“WAAAAAAH…!”
“Go! The hunt begins now.”
The savage roars seized Number 48’s fading consciousness and dragged it back.
“Gasp.”
His mind suddenly snapped awake, and Number 48 looked around.
The battlefield remained unchanged.
Slaughter raged everywhere.
Then he saw it.
A bizarre sight entered his eyes.
People who scarcely looked human had charged onto the battlefield.
Their clothes were shabby yet somehow imposing. At a glance, they looked like bandits.
But their appearance went far beyond that.
They had cast off their upper garments and wore what looked like the hides of unknown beasts around their lower bodies.
Their physiques were covered in bulging muscle.
Their weapons were bizarre.
Number 48 had seen them before.
They were the men who always waited at the very rear of the battlefield.
Hegemon Fortress.
Those lazy bastards who spent every battle against the Orthodox Allied Forces lying around in the back and sleeping.
Quite often, they did not even bother coming to the battlefield at all.
They were the true center of this entire battlefield.
Yet they had never once entered the fighting.
Only now, when the center showed signs of collapsing, did they finally appear.
What a sight.
But unlike their obnoxious behavior, their martial prowess was real.
People throughout the murim had one assessment of Hegemon Fortress.
It was the sect with the strongest external arts in the entire martial world.
True to that reputation, every one of them was enormous and packed with muscle.
They barely cared when blades sliced across their skin.
Some were even bold enough to seize incoming swords with their bare hands.
Others licked the blood running down their hands to wet their throats.
That was Hegemon Fortress.
In any case, Hegemon Fortress’s entry into the battle completely overturned the tide.
The Orthodox Allied Forces, which had been advancing with unstoppable momentum, came to a halt.
Now they were being driven backward instead.
‘So they finally came out. Those damned monsters….’
At the rear of the Orthodox Allied Forces.
Moyong Yang clenched his fist as he watched from the command post.
He had practically wasted more than a month for this very day.
They had barely fought seriously.
Even when they did fight, they had fought halfheartedly.
There had even been days when they had not fought at all.
Then came the day of the decisive battle.
To encourage the Orthodox Allied Forces, he had even placed his own son, Moyong Jeong-cheon, in the vanguard.
The Thousand Tiger-Fang Swords.
His sword force was savage as a tiger’s fangs, and he was one of the handful of finest martial artists of his generation.
Moyong Jeong-cheon’s swordsmanship had been every bit as sharp as his reputation suggested.
And just as expected, he had shattered the Ascending Dragon Sect’s center.
‘Damn it. They came out far sooner than expected… No, did the Ascending Dragon Sect simply hold out better than I thought?’
Ironblood Hall and the Tiger Fang Gang on the two wings were already on the verge of annihilation.
Yet the Ascending Dragon Sect in the center had ultimately endured the Orthodox Allied Forces’ assault.
‘We were close. If we’d pushed only a little farther, we could’ve completely wiped out the Ascending Dragon Sect and reached those Hegemon Fortress bastards. If nothing else, we should’ve finished off the Ascending Dragon Sect today….’
Now the retreat route of the orthodox martial artists who had penetrated the Ascending Dragon Sect’s formation would be cut off.
They would be trapped with nowhere to go and hunted down.
Had he hoped for too much?
No.
Was that not actually a modest wish?
A small step toward the future.
That was all he had gambled this battle to achieve.
Those bastards slept even during battles, so he had assumed they would at least wait until the entire vanguard had been smashed apart before moving….
It had been a miscalculation.
Everything he had prepared until now had come to nothing.
‘Retreat! We can’t hold out like this. I can’t demand any more sacrifices from our comrades.’
Moyong Jeong-cheon stared at the approaching martial artists of Hegemon Fortress.
If they reached this far, everyone here would be slaughtered.
And he himself had no room to spare at the moment.
“You bastard. Did you truly think you could come this far and leave alive?”
The man roaring at him was Second Elder Jang Woo-geun of the Ascending Dragon Sect.
His martial prowess was greater than Moyong Jeong-cheon had expected.
Moyong Jeong-cheon was the Young Family Head of the Moyong Family and its strongest martial artist.
Furthermore, he served as deputy commander of the Orthodox Allied Forces.
Yet Jang Woo-geun was powerful enough that even he could not overwhelm him.
‘As expected of the Ascending Dragon Sect. They’re not a force to be looked down upon. They’ve done nothing but defend all this time, so I underestimated them far too much. We’ll have to revise the entire strategy from the beginning.’
