Ch.646While the Two Were Fighting, Above Them (2)

The mental technique that returns the threat of flying spears and swords directly back to the enemy, Reversal Stance. That technique was a power even more overwhelming for the masters of Landenburg than Orhan’s Unyielding Flesh.

Unlike Unyielding Flesh, where attacks were meaningless but still possible, as long as Glar maintained Reversal Stance, they couldn’t even swing their swords at him.

Attacking Glar with full force would only result in injuring themselves.

“A perfect defense beyond Orhan…!? We can’t even touch him…!”

It was nothing short of a nightmare for the swords of Landenburg.

With his simple Tale of Heros that merely hardened his body, Orhan already reigned as an invincible warrior whom no knight in the world could defeat, but this was on another level entirely.

It was fortunate that Glar’s capabilities weren’t at the superhuman level of Orhan or Haschal Median Aishan-Gioro. If Glar had possessed strength comparable to theirs, the masters of Landenburg would have been annihilated in an instant.

“No, that’s impossible. If that were true, he would be the lord of the Ka’har. There must be some weakness we don’t know about yet, which is why he hasn’t surpassed Unyielding Flesh!”

William, the third sword, shouted to encourage his juniors. He believed Reversal Stance had a weakness. If there were no weakness, Glar would have surpassed Orhan to become the strongest in the great plains.

The very fact that Glar was the war commander of the Black Banner Army was evidence that even with his seemingly invincible Reversal Stance, he couldn’t surpass Unyielding Flesh.

Of course, his reasoning could be wrong.

It was possible that Glar chose to remain as war commander out of loyalty to Orhan, or that while his capabilities didn’t match Orhan’s, Reversal Stance itself was a Tale of Heros that surpassed Unyielding Flesh in every aspect.

However, William decided not to consider or mention the possibility that Reversal Stance had no weaknesses.

Considering an opponent invincible would only dampen allied morale and fighting spirit, offering no advantage in battle.

In any case, the masters of Landenburg believed Glar must have some weakness and fought desperately to find it… only to fall one by one.

Michel, thinking ranged attacks might be effective, received his own javelin in his lower abdomen.

Karim struck with all his might to see if Reversal Stance could be broken by force, and proved with his shattered shoulder blade that their strength was insufficient.

Hayden, assuming there must be a limit to how long Reversal Stance could be maintained or how many reflections it could perform, unleashed a barrage of shallow, rapid attacks, only to have them all reflected back, leaving his entire body shredded.

Yan and William focused on defense rather than offense, hoping to exhaust Glar’s energy, but as mere masters, they couldn’t hold out until a hero-level Glar tired.

Just three minutes. In just three minutes after the battle began, the five masters were reduced to severely wounded casualties.

—-

William’s prediction wasn’t entirely wrong. Reversal Stance did indeed have a fundamental weakness. It was simply a weakness that the five fallen masters could never have exploited.

‘I’m certain. He can’t return Ceres’s Wrath!’

‘So that’s why he didn’t approach me—because of this spear!’

After several minutes of fierce combat, Nigel and Heinrich, who unlike the other masters remained unwounded, realized Reversal Stance’s weakness.

Its vulnerability to wide-area attribute attacks.

The commonality between Heinrich’s Tale of Heros, Ceres’s Wrath, and Nigel’s Sacred Spear of Eberond was that they didn’t attack the enemy directly, but swept through the area where the enemy stood.

Moreover, they worked through intangible forces like vibration and electric shock, rather than having clear physical forms like spears or swords.

That was Reversal Stance’s weakness.

Glar’s life as a Ka’har warrior had little to do with sorcery, and the attacks he had to face throughout his life were limited to blades, arrows, punches, and thrown stones.

Therefore, his mental technique, Reversal Stance, which embodied his entire life experience, recognized and responded only to those as attacks to be returned.

On the plains, that was enough. Unlike Orhan, who could withstand even reflected attacks and continue striking until Glar’s strength gave out, other warriors couldn’t lay a finger on him.

