Barbarian Rout

Can't catch him.

He simply couldn't catch him!

Couldn't get away.

He simply couldn't get away either!

Combat instinct told the Gloomy Knight before him that the moment he dared expose his back, he would immediately take a Farron Throwing Axe.

But how did the enemy know his position and play hide-and-seek with him across this battlefield of barely fifty meters?

By listening to sounds?

The Gloomy Knight tried to slow down and conceal his footsteps, but it was useless. The other side had complete control over every one of his movements.

A phantom!

The enemy drifted around him like a ghostly phantom, like a cat toying with a mouse, waiting for the moment he was exhausted.

In truth, Duncan was under immense mental strain as well. The battlefield space available for him to play Qin King Circling the Pillar was only so large: a dozen haystacks, wooden houses on either side. One misstep and the enemy would catch him. If he had not played plenty of horror games in his past life, being chased in tiny spaces by ghosts and monsters, and if he were not using God's Eye View now to control his body with his mind, he would never have managed such precise micro-control. If the other side caught even the slightest opening, full armor against no armor was an utterly crushing advantage.

Yet in such a small battlefield, that grim-faced knight simply could not catch him.

He wanted to run.

But the instant he made a move to turn and retreat, all the hairs on his body stood on end, and the back of his head turned icy cold.

He had no way to describe how he felt.

But if an Earthling had been here, they would definitely have cried out, This bastard has map hacks. He's exploiting line of sight.

Three hundred and sixty degrees, no blind spots.

Every movement the enemy made, even a sharp breath, was under Duncan's all-around surveillance.

The Gloomy Knight probably regretted throwing away his ranged weapon during the rout. Of course, if Duncan had a bow capable of piercing armor, the man would have long since been shot into a hedgehog.

"Looks like this knight is only a bit stronger than an ordinary person."

"This other world is probably low-magic."

Though he was controlling things from a game-like perspective, the battle was infinitely close to reality. Neither side's health bar could withstand more than one or two hits.

Duncan had his view locked down tight. The two sides were twenty meters apart, with several haystacks standing two or three meters high between them, making it impossible to see what was on the other side. The wooden houses on both sides could block vision. No matter which direction the enemy came from, he could handle it calmly.

He could attack if he advanced and defend if he retreated. As long as you couldn't catch me, there was nothing you could do to me.

Unarmored against fully armored—he definitely couldn't fight head-on.

Duncan was relying on being young, fast, and nimble to bully an opponent who could barely run in heavy armor.

The situation even reminded him of playing hide-and-seek with his friends as a child. Back then, the rules said that finding someone wasn't enough—you had to catch them, touch them at least once to win. Some nasty kids relied on their speed to play Qin King Circling the Pillar with you, and no matter what, you could never catch them.

The other side was about to run.

The instant the enemy retreated, Duncan realized that the offensive and defensive positions had shifted.

In just a few minutes.

He had gone from a farmer being hunted by a knight to a farmer hunting a knight.

"Stamina Bar is still half full!"

With a manure fork in one hand and a throwing axe in the other, Duncan kept twenty meters away with his map-hack vision and followed the other man at an unhurried pace. If they left this area, he would no longer be able to exploit line of sight.

"Can't keep dragging this out!"

There was already a trace of fear on the Gloomy Knight's face. He felt as though he had encountered a ghost today.

He had gone from hunter to prey.

The enemy was like someone with divine sight; every move he made was known to the other side. The Gloomy Knight had chased him for ages in full armor yet had not even touched the hem of his clothes. The crucial part was that the man didn't run far either. He just led him in endless circles here, until the knight himself was starting to feel dizzy and disoriented.

His nerves were stretched taut, afraid the enemy would suddenly emerge from behind him or from either side.

Retreat.

At least retreat to open ground. He couldn't keep wasting time here.

Just as the Gloomy Knight slowly backed out of the haystack cluster, all the hairs on his body suddenly stood on end. He instinctively dove aside, but it was too late. A Farron Throwing Axe failed to hit his head directly, but smashed into the side of the back of his skull. His Chainmail blocked the attack, yet the heavy blow left him dizzy and spinning. Before he could rise and swing his sword in retaliation, a manure fork filled his vision.

Under God's Eye View.

A brief stun marker appeared after the enemy was struck in the back of the head.

Duncan attacked decisively.

"Don't kill me..."

Squelch!

Blood erupted, and his eye socket burst.

When Duncan pulled out the manure fork, he even dragged out a ruptured eyeball.

He turned, picked up the Farron Throwing Axe, and brought it down on the enemy's forehead!

Headshot!

The knight was still tough.

Only when the axe split his forehead did he finally kick the bucket.

"Battle over."

