Left behind, Forgotten, and Returned (1)

The dead had come to the fortress at night, without fail, and the soldiers of Winter Castle had to suffer as they heard the sound of their lost ones throughout the night.

The first day entailed no more than dealing with the soldiers who had fallen for the lure of the undead.

On the second day, the situation was the same. I stood on the wall every night and fiercely growled at the darkness. The darkness would stop once I started reciting. It would study me and then disappear. I spent the third and the fourth night like that.

When the fifth day dawned, the boundary between night and day had begun to crumble.

Mid-afternoon, with the sun still in the sky, the dead had not yet withdrawn. The sound of their weeping echoed all over the castle. The grief spread by the dead during the night began to affect the soldiers in earnest.

The soldiers were suffering from sorrow and longing for those who they would never see again.

I had to stand on that wall and watch as they wept.

Although they knew that the undead were causing such mental wounds, the feelings of loss had become etched like scars upon the depths of their souls. None could tend to such wounds, so I was left with little choice.

I had to prevent the dead from growing stronger and wilder during the night.

Another day passed.

In the gloomy atmosphere of the castle, even the knights who held accumulated mana within their bodies began to shake.

“Your Highness, I’d rather open the gates and fight them,” the bold Count Balahard stated.

“Not possible.”

Vincent gave a cruel chuckle at the bad state that the soldiers found themselves in.

“Night and day, these grief-stricken soldiers do not know when it will end or what they can do. It is too harsh to expect them to endure more!”

“It is better than being taken over by ghosts.”

“Your Highness, in a short time, you will lose the strength to hold onto your sword! I’d rather open the gates and find a way for us to go before these-“

“That’s what they want,” I said in a firm voice as I pressed my point.

And it was exactly what these beings wanted. The dead were now waiting for the gates to open themselves. They wanted to take over the bodies of the living, to claim their blood and flesh.

“So you would like to wipe them out before they get in?”

“What weapon do you think I’d use to kill ghosts, to kill beings of unreality?”

If it was possible to cut the things down with swords, I would have done so already. Since ghosts were more like illusions, like a virtual manifestation of the death realm, conventional weapons could do nothing against them – at least as long as they hid in the darkness without taking on corporeal form.

“The soldiers’ patience has reached its limit,” Vincent said in a heavy tone.

I already knew this. Rangers were wandering around the castle, their faces gloomy, and the sound of complaints from all over the place was a sure sign that the soldiers were reaching their limit.

“The soldiers of Balahard are strong. They will not fall.”

All I could tell Vincent was to wait; the time would soon come.

I silently awaited that moment, and it came when the eighth night fell upon us.

‘Kyuuuhaaaahaaahuuu,’ the ghosts gathering under the walls wailed and whispered each night, and borrowed the voices of departed souls, crying out in those voices in a cruel mockery of life.

‘Kyuuaaah aaahhhhhh!’

Thousand of voices, those of deceased spouses and lost parents and children, roared in their collective wailing. Thick clumps of darkness now spread wide over the snowfield, permeating under the ground.

When I saw this, I shouted with all my effort, “All, prepare for battle!”

The knights took up the order fiercely and shouted it along the lines, “Each ranger to his location!”

The rangers, wracked by depression where they stood under the walls, now got up from their seats in amazement as they heard the orders being roared out.

‘Buwooo woo wooo wooo!’ spread the horn’s cry throughout the castle.

“Unseal the warehouse! Bring the weapons to the walls!”

“What are you doing, boys!? Move it, move it!” the knights who were guarding the gates shouted as they kicked the ranger’s asses, telling them to get their shit together.

The rangers who had flocked to the castle walls now struggled to take up their usual posts.

“What about your bow!?”

“Oh, I forgot!”

Some of the rangers had not even brought their weapons, standing around with empty hands.

I frowned as I watched this uninteresting skit play out on the wall. They were not acting professionally at all, but I didn’t blame them.

