-Crackle!
Lightning poured from the giant's body. There was no dodging the shockwave, which was like an EMP blast.
"Thwack—!"
Caught in the wave, he is thrown from his horse and a terrible pain shot up his spine.
"Mr. Koo—!!!"
Team Leader Kim Do-han focused his railgun fire on the giant.
-Ka-kak!
"Damn, it's going to eat me alive!"
But the giant's skin was hard. The power had been reduced to reduce noise, and instead of the expensive stardust bullets, the railguns were loaded with magenta processed bullets.
In the end, Kim Do-han decided that physical offense would be more likely to draw the giant's attention, so he threw his spear as hard as he could and raised his shield.
"Four! Five! Get his attention!"
"Yes, Captain!"
The two groups fall in unison at Kim Do-han's command. The burden on the remaining groups to stop the giant's hounds will increase, but they can't afford to lose their knight.
-Hahahahaha—!
The giant swung a huge iron club and the shieldmen try to block it, but it's not enough to offset the impact.
With each swing of the hammer, the Man-At-Arms fly a dozen feet into the air, but they still manage to get up and catch the giant's eye.
"Spread out! We're at a disadvantage against him!"
While the two groups were desperately trying to get the giant's attention, Kim Do-han pulled out Koo Dae-sung from the dead horse.
"Hey, Mr. Koo, are you alright?!"
"Hmph—!"
Koo Dae-sung's eyes flashed open as he gulped down a breath of oxygen, pushing through the blood vessels in his heart that had just been clogged.
"Hmph, hmph—!"
For a moment, his heart stopped. If it wasn't for the stellar plate——
"Crazy, isn't the star iron armor broken? I've never seen anything like this before——"
At Kim Do-han's words, Koo Dae-sung opened his eyes wide and looked down at his empty chest.
"The armor was——"
It was a shock to both Koo Dae-sung and Kim Do-han that the armor was broken.
Although the armor of the knights and the Man-At-Arms used the same stardust, the content was very different.
Stardust "cultivated" armor, intended for mass production, has only a thin coating of stardust inside.
This alone makes it a very hard unique grade, but it is not comparable to the high-purity stardust armor of the knights.
To date, no Knight's Stardust Armor has ever been broken, but Koo Dae-sung was the first.
'It's because of me——.'
And Koo Dae-sung guessed the reason.
'It's because I didn't receive the blessing of the Holy Law, the gods, or anyone else——'
The Stellar Iron Armor isn't special simply because of its material. The reason it is invincible is because the knight who wears it is blessed by the gods to strengthen his armor.
But Koo Dae-sung was not blessed by any god.
Neither the Goddess of Light and Justice's blessing of destruction and sturdy walls, nor the God of War and Flame's blessing of battlefield fire.
-Graaaaaaah!
At that moment, Koo Dae-sung's eyes snapped open and he raised his shield, his defensive instincts tingling because of the threat approaching him.
-Thud!
With a dizzying impact, the giant's club bounces off the ground.
"Gu, Gu!"
From the floor in the distance, Captain Kim Do-han cried out with his mangled body.
"Damn—!"
Koo Dae-sung immediately stood up.
His whole body felt like it was crumbling, and he felt an overwhelming power disparity but even at this moment, he could only think of one person's teaching.
[When fighting, one must never hesitate]
Even in the midst of practical training, the mindset changes when you're in the thick of it.
As a young cadet in a knight's class, intimidated by the younger cadets, one of them had the audacity to ask Leon, as he was discussing a valiant charge.
[What if I'm not as strong or fast as my opponent?]
What's a knight to do when faced with an opponent he's bound to lose to, especially one as experienced as the Lionheart King?
Leon's answer was not what he expected.
[You just fight.]
[——.]
[There's no point in thinking about it at the moment. Running away will only get you a sword in your back. If you're going to die, you might as well die with your chest cut open.]
No finesse or tricks, a knight is one who fights from the front.
He rides his horse, charges, and does not retreat, no matter what he faces.
"Fight!
Just fight.
Koo Dae-sung has no great talent or quickness of foot but if there's one thing he's good at, it's fighting.
"You bastard, I'm still alive!"
Not giving up.
-Heh!
The giant who was swinging his club at Kim Do-han turns around.
-Kung! Thump!
Rough footsteps echo off the ground, the auditory overwhelm gradually casting shadows and blocking Koo Dae-Sung from the moonlight.
Koo Dae-sung's hesitation and the giant's imposing presence were like a cornered mouse and a cat.
-Gulp!
