hapter 180 – An Army to Defeat One Man (2)

Bertelgia had an incredulous tone of voice.

“What’s with that? Daddy made all of those? That’s impossible!”

Meanwhile, on top of one of the two Colossi that led the golems was a crouched man who covered his lower half of his face with a bandana.

“Kukuku… As predicted, he came here straight after leaving La Grange. Too obvious. It’s no wonder, anyone with such overwhelming power would take uncomplicated actions.”

Next to him was another man carrying 12 swords sitting in a lotus position.

“To be honest, I was dragged here against my will, and I have no desire to fight that monster.”

The identity of these two men were the Seven Heroes. Soul Eater Ga Xi Ong and Swordsman at the pinnacle Dragoman. They were waiting for Sungchul on the Ruteginean Road connecting the Human Empire to the Eastern Regions. Of course they were not waiting for Sungchul without a plan. They were making preparations for the upcoming fight. The Seven Heroes were heroes among heroes who have once saved the world from the Calamities. They had no desire to become a passive Calamity to be defeated one after another by a savior.

Once their comrades were killed, the Seven Heroes recognized Sungchul as a powerful enemy and came up with plans to face him. The army composed of golems that appeared before Sungchul was one such preparation.

“Kuku… do not worry, Dragoman. Eckhart’s dolls are far more useful than you can imagine.”

Ga Xi Ong was known to be the weakest of the Seven Heroes, but at least in the current era, he is the most famous.

The inhabitants of the world call him as such: The one who brought the Emperor to his knees.

Ga Xi Ong appeared before the Emperor with three Colossi and demanded half the world, and then attained it. Now he was trying to bring the Emperor’s old friend to his knees as well, using an weaponized army of golems.

It was a unique army never before seen nor ever to be replicated. It was not simply because the army was composed of golems. Ga Xi Ong named his golem army as such. An Army to Defeat One Man. Of course, the target is Sungchul.

“Will these collections of rubble really work against that monster?”

Dragoman continued to complain. He was against this plan from the first. The only thing on his mind was the Ancient Kingdom. The Ancient Kingdom which was located on the north western coast of the continent was the land of his ancestors. But the ones ruling the land now were not the descendants of his house but the ignoble servants who used to serve beneath them. Seeing the collection of rubbish going as far as adding ‘Ancient’ to the name of the baseless kingdom to feign tradition enraged him deeply. It wasn’t enough that they were already a grave source of irritation, they also managed to build up strength and foil the attack accompanied by the Colossus.

Dragoman was busy cultivating his lands to gather strength necessary to exterminate the Ancient Kingdom when he unfortunately got summoned by Desfort. A strictly self-serving Dragoman had no desire to fight Sungchul who beat up his comrades like a dog, but Desfort’s order as a leader was absolute and he couldn’t disobey. Becoming irritable under such circumstances was a natural conclusion. However, Ga Xi Ong was, in every meaning of the word, insane.

“Kukuku… the foundation of this grand army against one is Eckhart’s dolls, but it contains the bright ideas of the Soul Eater Ga Xi Ong. As these eyes of Ga Xi Ong sees, the probability this army will defeat that monster is over four to one.”

To he who was filled to the brim with anticipation of the upcoming battle, not one word of Dragoman’s complaint reached his ears.  Dragoman let out a sigh and said to Ga Xi Ong.

“…You couldn’t manage your territory because you were too busy building these toys?”

“Kukuku… are you about to express your profound respect for my initiative?”

“I don’t think this is a time to be cracking jokes.”

Dragoman’s expression was grim. The Destroyer made contact with the Golem Army. The battle was imminent.

Dragoman immediately stood up and moved his legs about to relieve tension in his legs so that he could run away at any time if needed. Even if they ran away from here, the territory before them was Vestiare’s, not his own. There was no reason why he shouldn’t run.

On the other hand, Ga Xi Ong was confident. He watched closely with anticipation for his army to begin their battle against Sungchul. The battle soon began.

Sungchul took out the Demonic weapon Cassandra. When the whip imbued with the flames of hell cut through the air, numerous golems fell destroyed.

“According to my observations, the Destroyer likes to use that whip when he faces a large number of enemies,” Ga Xi Ong said as he watched. Dragoman was watching the battle nervously before he finally decided to speak his mind.

“I don’t think I’m going to stick around after all. I have a bad feeling.”

