Ch.1138Blood Saint, Black Hound of Betrayal

The self-proclaimed Great Chieftain, the demigod, Black Dog Caliburn.

This black were-dog had been sleeping, waiting for the pressure of Heaven’s Wall to weaken. Upon finally awakening, he immediately summoned all werebeasts warriors underground to form a massive army.

Those who had slept alongside him, the remnants of Rurik’s faction who had refused Oleg’s rule, and even independent clans that had never belonged to Baryachrus.

When a godlike being called and demanded their obedience, they, being less than gods, had no choice but to follow.

Countless werebeast warriors responded to the call—or rather, submitted to the conscription backed by the demigod’s authority—heading underground to bow before their demigod and swear loyalty and obedience.

There was only one exception.

“An ancient demigod… So the great ‘Great Chieftain’ has ordered us to crawl in with bowed heads, promising to share his glory with us?”

Only Oleg’s Baryachrus, who had migrated to the eastern continent and were at war with the Ka’har.

—-

About ten days before the bloody battle between Caliburn and Erzsebet began.

A werebeast introducing himself as Great Chieftain Caliburn’s envoy visited Oleg, who was resting in his tent, and proposed that he join the Great Chieftain’s forces.

This was presented as a duty and task that must be performed as a werebeast warrior, with a firm and definitive threat that refusal would not be accepted.

“What an attractive proposal. I’d like to shed tears of gratitude… but I don’t know how to cry. How embarrassing.”

“…You would do well to mind your words. Unless you wish to incur his wrath.”

“Wrath? Let him be angry if he wants. It’s none of my concern.”

But Oleg responded to the threat with sharp sarcasm.

“Likewise, this ‘great task’ or whatever it is… is none of my business.”

He sneered at the conscription order to join Caliburn’s forces, rejecting it as if it wasn’t even worth considering.

“You would defy his will…? How reckless and arrogant, like the young fool you are. How long do you think it will take before you regret this decision?”

“Well… longer than you will.”

To finish things off, he tore apart and devoured the enraged envoy, making a meal of him for his insolent attitude.

It was essentially a unilateral and barbaric declaration of war, no different from hurling insults and mockery to someone’s face.

From Caliburn’s perspective, while seething with rage, he must have been inwardly dumbfounded.

A being without divine nature, who by ancient standards would be considered merely a tribal chief at best, had dared to challenge him without knowing his place.

The power difference between them was so obvious it hardly needed explanation. Though Oleg had grown stronger than before, he was still only at the upper hero level at best.

As the envoy had warned before dying, Oleg’s hostility toward Caliburn was beyond reckless—it was literally insane.

So why, then, did Oleg commit such madness without the slightest hesitation?

Had he gone half-mad from repeatedly cannibalizing his own kind?

Had he become intoxicated by the praise and adulation of his subordinate werebeasts, believing himself to be something special?

Of course, neither was true.

Oleg was brutal but not insane, and while violent, he was neither reckless nor stupid.

Even his outrageous act of killing and eating the envoy was not an impulsive atrocity but a decision made after cold calculation.

‘If they’ve come all the way from the north demanding we join them… it proves they have many enemies.’

The fact that they were gathering all werebeast warriors in the world meant they were in a situation that absolutely required such a force.

It meant that even a warrior as powerful as one who claimed to be half-god couldn’t handle his enemies alone—presumably other demigods and their armies that filled the underground.

‘So there’s no reason to bow. They don’t even have the luxury to worry about the likes of us right now.’

With this judgment, Oleg could defy Caliburn’s will without hesitation.

The self-proclaimed “Great Chieftain” Caliburn was clearly facing battles with other demigods and lacked the military resources to spare, needing to gather all manner of rabble.

In such a situation, dividing his forces to punish Oleg’s insolence would risk losing winnable battles, so it was reasonable to assume no threat would come to him until the underground war ended.

But wouldn’t this mean inevitable doom would come to him once that war ended?

Well, thinking pessimistically, perhaps, but Oleg judged this wasn’t a major concern either.

For two reasons.

‘A war between demigods. If he loses, he’ll certainly perish, and even if he wins, he’ll hardly be unscathed. Then I can kill him.’

First, there was no guarantee that this Caliburn would actually conquer the entire underground.

If Caliburn had been strong enough to overwhelm all his enemies, he wouldn’t have needed to come all the way east to demand their participation. And if he wasn’t that strong, it wouldn’t be surprising if he were defeated by someone, somewhere, at any time.

