Chapter 63

Chapter 63. Dunmore (5)

Choosing a frontal approach while infiltrating the middle of enemy territory alone was the same as willingly jumping into a pit of fire.

In other words, it was insanity.

Even so, the reason Balun deliberately chose a frontal approach was that, of all the methods available to him, this one gave him the highest chance of victory.

He had observed them with extreme thoroughness, but there was simply no opening in their surveillance network. Of course, he could create an opening, but unfortunately, Balun did not possess the talents of a night thief who could move around so stealthily that no one would notice him.

So what could he do?

He had no choice but to start a spectacular fight.

‘Even so, this is too much.’

Balun clicked his tongue. He could accept that there were many of them, but their response was far too swift.

They should have been sleeping soundly, so how had they armed themselves and rushed out so quickly?

They had even put on their clothes and armor, and brought their bows and swords.

Balun leaned against the outer wall of the tilted log cabin and glanced through the window. Inside the village, brightly illuminated by torches, dozens of hooded enemies were slowly approaching with bows in hand.

They had not discovered him yet, but they seemed to have realized that there was an enemy in this direction. Naturally so, since the loud noise had come from here.

‘They have completely spread out.’

Given how footsteps were coming from every direction like three-dimensional surround sound, it was safe to assume that they had spread throughout the inside and outside of the village.

That meant he had no choice but to fight more than a hundred enemies alone.

‘Count to five and go out. Just five.’

Balun took a deep breath. Then, after counting exactly to five, he gathered all his strength into his legs once more and stomped down hard.

BOOOOM!

With a thunderous roar, a tremor spread out in a circle. The fine cracks that had formed here and there spread like a spiderweb, and the ground began to shake.

“Whoa!”

“I-It is shaking!”

Amid the panicked voices ringing out from every direction, the houses shook, and clouds of dust began to rise.

‘Now.’

Balun immediately rushed out. While the thick dust hid his figure, even if only briefly, Balun quickly turned his head with Blue Moon and Crimson Moon in his hands, searching for his target.

‘I have to kill the mage first. The mage, no matter what.’

The slender man hiding behind the house on the opposite side. The Vice-Captain of this bandit group and their only mage.

The one who had designed the Blocking Barrier.

According to three days of concentrated observation, he was judged to be the brain of this group.

The moment Balun saw the man clutching a short wooden wand, his eyes half-closed as he muttered incomprehensible words, he charged toward him without hesitation.

RUMBLE!

The ground was still trembling finely, yet unlike the others, Balun did not lose his balance in the slightest. Even if he wanted to lose his balance, Balun’s unmatched sense of equilibrium made that impossible.

He rapidly closed in on the Vice-Captain and swung Blue Moon at once. Balun’s axe stopped in midair, and with the sound of metal being struck, it bounced violently backward.

CLANG!

Balun’s eyes narrowed. Why had his axe suddenly bounced off empty air?

When he looked closely, he saw a translucent membrane wrapped around the Vice-Captain’s body.

‘Defense magic!’

Balun gritted his teeth. How could such a cheating profession exist in the world?

Some people had to twist their bodies like mad to dodge attacks, while mages blocked attacks with one simple trick.

He was gritting his teeth in envy when their eyes met. The man was staring at him and mumbling something. Was he speaking to him? Or was he chanting a spell?

Either way, it did not matter. Giving a mage time to move his mouth at all was unsettling. Balun brought Blue Moon and Crimson Moon down with all his strength as if hacking the man to pieces.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Each time an attack struck, cracks slowly spread across the translucent membrane surrounding the Vice-Captain, and exactly on the fifth strike, it shattered completely.

“Cough!”

The moment the membrane shattered, the Vice-Captain coughed blood and collapsed to a sitting position.

It was because the physical impact had canceled the magic he had been casting.

“Impossible. Breaking a triple-layer shield with nothing but axe strikes makes no se…….”

CRACK!

“Aaaagh!”

GRAB!

Balun bent the right hand holding the wand and made him drop it, then grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up. Then, holding him high, he shouted, “Everyone, stop! Put down your weapons! If you do not put them down, I will kill your mage!”

Gazes poured onto him in an instant.

Facing the thick hostility, Balun wrapped his forearm around the Vice-Captain’s neck and leaned against the wall of the log cabin to block any approach from behind.

