Chapter 40
“Pour it on!!”
The palisades collapsed, and the walls were caked with frozen blood.
- Sizzle!
“Kieeeeeeek!!!”
Volkov, beset by the Eternal Winter, was fighting its final battle.
They boiled every liquid they had and poured it over the walls, then stabbed to death the ice fiends that crawled up on their half-thawed bodies.
- Thunk! Crack…!
The unpleasant sensation of plunging through poorly thawed flesh and rummaging through the blood vessels within was transmitted through the soldiers’ hands.
And even when they struck them down like this,
“Kyaak, kyaak….”
- Crunch!
“Kieeeyaaak!!”
the surrounding fiends devoured their dying fellow fiend to replenish their strength.
It had been a month since they first encountered such repulsive creatures.
“We can’t hold out any longer.”
The Volkov Line was reaching its limit.
“The number of ice fiends converging from the pole grows day by day!”
“High-risk fiends commanding them have also begun appearing with alarming frequency.”
“Our remaining supplies will last only about two weeks.”
Under the ice fiend army’s unexpectedly fierce assault, both soldiers and supplies were steadily dwindling.
“The reinforcements?”
“We succeeded in establishing communication via telepathy magic, but….”
The good news was that the reinforcements had set out.
The bad news was….
“We hear a massive snowstorm has blocked off the area around Volkov, making it completely inaccessible.”
“Haaah….”
A tremendous snowstorm had surrounded Volkov, too huge for the reinforcements to enter.
“According to reports, some residents did make it through the snowstorm, but….”
“The Little Elder’s grandson snuck out, got lost… and died.”
Still, it was fortunate that people could leave Volkov.
So long as they did not have Volkov blood flowing through their veins.
It was a savage snowstorm bearing malice solely toward Volkov.
- Tap, tap.
Arctic tapped the command table and recalled a story passed down through the heads of the family.
“Aki, beneath the permafrost at the pole lies a demon sealed away by our distant ancestors—the warriors of Valhalla, who offered their flesh and blood.”
“Weren’t all the demons sent back to Hell?”
It was the story his late biological father had told him while sitting him on his knee when he was young.
“Hmm. More precisely, she would be the demon’s bride. She was a spirit who fell in love with a demon. Her name was….”
“Glacies.”
The warriors of Valhalla, Volkov’s distant ancestors who had unified the northern reaches of the Ilias Continent.
She was an ice spirit said to have been sealed a thousand years ago by countless ancestors of Volkov, who sacrificed their bodies and souls.
As a side effect, Volkov had become a frozen land where snow could fall even in summer. Anyway.
- Tap, tap.
According to the history books, she commanded countless lesser ice spirits.
And her husband was the demon of Strife.
Upon his death, she supposedly took under her command the hundreds of thousands, even millions, of fiends he had led.
“My lord.”
And now they were digging their way out of the permafrost again, targeting Volkov—and humanity as a whole.
At the horrifying thought that a grieving woman’s revenge could be the key to humanity’s extinction, Arctic Volkov let out a long sigh.
“We withdraw.”
They could not hold out any longer.
Anything beyond this would be meaningless sacrifice.
No matter how much House Volkov embodied Strife, they could not keep throwing people into the fray.
“Leave behind only the minimum number of troops and withdraw. I’ll stay.”
“My lord?! What are you saying…!”
“Those with strong Volkov blood won’t be able to get out.”
As the story of the Little Elder’s grandson showed, those with strong Volkov blood could not escape….
He chose instead to bury his bones in his homeland.
“You must leave, my lord—.”
“Do you know why I sent Aicirel to Enersis?”
Everyone in the council chamber finally understood the depth of Arctic’s resolve.
They understood that this was why he had sent Aicirel away.
“To fulfill the family’s duty… I was a failure as a father.”
“My lord….”
“Then shouldn’t I at least save my child? So… heave.”
- Clack.
As Arctic rose from his seat, an unusual double-bladed spear—the Spiral Spear prototype—was in his hand.
Clad in armor, Arctic stood at the entrance of the council tent,
and to the staff, he looked like an indomitable warrior.
“Those who are leaving, leave now. Aren’t some of you about to see your grandchildren?”
How could men who had spent their entire lives fighting in the North ignore his kind yet resolute gaze?
