Catherine felt that her Mana had fallen dangerously low, so she had begun fighting without using it at all.
Fortunately, the body she had never neglected to train showed no signs of exhaustion even as she unleashed fierce attacks without Mana.
‘Incredible.’
The moment Karl had screamed as the Gnoll pounced on him, Catherine had intended to use Mana to save him. She had even thought that things could not continue like this and prepared to take Karl and escape.
But Karl had killed the Gnoll with his own strength and freed himself.
As though that were not enough, he had immediately sprung back to his feet and was now swinging his sword without pause, killing Gnolls one after another.
His mental fortitude, judgment, fighting spirit, and survival instinct were unbelievable.
Cowering in terror would accomplish nothing, so he would risk the danger, fight back, and carve open a path to survival.
Catherine could feel that resolve clearly.
But there were still far too many Gnolls. The conscripts had been all but annihilated, and even the imperial soldiers were deeply exhausted.
Milton and Catherine had almost no Mana remaining, and Bilford had only barely recovered some of his stamina.
Karl's efforts alone could not turn the tide of the battle.
It seemed as though everything was over.
And yet Catherine did not expend all her remaining Mana to take Karl and escape.
It was not because of some foolish notion that she could not abandon the others, nor because she wanted to respect Karl's wishes.
It was a sober judgment she had reached as a knight after carefully assessing the battlefield.
“Hold on just a little longer!”
They had already been fighting for a long time.
Even so, there was no way to tell how much longer they would have to continue.
Under such circumstances, Catherine telling them to hold on “just a little longer” meant almost nothing. Anyone could tell it was encouragement in words alone.
“Hold on just a little longer, and reinforcements will arrive!”
Reinforcements.
Reinforcements, was it……
Karl gave a bitter smile inside his Helmet at Catherine's words.
No matter how well Harmon had done, it did not seem possible that reinforcements could already be arriving.
The subjugation force had advanced too quickly.
Even if reinforcements had departed immediately after Karl left, considering the number of soldiers remaining at the castle and the supplies they would have to bring, they would need at least another thirty minutes at the very fastest.
Looking at the situation now, thirty minutes seemed more than enough time for Karl to become a Gnoll's meal.
“Haa! Haa!”
Karl could no longer encourage the soldiers in the booming voice he had used at the beginning.
His throat was too hoarse for his voice to come out properly, and even regulating his breathing had become difficult. If he tried shouting like that again, he felt as though he might collapse.
“Hrrgh!”
Karl let out a feeble battle cry and slashed his sword diagonally upward from his lower right to his upper left.
CLACK!
YELP!
The haft of the Gnoll's axe was caught by Karl's sword, while his blade carved a long line across the monster's abdomen and chest.
Karl pushed his arms forward against the force of the charging Gnoll.
Thanks to the monster's own momentum and body weight, even Karl's weak strength was enough to drive the blade deep into its chest.
The Gnoll, pierced through the right side of its chest, gasped violently in pain. Blood burst from its nose and mouth.
Karl did not even flinch at the metallic smell of the blood splattered across his Visor.
The moment the Gnoll endured the pain and tried to swing its axe, Karl abruptly lowered his stance.
WHOOSH….
The axe passed uselessly over the top of his Helmet.
As Karl lowered his body, the hilt of his sword naturally dropped with him.
With the swordpoint lodged firmly inside the Gnoll while the hilt descended, the wound tore wider and the blade slipped free with ease.
Karl did not retreat.
He pulled his arm back to recover his sword, then naturally drove the blade, now held in a middle guard, straight forward.
Gurgle……
The sword cleanly pierced the throat of the Gnoll whose lungs were already filling with blood.
The wet sound of bloody foam leaking from the wound in its neck was unpleasant.
“Huff! Huff! Sssst…! Haa!”
Karl backed away and struggled to regulate his breathing.
His mind endlessly replayed the combinations Catherine and Bilford had taught him, telling him how he needed to move.
Karl had learned only the basic stances, and those combinations were merely movements derived from those fundamentals.
Yet, as though proving why fundamentals were called fundamentals in the first place, Karl was able to kill a Gnoll swinging an axe with surprising ease.
In fact, it might have been more dangerous if the Gnolls had charged him barehanded.
The basic swordsmanship Karl had learned was meant for fighting opponents who wielded weapons.
With the Gnolls swinging their axes so clumsily, they were actually easier for him to deal with.
SQUELCH!
Karl charged toward another Gnoll.
Wet, sticky sounds followed every step he took.
At some point, the blood that had thoroughly soaked the ground around them had stopped seeping into the soil and begun pooling on the surface.