He could not avoid being surrounded, but at least he would not be struck in the back of the head.

“If you cooperate, I will spare the Vice-Captain! We can resolve this peacefully!”

“What do you want?”

One bandit asked while aiming his bow. By the time Balun turned his head to identify the owner of the voice, he had become the target of dozens of drawn bowstrings. Balun forced himself to ignore how violently his heart was pounding and answered loudly.

“Freedom!”

“What?”

“Put down your bows! Then Balun will not kill you. You save the mage, and Balun lives too!”

At Balun’s words, the bandit let out a snort.

“Ridiculous. After killing our men and even killing the captain, you plan to return alive? Do you think that makes any sense?”

“Does it make sense for you to be acting as bandits here?”

There was no answer.

They merely glared at Balun with their bowstrings drawn.

Did they have nothing to say, or did they simply not want to speak?

He could not tell which it was, but it did not matter. He had not spoken to hear an answer in the first place.

His purpose from the beginning was to buy time. He had to figure out how to break out of that encirclement. He had to figure out how to avoid being turned into a hedgehog by those arrows.

“Let me ask one thing.”

“What is it?”

“How close is the main force?”

Balun tilted his head.

What was that supposed to mean?

“There is no main force.”

“What?”

“I came alone. To be precise, I came with a guide, so there were two of us.”

“Then are you saying the two of you came to face us?”

“No, I am alone. The guide left.”

“Ridiculous.”

The bandit snorted. He did not believe Balun’s words in the slightest. Unless someone was insane, how could he even think of coming here alone? Ten lives would not be enough.

“Where did you hide the main force? The men below could not find them either. Are they crawling up the cliff or something?”

“I said there is no main force.”

“If that is your plan to deceive us, it will not work. We will not be fooled.”

“I am telling the truth…… No, never mind. Think whatever you want.”

The bandit exchanged glances with his comrades. They had to somehow overcome this situation where the captain was dead and the Vice-Captain had been subdued.

Soon, the bandits looked at each other and nodded. Then he lowered his gaze to the Vice-Captain restrained by Balun’s forearm and spoke with a determined expression.

“Vice-Captain. How do you feel right now?”

“How do I feel? Like shit, cough!”

“Since it already feels like shit, why not take our share too and feel like shit all by yourself?”

“What?”

“Please die. That is better than all of us dying.”

“You ungrateful bastards. After I raised you all, what? Kill me? Are you repaying kindness with enmity?”

“There is no helping it. This is better than ruining the entire operation.”

“You damned bastards. Tch.”

“Do not worry. We will kill you painlessly.”

“Prepare yourselves. If it hurts even a little, I will put every last one of you through punitive drills until dawn.”

“Well, if we are lucky, you might survive, might you not? We might kill only that barbarian-looking bastard. Then we can all live and escape together.”

“Shut up. I do not like your sloppy skills, so I will handle it myself!”

Balun’s expression turned strange at their solemn conversation going back and forth, and the calm expressions that did not match it at all.

The way these bastards were talking felt ominous.

And what was with this atmosphere?

‘This is no good.’

Balun’s eyes deepened. It seemed he had to give up on these tricks.

Their eyes were different. It meant these were not opponents this kind of trick would work on in the first place.

‘Their eyes are like those of hardened Warriors.’

The experienced older brothers in the Red Fang Tribe had looked exactly like that too.

‘Where the hell did these bastards come from?’

At that moment, the Vice-Captain abruptly began to say something.

“For the radiant prosperity and eternal glory of Valtrien…….”

‘Huh?’

Valtrien?

‘What was that again?’

He had heard it somewhere before.

‘Ah!’

He remembered.

The name of the neighboring country attached to the Kingdom of Corint was the Kingdom of Valtrien.

He wondered why the man was suddenly muttering the name of a neighboring country, but he could not resolve that doubt. It was because he sensed dense mana from the Vice-Captain in that instant.

Feeling the mana originating from him surge upward as if it were about to explode, Balun panicked and threw himself away.

BOOOOM!

The Vice-Captain’s body swelled, then burst with a thunderous explosion, scattering flesh and bone fragments in every direction. Balun dodged as best he could, but he inevitably got hit a few times.

