Emperor of Steel [EN]: Chapter 9

9. Ambush

1

The slums on the outskirts of Lamer. This place, a haven for many refugees from the Volga Kingdom, had been Princess Reina and her entourage’s home for several days.

They had come to the slums, abandoning their proper residence, for a reason. Recently, Count Monark, under the guise of urban redevelopment, had decided to demolish the slums and had begun forcibly evicting the refugees.

In response, Princess Reina entered the slums and confronted the Gigantes [large, powerful beings] and the Count’s soldiers carrying out the demolition.

“Princess, it’s dangerous here.”

“It’s alright. They won’t lay a finger on me.”

Reina smiled confidently at Pavel’s attempt to dissuade her. Indeed, after Reina arrived, Count Monark’s demolition work was halted. As the situation unfolded, the Count himself came to persuade and threaten her.

“Princess Reina, stop this dangerous behavior. Surely you know the easiest solution, don’t you?”

“Are you suggesting I marry you, Count? No, I have no intention of being the wife of a man who resorts to such despicable tactics after we settled things in the Gigantes Arena.”

“Hmph, the more you resist, the more the Volga refugees will suffer!”

“Then I will share the suffering with my people. If they go hungry, I will go hungry as well, and if they are whipped, I will be whipped with them!”

“Grrr!”

Faced with Reina’s stubbornness, the Count eventually backed down. He wanted to drag her out by force, but he would suffer a loss if the princess’s beauty were harmed. Moreover, if rumors spread and the noble faction found a reason to pick a fight, it would be even more troublesome.

Reina was well aware of this, which was why she was able to protect the refugees from the Count without any weapons.

“Argh! That vixen! I let her off easy, and now she’s trying to climb all over me!”

“Shall we suppress her then?”

At Baron Goth’s question, Monark flew into a rage.

“No! We must get the princess out of the slums without harming a single hair on her head!”

The surrounding vassals showed a lukewarm reaction, as if to say, ‘What do you want us to do?’, but Goth, the schemer, quickly came up with a plan.

“Your Excellency, how about this?”

At Goth’s whispered words, Barok’s eyes widened.

“W-wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

“Don’t worry. The princess’s old retainers won’t stand idly by.”

Baron Goth wore a sly and sinister smile.

And that night,

“Fire!”

“Quick, bring water!”

A fire of unknown origin broke out in one corner of the slums. The flames quickly spread in all directions, reaching the hut where Reina was staying.

“Princess, it’s dangerous! You must evacuate immediately!”

“No, I can’t leave my people behind and escape alone…”

“We’ll be fine, please escape quickly!”

As Baron Goth had predicted, Reina was pushed out of the slums by her loyal retainers and the refugees. Thanks to the Count’s army, the fire did not spread outside the slums, but the damage to the refugees was severe. There were over 1,000 casualties, and the number of displaced people was more than ten times that.

“Sob, sob, I’m sorry. I’m really… sorry.”

Reina was lost in despair and could only cry for a while at the horrific accident. Baron Goth came to offer his condolences to her, who was weeping in front of the charred corpses.

“Tsk, tsk, what a terrible thing to happen.”

“…”

“Still, it’s a relief that the princess is safe.”

Reina shuddered at the sinister smile on Goth’s face. Seeing his smile, she felt like she knew all the circumstances of the fire. And for the first time in her life, she could feel what anger was.

‘I can’t forgive them! I will never forgive them!’

She thought everything would be better once the debt problem was resolved. But the Count’s sinister hand did not stop, and the oppression of the people became even worse. She could no longer tolerate it.

‘But right now, I don’t have the power to punish the Count, let alone protect my people.’ Moreover, she couldn’t just be angry and lament. She had to somehow take care of the tens of thousands of refugees who had lost their homes and were driven out into the streets.

So, Reina, along with her retainers, including Pavel and Victor, sought ways to address this.

“How about asking other lords for help?”

Pavel shook his head at Victor’s suggestion.

“Would they really help? If they were going to help, they would have already stepped in when the princess was in trouble because of the debt.”

“No, I think differently. The debt issue was a personal matter, so they might have turned a blind eye, but this situation is different.”

