Chapter 214: Within Reach
Even after Belmar fell, the Alliance Forces held firm.
That fact, strangely, made it all the more unsettling.
Some had expected the shield wall to crumble with the Master's departure, and others believed the giant's footsteps would come crashing down immediately. But reality proved different. The soldiers bent but did not break, and even the monsters could not easily push them back.
The front line was holding.
As though someone had calculated it all in advance.
"……Both flanks are holding the center. Still standing."
At the commander's murmur, no one showed any sign of relief. They all understood what those words truly meant. They were enduring, not winning. And this state could not last.
As blood soaked into the earth, hope drained from the faces around them. What filled the battlefield was mechanical motion. Raise the shield, level the spear, fill the gap when someone falls. Emotion was a luxury.
Then it happened.
The sound of hoofbeats came from the rear. Not the chaotic noise of something bursting through—a single, steady rhythm cutting straight through the heart of the battlefield. The exhausted eyes of the soldiers turned toward it, and the crowd parted naturally.
It was Calix.
He swept his gaze across the battlefield from horseback. A landscape of fatigue and dust, broken terrain, corpses beyond the reach of names. He took it all in, yet his expression did not change.
His eyes came to rest beyond the territory of the Gromchi.
"We push straight through."
A short command.
The Mountain Rabbits nodded without a word. They had paced themselves throughout the battle precisely for this moment.
They exchanged no further words. They mounted up, gathered speed, and charged forward. Soldiers tangled in spears and shields instinctively stepped aside.
A path opened.
At its end, the giant's shadow was churning.
Calix did not even draw his sword. He simply rode forward. From this point on, this war was no longer a battle of endurance.
***
Lunos, the magnificent warhorse, trampled the earth forward in accordance with his master's will. The ground cracked apart, and lava surged up from the fissures here and there, yet the horse pressed on with steady steps.
Fear rose from deep within the beast's instincts, yet the man upon his back drove forward.
That was what mattered.
Neither the presence of the giant, nor the Corrupted and Tunnel Worms swarming on all sides, gave him pause. On this battlefield, there was only one true powerhouse.
"Faster! Move like the wind!"
Calix burst forward at the head of the charge.
He cleared the pitted craters, the spear shafts jutting like bones, the clods of earth hardened with dried blood. Even as the Corrupted swarmed and the giant's footsteps tore the ground open again, he pressed on.
And still, both flanks of the Alliance Forces held.
Positions paid for with someone's life. Thanks to them, the center front still held its shape. Calix drove into that gap without hesitation.
The reins pulled taut.
Fwish—
A sword flash blazed in an instant. If his allies had opened the path, it was now his turn to carve one himself. Gray energy stretched long along the blade.
Along a single straight trajectory, the bodies of the monsters were cleaved cleanly apart.
Crack.
The Pressure Field—no. Everything caught within Calix's domain was torn apart and annihilated. It was not merely cutting through—he cleared the entire route the Mountain Rabbits would take.
Then, the Gromchi's shadow fell over them.
The blade carving through the heart of the enemy lines seized the creature's attention at once. The colossal Gromchi rolled one massive eyeball and lifted its arm.
The Mana of Darkness stirred.
Black fissures rippled across the ground, and the Gromchi's energy surged to swallow Calix. His ankles felt submerged; sensation began to cut off. It was a pressure that made a human want to stop being human.
And yet Lunos did not stop. The beast knew this was a fear it could stand against.
Instead, he drove more force into his legs and took one more step forward.
Immediately after, Calix's gaze locked onto the Gromchi. He drew his sword and traced a flowing line through the air. Sensation spread through the pathways of his blood. The world divided itself into color. Where the dark pulse rose and how, where the fissure would spread, how the Gromchi's center of gravity was shifting—’all of it was readable’.
Calix was not fighting with swordsmanship. He was walking atop the current.
"May those who stand against evil be protected!"
"In the name of the Mountain Rabbits!"
From behind, Ella recited her prayer. Marik raised his sword high and shouted.
At that moment, the Gromchi's arm came crashing down. The trajectory Calix had traced with his sword and the force of the giant collided at a single point.
BOOM!!
Stone and earth exploded upward into the sky. A force that could have crushed dozens at once came down on Calix. But the one who staggered was the Gromchi.
Calix's sword had driven into the inside of the arm's descending arc. The blind spot where the weight dropped, the gap the raw force could not reach. The giant's power was immense—but that much slower.
Calix's chaos tore through that slowness.
Gray energy ran up along the back of the Gromchi's hand. The monster's hide, which even Masters had been unable to cut deeply, burst open in a curved line. Then the wrist and the elbow. Deep-carved lines split wide, and dark crimson blood surged violently up from within.
The Gromchi snarled and stepped back.
But the Mountain Rabbits had already passed by its side and were pressing forward. The one meant to face the Gromchi was someone else.
"Knights of Niboria!"
"An honorable death!!"
Master Sevi Belgrado burst forward alongside his disciples. Not for victory—but to buy time.
Now, only the Mountain Rabbits remained in the cavalry charge. Their target was the enemy's far rear: Army Commander Marcaron.
"You're in the way! Move!"
Basim led the charge and plunged in. The dwarf, now well at ease on horseback, hooked one foot in the stirrup and swung his axe.
The moment the axe cut a horizontal arc, the heads of three Corrupted flew simultaneously. In place of blood, a liquid like black mud splattered outward.