“Ghk!”

He felt dizzying pain. When he checked, he saw that some of the skin on his shoulder had been scraped away. At least that was fortunate.

‘They are completely insane. He self-destructed.’

As the explosion cleared, the scene was revealed. The bandits who had surrounded Balun had scattered before he knew it. The number of bandits had decreased considerably, though he had no idea where they had gone, but their tightly drawn bowstrings remained.

He saw them looking at him with horrified eyes, unable to believe he had not died in the explosion.

The moment he saw the hands drawing those bowstrings tremble, Balun stomped without hesitation.

BOOM!

The ground shook. The bandits staggered. Balun did not miss that moment and ran.

“He is running after the withdrawal te……!”

CRACK!

The head of the bandit who had been urgently speaking burst like a watermelon.

After swinging Black Moon and smashing the man’s head open in a satisfying blow, Balun ran toward the dense trees beyond the collapsed remains of the house. The bandits fired their bows, but their bodies had been shaken by the tremor, so they failed to hit Balun.

“Catch him! He is chasing the withdrawal team! Do not let him go no matter what!”

The bandits’ desperate voices echoed through the valley.

***

Bows were one of the greatest fears of Warriors. Even a Warrior of the Great Plains with outstanding skill had no way to deal with arrows pouring down in volleys.

That was true even for Balun of all people, so he had no choice but to be cautious.

That was why Balun had chosen to leave the village and hide himself in the mountains.

If he used the obstacles of dense trees and undergrowth, he could kill all the archers, even if there were more than a hundred of them.

Balun was confident. He had approached and killed archers who shot at him from a distance countless times. He had been especially good at that even within the tribe, to the point that Balun had acted as a detached force in every war.

However, even Balun could not easily break through the current situation. The enemy’s level was far higher than he had expected.

The enemies were better with bows than he had imagined, better with swords than he had imagined, and better at climbing mountains than he had imagined.

As if the mountain were their own backyard.

FWIP, FWIP, FWIP!

Arrows flew toward him. Balun quickly hid behind a tree. Arrows poured between the trees like rain and stuck into the ground before his eyes.

He barely managed to steady his pounding heart with a deep breath. His tense mind seemed to settle somewhat.

‘They are not ordinary soldiers. They are elites among elites.’

He understood clearly now.

What kind of work these bastards had done.

‘They are probably something like special forces. A ranger unit, perhaps. Since they said something about serving Valtrien, maybe they are soldiers belonging to the Kingdom of Valtrien.’

The same went for the fact that they had said “withdrawal team.” Bandits would never use words like that.

‘If a withdrawal team exists, that means there is a remaining team. Then are these the remaining team? To hold my attention?’

Balun squeezed his eyes shut. It seemed the scale of this had become larger than he had expected.

Who would have known? He thought they were just bandits, but it turned out they were special forces members.

‘Did Count Rotenfeld know this when he sent me here? Or did he send me without knowing?’

He could not think for long. He could see the encirclement tightening.

Footsteps drew closer. With his sharpened senses, Balun identified their positions. Even though he had maintained his Awakened State for quite a long time, Balun was still overflowing with power. It was astonishing, even to himself.

Most likely, the mana from the Fine Root of Mandragora that had melted into his body was supplying Balun with tremendous strength.

‘One ahead. Three behind. One beside the tree on the left, and two sitting on the large tree to the right. The most dangerous among them is…….’

Balun felt around beside him and snapped off a thick tree branch.

The moment he stood, he flung the branch.

WHOOSH!

The branch cut through the air. It could not endure Balun’s immense strength and broke apart, but part of its form still remained, flying onward under its own inertia.

Part of that flying branch pierced precisely into the face of the bandit who had climbed onto a tree and was aiming his bow.

“……!”

The branch penetrated the bandit’s head like a skewer. Red blood streamed down through the hole the branch had made.

“Insane……!”

Hearing the following cry of shock, Balun rose to his feet. He charged like a rhinoceros and swung Black Moon.

Black Moon cut through the bandit and the thick tree like tofu, splitting them both in two.

“What, what is that…….”

“A-A monster.”

Horror settled in the eyes of the bandits as they stared at their comrade spraying a fountain of blood and the tree that had been cleanly severed and was falling over.