“Even if it’s different, would they really step forward…”

The refugees of the old Volga Kingdom were not welcomed. They had been wandering around the Empire and were eventually driven down south. In this situation, would there be any lord willing to accept the refugees while incurring huge losses?

“Still, I have to ask for help. That’s all I can do right now.”

“Princess…”

“I’ll go see Marquis Myers first. He’s the most powerful lord in the south.”

Though she didn’t tell her retainers, Reina was determined to sell even her own body if it meant she could protect her people. The reason she had kept her chastity until now was because of her pride and self-esteem as the last descendant of the Kirillov royal family. But it was not worth keeping if it meant abandoning her people to terrible hardship.

“I’ll leave right away. Please prepare.”

“Yes, I understand, Princess.”

Reina, with Victor and Pavel as her companions, headed straight to Brandon, where Marquis Myers’s lord’s castle was located. It was late at night, but she couldn’t afford to delay if she wanted to save her people.

2

The sun began to set, and soon a deep darkness arrived. Just as they were worried about having to sleep outdoors, Luke’s party found a small inn by the roadside and immediately took rooms and had a late dinner.

“Those peddlers we met during the day, they seemed more like mercenaries than merchants, didn’t they?”

Rogers nodded at Philip’s words.

“I think so too. Mercenaries sometimes join as escorts, but they seemed too skilled. Besides, it’s strange for a peddler to be driving an expensive trailer, so I told them we should part ways immediately.”

Luke, who had been eating silently, inwardly agreed with the two men’s opinions.

‘What was in that trailer was definitely a Gigante.’ They disguised it as cargo by covering it with thick cloth, but they couldn’t hide the Gigante’s unique mana flow. He didn’t know who they were, but seeing them disguised as merchants and carrying five Gigantes, they were definitely not ordinary people.

‘Moreover, they deliberately stopped in front of us. If so, perhaps…’

Luke suddenly remembered a story he had overheard. It was a conversation between Hans and his vassals, that the Gigante accident that had put a minor lord in critical condition was the work of someone’s instigation. The blacksmith who caused the accident was found dead in a neighboring territory, making it very difficult to uncover the mastermind.

‘Are they assassins targeting me?’ It was possible that Rogers or Philip had a grudge against them. But Luke somehow felt that they were targeting him. If so, it was the right choice to leave in a hurry before they took action during the day.

Of course, if they were targeting him, they wouldn’t just sit idly by. It would be better to leave quickly rather than stay overnight at the inn.

‘But seeing that they sent Gigantes and high-class mercenaries, they must be quite powerful… Why would they want to kill a minor lord from a rural territory with no influence?’

As Luke was analyzing the situation, he suddenly sensed an unusual fluctuation of mana and jumped up from his seat.

“What’s wrong, young lord?”

“We have to get out of here right now!”

“Yes?”

Rogers jumped up from his seat and grabbed the bewildered Philip by the scruff of his neck, dragging him out through the back door. Although he didn’t have the same intuition as Luke, he had enough experience as a knight commander to sense what was about to happen from the young lord’s urgent expression.

Bang!

“W-what, who are you?!”

The moment the two men went out the back door, the front door was smashed open, and masked men armed to the teeth rushed in. The masked man with shaggy hair at the front, or rather, Tizel, cut down the protesting owner with a single blow and gave an order.

“Wipe them all out and find the young lord!”

“Yes!”

They were the Shadow Knights sent by Count Monark. They had met Luke on their way to the Rakan territory, and after secretly pursuing him during the day, they launched an attack as night fell.

“Argh!”

“P-please, save me… Aagh!”

As soon as Tizel’s order was given, the Shadow Knights mercilessly swung their swords. The guests who were having dinner in the dining room, the lodgers who were sleeping in their rooms, and even the cooks in the kitchen were all massacred without exception. For no reason, simply because they were in the same place as Luke.

“Captain Tizel, we can’t find them anywhere…”

“Argh!”

A scream was heard from behind the inn. But the scream came from the Shadow Knights who were surrounding the inn, not from the guests or the target.

“Tch, did they already escape outside?”

