Ch.630Heavenly Fortune and Earthly Blessing

Shot like a trebuchet projectile, Aishan-Gioro Orhan deflected the rain of arrows with his entire body and crashed into the area of Tower 7 where I was stationed.

“Crashed” was the only way to describe his entrance. Whether due to his flight path being altered by Frider’s final explosive javelin, he landed like a human cannonball, shattering the tower with his body.

“…How unseemly of me.”

Orhan muttered quietly as he cleared away the tower debris piled on the wall, dusting off his head and shoulders. Stone dust and dirt showered down.

‘Like dandruff from a homeless person who hasn’t bathed in a century.’

[What kind of comparison is that?]

Hersella grumbled as if the mere thought turned her stomach. I didn’t respond and instead glared at Orhan while carefully backing toward the uneven section of the wall to increase the distance between us.

“The Kagan has arrived! Your rebellious wolf days of insolence end here!”

“I’ll chew your flesh and grind your bones to drink!”

The warriors, emboldened by Orhan’s arrival, spouted nonsense. They already thought they’d won. I removed the cloth covering my mouth and threw off my robe, laughing.

“Worms who can’t even withstand a single blow bark so loudly. Anyone listening would think you were the ones fighting.”

My taunt, delivered in the Eastern tongue. The warriors’ expressions twisted as viciously as wrung-out rags.

“How dare you…!”

“If you want to object, come at me. I’ll make you unrecognizable to your own children.”

I extended my left hand and wiggled my fingers, intensifying the warriors’ killing intent. Though they all seemed furious, none charged forward—perhaps their retirement plans involved receiving care from their children.

“Haschal.”

Orhan interrupted my provocation.

He pushed aside the warriors with their faces like rotten pumpkins and swung the red curved blades gripped in both hands. With a whooshing sound, the stone dust around him swirled.

Twin swords… massive single-edged blades that looked like a great sword split in half. They were the very embodiment of death.

“Want another sword fight? Didn’t we establish last time that it doesn’t work?”

The protection of Rotholandus’s fire seal. Its effectiveness had already been proven in our previous fight. Even taking a direct hit from Orhan’s moon blade had only resulted in minor injuries—skin cuts and exposed muscle at worst.

“I didn’t bring the Blood Twin Blades to fight you.”

Orhan quietly replied, gripping the two curved blades in reverse and roughly driving them into the ground.

– Crack!

Shattered gravel flew in all directions. The solid rock split like lips, revealing thick, massive pieces of metal.

“They’re for after I punish you.”

Orhan, having used the stone wall as a temporary scabbard, clenched his fists tightly.

“Oh really? Then they’re just decorations. Because there won’t be any ‘after punishing me.'”

With my back to the uneven wall, I smiled boldly while discreetly surveying my surroundings.

Two Champions who had emerged from the siege tower. Around one hundred fifty warriors filling the area. Thousands of soldiers pouring in like customers rushing to a newly opened brothel.

Perfect.

If I had displayed my power and fought openly from the beginning, Orhan would have immediately charged at me, and the enemy soldiers wouldn’t have dared approach.

But thanks to hiding my strength until the very end, more than half of the enemy forces had now gathered around me.

“What was the name again? Blood Twin Blades? If you want, I can bury them with you as grave goods.”

“Your arrogance is excessive. You couldn’t have grown significantly stronger in just a few days… Let’s see what trap you’ve set that makes you so confident.”

So he had noticed it was a trap. I placed my left hand on the uneven section of the wall as if I were about to leap over it, and my lips twitched. Ludwig’s words when planning this operation flashed through my mind.

– Orhan will immediately recognize it’s a trap. But he’ll charge in regardless. He has absolute confidence in his Unyielding Flesh.

Indeed, he was right.

I wonder which of us is truly arrogant. I wanted to snap at him to examine his own attitude before criticizing my pride. Though if he really did, I’d be the one in trouble.

“Well, follow me if you want to see.”

“You want to fight while dancing through the air like last time? Yes, that would be advantageous for you. But the outcome won’t change.”

He wasn’t wrong. Fighting in the air, retreating backward whenever I took a hit, would make it easier to dodge his strikes and minimize damage even when hit.

However, contrary to Orhan’s misconception, my goal wasn’t aerial combat. That technique had terrible energy efficiency.

“Before we fight, I’ll ask one last time. Are you willing to accept my proposal even now? If you bring me Ludwig’s head—”

Orhan began walking toward me, rolling his shoulders to loosen up.

