The Demon of The North-Chapter 147 - 146. Run, Run, Hide Away

Before they moved to chase the fleeing orcs, Mara told the knights and Fenclade’s warriors to drink the healing tonic.

The vials are passed quickly through the ranks, small crystal bottles sealed with imperial wax, each one glowing faintly from within. The potion had been created by the empress herself, distilled from pure Undine healing water and refined for war.

It was made specifically for the imperial knights, reserved for moments like this one, when they’re at war. Mara shared the tonics with Leonhart and his warriors without hesitation.

They uncorked the bottles and drained them in a single gulp. Golden and crimson light erupted across the battlefield as the magic took hold. Torn flesh sealed before the eye, wounds closing as if they had never existed.

Shattered bones snapped back into place with sharp, audible cracks, armor reshaping itself around newly healed bodies. Pain vanished instantly, replaced by a rush of heat, strength, and burning adrenaline that flooded their veins.

Breaths steadied. Eyes sharpened. The warriors straightened, renewed.

"Fenclade!" Leonhart roared, raising his sword high as he vaulted onto his gryphon. The massive beast shrieked in answer, wings unfurling as it pawed at the ground, eager for blood.

"For the empire!" Mara shouted, swinging herself onto her warhorse. The steed stamped and snorted, muscles coiling beneath its armored hide, eyes glowing with battle hunger.

One Borgia knight remained behind, along with two beastmen. They would secure the battlefield, finish off the wounded orcs too slow to flee, and deal with what remained of House Rothschild’s chaos.

Above all, they’re there to protect Liselotte from any further threat, whether from lingering enemies or desperate traitors. Then the pursuit began. The hunters surged forward as one.

The Fenclade warriors moved first, lifting into the sky on gryphon wings. Leather reins snapped tight, feathers and wind roaring together as they surged above the battlefield, shadows sweeping across the broken ground below. From the air, Leonhart’s signals cut sharp and clear, guiding the second wave forward.

The Borgia elite followed. Warhorses thundered across churned earth, paws and hooves tearing through blood-soaked soil. Shifters ran alongside them, forms half-changed, claws already out, senses locked onto fleeing prey. With their eyes burning faintly red, the demon-blooded knights advanced, their magic coiling tight beneath their skin, ready to unleash.

The orcs ran.

For the first time in their lives, fear rooted itself deep in their bones. This isn’t a tactical withdrawal; this is humiliation. Terror. The unbearable realization that they had met something stronger than themselves. Death, the thing they had always delivered to others with laughing tusks and raised blades, now chased them with wings and fangs.

They could feel it behind them. They scattered in panic, breaking formation as survival instincts hit them harder. Some fled toward the forests, crashing through undergrowth, snapping branches in their haste.

Others turned toward the coast, slipping on wet stone as they raced for ships that suddenly felt impossibly far away. A few ran without direction at all, driven only by the certainty that stopping meant dying.

Above them, Gryphons screamed.

Fenclade warriors dove from the clouds. One orc barely had time to look up before talons punched through his shoulders, lifting him screaming into the air before dropping him, broken, onto the rocks below. Another fell to a javelin thrown from the sky, its shaft glowing briefly with spirit-bound runes before piercing straight through thick grey hide.

On the ground, the Borgia elite closed in.

A fleeing orc berserker barely had time to turn before a boar-beastman slammed into him from the side, tusks goring clean through his ribs. Another was dragged screaming into the shadows by panther-beastmen, his cries ending in wet silence. The warriors of Fenclade spared no effort in showing mercy.

Behind them came the Borgia elite, the second wave of nightmares made flesh, faster, sharper, and utterly merciless. The orcs ran, not blindly, but desperately.

They had retreated from battles before, repositioned, and regrouped, but this time, everything is different. The fight they face right now is born of terror. Humiliation burned in their chests as sharply as fear gnawed at their bones. For the first time in their long, brutal history, Calonian orcs felt what they had always inflicted on others.

They’re afraid of death.

They scattered in fractured groups, boots pounding unevenly against blood-soaked ground. Some fled toward the forests, hoping the dense trees would break pursuit. Others ran for the coast, chasing the distant promise of ships and escape. Anywhere was better than where they hunted them from behind.

The forest became a slaughter ground.

Some of the orcs reached the coast, believing salvation waited for them there. They ran toward the sea with broken ranks and ragged breaths—only to find death already descending from the sky.