To this, Ga Xi Ong made an indecipherable smile and replied.

“It’s your decision to run or not. But if you have any guts then watch closely.”

His gaze was fixed on the middle of the battlefield. Because Ga Xi Ong was showing such a serious face, Dragoman stopped complaining and turned to look at the battle as well. Sungchul was still demonstrating his overwhelming might. But finally, a strange scene unfolded before Dragoman’s eyes. Sungchul’s offensive paused. The reason was the golems’ coordinated attacks.

The golems armed with the weak and ineffectual weapons with the exaggerated name of ‘Gaze of Destruction’ first appeared as if they would be quickly wiped out by Sungchul, but they found a way to organize and begin the counter attack. The myriad of lights coming out of the Magic Armaments were focused on Sungchul. The Magic Armaments fired rounds that traveled near the speed of light and were therefore very accurate and difficult to dodge. These rounds greatly overlapped with one another, which forced even the mighty Sungchul to stop attacking and dodge out of the way.

‘Annoying.’

Sungchul was truly feeling troubled. Ga Xi Ong saw this and gave a crazed laughter before speaking to his comrade.

“How is it, Dragoman? The power of my Army to Defeat One Man?”

Dragoman watched the battle with reluctance. Once he witnessed the golems drive Sungchul back a few times, he finally let out a sigh and replied.

“About those golems. Did you make all of them use magic similar to Glare?”

“It’s not Glare. It’s a Magic Armament recreation. But the effectiveness is close enough.”

Ga Xi Ong felt elated to see that the scene he had concocted was playing out as he had planned. He continued to snicker like a mad man as he spoke with a over excited tone.

“Kukuku… No matter how strong the Destroyer is, he is still fundamentally a human being. There is an upper limit to the amount of damage he can tolerate. So I’ve thought long and hard about this. About an army that can feasibly be defeated by any other army, but becomes unstoppable against an individual!”

Numbers mean nothing before overwhelming power. This much was proven back when Sungchul and Kha’nes completely dominated on their own in their battle against the Demon Forces. But what if the numbers can be given significance?

Ga Xi Ong’s modified version of Eckhart’s golems sacrificed everything in exchange for Magic Armaments that had excellent accuracy and had the capacity for efficient concentration of fire power. The individual golem would have trouble against even the common soldier, but it was a different story if there were enough of them.

Ga Xi Ong’s idea began from there. A single magnifying glass possesses barely enough power to incinerate an ant, but if thousands or tens of thousands of them could be concentrated to a single point, then it should have a different result.

“The guy doesn’t wear armor, does not carry a shield. He depends entirely on his agile body and excellent fighting ability, but what about this time?”

Ga Xi Ong was blabbering on in excitement. Dragoman who had initially wanted to run away was about to change his mind upon seeing Sungchul be pushed to a corner when he realized a critical flaw.

“Hey, Ga Xi Ong. Your army or whatever is fine and all. But in the Destroyer’s perspective, wouldn’t he just simply run away?”

“That’s why we’re here.”

Ga Xi Ong had thought that far ahead in advance.

“The reason why I went as far as to ask the boss to call you over was so that the Destroyer would not leave from here.”

“Why would that be so?”

“The guy really wants to kill us. Kukuku… In other words, he’s desperate to end the Calamities. But his impatience will end up with him walking deeper into the mire on his own.”

Ga Xi Ong laid down on his side on top of the Colossi and got comfortable to watch the battle unfold below them.

Sungchul was surrounded by small golems armed with Magic Armaments. The Golem’s attacks were extremely simple. Once Sungchul entered their range, they fired a red Glare-like beam of light. There was nothing spectacular about the attack or its potency. But because of its nature as a form of light, if he didn’t dodge while it was being aimed, he would be hit without fail.

Sungchul had a powerful magic resistance and could afford to ignore an attack of that level, but it was a different story if dozens of beams were to hit simultaneously. Though small, he would begin to accumulate damage. And most importantly, it would harm his beloved coat.

‘I don’t know who came up with this idea but I have no words.’

A casual estimation on the number of lasers fired towards Sungchul would already exceed tens of thousands. But the number of shots Sungchul had allowed to hit him was zero. He had not let a single attack from the golem land on him. It was thanks to him taking evasive maneuvers, but it would become increasingly difficult to keep it up as time went on.

