Episode 8: I Mistook the Genre and Ended up Becoming a War Hero

Episode 8: Northern Front (7)

“Hold the line! If the formation breaks, it’s all over!”

With the commander-in-chief’s shout, the subjugation began.

The demonic demonic beasts were incomparably fiercer and larger than those we’d faced on the front lines.

Their skin was as hard as metal, and a single roar forced soldiers to clutch their ears.

Thousands of demonic demonic beasts clashed with the soldiers.

Monstrous creatures, barely resembling animals, tangled with humans, spraying blood and flesh in all directions.

Spearmen held the line, charging forward, while knights aggressively cut down demonic demonic beasts with coordinated strikes.

Swords and spears, Aura and demonic energy, collided. Blood and screams froze on the ice.

“Right flank! Another demonic demonic beast! Sending support!”

Ersch, deputy commander of the Belfurn’s ducal knights, led the charge, tearing into a demonic beast.

The leading candidate for the next Aura user, his radiant Aura sliced through the charging demonic beast like tofu.

Maintaining the formation, they aggressively targeted demonic beasts breaking through the spearmen.

“Animal-type demonic beast! Karl, Milia, Ritz, stick to the left! Hold the line as—”

Ersch, commanding the knights, suddenly sprayed blood from his neck.

A projectile-like force tore through the battlefield, ripping apart dozens of spearmen, scattering their entrails.

Amid the blood-soaked soldiers, a figure emerged.

Crimson eyes, vivid even in the snow. A grotesque, elongated black form, as if it had once been human.

A great demonic beast, with thick blades embedded in its forearms, held Ersch’s head in its grip.

“Damn it, Ersch!!”

“Deputy Commander…!!”

Ersch’s headless body collapsed. A comrade, witnessing his death, roared and charged, only to have his head roll across the ground after a single exchange. A one-sided slaughter began. The formation crumbled In an Instant.

“Don’t break! We can still hold! Don’t retreat—?!”

The field commander’s shout was cut short in the blizzard.

A long spear pierced through an officer’s chest as he screamed, blood gushing like a fountain.

Fear turned to madness, shouts to death cries, echoing across the snowfield.

As more great demonic beasts began massacring soldiers and the formation collapsed, a red slash cut through the air, slicing a demonic beast’s flank.

A cold, handsome man with half his face tattooed stepped through the crumbling line.

Franz Eldin gazed at Ersch’s severed head.

“Ersch, I owed you one in the south.”

He tossed the great demonic beast’s head to the ground.

“I’ll repay that debt.”

Franz charged like a glide, clashing with the great demonic beast. His red hair fluttered, black tattoos gleamed, and sparks erupted in the air.

His greatsword crossed the demonic beast’s bladed arms dozens of times.

Using the recoil of metal on metal as part of his swordplay, he overwhelmed the great demonic beast.

His flame-wreathed greatsword cut through the blizzard, severing the great demonic beast’s arm.

“Don’t let them escape! Killing them is our only way to survive!”

Irena’s frost spear tore through demonic beasts like a whirlwind, followed by Platinum Ironblood Medal holders decapitating others.

The empire’s hidden masters began confronting the great demonic beasts.

I sprinted through the battlefield, buried in screams, issuing orders to the strike team.

“Leven, Helz, and three others, support the Belfurn knights.”

“Tove, Pianel, Severn, Rie, follow me.”

To win this subjugation, we couldn’t just buy time.

The key to this gamble was not just killing visible demonic beasts but taking down great demonic beasts as quickly as possible.

That way, we could preserve enough forces to face Erebeon.

Leading four squad members, I charged toward a great demonic beast slaughtering soldiers.

Raising both Aura and Wave, I swung my sword.

A line of Wave burst like lightning, piercing the blizzard.

***

How long had the battle raged?

Each breath filled my lungs with the stench of blood.

My body was at its limit. Blood from unknown wounds had frozen, necrotizing the flesh. I swung my sword until my sense of time eroded.

I pulled my black blade from a great demonic beast’s corpse.

Despite all my training, facing over six great demonic beasts in a day was beyond reason.

Only two remained by my side. Tove and Severn, who fought beside me to the end, were buried in the snow far off.

Rie, breathing heavily, struggled to rise. Her body was battered—half her left hand was gone, and she’d wrapped cloth around her remaining hand and sword to keep fighting. But even that was nearing its end.

Franz severed the final great demonic beast’s head—the one with the broken imperial flag on its shoulder.

With all great demonic beasts defeated, Erebeon, silent throughout, began to stir.

As if it had just remembered something, the massive entity slowly knelt.

The nearly three-meter-tall armored giant twisted its joints, standing. Its black armor creaked, and the greatsword on its back cast a shadow over the snow.

The four-meter giant shouldered a blade larger than itself.

Its red eyes slowly lifted, gazing at the survivors.

Franz Eldin swung his greatsword horizontally.

His left arm broken, his thigh pierced, his face pale from blood loss, he squeezed out his last Aura.

His complexion grew paler as immense heat erupted around him.

“…We end it here.”

Irena and others followed. The remaining forces gathered one by one.

No shouts, no cheers, no emotions.

With even the rage to push their broken bodies gone, only duty remained—the resolve to end it here.

As the blizzard stilled, Erebeon moved.

Its heavy steps shook the frozen ground, its sword slowly falling from its shoulder.