Had they fought in perfect condition, Moyong Jeong-cheon might have won.
But more than anything else, he had already consumed a considerable amount of inner arts at the very beginning of the battle while breaking through the fortress wall created by the Heaven-Revolving Mighty Path.
“Yahoo! Jeong-cheon! Been a while!”
“How’s Moyong Yang doing? Still got his head attached?”
Obnoxious voices rang out from behind Jang Woo-geun.
“Tch.”
Moyong Jeong-cheon withdrew his sword.
The warriors of Hegemon Fortress were pouring in.
He could not deal with those barely human bastards while he had yet to subdue Jang Woo-geun.
‘They make Jang Woo-geun look like a gentleman by comparison.’
That was how wretched the members of Hegemon Fortress looked at a glance.
Aside from their martial arts.
Maces, sickles, wolf-tooth clubs, spears, dagger-axes….
Every kind of weapon imaginable flew about.
There were no rules.
No proper principles.
They simply swung their weapons.
And yet the Orthodox Allied Forces could not suppress them.
All because of the strength-based martial arts founded upon their absurd external arts.
“You…. You’ve saved your life. I’ll withdraw for today.”
“Where do you think you’re going?! You have yet to settle your match with me!”
Ignoring Jang Woo-geun, Moyong Jeong-cheon looked behind him and shouted.
“Rear ranks, form a defensive formation! Put the wounded in the center. Rear guard, form groups of three and cut off their advance.”
Had his pride been wounded?
His voice was louder than ever.
The formation moved the moment the order fell.
The martial artists remaining in the rear threw themselves forward to stop Hegemon Fortress’s charge.
Blood sprayed.
Screams erupted.
While the rear ranks fought desperately, those at the front finally gained enough breathing room to retreat.
“Jeong-cheon, you bastard! Why?! Why not stay and play a little longer?! Hahahaha! Where’s our Jeong-cheon rushing off to? Come here. Let me grab your dick once! Bwahahaha!”
Vulgar mockery followed him, but Moyong Jeong-cheon did not care.
It was merely the barking of beasts.
Their coordination had been excellent when advancing, and their retreat was equally smooth.
Those who had penetrated deep into the formation and ravaged the Ascending Dragon Sect pulled one another back while reorganizing their lines.
Then, shielding the wounded, they withdrew from the battlefield in an instant and returned to their original position.
The distance between the two sides widened once more to nearly what it had been just before the battle began.
“What the hell is the Strategist thinking, stopping us from wiping those bastards out right now?”
“Forget it. Disobey the Strategist and you’ll lose an arm.”
“You shut up. If I wanted, I could wring the Strategist’s neck myself.”
The warriors of Hegemon Fortress raged as they watched the Orthodox Allied Forces retreat into the distance.
They had been given an order.
-Protect the subordinate sects. If the enemy retreats, do not pursue.
It was the command of Hegemon Fortress’s strategist, Myo-wol.
“Fuck… Protect them? Those weak bastards?”
The vanguard lay scattered across the ground.
The Ascending Dragon Sect, Ironblood Hall, and the Tiger Fang Gang.
“We only came out because of you bastards! Useless pieces of shit!”
“Yeah, you bastards! On the way back, go find the Strategist and shove something into his mouth! If not for his damned order, we would’ve killed you ourselves!”
“Bah. Ptooey. Let’s go.”
The warriors of Hegemon Fortress who had advanced all the way to the vanguard spat thick phlegm onto the ground and withdrew.
Judging by the fact that they kept going, they seemed to be heading back altogether.
They had already lost interest in the battle.
The Orthodox Allied Forces likewise slowly vanished into the mountains.
It seemed the battle truly was ending now.
The two sides glared at one another in silence as each disappeared back into its own territory.
Amid the mountain gorges, on the strange flatland nestled partway up the mountain.
Pools of blood sloshed across the ground.
It had been a very long time.
***
At the entrance to Scattered Gorge Mountain.
The disciples of the Ascending Dragon Sect had gathered together, groaning.
It had been a long time since they suffered such a crushing defeat.
Looking at the battle as a whole, it had ended in a draw, but for the Ascending Dragon Sect alone, it was effectively a defeat.
Their central defensive formation had completely collapsed.
Even the Heaven-Revolving Mighty Path, which they had believed invincible, had been broken.
‘We left with a hundred twenty. Now there are ninety-five? Twenty-five died?’
Corpses lay in a row.
Jang Woo-geun could see seventeen bodies from where he stood.
