The Regressed Mercenary’s Machinations Novel - Chapter 796

Chapter 796
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Ghislain, spear in hand, carved a path through the fire-drenched battlefield like a hurricane.
Kwaaaaaang!
In Ghislain’s wake, the forms of soldiers exploded and flew in every direction. The Imperial army was clinging to the broad recovery effects of the divine aura saturating the field. Since the blessing wasn’t focused, their individual resilience was mediocre. If he dismantled them entirely before their flesh could knit back together, the holy energy was useless.
Kwaang! Kwaang! Kwaaaang!
Wherever Ghislain surged, vortexes of flame followed, and his shadow seemed to drown out the vision of the troops. He plunged into the enemy ranks like a gale—even though it was a solitary charge, anyone attempting to intercept him met an immediate end.
Ghislain took a quick stock of the theater. His allies were performing admirably, but the sheer volume of the opposition remained an issue.
“Perhaps I should increase the intensity a bit?”
He radiated mana in a wide radius.
Jiiiing—!
Hundreds of discarded armaments scattered across the dirt rose into the sky. While creating spectral weapons from mana would be simpler, it was an inefficient use of stamina, so he opted to “repurpose” the junk on the ground.
Whoooosh!
The blades and bludgeons streaked out like bolts of lightning. They shredded plate mail without hesitation, pulverized skeletons, and ruptured muscle.
Kwaang! Kwaang! Kwaaaaaang!
“Aaaargh!”
“Halt him! Move, get in his way!”
“Use your bodies if you have to!”
The knights and infantry tried every desperate measure to check Ghislain, but they couldn’t even breach his perimeter—only to fall beneath the hail of telekinetically controlled steel.
They were utterly incapable of slowing him. A primal dread began to hollow out the Imperial ranks; men threw themselves out of his path as he approached.
“M-monster!”
“Back away! This isn’t a human we can fight!”
“Where are the superhumans? Someone stop him!”
Terror rippled through the lines in a heartbeat. Even the specialists drilled for the horrors of the Demonic Realm were reduced to mere straw targets by Ghislain’s terrifying might.
Ghislain continued the slaughter of the panicked Imperial forces. With Marquis Pherington already incapacitated once, the army was a headless beast, twitching in confusion.
From the safety of the rear, officers screamed themselves hoarse at the sight of the carnage.
“M-mages! Focus all spells on that single target!”
“If he falls, we can reform the line!”
“Drain your cores! Give him everything!”
They berated the casters incessantly, but the mages were paralyzed.
“We can’t! The spirits require all our concentration!”
“If we let go, the spirits will tear us apart! We need to locate and eliminate the spirit mage first!”
One of the commanders bellowed in fury at the excuse.
“Not every one of you is tied up with spirits!”
“The others are desperately stabilizing the magic barrier!”
The mages were trapped—bound to a situation where they could neither advance nor defend. Ereneth was manipulating the spirits with such tactical grace that the casters couldn’t afford a moment of distraction.
Since Ghislain’s previous magic had already thinned the ranks of those maintaining the shield, the survivors were struggling just to keep the perimeter from collapsing.
To Ghislain, their frantic efforts were merely amateurish.
“If you’re going to cast, at least do it with some skill.”
Smirking, he gathered his mana.
“Frozen Tempest.”
Kwaaaaaaaaaaa!
As the words left his lips, a blizzard of lethal cold erupted from Ghislain’s position. The Imperial soldiers in his immediate vicinity turned to statues of ice before they could even process a thought of retreat.
A few Imperial mages scrambled to reinforce their ward, but it was a pathetic defense against an 8th-Circle incantation. Although the spell’s potency and range were somewhat muffled by the existing barrier, Ghislain wasn’t even pushing his limits. It was more than enough to crystallize the infantry.
Ghislain rotated his spear once before driving the butt of it into the earth.
Jjeoong—!
With a violent, crystalline crack, hundreds of frozen Imperial troops shattered into a million shards.
The Imperial legions were struck dumb by the sheer, terrifying exhibition of power.
It wasn’t just Ghislain causing chaos in the heart of their formation—the soldiers on the front lines were suffering just as badly.
“T-they won’t stay down!”
“Their gashes are closing before our eyes!”
“It’s that holy light!”
The Julien Mercenary Corps, fighting with a wild, infectious fervor, were the source of this frustration.
