Chapter 88

Chapter 88. Anchio (2)

The first thing Balun did after stepping onto a battlefield was read the field and judge the situation.

How many allies and enemies were there? What kind of forces did each side have, and in what formation were they facing each other? Did the enemy possess any asymmetric assets? And if they did, were those assets significant enough to affect the outcome?

Normally, he would first scan those details and establish a strategy, but right now, there was no need to bother.

Because anyone could see that this was a fight in which one side was being completely overwhelmed.

A one-sided massacre by the enemy.

In that hopeless battlefield, where not a single person seemed dependable, Balun let out a lamenting sigh and thought,

‘Ha, life.’

But his lament ended there.

Balun squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. After slapping his cheeks a few times with both hands, he opened his eyes wide and took out Blue Moon and Crimson Moon. Black Moon, his two-handed axe, was better in terms of destructive power, but for versatile use, dual axes were better after all.

“I will be counting on you.”

As he said that and lightly tapped the two of them, Blue Moon and Crimson Moon rang out as if excited.

Gripping their handles tightly, Balun drew in a deep breath. Then, as if putting all his strength into his lungs, he shouted loudly.

“All of you, throw down your weapons!”

At the thunderous voice that spread to every corner of the battlefield, the enemies flinched at once and grimaced. His voice was simply too loud.

“If you throw down your weapons, I will spare anyone! But if you do not throw them down, I will kill anyone!”

“…….”

“I am giving you a chance! I will count down from ten! If you do not throw down your weapons by the time I finish counting, I will consider it proof that you want to die!”

Then Balun slowly began counting. Ten, nine, eight, seven…….

Mocking laughter slipped from the soldiers’ mouths as they watched his fingers fold down.

“What is that bastard? Is he supposed to be someone important?”

“Exactly. I have never seen him before.”

Balun quickly finished counting down from ten and looked ahead. No one had thrown down their weapons. Only laughter was spreading around him.

“No one, then.”

Balun bared his teeth and smiled.

“Do not resent me. I clearly warned you. I will not forgive you even if you cry, beg, and plead.”

The enemies who had stopped at his thunderous shout began rushing toward him again. Feeling the hostility pouring toward him, Balun immediately put strength into his entire body. As he felt his swelling muscles move, Balun stomped the ground hard.

THOOOM!

A heavy tremor spread out in a circle with Balun at its center.

The enemies charging in lost their balance at once and staggered. Most of them merely lost their balance for a moment, but among the soldiers charging from close by, a few even fell over.

Balun did not miss the broken formation.

Balun kicked off the ground and ran. Shot forward like a bullet, he swung his axe at a staggering soldier. The head severed cleanly from the neck spewed blood as it dropped to the ground.

The headless corpse fell to the floor with a thud. Coincidentally, the place where it fell was where the soldiers who had lost their balance and collapsed were gathered.

“Damn it! Spit! What the…….”

Soldiers tangled together on the ground and thrashed about. Balun’s axes danced. In an instant, the tangled soldiers became pieces of corpses.

The encirclement was broken. Balun ran through the opening. One soldier shouted until his throat felt like it would burst.

“He is running! Catch him!”

Before anyone realized it, all the enemies’ gazes were fixed on Balun. However, Balun did not see them. He was focused on only one thing.

Among the countless noises stabbing into his ears, there was one faint sound. A sound that he could not hear yet, but that he would certainly have to hear.

The most dangerous sound, one with a high chance of ending Balun’s life.

Creeeak—

The moment the faint sound of a bowstring being drawn reached him, Balun grabbed a soldier who was rushing in. The soldier struggled, likely in panic, but he could not overcome Balun’s brute strength.

“Wh-What!”

THUD!

Balun smashed his elbow into the soldier’s face, then used him as a shield to block the front. Immediately afterward, arrows rained down.

FWIP FWIP FWIP FWIP!

Balun opened his eyes. Not a single arrow had hit him. Instead, the soldier had become a porcupine.

