The Imperial Supreme Commander Has Returned - Chapter 27

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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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The Empire’s Supreme Commander Returns — Episode 27

“No, stop! Everyone, hold them back!”

The War Priest cried out in desperation, stamping the ground beneath his feet.
But the War Priest had made not one, but two critical errors.
One was showing Delram the Wind technique again.
The other was panicking at the sight of his recklessness.

The result was a slaughter.
Before the War Priest could even lift his feet from the ground, Delram was already among the sorcerers near the Altar―

Crack!

A fraction of a second was all he needed.
The moment his feet touched earth, he split one diagonally with his Short Sword.
Flowing into the next motion, he cut down two more beside the first.
A throw accounted for the third.
Seizing a throat with his bare hand, a snap of the neck—the fourth.
Caving in a skull with a fist, middle finger extended—the fifth.

“Gack!”
“Nnnngh……!”

Excluding the first sorcerer he’d killed, there had been six more.
Perhaps because so many bodies had suddenly emptied the space?
The remaining four flew back from the Altar in unison.
From the way blood sprayed explosively from their mouths, it seemed impossible they’d survive, let alone reactivate the Altar.

“Yes, it worked!”

Delram threw both hands up in exultation, shouting with joy.
A feat only Delram could have accomplished!

Even the War Priest, who’d been charging forward, stopped in stunned silence.
It was over.
With the sorcerers gone, the Altar would crumble, and the barbarians—their morale shattered—would be pushed back by the Special Forces Unit. Even if they managed to slaughter them all, the main battlefield would suffer catastrophic losses in the resulting melee.
Every bit of it hung on Delram’s shoulders.

‘It’s all because of that bastard!’

The War Priest glared at Delram with bloodshot eyes.
If only that wretch had never come—Sambala would have―

Whoooooooom!
“Wh—what?”

That was when it happened.
The trembling Altar suddenly let out a Dragon’s Roar.
At the same time, crimson energy began surging forth in streams.
An aura of an entirely different magnitude from moments before.

Immediately after, Delram felt something wrong with his body.
A bone-deep chill, joints grinding with each movement.
An immense surge of Magical Power activated at close range.
Exposure to it alone was flooding his body with strain.

There was no doubt.
This was the prelude to a Grand Ritual being invoked.
It simply meant the sorcerers had been faster.

“Khahahaha!”

The War Priest clutched his belly, roaring with laughter.
Perhaps he’d never laughed so hard in his life.
Seeing the usually grave giant lose himself like this created an almost jarring dissonance.

But he had cause.
Delram’s expression of hollow defeat was precisely that funny.

“This… goddamn it…….”

As proof of that, Delram could say nothing even as his face reddened with rage.
He only hissed and spat curses.
It was inevitable—he’d been thoroughly outmaneuvered.

Then something caught Delram’s eye.
The Altar.
More precisely, the Fruit that lay atop it.
No larger than a thumb.

‘That…?’

He didn’t know what the Fruit was.
But given its size and its placement—
one thing was certain: it was no ordinary tree Fruit.

How could it be otherwise?
This spot was the perfect focal point for a Grand Ritual.
Only an object brimming with formidable Magical Power or charged with curse could rest here—never something mundane.

“…….”

Delram approached the Altar as if drawn by invisible threads.
He reached out toward the Fruit suspended in the red column of light.
Behind him, he heard the War Priest’s mocking laughter.

“Khahaha! Yes, go ahead and struggle! You’ll reach your hand into the source of an oversaturated Grand Ritual? You’ll melt on the spot!”

At those words, Delram’s hand faltered.
But Delram knew this much.
Sometimes, a single moment of instinct trumped thousands or tens of thousands of experiences and mental simulations—that was how one survived.
His hand reached forward again and touched the Fruit.

“What!?”

The War Priest’s voice rang out in shock.
As his tone made clear, Delram’s hand hadn’t melted.
Instead, he withdrew the Fruit cleanly and whole.

That wasn’t all.
Delram held the Fruit for a moment, then—

Gulp!

He swallowed it whole.

“That… that mad bastard!”
Whoooahhhhh!

The War Priest’s cry of alarm never finished.
An inconceivable tempest erupted from the depths.
From deep within Delram, it tore loose.

* * *

“What in the world is that……?”

Thud.