While the Death Knights had been dampened by the divine presence, the Julien Mercenary Corps had not. Under the protection of Deneb’s divine blessing, the mercenaries enjoyed peerless regeneration and endurance. Compounding the problem, the Imperial army’s own wide-range divine power was inadvertently aiding their enemies.
With the overlapping holy energies, even when Imperial knights landed mana-enhanced strikes, they produced nothing more than minor nicks—and those vanished instantly.
Conversely, the Imperial army’s healing was insufficient against the mercenaries’ lethal precision. No amount of divine aura could save a man whose head had been severed or whose torso had been hollowed out.
The Imperial ranks thinned rapidly under the mercenaries’ onslaught.
“Hahaha! These runts are made of paper!”
“Keep the pressure on! They’ll all be dead soon enough!”
“Osvald! This day marks a new era in the chronicles of rebellion!”
Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!
The Imperial forces were unable to kill the mercenaries, yet the mercenaries were slaughtering the Imperial forces.
Confronted by this impossible disparity in lethality, the Imperial army’s morale began to disintegrate.
Knights tried to target the mercenaries, but the Death Knights were always there to intercept. These immortal warriors had transitioned into living walls. The Julien Mercenary Corps simply stayed behind these indestructible shields and struck at their leisure.
The remaining Imperial superhumans were occupied by Julien and Kyle, completely unable to assist the crumbling line.
The defeat of the 10,000-strong Imperial force was no longer a question of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’
A total catastrophe was unfolding—a historical anomaly where a mere thirty mercenaries were systematically dismantling an entire army.
Kwaang! Kwaang! Kwaaaang!
As the minutes ticked by, the Imperial structure continued to rot.
They realized too late that they had fundamentally misjudged the Julien Mercenary Corps. These were not men, but calamities, equipped with a solution for every tactic the Empire possessed.
And directing this nightmare was Ghislain, a master of 8th-Circle sorcery with physical prowess exceeding a superhuman.
“A devil…”
A soldier whispered, eyes fixed on Ghislain.
What kind of war was this?
This was the army of the Pope, the vanguard of a sacred crusade.
And yet, this holy host was being shredded by a demon.
A demon who had charged into their very center, covered in blood, and was currently laughing.
Kwaaaaaang!
After clearing a dozen men with a single sweep, Ghislain pivoted sharply and brought his spear up.
Kaaang!
Deflecting a heavy blow, he grinned.
“So, you’re still capable of standing?”
“You monster…”
The speaker was Marquis Pherington, one side of his face a mangled ruin.
Chiiiiik……
Despite the holy light swirling around him, the damage to his face refused to knit. The gash was too deep, poisoned by Ghislain’s lingering mana. He lived only through the sheer tenacity of a superhuman and the relentless infusion of divine energy.
Marquis Pherington gnashed his teeth at Ghislain.
‘This is a total disaster.’
He should have mobilized more superhumans, more sorcerers, and more high priests to deal with them. At the very least, if they had maintained their cohesion and pushed as one, they wouldn’t have been picked apart so easily. Had they stayed disciplined, they might have wiped out the Julien Mercenary Corps, even at the cost of their own lives.
‘If this man didn’t exist…’
Allowing himself to be rattled by the enemy’s unorthodox tactics had been his fatal error. He should have dispatched only a token force to seek the Sacred Stone while using the main bulk of his army to steamroll the mercenaries.
Now, only one path remained.
‘At the very least, I must take him down…’
Before the Marquis could finish the thought, Ghislain spoke.
“You honestly think the war ends if you kill me?”
“……”
“In these moments, people like you always fall back on that delusion.”
“…You insolent brat. I will end you, no matter the cost.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
Infusing his spear with mana, Ghislain wore a predatory smile.
“And every person who said it to me is currently six feet under.”
“Be silent!”
Kwaaaaaang!
Marquis Pherington lunged, his blade targeting the horse’s throat. He aimed to unseat Ghislain and exploit the moment of instability.
But Ghislain’s spear caught the sword with a deft parry and, sliding along the steel, hissed forward.
Skeak!
Pherington narrowly avoided the tip, preparing for a follow-up—
Pook!
Ghislain’s spear found Pherington’s shoulder.
The Marquis stifled a cry and tried to close the gap, but Ghislain had already directed his mount to create distance. The spear flashed again, carving a thin red line across Pherington’s neck.
“Khk!”
Pherington jerked back just in time to keep his throat intact. He was reeling.
‘How is he fighting like this on a horse…’
Normally, a beast couldn’t match a superhuman’s speed. Even with ki-reinforcement, there were physiological ceilings. Yet this man was moving in perfect synchronization with the animal. It was a level of equestrian mastery that defied logic.