In a daze, Duncan seemed to see a flash of flowing light rise from the enemy's corpse before vanishing directly into the body he controlled.

--"Military Weapon Proficiency: You have gained the ability to skillfully use standard military weapons. You are more proficient when using one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, polearms, bows, crossbows, javelins, throwing axes, and other weapons."

--"Basic Combat Techniques: You have gained combat forms such as stabbing, chopping, lifting, and slashing. When using military weapons, you are familiar with most basic moves."

--"Blocking and Parrying: In battle, you can attempt to block and parry enemy attacks."

The combat section in the projected display suddenly filled up. The originally light-gray Stab form gained a pale blue border, while the other forms remained unchanged, still framed in light gray.

"Did I get a skill drop?"

Duncan discovered that he seemed to have plundered the enemy's combat techniques, as if he had undergone years of military training. All sorts of basic forms came naturally to hand.

He wouldn't dare say they were particularly brilliant, but his fundamentals were absolutely solid. Without three to five years of training, it would have been impossible to develop them.

His consciousness wavered slightly.

When Duncan's vision cleared, his consciousness had already withdrawn from God's Eye View. He smelled a thick stench of blood. He had sensed it during the earlier battle too, but never this clearly. It even made him want to retch.

The vicious corpse before him also made his heart tremble. Unlike God's Eye View, which felt like playing a game, Duncan couldn't help dry-heaving a few times.

His consciousness had returned to his body, but his mind now seemed to contain combat skills honed through years of training.

A wave of hunger hit him.

Duncan searched the area and eventually turned over the knight's corpse. He found a blood-soaked bag containing small pieces of jerky, which felt like venison. The meat had been soaked in blood and carried a faint bloody odor, but he couldn't find any other food nearby for the moment. He washed it at the well and chewed it dry.

In his past life, he would never have eaten something stained with a dead man's blood. But now he had killed three people in a row and didn't care at all. That little bit of blood could count as seasoning. Replenishing energy came first.

Now he understood why they said that any new recruit who survived a battlefield came back changed.

Duncan realized that his mentality was changing rapidly.

Looting corpses.

He dragged over the bodies of the three routed soldiers and searched them one by one, piling everything he found to the side. The Gloomy Knight was about the same height as him and was probably of noble birth, because he alone wore silk-like underclothes beneath his armor.

He stripped them off directly. Once the blood was washed out, they would be far better than the tattered clothes Duncan was wearing.

He would wear dead men's clothes all the same.

He had already transmigrated. What was there to be particular about?

The sky gradually darkened.

Only then did Duncan have the energy to digest the original owner's memories. The guy actually had the same name as him, which saved trouble. This body's original owner had lost both parents as a teenager and grown up on aid from relatives. He stole chickens and dogs, got into fights, and had a terrible reputation. Fortunately, he had already been thirteen or fourteen by then, half a laborer, and could always scrape together a meal. Once he became an adult, connections got him into a town blacksmith's shop to learn a trade. In truth, he just did odd jobs, and the old blacksmith never seriously taught him.

The guy was dishonest and wanted a shortcut, so he got together with the still-charming proprietress next door. When it was exposed, he could only slink back to this remote, impoverished mountain village.

There was little of value in the original owner's memories. The most vivid parts were all about that fair-skinned proprietress.

Pah!

She wasn't anything good either.

As for the cause of this village massacre, it was unclear. The original owner had only heard someone shout, "You damned peasants!" Then a violent conflict erupted. Those routed soldiers killed anyone they saw, and everyone else could only rise up and resist.

According to Duncan's guess, the routed soldiers had definitely been plundering the village. Either they were robbing property or the conflict had erupted over them assaulting women.

After losing a battle, slaughtering some peasants to vent their anger and let off steam—it was an old Empire tradition.

The Empire's military discipline was appalling!

Whenever they suffered even a slight rout, they would plunder nearby towns and villages.

The sky grew late.

Surrounded by wilderness and barren mountains, Duncan had nowhere to go. He gathered the corpses, found a relatively clean house, spread some straw, and made do for the night. The village had long since been stripped clean. He couldn't even find a chicken. There were no livestock in the huts, only a little animal dung.

Early the next morning.

He piled the bodies of the dead villagers beside the wooden houses and haystacks, found some firewood, and, facing the dawn on the horizon, burned everything clean with a single fire.

"That's all I can do!"

Duncan slung the poor-quality hunting bow he had found in a hunter's house onto his back and calmly said toward the rising flames, "Brother, I avenged you and buried your people."

"You can rest in peace now."

Duncan had no desire to bear any karmic ties from the original owner. He wasn't the one who slept with that still-charming proprietress. From now on, he had no attachments left.

The wooden houses caught fire.

