Chapter 168: The Bloody Stairs
Nothing could be seen.
Dust and dirt rose like a storm, swallowing the world whole. Soldiers covered their mouths and noses with the backs of their hands. Their throats were parched and raw, leaving them unable to draw breath. The echo of shattering rock still rang in their ears. The vibration seed to have sunk deep into their bones, setting their hands and feet trembling.
For a ti, the gorge below was choked with heat—heat rising from the soil, the ash, the crumbled stone. Even after the dust had finally settled, the shock of the collapsed cliff face refused to fade.
The wolves could no longer cry out with battle fury. Small sounds—tangled wails and screams—drifted through the heaps of stone. The bodies of crushed riders and wolves lay twisted together, while those that had survived stared around them with vacant eyes.
The stronger the creature, the more acutely it felt the terror of annihilation. They backed away, staring at the collapsed cliff and the rubble that blocked the path.
At the center of the gorge, the Corrupted's main force had been split as cleanly as a severed spine—cleaved into two. Those in the vanguard were either buried or in no condition to fight, while those who had followed behind stood frozen at the entrance, able only to pour out their confused, disoriented howls.
Not one of them found the courage to charge again.
Then, cutting through the cloud of dust, ca the soft, steady rhythm of hoofbeats. Calix sat astride his warhorse Lunos, gazing beyond the rubble.
He drew a calm, asured breath, his coldly gleaming eyes scanning the enemy's broken formation.
'The objective has been achieved.'
He had bought ti fighting the enemy's vanguard, and the refugees had been rescued. The wounded on his side were already being moved to the rear—all that remained was to crush the enemy with minimum losses.
"Now we are the hunters. Bury their footsteps."
At the brief command, the Mountain Rabbits' shoulders straightened. The rcenaries drew their throwing spears, while the coalition knights dismounted and readied themselves for close-quarters combat in the narrow ravine.
Speed, strength, the advantage of magical power—none of it ant anything here, in this cramped gorge.
"Volley! Throw—!!"
Shwiiish—!!
Hundreds of spear points cleaved the air, and at once ca the sound of stone and flesh splitting apart. The wolves trapped within the gorge curled in on themselves, groaning.
Blood sprayed across the rocks, and dust rose low once more.
* * *
The rubble shifted, and from between the cracked gaps ca the sound of ragged, heaving breath. The largest of the wolves—the very biggest among them—clawed its way out, stepping on broken stone fragnts. Clinging to its back was a massive, blood-soaked figure.
It was Growl.
His eyes held no fear—only the particular madness of a beast that had survived.
"Krwa-rararack!!"
A roar tore from his cracked, gaping mouth. Growl snatched up a Rite-Stone axe that had fallen to the ground and launched himself directly at Calix. Dark energy rippled along the axe blade.
The Corrupted nearby fell in behind him on pure instinct.
In the mont they charged, their gazes crossed. One pair of eyes was cold and lucid, holding reason; the other was the raw frenzy of a beast cornered against the wall.
"Miserable humans—resisting beyond your station!"
With the commander's fierce charge, the wavering battlefield briefly found its balance again. re throwing spears could not stop his advance. Darkness swirled at the tip of his axe, shattering shields and crumbling the coalition's formation.
In the end, once more, it was Calix who stepped forward. He raised his sword high and t the beast's roar and the crashing wave of darkness head-on.
When blade t axe, a shriek of tal tore through the gorge. The shockwave of that single collision sent dirt and dust exploding outward—but Calix's body did not waver so much as an inch.
If anything, it was Growl who was pushed back.
"Krgh……."
Growl bared his fangs, snarling. He swung his weapon again with his full might. The darkness wrapping the axe blade surged as if on the verge of detonating.
Yet the mont that overwhelming force struck his opponent's blade, it scattered—as hollow and helpless as ink dropped into water.
