Chapter 261 – #58_All Darkness Comes From The East (7)
#259
1.
Siwoo rushed towards the closest White Knight without hesitation.
Just because his body was encased in sturdy armor, and his heart was protected by a thick shield, didn’t mean his fear disappeared.
The enemy was strong and numerous.
Even with Elroa watching over him, a moment of carelessness could lead to a bitter experience.
His fearless charge wasn’t just recklessness.
Siwoo had learned.
The principles of warfare that Elroa had always emphasized during their sparring.
Initiative, Simultaneity, and Follow-up.
In battle, one must always seize the initiative.
Don’t let the flow be taken by the opponent, and don’t be swayed by their actions.
Controlling the situation is key to gaining the upper hand.
This was the initiative.
It’s not always possible to have an overwhelming initiative in battle.
The enemy isn’t a scarecrow and will also launch counterattacks to seize the initiative.
If you retreat at this point, you’ll eventually lose the initiative completely.
Before the flow shifts to the opponent’s side, you must prevent it through attack.
This was simultaneity.
When forced to receive an attack due to the opponent’s fierce offensive.
Don’t just receive it, but deflect it and prepare for a follow-up attack.
This was the follow-up.
As you can see, these three principles of warfare have a common thread.
In battle, you must always seize the initiative, and to do so, you cannot allow even a moment of hesitation or fear.
Therefore, before being surrounded by five knights and facing a difficult situation, Siwoo charged at the most prominent enemy.
Despite its appearance, the armor, weighing over 200kg, crushed the ground with just its charge.
-Whoosh!
A spear extended to meet Siwoo’s charge.
The spear, which had been aimed at his lower-middle section, suddenly curved strangely.
What was clearly aimed at his lower body surged like a swallow and targeted his heart.
-Clang!
However, Siwoo easily received the attack.
He angled his sword forward, suppressing the spear shaft to prevent any trickery, and then deflected it with his left-hand shield.
The fluid motion, so smooth that even he was bewildered, was incomparable to his previous movements.
Siwoo was surprised for two reasons.
One was that the speed was much faster and more menacing than he remembered.
The other was that, despite that, he could easily deflect it with his sword.
But just because he deflected the attack didn’t mean he could stand there blankly.
Siwoo relaxed all the muscles in his body.
He released the tension in his unnecessarily tense muscles and firmly planted his feet on the ground.
Swinging a sword wasn’t about the arms, but the legs and waist.
The arms were just holding the sword.
You could even forget you were holding it.
“Hoo…!”
With a single breath, strength filled his relaxed body.
He drew out all the dormant potential in every muscle at the extremities of his body.
If he could infuse his entire body’s power into a single strike, that blade could even split a mountain range.
The White Knight belatedly recovered his attack and tried to strike Siwoo’s head with his spear.
Siwoo had experienced this before.
The strike using the spear shaft that had pushed him back when he had managed to close the distance.
Just before the spear tip, rotating like a windmill, struck his helmet, Siwoo’s sword was swung first.
-Clang!
From his right shoulder to his left hip.
The longsword, swung in a clean arc, bisected the White Knight’s body as if enveloping it.
The longsword curved fluidly, drawing a melting trajectory.
That sensation remained at his fingertips.
Siwoo finished his sword strike and quickly tilted his head back.
The spear shaft grazed his helmet at a hair’s breadth, but it flew off, spinning and smashing into a parked car, as if it had slipped from his hand.
Success.
What was going to be a 5-on-1 battle had been turned into a 4-on-1 battle by seizing the initiative and eliminating one enemy early.
To cut down a White Knight, who he had no idea how to attack, so easily.
It was bewildering.
“It’s not over yet. Focus.”
“Hup!”
Along with Elroa’s sharp comment.
Siwoo’s body spun in the air.
-Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
At the same time, four spears were sharply embedded in the ground where Siwoo had been standing.
Power is directly proportional to mass and speed.
