Ch.687Ludwig’s Hardships

As soon as the barrage of spears ceased, Orhan charged toward the wall again.

He leaped across the deep, wide moat in a single bound, then kicked off the ground and soared up the few meters of wall as lightly as a water bird.

Joshua and Frider tried desperately to stop him, but the Black Sword of Giant Hunting lacked power, and Ainfeld’s Flash couldn’t be activated due to the recoil from continuous firing moments before.

By the time Frider gritted his teeth, drawing upon his Karma and grabbing his spear, Orhan had already mounted the wall.

“He made it up after all…!”

“Orhan-!”

Joshua and Frider thrust their sword and spear toward Orhan. Instead of their inefficient Tales of Heroes for close combat, they poured all their heroic Karma into physical enhancement.

Landenburg’s strongest swordsman and the Imperial Army’s greatest spearman. The strikes of these two heroes flew like lightning toward the ruler of the east.

“Weak and clumsy. Is this truly your best effort?”

Orhan held Jekrindo at an angle like a shield to deflect Frider’s spear tip, then swung it to knock away Joshua’s sword while shouting.

A slash empowered by both the blessing of divine blood and immense Murder Karma. The fiercely swung red blade carried such force that even knights who had reached the realm of heroes dared not try to block it.

“Kugh…!”

Joshua let out a groan between clenched teeth as he stopped his body from being pushed back. His wrists throbbed with pain and his forearms tingled.

‘To think a one-armed slash could possess such power. Truly a monster…!’

The force reminded him of Haschal’s slashes that he had faced during training. It was difficult enough just to block and deflect, let alone counter.

“Not yet!”

Frider, seizing an opening, unleashed a downpour of spear thrusts. A series of attacks—thrusting as if throwing the spear, quickly retrieving it, and thrusting again. His attacks were so fast it seemed as if more than ten spears were being fired simultaneously.

“Hmmph!”

Orhan stomped the ground with Karma-infused legs. The wall beneath his feet erupted with a thunderous sound. Rock fragments that couldn’t withstand the impact burst outward in all directions, erasing the shadows of Frider’s spear thrusts.

– Whoosh!

A crimson arc appeared next. The blade of Jekrindo, slicing through the rock fragments like tofu, extended toward Frider’s neck.

Frider, his stance disrupted by the flying rocks, hastily raised his spear shaft to block Orhan’s attack, then flew backward with a thunderous sound and crashed down.

“Kuhak…!”

With a shock that felt like his internal organs were being turned inside out, Frider spat blood as he barely managed to rise.

‘How can there be such a gap between heroes…!’

Frider gritted his teeth.

He had expected that he couldn’t match Orhan’s strength and at best could barely hold out… but facing him in actual combat, this was too much.

It was nearly impossible to even endure.

‘Unyielding Flesh isn’t the issue. Strength, movement, reaction speed—he overwhelmingly surpasses me in every capacity.’

Before even considering the depth of Karma or compatibility of heroic tales, the fundamental performance of his physical body was on a completely different level from theirs.

The blessing of divine blood inherited by those of the “Sky-Devouring Wolf” bloodline.

Faced with this transcendent protection that evolved humans into something beyond human, the two heroes, mere mortals, could only feel the fundamental limitations of their species.

—-

Of course, difficult as it was to endure, fleeing was not an option.

Joshua and Frider fought Orhan with all their might, and Heinrich, who had been waiting in reserve, joined in, swinging his halberd at Orhan while shaking the earth.

Longsword, spear, demon-slaying blade, and halberd whirled like a raging storm, carving away the top of the wall.

A fierce battle, three against one.

At this point, even Orhan had to occasionally activate Unyielding Flesh to continue fighting. Unlike when he had two functioning arms, with just one arm he couldn’t perfectly block attacks coming from all directions.

“Khaaaaap!”

The three heroes occasionally managed to land hits by having two block Jekrindo while the third targeted Orhan’s left blind spot.

…Yes, they could land hits.

But they only tore and dented his armor, unable to draw even a drop of blood.

“Damn that Unyielding Flesh!”

“How on earth did Lord Median manage to cut through this…!”

Orhan’s body, protected by Unyielding Flesh, boasted such hardness that even their full-strength strikes couldn’t leave a single scratch.

Orhan swung Jekrindo without regard for the blades striking his body, and the Imperial heroes, gaining nothing from their successful attacks, barely blocked his counterattacks while suffering one-sided injuries.