Flames shot into the sky.

Amid the dust swirling through the air, Duncan carried the things he could use and left the remote mountain village without looking back.

After traveling for half a day, he started throwing things away.

Those suits of armor were heavy as hell. Carrying them along mountain roads was pure torture. In the end, Duncan kept only a studded leather jerkin over a short under-tunic, making him look somewhat like a ranger—a light-armor unit. He threw away everything else that hindered movement.

He carried food and water on his back and a few looted coins in his pocket. He felt like a refugee fleeing famine.

"I need to find a horse somehow."

This damned place was truly desolate. He had no idea where those routed soldiers had been defeated. He had heard that a lord on the southern border had rebelled and directly defected to an enemy nation.

After the Empire weakened, border lords often rebelled.

It wasn't surprising.

Unfortunately, the original owner had little knowledge and had never gone far from home. Duncan would have to find a way to gather much of the information himself.

After walking mountain roads for most of the day, Duncan finally stepped onto an official road.

Four Directions Road.

Built during the Empire's golden age, it was now just a bumpy, dust-choked path that had not been repaired in decades.

But thankfully, he finally encountered other people.

A northern merchant caravan.

There were about twenty-odd people in total, with many refugees trailing behind them. The mounted caravan guards warily nocked arrows when they saw him. Only after questioning him did they reluctantly agree to let him follow behind the caravan to the next city.

Duncan consciously joined the refugees.

After asking around a little, he learned that they were mostly people fleeing from nearby areas. They had only heard that the Empire's army had lost another battle and were fleeing north to avoid the war. The caravan was also urgently withdrawing to the rear. They had never expected a nearby lord to rebel and change sides.

In any case, everything was a complete mess now, and the routed soldiers had thrown the region into chaos.

"Looks like this Empire is finished too!"

Before Duncan could get familiar with the refugees and learn more information, a piercing shriek suddenly rang out. The caravan guards immediately panicked. The mules and horses were being drawn together, goods were stacked around the outside, and people gathered inward. Every face was tense as they prepared for battle.

"It's Barbarians!" A terrified voice sounded beside him.

Whoosh!

An arrow flew in. One of the refugees following behind the caravan instantly fell, letting out a miserable scream. The others scattered like startled birds. Those with even a little sense immediately ran toward the semicircle formed by the caravan's wagons and animals, because there were not enough mules and carts to form anything more than a rough half-circle.

The Empire's most loyal mercenaries.

The Barbarians.

In these years of endless war, the Empire's few victories had all been won by Barbarian mercenaries. They upheld the last shred of glory of the dying Empire.

But if a Barbarian army was defeated and became routed soldiers, it was an utter disaster.

They burned, killed, plundered, and wiped out villages and towns with even more brutality than enemy armies.

"Entering combat state!"

Duncan felt his consciousness leaving his body. The next second, he switched into God's Eye View again. This time, however, there were numerous red dots on both sides, while the caravan guards were marked as blue points of light. What surprised him was that there was actually a special yellow marker in the center of the caravan's wagon formation.

--"Witch [Neutral] (skull marker)."

What the hell?!

When the empty Mana Bar had first appeared, Duncan had considered that this world might possess some supernatural power.

But the knight he had killed was only somewhat stronger than an ordinary person. He had assumed that even if supernatural power existed, it should be rather rare. He never expected to encounter it so quickly.

The Witch among the crowd couldn't be seen clearly at all.

Duncan ran like a wild horse, far faster than the other refugees, and sprinted all the way into the caravan's semicircular wagon formation.

A rain of arrows descended.

Half of those fleeing behind the caravan instantly went down. A few strong young men barely kept up. A burly man behind and to Duncan's side saw his companion fall behind and collapse, then turned to pull him up. But an arrow tore through the air and pierced straight through his neck.

As for the person he tried to help, he let out a terrified scream, shoved his companion away, and crawled into the caravan's defensive ring on hands and feet, scrambling in blind panic.

Only the man's corpse fell to the ground with a thud.

"You can't afford to play saint in chaotic times."

Duncan instinctively ducked his head back. That burly man had probably been a hunter among the refugees, someone of considerable standing and skill, yet he had died so quickly.

As for the young man who had crawled in panic, he was terrified out of his wits and lay collapsed on the ground, unable to get up for a long time.

A series of strange roars carried over.

Routed Barbarian soldiers gradually emerged from the woods on both sides of the road. Their beards and hair were thick, making them look like savages. They wore animal hides, their bare upper bodies covered in tattooed totems. Some had even smeared themselves with bone ash, using bizarre roars to terrify everyone present.

The Empire's most loyal mercenaries had once again turned their butcher's blades on the Empire's civilians.