Chapter 220: Ready to Rise Again
The front line moved quietly.
The Alliance Forces no longer spread wide. Instead, they narrowed their contact points with the enemy and tightened their field of vision. The cavalry did not push deep, and the battle line always left room to fall back. Strike once, confirm twice, then withdraw without fail.
At first, no one understood its meaning.
"Why are we stopping here?"
"Just a little more and we could—"
Field commanders questioned it, but the orders were clear. No pursuit. No additional engagement. Calix's directives never crossed that line.
The result was a string of small victories.
Along the riverbanks, valleys, and highland terrain, the numbers of the Corrupted were steadily whittled down. Battles were brief and casualties were few. Soldiers returning to camp looked at one another and tilted their heads.
"Are we... Winning?"
"......We haven't lost. That much is certain."
The next day was much the same.
And the day after that.
It wasn't a streak of overwhelming victories, but the air of defeat was swiftly evaporating. The troops' morale climbed again, and news of victory spread outward to the cities in the rear.
The Mountain Rabbits were at the forefront of it all.
They were never first to advance, yet always last to fall back. Eyes burning with spite, they marched to the front lines, came back bloodied, and marched again. Casualties plummeted sharply, while the enemy's losses continued to mount.
"Combat report. Two injured, no fatalities."
"Withdrawal timing was precise as well."
With each successive report, the eyes of the command gathered toward a single point.
Calix still did not step to the front. He neither rode a horse nor raised a sword. Instead, he spread maps across the table and moved nothing but red lines and blue markers. He decided not where to fight, but where not to fight, first.
"We abandon Aintrap."
"At the Etingen River—hit and withdraw."
"Select fast-moving infantry for the forward units, but no direct contact. Have the cavalry cut into their flank."
Every decision he made was measured to the point of frustration. Yet the results were undeniable.
The Alliance Forces recovered their composure.
Of course, the soldiers wouldn't go so far as to say they could ‘win’ at this rate. Even so, small changes had begun to surface.
"Feels like I might not die this time."
"At least now I know what we're fighting for."
Small differences, but decisive ones.
The enemy forces seemed to sense it as well.
At some point, the movements of the Corrupted shifted. They launched an active offensive. Even as their numbers took repeated losses, they pressed on without pause, replenishing with new monstrosities. The one saving grace was that De Generitum had not yet stepped to the forefront.
That bought the Alliance Forces time.
Calix set down the report. He could feel that the sensation in his fingertips had not fully returned, but he paid it little mind. What mattered right now was not the feel of gripping a sword.
It was the flow of the war.
‘We're being pushed westward.’
Clearly, it was not the ideal outcome. They had already been driven back to the eastern reaches of the Astria Kingdom.
Calix avoided battles he could not win and chose only battles he could not lose. With that simple principle, he had slowly shifted the mood of the front. Yet the army of darkness did not diminish. For every head cut down, another filled its place, and now they had their sights set beyond the Astria Kingdom.
But at the same time—
‘What needed to be gained has been gained.’
The Alliance Forces had finished preparing to rise again. Time had been bought, and the soldiers' morale had lifted. The Mountain Rabbits swore their vengeance anew each day.
All that remained now was someone's resolve.
There was still one person who had not yet raised his sword. He had to recover himself before the war could move forward.
***
Calix's body was returning faster than expected.
The stabbing pain had faded, and the faint trembling that had lingered in his fingertips was nearly gone. The neural accelerator's output had entered a stabilization phase, and the aftermath of the previous battle was gradually clearing.
That said, if asked whether he could return to battle—
Not yet.
He could lift a sword, perhaps. But moving rashly was out of the question.
He sat on the edge of his cot, eyes fixed on the table placed at the center of the tent. Maps, battle records, and combat reports were stacked in layers atop it. Every calculation was exact—troop losses, contact durations, withdrawal timing, and enemy responses.
Yet Calix knew something decisive was missing from all of it.
‘If I fight again......’
He did not finish the thought. He already knew what came after.
‘If I fight the same way...... I lose.’
The form of De Generitum flashed across his mind.
Calix had poured out his strength, pushed his speed to its limits, read his opponent's reactions, and tried to outpace them. He had led with chaotic mana and charged headlong into a collision. That was the method of fighting he had honed through countless battles—a path he had proven over and over again.
Yet none of it had worked.
"......Why?"
Calix closed his eyes. The moments of his clash with De Generitum surfaced one by one. The instant their blades met, the sensation of chaos erupting outward, the timing he had judged as a clean hit.
And still, his attacks had not landed. No—it wasn't that they were too slow. They were...... off-course. As though he were thrashing inside the grip of the enemy's hand.
Just then, a voice seeped in through the wall of the tent from outside.
"......Could we not request the aid of the mages?"
It was Volga.
