The gnolls’ momentum had clearly broken.
Even as they surged forward in a mass, the ones at the very front kept looking around, desperately trying to find some way to retreat.
But the gnolls in the rear, equally unwilling to stand at the front, kept shoving those ahead of them forward. In the end, the foremost gnolls had no choice but to be pushed all the way to the palisade.
At any rate, they could not simply stand there and die, so the gnolls forced to the front eventually began attacking.
“Thrust!”
“Yes!”
THUD THUD THUD!
At Catherine’s shout, the Imperial soldiers stationed along the western palisade, where the gnolls had attacked first, drove their spears downward.
More than ten gnolls were killed or incapacitated and collapsed from that single attack.
The palisade stood just under three meters tall.
From atop it, a spear more than two meters long was easily enough to keep the gnolls at bay.
But it could not stop gnolls from flattening themselves close to the ground and approaching on all fours.
Gnolls gripping axes between their teeth darted forward low to the ground, then immediately began hacking at the palisade.
CRACK! CRACK!
They were stronger than humans, and because they had copied the axes of woodcutters, their axe heads were quite large.
Their crude metallurgy meant the weapons were neither particularly sharp nor durable, but when swung with brute strength, they still tore brutally into the palisade’s logs.
“You men, aim for the ones chopping at the palisade!”
Karl shouted loudly as he slapped several soldiers on the back.
Then he raised his voice again.
“Thrust!”
“Yes!”
THUD THUD THUD!
To strike the gnolls crouched low and hacking at the palisade, the soldiers had to lean their bodies beyond the wall and fully extend their arms.
Naturally, that left them dangerously exposed.
Even so, the Imperial soldiers carried out the reckless order splendidly.
While the soldiers Karl had designated killed the gnolls chopping at the palisade, the others thrust their spears forward with all their strength to protect them, completely denying the gnolls any space from which to attack.
Gnolls were struck in the head and back while swinging their axes and collapsed, while the rest began hesitating and backing away before the solid defense.
Karl almost felt embarrassed that he had told Catherine he intended to fight personally.
These were Imperial soldiers who had fought extraordinarily well even when forced to form a defensive formation with carriages.
Now that they had a palisade as well, there was almost nothing pathetic creatures like gnolls could do against them.
“Raise your shields!”
CLACK! THUNK! THUNK!
At that moment, Catherine shouted loudly.
The Imperial soldiers reacted instantly and raised their shields, easily blocking the axes thrown by the gnolls.
The axes had terrible balance, so they flew just as badly. Not a single one struck a shield properly with its blade. Most hit the outside of the palisade and fell, sometimes striking other gnolls, while those that reached the shields merely hit them with their hafts or other harmless parts.
However, things became slightly troublesome when the gnolls realized the soldiers could not thrust their spears while holding their shields up and began throwing axes one after another.
“Lord Karl, keep your head down and wait.”
Protected by Catherine, Karl waited for the absurd barrage to pass.
He could hear the gnolls excitedly battering away beneath the palisade.
But after a short while, the course of the battle reversed completely.
The gnolls who had thrown away their axes were now empty-handed and had nothing they could do.
“Kill the gnolls!”
Once the axes stopped flying, Catherine gave the order.
While the unarmed gnolls merely stood and watched blankly, the soldiers mercilessly stabbed to death those still hacking at the palisade below.
Even if the gnolls jumped as high as they could, the palisade was too tall for them to attack with their bare hands.
The soldiers were therefore able to kill them almost at leisure.
One should not expect tactical judgment from monsters, but it was still an astonishingly foolish attack.
Yet even that outcome was possible only because the Imperial soldiers were so formidable.
If conscripts tried to imitate them, it would be complete chaos. Some would lose their balance and tumble over the palisade under the force of their own thrusts, others would drop their spears, while still others would make clumsy attacks, get seized by gnolls, and be dragged over the wall.
With the western palisade, where the fiercest fighting should have occurred, completely blocked by the Imperial soldiers, the gnolls gradually began moving elsewhere to attack.
But they were neither intelligent enough to make tactical decisions nor led by any commander.
Each moved according to its own judgment.
Only a handful of gnolls actually circled around to attack elsewhere, and naturally, they were simply stabbed to death like dogs.
The Imperial soldiers stacked gnoll corpses as effortlessly as farmers harvesting grain, and in less than ten minutes, dozens of gnoll bodies lay sprawled before the palisade, bleeding into the earth.
However, as the corpses piled up, a new problem emerged.