Just as Siwoo had added mass to his shadow weapons by applying earth elemental magic to increase his power.
The spears wielded by the White Knights were also so heavy that they couldn’t be considered ordinary cold weapons.
The four White Knights, who had pulled out the spears that had broken the asphalt and embedded themselves deep into the ground, formed a line and aimed their spears at Siwoo.
Certainly, the pressure was different from the moment you faced one versus four.
Siwoo felt sweat trickling down his spine as he observed the enemy.
Can I win?
Can I do it?
Doubt about himself surged.
It wasn’t that he had never experienced fighting against multiple opponents.
He had already experienced something like 50-on-1 against the black dogs in the department store.
But if an enemy with intelligence systematically pressed him in battle.
Could he really withstand it?
Siwoo took out four ribbons.
Through training with Elroa and personal magic research, he had increased the number of ribbons he could use.
With this, he wouldn’t be completely pushed back in a numbers game.
The White Knights, clad in armor that shone unnervingly white.
Two of them quickly closed the distance and rushed forward.
The other two circled to the sides, as if to simultaneously occupy Siwoo’s flanks.
Siwoo divided the ribbons into two to prevent being completely surrounded.
Meanwhile, he faced the enemies in front with his sword and shield.
-Thud! Thud! Thud!
The heavy thrusts of the White Knights.
Had Siwoo’s perception improved as he trained with Elroa?
Before, he had just thought of them as ‘attacks that curved and bent.’
But now, having encountered and learned various techniques, it felt different.
Each White Knight’s spear technique was excellent.
The steps that were in perfect harmony with the upper body movements, the timing of thrusting and pulling back, and the feints that confused with wrist snaps and rotations.
Systematic and tactical.
They were ideally executing the optimal moves to pierce the enemy’s heart.
-Clang! Clang!
Two White Knights took turns harassing Siwoo.
When it was one, he could deflect the attack and exploit the gap, but with two, that gap had almost disappeared.
If one attack missed, the other would cover the gap.
And if Siwoo hesitated, attacks would come simultaneously from difficult angles.
It felt like fighting well-trained and experienced soldiers.
It was like 1+1 becoming 3.
Moreover, he was simultaneously dealing with the White Knights trying to break through his flanks with his ribbons, not just the two in front, so he was completely overwhelmed.
Unable to stand his ground, he slowly retreated.
“…”
Elroa watched the scene anxiously.
Her hand holding the contract sword kept clenching.
She was desperately suppressing the urge to jump in and slaughter those bastards.
As widely known, the enemy knights were homunculi with numerous battle experiences and outstanding skills.
Therefore, the White Knights, their minor copies, also possessed the combat skills of veteran warriors.
Their combat power was no longer that of a single homunculus.
Although they only had four eyes on the surface, that was only the output of their magic power, and their danger far exceeded that of those with five or six eyes.
The combined attacks that skillfully pushed Siwoo were also perfectly synchronized, as if they were one body.
Although he had seized the initiative by defeating one in the initial attack, he would gradually be pushed back if things continued this way.
Was it still too early?
Had her expectations for him been too high, just because he had shown rapid growth?
-KWAANG!
A loud roar echoed.
It was the sound of Siwoo’s ribbons, which had been holding back the two White Knights, being helplessly embedded in the ground.
With nothing to hinder them, the two White Knights rushed at Siwoo from both sides.
He had already been struggling against two, and now two more were added.
Indeed, it wasn’t the time yet.
Just as Elroa was about to jump in to help Siwoo.
“Huh…?”
Elroa’s eyes caught Siwoo’s back.
He threw away the shield that had been hanging on his arm as if it were cumbersome.
He firmly grasped the sword he had been holding with one hand with both hands.
-Clang! Clang!
Siwoo’s sword, drawing a single trajectory, softly deflected two thrusts.
Unlike before, there was no loud, violent sound of force pressing down on force, or force colliding with force.