The mud formed from blood and earth clung to his feet so heavily that even taking a step had become difficult.
It stuck and stretched around his boots, straining the muscles of his ankles and legs.
The miserable battlefield conditions exhausted Karl even further when he was already at his limit.
Nor was he alone. Everyone else was suffering as they fought on the unstable ground.
The same was true of the Gnolls.
As they tangled together, shoving and pulling at one another, blood-soaked mud clung thickly to their fur.
It was, quite literally, a fight in the mud.
There was no longer even a trace of the cause of protecting the Empire's subjects, nor of honor or authority.
If hell existed, then surely some horrific war raged there forever without end.
Not a single conscript remained.
Only a small shield wall of thirty imperial soldiers stood, swaying violently as their spears bristled like the spines of a hedgehog.
Nothing remained of their initial solidity.
The imperial soldiers had reached their limits as well.
Their shields were too heavy.
Even though they had braced them firmly against their sides, their spearpoints kept drooping like the heads of condemned prisoners kneeling beneath a guillotine.
“Milton! Haaah! Mana!”
Karl no longer even had enough strength to form a proper sentence.
At his broken shout, Milton answered with a flat voice, as though he had given up on everything.
“I have none left.”
After saying that, Milton picked up one of the crude spears dropped by a dead conscript and began attacking over the soldiers' shoulders.
Naturally, there was no reason an Imperial Physician would ever have learned martial arts, so his attacks did little more than inconvenience the charging Gnolls.
Still, it was better than nothing.
“Ghh!”
Bilford collapsed to his knees.
The inside of his Helmet, its Visor lowered, was already filthy with his own vomit and blood from his nose.
He had nothing left in his stomach to bring up, so all that came were dry heaves.
BARK! BARK!
The moment Bilford fell, the Gnolls' eyes went wild and they rushed him.
Such was the instinct of wild beasts—they never missed an opening.
GRAB! GRAB!
“Aaaaaagh!”
In an instant, Bilford was surrounded by Gnolls that seized his limbs and even his head.
He struggled to break free, but no strength remained in him even to raise his sword.
“Catherine!”
Even with his breathing completely ruined, Karl screamed Catherine's name.
But Catherine merely turned her head, looked once at Karl, then at Bilford's predicament, and coldly shook her head a single time before returning her attention to killing Gnolls and holding the line.
Bilford could no longer fight.
If Catherine allowed herself to be tied down protecting him, the entire formation would collapse.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The Gnolls mercilessly brought their axes down on the fallen Bilford.
But they could not easily penetrate the sturdy armor made for the Squire of an Imperial Knight.
After barking several times, the Gnolls began forcing their fingertips into the gaps in his armor.
It never even occurred to them to undo the fastenings and remove it.
“Aaaaaagh!”
Sharp claws dug through the gaps in the armor and tore into Bilford's body.
Excited by his screams, the Gnolls became even more frenzied, jamming their fingers deeper into the openings.
They were so worked up that they did not even notice their own hands being cut by the armor.
“Haaah! Haaah!”
Karl gasped as he listened to Bilford's agonized screams beyond the imperial soldiers and wavered.
Bilford was far too valuable a talent to lose here.
He could not allow a knight destined to become Aingir's most loyal hound after Aingir became Emperor to die to mere Gnolls.
But if Karl charged out there now and died, everything would end with him.
Why had Bilford even remained outside the wall formed by the imperial soldiers until he ended up in that state?!
The instant that thought crossed Karl's mind, he realized that the furious pressure the Gnolls had been placing on the formation had suddenly weakened.
An uncountable number of Gnolls had swarmed around the fallen Bilford.
Bilford had thrown himself out as bait, knowing he could no longer fight, in order to buy them even a little more time.
“Damn it!”
Karl bit down hard on his lip and cursed.
But there was nothing more he could do.
He could barely remain standing now, much less swing his sword.
The terrible helplessness threatened to crush him.
Was this the end?
Was he going to die here, having accomplished nothing?
WAAAAAAAAAH!
At that moment, a roar loud enough to shatter the heavens erupted from beyond the Gnolls.
Karl flinched as his surroundings suddenly brightened as though the sun had risen, and he frantically looked toward the sky through the narrow, obstructed view of his Visor.
Of course, there were still several hours before sunrise.
“Reinforcements from Axe Sound Village have arrived! Hold on just a little longer!”
Only after hearing Catherine's confident voice did Karl understand what was happening.
The subjugation force's formation might have been sturdy, but it could not compare to Axe Sound Village, which was holding behind a palisade.
Because of that, the majority of the Gnolls had swarmed toward the subjugation force.