Tizel, hearing his subordinates’ screams, ordered the inn to be set on fire to destroy the evidence and then went outside. Looking in the direction where the sounds of clashing weapons were coming from, he saw Luke’s party exchanging blows with the Shadow Knights in the darkness.

“Captain, these guys are no joke!”

“If you have time to talk, swing your sword more!”

Rogers was an upper-level Expert, and Philip was a mid-level Expert, but they couldn’t find a breakthrough. It was partly because they were fighting while protecting Luke, but also because the Shadow Knights were not easy opponents. Among those who surrounded them, there were more than three who had reached the lower level of Expert, and there were as many as ten sword users. And the most serious problem was that the Gigantes that had been waiting nearby were approaching.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

“Oh no, this is bad!”

“Everyone, close your eyes!”

At Luke’s shout, Rogers and Philip closed their eyes, though puzzled. At the same time, Luke activated his magic.

“Sun, shine in the darkness!”

Flash—!

A dazzling flash of light burst from Luke’s hand. It was a simple Flash spell, but the sudden flash struck the eyes of the Shadow Knights, who were accustomed to the darkness, like needles.

“Argh!”

“I-I can’t see!”

Even the Gigante riders seemed to have lost their sight for a moment, as the Gigantes stumbled and stopped moving.

“Now’s our chance, let’s get out of here!”

“D-damn it! Catch them!”

Luke’s party pushed away the struggling Shadow Knights and escaped the encirclement. Tizel, who had arrived a step late, was furious at the pathetic state of his subordinates.

“You idiots! You were defeated by a mere low-level magic? And what the hell were you magicians doing!”

There were also five mercenary mages in the Shadow Knights to provide Gigante maintenance and magic support.

“W-well… we didn’t have any information that the target was a mage, and there was no sign that he was going to use magic…”

“Shut up! If you have time to make useless excuses, go after them and deal with them right now!”

Tizel urged his subordinates and began the pursuit, following the traces left by Luke’s party.

3

“You were truly amazing, young lord.”

“That’s right. It was really appropriate.”

Rogers and Philip were impressed by Luke’s brilliant move. Like the opposing mages, they hadn’t noticed that Luke was going to use magic. They knew he wasn’t a mage, and Luke had used his magic very secretly, fearing that the enemy would see through it.

“But was the magic you used earlier a spell magic?”

“Captain, I guarantee that the young lord will definitely become a great Rune Knight…”

“If you have the strength to chatter, run faster!”

Luke’s party ran into the mountains. They judged that it would be easier to hide there than on flat ground, and it would be difficult for the enemy to pursue them. However, there was one problem they hadn’t considered. That was that while it was easy to shake off the enemy, it also consumed a lot of stamina.

Philip and Rogers were Expert-level knights who had built up exceptional stamina, and Luke had also strengthened his body with the magic core. But it was not easy to shake off those who were chasing them on horseback. Moreover, the Shadow Knights were experts in dirty work and assassination, so they were very skilled in tracking and searching.

“There they are!”

“Damn it, those guys are persistent!”

Philip shuddered as the Shadow Knights continued to chase them. Rogers, with a stern face, pushed Luke forward and said,

“We’ll buy you some time. Please escape first, young lord.”

“But…”

“Don’t worry. We’re not weak enough to be defeated by such despicable guys.”

Luke knew that too. If he was there, they might not be able to fully demonstrate their abilities due to the pressure of having to protect their lord.

‘Of course, if I use golems or black magic, there’s no need to feel any pressure at all…’

He had a lot to do in the future, so it wouldn’t be good to reveal his hand so early. And if his vassals became suspicious, it would be troublesome. Deciding that, Luke decided to run away first.

“Both of you, don’t you dare die.”

“Yes, don’t worry and go quickly!”

Philip and Rogers, having sent Luke away, drew their swords. And at the same time, they unleashed their auras and charged towards the assassins. “Die!”

“How dare you target the Rakan family! You’ve got some nerve!”

They charged towards the assassins and swung their swords mercilessly. The Shadow Knights fell, spraying blood from their onslaught.

“Argh!”

