The distance from our base in Chuncheon to Pyeongchang was considerable.
Trying to exterminate an enemy that far away was, in itself, a hard task.
Therefore—
To make sure we could wipe out every enemy in this battle,
our unit had to bring every option we could to bear.
“Sing the marching song while we move!”
One of those options was—
“The song is ‘A Fine Man’!”
“Fine! Man!”
A little embarrassing, sure, but whatever.
We were leading a chorus of the army song.
—To think they’re... following our tribe’s culture like this.
This trait originally belonged to the [Green Manes Tribe].
It activates when all members sing loudly in unison.
A kind of [Fervor].
In many-on-many fights,
the meaning of this kind of wide-area buff goes beyond imagination.
‘Because of this, we even had to teach the army songs to the ones without prior service...’
Back when I was a private,
I remembered teaching the battalion song to the new transfers.
“Ugh. Do we really have to do this?”
From the perspective of those without prior service, the song was pretty mortifying.
A few grumbles leaked out.
Anyway, whatever.
Only one thing matters.
“The effect is that good, so of course we’re doing it!”
[Guild — All stats of ‘Iron Legion’ are... ]
[Guild — Traits are granted to ‘Iron Legion’... ]
Even though it was nothing more than singing while running,
the effect
was unmistakably real.
And that wasn’t all.
[Command Shout — ‘Charge Order’ rings out.]
“All troops, forward!”
“[Intermediate Commander].”
With Lieutenant Kim’s crisp order,
a powerful buff settled onto the bodies of our members.
[Shout of Madness]
“Victory or death!!!”
With Corporal Jeon Gwangil’s mad, guttural growl,
a faint madness to annihilate the enemy kindled in the soldiers’ eyes.
And—
[Course Meal — Anti-Demon Light]
When facing wicked foes,
a hearty meal is a necessity.
[Group Trait — ‘Legion’s Energy’ applies.]
[Synergy is granted to each buff’s effect.]
With every buff further strengthened and applied,
all members now had twice—
no, nearly three times—their usual strength.
“Grrrkk...!”
As the overwhelming buffs flooded their bodies,
a few of the soldiers singing the song began to foam at the mouth.
Not because they were in pain.
It was a symptom we’d seen plenty by now.
“S-Sergeant Shin.”
“Let us... fight, please.”
“Hold it in, you punks.”
They couldn’t control the power overflowing inside,
so they wanted, somehow, to vent it.
“All personnel, ready to breach!”
“Everyone’s done eating and chomping at the bit to fight.”
At the reports, I looked back.
Dozens of tanks and fighting vehicles.
And behind the tanks,
rank upon rank of Legion soldiers in long field coats tailored for winter.
Without a hair out of place,
they sang the army song with discipline brimming in their bearing.
Watching them,
I bit a combat ration without ceremony and said lightly,
“All right, let’s go in.”
“Yes!”
A winter world blanketed in snow.
There, a majestic war song thundered.
A moving wall.
Tank treads chewed across the snowy field as they advanced.
“All troops, subdue the enemy!”
“Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty!!!”
Soldiers who had transcended being human.
They surged toward the enemy lines faster than the tanks.
“For the Legion’s victory!!!”
“Skreeeeeeee!!!”
For the
Legion’s victory.
****
“G-Guide!”
A sudden enemy raid.
The [Demon Contractors], flustered,
ran to the place where their head,
Wonjun, was.
“W-what is going on!”
“...An enemy assault.”
“An assault? How did they learn our location...?”
By their nature, contractors leave few traces.
When they proceed with the contract by offering up their souls, they vanish—quite literally—“without a trace.”
Many feared that moment.
But as far as not being found by the enemy, it was considered a strength.
‘This is a place under the Master’s grace. Even with search-type traits it should be hard to find the exact spot...’
And yet,
the enemy had pinpointed their location.
Rough coordinates found by an [Astrologer].
Exact position found by a [Spirit User].
