The Indomitable Martial King

From the start, with a force of just over a hundred, the main camp only had about a dozen people.

Sillan looked worried as he watched the dwarves being pushed back.

“It looks bad, doesn’t it, Mr. Repen?”

“It’s fine. This was expected.”

Repenhardt raised one hand to signal. In response, about twenty elf warriors, who had been mingled among the dwarves, separated from the formation and stood side by side. They all raised their hands to the sky and began to shout.

“O friends of the blazing flame!”

Giant figures of fire appeared all at once. All twenty of them had summoned Ignatius, the fire spirit. The flaming giants heated the air as they charged towards the fortress. Naturally, the fortress troops responded with arrows, but…

“Hmph, ordinary arrows won’t work on Ignatius, the spirit of fire, which isn’t a physical being.”

Elf Relhard smiled coldly as he watched the spirits charge. Without powerful magic, divine power, or aura, they couldn’t be stopped!

The twenty fire giants simultaneously struck various parts of the fortress. Each strike resounded with explosions and rising flames. The defensive magic circle, with strong resistance to aura, magical power, and divine power, was completely defenseless against the spirit power. Ignatius shook the fortress’s defenses, rapidly draining the magic circle’s power.

Boom!

Finally, the last Ignatius sent by Relhard delivered a blow that shattered the defensive magic circle. The mages on the wall coughed up blood and collapsed.

“Ugh!”

“Gah!”

The faint light of the gate soon faded. Tetsvalt shouted in disbelief.

“What is that?”

He had occasionally seen mages summon spirits, but the elves’ method was completely different.

For a mage to summon a spirit, a complex summoning magic circle was required. An elaborate pattern of light should appear, recognizable even to a layman. However, these elves summoned spirits without any such circle.

A deputy muttered in bafflement.

“It’s like… something out of a children’s fairy tale about spirit summoners…”

Tetsvalt had read quite a few fairy tales in his childhood. He muttered incredulously.

“Huh? Do those elves think they’re some kind of fairy-tale beautiful spirit summoners?”

In fact, in the original versions of the fairy tales, those beautiful spirit summoners were indeed elves. However, since all the fairy tales and folklore had been revised from a human perspective, no one knew that elves could perform spirit summoning anymore.

“Well done, Relhard!”

Kadamyte, who had been parrying arrows, raised his axe spear and expressed his gratitude to Relhard. Now that the magic circle protecting the gate was gone, there was nothing to hinder them. He exhaled a long stream of reddish aura and charged forward.

“Hyah!”

With a vigorous shout, he summoned all his aura. Resonating with the earth, he amplified his energy even further. In that state, Kadamyte brought down his axe spear. The reddish aura extended and struck the gate of Sinai Fortress accurately.

Boom!

With a thunderous sound, sawdust and wooden fragments scattered everywhere. The thick gate was shattered with a single blow. The expressions of everyone in the fortress turned pale.

The gate was broken.

The fiends were coming inside the fortress.

They advanced like a nightmare, led by monsters wielding dazzling aura!

Even someone as thick-headed as Tetsvalt couldn’t just stand by and watch the situation unfold at this point.

“Fernando Knights! All units, charge!”

After shouting, he drew his sword. Grinding his teeth, he muttered.

“I’ll take care of those bastards myself.”

In fact, even with the gate broken, the dwarves were still few in number. Using the fortress structures for a siege would have been a rational choice. However, neither Tetsvalt nor anyone else even considered that.

The very fact that mere slaves had broken through the gate was an indelible disgrace.

Allowing their filthy footsteps inside the fortress? That itself was no different from defeat!

“Repel those monsters!”

Tetsvalt mounted his steed and gallantly charged towards the gate. The Fernando Knights followed, shouting.

“For the true king!”

“Let’s show those lowly creatures the true power of knights!”

As Tetsvalt deployed, two thousand troops charged out through the east and west gates of the fortress with a loud roar. All but a thousand soldiers guarding the fortress were deployed into the battlefield.

Although it seemed like a straightforward challenge, the dwarves’ attack was practically a psychological ambush. Even so, the troops marched in orderly ranks, forming a siege. This was evidence of their considerable elite status.

Despite the individual prowess of the dwarf-elf allied force, numbering just over a hundred, facing a force of two thousand was indeed a daunting task. Kadamyte shouted urgently.

“Malroid! Sloytle! Protect our comrades!”

“Got it!”

Malroid and Sloytle spread out, blocking three directions. The Fernando Knights, noticing the unguarded side where the aura users couldn’t defend, spurred their horses and charged in unison towards the dwarves. Holding their lances and increasing their speed, they rushed at the dwarves. The dwarven soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder, raising their shields to meet the knights’ charge. It was a human tactic.

“Do they think they can stop charging cavalry with just shields?” one knight scoffed at their folly, shouting, “I’ll pierce through you all, you fools!”

In an instant, the knights overwhelmed the dwarven soldiers. Just as the heavy hooves of the horses were about to trample the dwarves along with their shields…

“Hyah!”

Astonishingly, the dwarves raised their shields, hurling the knights away!

Neigh!

“Aaargh!”