A single swing scattered snowflakes and warped the air pressure.

Sword Saint Franz charged first, gliding through the snow.

A red afterimage trailed his blade, carving the snow as swords clashed.

Clang!

The sound of metal exploding.

A shockwave swept through the snowfield a beat later.

The survivors frantically thrust their weapons at Erebeon from close range.

Its pitch-black demonic energy erupted like a volcano, engulfing everything around it.

The storm of demonic energy became a frigid blade, slashing indiscriminately.

It carved through flesh and shattered bones with unearthly speed.

Erebeon’s greatsword danced freely, deflecting incoming attacks and crushing weapons.

Edelgard Selnia, head of the Administration Bureau, was bisected as her crossed short swords snapped.

Calbrad, leader of the mercenary alliance, had his upper body obliterated along with his broken halberd.

Franz’s sword broke in two, and Erebeon’s greatsword plunged deep into his collarbone.

With a sickening crunch, his armor and flesh were mangled as he was flung back, buried under a pile of rocks at the base of a cliff.

Despite three key fighters falling in an instant, the survivors pressed on.

Irena stomped the ground, launching her frost spear.

Ice formed around her steps, and an Aura blade shaped like an awl materialized at the spear’s tip—a knight’s lance charge, refined to its utmost limit.

From behind Erebeon, Pianel and Rie unleashed their Waves.

Blue Waves flickered like lightning through the crimson Aura enveloping them.

At the Deep Tremor stage, they materialized their Waves into their weapons, capable of killing high-tier demonic beasts in one strike.

As their attack descended on Erebeon’s armor, Erebeon began to use true swordsmanship for the first time.

Twisting its greatsword, Erebeon minimized the lance charge’s impact.

It stepped back with one foot, pivoting the other to shift the flow of the assault.

Turning its greatsword toward its back, it applied erratic rotations with wrist and fingers.

The demonic energy-wreathed blade clashed head-on with Pianel and Rie’s Wave Techniques. After a tense standoff, Pianel’s Wave collapsed first.

Upper arm, ribs, spleen, femur, patella, pelvis—her body, pierced by the greatsword, crumpled like clay, disintegrating in an instant.

Pianel died without a scream. Rie’s left arm, impaled by the greatsword, was torn vertically, and Irena was kicked back, her body flung away.

Irena struggled to rise, trembling, but collapsed again. The earlier blow had shattered every bone in her body.

“I…an…”

Before she could finish, I charged at Erebeon.

The black sword in my hand pulsed, dripping with blood.

While others bought time, I’d been feeding blood to Radiata’s reinforced armament. With Franz and Irena out of the fight, this was my only shot.

“Here I go.”

The moment my toes scraped the snow, I closed the distance to Erebeon.

Twisting my stance, I shifted my lower body and slid my upper body horizontally, unleashing a flurry of strikes: a spin, a thrust, an upward slash.

The triple strike, each on a different axis, amplified the shockwaves through chain reactions.

Erebeon countered, raising its demonic energy.

Its greatsword traced a graceful yet irregular curve, deflecting the triple strike.

With a twist of ankle and hip, a subtle shift between scapula and ribs, its fluid swordplay snapped upward like a whip.

The sudden strike tore through my armor and flesh, an irrational blow laced with vast demonic energy that meant instant death on contact.

Instinctively, I shifted my weight to my left foot.

Raw intuition, honed through countless near-death experiences, forced my body to adjust.

Tilting my upper body slightly right, I angled my blade.

I unleashed two Waves, cycling them through my sword, reducing the lethal strike to one I could just barely parry.

The incomplete deflection twisted both my arms backward.

My muscles strained to the point of rupture, my ligaments shredded, yet I held on.

The clash of swords lasted 0.3 seconds. Erebeon never locked its wrist or elbow.

As our blades met, it redirected my force into a counterattack.

Its sword became not a wall but a mirror, reflecting my trajectory and crushing it with the recoil.

I mirrored it back.

I became a mirror, reflecting its trajectory and countering with the recoil.

I was being pushed back. Aura was inferior to demonic energy.

Human flesh couldn’t compare to demonic beast flesh.

Even enhancing regeneration and Aura with the Reinforced armament’s bloodlust changed nothing.

So, I focused on the Wave—the truest embodiment of human strength, unbound by anything else. I staked everything on it.

With every desperate moment of survival, the Wave grew clearer.

Red and blue Waves flashed like lightning through the surging demonic energy and radiating Aura.

Dozens of blinding bursts later, the Wave became invisible, and the vibrations within me faded.

A sudden realization struck.

Vibration meant I was still aware of the external.

True resonance came only in the silence of absolute stillness, where no vibration remained. I fully attuned myself to the external flow.

In that moment, I became the Wave itself. Beyond, I saw vividly the countless colored Waves, once impossible to grasp, now within reach. Where I once struggled to follow their flow, now I could intervene.

Extreme colors converged into a single point. Dozens of hues twisted into a spiral, unraveling and blending together.

I thrust my sword.

No complex principles, no finesse, no technique—just the simple act of a child stabbing with a stick.

The black sword, wreathed in spiraling Waves, shattered Erebeon’s greatsword and pierced its armor.

The demonic beast’s upper body was lost as it collapsed backward, lifeless.

The heavens parted.

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