They fell from the wall, staining the ground below with their blood.

‘This is meaningless.’

Orhan was certain. These three knights fighting with all their might could never stop him, not even if they died and came back to life.

If he just called War Chief Hatan to handle one of them, it was obvious that all three would meet their deaths in less than ten minutes.

That’s why he was puzzled.

He couldn’t know what trap Ludwig and Haschal had prepared, but he didn’t think they would sacrifice three forces comparable to a war chief as mere decoys.

“Where are you hiding, Haschal!”

Orhan, having stomped the ground to pieces and swung Jekrindo to shake off all three men, roared like an enraged tiger.

“Do you plan to keep hiding? Until I crush the heads of every hero and tear out the entrails of every master to present before you!”

His deep, resonant roar echoed. The Imperial soldiers trembled and shrank back involuntarily.

Their morale had hit rock bottom in the face of Orhan’s overwhelming strength, single-handedly dominating three heroes. And the real battle hadn’t even begun.

—-

‘As expected, even three are not enough.’

Ludwig, watching the battle through a window in the inner fortress, glared at Orhan while letting out a quiet sigh.

The Emperor of Ka’har. The strongest warrior of the steppes, whom he had been watching for over a decade, had become a calamitous existence, just as he had predicted.

‘I should have killed him long ago.’

Eleven years ago, nine years ago, or at least two years ago. He should have killed him by any means necessary.

Until then, there had been a possibility of defeating him with the Empire’s power alone. Back when even the Empire’s First Sword couldn’t surpass the limits of mastery, that unyielding wall.

The ‘Sword of Landenburg’ had been raised solely for that purpose. If Orhan hadn’t crossed that wall, they could have somehow defeated him with a combined attack of ten masters.

But now it was too late.

The Battle of Zeren Plains, where Werner Valenstein met his death. There, the new Empire’s First Sword had flung open the door to the next realm—a door that Valenstein had failed to open despite decades of effort.

That was the beginning.

Slowly but surely, those who had reached the pinnacle of mastery began to advance beyond the wall.

From mere humans wielding metal, to the realm of superhumans who could create miracles with their own Karma.

The Realm of Heroes.

While it was a blessing that master-level swordsmen had dreamed of, for Ludwig it was nothing short of a disaster.

Unlike the past when stronger forces could suppress powerful individuals, those who entered the realm of heroes could slaughter those who hadn’t crossed the wall all too easily.

Knights who had obtained the miracle of heroic tales were literally one-man armies, and only fellow heroes could stand against them.

Conventional strategies and tactics lost meaning before them, and thus war twisted into a truly bizarre form.

To fight monsters that had transcended common sense, one had to either prepare similar monsters to clash with them or devise strategies that completely transcended common sense.

Like breaking the Wall of Berengaria and burying the enemy in a furnace-like inferno, or sacrificing hundreds of thousands of humans to obtain tremendous power.

Actions that would have been considered madness in the world before the emergence of heroes had become viable strategies to stop the enemy.

In other words, conventional strategies could not stop heroes.

For example, the strategy of ten masters joining forces to defeat the strongest master—such approaches were now useless.

‘The Sword of Landenburg cannot defeat Orhan. No, they couldn’t even defeat Orhan’s war chief.’

The battle with War Chief Glar was proof of that.

Not all ten, but seven of the Sword of Landenburg, including Heinrich, not only failed to defeat Glar but were overwhelmed and lost two of their number.

Facing the corpses of Karim and William, Ludwig realized:

If Glar, who had crossed the wall, had grown this powerful, then Orhan must have become an utterly unapproachable existence.

Sure enough, despite mobilizing every hero of Imperial origin, it was impossible to wound Orhan.

‘It seems… we can’t even expect to deplete his energy until he can no longer maintain Unyielding Flesh.’

The only one who could stop Orhan—who had transcended not just humans but even ordinary heroes—was a transcendent being equal to him.

The Sword of the Starry Sky, Haschal. Only she could face Orhan.

The problem was that she had not yet returned.

‘Somehow we need to buy time… but can we?’

Ludwig, his lips trembling with tension and anxiety, called to a mage standing nearby and requested a spell.

A spell to carry his voice on the wind so it would reach Orhan, who was rampaging near the outer wall.

As the mage nodded and transformed mana into wind, Ludwig spoke.

“Looking for Haschal? I regret to inform you that she is not here.”

A single sentence, forced to sound calm. The voice, its direction impossible to determine, penetrated Orhan’s ears.