The Archmage’s Destruction Strategy - Chapter 114

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#114. Defensive Battle

Hills and lakes.
Two words that should ordinarily soothe the observer’s mind and bring peace to their heart were spread endlessly before Ryan Cooper, captain of the 3rd Reconnaissance Squad of the US Western Defense Force.
The only problem was that these countless hills and lakes were composed entirely of the blood and bodily fluids of monsters pouring down without end.
Captain Cooper exhaled roughly as he gazed upon pools of blood so deep that one could wade past ankle-depth and actually submerge oneself within them.

“Damn it! Captain! This wasn’t supposed to be the operation from the start! We’re going to be completely annihilated at this rate!”
“Check the status. Confirm all personnel are alive.”
“Thompson, Danny, Walker, Miller, and Kevin have fallen. Miguel and Collins are severely wounded.”
“So we’ve taken casualties across both front and rear lines.”

Among the 3rd Reconnaissance Squad’s casualties, Thompson, Danny, and Walker were vanguard fighters wielding close-combat weapons at the front, while Miguel, Kevin, and Collins were rearguard personnel attacking enemies from behind.
The fact that not only front-line personnel but also those who should have been in the rear had fallen meant the enemy had breached the defensive line they’d established and completely surrounded them.
The captain’s expression grew grave as he spoke to Lucas, his second-in-command.

“What about them?”

By “them,” the captain meant Yeonse-a and Shirasaki Miyu, whom Sung-jun had brought with him.
In this operation, they served as both tactical assets and top-priority protected personnel.
Of course, since they had voluntarily participated despite knowing the risk of death during the operation was severe, there would be no grounds for Sung-jun to reproach him even if one of them had fallen.
However, no matter how much they had known they might die when volunteering for the operation, informing Sung-jun that borrowed personnel had been lost was deeply uncomfortable for Captain Cooper, so he silently prayed they had survived unscathed.

“They’re fine.”
“Fine comes in different varieties. Which is it? Does it mean they’re fine because all their limbs have been severed but their lifeline still holds? Or does it mean they’re fine because they’re alive without a single wound?”
“Neither. Both of them have sustained minor injuries and are extremely exhausted, but they’re in relatively good condition.”

Lieutenant Lucas, having said so, looked around with a bitter expression and continued speaking.

“Relatively good, that is, compared to our forces.”

From D-day onward, he had experienced friendly forces being completely annihilated as casually as eating meals, and even to his eyes, this battle carried an atmosphere of severe danger.
More than half of the Awakened forces—the elite of the Western United States Defense Force—had either been sidelined by injuries or crossed the river from which there was no return.
The problem was that despite such enormous sacrifice, the enemy’s numbers continued to increase.
Yet despite this situation, Captain Cooper could not bring himself to blame Sung-jun, who had proposed this operation.
Had Sung-jun not provided support from his two most powerful undead subordinates, their forces would have been completely annihilated long ago.

“Undead, then? They truly seem tireless.”

The vampire noble who identified himself as Argen, the Count of the Funeral Night, and the Death Knight introduced as Exterminator Knight Carsserion demonstrated strength that surpassed the combined power of all 300 Awakened personnel participating in this operation, holding back the near-Apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity that had appeared on the battlefield.
Without these two, everyone would have been annihilated long ago.
Yet even Argen and Carsserion, possessing such tremendous power, could not bring down the near-Apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity they faced.
Rather, as time passed, they were gradually pushed back, filling all observers with dread.
Then, as if to transform Captain Cooper’s anxiety into certainty, Carsserion, who had been charging toward the near-Apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity while mounted, was sent flying like a cannonball and crashed into the center of a hill made of corpses.

-SPLOOOOORCH!-

The hill was not made of hard stone and hardened earth, but of the corpses of monsters that had been alive mere moments before, so Carsserion, embedded in the hill, produced not the explosive sound of something detonating, but rather the sickening sound of a massive chunk of meat being struck by a hammer, burying him within the corpses.
Then Argen, who had been facing the near-Apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity alongside Carsserion, spoke toward the hill of corpses with the gaping hole torn through it.

“That’s unlike you—were you careless? Under normal circumstances, you would have easily evaded that attack.”

Of course, Argen knew well why Carsserion had failed to dodge the enemy’s assault.
Just like Carsserion, who had been sent flying like a cannonball and embedded in the hill of corpses moments before, Argen himself had been worn down to the point of exhaustion by the prolonged battle.
Yet the reason he provoked Carsserion was to touch upon his pride and draw him back to the battlefield as quickly as possible.

-SPLOOOOORCH!-

With the sound of accumulated corpses scattering in all directions, Carsserion emerged, drenched in blood from head to toe.
His lance with its broken tip and his armor, shattered in places, bore witness to just how fierce the battles he had endured truly were.

“Don’t lump me in with someone like you who can attack cowardly from a distance. The arena I fight in is far more perilous than the one you occupy.”
“If you’re dissatisfied, why don’t you fight while throwing spears instead? Ah, but you’re a Knight—you can only engage in close combat, can’t you? Anyway, now that you’re up, rejoin us immediately. Unlike you, who can endure repeated beatings, I’m high-value personnel—one hit and I’m done for.”
“I was already planning to!”