“……Who says we’re leaving!”
“This is our homeland too! We’ll bury our bones here! Damn right!!”
“Hah, you fools.”
They had fought under Volkov for decades.
Both the previous and current heads of Volkov had been excellent superiors, if not fathers.
“At last, it’s time to repay the debt we owe Volkov! Hahaha!”
“I was thinking of lying down in a grave soon anyway. We’ll go to Valhalla ahead of time and prepare your place, my lord!”
They intended to repay the debt they owed Volkov with their deaths.
“Idiots.”
Even as Arctic said that, he was laughing heartily.
“Good. We’ll make the Final Volkov Line! Leave only the minimum number of troops and accept volunteers!”
“Yes, sir!”
Arctic made a vow as well.
For those who would go to their deaths alongside him, he would be buried here too.
* * *
The withdrawal itself was completed quickly.
As though it wanted them to leave, the snowstorm did not obstruct the refugee procession heading toward the capital.
“Well, the offensive has dropped off sharply.”
The number of fiends pounding on Volkov’s castle walls had also fallen sharply.
The frequency of appearances by commander-class high-risk fiends had decreased as well.
- Crack….
“Tsk. Even my breath is freezing.”
Instead, the cold from the pole was gradually drawing nearer.
It was filled with killing intent, as though preparing for the final moment.
- Slash!
Arctic quickly shook the blood from the drill bit.
He glared once more toward the pole.
“Hoo, hoo….”
- Gulp…!
That endless hatred and killing intent made even the veterans who had guarded the walls for decades break into a cold sweat.
That is our end.
Everyone sensed it, and even Arctic trembled slightly with fear.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes, sir!”
Even so, everyone gripped their weapons tightly.
If they could not stop them here, the fiends would descend upon the refugee procession.
- Crunch, crunch.
Though they were grateful that the snowstorm was no longer raging,
the sky was covered in snow clouds, so even in the daytime, everything within sight was dark.
The final troops guarding Volkov thus walked outside the walls behind Arctic.
They wondered where he was going, but they did not go very far.
The moment they crossed the low hill outside the walls,
- Tap.
“Goddamn it….”
One.
Only one humanoid specimen stood upon the vast permafrost.
She was wrapped in pale, nearly white skin and six ice-crystal wings….
“Glacies…….”
The calamity described in the history books had appeared before them.
“Why aren’t those things around her moving?”
“They all appear to be dead….”
The area around her was even more savage.
The entire army of hundreds of thousands of fiends stood emaciated, their hands clasped toward her as if in prayer.
“It seems she drained all the nutrients and mana from them.”
The elderly mage who had accompanied them realized that every fiend had offered itself to Glacies and began to tremble.
Hundreds of thousands of lives had been sacrificed for a single creature?!
“D-demon lord….”
Didn’t she look as though she were imitating the being known as the king of demons?
- Rustle….
Glacies had drained hundreds of thousands of lives just like that.
Without her hostility, she might have looked like a beautiful maiden whom any man would ask to marry at first sight, but….
“Warriors of Valhalla….”
The killing intent in those sapphire-blue eyes was anything but beautiful.
The moment they entered Glacies’s gaze, everyone felt as though their entire bodies were freezing.
“So you are their descendants. Your blood is thin… I see. So much time has passed….”
Glacies had been buried beneath the permafrost, releasing her power little by little and sending her husband’s fiends forth.
Having finally escaped from beneath it and reclaimed all her power, she….
- Bang!
- Whiiiiiiish!!!
“Graaagh?!”
“What—mana carried on the snow wind?!”
“While I was buried beneath the permafrost, how peacefully you prospered! That splendid prosperity, enough to make me jealous, has returned to me as an unbearable hatred!!”
She was an enemy so mighty that one might wonder who could possibly stop her.
“Feel that pain yourselves. Descendants of Valhalla!!”
“U-uuugh…!”
“You’re all going to die, all of you will freeze to death…!”
Just as everyone sensed their defeat,
- Whoom!
“Do not retreat!!”
A mana-infused shout cast off their despair.
“Whether we fight here or run, we will die. If so, then fight!”
- Boom!!
- Whiiiiir!!
