Chapter 47
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The sharpest spear in Cao Cao's army, charging from the most dangerous places faster than anyone else and crushing enemies like lightning.
An Myeong took pride in the name Tiger and Leopard Cavalry.
They had trampled the vast lands of Hebei beneath their horses' hooves, and their spears had never failed to pierce anything.
He had thought it would be the same this time.
The fleeing Liu Bei army was, of course, tasty prey.
They would simply and coldly slaughter the scattered rabbits that had dared betray the Chancellor's favor and flee in all directions.
However.
Along with screams, fervent shouts, and the metallic stench of blood.
An Myeong felt a sensation of sin searing down his spine.
A single white speck was climbing the waterfall, moving against the tide of enemy soldiers and riding the flow of his own side as he surged upward without hesitation.
That speck was drawing closer.
“What is that?”
The fellow general beside him spat and said.
“Some mad bastard's decided to die, huh? Hah-hah!”
But An Myeong couldn't laugh.
Within the crimson waves, that speck drew nearer and nearer.
A figure in silver armor, wrapped in a spray of blood, came into view.
“Still, that's quite a bit of courage!”
An army of a full hundred thousand.
To have broken through nearly five thousand elite Tiger and Leopard Cavalry and reached here...
That...
Could a person really do that?
Before An Myeong's thoughts could even finish, the fellow general rushed forward as if swept away.
And then.
CRUNCH!
A spearhead jutted chillingly out between his neck and shoulder. Without even a scream.
Soon after.
An irresistible death began to pierce through them.
Soldiers died, subordinates died, superiors died, comrades died—everything that stood in the way simply died.
Was he human?
Could that thing even be called human?
It was martial skill awe-inspiring enough to command reverence.
An Myeong bit his lip.
The blood trickling down his chin straightened his pride as a Tiger and Leopard Cavalryman once more.
“The enemy is alone!”
“Form ranks and surround him!”
“Kill him!”
Bolstered a little more by the infantry voices ringing out behind him as if reinforcements had arrived.
An Myeong spurred his horse and shot forward in a fit of frenzy.
The man whose silver armor should already have been covered in blood, looking like a demon returned from the underworld.
“Zhao, Zhao Zilong……!”
“It's Zhao Zilong!”
The soldiers who recognized him screamed, but he didn't care.
Because he was Cao Cao's sharpest spear.
With the sounds of the battlefield fading away as if they were a lie, An Myeong gripped his three-pointed, double-edged blade tightly.
“Take this──!”
After letting out a bold shout, An Myeong gauged the distance and swung his blade without hesitation.
With this strike, he should be able to break him.
That was what he thought.
But at that moment.
An Myeong saw it.
Two eyes.
No, two pairs of eyes.
“──!”
From the chest of armor that looked as though it had been brutally torn open, he saw a tiny life crying with a furrowed brow.
An Myeong could only freeze for a moment.
A child.
He had come all the way up through this hellish battlefield carrying a child?
“Why──”
Unfortunately.
His question could go no further.
He tried to grip his blade and swing, but there was no strength in his arm.
An Myeong lowered his head before he knew it.
What he saw there was.
The spearhead, cleanly piercing his heart.
A lightning-quick thrust so fast he couldn't even catch the motion.
Ah.
I see.
So that's Zhao Zilong of Mt. Changshan──
An Myeong's consciousness was severed.
* * *
…….
…….
“The man of Yan, Zhang Yide, is here! If anyone dares to come out and fight me to the death, step forward and settle it!”
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Zhao Yun, who charged through the near-death Changban battlefield on horseback single-handedly, driven only by the resolve to rescue his lord's wife and son.
Zhang Fei, who acknowledged the young strategist Zhuge Liang's talent and, following his scheme, fearlessly held back ten thousand elite soldiers all by himself.
And the two splendid illustrations that Kim Yul had squeezed out of Historie, too.
A hype-filled development more than enough to slap the faces of the Cao Cao stans who kept piling on baseless slander like, 'He's running away again—how many times is this now?'
“There’s boasting, and then there’s this. At this point I'd believe it if you told me this wasn't bragging but a dragon's roar……!”
“To come back alive while even saving the child in his arms—at this point Zhao Yun is basically number one in the martial rankings, right?”
“And to swing weapons like that and still have them look fine—just how great a dwarf must Liu Bei's army's blacksmith be!”
“Ahem! I am the S-Rank Zilong of Changshan──ahhh!”
I, who had been reading listlessly, wondering if they were going to dump another dose of frustration on us, managed to sit up straight.
What's more, Kim Yul had cunningly pushed the scene where Liu Bei tosses A Dou to the next chapter, so the whole chapter overflowed with nothing but catharsis and dopamine!
Of course.
“If Cao Cao hadn't only ordered him captured alive, I don't think this mess would have happened……?”
“Hmm, isn't that a little too convenient?”
“Ordering him captured alive while our side is getting wiped out—how is that something a sane person could even think of?”
There was also fair criticism grounded in the facts.
But that's Cao Cao for you.
“Remember Crossing the Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals……!”
“Cao Cao special: obsessed with talent and married women.”