With a clear sound, like tapping a glass with a fork, the path of the spears was perfectly diverted.
“Hoo…”
The battle wasn’t over yet, but the world seemed to be filled with silence.
In the midst of it, only the sound of Siwoo inhaling was clear, and Siwoo’s sword, imbued with a single breath, drew a spiral as if dancing.
A beautiful dance with no unnecessary force.
The pure and beautiful sword path (劍路) that warriors who had held swords, those who sought strength, had only imagined in their minds and died with, shattered the moonlight.
His movements, freely navigating the spear blades that were thrusting in all directions.
His footwork, tapping the ground in succession like a waltz, and the sword that had become part of the dance as if flowing.
His appearance, engrossed in the sword dance as if in a trance, was too relaxed to be in the midst of a fierce battle.
Elroa rubbed her eyes without realizing it.
Over his back, a familiar figure overlapped.
“Lafi…”
The child who was loved by the sword.
The child who could hear the voice of the sword.
If she had become a witch, she would have far surpassed Elroa, a genius among geniuses.
Her phantom faintly overlapped with Siwoo’s.
The stalemate, which seemed endless.
The form, which had been slowly tilting towards the White Knights, changed in an instant.
The two spears, which had been freely navigating the air like acrobatics, were swept away like leaves by the straight sword path.
Elroa, who had been staring blankly at the scene, suddenly became anxious.
It was because the two White Knights, who had finally shaken off the ribbons, had joined the battle.
One aimed a spear at his rear-side from the 7 o’clock direction, and the other aimed at a perfect blind spot.
The spears wielded by the White Knights shared similar effects with their origin, ‘Red Branch.’
It seemed impossible to form the distortion field unique to Red Branch, but it cut off the formation and flow of magic power.
No matter how thick his shadow armor was, if he were hit directly, it would be torn apart like paper.
In that critical moment, Siwoo’s foot kicked the ground as if he had been waiting for it.
It wasn’t just a leap.
It was a preparatory action to rotate his body with all his might by manifesting the essence of explosive force.
The asphalt ruptured and let out a death rattle.
A shockwave erupted from the tip of his sword, breaking the sound barrier.
The sword, swung at waist height, forcefully repelled the persistent pursuit from the front, and at the same time, sliced through the White Knights who had attacked from the rear and sides.
Those who launch surprise attacks are vulnerable to counterattacks.
Siwoo had intentionally allowed the surprise attack and was gauging the timing to launch a counter.
The upper bodies of the White Knights, who had been thrusting their spears with bravado, floated in the air side by side, but Siwoo did not stop his rotation.
-Bang!
What supported his body, which had been thrown off balance during the rotation, were two ribbons.
The black ribbons dug into the asphalt, which had turned into a gravel field due to the fierce battle.
Thanks to the ribbons that gripped the ground as if clutching it, Siwoo was able to execute another rotating slash.
The second rotation.
It would have been just enough for the sword’s trajectory to lightly graze the White Knight’s helmet.
-Bang!
With just that, the helmet burst like an aluminum can hit by a sledgehammer.
There was one enemy left.
White Knights had no emotions.
Even though they had lost three comrades in an instant, they didn’t feel fear or hesitation.
The White Knight, finally revealing Siwoo’s flank, was about to strike him with an uppercut.
In this state, evasion, defense, and counterattack would all be impossible.
-Crack!
However, two ribbons that had sprung from the ground pierced the White Knight’s body like a rag doll.
The force not only pierced him but also sent him soaring high into the air, where he dangled with his vital points pierced.
He had set it up like a trap when he had embedded the ribbons in the ground during his rotation.
Elroa, who had been watching Siwoo’s defeat of the last White Knight, saw the upper body of the White Knight, which had been floating in the air a moment ago, fall to the ground with a thud.
He had dealt with four White Knights in the blink of an eye.
At the same time, the time that had seemed to flow slowly returned to its original speed.
There was no room for doubt.
It was Siwoo’s complete victory.