The rest had become mixed among the other corpses so thoroughly that they had not even been able to retrieve them.
‘The Hegemon Fortress rear detachment will take care of the rest. Strategist Myo-wol is good at that sort of thing.’
Even if they recovered the bodies, those corpses would never return to the Ascending Dragon Sect.
There was no need for them anyway.
If they were unlucky, wild beasts would eat them.
If they were lucky, they would be buried beneath nameless mounds.
In any case, the Ascending Dragon Sect had lost more than twenty percent of its strength in this battle.
Jang Woo-geun’s head throbbed.
“We will rest here and treat our wounds.”
At his shout, the disciples collapsed wherever they stood.
For the past several months, they had fought nothing but minor local skirmishes.
Then, without warning, they had been struck by an attack on this scale….
‘Even Moyong Jeong-cheon took the field. I was far too complacent. If Hegemon Fortress hadn’t stepped in….’
They might have been annihilated.
Cold sweat streamed down Jang Woo-geun’s back.
He looked at the corps members sprawled across the ground.
There were many dead.
The wounded numbered twice as many.
It would have been faster to count those who were still uninjured.
‘At least that’s fortunate. The Golden Dragon Corps didn’t suffer too badly. We preserved most of our strongest fighting force. Should I take comfort in that…?’
Aside from several men in the vanguard, the Golden Dragon Corps was relatively intact.
Whatever else might be said, their martial prowess did not fall short even compared with the experts of the orthodox faction.
‘Damn it. Even so, we’ve lost too many people. How am I supposed to replenish the Silver Dragon Corps and Iron Dragon Corps now? If the Sect Leader hears about this… that piece of shit won’t let it go.’
Jang Woo-geun clutched his head.
Perhaps even he would not escape unharmed.
The thought of Sect Leader Lee Woo-yang flying into a rage was enough to make a headache appear where there had not been one before.
***
“I-Instructor, j-just a l-little more g-gently.”
Number 87 spoke to the Silver Dragon Corps member wrapping a bandage around him.
“What the hell are you saying? Stop stuttering and speak properly. Huh? You bastard. Hold still!”
The Silver Dragon Corps member frowned.
It was because of Number 87’s gaping wound.
The area around it had already turned black.
The Silver Dragon Corps member treating Number 87 had been positioned away from the fiercest fighting and had managed to avoid direct combat.
Thanks to that, he was now acting as a healer.
“Fuck, how the hell did you get cut for the wound to look like this?”
The Silver Dragon Corps member cursed as he tightly wrapped bandages around the blackened wound.
He too had passed through the Non-Dragon Corps and Iron Dragon Corps.
In particular, Jeong Gyun, who was bandaging Number 87, had briefly lived alongside Numbers 48 and 87 when they first entered the Non-Dragon Corps.
Not long afterward, he had risen to the Iron Dragon Corps.
“E-Earlier, when y-you were w-wrapping F-Four-Eight’s b-bandage, he d-died….”
“Four-Eight isn’t dead, you bastard. Shut up before I wrap yours even tighter.”
His tone was somewhat gentler.
‘Ugh….’
Beside Number 87, Number 48 lay motionless like a corpse after passing out during treatment.
When they wrapped the sword wound around his neck, the bandage had nearly strangled him to death for real.
“Snoooore… snoooore….”
Number 48 snored.
Apparently, after fainting, his extreme exhaustion had carried him straight into deep sleep.
“Can’t you see that bastard snoring? You endure it too.”
“Y-Y-Y-Yes.”
Number 87 answered in a tiny voice.
“Stop stuttering so much.”
They were far from the only ones.
Groans and curses from those receiving treatment mingled everywhere.
Aside from that, there was little conversation.
No one had the strength to speak.
More importantly, the shock of what they had just experienced was too great.
Hegemon Fortress entering the battle.
None of the current Silver Dragon Corps members had ever experienced a battle like this.
That alone showed how fierce it had been.
Only after night had fully fallen did the corps members set out for the Ascending Dragon Sect.
They dragged their battered bodies along.
They looked exactly like defeated soldiers.
The Ascending Dragon Sect members hurried onward in miserable condition.
Love it or hate it, that place was still home.
But although those above kept urging those below to move faster, their pace would not increase at all.
Whether the battle had been won or lost did not matter.
That was Hegemon Fortress’s problem.
It had little to do with them.
Even so, people who had been standing beside them had died or been injured.
They could not help feeling dejected.
These were people they had lived shoulder to shoulder with in the same rooms for years.