What stung even more was that it was Pherington’s own horse. The fact that Ghislain could master an unfamiliar mount so thoroughly only deepened Pherington’s fury.
‘I need to get inside his reach!’
Pherington ignited his mana, holding nothing back. In a clash of superhumans, specific weapons usually mattered less than raw power, but Ghislain’s technique was too refined. Against the reach of a spear, he was losing the war of attrition.
Kaang! Kaang! Kaang!
Pherington threw himself into the fray, trying to force a close-quarters brawl. But Ghislain, high in the saddle, parried every desperate swing with casual ease.
“Is this the limit? It’s not bad… but it’s boring. Still, I suppose you’re a step above Kyle.”
“Uwaaaaaaaah!”
Pherington let out a primal scream and lashed out with his sword. He was one of the five greatest warriors in the Empire, yet he couldn’t even nick the man’s tunic. Shame and hopelessness began to suffocate him.
Kaang! Kaang! Kaaaang!
While Ghislain toyed with Pherington, the aerial weapons he controlled continued to harvest Imperial lives.
‘No, I have to end this. I have to…’
The more his heart raced, the more his desperation grew. He needed Ghislain’s head to stop the bleeding of his army.
By contrast, Ghislain’s counter-offensive was surgical and calm.
Pook! Pook! Pook!
Pherington was being perforated. The divine light tried to stitch him back together, but the rate of injury far outpaced the rate of healing.
Chiiiiik……
Eventually, the regeneration stalled. Ghislain’s mana was burrowing into the wounds, a persistent rot eating Pherington from the inside out.
Pherington was undeniably a titan. With the aid of holy power and his own full strength, even Ghislain couldn’t end him in a single heartbeat. But such an opponent could be methodically dismantled.
Paak!
Ghislain was executing Marquis Pherington one inch at a time. With every strike, mana was injected into the flesh. The Marquis wasn’t healing; he was decaying while still alive.
Pushing Pherington back, Ghislain remarked softly,
“If we had crossed paths before I finished my training, this might have been a decent workout.”
It was an honest assessment—had they fought during his growth period, he might have broken a sweat. But that time had passed.
By reaching the 8th Circle, Ghislain had tapped into the fundamental truths of existence. With his reinforced willpower, Marquis Pherington was no longer in the same league.
Ghislain’s steady voice cut through the noise of battle.
“You really should have considered the possibility that we weren’t standing still.”
“Khk…!”
Pherington’s breath was ragged. He had prepared for superhumans, but he had still failed. The Julien Mercenary Corps was far more potent and daring than any intelligence report had suggested.
He had been outplayed at every turn. There was no room for excuses—it was a total, humiliating defeat.
Yet, Marquis Pherington still had one grievance to air. He glared at Ghislain.
“If you… if you hadn’t committed that lunacy of discarding the Sacred Stone…”
If they had fought a conventional battle, Pherington believed they wouldn’t have been decimated like this.
Ghislain gave a small, mocking nod.
“True, we probably would have walked away with some scars.”
Based on the current forces, Pherington’s logic held some weight. A head-on collision against a prepared Imperial formation would have been costly.
But there was a piece of the puzzle Pherington lacked. Ghislain smiled and suddenly retracted his spear.
“But we didn’t actually throw away the Sacred Stone.”
Pherington froze at the revelation.
“…What?”
“You heard me. We never threw it away.”
“T-then that object…”
“A fake, obviously. It was quite a good replica, wasn’t it? The Dragon Lord crafted it for us. I requested a decoy specifically for a moment like that. The ‘divine power’ you felt was just a little trick from Deneb.”
“Y-you…”
Pherington’s face drained of color. The importance of the artifact and the pressure of the moment had blinded him to the possibility of a ruse. From his perspective, the Julien Mercenary Corps would have gained nothing by keeping it. But it was all a theater—a calculated performance!
‘Could it be…’
The Julien Mercenary Corps had been ready for a full-scale war with the Empire from the start. Even the encirclement he thought was his masterpiece had been anticipated by the enemy.
“You devil!”
Blind with fury, Pherington raised his blade high. The humiliation of being a puppet in Ghislain’s play consumed his mind.
He swung—but his heart was frantic and his body was broken. His form was wide open.
And in that instant—
Pook!
The point of Ghislain’s spear drove straight through the center of Marquis Pherington’s heart.