The momentum of the gnolls had clearly been broken.
Even as they surged forward in a mass, the ones at the very front kept glancing around, trying to fall back somehow.
But the gnolls in the rear, unwilling to take the lead, kept shoving those in front, forcing them right up to the palisade.
In any case, they couldn’t just die like this, so the ones pushed forward eventually began to attack.
“Thrust!”
“Hah!”
Thud-thud!
At Catherine’s shout, the imperial soldiers on the western palisade who were the first to be engaged drove their spears forward.
With a single strike, more than ten gnolls were either killed or incapacitated and collapsed.
The palisade stood just under three meters tall.
From atop it, thrusting down with spears over two meters long was more than enough to hold the gnolls at bay.
However, it couldn’t stop those that dropped low and rushed in on all fours.
Gnolls with axes clenched in their jaws crouched low and darted forward, hacking at the palisade in an instant.
Crack! Crack!
They were stronger than humans and wielded axes modelled on those used by lumberjacks, with large, heavy heads. Even though their crude metallurgy meant that the axes were neither sharp nor durable, the ogres’ sheer brute force allowed them to smash into the logs and carve them apart mercilessly.
“Target the ones hacking at the wall!”
Karl shouted loudly, clapping a few soldiers on the back, then raised his voice again.
“Thrust!”
“Hah!”
Thud-thud!
To strike the gnolls crouched low and hacking at the wall, the soldiers had to lean their bodies out past the palisade and fully extend their arms. Naturally, it left them dangerously exposed.
Even so, the imperial soldiers carried out the risky order flawlessly.
While the soldiers Karl directed killed the ones hacking at the wall, others simultaneously thrust their spears with all their strength to block off any space the gnolls could use to attack, protecting their comrades.
Gnolls struck in the head and back by spears while hacking at the wall collapsed, and faced with such solid defense, the gnolls hesitated and retreated.
Karl almost felt embarrassed that he had insisted on fighting personally to Catherine.
These were the same imperial soldiers who had fought so well even while forming a defensive line with wagons. Now, fighting with the added advantage of the palisade, there was practically nothing mere gnolls could do.
“Shields up!”
Clack! Thud! Thud!
At that moment, Catherine shouted in a powerful voice.
As the imperial soldiers reacted swiftly and raised their shields, the axes thrown by the gnolls were easily blocked.
The balance of the axes was terrible, so they flew erratically, and not a single one struck properly with its blade. Most hit the outside of the palisade and fell, even striking other gnolls, and those that did reach the shields only made contact with the handles.
However, things grew slightly troublesome when the gnolls realized that while the shields were raised, the soldiers couldn’t thrust with their spears. One after another, they began hurling axes.
“Sir Karl, lower yourself and wait.”
Protected by Catherine, Karl crouched and waited for the absurd attack to pass.
Below, the gnolls, now emboldened, pounded against the base of the palisade.
But after a short while, the tide turned instantly.
Having thrown away their axes, the gnolls were left barehanded, with nothing they could do.
“Kill the gnolls!”
As soon as the axes stopped flying, Catherine gave the order.
While the unarmed gnolls stood there blankly, the soldiers mercilessly speared those hacking at the base of the palisade.
No matter how much the gnolls leapt, they couldn’t reach high enough to attack with their bare hands, allowing the soldiers to kill them with ease.
You can’t expect tactical thinking from monsters, but this was truly a hopelessly foolish attack.
Still, it only happened because the imperial soldiers were that strong.
If conscripts tried the same thing, it would be chaos. Some would lose their footing and fall outside the palisade, others would drop their spears, and some would be grabbed and dragged off by gnolls mid-thrust.
With the western side of the palisade through which the gnolls had charged en masse now completely blocked off, the gnolls began to drift towards the other sections.
But they weren’t intelligent enough to make proper tactical decisions, nor did they have a commander, so each acted on its own.
Only a handful managed to circle around and attack elsewhere, and naturally, they were beaten down and died meaningless deaths under spear thrusts.
The imperial soldiers piled up gnoll corpses as easily as harvesting grain, and in less than ten minutes, dozens of bodies lay scattered before the palisade, bleeding out.
But as the corpses accumulated, a new problem emerged.