Balun hooked Blue Moon at his waist, then held the arrow-filled soldier in his left hand like a shield and ran. As Balun ran, the large body of the sturdy adult man in heavy armor fluttered limply like a deflated balloon.

“No, what in the world is that……!”

A knight blinked as he watched the scene.

He was truly dumbfounded. Carrying a person around like a shield? And a large, sturdy man at that?

Did it even make sense for such a thing to be possible?

“He is entering the inside! Stop him!”

“Yes, sir!”

The pursuers immediately followed. However, things did not go as they expected. Contrary to the shout, Balun ran outward.

Toward the outside of the stone wall that separated the fields from the road.

Pointing at the retreating Balun, a soldier spoke to the knight.

“It looks like he is running away, sir.”

“Heh heh. I suppose his little tricks end there. Hurry after him and kill him.”

“Yes, sir!”

But contrary to their confidence, Balun was not running away. He had only put his back to the stone wall in order to avoid the arrows.

As expected, every arrow that flew at him struck the stone wall.

Balun crouched beneath the stone wall and waited. The moment the soldiers changed direction and looked at him, he flung the corpse in his left hand at the soldiers charging toward him.

“What!”

“Argh!”

When a corpse suddenly flew at them and crashed down, the soldiers panicked and fell to the ground all at once. Balun aimed for that opening, and soon, more corpses appeared.

By that point, the soldiers began to hesitate. Already, more than a dozen soldiers had died at Balun’s hands.

“He is quite good. He knows how to fight cleverly.”

A knight who had been chasing fleeing civilians from a short distance away saw the scene and clicked his tongue. Only then did he realize that this Barbarian was no ordinary man.

“All of you, step aside. He is not an opponent for you. I will go myself.”

The knight kicked off the ground and charged at Balun. He had rushed in from quite a distance away, but Balun sensed the knight’s approach without even looking. He felt an unusual force drawing closer.

The knight, who had run in with swift footwork, swung his sword. Balun raised Blue Moon and blocked it.

CLANG!

The sword and axe collided, producing a rattling metallic sound. The hand with which Balun held the axe was still without the slightest movement, while the knight’s hand trembled as if he had a hand tremor.

“You are quite skilled, Barbarian. Are you a mercenary?”

“Yes.”

“Why would someone as skilled as you side with Corint? It would have been better if you had sided with our Croa.”

Balun let out a hollow laugh when he heard that. This bastard was really making him angry.

“You are saying something moronic. Who attacked me first when I was just passing by?”

“What, m-moronic?”

“Yes. Moronic. If you had not attacked, I would have passed by quietly, but you attacked for no reason and now you are all about to die. That makes you morons.”

“I praise you a little, and now you are getting arrogant. In the end, you are still nothing but a smelly, uncivilized savage monkey!”

The knight’s face turned red. Balun gave a faint laugh.

Of course. He had been wondering when those words would come out.

“Knight. I am so annoyed that I could go mad, but I am holding it in and making you one proposal.”

“A proposal?”

“Put away your sword right now and let me go. I was never a hired mercenary in the first place. I was on my way to the Kingdom of Croa to avoid the war. If you let me go even now, I can treat this as if it never happened.”

“You are not a hired mercenary?”

“Yes.”

At Balun’s words, the knight snorted.

“Ha! What a ridiculous man. Do you expect me to believe that? Avoiding the war? So you were crossing into our nation?”

“That is what I said.”

“It seems you are trying to use your head in your own way, but not a chance. A Barbarian is fleeing to avoid war? Why not just say you hate fighting altogether? Or say you love peace?”

The knight continued without even pausing for breath.

“Do not even think of playing tricks, and speak with your axe. In any case, I cannot simply let you go after you killed my subordinates.”

His eyes deepened. Balun let out a long sigh.

“You brought your death upon yourself.”

He put strength into both arms. His arm muscles swelled greatly, and powerful force could be felt from them. The instant Balun put force into his axe and struck hard against the sword, the knight’s sword was sent flying backward helplessly.

“Insane!”

That became the knight’s dying cry.

SLASH!

