I Became the First Prince

Walking in Twilight (4)

Sword light flashed.

Black arrows rained from the sky.

The world was filled with sticky malice and sharp murderous intent.

All of that was directed at just one person.

A knight with the symbol of a crouching lion emblazoned on his chest.

Adrian Leonberger, Leonberg’s God of War.

Blood spurted wherever the war god passed.

Severed limbs flew through the sky and heads rolled on the floor.

No one could withstand his sword.

“Keugh!“

A soldier’s head fell before his spear could even reach its target.

“Burgundy! Forever…”

The knight who cried out the name of the emperor was covered in blood before he could even finish his sentence.

The corpses formed a mountain. The blood flowed into a stream.

The war god stood in the middle and did not retreat a single step.

The same was true of the imperial army.

They were the proud soldiers of the emperor, the elite corps protecting the imperial family, the Imperial Guard.

It was impossible for them to retreat before their enemy, even if it meant death.

“For His Majesty the Emperor!”

The Imperial Guard marched forward, shouting the emperor’s appellation at the top of their lungs.

After crossing the mounds of corpses and pools of blood, they finally reached the empire’s enemy.

But it was futile.

Before the sword of the God of War, all of those things lost their meaning.

“Blessed be His Majesty the Emperor… Kwagh!“

Loyalty toward the emperor turned into a cry of despair.

“What a fanatic.”

Their determination to risk death was ridiculed as madness by the war god.

The incessant shouting and screaming began to subside.

“Only His Majesty…”

And ended with the last words of a soldier who had the upper half of his body cut off at an angle.

The war god lowered his sword.

The bright blue fire that burned around his eyes faded.

Adrian Leonberger suddenly searched the sleeves of a soldier lying in a pool of blood.

Then he took out a loaf of bread and put it in his mouth.

He chewed the bread stained with red blood slowly, as if savoring a unique delicacy.

“How could there be such an arrogant guy!”

The leaders of the Imperial Guard scowled while watching.

It was already the second day.

The proud imperial army had been blocked by just one person.

In their hearts, they wanted to immediately send their forces en masse and trample the war god.

But they couldn’t.

Not long ago, the army of 20,000 soldiers that were gathered together at the Briand Duchy had been massacred by the war god.

Recently, the leaders of the imperial army had been instructed to divide their forces into units of 100 and spread out as widely as possible to avoid being killed all at once.

So the next best solution was to slowly wear the war god down.

Small units would be continuously sent out to prevent him from getting proper rest, and he would gradually become exhausted.

However, at this point they were confused as to whether they were wearing down the war god or whether the war god was individually destroying them.

After finishing his meal, the war god lay down.

“Have you seen such a madman!”

A few knights with keen ears heard the sound of snoring and started swearing.

A commander let out a long sigh.

“It’s clearly a cheap provocation. Our troops will continue with the strategy.”

One of the old commanders, a man of considerable rank, raised his hand and signaled.

A flag rose above the camp.

At the same time, the cavalry which had previously hovered near the back now moved at the front.

Two hundred pairs of men and horses, fully equipped with iron armor.

The empire’s elite cavalry troop, whose piercing power was considered to be greater than that of any other legion of knights.

They were the emperor’s cavalry.

The cavalrymen ran towards the war god.

The war god still did not get up from his position.

He seemed to be in a really deep sleep.

The commanders of the Imperial Guard hoped that the war god would not wake up. They wished he would be trampled by the cavalry and crushed into pieces.

Of course, there was no chance of that happening.

When the spears of the imperial cavalrymen were a short distance away, the war god suddenly stood up.

“For His Majesty the Emperor!”

The figure of the God of War was hidden behind the cavalry.

Bang!

Immediately afterwards, an explosion burst out.

The cavalry that had been wildly charging suddenly bounced back as if they had hit a huge wall.

The ranks of cavalry collapsed all the way to the rear when they were hit by the rebounding men and horses.

Unable to overcome their forward momentum, they tangled together and rolled around on the ground.

“Kwagh!”

“My feet!”

The cavalrymen, crushed by the heavy war horses, continued to scream.

But their screaming did not last long.

Suddenly.

A bluish light flashed a few times, and then the screams suddenly stopped.

The emperor’s proud cavalry troop had been instantly annihilated.

The old commander clicked his tongue.

He didn’t think that the cavalry alone could do anything to the war god, but he didn’t expect that they would fall so easily.

The old commander, who had been clicking his tongue, raised his hand.

Now, with just a small gesture, the waiting soldiers of the Imperial Guard would rush out.

However, the old commander remained frozen and could not move.

The God of War was looking straight at him.

Found you.

The shape of his mouth could be seen with surprising clarity.

“No, he’s coming this way!”

One of the knights who had been swearing at the war god just a moment ago screamed.

The war god raced towards him on a horse that had lost its rider.

“Stop him!”

The old commander gestured urgently.

The heavily armored infantry that was on standby formed a barrier at the front.

Bang!

One, just one.

The infantry, wearing thick iron armor and massive shields, had their armor torn apart and bloodied with a single sword strike.

The war god quickly reached the commander after trampling 100 heavily armored soldiers.

“W-wait…!”

The old commander shouted urgently.

And those became his last words.

Ssokok!

Nothing was left after the war god’s sword had swept through.

There were only corpses, and more corpses.

Adrian Leonberger killed the commander and leisurely returned to his place.

As if nothing had happened.

The Imperial Guard dispatched troops to the rear to fill in the gap left by the soldiers that had been annihilated that day.

The vacancy left by the deceased commander was also filled by someone else.

“Am I the fourth?”

The new leader, a battalion commander¹ spoke heavily.

It had been two days since they first encountered the God of War.

