As expected, the Barbarians had sent forth their slave soldiers in the vanguard.
Their numbers were around thirty thousand strong.
However, the majority of them were not soldiers, but civilians. Notably, there was a significant number of elves who had been conscripted from the conquered lands. The Barbarians had driven the elderly, women, and even people with disabled bodies onto the battlefield. If there were children, they too would have been forced on the battlefield.
The plight of the slave soldiers led by the Barbarians was terrible to behold.
The elves had their ears torn off, the dwarves had their beards ripped out flesh and all, and in the case of humans, their noses were cut off.
In every sense, physically and mentally, the eyes of the slave conscripts were already dead.
Behind the slave conscripts, there were about a thousand Barbarians standing at intervals, each holding a whip with spikes that were easily 10 meters long.
As the battle began, the Barbarians whipped their slaves into the battlefield.
Crack!
A whip lashed past a slave.
“Arghhh!”
A slave who was struck by the whip imbued with inhuman strength trembled like an electrocuted rat before dying on the spot.
The Barbarians laughed loudly at the sight, flailing their whips indiscriminately.
With each lash, another slave fell.
Behind the thirty thousand slaves were more than a thousand Barbarians swinging their whips.
Even before the actual battle could even get started, over a thousand slaves had died, and the number was growing exponentially.
The Barbarians seemed to not care in the slightest.
They lashed their whips mercilessly, seemingly intent on killing all the remaining slaves themselves.
The slaves, paralyzed by fear, had no other choice.
Like a flock of sheep meeting a pack of wolves, they charged at the defense line of their kin with their almost nonexistent weapons and armor.
Sungchul looked around.
It was just as he had expected.
Elves were particularly famous for their love of fellow elves.
They hesitated to pull their quiver against their kin, who had turned into an abused and mutilated horde.
Sungchul also felt compassion for those being driven to death by the Barbarians.
However, this was war.
A moment of carelessness and complacency could make a difference between victory or defeat.
To hesitate now was to give exactly what the Barbarians wanted.
And if the battle were to unfold as the Barbarians desired, the future was more than obvious.
The elves will be defeated in battle, any survivors of this battle as well as any remaining civilians among the elves would meet the same grizzly end as those enslaved conscripts that were swarming towards them in future battles.
“What should we do, Imperial Commander in Chief?”
The desperate Elvan lieutenant instinctively called Sungchul by his former title and sought his opinion.
“…”
A commander must possess a heart of steel.
That’s what the Emperor of the Human Empire once told Sungchul.
Sungchul, who had led many armies into war as the Imperial Commander in Chief, understood the meaning of those words well.
‘The Barbarians are fairly smart.’
It was now time to show the commander was worth his salt.
And as he always did, Sungchul preferred to express his will through actions rather than words.
Sungchul drew the sacred bow he had personally received from the Elven lord and pulled on the string.
Fallen Leaves of Spring.
This bow was more considered a ceremonial item than a combat weapon. But this legendary bow, said to be a gift from the World Tree to the elves in an unimaginably distant past, were nothing if not extraordinary.
The draw strings were unexpectantly withstanding his godlike strength very well.
‘Hoh. I did not know there were any bow with this level of performance. It might be able to rival one of the Weapons of Calamity.’
Sungchul enjoyed the satisfying feeling of drawing back the bow until the string seemed like it might snap at any minute. He then launched an arrow.
The arrow Sungchul released was more like a bullet rather than a simple arrow, and it flew towards the enemies.
The arrow that was sent flying with such ferocity pierced through the heart of one of the enslaved conscripts.
But it wasn’t just one.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
The arrow did not stop at penetrating the heart of one enemy, it continued to fly through the next and the next, and it wasn’t until a dozen or so enemies were pierced by the same arrow that the projectile was finally stopped.
Indeed, it was an attack to be feared.
The effectiveness of the arrow was closer to that of a canon strike.
It was a sight that showed what would happen if it was possible to imbue an arrow with a power of god-like strength.
Sungchul lowered his bow and looked around as he roared his next words.
“Do not hesitate!”
Sungchul reached out with his hands as he shouted.
The Elvan officer handed Sungchul the next arrow. Sungchul nocked the bow as she shouted once more.
“The only mercy you can give those you see before you…”
Sungchul paused from his words to release yet another arrow.
The arrow, once again, streaked across the battle field and punched holes through dozens of slaves.
As pitiful cries of despair and death rant out in the fields ahead, Sungchul finished his words.
“Is the release of death!”
Was it perhaps his god-like warrior aura? Or perhaps his thunderous roar?
Whichever it was, Sungchul’s two shots of an arrow completely shook up the elvan army that had been hesitating.
The various leaders who had been watching passively regained their senses and relayed their orders to their subordinates.
“Obey the Imperial Commander in Chief!”
The commands were issued all across the camp, which resulted in thousands of arrows flying over the Living Woods and fell down like rain upon the slave conscripts.