The avian beastmen were moving. So were the demon-blood knights. They swooped down upon the Calonian ships in ruthless waves, talons and steel tearing into wood and iron alike. Hulls split under brutal force, masts snapped, and decks erupted into chaos as the attackers carved through everything in their path. Fire followed blade and claw, consuming sails and swallowing screams.

The viscountess had given a single order: "Do not let anyone leave alive." And that was exactly what they intended to do.

Smoke coiled upward from shattered hulls, blackening the sky above the harbor. The sea itself turned dark, slick with blood and littered with broken bodies and splintered wreckage. Survivors who tried to swim are dragged under, either by arrows piercing the water or hands that refused to let go.

"Our citizens only," one commander barked, his voice cutting through the din.

Those words sealed the fate of every Calonian left behind. No mercy. No prisoners. Only silence, spreading where the screams had been. Talons grabbed wounded allies from Fenclade and Borgia alike, lifting them from the wreckage. Healers were flown back first. Scouts circled overhead, eyes sharp for any sign of ambush or escape.

Below them, the last of the orcs tried to reach the ships. They failed miserably, and Mara arrived among them like a force of nature. She didn’t bother drawing a weapon at first.

Her fist crashed into an orc captain’s chest, blowing the ribs outward. Another swing took a head clean off. When she finally drew her blade, it was already dripping with blood that wasn’t hers.

Leonhart fought nearby, laughing as he ran down fleeing berserkers, his sword a blur of motion. "You should’ve stayed on your continent!" he shouted, driving steel through another spine.

-

The land did not know peace even after the port fell silent.

The orcs scattered like wounded beasts, fleeing inland, crashing through farms, forests, and abandoned villages with blind desperation. Some tried to hide beneath overturned wagons or inside burned-out barns.

Others ran until their lungs failed them, the foreign mana in the air eating at their insides, their breaths turning wet and bloody. It didn’t save them; they’re being hunted.

At the port, the bodies piled high.

The dead orcs are dragged away from the docks and burned in mass pyres, their warped armor melting into slag, the stench of scorched flesh hanging heavy over the sea. Flames roared day and night, fed with oil and hatred alike.

Soldiers stood watch as the fires burned, ensuring nothing rose from them again. The sea itself seemed to recoil, waves lapping weakly against bloodstained stone.

Boarding parties moved through the captured ships, one deck at a time. Inside the ship, they found cages, iron bars bent inward, and chains bolted to the floor.

They found survivors huddled together in the dark, eyes hollow, bodies trembling from cold, fear, and pain. Some omegas clung to each other, too exhausted to cry anymore. Others screamed at the first sight of uniforms, mistaking rescue for another kind of violence.

Not all wounds are visible.

Some had been brutalized beyond words, their scents broken and distorted, marks torn open by hands that didn’t care for consent or bonds. Healers moved quickly, cloaking them in magic, blankets, and silence, shielding them from curious eyes.

No one asked them to speak. No one demanded strength from them. They’re carried out gently, away from the ships that had become floating graves. For those who didn’t survive the violence, sheets are drawn over still forms.

Across the land, the last orcs are cornered.

Some tried to surrender, collapsing to their knees as blood streamed from their noses and ears, bodies failing under mana poisoning. It didn’t matter. Orders had been clear. This battle isn’t a war of conquest; it’s their extermination. A response to an unforgivable crime.

By the third day, the screams had faded.

Smoke still rose from the distant hills, thin and bitter against the darkening sky. The land itself bore the scars: fields burned black, roads torn apart, and stone walls cracked and stained with blood.

The people of Rothschild would remember this. They would remember every scorched granary, every shattered home, every body laid out beneath hastily drawn sheets. They would remember the cries that echoed through the port, the silence that followed, and the ones who never returned to answer their names.

They would remember the souls that were taken and the souls that survived only by a cruel margin. Those rescued from the ships would carry their wounds long after the fires were extinguished, some visible, others buried so deep that no magic could fully mend them. Healing halls overflowed, prayers whispered endlessly, but the weight of what had been done could not be erased.

This day would be etched into Rothschild’s history, passed down not as a tale of invasion alone, but as a lesson written in blood and ash. They would remember it as the day their people paid the price for arrogance and greed.

And above all, they would remember it as the undeniable failure of their former head, a man who chose profit over duty and ambition over protection and condemned his own land to ruin.