“Ugh!”

“Damn it, don’t fight alone! Attack them in a group!”

The two men’s valiant and fierce momentum was like a lion subduing a pack of wild dogs.

Startled, the assassins finally tried to join forces, but by then, more than a dozen had already been killed or wounded.

They had no choice but to focus all their efforts on dealing with the two men, abandoning any thought of chasing after Luke.

After running for about an hour,

Luke, having covered a good distance, turned onto a path leading up a cliff.

“I guess I can relax now,” Luke muttered, glancing back.

But as if in response to his words, a mocking laugh came from ahead.

“Heh heh heh, isn’t it a bit early to relax?”

Tiesel and other Shadow Knights appeared from the front.

While their comrades were chasing Luke’s group, they had been lying in ambush at a likely escape route, waiting for their target to appear.

It was practically a rabbit hunt.

Luke clicked his tongue at the sight of dozens of assassins and five giants standing behind them.

“Are you really trying to catch me? Don’t you think this is a bit much?”

“Heh heh heh, even an ogre does his best when catching a kobold.”

“I suppose so. One should always do their best in everything.”

Luke nodded in agreement, causing Tiesel to frown.

Shouldn’t he be bewildered or furious at the sight of them? What was with that composure?

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Not at all. The reason I thought I could relax earlier was because…”

Luke paused mid-sentence and made a hand seal in the air.

Immediately after, the bracelet’s summoning magic activated.

And finally, giants lined up on either side of Luke.

They were 5-meter-tall golems [artificial beings animated by magic].

“It’s because I can use my power without worrying about my vassals.”

“Th-that’s… !”

The Shadow Knights were flustered.

They had figured out that their target could use magic a little while ago, but they never imagined he could control golems, let alone more than ten of them.

“Hmph, they’re just dumb dolls anyway! We have far superior giants!”

Tiesel shouted, quickly calming his flustered subordinates.

His words were not entirely wrong.

In today’s world, where giants reign as the ultimate combat weapon, golems were nothing more than relics of the past, occasionally seen at construction sites.

They were skilled assassins, not some dim-witted monsters, so there was no way they would be defeated by golems.

Moreover, as their leader said, they had giants, didn’t they?

A giant would crush those stone and wood dolls in an instant.

“Get rid of them! I’ll give a special reward to whoever takes down that anachronistic fool’s head first!”

“Ooooh!”

Tiesel’s words spurred the Shadow Knights to rush towards Luke. The giants also began to charge, not wanting to be left behind.

Despite the Shadow Knights’ ferocious charge, Luke wore a sly smile.

“Hmph, you’re the fools!”

KWA-AA-AAANG—!

The moment Luke commanded them with marionette magic, the golems, with their fists raised, simultaneously slammed them into the ground.

‘Crazy…!’

Tiesel scoffed at Luke’s golems, who were doing something absurd, neither attacking nor defending.

But that scoff soon turned into a gruesome grimace.

KU-GU-GU-GU-GU-GUNG!

With a roar, a huge crack appeared, and the ground was collapsing.

4

CRACK! RUMBLE!

The path on the cliff disappeared in an instant, and the Shadow Knights’ bodies were suspended in the air.

“Waaah!”

“S-save me!”

They struggled to avoid falling, but there was nowhere to step, so they had no choice but to fall.

The giants were in an even worse situation.

Due to their heavy weight, they fell down the steep cliff faster than the knights, crashing with a terrible roar and shattering miserably.

“Even an ogre can get hurt if they underestimate a kobold.”

Luke looked down and smirked.

Before summoning the golems, he had examined the state of the ground.

It was quite solid, but he thought he could break it if he concentrated the golems’ power.

Moreover, the assassins foolishly added to the load by bringing in the giants.

The result was, of course, a clean wipeout.

“I wanted to capture a few of them and ask who was behind this, but at this height, there’s no way they could survive… !”

Luke was interrupted mid-sentence, startled by a sharp energy flying from the darkness.

The dagger that flew from below barely grazed his body as he quickly twisted away.

“Kuh!”

“You damn brat!”

Tiesel shouted desperately as he climbed back up the cliff.