From their perspective, ignorant of the Legion’s intelligence-gathering chain, it made no sense.
“...So they really are soldiers.”
Simply,
survivors of a military unit.
“That seems likely.”
“Looks like they’re operating tanks, too.”
They could only guess that the former soldiers had used their old technical skill
to cook up some method.
“T-tanks?”
“Weren’t you the one who said it was most likely just one or two small units that survived!”
Tanks rolling in en masse.
And over there in the distance, they could see towed guns belching fire.
A long time had passed since the ruin.
Monsters did not simply roll over and lose helplessly to army bombardment.
Babababababoom...
Even so,
that overwhelming firepower was more than enough of a burden.
“That’s not the firepower of one or two small units!”
“...Agreed.”
That was not an amount you’d get from stripping a single tank battalion or an artillery battalion.
It looked like a joint operation by several army units.
Having lots of war machines alone wouldn’t cut it.
War machines demand a great deal of resources and are terribly inefficient.
To operate that many tanks,
you’d need a staggering amount of fuel and supplies.
‘Does that mean they’ve already retaken many army bases? Or that, from the start, many units in their region survived?’
In the region they lived, without exception,
every single army unit had been wiped out.
Maybe they just got lucky, and in the Legion’s area, many units survived?
The numbers pushed them to consider even that.
But—
they didn’t know.
Until not long ago,
the Legion’s war machine stockpiles weren’t even a quarter of that.
By freeing the monsters occupying the bases,
and succeeding in disposing of those monsters without suffering any damage,
the weapons and materiel of the now-empty bases—
had fallen into the Legion’s hands.
The contractors had assumed the very operation “free the army’s monsters” would fail,
so there was no way they could have known.
“Wh-what is this...”
“T-tanks and towed guns... what’s going to happen to us!”
As it came to this,
the sudden attack left the contractors no choice but to panic.
However—
“Well, getting our location blown is a kick in the ribs... but we don’t need to worry too much.”
To those who were so rattled,
the cadre spoke evenly.
“That’s what the guardians the Master sent down are for.”
“A-ah.”
“Right, there was that.”
The demon.
To protect the contractors, that being had decided to make a small investment.
Powerful monsters sent down to earth
without taking any souls in payment.
—There were far more minions than the headcount suggested.
The whole area they occupied now
was little different from a demon-tainted field swarming with an immense number of minions.
“Look there. The minions are deploying.”
“Oooh...!”
Just as they said,
they could see monsters wrapped in dark shadow moving out to intercept the enemy.
The first time they’d seen them they’d been nothing but horrifying,
but viewed like this they looked endlessly reassuring.
Especially the one taking the very lead among them—
a gigantic beast nearly the size of a building.
[Barghast]
They couldn’t have known this, but
once,
that monster had even given the Legion’s commander a hard time.
“Among the minions the Master sent, that one’s renowned for its toughness.”
“I-I see.”
“With that thing out there, even tank fire won’t mean much...”
Its skin gleamed like oil—disgusting, perhaps—
but its sheer size and strength,
to those being protected, were a bottomless comfort.
And then—
KRAAAAAAANG!!!
—Grrrk...!
“!?”
A tank spat fire as it advanced.
The massive body rocked hard.
At that, eyes swung to the cadre who’d just spoken.
“Y-you just said tank fire wouldn’t matter—”
“...This shouldn’t be happening.”
Unlike the average contractor,
those of higher station had some information on the minions.
[Intermediate Demon Contractor Lv.22]
[Trait — Intermediate Demon Lore]
According to what that trait taught,
that minion’s toughness should withstand tank bombardment.
Meaning—
‘These aren’t ordinary tanks?’
If it had ended there, fine.
Unfortunately, the attack didn’t end there.
“Dismount, all of you!”
The tank that had opened up,
as battle began, the soldiers riding it dismounted from the vehicle.
And each soldier drew their own weapon.