“No, your head is all I want.”

I twirled Durandal once and pointed it at Orhan, rejecting his proposal. He was persistently trying to spare my strength, but his offer held no value for me.

Become allies with those who said they’d eat my flesh? I’d have to be insane.

[You could return to the Aishan with Ludwig’s head, then assassinate him when the opportunity arises?]

Hersella offered advice disguised as a joke. Her tone was quite elevated, as if she could barely contain her excitement for what was about to unfold.

—Crack.

“That’s unfortunate. Then I’ll shatter your limbs, drag you to Ordos, and ask again.”

Crack.

“I’m telling you, that won’t happen.”

I just snickered while looking at Orhan, who was beginning to show hostility.

The reason I’d been talking with him was merely to buy time, and thanks to his reluctance to kill me, I’d managed to stall long enough.

Crack.

Just as I expected. This bastard has no mana detection ability. If he could sense the flow of mana, he would have noticed what was happening right now.

Well, it’s too late now.

Boom—

The vibration that had started dozens of meters below finally reached my feet. As gentle as an old man’s heartbeat. As quiet as the harbinger of a storm.

“Hmm…?”

Perhaps he felt the same sensation. Orhan tilted his head for a moment. I pulled the corners of my mouth up to my ears and sheathed Durandal.

And then.

– BOOOOOOM!

With a sound like a giant thrashing about, the wall shook violently.

—-

Thunder roars. Like thousands of lightning bolts striking simultaneously. A sound like all the peaks of the Sky Mountains collapsing at once. Starting from beneath my feet.

“Wha…!”

My vision thrashed about as if my eyeballs had been shaken in a barrel. Soldiers lost their balance and fell from the violent tremors that felt like an earthquake.

“Earthquake?! Is it an earthquake?!”

Warriors who managed to hold onto the wall’s uneven surfaces turned their heads in all directions. Their faces looked bewildered. They hadn’t yet realized what was happening.

Or perhaps they had noticed but were desperately denying it.

“Haschal…! You, could it be…!”

Even Orhan lost his composure. Being smarter than the average Ka’har, he must have understood the situation.

The ground beneath his feet—no, all the surrounding floor—began to crack.

[Taste it! This is truly heaven’s collapse and earth’s overturning!]

Hersella burst into maniacal laughter.

Though I was the only one who could hear her voice.

“I’m giving you the finest tomb. Consider it my final act of filial piety.”

I smiled as I removed my left hand from the wall.

Hagalaz.

My left hand imbued with the power of collapse.

The next moment, the world came crashing down.

======[ Ka’har ]=======

“The Ka’har are coming! Stop them! Soak the wall with their blood!”

The battlefield had descended into chaos.

“Fight until you die. Fight even after death!”

“The time has come to end our long humiliation. Today, the western wall will finally fall!”

Ka’har soldiers who had desperately climbed rope ladders and rushed up siege tower stairs to reach the top of the wall. They fought like rabid dogs, blocking and deflecting the spears and swords of the Imperial soldiers who charged at them.

“Tear those pale-skins to pieces!”

A White Banner soldier’s forcefully swung sword was blocked by an Imperial soldier’s shield wall, and a spear tip that extended like an awl through the shield gap pierced the White Banner soldier’s abdomen.

“Argh! You bastard!”

Enraged by the pain of his intestines being severed, the White Banner soldier yanked the spear embedded in his stomach and plunged his blade into the face of the Imperial soldier who lost balance and was pulled forward.

“Ugh…!”

The Imperial soldier who blocked the blade with his face convulsed and wet himself, while the White Banner soldier, grinning fiercely as he pulled out his blade, was impaled by spears from other Imperial soldiers.

Imperial screams and Ka’har death throes mingled as corpses piled up on the wall.

It was right after this that a sound like the sky itself screaming tore through the air.

“What, what is that sound! Did lightning strike?!”

“Is it Lord Frider…? No, Lord Frider is over there…”

Men with contorted faces who had been swinging blades were startled by the sudden sound and vibration, reflexively turning their heads toward the source of the noise.

And they forgot how to speak.

“Ah, ahhh…! Ahhhhh!”

“Uhhhhh…!”

Imperial and Eastern men alike stopped fighting and stared at the source of the sound with pale faces. They couldn’t have been more shocked if they’d caught their wives in bed with their fathers-in-law.

The wall was collapsing.

Swallowing thousands of lives.