In the meantime, the forces of Axe Sound Village had either killed or driven away all the Gnolls attacking the village.
Now they had opened the gates and charged out to rescue them!
“Catherine! Bilford!”
Karl shouted with his ruined voice.
But before he even finished speaking, Catherine had already used the last of her Mana and plunged into the mass of Gnolls surrounding Bilford.
“Victory is within reach! Hold on just a little longer!”
Karl's throat was so damaged that he could barely produce a proper voice.
But throughout the battle, which had gone on for so long that none of them could even tell how much time had passed, the imperial soldiers had heard Karl's voice without cease.
And they heard him clearly now.
“GRAAAAAH!”
They no longer had the strength to answer with the sharp, disciplined cries they had given at the beginning.
Instead, they roared with all the strength they had left, like wild beasts.
They squeezed out the last of their strength, raised their shields, and thrust their spears.
“We must rescue them!”
“WAAAAAAAAH!”
The forces pouring out of the village charged bravely toward the rear of the Gnolls encircling the subjugation force.
Five cavalrymen galloped fiercely at the front and hurled their spears with all their strength.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
The Gnolls struck by the thrown weapons collapsed helplessly.
The cavalrymen trampled over them, pulled the spears hanging from their saddles, tucked them firmly beneath their arms, and lowered themselves over their horses.
“CHAAARGE!”
“WAAAAAAAAH!”
Only five men.
And Light Cavalry at that, poorly suited to close combat.
Yet they launched a fearless lance charge into that enormous mass of Gnolls!
The Gnolls turned at the exploding battle cries and thunder of charging hooves, then recoiled in alarm.
The five Light Cavalry riders charged almost knee to knee, packed tightly together as they leveled their spears with unwavering resolve and rode as one.
Light Cavalry did not normally perform lance charges, so they could not perfectly match their speeds.
Their formation stretched unevenly forward and back, quickly losing its neat shape.
But with the charging infantry and their torches behind them, the cavalry appeared to the Gnolls as nothing more than a single enormous black silhouette.
To the monsters, it looked as though some gigantic creature with dozens of legs were charging them at full speed.
YELP! YELP!
Terrified Gnolls fled in panic.
The moment one ran, the Gnolls behind it, believing some enormous monster was attacking from the rear, began fleeing one after another.
THUD! THUD!
CRASH!
The cavalry ignored the fleeing Gnolls and smashed straight into the rear of the monsters that had yet to understand what was happening.
The spearheads struck first, driving into the Gnolls' backs.
But the Light Cavalry had little experience with lance charges, and their saddles lacked even the proper fittings to brace the weapons securely.
They could not drive through one Gnoll after another and kill several in succession.
What they could do, however, was let their thoroughly excited Warhorses slam bodily into the Gnolls' backs with tremendous force.
The Gnolls, thrown into chaos by the attack from behind, looked around frantically and saw five massive cavalrymen sitting upright in their saddles and thrusting their spears, with infantry carrying torches charging behind them.
“WAAAAAAAAH!”
The village forces, their morale soaring, roared loudly enough to shake the heavens and charged while wildly waving their torches.
The Gnolls lost their nerve and fled.
The humans were not the only ones exhausted.
The Gnolls were exhausted as well.
No—they were even more exhausted.
Gnolls possessed great strength and agility, but their stamina was not particularly impressive.
Because their bodies were covered in fur, they had to release heat through their palms, the soles of their feet, and their tongues to cool themselves.
On top of that, after rolling and struggling over ground that had turned into bloody mud, their fur was caked with filth, making it even harder for them to move.
“The Gnolls are fleeing! Victory is ours!”
“WAAAAAAAAH!”
Karl raised his Visor and shouted with all his strength.
The sounds that had been muffled beyond his Helmet suddenly crashed into him with overwhelming force.
It felt as though heaven and earth themselves were shaking.
Karl thought the sky illuminated by the torches seemed strangely bright.
Then his vision turned completely white.
Only then did he realize that it was not the torchlight.
He was about to lose consciousness.
He tried to brace himself against the ground with his sword, but the weapon had already slipped from his hand and fallen into the mud.
Within his whitewashed vision, the blurry world suddenly spun.
SPLASH!
Karl toppled sideways like a felled log, without even enough strength left to soften the impact.
And so, after surviving a battle that seemed like a scene from hell itself, he was unfortunately unable to savor the moment of victory.
Karl thought he heard countless voices calling his name one final time.
Then he felt many hands carefully reaching out to catch him.
Even as the imperial soldiers supported him with hands filled with reverence, Karl could not remain conscious.
Everything faded away.