Plausibility is built from buildup, after all.
Part 1. The Chancellor Cao's thoroughly Cao-ish behavior, painstakingly built up in The Villain Hides His Ambition, ended up serving as foreshadowing.
Today's Cao Cao fans shed blood tears once again.
It was a trivial thing, one that happened often.
And then.
“……!”
“A-a limited edition card……!”
“Changban pack……? SSR Silver-Spear Zhao Yun, SSR One-Man Army Zhang Fei……?”
A new battlefield means new cards.
Faced with this obvious truth, the card addicts once again tore open their card packs in tears.
‘R-rank A Dou Thrown to the Ground’ greeted them.
* * *
As light and darkness are bound to coexist.
The world and the Demon Realm relentlessly contested each other's territory across the alien boundary called a Rift.
If the Rift that had opened in the Empire was connected to the western Demon Realm,
Rozelin's homeland.
the Great Rift that had opened in the Holy Kingdom was connected to the eastern part of the Demon Realm.
By sheer prestige, the Holy Kingdom was more powerful than any other nation on the continent, but
most of their power was being devoted to suppressing the Demon Realm.
They did have the resolve to uphold the Goddess Church's will and stand firm as the shield protecting the world, but an even bigger reason was
that the eastern Demon Realm was several times more dangerous than the west.
In the west, there were occasionally giant monsters so ferocious that only a hero could drive them out.
But in the east, there were simply more monsters.
And they were monsters resembling humans, swarming in numbers far greater than humans themselves.
“Goddess……”
Someone let out a sigh as another wave of monsters surged in today.
It might have damaged morale, but no one could refute his words.
Like a dike collapsing and the torrent rushing out.
Faced with a massive tide that seemed like the fierce will writhing in the Demon Realm was pouring forth to destroy the world, anyone would have no choice but to call on the Goddess.
Despite the listlessness hanging over the camp.
“Hoo, let's have another go today.”
The hero Baisach gripped his holy sword tightly.
At first, it was faith.
Now it was just duty, the pressure of countless lives resting on his shoulders, responsibility, and nobility.
Pouring all of that into his sweeping sword, he simply walked forward in silence.
The moment he stepped forward.
“Huh?”
His eyes widened.
From far away.
Instead of the deep darkness that symbolized monsters, a figure appeared scattering brilliant radiance, as if it held starlight within it.
Thanks to his vision, which far surpassed that of ordinary people, the shape gradually etched itself clearly onto Baisach's retina.
As the nobly gleaming pure white figure charged, swinging a silver-shining spear, monsters burst apart without form from the spear pressure alone.
When seething flames violently drove a snake-shaped spear blade into the ground, everything that blocked it was obliterated as if vaporized.
The flames rippled as though laughing heartily, and the pure white figure, seeing that, spun the spear once as if saluting.
“No way…….”
Baisach recalled something he had once heard from Seraphin, a hero of the Empire.
That an angel sometimes appeared on the western front of the Demon Realm.
That the angel quietly plucked an instrument and murmured a melody, and the mighty demonic beast vanished in an instant as if the air itself had been torn apart.
That wherever the angel appeared, color bloomed as if paint had spilled across the world.
- You expect me to believe that? An angel? What, ha ha…….
- You've been living too easily, Baisach? Sometimes a bald-eagle angel shows up too?
Of course, he hadn't believed it.
But…….
“O-oh, ooooh!”
“An angel! An angel has descended!”
“The Goddess heard my prayer……!”
“L-look over there, it's yellow-brown……!”
“It's not gray, it's really, really dirt-colored!”
One knelt and prayed.
One shouted the Goddess's name.
One dropped the weapon in his hand and hugged the comrade beside him.
Military discipline had collapsed at that moment, but
did discipline really matter in a miraculous moment like this?
If they truly were angels.
Even so.
There was only one thing Baisach had to do.
“Roelin! Charge!”
“Y-yes, sir!”
Drive the monsters back.
And protect the joy surging behind them.
That was a hero's duty.
* * *
“A mountain of fan letters again today.”
“Are they all insults? That's not something to be happy about.”
Chloe chided me, but I remained relaxed.
It's only natural for a masterpiece to attract hate comments and witch hunts.
Let's see, shall we open one?
[Imperial Elf Environmental Protection Association]
[Xuzhou flooded, Wuchao a sea of fire, and even Bowang Slope…… Please consider the environment a little more when writing. Otherwise, you will go bald……]
“Chloe, come here.”
“What did you say?”
Instead of adding an explanation, I handed the letter to the elf.
“Every word of it was right── Hngyaaah!”
This is why elves are impossible.
After all, wasn't scorched-earth warfare the very foundation of tactics, and wasn't turning places into a sea of water a national tradition passed down since the Battle of Salsu?
“Noah, Noah, Noah, pleeease!”
“I wonder what their next reaction will be.”
I idly flipped through the manuscript.
September 208.
Liu Bei escaped Changban safely.
And then.
November of the same year.
Just two months apart.
A very fiery river-pollution incident was about to occur.
Of course, before that, I still had to wrap up the Zhuge Liang deification project, along with Sima Yi's underdog breakout project.