To begin with, the slaves weren’t soldiers nor combatants.
Aside from the small number of former warriors, most of them were slain helplessly within the rain of arrows.
Those who had no NCOs or officers to lead them, sent forth only by the tip of the whip, knew only how to die on their feet.
But this wasn’t the end of the nightmare.
One of the slaves who had turned into a pincushion by a volley of arrows, let out a scream before his body turned pure white before it exploded violently.
Kaboom!
It was a massive explosion.
Let alone nearby slaves, it was enough to shake the earth itself.
A deep furrow etched itself in Sungchul’s forehead.
Not even the demons used this method. To turn living humans into bombs using some evil spell.
If they had shown mercy and allowed these slaves into the camp, just imagining what could have happened made one’s heart sink.
But on the other hand, Sungchul now had the undeniable proof that unlike the scouts and intelligence he had gathered until now, the Barbarians in fact did know how to use magic.
‘The enemies also have magic users. They just haven’t revealed them thus far.’
Sungchul calmly surveyed the situation.
The Elves now unhesitatingly released volley after volley of arrows.
Each of these volleys killed hundreds of slaves, and a few of them would give off white light and explode, turning into unrecognizable chunks of meat and gigantic craters upon the earth.
“How terrible.”
Arcanite, who had been watching the battlefield, approached Sungchul with a sickened expression.
Even as a warrior who have fought through countless battles and seen all manners of terrible and horrific things throughout his life, the situation unfolding before them were still too utterly miserable to witness.
“There’s no doubt now. Those Barbarians…they do not see us as people.”
Sungchul didn’t particularly like the Arcanite, but even he felt that Arcanite’s words were irrefutably correct in their assessment.
He could see it.
The sight of the Barbarians standing far behind the slaves, laughing and cackling as they watched terrified slaves die enmasse or light up and explode.
They looked like a bunch of merry goers who have come to watch fireworks.
“I see.”
Sungchul reached out with his hands towards the elvan officer.
“Arrow.”
The Elvan officer offered Sungchul an arrow that had the fletching of a hawk.
Sungchul nocked the arrow, engraved with the unique characters of the Elven tribe, and took aim at the enemy.
His targets were not the slave conscripts before him.
It was those brutal Barbarians watching and enjoying the scene from their camp at a safe distance.
The Barbarians were more than thousand five hundred meters away.
Even for a master archer, this was no easy distance to hit a target, and even if the arrow was to find its mark, it would be difficult to do any meaningful damage.
Sungchul drew a deep breath and pulled back the bowstring of the sacred bow of the elves to its limit.
Sungchul’s breathing ceased, and his eyes bulged open.
His target was the Barbarians.
Inside of the detestable maw of the one who was cackling in laughter, swinging his blood-soaked whip.
Sungchul’s body flexed with god-like strength.
His hand, which held the bowstring, bent it beyond its limit.
The faces of the Elven officers watching him were filled with a mixture of shock and admiration.
The bow was crying out – creaking.
It was letting out a mysterious wail for finally having met someone who would be able to make use of its true power.
‘A… Amazing.’
‘I can’t believe anyone could use a bow like that.’
In silence, Sungchul released the arrow.
Ping-
What the Fallen Leaf of Spring released was not an arrow but a single strand of light.
The flash of light connected the target and Sungchul in a straight line.
There was not a single bend or curve in the trajectory, and the moment the trajectory was confirmed, the fate of the arrow was already determined.
The strand of light went into the mouth of the laughing Barbarian as if sucked into it.
“Ke ha ha ha hak!!!”
One Barbarian spewed blood from its mouth before falling backwards.
The other Barbarians who were laughing with him realized after the fact that it had died and looked around, confused as to what happened. It wasn’t long before they noticed a man on the other side of the palisade holding a bow.
Sungchul Kim.
He glared straight at the onlooking Barbarians.
“Now they won’t be able to show their teeth ever again.”
Sungchul said while glaring at the Barbarians.
The Barbarians faltered slightly at Sungchul’s ambient aura, but they let out a beastly howl in unison and rallied themselves.
“Shaman Ka! Shaman Ka!”
It was a bizarre name whose meaning could not be understood.
The barbarians beat a drum, seemingly made of stitched-together human skin. They beat the drums like madmen ominously.
Soon, something appeared from between the Barbarians with whips.
It was an old woman with a long wooden mask. She held a wooden staff adorned with human eyeballs and chopped fingers.
‘A shaman, perhaps?’
From the atmosphere she exuded, it seemed to be the case.
Upon the appearance of the Barbarian shaman, the barbarians elevated their spirits and screamed even louder.
“Shaman Ka! Shaman Ka!”
Sungchul had a bad feeling about this shaman.
Soon, the shaman lifted up the staff bearing eyeballs and severed fingers.
Now everyone bore witness to a magic formation never before seen. One not even Sungchul had ever laid eyes upon.
It led to a bunch of explosions to take place in front of the Living Wood’s palisade.