The knight’s head soared into the sky. For a moment, the battlefield seemed to freeze.

“Impossible…….”

“How could Sir Dustin…….”

The soldiers’ faces were filled with shock. He also saw that the mages, who had barely looked at him before, were now looking at him.

“You bastard!”

“How dare you kill Dustin!”

Three knights rushed at Balun at the same time in fury. Their blue-tinged swords traced arcs through the air. Balun raised Blue Moon and Crimson Moon in a cross and blocked their swords. Balun’s arms trembled.

The axes locked against the swords made a strange sound. To Balun, it felt almost like a scream. Balun poured in all his strength without delay.

Creak!

His swollen muscles compressed. His body, which had reached the Awakened State, supplied powerful strength throughout his entire frame, and the force that had felt burdensome no longer felt that way.

‘Hoo!’

Balun exerted strength. With an explosive force, a gust of wind pressure burst outward and swept over the three knights and the soldiers behind them.

The soldiers all screamed and fell over, but as expected of knights, they did not fall. They merely staggered for a brief moment.

However, in battles between experts, that brief opening immediately became a crisis. Balun did not miss that opening.

STAB!

“Kuh!”

Crimson Moon in his right hand split through one heart. He pulled the axe out as it was. Fragments of the heart came out with the axe. As if shaking them off, he swung hard horizontally. A diagonal line was drawn across one knight’s shoulder blade, and a fountain of blood sprayed out.

“GRAAAH!”

And then there was one left. The man’s eyes trembled. However, his sword was calm. His trained body remembered the sensation.

“I-I will kill you!”

Unfortunately, however, that calm sword contained no power. He was so shocked that strength had unconsciously drained from his hand.

In truth, that alone was already rather impressive, but unfortunately, on a battlefield, merely being impressive was not enough to survive. One had to be truly exceptionally impressive to survive. Either that, or lucky.

This knight was neither. That decided his life.

SLASH!

The last knight’s head soared into the air. At that perfectly timed moment, an Ice Arrow flew in and struck Balun in the shoulder blade.

“Kuh!”

Balun gritted his teeth. A dizzying pain struck him. He also felt a bone-chilling cold. Perhaps because of that, even his head felt numb.

He whipped his head around and looked in the direction it had flown from. A mage was standing there with a face full of despair. He had been one step too late. The magic had been used to help the knight.

Their eyes met. Balun glared fiercely.

“Gasp!”

The mage dropped his staff and collapsed on the spot. He had been startled by Balun’s beastlike gaze and force. Soon, his crotch grew wet, and yellow liquid dripped down the hem of his trousers.

“D-Damn it. How could this happen?”

The mage quickly brushed off his backside and stood. Then he swung his staff and shouted loudly.

“E-Everyone, retreat! Retreat!”

His voice was extremely loud. It was probably magic that amplified his voice.

The soldiers responded to his voice. After staring at one another in confusion, they soon turned their bodies and began running away. Well over a hundred soldiers withdrew all at once like an ebbing tide.

Balun reflexively tried to chase them, then stopped. Chasing more than a hundred enemies was unreasonable. In addition, there were as many as three mages among the enemy. Balun could not even predict what kind of magic they might use to toy with him.

However, Balun ground his teeth. He could not let them go like this. He wanted to strike them at least once somehow.

With a face filled with anger, Balun pulled a dagger from his waist. He put all his strength into it and flung the dagger.

WHOOOOOSH!

The dagger cut through the air. His strength was so great that the dagger snapped in the middle.

One of the broken fragments struck the mage.

BANG!

“Kuh!”

With the sound of something bursting, the mage clutched his shoulder and staggered, but he did not stop walking. The soldiers stood in front of the mage as if to escort him, and soon, all the troops withdrew like the tide.

“…….”

In the battlefield that had fallen quiet in an instant, Balun was the only one standing.

Only belatedly did the people who had been hiding here and there raise their crouched bodies. Their gazes landed on Balun.

“H-Hero.”

The word someone muttered softly filled the blood-reeking battlefield.