Stacked high enough, the bodies formed a crude platform. Step on them and a gnoll could leap up, grab the palisade, and start climbing. The gnolls began to linger nearby, sizing up their chances.
“Move.”
Catherine pushed her way between the imperial soldiers, examined the base of the palisade, and took position where the bodies had piled up the highest.
With an imperial knight capable of handling mana standing there, that section would not fall.
But to the gnolls, Catherine who was smaller in build than the imperial soldiers looked like an easier target.
Grr! Grr!
The gnolls barked, watching for an opening. Then several of them shoved the one at the front with all their strength, throwing it toward the palisade.
Thud!
Catherine calmly thrust her spear, crushing the creature’s skull with perfect precision.
She killed it before it even reached the wall, preventing the corpse pile from growing any higher.
But if the corpses kept piling up like this, it would become a problem. Especially in the sections guarded not by imperial soldiers, but by conscripts.
I’ll have to change tactics next time.
Watching this, Catherine organized her thoughts.
Even in the midst of that, she mechanically struck down the gnolls rushing at her, one after another.
In the end, the gnolls, blocked by the massive wall that was Catherine and the imperial soldiers, gave up after piling up meaningless deaths and began to slink away.
“Don’t let them take the bodies!”
Seeing the gnolls crawling in even now, grabbing limbs and trying to drag away the corpses, Karl felt a chill run down his spine and ordered them to be stopped.
Even after Catherine and the imperial soldiers leaned fully out past the palisade and killed every last one of them, the gnolls couldn’t easily bring themselves to leave, their eyes fixed on the bodies.
What on earth is happening in that forest?
Karl felt goosebumps rise at the gnolls’ incomprehensible behavior.
It couldn’t be that they were trying to hold funerals.
“No one died!”
“A complete victory!”
“Waaaaah!”
Having slaughtered the gnolls one-sidedly and held the line without losses, Axeblade Village fell into a full festival atmosphere.
“Long live Sir Karl!”
“Duren is watching over us!”
The soldiers believed Karl was under Duren’s protection.
Some became so frenzied that they jumped up and down atop the palisade and nearly fell off, forcing Corbin to sweat as he struggled to bring them under control.
“We need to examine the gnoll corpses.”
Even amid all that, Karl, with his face pale, descended from the palisade under the protection of Catherine and the imperial soldiers.
The night before, he had passed out right after the battle and hadn’t grasped the situation, but now that he had seen firsthand the gnolls’ obsession with the corpses, his hands trembled with unease.
They opened the gate on the eastern side of the palisade and went out. Beneath the section guarded by conscripts, only blood and drag marks remained….no bodies.
Without a single exception, every corpse had been taken from all areas except where Catherine and the imperial soldiers had been stationed.
Under tight protection, Karl reached the western palisade. Seeing the pile of gnoll corpses there, he clenched his teeth.
All the bodies that had been out of reach of spears had been taken.
“…Sir Corbin!”
At Karl’s call, Corbin came running and leaned his head out past the palisade.
“Yes, Sir Karl!”
Corbin too seemed greatly encouraged by the flawless victory. His flushed face and raised voice felt somewhat unfamiliar.
“Have the soldiers move the gnolls inside the palisade immediately!”
After saying that to Corbin, Karl ordered the imperial soldiers to guard the gnoll corpses.
At Karl’s pale face and thunderous command, everyone sprang into action in a frenzy.
The joy of victory was brief. Seeing Prince Karl so unusually wary, fear quickly crept in.
“Sir Karl, do you know something?”
Catherine asked in a cautious tone.
Karl hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.
“I’ll explain shortly.”
The gnoll corpses were quickly brought inside the palisade.
After that, Karl ordered the hunters to dissect them.
“Examine them thoroughly. Don’t miss even the smallest detail.”
No one understood what was going on, and they were visibly confused.
Still, at the words of Karl whom they regarded as a messenger of the gods, the hunters began dismembering the gnolls, sweating as they worked.
The bodies, already mangled from spear thrusts, were in terrible condition. Blood pooled everywhere, and the ruptured organs made it look no different from a scene out of hell.
Suppressing his nausea, Karl carefully examined the glistening red corpses and exposed organs under the torchlight.
“Do you notice anything unusual?”
“They seem like ordinary gnolls.”
