The War Department of the Luoyang Sword Clan.
Beyond Yeon So-hyeon’s party perched upon the cliff, the first to catch sight of them were the scouts on the ground.
[T-The War Department…! Sword Clan War Department spotted!]
[What?! Did the forward unit miss them?!]
These were the long-range scouts of the Namgung Clan, a thin web of observers stretched wide across the outskirts of the battlefield.
[Wasn’t the Third Young Master’s elite guard supposed to be tracking them?!]
[They were!]
[D-Don’t tell me they were defeated—?]
“You useless shits…!”
The physical voice of the scout leader sliced through the frantic flurry of sound transmissions. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
According to the Namgung scouts’ strict operational protocols, vocalizing during a mission was forbidden. See the enemy without being seen, that was their creed. However, the sheer authority of the leader’s unsanctioned shout snapped the scouts out of their panic.
[Send the signal to the Military Strategy Bureau immediately!] the leader commanded via transmission, his voice now disciplined. The scouts were stationed on the periphery for this exact reason: to prevent the enemy from introducing an unforeseen variable through an ambush. Their very purpose was being tested in this heartbeat.
[B-But protocol says we must signal the nearest unit first—]
[No!] the leader cut in sharply. They hadn’t received signals from any of the forward units, and while he couldn’t discern the cause, he knew that following the manual now would likely be a death sentence. [Signal the Military Strategy Bureau directly! That’s an order!]
[U-Understood!] A scout, still flattened against the dirt, fumbled for a small mirror. Signaling with reflected light was clumsy for complex reporting, but for a high-priority warning like New Enemy Detected, there was no faster covert method.
Dammit! But the simple task proved difficult. Of all things, we’re facing the setting sun!
Whether by design or sheer misfortune, the enemy was emerging from the west. With the scouts’ backs to the sunset, angling the mirror to catch enough light for a clear signal was a nightmare. A faint, muddy reflection would never be recognized by the Military Strategy Bureau as a formal signal.
[What’s the hold-up?!]
[The sun… it’s—]
That brief hesitation was all the War Department required.
[Give me that! I’ll do it—!] Just as the leader reached to snatch the mirror, a heavy thwack echoed through the grass. A spearhead buried itself directly into the fumbling scout’s face.
“…”
The projectile had arrived with such blinding velocity that to the leader, it appeared as though a jagged iron shaft had spontaneously sprouted from his subordinate’s skull. Horror registered on the remaining scouts’ faces a heartbeat later.
[Scatter!]
The order came too late. Before the whistle of cloven air could even register, a barrage of dozens of javelins rained down upon them. Lacking the scouts’ exact coordinates, the War Department had simply blanketed the entire area in a lethal grid of fire, and scouts were skewered like meat for the spit.
Fuck! This is insane!
Having witnessed the first casualty a split-second before the others, the leader managed to scramble away. He ran low, his belly nearly scraping the earth, teeth gritting until they groaned. How the hell did the Sword Clan find our position?
To survive, he should have kept his head down and vanished, but the metallic tang of his men’s blood on his lips fueled a desperate resolve. Don’t you dare underestimate the Namgung scouts!
He reached into his robes for a smoke canister. Igniting it would pin a target on his back for the entire enemy army, but he prioritized the mission over his life.
Fuck you, War Depart—
As his finger hooked the ring of the canister, a spear faster and truer than any that had come before screamed through the air. It pulverized his cranium and liquefied his brain before pinning him to the earth.
Gurgle…!
The headless torso jerked spasmodically, spraying blood from the ragged stump of the neck before collapsing into the dirt. Behind the corpse, the massive steel javelin stood tall, its dark, turgid surface shimmering coldly in the twilight. It was a pathetic, hollow end for a unit of such legendary reputation.
***
[Target silenced. Exceptional marksmanship, sir.]
A War Department observer delivered the report. The Head of the War Department, having just thrown the lethal lightning-bolt of a spear, was already reaching for his next weapon, his eyes scouring the landscape.
[Pinpointing the next scout cell.]
Several War Department warriors, fully armored, crouched low to the ground with their hands pressed to their ears. The posture was almost comical, yet they were finding the hidden Namgung units with terrifying precision by amplifying the sounds and vibrations of the earth.
[Pinpointing…]
[Found them.]
[Release.]
Hup! Haa!
The moment the command left the Department Head’s lips, javelins streaked toward the specified coordinates.
Schwing! Sssss-thud!
[Enemy completely silenced. All scouts capable of detecting our advance have been neutralized.]
