The Emperor Has Returned

Chapter 120 – Return of the Winter (2)

Urkel’s body was on fire as he rolled around on the ground for a long time. The warriors of Arbalde rushed to try and douse the flames by pouring snow on Urkel, but the flames released by a dragon would not be put out that easily. It was only after a long time Urkel managed to stand up on his feet with red burns all over him.

“That son of a bitch!”

Urkel muttered a curse and looked toward the fortress of Beldeve. The gate was destroyed, but a dragon was burning all the villagers who were approaching the gate. The front of the gate was no different than hell.

Meanwhile, the black-haired beast wandered leisurely through the flames and ruthlessly killed anyone who came near the gate.

Juan quickly knocked down the warriors of Arbalde—he didn’t even need to take out his weapon.

Urkel gritted his teeth. It would be impossible to pass through the gate with Juan and the dragon guarding the front. But they didn’t have any other way either.

“The dragon won’t be able to breathe out fire endlessly! The black-haired beast won’t be able to fight forever either! Continue pushing!”

Urkel yelled and tried to push forward again. He had no choice but to step up and try to restrain the black-haired beast so that the warriors of Arbalde and the villagers could seek an opportunity to enter the fortress.

‘It would be hard for me to do so given my current state, but if I tap into the power of the Crack just a little more…’

Urkel made a hard decision, but he stumbled and dropped down on his knee.

“Leader, I think it would be best for you to treat your fatal wounds while staying at the back for now. You can’t fight as you are right now.”

Urkel was suffering from immense pain due to the burns, yet he refused to step back; he had decided to die fighting. He knew that other villagers would hesitate if he were to back down now.

Then Urkel saw one of the warriors of Arbalde approaching him in a hurry.

“Don’t worry about me! Just go and continue pushing. I’ll take care of myself!”

Urkel burst into a rage and tried to send the warrior away even before the warrior opened his mouth. At the same time, the warrior shook his head with a pale expression as if he was perplexed.

“That’s not it, Leader! I just got a message from back home!”

“The rear?”

Everyone who had come to the fortress of Beldeve had come prepared to leave everything behind and die on the battlefield. This meant that they no longer had a place to call ‘home.’

‘If there is anything like that, it would probably be where a small number of children and the elders are still…’

Urkel’s face hardened. The warrior brought a boy who looked like he could die at any moment. The boy was barefoot and his foot was soaked in blood, almost as if he had been running for a long time in the snow. Urkel’s lips quivered.

“What happened?” Urkel asked the boy.

“Nienna…”

A familiar but terrifying name came out of the boy’s mouth.

“Nienna and the Order of Penlil have barged into the village!”

The woman who led the carnage from decades ago and turned Arbalde into ruins. The boy was saying that she had returned.

***

Urkel felt as if someone had hit him in the back of his head.

‘Nienna? Why would Nienna be here right now?

Nienna was the emperor’s second child, as well as the person who was second in command within the empire. She was a combat freak who had been fighting against the Crack ever since she was barely old enough to hold a sword in her hand, and she was the one who took care of the entire northern territory. Not only was she the General of the Imperial Army in the northern territory, but she was also the captain of the Order of Penlil that was well known for their violence as well as the strongest military discipline in the empire.

Nienna Nelben was known as the harbinger of winter. In the current state of the empire where the seat of the emperor was vacant, the Thornbush Priest Organization’s strongest enemy was Nienna. The reason why the Thornbush Priest Organization had not explicitly intervened even until now was due to Urkel’s request to keep Nienna in check.

But here she was—when the fall of Beldeve was right around the corner.

The snowflakes fell on Urkel’s head. Come to think of it, the first snow of the season this time around was much earlier compared to the past winters. Urkel bit his lips; he felt that he should have sensed Nienna’s imminent return based on the early onset of snowfall.

After all, Nienna’s title was ‘the one who brings the winter.’

Death and ruins would be all that would remain if Nienna and the Order of Penlil had decided to intervene in the affairs of the northeast. In fact, nothing would be left this time.

At that moment Urkel came back to his senses. Urkel hastily bent down toward the boy and whispered in a nervous voice.

“What about the other villages? Did everyone manage to evacuate?”

The boy looked at Urkel in silence and shed tears.