Not only him, but four others had also survived.

In a situation where even the mages were flustered and couldn’t deploy fly magic, they had miraculously survived by sticking their swords into the cliff.

Having gone to the very gates of hell, they wore expressions like demons.

“I won’t let you die easily. I’ll grind you alive until you beg me to kill you!”

“Tch, attack!”

Luke commanded the golems.

But the five assassins who had survived the ordeal were not so weak that they would die from the golems’ punches.

They lightly evaded the golems’ attacks and rushed towards Luke like lightning.

“Dark Torna… Huk!”

Luke groaned as he tried to blow away the assassins with a storm of black magic.

A sudden, stinging pain was felt in his heart.

The magic failed to manifest, and the assassins’ swords flew mercilessly at him as he faltered.

“Kuh-euk!”

Tiesel’s sword grazed Luke’s cheek.

Following him, four assassins rushed in and slashed his left arm, the back of his right hand, his thigh, and his calf.

He avoided fatal wounds, but it wasn’t because Luke was lucky.

As Tiesel had declared earlier, they had deliberately avoided fatal wounds to inflict as much pain as possible.

Tiesel approached the staggering Luke, placed his sword on his shoulder, and slowly stabbed it in.

“This time, I’ll carve out your flesh, then I’ll show you the exposed bone, and after that…”

Tiesel suddenly lost his words. It was because Luke was deploying black magic even while screaming in pain.

“Kuaaak! Black Bind!”

DRRR! WHIRR!

Black plant stems sprouted from the ground and instantly wrapped around the assassins’ bodies.

“W-what is this!”

Tiesel tried to shake off the vines that were binding him, but the more he struggled, the tighter they became.

So he tried to cut them with his sword by drawing on his aura [a manifestation of inner energy].

But the aura he had painstakingly drawn out was flowing straight through the vines!

The more he struggled, the more his aura kept flowing out like water from a leaky bucket.

‘Th-this is!’

Tiesel stared at Luke with wide eyes.

He could feel his own aura, which had just been taken away, coming from Luke’s body as he slowly rose.

This strange technique that absorbs the opponent’s power was definitely…

“B-black magic… !”

A descendant of the hero Rakan using black magic?!

“Kuaaaak!”

Tiesel tried to say something, but Luke’s movements were faster.

At his gesture, the vines extracted aura even faster, and Tiesel, with his eyes wide in shock, withered like a mummy.

The aura and life force that were sucked out were all absorbed into Luke’s body.

Thanks to that, his wounds were healed, but his expression was not so bright.

‘It was a technique I used to absorb the power of demons, but I never thought I’d use it against humans!’

He had vowed in the past, when he learned this black magic, that he would never use it against humans.

But that vow was broken today.

He had no choice but to do it to survive, but his heart was heavy because he had broken the code he had set in the past.

Luke turned his gaze to the four remaining assassins.

Although they had not had their power absorbed, they were completely helpless and had clearly witnessed how their expert-level captain had died so pathetically.

The terrifying power of darkness, which they had only heard of in rumors and old stories, was being recreated before their eyes, and their jaws were trembling uncontrollably.

“Ugh! S-spare me…”

“Just answer my questions. Who ordered you to kill me?”

“It was Baron Goth.”

“Baron Goth? Who is he and what does he do?”

“He’s the chief steward of the Monark County.”

‘As I thought…’

Luke’s expression twisted.

Considering what happened at the Giant Arena, the Count would want to kill him.

Not only had he interfered with his attempt to win Princess Reina, but he had also taken a huge prize.

But considering the previous assassination attempts, it didn’t seem to be just because of that.

Of course, it wasn’t certain that Count Monark was behind it, but Luke’s gut feeling was telling him so.

“Why did the Count try to kill me? It can’t be just because of what happened at the Giant Arena, can it?”

“I-I don’t know about that… Hieeeek! P-please spare me!”

The body of the man being interrogated was sucked into the ground.

The assassins, startled by that, begged for their lives, but Luke was cold.

“I’ll spare the one who tells me the reason.”

“I-I really don’t know!”

“We were just following Baron Goth’s orders… Uwaaak!”

