Chapter 63 : Chapter 63

Chapter 63. The King

The smoke of battle had not yet dispersed.

Shadow Vale, this territory once meticulously planned in the style of the Southern Frontier by Sabda Medici, had now become a ruin straight out of hell.

Its position so close to the depths of the forest had caused Shadow Vale to suffer a beast tide impact far beyond what Black Territory had endured.

Most of the low but orderly houses of wood and stone had collapsed, reduced to charred, broken walls after the flames.

The workshop district was nothing but blackened frames still trailing smoke, and the farmlands that had only just begun to take shape had been trampled flat, as though an enormous plow had churned them over again and again.

The defensive works had been smashed open in multiple places, leaving huge breaches, and the wooden watchtowers had snapped and toppled over.

Corpses.

There were corpses everywhere.

Soldiers. Subjects. And even more remains of massive beasts of every kind.

They were piled through the streets and among the ruins of the houses in all sorts of twisted postures, trampled until they had become almost shapeless.

Sabda sat crouched atop the roof of the lord’s residence, his soft, handsome face stained with soot and dried blood.

Those gray eyes that had always flickered with ambition now held only numbness and piercing grief.

It was over.

Everything he had painstakingly built, everything into which he had poured vast amounts of his family’s resources... was almost entirely gone.

Had the reinforcements sent by his father—the two hundred elite men led by that Gold Tier knight—not arrived in time to withstand the beast tide’s second and most frenzied assault...

he himself would likely have become just one more cold corpse upon this scorched earth.

Regret gnawed at his heart like a venomous serpent.

If... if, back in the council hall, he had listened to Ragnar’s counsel and given the forest’s abnormalities the attention they deserved...

Would the ending have been different?

He clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles whitened, yet it did nothing to ease the agonizing pain in his chest.

Tears churned wildly in his eyes, but he suppressed them with every ounce of strength he had.

His pride would not allow him to show weakness before anyone.

Heavy footsteps sounded from behind him.

Sabda did not turn around. He knew who it was.

Ragnar stepped to Sabda’s side and looked out over the hellish scene before them as well.

There was no schadenfreude on the face of this cold nobleman, only deep exhaustion and solemn heaviness.

“As expected of the Serpent House. You were certainly hard to find.”

Ragnar’s low, hoarse voice broke the suffocating silence.

Sabda remained silent. Only his throat moved with difficulty.

Ragnar did not look at him. His eyes were fixed on the surviving subjects struggling amidst the ruins, and there was a faint, almost imperceptible sigh in his voice.

“What is it? Has one disastrous defeat broken the spine of the son of the Duke of the Southern Frontier?

Back when you came to us, you swore with absolute confidence that you would unify the southern reaches of the Western Frontier, link them to the Southern Frontier, and expand its dominion.

You said you would root the power of House Medici in this land... This is not the face you showed then.”

Those words were like a sharpened blade stabbing straight into Sabda’s deepest wound.

He abruptly shut his eyes, and his body began to tremble despite himself.

Humiliation, fury, lingering fear, and... responsibility... surged together like a tidal wave against the last defenses of his heart.

At last, a single burning drop broke through the proud wall he had fought so hard to maintain and slid down his soot-streaked cheek.

He raised a hand at once and wiped it away savagely with a bloodstained sleeve.

When he opened his eyes again, all weakness had been forcibly buried in the depths of those gray irises.

He suddenly turned around, putting his back to Ragnar and the devastated ruins.

His voice was hoarse and low.

“Ragnar!”

“Count the casualties! Inventory every usable supply we have left!”

“Calm... every subject who survived!”

“Tell Luke and the others to clear the ruins, treat the wounded, and gather the dead! Immediately! At once!”

...

Under the same bleak daylight, in Black Territory Valley—

The noise of battle had already faded, but the air was saturated with a smell of blood and scorched ruin even heavier than in Shadow Vale.

The soldiers were silently cleaning the battlefield.

There was no joy of victory on their faces, only the numbness of having survived and an exhaustion that seemed to sink into the bones.

Some carefully lifted the bodies of fallen comrades that could still be recognized onto crude stretchers.

More soldiers, together with the subjects, fought back the urge to vomit as they dragged beast carcasses into piles, stacking them into small hills that made the heart shudder.

In the relatively safe area behind the wall, the makeshift medical tents were filled with painful groans.

Aila’s eyes were bloodshot, and her pale cheeks were smeared with blood and soot.

Together with Scholar Alva and their assistants, she moved swiftly among the wounded, treating injury after injury.

The sharp scent of medicinal herbs mixed with the stench of blood and hung heavily in the air.