Arctic, the source of the shout, infused mana into the Spiral Spear,
and in response, the drill section of the spear began spinning fiercely.
“Warriors of the North who deem wounds on your backs a disgrace!! That savage thing wants our hearts! Then give them to her. She will give up a piece of her heart as well!!”
- Thud, thud, thud.
No matter how they fought, the end would still be death,
so Arctic walked forward with the resolve to die standing.
“For every one of our lives that falls, one family survives. Burn your lives like purifying flames for the hope behind you!!”
Wasn’t that why he had sent his daughter away?
The duchess, who knew the circumstances, had held out, but he had somehow managed to send her away with this refugee procession.
“Do not forget! We are the final wall of the Empire’s North!! The moment we fall, the Empire’s people and our families can survive a little longer! So never forget: your deaths will be worth more than any jewel!!”
Even if they had to cling to a fleeting hope, they had to hold out. Would that not buy the Empire time to become their shield?
“Then I’ll see you in Valhalla, brothers!!”
- Bang!!
Thus Arctic was the first to leap at that winter calamity that should have died a thousand years ago.
“Raise the flag high!!!”
“The duke is charging in first, so what the hell are you standing around afraid of!! Take up your swords again!!”
“Glory to Volkov!!”
Amid the swirling ice blades,
the final warriors of the Volkov Line, knowing they would die, leaped after their family head.
*
Thus the sun set and rose again.
No one knew how many times the sky had risen and set….
- Thunk!
“Hah, haah.”
The commander of the Volkov Knights, who had always supported Arctic at his side during the battle.
An ice blade protruded from his back.
“You goddamn human….”
- Creak…!
“Kuh, haah…!!”
Arctic’s entire flank had been frozen and torn away several hours ago.
Having been incapacitated for a short time, the knight commander had fought to the end as the final survivor.
As a result, Glacies pierced his heart with her hand….
- Crumble!
Glacies had also lost every wing she had used as a weapon.
- Gush!!
Blood spurted along the hand Glacies pulled free, though during their first clash, even that blood had frozen into pillars.
“To serve you, it was an honor, my—.”
“Yes, see you in Valhalla.”
The knight commander lay down in the slowly melting permafrost.
“Huff, huff! Damn tenacious humans…!”
It was proof that Glacies was gradually reaching her limit.
Of course, by then, no warriors remained alive except Arctic….
- Clang! Tap tap.
“Glacies.”
Thinking of it another way, this was the perfect opportunity.
If she fled, they would have to fight again, but what if Arctic held her here?
“You….”
“I think… it’s time to break the chain of hatred.”
Arctic would die… but the reinforcements would arrive in time to finish Glacies.
Arctic removed all the armor he was wearing, making his body lighter.
With part of his flank torn away as well, his body was even lighter,
- Crunch…!
so he invested even greater strength into gripping the spear.
“The chain of hatred? Ah-ha, ahahaha!! What nonsense!”
“You know, don’t you? Hatred isn’t a chain… it is passed down.”
The Spiral Style that his daughter had agonized over with Clad.
It was a thrust-focused spear art based on rotational force, raising its penetrating power to a lethal level.
“Whether I die here or you do… those we once held dear will stoke the inherited hatred.”
With this penetrating power, driven to its limit by even using the rigidity of his joints, hadn’t he already smashed three of Glacies’s wings?
“So long as neither side gives up.”
“So you’re telling me to give up?”
Therefore, his target was the part of her chest where her heart lay.
The problem was that he had to accomplish it in a single blow.
Still, whether he succeeded or failed with that instant strike… even this moment of confrontation,
this drawn-out passage of time, was also an advantage for Arctic.
It bought time for the reinforcements to arrive.
“No. Never.”
- Keening…!
“I will never forgive your Valhalla clan, who tore my husband to pieces, nor humanity.”
“Heh heh. Is that so?”
Glacies knew this too.
Seeking a swift conclusion, she drew upon her remaining strength and summoned one more ice wing.
“I agree. We’ve lost too much to you as well.”
Unlike on the first day, its size and power would be pitifully weak, but it should still be enough to crush a veteran with half his flank blown away.
‘Just one moment.’
Yet he only needed to become stronger than his opponent for a single moment.