Two high-ranking commanders had died every day.

The battalion commander saw the war god sitting on a mountain of corpses, wiggling his outstretched feet.

“He’s completely mocking us.”

It was a blatant provocation.

But the commander was unperturbed.

Time was on the empire’s side.

Even now, the empire’s 80,000 troops were pounding on the kingdom’s castles and fortresses.

It was no loss to them if the war god was held here.

But.

“What on earth is he thinking?”

The war god was also not unaware of this fact.

Despite this, he did not move.

It looked as if he was waiting for something.

The commander couldn’t understand.

Of course, that wasn’t the only thing he didn’t understand about this war.

The unreasonable military strategy that did not make any use of their numerical advantage. The existence of a God of War who could single-handedly annihilate a large army of 20,000. The emperor not sending a powerful army to the front lines to immediately overwhelm their enemy, and instead only dealing with the war god.

There were many things he couldn’t understand.

The commander thought about it constantly, but he couldn’t find an answer.

So he chose to carry out his assigned mission.

The troops were sent out one after another so that the war god could not rest properly.

All the soldiers who advanced were slaughtered by the war god.

The number of fatalities had already reached 4,000.

However, there were still more than 16,000 imperial soldiers who were not afraid of death.

It was a fight they couldn’t afford to lose.

But when a week had passed since the battle with the war god started and the number of troops decreased from 16,000 to 12,000, the commander became more and more anxious.

At some point, the fearless imperial army had begun to hesitate.

The 12,000 troops became 10,000.

The first unit to receive the order to march that day turned and fled.

All deserters were slaughtered by the knights who had arrived immediately after.

The fear that the war god had sowed on the battlefield was rapidly growing.

It was natural that the morale of the Imperial Guard had plummeted.

As the situation reached this point, the leaders could no longer stay silent.

“Two legions! Push back the war god with 5 knights!”

Finally, the order to engage was given.

The widely-spaced troops gathered up and began to advance.

The battalion commander also stepped forward, shouting at the top of his voice.

“Go! Charge! Now is our chance to take him down!”

Since the commander had been ceaselessly pressuring the war god to prevent him from resting, he thought that he might be able to finish him off this time.

It didn’t take long for the commander to realize how absurd that expectation was.

The war god stood tall on the mountain of corpses he had piled up and raised his sword high.

At that moment.

The whole world started shaking.

A blinding flash of light erupted.

The sky fell and the earth rose.

Dragons ran wild and a huge sword that reached the sky fell.

The boundary between reality and fantasy collapsed.

Ordinary people were only capable of lying on the ground and shivering.

The loud noises and screams subsided.

The swirling wind and dust also vanished.

The battalion commander, who had been lying prone, slowly raised his head.

There were corpses as far as the eye could see.

Pieces of meat that had been torn to shreds and bits of armor that had been crushed into pieces were strewn everywhere.

“U-uwaaah!“

The battalion commander, staring blankly at the blood flowing from the pulverized remains and soaking his feet, screamed at the top of his lungs.

Scramble.

While sitting down, he struggled with his feet awkwardly.

To somehow get away from the terrible devastation.

Ttok.

After struggling like crazy for a while, something touched the battalion commander’s back.

He instinctively looked behind him.

There was a large knight fully clad in pure white armor.

Behind him were a hundred more knights, also wearing white armor, in formation.

Seeing the golden shield pattern emblazoned on their chests, the battalion commander’s eyes widened as if he was tearing them apart.

“R-royal Guard!”

They were the knights of the Royal Guard, the strongest order in the empire, personally selected and raised by the emperor.

“Royal Guard? It’s my first time hearing this name.”

And suddenly, a blunt voice could be heard from a stone’s throw away.

The commander froze.

“Is it a newly created knighthood?”

The monster that had annihilated 4,500 troops in a single moment had come down from the mountain of corpses and was right in front of them.

The commander’s body trembled.

The war god headed straight toward the Royal Guard as if he had no interest in the battalion commander.

“Well, anyway, nice to meet you. I was getting tired of waiting.”

The war god looked up at the huge knights, who were two heads taller than him, and smiled as if he was truly happy to see them.

“Carrie de Carman, First Guardian of His Majesty the Emperor, and…”

“I know. A Penta Knight, right?”

The Guardian nodded slightly.

Then another knight came out from behind.

“Ifran de Ifrian. Also a Penta Knight.”

That was just the beginning.

“Dauphin de Malpeigne. That is the name of the Guardian who will take your life.”

Penta Knights revealed their presence one after another.

A mountain-like force bloomed.

Each and every one of them was as powerful as the God of War.

The battalion commander laughed.

The fate of that terrible war god was sealed, and he cheered for the superhumans that the emperor had raised.

But his cheers only lasted for a moment.

Caught between the guardians and the war god, the commander’s entire body was twisted under the weight of an unbearable force.

He couldn’t even faint, and as he writhed in pain, he slowly lost consciousness.

Just before completely blacking out, the commander came to a small realization.

This was a battlefield for monsters that had transcended their limits, and he was just an ordinary human.

1. As far as I can tell, the term used here 천인장 means “leader of a 1000 men unit.” ⤴

Notes: Someone asked about an epub. I haven’t translated chapters 7-289, so whatever is out there on the internet will be about as good as it gets. According to the author’s blog, there should be an official english publication of this novel at some point. Please consider buying it to support the author if you can, but if not then I’m sure there will be alternatives available.

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I Became the First Prince Chapter 298June 23, 2023In "I Became the First Prince"

I Became the First Prince Chapter 299June 30, 2023In "I Became the First Prince"

I Became the First Prince Chapter 300July 16, 2023In "I Became the First Prince"

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