“That’s what I think as well.”
Even Catherine who had studied monsterology as an imperial knight, and Corbin who had fought and killed monsters in reality, found nothing out of the ordinary.
But the hunters, who had dissected countless carcasses, discovered something strange.
“Sir Karl… these things, their insides are empty.”
One of the hunters spoke carefully as he split open a gnoll’s abdomen and pulled out its organs.
“Empty?”
As Karl stepped closer to inspect, the hunter who believed Karl to be a divine messenger quickly spread the organs out for him to see.
“Look.”
The hunter scraped open the stomach and intestines with a dagger.
A strange, fishy stench mixed with the smell of blood hit them. In the cold autumn night air, a wave of heat rose up, and Karl had to fight back the urge to gag.
“The insides are empty. I mean it literally…there’s nothing inside.”
“…Could it have been starving for a long time?”
Swallowing back bile, Karl asked.
The hunter shook his head.
“No matter what, it can’t be this clean. Creatures like gnolls, especially ones that eat anything, usually have extremely filthy intestines. Even if they go hungry for a week, there’s still waste left inside.”
It was far too crude to say to an imperial prince, but the experience of a hunter who had made a living killing countless creatures was, in this moment, more valuable than that of Catherine, an imperial knight.
“From the looks of it, they definitely haven’t been starving for long. Their flesh is firm, and their fur is glossy.”
“……”
Karl’s vivid green eyes wavered for a moment at the hunter’s words.
He glanced over the scattered corpses, briefly looked up at the sky, then lowered his gaze again to the hunter, who was waiting for praise.
“…Good work.”
“Oh, it was nothing.”
At Karl’s brief remark, the hunter beamed and waved his blood-soaked hands dismissively.
Karl stared at the gnoll’s empty insides with a pale face, then slowly turned to Catherine and Corbin and spoke.
“For now, let’s start with post-battle cleanup.”
***
The cleanup did not take long. The battle itself had ended quickly to begin with, and there were hardly any losses. Even repairs to the wooden barricades were unnecessary.
However, dealing with the piled-up gnoll corpses proved troublesome.
“Burn them. Leave not even a trace.”
At Karl’s firm command, they used even their precious oil to burn everything thoroughly.
Aside from those assigned to night watch, the soldiers celebrated their victory and went to bed at ease.
But Karl, Catherine, Corbin, and even Milton could not sleep late into the night.
“Are you saying their insides were completely empty? And yet they were that healthy?”
“That’s correct.”
Catherine and Corbin recognized that the situation was unsettling, but they were not as shocked as Milton.
As the imperial physician, Milton knew very well that such a thing was impossible.
“…It’s possible they’ve been consuming something that leaves no trace in the intestines. Something liquid, perhaps, yet capable of providing enough energy for activity—something extraordinary.”
Drawing on his knowledge, Milton pondered the matter.
“They may even be feeding on a transcendent force like mana. If so, this is a serious issue that cannot be ignored not just in Hilpin Territory, but across the Empire.”
If something that valuable existed, it would need to be secured and gathered without leaving anything behind.
Milton subtly suggested to Karl that they should request greater imperial support.
But Karl firmly shook his head.
“That won’t be possible. There will be no further support from the imperial family. And no aid from other territories or nobles either.”
“……”
Karl’s firm words weighed heavily in the air.
Corbin looked bewildered, unable to understand the situation, but for Karl, this was an unavoidable decision.
If something that valuable existed, Karl had every reason to keep it for himself in secret. If word got out, not only would that mysterious substance be taken, but the silver would be lost as well.
And there was another reason.
This doesn’t feel like something so convenient.
Karl felt a faint sense of fear, along with unease, at the sight of the gnoll’s empty insides.
It came from the memories of a modern man who had grown up exposed to countless stories from novels, films, and comics.
Something unknown is happening in the forest.
Gnolls multiplying endlessly, as if there were no limit.
The existence of silver that no one had known about.
The crude yet rapidly developed intelligence of gnolls who had acquired metallurgy in a short time.
Their irrational obsession with corpses.
And their bodies healthy enough to tear a person apart with their bare hands, yet with insides that were completely empty.
The secret behind all of this could not possibly be some miraculous cure-all.
Could this too be something Madius had intended?
Leave a Reply