He swallowed his saliva and a cold sweat broke out from the tension.
All Koo Dae-sung can do is bark loudly and try to hide his fear, proving the idiom that the cornered mouse bites the cat.
-Gah!
A black iron club is swung and the moment it hits, Koo Dae-sung would be killed instantly but something happened at that moment.
-Kak──!
With a sharp noise, a supersonic projectile hits the giant's finger.
"Oh, no, it hit!"
It was the defector Cho Mal-soon. He grabbed the railgun of the fallen Man-At-Arms and fired, and to his surprise, it hit the giant's finger.
-Yikes!
You can't just take down a monster with a high-powered weapon. Giants are resistant to most scientific weapons.
The element that makes up their bodies is the magical power of magic stones, their own 'souls'.
However, a railgun traveling at 40 times the speed of sound would be like poking a toothpick through your finger.
-Thud!
The iron club fell to the ground in agony, and Koo Dae-sung didn't miss the chance.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Koo Dae-sung leaped off the ground into the spurred giant's arms as if he were flying.
-How—?
Because of a momentary lapse in defense, a third party's luck, and an upright frontal assault the giant didn't even have time to react, as Koo Dae-sung's sword pierced his chest.
-God—!
"Damn it–phew!"
The giant collapsed under the momentum of the stabbing without even having time to clear his mouth of the blood splattered from his chest pocket.
Koo Dae-sung, who had fallen forward along with the giant, was drawn down by gravity and plunged the Star Iron Sword even deeper.
-Kwadang!
Dirt was kicked up by the fallen giant.
"Uh, uh, Mr. Koo, are you ok?"
Kim Do-han rushed over and checked on Koo Dae-sung, who was breathing heavily in the dirt as if he couldn't believe what he had done.
"Huh! Huh! Huh! I-I caught a giant?"
"Uhhh, yeah, it was a close call, but you did catch it, heheheh!"
Kim Do-han helped the frozen Koo Dae-sung to his feet and patted him on the shoulder.
"Hehehe—! I can call you the Giant Slayer now!"
"Uh, please don't."
"Come on, regardless of my happiness, let's get rid of the rest of the monsters first! Since we made such a loud noise, there might be more monsters around!"
Sobered by those words, Koo Dae-sung picked up the sword that was embedded in the giant's chest and charged at the remaining monsters.
* * * *
"Thank you, thank you!"
After that, it was all chaos.
Hundreds of people were still trapped inside the camp, and they were relieved to be alive as they thanked Koo Dae-sung profusely.
As he rode in the rear for their escort, he saw the horse that had fallen in the fight with the giant.
"I'm sorry. Because of your ugly owner——'
A bolt of lightning struck the horse and Koo Dae-sung with an impact that could shatter stardust armor. Naturally, the horse died instantly.
'What the hell was that lightning–what was that?'
It was too strange for magic. Something didn't seem to fit together–the giant hadn't used magic or struck lightning since.
"Huh? Where did the giant's body go?"
Someone said and everyone turned to the corpse of the giant that had been lying in the center of the camp just moments before.
"What the hell—?"
The large corpse had disappeared in the blink of an eye. It was an incomprehensible situation, but no one could care less.
"Come on, let's hurry! There might be other monsters coming, so we have to cross the Tumen River quickly!"
Even if they couldn't, they still had to take more than three hundred people they saved across the Tumen River, and if more monsters came, the fifty or so Man-At-Arms would inevitably suffer casualties.
"Let's go!"
Leaving the disappearing giant behind, Koo Dae-sung and the fifty Man-At-Arms led the people out of the camp.
"——-"
The gazes watching them remained silent until the very end.
-Croak—!
"Damn it, the hounds I baited with the drone are back!"
Before the battle with the giant, the dozen or so hounds that had been baited by the drone were chasing after the people trying to escape the city of Hoeryong.
-Aoooooooooo—!
-Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
The howl, which seemed to be calling for companions, actually summoned the monsters of the entire city.
-Croak—!
"Three o'clock, stop them!"
-Crack!
-Crack!
The railgun fires at full power, blocking the monsters' approach.
Koo Dae-sung and the Man-At-Arms fought off the monsters as best they could, capturing and killing some of them, but they didn't back down, continuing their pursuit as if to avenge their master.
"Damn it! We're almost at the Tumen River!"
"If we keep going like this, the damage will be severe!"
The monsters from the entire city had enough power to wipe out the convoy. They couldn't afford to come last and lose people.
It was a desperate crisis but at that very moment, a loud noise came from beyond the Tumen River.
"What?"