The ones with rifles were fine.
The problem was—
‘Staves?’
Soldiers holding wooden staves that didn’t suit military uniforms at all.
They shouted in voices full of discipline.
“Cast firebombs!”
They called them firebombs,
but what they threw weren’t standard army incendiaries.
[Fireball]
KRAAAAAAANG!!!
—Gooooooo...!
As the Legion’s mages unleashed powerful area attacks,
the huge beast, the Barghast, writhed in pain.
The man watching could only be appalled.
From the way they handled the gigantic monster, it didn’t feel like they were facing an unknown creature at all.
Rather—yes.
As if—
‘As if they know the Barghast’s weakness...!’
The observer’s thought hit close enough.
A monster that had recently joined the Legion.
—Grrk... The beast you met is called a Barghast.
A survivor of a race that had fought a brutal civil war against the demon’s minions,
suffered grievous wounds,
and at last succeeded in driving them out.
—It’s a mighty fiend to be sure, but it’s relatively weak against wide-area flames.
Knowledge of the demon’s minions—
stacked up at the cost of countless lives by his race—
had come into the Legion’s hands.
****
Tanks, assorted gun emplacements,
and the rest—
by bringing army firepower to bear,
the monsters on the outskirts of the contractors’ lodgings
had been driven to near annihilation.
However,
a soldier watching thought,
‘Now it really starts.’
Where the contractors were entrenched
was the very center of the area those minions protected,
a place with a great many buildings clustered together.
Naturally,
the fight took on the character of urban combat.
No matter how powerful the Legion’s firepower,
in urban warfare that firepower is bound to be blunted to a degree.
Each tall building serves like a medieval curtain wall.
Each one becomes a barrier that soaks up fire.
There’s a reason they call urban combat “hell for infantry.”
But—
the Legionaries now
were a little different from the soldiers of the past.
KWOOM!
“This side is clear.”
“Continue the push!”
Even without distant fire support,
each one of them was a warrior who had surpassed ordinary humans.
A lightning raid.
Stuffed full on cooking,
under the effects of [Command Shout] and the [War Song],
the Legionaries were infiltrating the enemy interior at a blistering pace.
Then—
Clang...
From far off,
came a sound like iron striking iron.
“That one is...”
“The thing the Commander told us to watch out for.”
Up ahead,
a minion with the form of a massive knight appeared.
[Hell Knight]
A knight in heavy armor holding the avenue.
Though in size it was small compared to other gigantic monsters,
the presence radiating from its body was nothing of the sort.
In fact—
“Kh—!”
A few soldiers gripped their weapons and rushed in,
but they couldn’t bring it down easily.
—Knights of the underworld have no clear weak point.
The true body was powerful,
and with no obvious weak point it was /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ a hard foe.
“Damn it!”
“Since we started with a surprise attack, speed is of the essence for the breach...!”
Who knew what kind of search measures the enemy had.
The Legion had run nonstop and jumped into battle the moment prep was finished.
To capitalize on the surprise, they had to subdue the enemy as fast as possible—
but the moment they got bogged down by this sudden foe—
THOOM...
From behind the soldiers... came heavy footfalls.
At that presence they turned their heads.
“...!”
“Corporal Jeon.”
A hulking soldier
stood behind them.
“I’ll take it.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
Even if the underworld knight was small compared to other monsters, it stood over three meters tall.
Compared to the soldier striding up to meet it, the foe was at least a head taller.
But—
‘What presence is this...!’
The force pouring off his body
made even the giant enemy seem small!
“Huff.”
The warrior drew a deep breath
and hurled himself at the knight.
In reply,
the knight of hell swung its sword.
“For the— Legion...!”
Veins stood on his forehead.
Teeth ground tight.
His whole body drowned in thick madness.
And yet—
“For victory...!”
even with the frenzy surging high enough to cover his whole body,
there wasn’t a single mistake in the words he shouted as he leapt for the enemy.