They had suffered the siege of the dead for an entire week now. Quite a few soldiers had collapsed or lost their minds. It was great that the rangers could even manage to follow orders, even if they followed them too hurriedly.

“All are ready for battle!” came the report of the knights when the rangers had finally taken up their positions. It was then that the ground began to shake.

Through the pure-white snowfield, there appeared hands of rotten, blueish flesh. Next followed the forearms and the blue-hued heads, hungry blue heads.

Bodies popped up all across the snowfield.

I watched it all with a firm face.

I had known that the dead would never be patient enough to await the opening of Winter Castle’s gates by themselves. The appetite of the deceased was not a patient hunger – they could never wait too long to enjoy their dinner. I had expected that, sooner or later, they would come to directly knock on our gates with physical bodies.

Still, there was something that I had not expected. It was that the corpses the dead would use as vessels would be so intact. They had entered the remains of Balahard’s soldiers and knights who had died fighting in the harsh winters, generation after generation.

The bodies of those soldiers who could not be buried now awoke after their long, frozen slumber. One could see the signs of the battles they had waged, with a limb missing here or there, but their human shapes remained more or less intact.

And among them rose the corpses of those who had but so recently died upon this field.

“Zane…?”

“My God! It’s Gibson!”

The rangers groaned as they started recognizing former comrades. Other veteran rangers kept their eyes peeled as they stared across the snow. Their faces were ashen pale as they looked to see whether they could recognize anyone dear to them among all those terrible corpses.

I did the same as them. Please don’t be here. Please don’t… ###

I hoped with all eagerness that my uncle would not be in that mass of abominable flesh.

“He is not there,” Vincent said, as if he had noticed my fear.

“My father is not there.”

I couldn’t laugh nor cry as I heard his words.

I wasn’t sure whether Bale should be relieved that his body didn’t reappear in such a terrible manner, or whether he should be furious that his death had been so terrible that not a trace of his body remained thereafter. I could not decide whether I should be ashamed of my selfish hope.

I looked at Vincent and saw that his was a face filled with self-doubt.

He was clearly troubled by his own treacherous feelings that sprouted from his current position that he had inherited after his father’s death.

However, in the midst of such feelings, I saw that he did not forget his duties as lord of the castle.

“Everyone. Stand fast!” Vincent exclaimed with some ferocity.

“Are they truly the ones you once knew!? No! They are monsters that have taken over those frozen corpses to drink your blood and bite into your flesh!”

Vincent’s voice, loudened by his mana rings, rang out across the walls.

“Consider it in full! We are the warriors who have not yet joined our ancestors, and these abominations sully their memory! We will make our stand here today and honor the spirit of those who died for us!”

The moment I heard this, verses of a poem entered my mind. It was the sad memorial song for a father who was killed while fighting to end all fighting. It was the fleeting song of the extraordinary avenger.

“I piled up green carcasses, raising myself a mountain. Red streams flowed from it, as bloody as nails.”

Even if the corpses we faced were not green.

“I honor your soul before this mountain of mine!”

I held that same desire, of honoring a fallen soul, so no other martial poem suited the occasion better. That verse of the [Poem of Divorce] ended, so I continued with another verse.

“Silent are the snow-capped peaks, the frozen valleys, and the blood-drenched walls.”

The frozen corpses upon the field were a testament to the very history of all the countless wars that had been fought before Winter Castle.

“Only our horns of war are heard, for a new day dawns into which we advance!”

I earnestly hoped that the sound of the trumpet of dawn would drive the night away.

My heart pounded, and mana flowed from me like the ebbing tides. If this had been me a while ago, I would have lost consciousness. But not now – now I was a transcended knight, a Sword Master.

A flame of true spirit lit up on the tip of my sword. And I started to recite [Winter Poetry].

‘Gdsoo-ooh-ooh-ooh!’ a mighty energy spread across the walls.

“Silent are the snow-capped peaks, the frozen valleys, and the blood-drenched walls.

“Only our horns of war are heard, for a new day dawns into which we advance!”

The knights roared fiercely as they followed me in song.