The bodies had accumulated high enough that, with a good leap from atop them, the gnolls could grab the palisade and climb.
The creatures began prowling around the wall, looking for a place to try.
“Move aside.”
Catherine squeezed between the Imperial soldiers, looked down beyond the palisade, and positioned herself where the corpses had piled up highest.
With an Imperial Knight capable of wielding Mana holding that point, there was no chance it would be breached.
But to the gnolls, Catherine was smaller than the Imperial soldiers and looked like a much easier target.
BARK! BARK!
The gnolls watched her cautiously as they barked.
Then several of them shoved the one standing foremost with all their strength, hurling it toward the palisade.
CRACK!
Catherine casually thrust her spear and smashed the creature’s skull with perfect accuracy.
She killed it before it even touched the palisade, preventing the staircase of corpses from growing any higher.
But if the bodies continued piling up like this, it would become troublesome.
Not here, where the Imperial soldiers stood guard, but in the sections defended by conscripts.
‘We will have to change our tactics next time.’
Catherine organized her thoughts as she watched.
All the while, she mechanically struck down the gnolls that continued rushing toward her.
In the end, blocked by the enormous wall that was Catherine and the Imperial soldiers, the gnolls accomplished nothing but adding to their dead before finally giving up and beginning to slink away.
“Do not let them take the bodies!”
Karl saw gnolls creeping forward even then, trying to recover the corpses by grabbing their limbs and dragging them away.
A chill ran through him, and he ordered the soldiers to stop them.
Catherine and the Imperial soldiers leaned almost their entire bodies over the palisade and thrust their spears outward, killing every gnoll that came close.
Even afterward, the remaining gnolls could not easily tear themselves away from the sight of the corpses.
‘What in the world is happening inside that forest?!’
Goosebumps spread across Karl’s skin at the gnolls’ inexplicable behavior.
Surely they were not trying to hold funerals.
“No one died!”
“A great victory!”
“WAAAAAAAH!”
Having massacred the gnolls one-sidedly without suffering any losses, Axe Sound Village erupted into celebration.
“Long live Lord Karl!”
“Düren is protecting us!”
The soldiers believed Karl was under Düren’s protection.
Some became so wildly excited that they started jumping up and down atop the palisade, nearly falling off and injuring themselves, forcing Corbin to run around drenched in sweat as he tried to control them.
“We need to examine the gnoll corpses.”
Yet amid the celebration, Karl was descending from the palisade under the protection of Catherine and the Imperial soldiers, his face deathly pale.
He had collapsed immediately after last night’s battle and had therefore failed to notice what had happened afterward.
Now that he had personally witnessed the gnolls’ obsession with their corpses, his hands trembled with unease.
They opened the gate in the eastern palisade and went outside.
Beneath the section guarded by the conscripts, nothing remained except bloodstains and tracks where corpses had been dragged away.
Every single corpse had been collected from every section except the one defended by Catherine and the Imperial soldiers.
Under airtight protection, Karl reached the western palisade and gritted his teeth as he looked at the pile of gnoll corpses.
Every body beyond the reach of their spears had been taken.
“……Sir Corbin!”
At Karl’s shout, Corbin soon came running and leaned his head over the palisade.
“Yes! Lord Karl!”
Corbin also seemed highly elated by the overwhelming victory they had achieved without casualties.
His flushed face and unusually high voice felt almost unfamiliar.
“Have the soldiers move the gnolls inside the palisade immediately!”
After giving Corbin that order, Karl had the Imperial soldiers guard the corpses.
Everyone began moving frantically at the sight of Karl’s pale face and the thunderous force of his command.
The joy of victory lasted only a moment.
Seeing an Imperial Prince display such unusual caution quickly filled them with fear.
“Lord Karl, do you know something about this?”
Catherine asked carefully.
Karl hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.
“I will explain later.”
The gnoll corpses were quickly moved inside the palisade.
Then Karl ordered hunters to dissect them.
“Examine them thoroughly. Do not overlook even the smallest detail.”
No one understood what was happening.
Still, because the hunters regarded Karl as a divine messenger, they began dissecting the gnolls while sweating profusely under the pressure.
The corpses pierced by spears were mangled beyond recognition.
Blood had spilled everywhere in thick pools, and ruptured entrails lay scattered about, making the scene resemble hell itself.
Karl fought back nausea as he carefully inspected the red, glistening corpses and organs beneath the torchlight.
“Do you notice anything unusual?”
“They appear to be ordinary gnolls.”
“They look the same to me.”