"The Gatekeeper, or Minebris—they're both available, aren't they? Or even Kailo Felderwin would do. We are desperate for magical support right now."
His voice was low, but the effort to suppress his emotions was plain to hear.
Calix kept his eyes closed and let the conversation drift past him. Even without listening closely, he could already guess what answer would follow.
"Mages are beings who safeguard balance."
Sure enough, Yelayen spoke with finality. His words already carried the conclusion within them.
"We look to the flow of the world rather than the needs of a moment. Perhaps even the destruction unfolding now is part of a purification process. That is why we do not move without reason—"
His words cut off mid-sentence. Volga's breathing had grown rough.
"'Purification'?"
A beat late, anger bled through.
"Listen here, mage. Everyone pays the price for their actions. If you wish to protect something, to take something—you must bear the responsibility for it."
"......"
"Yet it seems the mages have forgotten that fact. Hidden behind the pretty words of world balance."
A brief silence fell.
Then the words that had been held back came crashing out all at once.
"If it's truly because of that damned balance, then why are ‘you’ standing here?"
Volga's voice was low, but sharp as a blade.
"If the will of the world matters so much, you could've stayed far away, scratching your belly and watching from a distance. What possessed you to come all the way out here? Well? Answer me."
Yelayen gave no reply. The silence that followed was that long. The crackling of torches, the brush of wind against the tent, the footsteps of passing soldiers—scattered noise filled the space between.
Calix listened to that silence and, in that moment, realized something.
The world the mages saw and the world he saw were different.
They did not judge by power alone. Nor did they place victory, defeat, or the value of life at the center. Flow and balance, cycles and continuity—they dealt with everything across a far wider scope.
And De Generitum, too, understood that perspective.
‘He never met my chaotic mana head-on.’
He yielded only as much as could be broken and let through only as much as he could bear. He precisely divided what would shatter and what would remain, then carried it out.
‘It wasn't that my attacks didn't work.’
Calix recalled it belatedly. In every moment that chaos erupted at his blade's edge, De Generitum's movements had shifted by the faintest margin. That much was not the bearing of someone with room to spare.
He had neither ignored it nor met it directly.
Looking back, De Generitum had acknowledged the other's uniqueness. And because of that, he had accepted the chaos as simply part of the process. For the sake of a greater victory, he had conceded the small things.
In that instant, the way Calix saw things changed.
What he had failed to keep up with was not speed. It certainly wasn't the bloodline ability that read the path of a sword. The reason De Generitum had been strong was—because he viewed the world as a single, unified framework.
By contrast, Calix had understood that fight as a duel. He had defined strength as something proven through direct confrontation.
He needed to see wider.
That realization was not a certainty—it was closer to a question. The sense that the combat instincts, experience, and convictions he had built up over time were slowly, quietly cracking.
The neural accelerator's readings, the limits of output, the thinking that faster and stronger was always the answer—perhaps all of it had been a fence he had built around himself. That thought raised its head for the very first time.
He did not yet know.
Where to begin unraveling it, or how to change it. And the time given to him was not plentiful. But one thing was clear.
He could never win by fighting the same way as before.
***
Calix drew a slow, steady breath.
Nothing had changed. He had come to understand a new destination, but could not yet move toward it in practice. However, he now knew what he must not do.
The belief that strength was faster reaction, that combat meant meeting the enemy head-on, and that the outcome was decided on the edge of a blade—that belief had carried him this far, but it had also been holding him back from going further.
‘I've been clinging to numbers all this time.’
The neural accelerator's output, the limits of reaction speed, the chaotic mana drawn from the core. He had always thought only within what he possessed. Push the numbers higher and I win; exceed the threshold and I'm in danger. Without realizing it, he had drawn a line and moved only within it.
‘I've been fighting...... too narrowly.’
The realization was nothing special. It offered no conclusion, and it led to no answer. Yet it broadened the range of his thinking.
A direction had been set.
A resolve not to be bound any longer by the neural accelerator. To see the world by a different set of rules than before.
[Bloodline Ability Change Detected]
[Ashapel's Instinct/Avatar Of The Battlefield '8%' Increase, Reaching '98%']
In that moment, paradoxically, a neural accelerator notification surfaced.
Calix silently looked down at the sword hanging at his hip. The blade was still keen, and his hand had more than enough strength to grip it. Even so, he did not reach for it.
There was no need to, anymore.
Then, footsteps approached from outside the tent.
"Calix."
It was Hadiya.
She brought news that the enemy forces were massing once again.
"Their main body has closed in within two days' march of here. Meanwhile, the rear cities haven't finished evacuating yet."
Calix nodded with a composed expression.
"Call a meeting of the key personnel."
A storm was bearing down from outside, but his mind was no longer shaken the way it once had been.
"It's time to rise again."
The second decisive battle was drawing near.