“Ugh… there’s too many. Isn’t this getting dangerous?”

Bertelgia buried herself into the deepest part of Sungchul’s pocket and expressed her fear for the first time in a while. Bertelgia wasn’t unfounded in her fears. Sungchul had been advancing while destroying golems until he found himself almost completely surrounded on all sides. The red glow of the golems lighting up from all directions in the darkness was a terrifying sight to behold.

‘Fly.’

Sungchul requested the first Soul Stone to activate the Fly spell. A Magic Formation appeared above the Soul Stone and Sungchul soared into the sky. Ga Xi Ong looked surprised.

“He even had Flight Magic up his sleeve? But it’s a possibility I’ve already covered.”

He used the Colossi to issue a new command to the golems. Several thousand golems processed the new command and blinked their red eyes. Their attack pattern changed.

It changed from aiming and firing towards Sungchul when he entered the effective range to firing indiscriminately in his general direction upon his entry into the firing range. If one or two were to engage in such an attack, it would be classified as firing at random. But if thousands of them were to do so, it would be called a barrage.

Sungchul immediately poured lots of magic power into Fly to increase his speed and altitude to avoid the barrage. But that was not the end of it. A glistening object came flying from below him. A spear made of ice.

It greatly resembled the Cryomancy’s 3rd circle offensive spell Crystal Lance. Sungchul moved his body midair to dodge the spear, but the Spear exploded on its own and launched shrapnel in all directions. One of those hit the tip of his coat and caused a rip. Sungchul felt annoyed.

‘What a messy way to fight.’

He turned his wrathful gaze down.

The medium sized golems spread out among the smaller golems were making spears made of ice. It was a Magic Armament of sorts like the ones used by the smaller golems. It appeared as though the medium golems were made in anticipation of this situation and had been prepared as anti air. Sungchul sensed that there were several hundred of these spears glistening below him, so he quickly turned his body to leave the range of fire. Several hundred pears of ice came flying where Sungchul had just been like an upward falling rain and sprayed its shrapnel in all directions.

It looked just like snow from below.

“Kikiki! Isn’t it gorgeous, Dragoman?”

Ga Xi Ong made a triumphant smile as he turned to look at Dragoman.

“…Mmm.”

Dragoman was a man of few compliments. Especially if it was for a much weaker and unattractive man like Ga Xi Ong.

“Wait. I think he’s also changing his strategy.”

Instead of giving a compliment, he pointed up at the sky at the magic formation that just appeared. It was the magic formation for Meteor.

Several meteors appeared as a result of Echo and landed in the formations the ice spear producing golems were standing, destroying several hundred golems in an instant. Sungchul changed his tactic. Since the enemy was using a strategy designed to counter an individual, he used the traditional counter to numerically superior enemies with the use of a large area of effect spell. But Dragoman knew that such action was meaningless and was internally jealous of Ga Xi Ong. He was regretting his actions.

‘Ah… Instead of trying to build a city with my Colossus, I should have mass produced Golems like this man.’

Even as he thought as much, the lower part of the Colossus was manufacturing new Golems automatically which soon joined the battlelines. This was the hidden ability of the Colossal Calamity Warmachine Bertelgia as designed by the first Creationist, Eckhart.

Creation.

This was the secret behind Vestiare’s overnight creation of the ivory colored city.

“Kukuku… You can’t win against my army no matter how hard you try.”

Ga Xi Ong felt his certainty of winning rise as his army continued to grow. But he did not know, the fact that Sungchul had never once fought to his full potential after he had obtained god-like power.

“…”

Sungchul took off his coat. Sungchul exchanged the coat with something else from the Soul Storage. It was a leather armor made of silver colored fur of a wolf. It had high defense and heat resistance for something made of leather, and most importantly, it had the blessings of regeneration that made it ideal to abuse it recklessly. It was something he had been fond of using since his days in the rebellion army.

Sungchul put the armor on and placed Bertelgia on the inside.

“This looks way better than that worm out coat.”

“This Silver Fang is certainly a great item. But I have worn it for too long.”

He had worn it for over ten years. He had thought that it was about time he stopped wearing it and had stuffed it into a corner of his Soul Storage until today. Sungchul felt a bit of rage.

‘They really thought they could beat me with such a laughable strategy.’

He would show no mercy.

Sungchul thought to himself as he took out his divine weapon Fal Garaz.