But not against westerners. The western legions didn’t shun priests and mages—forces that plains warriors considered sorcerers. Far from shunning them, they welcomed and actively employed them.

Though their numbers were few, as only a small minority of mages chose the frontlines over comfortable research positions.

If Glar had faced seven high-level mages instead of seven knights, he wouldn’t have been able to counterattack while activating Reversal Stance—he would have been too busy dodging their magic.

Of course, recruiting seven combat-capable high-level mages was more difficult than recruiting twenty masters, so this was merely an academic discussion.

Why would high-level mages, who could live as comfortably as nobles just by becoming vassals of institutional nobles, set foot on the desolate frontlines?

Most of them pursued only deeper magical knowledge, caring nothing for the empire’s safety or the threat from the plains.

As a result, Landenburg possessed only forty mages, with no high-level mages among them.

Even those forty had all been assigned to maintain the trap for capturing Orhan.

Heinrich, knowing this, decided to rely on battle priests instead of mages, making do with what he had.

“Bring all available battle priests! Those with area-of-effect miracles!”

“Yes, sir!”

The soldier who heard Heinrich’s order ran urgently toward the rear of the wall.

Most priests were positioned at the rear base below the wall, not in the middle of the battlefield. Battle priests were as valuable as mages, and being affiliated with the Church rather than noble private armies, they couldn’t be carelessly expended.

—-

Around that time, Glar also realized that the enemy had noticed Reversal Stance’s weakness.

‘They’ve figured out the limitations of Reversal Stance…’

It was an obvious realization.

How could they not understand when one was desperately shaking the ground and the other was relentlessly hurling lightning? There would be no reason to fight that way unless they had identified the weakness of Reversal Stance that even Glar couldn’t have realized without experiencing it firsthand.

‘But what of it!’

Although half the power of his mental technique, Reversal Stance, had been neutralized, Glar felt no dismay.

The gap between one who had crossed the wall and those who hadn’t was not shallow enough to be overcome by countering a single mental technique.

Can’t reflect with Reversal Stance? Then he would block, dodge, approach, and cut them down. It would take a little more time, but his advantage remained firm.

It was precisely that—the fact that it would take more time—that fueled his anger.

In a situation where he needed to rush to Orhan’s side as quickly as possible, he was being held up by a couple of knights weaker than himself.

“I’ll tear you to pieces!”

He raged even more fiercely, unleashing a downpour of curved blade strikes.

—-

Imperial Third Legion Commander Frederick glanced at the battlefield where Glar and the swords of Landenburg were locked in mortal combat, biting his lip.

‘This isn’t good…!’

They seemed to be holding out somehow against the Ka’har hero, but even from a distance, it was clear they were merely buying time with no chance of victory.

‘If only I could join them…’

He too was a knight who had crossed the wall to reach the realm of heroes. Normally, he should have joined that fight to face Glar.

Heinrich, Hayden, and Nigel alone would struggle even to maintain a stalemate, let alone achieve victory.

The problem was that he couldn’t leave his position.

“Charge with all your might! Break through here and victory is ours!”

Ka’har warriors charged up the rocky mountain as if it were flat ground, rushing toward him. On top of the wall debris collapsed according to Ludwig Wilhelm von Landenburg’s strategy, Frederick was defending the mountain of rubble like an iron wall alongside the empire’s heavy infantry.

“Hold with your dying breath!”

Frederick shouted as he swung his sword at the forefront of the heavy infantry, with no time to wipe away the blood covering him.

The battle on the debris was incomparably fierce compared to elsewhere. If Frederick left the front line even for a moment, they would be broken through immediately.

Unlike the wall, which required climbing vertically for dozens of meters, the mountain of debris was little more than a slightly elevated hill for the warriors.

It was inevitable that most of the Ka’har forces that hadn’t yet reached the top of the wall would converge there.