Most of the corps members dragged injured legs behind them.
Quite a few were being carried on stretchers.
Within the oppressive silence, only the sound of feet scraping across the dirt cut through the dark night.
“Fuck. I’m still hungry even in a situation like this.”
Number 32 spoke while tearing into a strip of dried meat.
Someone was strapped to his back.
Number 92.
His arms and legs slowly swayed back and forth with Number 32’s steps.
Beyond that, they did not move.
Number 92’s entire body was drenched in blood.
That alone would not have been a major problem.
Plenty of people here had suffered wounds that severe.
The real problem was….
“This bastard is fucking heavy…. You don’t even have a head, so why the hell are you so heavy?”
Number 32 kept grumbling.
Just as he said, half of Number 92’s head was gone.
His life had disappeared along with it.
“Stop swinging your arm, bastard. You’re making it hard to eat.”
The dried meat grew soggy with the tears running down Number 32’s face.
“Fuck….”
Numbers 48 and 87 followed behind Number 32, each carrying two ownerless greatswords and great sabers over their shoulders.
The Iron Dragon Corps had suffered the greatest losses.
But that was that.
The Iron Dragon Corps still had its work to do.
One step.
Then another.
Their heavy footsteps carried them toward the Ascending Dragon Sect.
The old pavilion at the entrance welcomed the defeated soldiers home.
“We’re home. Walk on your own now, bastard.”
Number 32 spoke as he lowered Number 92 from his back.
Though he knew no answer could possibly come, Number 32 sounded irritated for no reason.
“Leave all the corpses over there.”
The Silver Dragon Corps member overseeing the Iron Dragon Corps spoke from one side of the training ground.
Number 32 lifted Number 92 again and carried him to where the bodies had been piled.
“…….”
After setting Number 92 down, Number 32 could not leave for a long while.
He simply stood there, staring blankly at Number 92.
They had been companions.
They had risen to the Iron Dragon Corps together.
Before that, they had grown up rolling around together in the Non-Dragon Corps.
“What are you doing? You put him down, so get lost.”
The Silver Dragon Corps member spoke irritably.
“Come on. We should let Nine-Two go now.”
Number 48 lightly tapped Number 32’s shoulder.
Let him go?
Where?
Into that pile of corpses?
Thump, thump.
Another corpse was laid over Number 92.
Then another.
And another.
Before long, Number 92 could no longer be seen at all.
“Come on. We’ll lose the formation.”
“Bastard…. Give me a sword.”
Turning away from Number 92, Number 32 snatched one of the swords Number 48 was carrying.
“You okay?”
“Well… if we keep doing this, I guess all of us will die eventually. He spent all that time reading books…. An internal affairs officer, huh? Not like just anyone can become one. Can’t do it once you’re dead anyway…. At least he died with his penis still attached, so I guess he had no regrets.”
Number 32 strode ahead.
The three silently joined the end of the formation.
During the climb, none of them spoke another word.
***
The broad training ground before the magnificent, lavishly decorated Great Dragon Hall.
Torches crackled on every side, driving back the darkness.
‘We can finally rest.’
The battered corps members entered the training ground.
They said even rolling in a field of dog shit was better as long as you remained in the living world….
Compared with a battlefield where people truly fought to the death, even the Ascending Dragon Sect was far better.
“Everyone, form ranks.”
Jang Woo-geun suddenly shouted.
What?
The disciples dragged their legs toward the center of the training ground and formed ranks.
The Ascending Dragon Sect bestowed the epithet Ascending Dragon upon its strongest man.
That man became the Sect Leader.
The man standing in the center of the training ground.
The master of this place.
He was the Sect Leader of the Ascending Dragon Sect.
Ascending Dragon Lee Woo-yang.
He had a thick-boned, muscular build, with a layer of plump flesh over it that gave him a strange sense of intimidation.
His eyes were narrow and long, oddly ill-suited to his massive frame.
Until now, he had done little more than wander around atop the platform.
Tonight, he had personally descended onto the training ground.
Lee Woo-yang slowly swept his gaze across the corps members forming ranks.
The torchlight flickering in the wind passed over his face.
Was it an illusion?
His expression was badly twisted.
With rage.
Then he spoke.
Quietly.
“Everyone, return to the exact formation you stood in during the battle.”
“……?”
The corps members did not understand.
Why was he suddenly ordering them to recreate their formation?
Unable to understand the reason, they hesitated and looked toward Jang Woo-geun.
Jang Woo-geun swallowed once, then approached Lee Woo-yang.