The low-ranking assassins had no way of knowing the Count’s intentions. In the end, they were all sucked into the ground.

After cleaning up neatly, Luke ground his teeth, thinking of the pig-like Count Monark.

“Count Monark, huh… Alright, since you’re the closest, I’ll kill you first.”

He didn’t like him anyway, since he resembled Duke Baroque from the old days.

With this incident on top of that, he had no intention of letting him live.

‘I want to go and tear him to pieces right now, but I’ll let it slide this once. After all, thanks to your assassination attempt, I got this body.’

As Luke thought this, Rogers and Philip’s voices came from the distance behind him.

“Young Lord! Where are you?”

“Young Lord!”

Luke quickly returned the golems to the subspace in his bracelet. And just in case, he used Black Bind and carefully checked to make sure no traces of magic remained.

Just as he finished cleaning up, the two men appeared.

They were quite tired and wounded, but they didn’t seem to be seriously injured.

“You’re safe, Young Lord!”

“Ah, that’s a relief.”

They were happy, but their eyes widened when they saw that the path on the cliff had been cut off.

“What happened?”

“Well, I was running away this way, and their main force was waiting here, blocking the path. They even brought giants, but as they rushed to catch me, the weak ground collapsed.”

“Huh, that happened…”

Rogers was dumbfounded, but he didn’t ask any further, thinking it was plausible enough.

“You were really lucky.”

“Indeed. It must be because the ancestor Rakan was watching over us.”

Luke’s expression hardened at Philip’s praise of Rakan.

Far from watching over him, Rakan’s curse had almost prevented him from getting revenge and sent him to the afterlife.

‘The wave that stopped the black circle in my heart when I tried to use the storm’s black magic, that was definitely the wave of the curse.’

The curse was activated at a truly critical moment.

If the target had not been Luke, he would have died in all likelihood.

‘Damn it! I’m definitely not him, but who the hell put such a terrible curse on me?’

While Luke was lost in thought, Rogers said,

“Anyway, there might be more stragglers, so we should hurry to Lamer City.”

“No, I won’t go to Lamer.”

“Yes? Why all of a sudden?”

They were originally going to Lamer to buy giants.

Rogers wondered if there was another reason for Luke’s sudden objection.

Luke, who couldn’t say that he had dealt with and interrogated the assassins with black magic, made up a plausible story.

“I recognized the voice of one of the assassins. When I thought about it, it was the voice I heard when I went to Lamer last time.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Philip, you remember? I went to spy on the maintenance room of the Lipi Clan. One of Count Monark’s knights had that voice.”

At those words, Rogers’ expression became serious.

“Then… Count Monark might have sent the assassins.”

“That’s right. There’s no proof, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.”

“Then let’s go to Brandon City. It’s the biggest city in the southern part of the Empire, and there are many branches of large magic towers and medium and small magic towers.”

“Okay, let’s go to Brandon City then.”

Luke nodded at Philip’s suggestion.

Brandon City was a bit far, but it was better to avoid danger as much as possible. And since there were many magic towers, he thought there would be a lot to see.

The three rested until sunrise, and when morning came, they descended from the mountain.

A grueling journey to Brandon City was expected, but the situation changed when they acquired an unexpected item in the middle of the mountain.

“Isn’t that a trailer?”

“That’s right. It seems the assassins used it to transport the giants. They must have left it here while chasing us.”

“Then let’s use it.”

“But we need a mage to control it… Oh, right, Young Lord, you know a bit about magic, don’t you?”

“Yes, it’s my first time handling something like this, but…”

Luke was a bit worried, but controlling the trailer was easier than he thought.

He just had to pour mana [magical energy] into the crystal ball connected to the magic steam engine, and it started.

Of course, he had the inconvenience of using spell magic to avoid revealing that he was a mage, but he was able to start it safely.

Then, when he pulled the lever to the side labeled ‘forward,’ the trailer slowly moved. The direction was controlled by turning the wheel with a semi-circular control stick.

After practicing the controls a few times, Luke took Philip and Rogers and set off for Brandon City.

Unaware of what events or encounters awaited them there.