Alone, Eli stood quietly atop the damaged wall.

With one hand resting on the rough, cold battlement, he calmly swept his gaze across the hellish scene below...

Yet beneath that calm lay a heaviness so deep that no bottom could be seen.

Steady footsteps sounded from behind him, accompanied by the faint scrape of iron armor.

Captain Buck came to his side.

His face was equally exhausted, and his black armor was covered in deep claw marks and dented from heavy impacts.

Several damaged spots had been hastily wrapped with strips of cloth, and dark red blood seeped through them.

“My lord,” Buck said in a low voice, “the preliminary count is complete.”

Eli did not turn around. He only tilted his head slightly, signaling for him to continue.

“Our dead: forty-seven soldiers. Most were recruits. They were either killed by beasts that leaped onto the wall during the defense, or fell in close combat...”

“Eighty-three are heavily wounded and no longer combat-capable. Most have missing limbs or ruptured organs...”

“As for the lightly wounded, they are too many to count. Almost everyone bears some injury.”

“The Black Crow Knights... lost one man. Tiger, a Mid-Bronze Tier knight, died in battle from exhaustion while joining my assault. Three others were gravely wounded—their battle aura exhausted, with multiple fractures.”

“The Wolf-kin warriors... five lightly wounded. Nothing serious.”

Behind those cold numbers were living lives, one by one—warriors who had trusted him and followed him, fathers, sons, and brothers of the people of Black Territory...

With every number Buck reported, Eli’s fingers tightened further around the battlement.

The price of victory was so heavy that it nearly robbed him of breath.

Forty-seven soldiers... one Silver knight...

These were the worst losses Black Territory had suffered since its founding.

Those vivid faces, those young lives that had sweated and struggled on the training ground... had fallen here forever to defend this land.

“Young Master...” Buck looked at Eli’s profile and could not help speaking.

He wanted to say that Eli had already done enough under such a terrifying beast tide.

To hold the territory, to lead the charge, to shatter the beast horde—those things were already a miracle...

But Eli raised a hand and cut him off.

Slowly, Eli turned around.

The calm had vanished from his face.

His gaze passed over Buck and landed on the silent soldiers standing atop and below the wall.

He drew a deep breath, his chest rising and falling sharply.

Then he suddenly raised his voice, and it rang clearly across the entire battlefield.

“Brothers!”

All the soldiers and subjects who had been busy working instinctively stopped what they were doing and looked up toward the white-haired figure standing atop the wall.

Eli’s gaze swept across face after face lined with exhaustion and grief.

He raised a hand and pointed toward the mountain of beast corpses below the wall—those murderers who had taken the lives of their comrades.

“Look at these beasts! They took the lives of our brothers! They wanted to make us afraid! They wanted us to kneel!”

“But today—we held! We made them pay in blood! And now—”

He pointed sharply toward that mountain of corpses and sea of blood.

“We skin them! Break their bones! Build the fires! Roast them! Stew them to pieces! We eat every last one of them! With their flesh and blood, we will honor our fallen brothers! And we will tell this damned wasteland—”

He nearly roared the final sentence.

“Obsidian Territory! Pendragon! Never yield!”

Silence.

Then, after a brief instant of dead silence—

“ROAR—!!”

“Eat them!”

“Avenge our brothers!”

“Long live Pendragon!!”

It was like a volcano that had been suppressed for far too long suddenly erupting.

A deafening, exultant roar of vengeance swept across the whole of Black Territory Valley in an instant.

Inside the medical tents, Aila lifted her head and looked toward that white-haired figure standing upon the wall, hair flying, igniting everyone’s hot blood like a war god.

Her violet eyes were filled with a complicated light—worry, heartache, and also a trace of pride too difficult to put into words.

Buck stood half a step behind Eli, quietly looking at the white-haired back standing tall in the dawn light.

Watching the soldiers and subjects below become utterly inflamed, a faint curve tugged at his bloodstained, exhausted face.

He remembered that arrogant bastard son at the Shadow Vale alliance meeting, the one who had still dared recommend himself as alliance lord even beneath the pressure of Sabda.

He remembered the young commander who, after the bloody battle on Windrest Plain, had forced himself through his nausea to order the battlefield cleaned and then marched on Lucerne City.

And even more, he remembered the resolute figure from less than half a shichen ago, the one who had not hesitated for even a moment to leap from the wall alone in order to save him.

My lord Marquess...

Buck spoke silently in his heart, carrying a feeling that went beyond duty itself.

Your son... has already become a lion tempered in the blood and fire of the wasteland.

A true king who can bear a territory on his shoulders, and ignite his followers with his own blood and spirit— a born king.