It was said that even the first hero had been infinitely weaker than the dragon when he first hunted the evil dragon.
How had he won?
‘If only I can become stronger than that woman for one moment.’
One-strike kill.
Sharpen endlessly, watch for an opportunity, and strike the instant an opening appeared.
Later generations called such desperation ugly, but the respect contained in that word remained.
- Crunch…!
Then Arctic suddenly remembered the letter from Akion that had been enclosed with his daughter’s letter.
[This is a custom-made motor for Your Grace. I made it extremely high-powered, so even Sir Clad and your daughter cannot draw out its full performance. Please leave me a review.]
Apparently, the prototype had to be powerful, so Akion had personally made a special-order motor for it.
Arctic had wondered what sort of nonsense it was, but,
“Heh heh.”
Looking back now, Arctic understood it as Akion’s way of showing filial respect to his father-in-law.
With a silly laugh, he rotated the spear.
- Keening!!!
And leaped.
Ice blades poured from Glacies’s small wing.
He parried and deflected them with the blade at the opposite end of the shaft, and angled himself to take whatever he could not evade.
“Die, die, die─!!”
Forgetting even that he was hated to the utmost by the calamity that would cover an entire kingdom in ice,
Arctic swung and thrust the spear, focusing while ignoring his gradually chilling body.
In response, the Spiral Spear steadily pierced Glacies’s tough body bit by bit.
‘Come back, and go again.’
- Keening!!!
Each time Arctic swung and thrust, it demonstrated its full performance.
At that moment, Arctic even felt as though he had become one with the Spiral Spear.
However,
“You’ve fallen for it, Arctic─!!!”
He had to be fooled by an attack he knew was a trap.
That way, she would not run.
- Creak…!!
Ignoring the sensation of the arm on his missing flank twisting,
Arctic gripped the Spiral Spear with his remaining hand.
- Crackle, crackle!!
The Spiral Spear’s motor groaned as it spun furiously, as if it were about to burst.
The torrent of spiral force pouring from it kept rotating endlessly, as if telling Arctic not to lose.
Only then did Arctic….
“Ah.”
Truly understand the spiral.
That all life in the world bloomed and withered in the form of a spiral, cycling eternally.
And how beautiful that cycle was.
“So this is a spiral…! Hahahaha!”
Even as his life melted away,
Arctic twisted and thrust the spear, showing his joy.
* * *
“Quickly, quickly!”
“Move your feet!! Duke Arctic is in danger!!!”
The snowstorm, which had been gradually weakening, suddenly subsided.
The reinforcements, sensing that the time had come, sent a detachment ahead first.
“Hah, haah…!!”
Among them was Duke Arctic’s daughter, Aicirel.
She had hurried back to Volkov after hearing the news, but what greeted her was a massive snowstorm.
“Father…!!”
Among the refugees who escaped the snowstorm were Duke Arctic’s staff.
The man in charge of the refugees confessed why the duke had sent her away….
“Catch your breath, Lady Aicirel!”
Having understood the whole situation, Aicirel despaired.
Glacies. A supreme spirit that even dragons would struggle to fight had invaded Volkov!
If so, her father Arctic, who had remained behind to buy time, surely…!!
“Hah, huff, yes, Count…!”
Even so, she somehow calmed herself, held back the tears threatening to burst forth, and ran.
Delphord, who was flying alongside her, followed with a troubled heart.
“Arctic….”
Arctic was a man who had chosen to sacrifice himself for the Empire’s citizens and his own domain’s people.
Even if their relationship was purely business, Delphord wanted to praise Arctic’s decision and resolve first and foremost.
They reached Volkov Castle, passed the ruined gate opposite it, and crossed the hill,
- Paaang─!!!
“What was that sound?!”
Before the detachment, a tremendous sound tore through the air, and light burst from the dark sky.
And over the permafrost at its source,
“How…?”
Arctic stood motionless, one arm shredded, gripping the Spiral Spear with his remaining arm.
Glacies stood before him with a hole through her chest.
“Good heavens… With a single thrust…?!”
“Did he punch a hole all the way into the sky?!”
Everything along the path of the spear’s thrust
had been twisted in a spiral and drilled through.
One of the detachment members watching dumbfounded muttered,
“Master….”
A title everyone here could agree on.