As Carsserion roared and signaled his steed, the horse beneath him shot forward like a streak of crimson light.
However, unlike the early stages of combat, his charge forward now showed noticeably diminished speed and destructive force.

‘The enemy is far too strong.’

Of course, the enemy hadn’t escaped unscathed either.
Having absorbed cavalry charges with my body countless times, the massive insectoid Corrosion Entity bore several visibly large holes punctured across its frame.
Yet despite sustaining dozens of fatal wounds that would have killed any ordinary creature long ago, the creature’s momentum showed no signs of waning.
Strength, stamina, regeneration, endurance, durability, sharpness.
The semi-apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity we faced lacked the supernatural abilities to obliterate everything within dozens of meters with a single foreleg strike or read the future and hurl certain death at its opponents.
It possessed only an overwhelmingly dominant physical capability that could exhaust any foe through sheer attrition.
Its impenetrable carapace that wouldn’t even scratch without an all-out desperate assault, its regenerative prowess that instantly healed even holes large enough for vehicles to pass through, and its razor-sharp forelegs capable of severing the spear tip of Karcerion—forged from the hardest material in the Otherworld itself—made it a sufficiently formidable threat on its own.

‘Still, I must hold the line. If we fail to pin this creature here, our allies behind us will be next.’

Facing an overwhelmingly powerful enemy didn’t mean Karcerion had lost sight of the battlefield’s situation.
Even now, information about the chaotic clash between countless monsters and allied forces flowed to his mind as sensory data.
As both an exceptional knight and an exceptional commander, he possessed the ability to grasp the state of our forces and the shifting tide of battle as clearly as if he’d witnessed it with his own eyes, merely by sensing the atmosphere flowing across the battlefield without turning his head.

‘Argen and I can manage to hold out. The problem is that our soldiers continue to fall even as we keep this monster pinned down….’

The image of one person surfaced in Karcerion’s mind.
That one person who would have been the most reliable asset in such a situation.
Recalling the dwarven hero who wielded an enormous hammer in one hand and completed an impregnable fortress wall in a single swing, Karcerion tightened his grip on the spear.

‘If only I could fight alongside him instead of Argen….’

In that moment of lamenting the absence of a comrade, a yellow signal flare shot high into the sky in the distance, clearly visible within his field of surveillance spanning the entire battlefield.

“The signal!”
“The 3rd Assault Team succeeded in their operation!”
“Damn it, what good does that do! We’re completely surrounded—there’s no way to retreat!”

The original plan was for Sung-jun to retrieve all equipment from the Supply Depot, then fire the yellow signal flare, after which our entire force would execute a rapid withdrawal.
The problem was that our entire force was surrounded, leaving no way to break free.
Since Argen and Karcerion—the only ones capable of breaking through the encirclement and opening an escape route—were locked in combat with the semi-apocalypse-class Corrosion Entity and couldn’t disengage, seeing the signal flare did nothing to lift our morale.

“Argen! Even just for a moment! Can you hold that creature alone!?”

As the increasingly desperate Karcerion shouted toward Argen, Argen hurled an invisible blade at the enemy and replied.

“It’s impossible. To restrain that creature even for a moment, we both need to be here. The instant one of us falters, it will charge toward our forces.”
“We have to break through the encirclement even if it means taking risks! If we don’t, our entire army could be annihilated!”
“Your faith is lacking. Trust in your lord. Our new master possesses more than enough power to resolve a situation like this.”
“Don’t speak nonsense. No matter how much of a lord he is….”

Karcerion’s doubt in Argen’s words was understandable.
The memory of fighting him directly in Japan was etched deeply into his mind.
Of course, he had been defeated by Sung-jun back then and became his subordinate, but even accounting for that, Sung-jun’s power didn’t seem strong enough to resolve the current situation in an instant.

“Unlike you, I have fought my lord directly. No matter how capable he is, saving our entire force in this situation is impossible.”
“Your words would be correct if you judged my lord by the standards of when you fought him. But my lord is different from you and me. He is a great Archmage and the one who inherited the throne of the Demon King. And the mages I remember….”

Argen spoke with unwavering conviction in his voice.

“They are those who accomplish miracles—true ‘magic’—and achieve whatever they desire.”

In that instant, every eye on the battlefield turned simultaneously toward the direction the signal flare had been fired.
The head of a soldier awaiting death, drenched in blood, and the terrifying insectoid Monster with sharp claws poised to pierce the soldier’s heart.
The reason everyone on the battlefield stopped fighting for a fleeting moment and turned their heads in unison was because violent vibrations, palpable even through the skin, emanated from the direction the signal flare had been fired and shook the entire battlefield through the ground.

-Boom! Boom! Crash! Crash!-

Massive trees that had somehow maintained their form snapped like reeds as colossal entities rushed toward this location.
And not just one or two—at least over two hundred of them.
Hundreds of steel giants violently ravaged the ground, tearing through the forest and charging onto the battlefield.

“R… Robots?”

The moment a bewildered soldier’s voice echoed across the battlefield, the steel giants that had charged forward at tremendous speed lowered their waists with a thunderous mechanical sound and took their stance.
And in that instant, an overwhelming barrage of firepower reminiscent of the U.S. Military before D-day began pouring down like a torrential rain upon the heads of the writhing insectoid Monster horde.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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