The Special Forces Commander dropped his arm.
The barbarian warrior had severed it cleanly, with deliberate precision.
Though it had been trampled in the mud and battered beyond easy restoration even with Holy Power, it remained his precious right arm nonetheless.
He’d only just recovered it, and now he’d lost it again.

The sight unfolding before his eyes.
It made absolutely no sense.

Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
Crack-crack-crack-crack—

What appeared in the distance was a vortex.
A whirlwind spanning dozens of meters across.
It rose like a Dragon Spiral Wind from the desert, bridging earth and sky.

Its power was absolutely devastating.
Ancient oaks growing in clusters were uprooted entirely.
By the screams echoing across, people were not spared either.

Moreover, dawn was just breaking.
The deep crimson light of the sun rising beyond the Mountain Range bled into the vortex, and the world seemed as though the final apocalypse had arrived.

The blast reached their position as well.
A tremendous gale descended upon both the Special Forces Unit and the barbarian tribes.
The wind was so violent that even the elite soldiers could do nothing more than lower their center of gravity and barely hold their ground against being swept away.
The Special Forces Commander ground out his words.

“The Grand Ritual has activated after all……!”

That’s what he thought at first.
The sheer force of it made no other explanation possible.

But he soon noticed something strange.
Why did the barbarians look so bewildered?
The Grand Ritual they’d been protecting had succeeded.

Having reached that point in his reasoning, the Special Forces Commander was certain.
That Dragon Spiral Wind must be a backlash from the Altar’s destruction!

“The Altar is destroyed! Once we finish these vermin, we can withdraw! Everyone—draw upon your final reserves!”
“Arooooo!”

His command pierced through the roaring gale with a battle cry.
The barbarians, by contrast, did the opposite.
They faltered, then one by one broke ranks and fled.

The forest soon lay empty.
From the dark dawn until now, as light broke over the horizon.
The fierce battle that had raged ceaselessly ended in anticlimax within a moment.

“This is no time for hesitation. We must go!”
“You’re right.”

The Special Forces Commander ran with the two surviving Knights.
His body felt impossibly heavy.
With his right arm severed and his wounds severe, exhaustion was crushing him.

Still, he was grateful the Altar was so close.
When they arrived, what greeted them was―

“Delram!”

Had some mythic beast emerged from legend?
Everything around the Altar lay scattered and shredded as if raked by the talons of some enormous creature.

But one thing remained.
Delram stood unharmed amid the wreckage.

At first, he hadn’t even been certain it was Delram.
The figure was drenched in blood, leaning against the Altar.
Yet the fact that he remained conscious at all was remarkable.
Delram, limping, called out to the Special Forces Commander as he approached.

“You took your damn time getting here… but you came.”
“Are you alright—you bastard!”

The Special Forces Commander caught Delram as he collapsed, supporting him with his remaining arm.
Delram was grinning.

* * *

-Aaaahhhhh!
-Charge, forward now!

Delram stared blankly ahead.
He stood atop an earthen Watchtower.
Far below on the Plains, vast armies clashed.

A hundred thousand against two hundred thousand.
Had such a battle ever existed in the continent’s history?
Probably not.

Even Delram, who had unified the continent, had never seen anything like it.
Only once during the Selams Conflict in Odetsa had he witnessed such a sight.
Then the answer was simple.
This was a dream from that time…….

Delram watched the Phalanx Formation.
Though distant, his enhanced vision as a high-ranking Knight picked out the slowly advancing columns with perfect clarity.
Yet they looked utterly different from the Phalanx Formations he had faced when fighting the Sambala Tribal Alliance after his Regression.

First, their armor.
The soldiers bore massive oval Shields larger than their own bodies, walls of protection in motion.
And protruding between them, the Pikes.
Thin, long Pikes stretching some four meters, waiting for the moment to pierce through charging enemies.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
-Charge troops incoming! Hold the line!
-Signal flags up! Raise your banners!

What struck him most was the formation itself.
They hadn’t relied on individual strength alone.
The moment enemies surged forward, shields overlapped into a dense phalanx, and simultaneously the second line of pikemen thrust their pikes through the gaps.

The enemies’ attacks proved useless.
Axes, swords, spears came down and thrust with desperate force, only to slide harmlessly off the formation shields, dealing no damage at all.

And then it was over.
The enemies became phantoms scattered across the battlefield.
Every movement was economical, a distillation of pure training.