"Hold the speed!"
Royce lent his hand from the left flank. He displayed power befitting those red eyes. Two creatures per swing. He cut through the Corrupted blocking the path with precision—not so much killing as shoving through to advance.
"Throw!"
Then, at Zahira's signal, the veteran mercenaries hurled their javelins. Volga forced a path with brute strength. He gripped his greatsword with both hands and poured out his natural might. The vibration hum of the neural accelerator rang long against the back of his neck. Simultaneously, Ella's divinity enveloped the cavalry.
Sometimes, the simple things are the most fearsome.
The Mountain Rabbits were exactly that.
The Gromchi finally poured out the Mana of Darkness, but that power could not pierce Ella's divinity. Even if it had, it would not have surpassed Calix's domain.
In the end, they could not be stopped.
The Alliance soldiers watched the sight as though entranced.
"The Mountain Rabbits……Crossed the giant."
In an instant, life returned to exhausted faces. The air across the entire battlefield changed. Those who had been on the verge of collapse from relentless combat straightened their backs.
But Calix did not look back. His eyes were already fixed on what lay beyond. Behind the giant's shadow, Marcaron was toying with the currents of the battle.
The Mountain Rabbits rode toward that place.
In the path they had torn through, traces remained. The dark crimson blood of the monsters. Relentless, unstoppable footsteps that had pierced the enemy lines.
Then, from outside the battlefield—a very faint vibration sounded.
At first, it seemed like the sound of the wind. But soon it shifted into the scraping of metal against metal. And at last, the clatter of teeth striking together rang out.
Calix's eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly. He had not stopped moving for a single moment, yet he had clearly sensed it. Something different from Marcaron's pulse—was drawing close.
Calix tightened his grip on the sword.
"We keep moving."
At that brief murmur, the force behind each hoofbeat grew stronger as well. The hardened battlefield was at last beginning to change.
And at the end of that current, darkness was quietly opening its mouth.
***
The Mountain Rabbits drove into the gap carved out by the giant's footsteps. But even so, Royce's gaze had shifted toward the far rear of the enemy lines.
That place felt less like a battlefield and more like a space that had been meticulously arranged.
The movements of the Corrupted were chaotic, but their center was different. In a place soaked in monster blood and black mud, a single zone was, disturbingly, at ease.
And there, Marcaron stood.
He was neither colossal in build nor intimidating in form. If anything, his appearance was unsettlingly close to human. The limbs visible beneath the black robe were lean, and his fingertips were long and slender. Only a single black wing, sprouting from his back, distinguished him.
The air around him was unmistakably different.
The Mana of Darkness was rotating around him at the center. A pulse that even the Mountain Rabbits could feel on their skin, not just Calix.
Marcaron was conducting the battlefield.
[Mortals, do you truly come marching toward your deaths.]
It opened its mouth.
A voice neither high nor low. Neither a shout nor a command—yet at those words, every Corrupted on the field froze in place.
The Mountain Rabbits' advance faltered.
But Calix did not stop.
Rather than answer his opponent, he kicked off the saddle and leaped. The landing and the leap were completed in an instant. A distance of some fifty paces. Between them the field was packed with monsters, yet Calix tore through the enemy lines leaving only afterimages.
Just how strong had Calix become?
Truthfully, even he himself did not quite know. Since reaching the realm of a Master, there had been no opponent worthy of drawing out his full power.
And now, the answer to that question stood before him.
Marcaron raised his hand. The air folded and bent, warping the approach path Calix had been taking. The Army Commander's authority—to twist and wring the flesh of the living.
Yet—
A gray trajectory twisted that force in reverse. Calix's energy gathered at the tip of his blade and drove deep into Marcaron's domain.
[What……!]
Marcaron could not finish the words.
Calix saw and felt the structure of the energy encasing him. He understood the Army Commander's ‘domain’ as principle and system. How it had been built, and how it needed to be broken. He drove the blade into the point where every current interlocked.
As though mist being pushed aside, the Mana of Darkness was expelled outward under pressure. In an instant, part of Marcaron's domain collapsed.
Then the sword came down.
Shk.
It did not cut deep. At the moment of its fullest reach, the tip of the blade left a small wound on Marcaron's skin.
A span of barely one hand's length.
Very thinly, a crimson line was drawn across Marcaron's side.
The battlefield froze. The Gromchi's roar, the screams of the Corrupted, the cries of the soldiers—for this one moment, all of it vanished.
Marcaron hurriedly withdrew. He pressed one hand over the wound, and it quickly became two.
A distinct emotion surfaced on his face.
Bewilderment.
Fwoooosh!!
The cut site bubbled like lava, then froze solid. It seemed about to heal in an instant—but instead, began to necrotize the surrounding healthy tissue. It was not the result of fire, nor of ice. Poison made even less sense. Yet one thing was certain: his body was collapsing structurally.
The trivial wound tore and split, spreading outward.
At the end of it, the core embedded in Marcaron's chest was laid bare. Though only partially exposed, the monster's gaze snapped directly to Calix.
The being it had been mocking moments before had transformed into a clear and present threat.
Calix raised his sword again.
As the Mountain Rabbits closed in behind him, he resolved to press even deeper.
‘The next move will reach the core.’
Until that moment—everyone believed that this war could be ended by human hands.