Calix took it all in with calm, asured eyes. Lunos's breath brushed the tip of his nose, and the tension in his shoulders and arms wound tighter and tighter. He stepped forward a single pace within a space no wider than ten or so strides.
Again and again, Growl's savage axe strikes ca pouring in. Violet arcs traced the air, cutting across his field of vision.
Calix's sword flashed in short, precise bursts. Each impact sent sparks flying, and the darkness splintered and scattered. Each ti, he traced the most economical arc available to him, cutting off every possible trajectory.
tal rang out with every passing instant. Shards of darkness ricocheted from the point of impact and dissolved on the wind. It was as though the darkness could not sustain the domain it had been given.
'……A familiar feeling.'
Calix's chest tightened for a fleeting mont. The Apex of Annihilation—the power beyond the Wall of the Master's Realm—drew in even the darkness itself. Each ti the tip of his blade skimd past, the air bent in a strange, subtle way, and fragnts of darkness leapt upward, drawn into the core within him.
The flow of the world rotated around him.
'A little deeper…… If I take just one more step forward, I might see what lies beyond.'
Calix's gaze wavered for an instant—driven by the hunger to ascend to a higher plane. But it was only the inner darkness that responded to a fleeting impulse like that.
‘Chaos is contained within stillness.’
He steadied himself at once and drove the enemy back with unrelenting force. There was no need to fall back anymore, no one left that he needed to protect.
"Kck……!"
Growl let out a groan and sank onto one knee. Already the wolf's body had gone cold, and he was standing on the bare earth. Deep gashes across his shoulder and thigh bled freely. Had he not devoured his own subordinates, the fight would have ended long before now.
"So this is the power of chaos. Having faced it firsthand—truly grotesque."
He tried to force so defiance into his bearing, but even he could feel the shadow of annihilation falling over his head.
The real problem lay elsewhere.
Growl knew that the dark energy he had unleashed was lting away before it could even touch his opponent's body. At first he had assud it was being suppressed by the enemy's own power—then he had supposed it was so particular ability unique to this human swordsman.
Neither was true.
The fragnts of darkness, as though swept up in an invisible vortex, were flowing into Calix's body.
Growl's eyes shook violently.
'Impossible. That's…….'
A Master repels the power of others. One builds a domain, pushes and pulls—but does not absorb an opponent's power.
"……Kohtan! Why does a wretch like you possess that power!"
Beneath the savagery, sothing subtle and afraid had seeped in. The hand gripping the axe trembled, and the snout that had been spitting out howls clenched shut.
Crash!
Calix pressed the attack without a word. With a thunderous impact, hot blood sprayed upward, spattering the horse's forelegs. The tallic scent of iron mingled into the wind, and Growl let out a ragged scream.
Every thrust, every slash was lethal. Flesh was pierced through. An arm was left in tatters.
Growl t his opponent's gaze. In those calm, expressionless eyes that showed nothing—the beast's instinct sounded a fierce, hamring alarm.
If he kept fighting like this—
'I'll be devoured!'
A savage howl burst forth—but it was no longer a threatening roar. It was a scream born of primal fear.
* * *
Without anyone noticing, a wide, circular space had ford around them.
The Corrupted had been pushed back by the coalition's shields and stood trapped in the narrow space, doing nothing but rolling their eyes. The outco of this duel would decide everything. Without distinction of friend or foe, every last person held their breath and watched.
Growl drew breath in ragged heaves. Blood and dust mixed together, and with every inhale his lungs felt as though they were burning away.
What was catching in his ears was not the battle cry of combat, nor the will to challenge the strong. There was only one thing—the single warning tone of survival.
'I have to report it. That he is not rely wielding chaos.'
A beast's instinct crushed a commander's arrogance.
His eyes snapped open wide as he looked behind him. The wolves were frozen in place, paralyzed with fear, but the Corrupted were waiting for their commander's order.
Slash!!