The cries of horses and the screams of knights mingled as the leading knights were thrown from their horses. It was the power of earth resonance, temporarily increasing their strength tenfold. It was a limited technique that could only be used for a brief moment, but the seasoned dwarf warriors timed it perfectly to counter the knights’ charge. In that instant, they weren’t just soldiers with shields; they were as impenetrable as a solid wall.

“Damn it!”

“Curse it!”

The other knights cursed. They had barely managed to fend off the first attack, but there were still many knights left. Enraged by their comrades’ deaths, the knights started to furiously charge at the dwarves.

Chaos erupted outside the fortress.

“Where on earth did these bastards come from?” Tetsvalt gritted his teeth, swinging his navy-blue aura-infused sword repeatedly. Despite having nearly twenty times the number of troops, it was the Sinai fortress troops suffering the casualties.

These dwarf warriors were nearly impervious to the regular soldiers. Their skill was formidable, but the performance of their weapons and armor was also extraordinarily superior.

One knight, throwing aside a shield crushed by an enemy blow, shouted, “Why are their weapons so damn good?”

They already knew that dwarves were skilled craftsmen, but the quality of the dwarves’ equipment was excessive. Even the finely forged dwarf-made weapons of the Fernando knights quickly became dull or bent when clashing with the enemy’s gear.

But for the dwarves of the Grand Forge, the outcome was natural.

Though both sides wielded dwarf-made weapons, the ones used by the fortress troops were reluctantly produced as tributes, while those used by the warriors here were crafted with the full inheritance of their ancestors’ techniques, with utmost care to achieve the highest quality for their kin’s warriors. How could there be any comparison?

Screams continued to fill the air. Most of them came from the troops stationed at Sinai Fortress, but among them were also the cries of elves and dwarves. In a brutal battle with odds of twenty to one, even the elite of the elves and dwarves could not escape unscathed.

And those screams were mostly caused by the hands of the strongest knight of Crovence, Tetsvalt, who wielded a dark blue aura.

“You wretches dare to overstep your bounds!”

Cursing, Tetsvalt cut down his enemies one after another. Already, more than ten dwarven warriors had become cold corpses by his hand. On the other side, Kadamyte, who was fending off the offensive, bit his lip at the sight.

“Damn it!”

Kadamyte launched himself towards Tetsvalt, quickly closing the distance and striking first. A reddish-brown aura traced a circular trajectory aimed at Tetsvalt’s head.

“I will take you on!”

“Insolent fool! How dare you, a mere ground beetle, imitate an Aura User!”

Shouting, Tetsvalt deflected the attack. The clash of auras created a powerful rebound that struck both of them.

Boom!

As shockwaves rippled out, the two men simultaneously stepped back. Tetsvalt’s expression hardened as he adjusted his stance.

‘What is this…?’

In truth, Tetsvalt had still been underestimating them. He had assumed that even though they had been lucky enough to awaken their auras, dwarves were still dwarves, and in comparison to a proper ‘human’ Aura User, they would be halfwits at best.

But with just one clash, he had to change his mind.

‘He’s not beneath me at all, is he?’

His hand still tingled from the recoil of the aura felt through his sword. With a serious expression, Tetsvalt dismounted. In a battle between Aura Users, the mobility of a horse was meaningless and could even be a hindrance.

Tetsvalt had finally acknowledged Kadamyte as a worthy opponent.

Bang! Boom!

Reddish-brown and dark blue auras clashed repeatedly, echoing with loud roars. Kadamyte’s axe-spear and Tetsvalt’s longsword continually brushed past each other. Deadly strikes rained down on both sides, narrowly missing and flowing back into the next move.

Other knights engaged in the battle voiced their surprise at the sight.

“What’s that guy?”

“It’s surprising enough that a dwarf is an Aura User…”

“To think he can go toe-to-toe with Sir Tetsvalt!”

He couldn’t believe the sight before him. Tetsvalt had spent his entire life training with the sword and, even after awakening his aura, had never neglected his training. Yet, here he was, locked in an even battle with a mere dwarf, despite being renowned as the strongest knight of the Crovence Kingdom for over ten years.

Whoosh!

The dark blue aura curved like a whip, aiming for his side. Kadamyte tilted his axe-spear to deflect the attack and calmly stared at his opponent.

‘As expected, humans are not to be underestimated.’

Sir Tetsvalt was indeed a powerful aura user whose reputation was well-deserved. The surge of his dark blue aura and the swordsmanship he had honed over decades were formidable even to Kadamyte, who had lived for 150 years. In fact, in terms of skill alone, Tetsvalt seemed to surpass Kadamyte.

‘At his age, he could have only trained in swordsmanship for about 40 to 50 years, yet he’s better than me…’

Deflecting Tetsvalt’s invasive aura, Kadamyte’s expression grew bitter.

Humans were indeed a quick race.

When it came to mastering something over the same period, elves and dwarves could never match the growth rate of humans.

Acknowledging the latent potential of humans with a sigh, Kadamyte swung his axe-spear even more fiercely. Whenever Kadamyte pressured with his powerful, dwarf-like strikes, Tetsvalt evaded with his seasoned swordsmanship. The two aura users clashed repeatedly, their weapons gleaming with the brilliant light of destruction. Both of them were giving their all, relentlessly striking at each other.