First Battle [4]

As a large battle of two forces with a combined number of over 500 men clashes, there's bound to be multiple piles of corpses that accumulate; some larger than others.

Laying in one of these piles, pretending to be one of the corpses was — Sunyoung?

A mere moment ago, he had been killed by Kuzma.

Yet he was still alive in a vastly different location on the battlefield.

"Hnn," he grunted softly as the memories, experience, and skills that the now-deceased Sunyoung had acquired merged into the body of this second Sunyoung.

The feeling of death felt cold.

It wasn't a painful experience especially since his death was rather instant.

But that didn't mean that dying was peaceful.

Even now, Sunyoung felt like curling up into a ball and hiding away because he didn't want to experience that again.

Nervous sweat drenched his back.

But he didn't have the liberty to cower away. He had a luxury that no one else in the world did and his plans were far too grand for him to back away now.

Even if he had to die a million more times and experience that terrible sensation over and over — it was a necessary sacrifice that only he could make.

'That was how powerful a warrior who hasn't even awakened their ki is... How much more powerful would a ki-user be?' 

Sunyoung was in disbelief at just how high the mountain he had to climb was. It's not that he got ahead of himself and believed that it'd been an easy path to get to the level he desired.

It's just that he thought he was on the second step when in reality, he had barely taken his first.

'...But at least Master was right,' he concluded. 'Even though I couldn't react to that barbarian's movements, I was able to follow along with my eyes.'

He saw the attack that disarmed him almost as if time had slowed down slightly.

His mind and eyes worked harmoniously and reacted to the move but his body was a step too slow to follow along with it.

The attack itself was very simple. There was nothing complex about it and if you showed a non-warrior the move, they might even mistake it for a beginner's attempt at martial arts.

However, the simplicity came from the fact that the barbarian had spent years honing it.

'He must've practiced that move thousands of times. There were barely any flaws in it.'

That second sentence Sunyoung thought wasn't something he should've been capable of concluding as he had never been trained in what was right or wrong about anything he was seeing on the battlefield.

Obviously, he knew the basics of attacking, blocking, and dodging but the more minute details that come with experience or lessons from an expert weren't knowledge that was engraved in him.

However, just by being on the battlefield, watching people fight, and seeing the differences in the success of certain attacks, his mind was taking in a vast amount of information and subconsciously analyzing where people had flaws in their movements.

It wasn't even something he was aware his brain was doing.

After replaying the scene of Kuzma's disarming attack a few more times in his head, Sunyoung stood up from the pile of corpses.

Rather — one of the him did.

There were now two Sunyoungs; one of them remained flat on the floor continuing his act of being a corpse while the other was heading back into battle.

The one heading in the direction of his killer picked up two one-handed axes from the floor.

They had the same one-sided design as the axes that Kuzma was using.

'His technique wasn't anything special but they were about as perfect as a normal ki-less technique could be,' Sunyoung thought. 

It took him a few tries but after successfully killing two more barbarians on his way back to the man who killed him, Sunyoung had gained enough proficiency in the weapons he was wielding.

He was just mimicking the images of the technique in his head and was adjusting himself whenever he made mistakes.

'I should be able to somewhat react to that disarming attack of his... albeit just barely. Zero, what are the odds now of my survival?'

Just like before, he asked for the odds of his survival rather than the odds of him winning.

Because he already knew the answer to that question — zero.

[The odds have increased to 3 and a half percent. More accurate, 3.41%.]

'An increase of almost 1 and a half percent. Not bad,' Sunyoung smiled, a little proud of himself. 

The dual axe-wielding barbarian Kuzma had resumed his killing of imperial soldiers while constantly thinking about what had occurred a while ago with the child who vanished after dying to him.

His body was drenched in the blood of his enemies and his axes were starting to dull after splitting so many skulls.

As he took a deep breath out, he saw the same child who he had killed a moment ago returning for a second round against him.

Kuzma asked, "What was that earlier? Was that a skill of yours? Was the one I was fighting perhaps an illusion you cast on me?"

That seemed like the most logical thing but he was wrong.

The Sunyoung he killed was very much real. He was as real as the one who had been hiding with the corpses.

Both of them were real. 

Sunyoung, with no obligations to answer the questions of his enemy, charged forward with his two axes in hand.

Kuzma already knew that he wouldn't receive an answer from Sunyoung because no enemy would provide information about their powers willingly.

'He doesn't seem to have any ki in his body. Did someone else cast the illusion?' he wondered as a regular ki-less warrior such as himself and Sunyoung couldn't use techniques such as conjuring fire or shooting aura blades. 'I'll just have to see what happens with my eyes again.'

It should've been over with three to four moves such as before but Sunyoung was not only dodging his attacks but was even actively searching for a space he could counter in.

'How did he improve this fast?' Kuzma wondered. 

The barbarian hadn't been fighting all out because it was smarter to converse energy on a battlefield where you were constantly fighting but even so, the child shouldn't have been able to persevere this long against him.

'I have to try a little more,' he concluded as he applied more strength and speed to his attack to disarm the child.

'I thought I could react to that. Dang it!' Sunyoung yelled in frustration inwardly. 

The exchange hadn't been easy at all for him. He had been dodging but just barely as his body was still reacting too slowly.

'23 seconds. I lasted 23 seconds this time.'

Compared to before where he could only block two attacks before getting disarmed and killed, this time he had much more success.

Holding an axe to the side of Sunyoung's head, Kuzma asked, "How are you using my technique?"