Even if he did defeat all his enemies, he would certainly have to accept massive casualties in the process, and it would take considerable time to recover his strength.

Oleg could solve the problem by killing him during that window of opportunity.

‘It would be impossible for me, but… that woman could do it. I wouldn’t even need to provoke her—just leaking a bit of information about him would be enough to make her jump in.’

Of course, even depleted, a demigod was still a demigod.

Since Oleg himself had no chance of winning, the task of beheading Caliburn would have to be left to that monster who seemed born to kill other species.

From Oleg’s perspective, this wasn’t even difficult.

He just needed to spread rumors about Caliburn, and that woman would leap into the underground and return with the beast’s head.

Oleg always had a plan.

Whether by good fortune or not, all his plans had always achieved definite success.

“OLEEEEG! It’s time to settle our unfinished business! Come out now—!”

…With the exception of the one currently shouting outside his tent.

“Lord Oleg! Enemy cavalry has appeared in the rear! It’s Targiyan’s Black Cavalry!”

“Haa… that guy again? Why won’t Targiyan just die already?”

The only miscalculation in all his otherwise perfect plans—the 2nd Kagan of Clan Aishan, Targiyan.

Was he some kind of immortal? Every time he retreated with serious injuries, he would return completely recovered not long after to block Oleg’s forces.

His tenacity was so remarkable that Oleg wondered if he might be a werebeast disguised as a human.

After this happened repeatedly, even Oleg, who had secretly enjoyed bloody battles with worthy opponents, was now sighing in exasperation.

Of course, Oleg himself had also recovered through the werebeasts’ unique regenerative abilities each time he was injured, so he wasn’t really in a position to criticize Targiyan’s tenacity.

—-

Anyway, more than ten days had passed since then, and Caliburn had begun his underground conquest war, leading the werebeasts who had obeyed his conscription order.

The beginning was smooth.

If the commanders’ powers are equal, victory is ultimately determined by the number and might of their forces.

There weren’t even five demigods in the vast underground who had amassed forces powerful enough to surpass the werebeast army he had gathered.

The problem was that the second opponent he faced happened to be one of those five.

“Menes would be grateful. The traitor and betrayer he failed to punish will finally meet death here.”

Erzsebet.

The former saint who had exterminated all vampires on the surface, only to fall into corruption by consuming all their blood and attaining the status of a demigod—the Empress of Blood.

Like a plague transmitted through bodily fluids, she could transform creatures into vampires by granting them her blood, making them her subjects.

The vampire legion born this way numbered twice that of Caliburn’s werebeast army, and Erzsebet engaged Caliburn in bloody combat based on this force.

While the vampire legion was clearly superior in numbers, the werebeast army had somewhat stronger individual warriors.

Erzsebet was confident of victory based on her two-fold numerical advantage, while Caliburn believed his warriors could easily overcome such odds.

“Betrayal? Kuh, that’s just the excuse of one who was cast out.”

Therefore, neither demigod had the slightest intention of retreating.

“All nine tribes and seven chieftains supported me. They recognized that I, Caliburn, not him, was worthy of the Great Chieftain position!”

“Recognition? As I recall, that wretched kingdom you seized and ruled fell apart from internal strife in just three years?”

Contempt and hostility crossed like sharp swords.

“A three-year Great Chieftain. Certainly, an unparalleled achievement that no one could surpass. I shall personally commend you. Consider it an honor.”

Behind the woman in a splendid dress over red skin, a silver ring appeared, cracked and broken, dripping blood.

Four wings resembling bat membranes burst through her back and spread wide, while blood pooled on the ground rose up in defiance of gravity, swirling into a vortex.

“Ha, a woman driven mad by blood intoxication certainly talks well!”

The black were-dog growled in rage.

Behind him, a shadow like a massive beast rose like a mirage, shimmering faintly before disappearing as if being sucked into his body.

– CRACK!

The sound of bones and muscles rupturing and regenerating.

Caliburn’s body suddenly doubled in size, then continued to swell rapidly, changing form.

His bestial ferocity—the essence of werebeasts—was maximized. He grew even larger and more vicious, becoming closer to a true beast.

“GROAAAAAAR-!”

The black monstrous dog, now as large as a house, spread his arms wide and roared.

The rune engraved on his chest spewed flames that wrapped around the beast’s entire body like armor, and his five pairs of claws, now long and sharp as swords, gleamed wrapped in bluish light.

Ancient demons who had released their divine bodies as demigods.

Like an erupting volcano, like a crashing tidal wave, the collision of these godlike monsters shook heaven and earth, spraying a bloody mist.