Urkel’s mind went blank; it was clear that the boy was the only one who was able to escape while everyone else was dying. Nienna allowing the boy to escape clearly had a purpose—it was either her plan to make the warriors of Arbalde and the villagers panic, or to make them fight back without retreat.

The warriors hurriedly held Urkel and helped him stand on his feet just as he stumbled.

‘I promised myself that I would die here.’

Urkel had thought that he had completely let go of everything else in his life for revenge. But this was only a delusion. He decided to die on the battlefield for the sake of his grandchildren and their survival. While he thought that everything he did was for revenge, he only now realized that it had all been to lead all those who devoted their lives for revenge just so that their children could live freely in peace. Urkel knew that his grandchildren would also live bound by hatred for the rest of their lives if he didn’t sacrifice himself while holding all the hatred in his arms.

But they were all dead now. There was only one thing left for Urkel and the warriors of Arbalde—revenge.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

Urkel’s scream shook the earth as tears of blood flowed down his cheeks. Urkel grit his teeth to the point that they almost broke. Urkel turned his head and looked at his surroundings.

There was only one thing he was looking for.

It was the Imperial knight from the capital that had induced and instigated this whole war. Nienna’s sudden intervention could only be thought of as Suvole's trick to wipe out both the Fourth Division as well as the northeastern rebels in one fell swoop.

Urkel realized that both Hela and himself had been used.

“Suvole!”

Urkel recalled seeing Suvole standing with the Order of the Evil Snake on the hill and whispering something to the captain before he went to war. Urkel’s bloody eyes turned to one side of the battlefield. On the hill above the forest, there were quite a few Templars who were arrogantly watching the battle, waiting for its end.

“I’ll tear you to death, you fucking bastards!”

***

Marco was watching the siege against the fortress of Beldeve from atop the hill. The fact that the warriors of Arbalde and the villagers managed to destroy the gate was impressive, but the sudden appearance of the dragon and the black-haired young man was unexpected. The black-haired young man was even wandering around, almost as if he didn’t care about hiding his identity.

“There’s nothing good about the Fourth Division fighting a war with a heretic like that being on their side. Besides, isn’t a dragon considered to be an evil beast within the empire? Hela was so determined to protect them both, but now would be the perfect opportunity to take both of them out at once.”

“The black-haired young man won’t be able to do anything once the ladder reaches the wall. Some of the warriors of Arbalde are quite remarkable, so it will only be a matter of time before the fortress of Beldeve falls.”

“Good, good. We will wait for now, then group one, two, and three will break through as soon as the battle enters a state of lull. Group four should make sure that the black-haired young man doesn’t escape from the outskirts… wait, what is that?”

Marco frowned as he saw some of the rebels running toward them all of a sudden. Marco’s eyes which had been bestowed with a Grace allowed him to see his opponents clearly even from afar.

Urkel was running straight toward the Templars. Marco flinched for a moment upon seeing Urkel, who was tapping into more and more of the power of the Crack running crazily toward him with tears of blood in his eyes. At the same time, he felt a murderous intent that sent chills down his spine.

“Prepare for battle,” Marco ordered.

“Pardon? Isn’t that just the Revenge King?”

“Can’t you see that the lunatic has gone completely mad!? Get your weapons right now and get ready to defend!”

The Templars raised their weapons upon hearing Marco’s roar. It was only natural that they weren’t prepared to defend; the Templars had just been leisurely watching the battle from a distance. The Templars hurriedly set up a barricade, but the speed of the warriors of Arbalde far exceeded their expectations.

“Ah, forget about the barricade! Start charging your Spears of Wrath!” Marco belatedly shouted another command.

Urkel ran toward the Templars, reaching them in just an instant and split the nearest Templar body in half.

In response, Marco shouted in anger and threw a Spear of Wrath toward Urkel. A few strands of lightning also struck Urkle, but he did not slow down at all.

Marco shouted to vent his anger, “You jerks! I should have known that heretics have no loyalty at all!”

“■■■■ ■■■!”

Urkel shouted an unintelligible name that no one could understand and swung his ax toward Marco again. Marco questioned whether Urkel had suddenly gone mad, but Urkel didn’t give Marco an opportunity to have a conversation.

At the same time, Macro wasn’t the type to solve conflicts through conversation either.

“Kill them all! The steps that we must take in order to establish His Majesty’s will have changed!”