During their exchanges, Sunyoung had fought back three times. Kuzma dodged them easily but he was able to see in those three brief attacks that the movement was eerily similar to his own.

Kuzma wasn't particularly worried about someone else using his technique since it was just a common one that was taught in his homeland.

But that was the issue.

Only people in his homeland used such a technique. No one in the empire should be using it because they had their own techniques they trained by.

With the axe pointed at Sunyoung's head, he was implying that if the child didn't answer, death was awaiting him.

Both knew though that even if Sunyoung did answer, he'd still be killed.

"It's a technique only my people know how to use. So... how is an imperial boy such as yourself capable of using it?"

Sunyoung didn't answer the question. Instead, he just smiled and swung his head at the axe with enough force to insert it into his own brain.

Although the movement was sudden, Kuzma was able to react to it however he didn't because the action itself wasn't one he felt the need to prevent.

'It happened again,' he thought as he watched Sunyoung's body collapsing and then vanishing into nothingness.

He looked into the crowd of people who were still fighting.

"Is he going to approach me for a third round?" 

A smirk grew on his face slightly as he realized something.

"It wasn't luck that helped that kid throw that spear. He must've also learned my technique when I killed him the first time."

He let out a chuckle that wasn't befitting a warrior in a plane of death.

"Even in a place as hopeless as this, there is someone who might someday create a name for himself," Kuzma muttered as he tilted his head to dodge the piercing attack of a spear.

Twisting his body, he threw his black axe in the same motion, planting it in the chest of the soldier who tried to ambush him from behind.

The sound of a horn being blown echoed throughout the entire battlefield.

"What a shame imperial boy. Our battle will have to resume another day," Kuzma said as he looked at the remaining barbarians begin to retreat.

That horn signaled the death of the leader of the barbarians.

He had been engaged in a one-on-one battle with the leader of the imperial soldiers since the beginning of the clash of the two companies.

While foot soldiers went through numerous battles, those two had been involved in only one.

It could be said that war in this world of martial artists was determined by one thing: the battles between the strongest men on the field.

Their fights were akin to a game of chess which could take hours sometimes while the foot soldiers were playing quick games of a 50/50 coin toss.

If a collision between two parties with a thousand soldiers each started, even if one side had only a hundred men while the other than three hundred left, that didn't answer who came out on top.

The victor was the one who had the most ki-users, particularly the stronger ones, remaining at the end.

The brutal truth was that regular foot soldiers and barbarians were merely fodder to fill up numbers and prevent the powerful leaders from having to face enemies from all directions.

After all, enough ants bite you and you can get distracted. Any mistake on the battlefield could easily result in death.

Emerging from the pile of corpses was Sunyoung.

This time, there weren't two separate versions of him; just the singular one who had been hiding in that pile since a while ago.

Rather than pursuing the escaping barbarians, the imperial soldiers just watched as their enemies disappeared into the distance.

This wasn't because they were showing mercy.

It was just that with the barbarian leader dead, there was no point in chasing after the fodders. It would only result in needless death on their end.

Instead, it was wiser to recoup, celebrate their victory to boost morale, and prepare themselves for the next confrontation with ample number to occupy the fodders while the big dogs scrap it out.

Turning his head, Sunyoung found where his squad leader was standing.

Although he began the clash against the barbarian by his squad leader and squad mates' side, as war is naturally chaotic, he moved along with the flow of the battlefield and was separated from them.

As one of the ki-users in their imperial company, Sunyoung's squad leader, Biseok, was more valuable than the surviving foot soldiers combined.

Making his way to his squad leader, Sunyoung saw two other members regrouping with him: Mun Kwang and one of the men that Biseok had anticipated would become a team leader someday as long as he continued to survive.

At the very beginning of the large-scale battle, the imperial company was composed of ten squads with around ten members each and dozens of teams to fill up the rest of the numbers.

Now most of those squads were left with less than half of their original number while the teams of 2-4 were mostly wiped out entirely.

For a squad of all rookies, Biseok hadn't expected more than a single member to return to him intact.

"I'm pleasantly surprised, Mun Kwang, Sunyoung, and Jeonbong. You three are still alive," he addressed them.

Jeonbong was a member who had been hopeful for while the other two he had determined to be doomed.

He could sense their growth as well as the innate killing intent that had grown in them which represented how many people they'd killed.

'This child killed the most out of the three of them,' he thought to himself as he paid closer attention to Sunyoung without outwardly looking at him. 'I've been proven wrong.'

"What happens to us now?" Mun Kwang asked. "There's only three of us left."

"Normally squads with less than four members will be swallowed by another squad but in cases of a rookie squad such as mine, we just add more rookies to make up for our losses. Then when we fight again, most rookies will die such as today while some lucky few will survive such as yourself. Repeat this process over and over until I'm no longer assigned to rookie duty. Then... depending on how we do in the future, we either absorb broken squads to keep our number quota or get absorbed," Biseok responded.

That was the nature of war. It was a bitter truth that most people didn't want to think too long about.

Everyone except for those at the very top was replaceable.

One goes down and another rises to take their place.

Depending on the scale of the army, even someone as valuable as Biseok could be replaced by someone else who either awakened their ki and was getting a promotion to squad leader or an already established squad leader whose squad had been absorbed by another, leaving him squad-less.

This same idea could be applied even to captains and commanders who were powerful beings capable of facing hundreds to thousands of warriors simultaneously.