Seemingly all the human bombs exploded all at once.
Countless corpses were strewn about all over the fields, and now on the Barbarian’s side of the battle field were only a small number of survivors and a field of bodies.
‘What is this purpose of this?’
The only thing the old shaman had accomplished since showing up was to blow up all the slaves who were meant to serve as their meat shields.
But soon, the barbarians revealed their true intentions.
“Keeheeheeheehee!”
The shaman, or perhaps known as Shamanka, was preparing another spell with a sinister laughter.
Sungchul immediately fired an arrow towards the old woman.
However, the Barbarians did not fall for it like before.
They pulled out an entire almond tree and used it to create a wall between Sungchul and the shaman, even going as far as becoming shields themselves to protect the shaman.
“Argh!!!”
Despite a Barbarian’s agonizing scream as he was pierced by an arrow and slain, the shaman had completed her malevolent spell in the meantime.
The shaman, laughing maniacally, waved her staff, and the sky darkened above as black clouds engulfed the surroundings.
The elves watched the ominous signs in the sky with fear.
Sungchul also felt an unpleasant familiarity with the premonition of terrible things to come.
‘This feeling. I’ve felt it somewhere before….’
The next moment, black lightning struck the earth.
It was not just simple lightning.
An unholy, blasphemous curse unpermitted to man was unleashed upon the world.
“Look… look there!”
A fear-stricken archer pointed to a spot on the battlefield.
It was beginning.
The bodies that had been growing cold on the battlefield were rising.
“Grrrrr….”
Crash!
The black lightning continued to strike.
Wherever the black lightning touched, dozens, sometimes hundreds of bodies began to rise.
It was a large-scale necromancy used by high-ranking necromancers on the battlefield.
But this was no ordinary necromancy. Sungchul and the elf army could see the revived corpses growing sharp fangs from their mouths, with parts of their bodies becoming misty like fog.
They were not mere skeletons or zombies, but higher-level undead monsters – vampires.
“This is absurd. I’ve seen numerous necromancers on my battlefield, but I’ve never heard or seen such a thing.”
Those who fought against the last kingdom that employed necromancers in warfare, the Rutheginea Kingdom, would know.
They would know that the events happening before their eyes were impossible, or rather, unimaginable.
But such an event was actually taking place.
The issue encompassed a severity far beyond the simple destruction of common sense.
It had to do with the gravity of the situation.
It was one thing to fight an army of thirty thousand zombies, but an army of thirty thousand vampires was a problem of an entirely different magnitude.
Vampires, capable of evading physical attacks by turning into a mist form and swiftly charging into enemy lines by transforming into bats, were a far cry from the sluggish zombies that typically served as nothing more than cannon fodder.
Upon seeing this, Sungchul could intuitively tell.
‘Was this the plan from the beginning?’
On the shoulders of the reborn vampire slaves, without exception, there was a heretical eyeball-shaped mark.
The unholy power of black lightning was scattering in mid-air and being absorbed into the mark.
With this, it became clear.
What the Barbarians aimed for through the slave soldiers was neither a simple demoralization nor attrition warfare.
It didn’t matter if it did achieve those results, as those were unintended secondary consequences.
What they were after from the start was a fresh mass production of corpses. For the purpose of freely summoning an impossibly numerous powerful high-ranking undead horde.
Sungchul picked up Fal Garaz, which he had briefly laid on the ground.
“To all units, focus on defense.”
Traditionally, the there was only one way to effectively deal with a Necromancer on the battlefield.
To kill the spell caster.
Although it was much more straight forward than the hide-and-seek game in La Grange he had to play, Sungchul felt that this matter was incomparably more dangerous than that time.
It was likely that they would have prepared a defense of an unprecedented ferocity, with an assassin waiting for him.
But nevertheless he had no choice but to go.
Because if he didn’t, there was no chance of victory.
Fizzle.
A faint spark flickered at the tip of Sungchul’s fingers.
With Fal Garaz in one hand and the power of electrical current in the other, Sungchul stepped forward.
“Bertelgia. It’s going to get dangerous.”
Sungchul’s heart was unusually heavy.
However, Bertelgia responded to Sungchul with an indifferent tone.
“You sure are getting quite whinny these days. Let’s just finish quickly and head over to the Colossus already! Everyday you tell me we’re going to go, just how long are you planning on making me wait?”
Not an ounce of fear could be felt from Bertelgia.
Sungchul, after being the recipient of Bertelgia’s characteristic outburst, felt a large measure of weight lift off of his shoulders. Reflecting on his shortcomings, Sungchul lifted his chin.
“The elves are dying so loudly it made me lose perspective.”
A faint smile appeared on Sungchul’s lips.
“I’ll end this quickly.”
The man known as the Enemy of the World silently walked forward under the watchful eyes of all.
Towards the battlefield where thirty thousand vampires rose from dead after being struck by the black lightning.
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‘What is this purpose of this?’ >>> ‘What is the* purpose of this?’