“The new method of tracking via sound and vibration worked perfectly,” a Sword Clan general remarked, nodding with grim satisfaction. “We spent far too much effort on these preparations for them to fail now.”
Another general chuckled. “The Namgung bastards never saw it coming.”
Indeed, the War Department had developed a specific countermeasure against the Namgung Clan’s specialty of ghostly concealment long before the first shot was fired.
“…That,” the Department Head said, his voice level and devoid of emotion, “is the very reason our War Department exists.”
While the political infighting of the Clan had forced them to hold their breath in the shadows, they had spent that time researching exactly how to slaughter every potential enemy of the Empire.
***
“All units, advance!”
A spotter for the Third Young Master’s Military Strategy Bureau stood atop an armored carriage. The terrain was mostly flat, aside from the distant cliff where Yeon So-hyeon stood, leaving the carriage roofs as the only high ground.
“What is that…?” the spotter muttered.
Instead of reporting on the shifting lines of the main battle, he was staring blankly at the western horizon.
“Hey! What the hell are you doing?!” a junior strategist barked from below, having run over to collect the latest intelligence. “Is this the time to be admiring the sunset?!”
“No… it’s not that…”
“The hell it isn’t! Get your head in the game!”
The spotter didn’t look away, his vision pushed to its absolute limit. “…I think I see movement coming from the sun.”
“What kind of absolute bullshit is that?!” the strategist yelled, jumping with frustration. “The Namgung scouts are crawling all over that sector! It’s probably just a detachment of the Dread King’s troops moving to the flank. Stop talking nonsense and—”
The strategist’s nagging became background noise as the spotter’s focus sharpened. “I know they’re supposed to be there, but…” His voice turned tremulous. “What the hell is that?”
In the distance, he saw the Dread King’s Cannibal Riders Brigade, a unit that had been relentlessly pursuing the Sichuan Tang Clan’s poisoners along the periphery.
“That’s definitely the Cannibal Riders Brigade… but what is that unit heading toward them?”
Was it just another Northern detachment as the strategist claimed, or was it something else? Due to the distance and the chaotic dust of the battlefield, it took several more heartbeats for the reality to sink in.
“Listen to me, you crazy—if you’re going to just stand there like a statue, I’ll climb up and—!”
“REINFORCEMENTS! ENEMY REINFORCEMENTS!”
The spotter’s scream, infused with every drop of his internal energy, was a thunderclap. The junior strategist was knocked off the carriage, landing hard on his backside, but he didn’t even feel the pain.
“The War Department! The Sword Clan’s War Department has intercepted the Cannibal Riders Brigade!”
The strategist stared up, his jaw hanging loose. “…What?”
***
(DIIIIIE!)
Charging on massive, mane-ripping warhorses and brandishing oversized weapons, the Cannibal Riders Brigade were the personification of Northern terror. But the man standing in their path didn’t even blink. He let out a low, concise kiai.
Sword Clan Arts: Heart of the Resonating Sword. Drawing Stance, Secret Technique. Turbulence.
A draw so orthodox it was frightening, so perfect it was beautiful, streaked through the air.
CRA-A-A-ACK!
There were no screams. In a single exchange, the riders and their man-eating mounts were cleaved perfectly in half, their remains tumbling into the dirt.
“He who craves the flesh of man shall end as fertilizer for the meadow grass…”
There was only one man who would recite poetry with such refined flair in the middle of a slaughter: the commander of the War Department Vanguard, the Sword Clan General known as Mourning Scholar.
“That was the last of the units pursuing us,” the leader of the Sichuan Tang poisoners said, approaching Mourning Scholar with visible exhaustion. “The War Department is indeed formidable… to cull those man-eating demons as if they were mere cattle.”
The poisoner spat on the corpses that had hunted his men for half a day.
Sizzle!
Toxic saliva caused the mangled flesh to bubble. Mourning Scholar looked away.
“You lot did the heavy lifting by weakening them. I merely finished the job.”
Indeed, as Mourning Scholar noted, the corpses of the Cannibal Riders Brigade were covered in massive, weeping blisters and oozing sores from the Tang family’s toxins.
“If they had chased us any longer, we would have been eaten alive.” The poisoner shuddered at the memory. “But is the Vanguard all that arrived?”
“The Grand Young Master promised the entire War Department would come,” the poisoner added.
Mourning Scholar simply pointed upward. “Look up.”
The poisoner followed his finger. In that moment, a gargantuan shadow stretched across the vanguard and the Tang survivors, a darkness so vast it blotted out the crimson light of the setting sun.
It was an impossible storm of javelins, thousands of them, arching through the sky toward the heart of the battlefield.