In that instant, Growl wrenched his body free of the battlefield. One of his forearms was sheared entirely off by Calix's blade—but he swallowed the agonized scream that rose up and moved his two legs forward.
"Out of the way!"
At his rough gesture, his subordinates tumbled over one another, falling underfoot—he paid it no mind. With a single-minded will to survive, he shoved his way toward the center of the gorge.
Naturally, ahead of him stood the collapsed cliff face and the wall of rubble blocking the path. So he decided to make sothing he could climb over.
Growl slamd a Corrupted's head into a rock, caving it in. He bit through a wolf's scruff and used it as a foothold. Even that was not enough.
"Go! Make a path!!"
The order was absolute.
The Corrupted threw down their weapons and surged toward the rubble. Blood flew as they scraped against jagged rock edges. Even when bones cracked under the weight of those piling on from behind, they did not stop. In exchange, a gentle slope gradually took shape before Growl's eyes.
It was a staircase made of blood and flesh.
"What in the……."
The knights stared open-mouthed at the sight, but the Mountain Rabbits erupted in furious shouts. Volga was the first to seize his weapon and charge forward.
"He's running! We have to catch him right now—"
But at that mont, Calix raised a hand to stop him.
"Don't pursue."
"What? But……."
His gaze moved not to Growl, scrambling away in desperate flight, but to the river of blood flowing beneath him. Dark crimson water dyed the gorge floor deep red.
"We've already gotten what we ca for. Wasn't the point to reduce their numbers?"
More than anything else, the Corrupted left behind still had to be dealt with.
In fact, the battle in the gorge did not end for so ti after Growl fled.
Calix led the Silver Shield Legion to suppress the enemy. From atop the cliffs, throwing spears flew without pause, and screams and brief death cries echoed back and forth.
The Corrupted had lost their commander and had no idea where to flee. They resisted—nothing more than the desperate thrashings of cornered animals.
The suffocating battle continued for hours on end, and only when the sun began to sink toward the horizon did the wolves' howling finally fall silent altogether.
In the mont the battlefield grew quiet, the place resembled nothing so much as a vast, open grave.
Dark crimson streams—a mixture of blood and dust—ran along the ground. Thousands of Rite-Stone weapons were strewn across the earth, and between them, the wounded were carried out on stretchers.
At the end of it all, the Mountain Rabbits broke into exhausted, hoarse cheers.
"Uwaaaaaaah!!"
Soldiers slumped back against broken boulders, sharing water with one another and catching their breath. They had cut the enemy's force in half—yet even so, it had taken a long, grueling stretch of ti to finish them off.
Calix looked down upon the scene from atop the cliff. His eyes were still, but within them lay the weight of the battlefield.
The vanguard that Growl had led was more than half annihilated. His own side's losses had been kept to a minimum. By that asure alone, the objective had been accomplished.
Yet his gaze drifted past the collapsed cliff face, trailing after Growl, who had fled far into the distance.
Just then, Royce, who stood nearby, added a word.
"There were more of them than we expected."
Just as he said—Calix had co to understand how Verhas's legion fought. It was superficially similar to Kohtan's way, yet entirely different.
A war of attrition that drove living things in by force. The fact that he had fled was not cowardice—it was one more piece of evidence revealing their thod.
In that mont, he felt soone's gaze from below. At the entrance to the cliff, soldiers and refugees alike were looking up at him.
Calix held that gaze for a mont before lifting his head forward again. Adrian and Basim, the Mage Yelayen, and the Order—all of them were waiting for his answer.
"This is not over."
"Then? What cos next?"
He looked out over the plain beyond the gorge. It was land under the dominion of wicked things—there were limits to how much they could replenish their allied forces.
And so.
"We'll have to cut it away."
His low, unwavering voice rang through the dry air. Clouds were visible even in the late evening. The shadow retreated, and humans filled the empty space left behind.
The spirit of victory—and the tension that had still not yet dispersed—stretched long and thin across the gorge above.
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