***

The northern army was marching fast despite the heavy snowstorm. Ten thousand elite soldiers mounted on horses and equipped with heavy armor led the way, and three times as many support and evacuation units followed behind them. As they advanced, the troops didn’t leave behind anything that might possibly come back to bite them later. To prevent anyone from hiding or surviving, the troops even burned all the food and didn’t leave behind a single place that could function as a hiding place.

A long silver-haired young woman led the army at the forefront. The woman who rode her horse in silence came to a stop at some point. She reached out her hand and clenched her fist as if she was grasping air. The moment she pulled her fist aside, the snowstorm that filled the entire sky began to fade in an instant.

As the sky cleared, the sight of the northeastern rebels running around the fortress of Beldeve could be seen from afar. At the same time, one knight carefully approached the woman.

“General Nienna, there’s the target.”

Nienna didn’t even glance at him, causing Suvole to have an awkward expression.

“Wasn’t that the land you wanted to go back to so badly? You said you regretted not being able to clean it up completely. I let you come back here. Don’t you have any other impressions?”

Nienna raised her middle finger toward Suvole.

“Thank you very much,” Suvole smiled and took a step back.

Nienna once again began to ride her horse at a high speed as the snow subsided, and three knights wearing unusually thick armor followed closely behind her. Behind the knights’ backs fluttered the blue-colored skin of a beast instead of a cape with a symbol.

Snow wolves that are strong enough to chew up the demonic beasts of the Crack acted as their symbol. Even Suvole, a knight from the Order of the Capital, was in awe of the Order of Penlil, who had survived ever since His Majesty’s era. The knights belonging to the Order of the Capital were mostly from the newer generations and had replaced the older knights, but the Order of Penlil was full of older knights. Nevertheless, it didn’t look like the Order of Penlil had weakened at all.

‘Instead, they seem to be getting stronger.’

Suvole turned his head toward the back to look at the mounted soldiers who were following Nienna from behind. The mounted soldiers consisted of northern ethnic groups; they were extremely strong and were so huge that it made others doubt whether or not they were just ordinary people of the empire.

In fact, ‘Imperial Army’ wasn’t an appropriate term for them—it was said that these soldiers were more loyal to Nienna than to the Regent or His Majesty. The same could be said about the entire northern territory. Nienna was the living proof of the long-standing native faith worshiped by the North.

Nienna was said to be the daughter of the being called the ‘winter duke’, someone who came and left with a long snowstorm. There was no way to confirm whether the story was true or not, but this mysterious myth about Nienna was an object of awe and worship to the people from the North.

Suvole couldn’t hide his excitement at being able to run and fight alongside a famous legend. Suvole also felt that it was interesting that the Order of the Capital’s long-drawn plan was able to be rapidly advanced, thanks to the black-haired young man.

“All knights-”

Nienna stretched out her right hand like a wing. She only whispered in a quiet voice, but the cavalry rushed to spread out swiftly to the side as if they were one with Nienna.

“Go rescue them.”

Nienna gave a short order.

Just before the cavalry stormed in, the ground which had become muddy due to the blood and the heat began to freeze white. The villagers and the rebels who saw Nienna and the cavalry tried to fight or run away, but thin ice froze them before they could even do anything. The villagers died before knowing the reason for their death—their eyes were the first to burst.

A hammer named Nienna as well as her ten thousand-strong elite cavalries quickly struck the northeastern rebels who were placed on the anvil called Beldeve. The northeastern rebels broke in an instant, just like thin glass.

Suvole burst into laughter when he saw one of the warriors of Arbalde being trampled under his horse’s hooves.

“Duke Henna. The ten thousand Imperial Army troops that I promised you have now arrived!”

***

Juan had a suspicious look on his face as he saw the warriors of Arbalde retreating like a tide. Then he soon realized that they were rushing at the Templar’s camp—Juan could easily tell from their expressions and the scale of the disturbance that their reason for charging toward the camp wasn’t for anything good.

At that moment, a familiar sound was heard from the front line. The sound of numerous horse hooves pounding on the ground shook the earth. The sound of the upcoming battle was vibrating the entire ground.

Soon after, an unknown cavalry unit struck the rear of the northeastern rebels. It was unknown as to who it was that was leading the cavalry unit, but it was a clean charge at just the right timing. Meanwhile, the northeastern rebels were still busy fighting against the Templars on one side.

Juan could only say one sentence.

“Haha. What a fucking mess.”