-Ahhhhh…….
-Knights…….

Yet even they were not invincible.
No amount of training, no matter how fine the weapons, could prevail against the transcendent beings.

The Knights and Mages tore through the formation like natural predators.
The phalanx crumbled in places with screams.

But Delram’s expression remained blank as he watched.
Using the Knights and Mages—their most critical forces—to break the phalanx?
That meant the enemy was desperate, and if they were that desperate, the war’s outcome was already decided.

‘What a vivid dream this is.’

That thought crossed Delram’s mind as he watched.
This was from the past—the campaign against the Odetsa Allied States.
Five city-states, banding together against the Empire, had formed a grand coalition and received support from other kingdoms in what became a decisive battle.

Of course, the result was plain to see.
No matter how wealthy those renowned city-states were, no matter how much gold they poured forth, the Imperial forces under Delram’s command had been utterly invincible.
Before them, all resistance was mere scarecrows.

-Are you satisfied with the training, Commander-in-Chief?

His adjutant asked from beside him.
In the dream, Delram’s head turned of its own accord, and he spoke.

-Yes, at this rate, unifying the continent is merely a matter of time.
-His Majesty will be delighted. Continental unification! At last our Empire will achieve an unprecedented feat.
-Precisely—it’s the only thing left to do.
-Sir?

Commander-in-Chief Delram smiled bitterly as he continued.

-There’s an old saying from the East. It speaks of riding astride a galloping beast……. That is our Empire’s situation now.
-How so?
-If we stop the war now, the Empire will be torn to shreds by rebellions across the realm within years. The only way to prevent that is to unify the continent.
-Surely not? Our Empire is strong! Those rebel scoundrels are nothing but a rabble—surely you know this better than anyone.
-A sword left unused rusts quickly. And the economy? Our economy now runs on war itself. Surely an Adjutant graduated top of the Academy knows this.
-Ah…….

He was right.
The greatest problem was the economy.
The commoners’ lives had always been harsh, but after more than forty years of continuous warfare, they had become a living hell.
The only reason it continued at all?
Ironically, because of the war itself.

Mass production of military supplies.
The added value and increased basic income that resulted had breathed life into the Empire’s economy—life enough to keep it from expiring entirely.
Of course, it was the consequence of draining cheap materials and labor from the conquered territories to their breaking point.

But the reason the Empire had to unify the continent.
The reason Delram—not by imperial decree—had to do it.
That was—

—I must unify the continent. There is no other choice.
—Is it truly Your Majesty’s command, then?
—No. The hundreds of thousands of soldiers who fell on the battlefield…….
—……!
—If it ends like this, won’t they have simply died a dog’s death? A supreme commander—no, a comrade in arms—must never allow that. They deserve at least one thing to take pride in, even in the afterlife.

To halt was to fall. To retreat was to fall.
There was nothing left but to charge ahead like a madman.
It was then that the Adjutant suddenly asked, as though something had just occurred to him.

“And in this life? What of this life?”
“…What did you say?”
“In this life, will you serve the Emperor again? Will you once more dye the continent in blood and despair?”
“You—”

Words he had never heard in his past life.
Delram’s eyes widened as he realized what had been said.
But the Adjutant had already vanished like a phantom.

The surroundings were the same.
The fierce battlefield had dissolved like a dream.
In its place, only a darkness vast and terrible stretched endlessly.

Save for one woman.
A woman of azure form gazed down at Delram.
Her gaze carried the weight of entire worlds…….

* * *

“Hack!”

Delram woke from a fit of coughing in his sleep.
Or rather, it seemed to stem from some strange dream…….
But like all dreams, he couldn’t recall what it had been about.

More pressing was the state of his body.
When he blinked, the outline of the ceiling came into focus by candlelight.
A tent. His bare body wrapped round and round in white Bandages.
And pain creeping in with sharp intensity.

Yet the pain didn’t feel like mere pain.
To hurt was to be alive!
It meant, by a stroke of luck, that everything had ended and he’d been brought to the Garrison.
Though Delram’s murmur was somewhat odd.

“…Am I still half-asleep?”

It was reasonable enough to wonder.
Right in front of him—visible when he tilted his head down—over his abdomen.
A blue owl was looking down at him.

Flutter-flutter!

—————
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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