Chapter 195: The Great Evil
The southern continent.
The southern forestlands were not a battlefield familiar to the desert warriors. Scorching air burrowed beneath their armor, and the muddy paths tangled with tree roots pulled at their knees with a different sensation than desert sand.
"It seems like the stench of rot comes from all directions, Great Chief."
One of the commanders grumbled, and Yoman gave him a brief glance. He had only turned his head, yet the men read the mood and lowered theirs.
"Every land where people live carries a smell."
His voice was low and dry, like cracked earth.
"We came here to win. Save your complaints for after the victory."
Silence fell around them. Soon after, the discipline unique to Kalahim settled firmly into place.
They were already on the eve of a decisive battle.
The forest carried the thick smell of smoke even in early summer. Every leaf had fallen, leaving only bare branches, and the fields were stained black here and there with traces of the Corrupted.
Thwack.
Yoman snapped a charred branch with his fingertips. A faint heat was felt. It was a remnant of darkness. When he let it go, dark red soil was left smeared across his fingertips.
"I know the hearts of the soldiers are aflame."
He spoke in a low voice, and the tribal elders leaned in to listen.
"The mere fact that they faced a wicked power and did not flee in fear is already worthy of praise."
His eyes swept through the distant forest. He peered into the crawling shadows stretched out like tentacles, searching for the enemies lurking within.
"So then, let us bring this to an end with our own hands."
At those words, the breath of the Kalahim warriors changed. Even as they inhaled the humid air, they swallowed the tension of a moment just before a sandstorm erupts.
"Surrender your bodies to the wind."
Yoman mounted his horse and raised his sword high.
"I, Yoman, in my name, shall summon the wind to this forest.
* * *
The Gardia Kingdom army was slowly tightening their encirclement over time. Citing the difficulty of coordinating, they only wanted Yoman's forces deployed on the flanks.
But Yoman made an entirely different judgment.
"We go straight ahead."
The Gardia herald widened his eyes and cried out.
"W-we're in the south! They say the desert warriors are brave, but……"
Yoman cut his words short and answered briefly.
"Desert warriors learn to keep their feet from sinking in sand, and their horses learn not to sink in mud. That is not something for you to worry about."
He mounted his horse and gripped the reins.
A short while later, both armies faced off with the barren forest in between. The thoroughly withered forest was actually terrain well-suited for cavalry.
The places the Corrupted had passed through had turned to black heaps of earth as grass and leaves burned away, and those marks were scattered across the entire ground.
The warriors' breathing gradually grew rougher.
Behind the treeline, siege catapults stood lined up in rows. The Kalahim warriors honed their blades and spears within a familiar pressure.
Soon, thousands of cavalry led by warrior Tekharak assembled in formation.
The first clash began at the center.
"Charge! No mercy for the enemy!!"
The target lay at the heart of the enemy lines. The Legion Commander, Saulak ‘The Trampler’—a monster with the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a serpent.
Yoman took in the cavalry erupting forward like a storm. Who would die and who would survive was of no importance. The desert lord first thought of what he himself needed to do.
"……The wind stirs."
He raised his head and traced the grain of the wind. A breeze blowing in from the direction of the coast tickled the back of his neck. From his observations over several weeks—it was still calm for now, but at some point it would turn fierce enough to cut skin.
At that moment, a tremendous crash of collision rang in his ears. The cavalry had pierced through the enemy lines and pushed inward. The shrieks of the Corrupted and the battle cries of the warriors mingled, and the battlefield trembled in small vibrations.
The desert warriors displayed their valor.
They cut down enemies with curved blades, shattering the enemy's dense formations. In the rare moments of brief respite, they drew short spears and hurled them.
Some were thrown from their horses, but even at a glance, it was clear the Kalahim army held the advantage. They were literally destroying everything that stood in their way.
"Great Chief, should they not be going too deep……"
There were those who worried about the state of the battle, but Yoman raised a hand and quietly restrained them.
"The moment has not yet come."
Soon the cavalry's speed slowed, and warriors fell into the mud. Now, the song of swords rang across the battlefield. The line between life and death rested solely on the ability of each individual.
And only then did Great Chief Yoman's lips part.
"Akemta."
"Yes, my lord!"
"Bring those valiant warriors back to me."
"I shall act in accordance with your will!"
A 2nd cavalry unit crossed through the heart of the forest. Their numbers amounted to only a few hundred, but from the beginning, this was not a charge meant for battle.
"Tekharak! The time has come!"
"……!"
Akemta crossed the battlefield to relay the message. It was the order to retreat. Tekharak pulled back his lines as prearranged. Nearly half the men could not extract themselves.
Yet those who remained, rather than despairing, burned their eyes with venom.
The warriors pulled leather pouches from within their armor, or from the saddles of fallen horses.