Neither Catherine, who had studied Monsterology as an Imperial Knight, nor Corbin, who had personally fought and killed monsters, found anything particularly unusual.
But the hunters, who had butchered countless animal carcasses in their lives, discovered something strange.
“Lord Karl. These creatures’ guts are completely empty.”
One hunter spoke cautiously while cutting open a gnoll’s abdomen and pulling out its entrails.
“Their guts are empty?”
Karl approached to look, and the hunter, who believed Karl to be a divine messenger, quickly spread the organs out for him.
“Look here.”
The hunter sliced open the stomach and intestines with his dagger.
A strange fishy odor surged forth along with the smell of blood.
Hot steam rose from the organs into the cold autumn night air, forcing Karl to suppress another wave of nausea.
“They are completely empty. I mean that literally. There is nothing inside them at all.”
“…Could they simply have been starving for a long time?”
Karl swallowed the sourness rising in his throat as he asked.
The hunter shook his head.
“Even then, they would never be this clean. Gnolls especially eat just about anything, so their intestines are usually filthy. Creatures like these can go a week without food and still have traces of feces left inside.”
The language was far too crude to use before an Imperial Prince.
However, the experience of a hunter who had killed and butchered more living creatures than he could count was, at this moment, more valuable than even that of Catherine, an Imperial Knight.
“Judging by their condition, they definitely have not been starving for long. Their flesh is firm, and their fur is glossy.”
“……”
Karl’s vivid green eyes wandered for a moment at the hunter’s words.
He looked across the scattered corpses, glanced up toward the sky, then lowered his gaze once more to the hunter waiting eagerly for praise.
“……You did well.”
“Oh, it was nothing.”
The hunter brightened at Karl’s few words of praise and waved his blood-soaked hands dismissively.
Karl stared at the gnoll’s empty entrails with a deathly pale face before slowly turning toward Catherine and Corbin.
“For now, let us deal with the aftermath of the battle.”
***
The aftermath did not take long to handle.
The battle itself had ended quickly, and there had been almost no losses.
Even the palisade required virtually no repairs.
However, disposing of the large pile of gnoll corpses presented a problem.
“Burn them. Leave no trace behind.”
At Karl’s firm command, they even used their precious oil to make certain the corpses were thoroughly incinerated.
Except for those assigned to night watch, the soldiers went to bed in good spirits, celebrating their victory with easy hearts.
But Karl, Catherine, Corbin, and even Milton remained unable to sleep until deep into the night.
“You are saying their digestive tracts were completely empty? Yet they were still that healthy?”
“That is correct.”
Catherine and Corbin understood that there was something deeply unsettling about the situation, but neither seemed as shocked as Milton.
As the Imperial Physician, Milton knew very well that such a thing should have been impossible.
“……There is a possibility that they are consuming something that leaves no trace within the digestive tract. Something liquid, yet capable of supplying sufficient energy for activity…… something extraordinary.”
Milton drew upon his medical knowledge as he considered the matter.
“They may be consuming something influenced by a transcendent force such as Mana. If so, this is no longer merely a matter concerning the Barony of Hilpin. It would be a grave matter that even the Empire could not ignore.”
If something that valuable existed, the surrounding area would have to be secured and every last trace of it collected.
Milton indirectly suggested that Karl call for greater Imperial support.
But Karl firmly shook his head.
“That is impossible. There will be no further support from the Imperial Family. Nor will there be support from any other territory or noble.”
“……”
The atmosphere grew heavy at Karl’s decisive words.
Corbin seemed bewildered, unable to understand the situation, but from Karl’s perspective, the decision was unavoidable.
If something so valuable existed here, then naturally Karl had to monopolize it in secret.
If he spread word of it everywhere, not only would that mysterious substance be taken from him, but the silver as well.
And there was one more reason.
‘I do not think this is going to be such a convenient story.’
The sight of the gnolls’ completely empty entrails filled Karl with unease and a faint trace of fear.
That fear came from Han Changin’s memories of having lived surrounded by countless stories—novels, films, comics, and more.
‘Something unknown is happening inside the forest.’
Gnolls whose numbers continued increasing as though they were inexhaustible.
Silver that no one had known existed.
Gnolls that had somehow acquired crude metallurgy in an extraordinarily short time.
Their irrational obsession with corpses.
And gnolls healthy enough to tear humans apart with their bare hands despite having perfectly empty digestive tracts.
Whatever secret connected all of those things, it was certainly not going to be some miraculous panacea.
Could this, too, truly have been something Madius intended?