‘Bawoo woo wooo! Trum dum dum trum dum dum dum!’ the rangers, who had been staring in grief out over the snowfield, now blew their horns and beat upon their drums. No one had told them to do so, yet they had heard my promise.

I stared out over the wall.

The frozen corpses were there – now running toward us as their stiffened limbs creaked.

They were no longer an intangible horror, no longer ethereal evil spirits. They were just undead abominations, their bodies frozen.

As I stared at them, I gathered the waves of mana and the noise of my poem into a single point, and I spread it all over the castle walls. I could feel the spirits of the soldiers lifting. The cries of the undead were no longer heard.

All I could hear was the thump, thump, thump, of my heart. I felt hot – as if my body was aflame. If I did not expel this heat right away, my body would be burned to cinders, or so it felt.

“Tonight is the night!” I exclaimed resolutely.

“Tonight, this nightmare ends!” the soldiers took up the shout.

And at that moment, the undead began scaling the walls with their creaking limbs.

I ran to the edge of the wall and watched as the corpses climbed up, their eyes red and their heads lolling.

The flame of my true spirit flowed into my Aura Blade as it formed to the tip of my sword.

This was not destruction, but purification. Blue flames wrapped the undead who had climbed up, and they melted under it.

“Let the dead rest!”

“Banish the evil spirits into the abyss!” Rangers and knights shouted as they drew their swords. Battle was joined between the ascending corpses and the humans on the walls.

The severance had begun – all that had to be burned were the remains of the men of Balahard, who had been asleep for mere months or many centuries, and the evil spirits therein.

I held my sword as I ran along the wall’s rim.

I slashed out over and over again, at random. Countless of the undead became ashes in the flames of my purification, which incinerated them just passing them by.

However, there were still so many corpses that had to be burned.

The nights had felt so long – until yesterday, for today felt nothing like before.

I calculated our time-frame, and decided that I couldn’t afford to take the chance – I had to end this tonight. When dawn comes, the dead spirits would escape from their frozen corpses and once more become naught but insubstantial demons. And then, the nightmare would repeat itself.

“Vincent!”

“Yes!? Your Highness!”

“What’s under the gatehouse?”

Vincent checked and turned back to me.

“There is nothing under its walls!”

After he had confirmed that no undead had managed to pass through the gates, his eyes stretched wide.

“Surely…?” Vincent ran towards me as he realized it. “Oh, no!” he shouted.

Whether he was running to me or not, I still threw myself off the wall.

The undead were crowded there, and those who saw me fall reached out and ground their teeth. Their nails were abnormally long and had grown into sharp talons. These nails now raked the air like a field of jabbing spears.

I pulled back my sword as I plunged down.

‘Kreeeheeh!” the undead screamed as their hands were severed at their wrists, and they turned to ash.

‘Chik,’ I landed in the snow, my boots sinking into it. I looked to the top of the wall.

“Highness!”

Green shadows moved past Vincent as he screamed to me.

The shadows drew their swords as they gracefully reached the snow and surrounded me.

“I take over from here,” I stated. I was surrounded by reliable allies, and so had nothing more to worry about. I jumped into the center of the undead.

Slice, slash, slice, and slash again.

They burned and burned, and burned once more.

Any undead caught in the coruscating blue flames fluttered to the snow as ash.

I fell into a trance as I decimated the undead – then I met them: A group of corpses that seemed more rational, clearly distinguished from the undead who blindly rushed at the wall. I stiffened the moment that I saw them.

They were the Black Lancers who had offered their lives like true heroes in the charge against the warlord. But these were just the shells – their true identities were that of the most powerful of the undead who had risen into unlife.

There was a Death Knight, and he wasn’t just a Death Knight either.

I have never heard of a knight like him in the camp of the Dragon Slayer!? ###

He had been killed four hundred years ago when he had climbed the mountain to kill Gwanryong, the great dragon.

“This is good! If you’re such a knight, maybe you know where the king is.”

These were the first Royal Knights of the kingdom.