"For Yoman—!!"
Crack!
They hurled oil jars in every direction. A thick, sticky liquid flowed along the ground. The parching mud drank it all in.
Yoman watched until the very end the final moments of his warriors.
The desert men died for him. Their families would be honored, and that responsibility rested entirely on the shoulders of the lord.
And so—
"Set it alight."
At just that moment, the wind's movement changed. The direction it blew from remained the same, but it began howling fiercely enough to whip hair about.
With that, Yoman gave the most straightforward of commands.
"Burn this forest full of the dead to ashes."
At his single word, the entire Kalahim camp trembled with tension.
The archers waiting in the rear drew their bowstrings as one. Their aim was clumsy across the board, yet accuracy mattered less than the fire simply reaching its mark.
Hundreds of sparks rose, cutting through the darkness.
Whiiiiiish!
Flaming arrows filled the sky, tracing eerie arcs.
And then—
Kaboooooom!!
The oil-soaked mud ignited in an explosion-like eruption. As the flames caught onto the parched earth, the center of the forest was flooded with light in an instant. Sticky fire clung to soil and tree roots, spreading with a writhing crawl.
The Corrupted did not scream. They only let out twisted groans and howling cries. As though trying to devour the flames themselves, they charged straight into the inferno.
But by then, a tremendous quantity of oil had already seeped deep beneath the layers of mud. The flames could not be smothered by covering them with a body. Burning endlessly from the root, they cooked the flesh of the Corrupted from the inside out.
The exposed bones twisted black, and dark energy burst like steam, polluting the air.
The desert warriors were struck speechless at the sight. They felt the sweat droplets on their foreheads evaporate. Horses reared in panic, and the hands gripping swords trembled finely.
Quite literally, the earth was boiling.
The mud could not smother the flames. Instead, it joined with them. From below, everything bubbled and seethed; from above, all that existed was reduced to ash.
Yet Yoman did not waver. In the midst of that hellish inferno, he could think only of his subordinates' sacrifice. Their sacrifice was rising now as smoke.
Akemta, who had just returned from rescuing the cavalry, swallowed hard.
"Great Chief! The battlefield…… a path has opened!"
Yoman nodded wordlessly.
The time had come to enter the battlefield.
* * *
The desert lord, Yoman, moved in person.
He raised his sword and cried out.
"Who among you is the most courageous?"
"Yoman!!"
"Where are the fearless? Who stands there?"
"Kalahim!!"
Kalahim's elite forces followed at his back. The rough breathing of warriors, the splashing of hooves, the faint friction of leather armor became one and resonated as a single vibration.
The flames engulfed the forest, but the desert warriors broke through on the strength of their own ability alone. As the mana stones in the barding blazed red, the cavalry's speed reached its extreme limit in an instant.
Thousands of hooves stamped out the flames. Giving them no chance to rise again, they filled the ground completely with the movement of men.
At that same moment, the Gardia mercenaries who had arrived late to the battlefield let out sighs of awe.
"Is that…… Great Chief Yoman!"
"They say he unified the Kalahim Desert…… he's like a living sandstorm."
The Kalahim cavalry cut through the heat and drove deep into the forest's heart.
The Corrupted were either burned with their limbs curled, or were biting at each other in the chaos. Yoman raised his sword and severed the neck of a Corrupted standing in his path.
The sensation of the blade parting flesh was the same as what he had felt in the desert. He was a man accustomed to victory, one who had never known defeat. This battle would be no different.
Before long, the flames gradually calmed and the battlefield began to reveal itself.
The corpses of the Corrupted were piled in heaps, and the tide of battle was shifting sharply. On the path to the heart of the forest, nothing could block Yoman's way.
"Now is the time to put an end to this!"
He turned his horse's head and searched in the deepest part of the battlefield for Saulak ‘The Trampler’. A monster that beguiles humans. Yet at Yoman's side too, there was a being of equal power.
"Karp Zarim!"
The Sword of the Dunes, Kalahim's Master, revealed himself. Today, the Legion Commander Saulak's atrocities would come to an end.
It was then.
The flames that had been filling the forest began to die down, little by little. No—it was not that the flames were dying down.
Yoman slowly raised his head. The groans of the Corrupted that had been boring into his ears until a moment ago, the sound of fire bursting, the battle cries of the warriors—all of it vanished in a single instant.
"……?"
No one was able to speak.
The flames still burned, yet made no crackling sound. It was a silence as though not the forest, but the world itself had stopped breathing.
At first, Yoman mistook that silence for a sign of victory. But soon, a chilling sensation flowed down his spine.
He instinctively looked down.
The shadow cast beneath his feet was laid out twice as dark and heavy as it should have been. And more than anything, it did not follow his movement. As though granted its own life, it raised a hand and pointed in a single direction.