"That?"
Something was flying across the frozen Tumen River. It was the unmanned drone that carried aid packages for the Men at Arms who crossed into North Korea.
It transforms into the shape of a motorcycle and charges toward them.
"Hey, Sir Yappy! Over here! Over here!"
Koo Dae-sung waved urgently, realizing that it was Yappy piloting it. The drone motorcycle, traveling at 600 kilometers per hour, flew past the convoy in a flash and headed straight for the monsters.
-Full set of internalized weapons. 3 minutes and 37 seconds to initiate combat.
The drone carrying the support package unleashed a barrage of machine guns and railguns.
-Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk!
High-powered railguns and large-caliber machine guns that were not intended for human use, but strictly for Yappy's use.
The monsters were overwhelmed for the moment by the armed drone that supported them with a generous scattering of limited ammunition and bullets.
"Lord Yappy is covering us, let's cross the Tumen River while we can!"
They hurry across the frozen Tumen River. Along the way, they fired support fire from their small railguns to disperse the monsters' pursuit, but the monsters were still determined.
"Tenacious bastards, battle is inevitable!"
Captain Kim Do-han, fed up with the opponent's relentlessness, called for an emergency evacuation.
-Emergency evacuation. Self-destruct sequence initiated.
"Eh?"
"Eh?"
For a moment, I thought I'd misheard, but the cold mechanical sound never jokes.
-Countdown. 10— 9— 8──
"Oooosh—!"
"Run, run, run!"
The drone motorcycles charge at the monsters, and the Man-At-Arms panic and run across the Tumen River. When they finally cross the river──
-Kaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
A huge explosion erupted in the middle of the Tumen River, creating a mushroom cloud.
-Kuwaaaaaaaaah!!!
"Aaahhhhhh!"
The blast was powerful enough to blow the Man-At-Arms beyond the Tumen River into thin air.
* * * *
"Yeah, your job went well."
-Crack! The wounded will be transported to Korea.
Leon, who had received Yappy's report during the night, sighed softly and praised Koo Dae-sung.
"Send them meat and liquor of the finest quality, with new armor, of course."
-Receiving orders.
"By the way— what does Lord Spinner think?"
A camp in North Korea has been taken over by monsters, it's not that unusual.
-An accident caused by a backward country's inadequate gate security. There are many overlaps with previous cases.
"No word from President Ahn?"
-Says he spoke to Kim via the hotline as usual. All is well with the leadership in Pyongyang.
"Is it just a fringe disturbance?"
Something was up and Leon had a premonition about what was happening in North Korea.
He has a sixth sense that goes beyond the five senses, a magical phenomenon, on par with the intuition of the Lionheart King.
"I want you to dispatch your drones to North Korea. I want to make sure I know what's going on there."
-Order received. Immediate fulfillment.
After giving the order to Yappy, Leon immediately checked the following document.
"——"
The document was officially sent to the TTG Temple by the South Korean government.
Leon had received a document like this once before from the Japanese government, when they had formed the Wandering Demon Sword Alliance.
"United States of America."
It was a formal request for dispatch from the United States Hunter Management Agency.
It even contained a personal letter from the President of the United States, saying that he wanted Leon and TTG Temple to join the allied offensive against the Black Gate in the center of New York City.
Leon was told it was delivered in half a day by one of America's newest stealth fighter jets, in order to be both formal and urgent.
[Greetings to King Lionheart of the great Lionheart Kingdom from the head of state of a faraway nation across the sea. I am Anthony Hobson, President of the United States of America-─]
It was a formal letter, written in an archaic style. I can't imagine how many professors of classical literature would have been tempted to write a letter that was as personalized as possible for Leon.
"Hmmm, this President Anthony Hobson, he knows formality."
Leon, an authority on native royal court culture, marveled at the poignancy of the letter, savoring every word. He closed it and opened the next "informal correspondence."
The sender of this unofficial letter from the U.S. administration, delivered after the president's letter, bore the name of a recently acquired goddess.
[I hope you have been well, King Leon. I blessed your future and looked forward to our next meeting, but I have an urgent message for you]
Meriel, Goddess of Fate. What she conveyed to Leon in her letter surprised even him. He will──
"Lord Spinner, we must urgently organize an army and head for America."
-No negotiations, just a quick departure?
"Yes, because the goddess will not take no for an answer."
After reading the letter, Leon took the goddess's letter in his trembling hands and his face lit up in a way that would have surprised anyone who knew him.
"Karina——"
With the name of a child he would never call again— Leon prepared to leave for the United States.