implicitly understood by the heads of both factions, perhaps marking the final war that would unfold on this very spot.
And before that,
– We will decisively eliminate McLaine.
This, they firmly agreed upon.
The battle began similarly to the second day.
However, unlike then, Yordan had sent the knights rushing ahead, looking for an opening from behind, but soon he realized through firsthand experience that Clayton’s Gravity Control could snag the desired targets seemingly without concern for whomever was in front. Simultaneously bearing the brunt of focused fire and exclusively defending.
Wicken too, unable to accept that someone as lowly as Logan could battle him on equal footing, was left grinding his teeth with frustration.
But what changed was that unlike that previous occasion, the the First Prince army did not retreat using any cunning tricks, and as more corpses piled up beneath the walls, increasing numbers of enemy knights ascended, creating a lethal gap for McLaine.
To Patrick, it was merely a natural and inevitable sequence of an intensifying battle.
Yet, the start of the problem was when knights from the Second Prince’s forces began to intrude amongst the 1st to 5th squads of the self-defense forces who were constantly bombarding Duke Yordan Valdermaine.
How could someone calmly shoot crossbows out of the wall while a knight on the wall aimed for their neck?
Naturally, the focused fire upon Duke Yordan Valdermaine relaxed momentarily.
That was the first issue.
The second was the superhuman, seizing the gap, began to move not toward the top of the wall but, somehow, arrived near the eastern wall where a fierce battle between Logan and Wicken had been taking place.
In the noisy and urgent battleground,
had Patrick, who had been closely monitoring Yordan, felt a gaze lock with his across a great distance, or was it just an illusion?
The curling corner of Yordan’s mouth seemed to say as if taunting:
‘Watch as your son dies.’
And Patrick had no desire to see his son die before him.
That’s why he set aside commands and charged straight towards him.
Only one thought filled his mind:
I have to stop him. I have to save my son.
Yet, as he leaped from the height, summoning all his strength into one blow, he also simultaneously realized how Moran’s massive flame aura dispersed it like bubbles as soon as they met. An odd and intense pain, reminiscent of being uprooted, reminded him of a familiar sensation.
‘Right. It was madness to go against an aura.’
The normalcy of that thought came too late, as the vanished force left him practically immobile.
But strangely enough, the expectedly fatal touch from the duke seemed to hesitate for a moment.
The surging intent to kill softened, and the stretch of energy wavering aimed for his limbs instead of his neck.
And that slight pause was enough for someone else to intervene.
“My lord!!”
A voice so familiar, pushing his body aside, Patrick saw the face of a comrade and subordinate with whom he had spent half a life; before he could take it all in, he was pulled from the duke’s range of attack.
“Help the lord!”
“Attack that monster!”
Bang! Bang! Bang! Crash!
“Damn it…!”
The rough voice was drowned in the explosion, and as the force recovered, strength returned to his whole body. However, Patrick couldn’t smile.
“Huh, fortunately. My lord,” his subordinate, or rather, friend, said with blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, collapsed while looking at him with a blurry smile. Heinckel’s right arm, along with the sword, had disappeared entirely, and the sight painfully pierced Patrick’s eyes.
Editor’s musing:
F*ck, why does Patrick always get in trouble? And here I thought Heinckel was safe already.