"G-……Great Chief……"
The voices of the warriors following behind him trembled.
It began with only a few, but the sound of thud, thud, thud followed in a line. The desert warriors were dropping to their knees.
As though crushed by some unseen force, they bowed their heads without even the sound of hitting the ground. There was no clash of armor. There was only the pressure of an invisible, tremendous weight pushing all existence downward.
Yoman cried out with fury.
"Who is it! Who dares—to make this Yoman kneel!!"
Barely keeping his back straight, he turned his head to scan the outskirts of the forest. Had it not been for Master Karp Zarim, he too would not have escaped that humiliation.
And then, from within that darkness—
A pitch-black ripple spread.
One step, then another.
Someone was walking forward. Yet not a single presence could be felt. Even as footsteps met the earth, it was as though the world wished not to announce that fact.
And soon, death came walking out.
It was the Corrupted Lord, De Generitum.
Yoman laid eyes on his face for the first time. Yet the very thought that it was a first time was not permitted to him. The desert lord showed an expression that defied description. It was revulsion, and joy, and anguish, and temptation.
He felt an emotion he had never once experienced until now. Even the Master's expression hardened as he sensed his presence.
Yoman bit his lip and seized hold of his mind. He does not break. As the desert lord, that was a fact he never forgot. He gathered the fury, pride, and dignity accumulated across all the desert and raised himself up with it as one.
"The warriors of Kalahim…… Do not kneel."
The feeling in his arm had half-disappeared, but in exchange, he raised his sword. He dismounted from a horse that would not stir, and kicked forward with his own legs. To the very end, he advanced toward the enemy with honor.
"Great Chief!!"
The cry of Master Karp Zarim was heard. That sound was torn to shreds before it even reached his back. The tip of Yoman's sword charged straight toward De Generitum.
Like the last sun cleaving through the darkness, it was a blow with the full might of the lord behind it.
But Yoman's sword did not reach.
His arm gave way. His muscles unraveled as though rotted. From his shoulder to his elbow, to his wrist. The strength that had built the desert's Great Chief crumbled in a single moment.
"……!"
Several emotions seeped into Yoman's eyes.
De Generitum said nothing. He did not block the sword, nor use any energy. He simply gazed at him in silence.
The next moment, Yoman's knees touched the ground. Regardless of his will, his eyes rotted alive and were dyed pitch black. His arm corroded and fell away, and blood poured from his ears and nose.
It was the end of one rejected by the world.
* * *
The moment Yoman met his death on bended knee, the entire forest—no, the entire southern front—broke.
With the force that had bound the free-spirited warriors together now gone, the desert warriors lost their will to fight. Those who had been holding on and fighting fell one by one.
Without having received any attack, their breath was cut off and their eyes rolled back.
Even Master Karp Zarim dared not charge forward recklessly. Rather than facing De Generitum, he gave priority to the Great Chief's honor.
"Retrieve the Great Chief's body! Retreat immediately—"
His cry was only half-heard. When De Generitum drew a finger through the air toward him, a black crack formed in the void before it ruptured like a mark being stamped.
"Gkk!"
Even the desert's Master was hard-pressed just to take a single attack.
Following that, even the Gardia Kingdom army holding the line began to falter.
"W-what is happening!"
"Why is my body…… My leg! My leg!"
The armor of the mercenaries fell to the ground. Not because straps had snapped—the metal plates crumbled into fragments. They screamed and tried to raise their hands, but those fingers melted away in midair.
This was no longer a war.
There was only the side that vanished, and the side that remained.
The allied forces of the southern front collapsed from that moment forward. Their lines crumbled before phenomena beyond comprehension, and soldiers fled without looking back. What had taken more than half a year to gather was scattered in an instant.
At that moment, a young man rose to his feet at nearly a crawling pace.
"I-I have to run……"
He grasped the thread of his sanity and fled to the opposite side of the forest. At some point, he looked back and his breath stopped with a gasp.
The burning forest was being swallowed by a black wave. It had no form, and no sense of speed could be felt from it. It was simply death itself, spreading wide.
And that wave was flowing toward the southern cities.
"No, the south…… all of it……"
The messenger ran as though his breath would snap. Behind him, the lanterns built by human hands were extinguished one row at a time. Sound, warmth, life.
The southern front met its end right there.
* * *
Calix listened to the messenger's account to the very end. He wanted to commend him for his effort in crossing what amounted to the whole continent, but giving him rest came first.
There was no focus in the messenger's eyes.
"The Great Chief Yoman raised his sword…… And his arm disappeared…… His eyes turned black. He could not even breathe……"
He could no longer continue his words.
His lips trembled finely, and convulsions ran through his entire body. The guards rushed out to call the healers.
Calix met Adrian's gaze.
"The south…… Has fallen."
The great evil had made its appearance.