Published at 17th of December 2025 8:38 am

Chapter 1347: Kurogane Pass

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Back at the army camp, almost an hour had passed since Adam had left to deal with the enemy ambushers.

Inside the main tent, Goro and his brothers were discussing the strategy for the upcoming battle, but gradually they started to feel slightly concerned for Adam.

"Why hasn’t he returned yet?" Someone finally voiced their inner thought.

The siblings exchanged glances. Then, someone said, "Should we send someone to look for him?"

Goro remained silent. Yet the slight frown on his face betrayed his feelings.

Could something have happened to him? He wondered.

Just as the Magi were discussing who to send to look for Adam, a faint gust of wind blew inside the tent, causing the maps and parchments on the table to gently flutter.

Everyone immediately turned towards the presence that had just revealed itself.

And there he was... sitting on a wooden chest and nonchalantly removing his gauntlets.

Adam had returned.

"Brother Ao!"

"You’re finally back!"

"What took you so long?"

"We were worried! Are you hurt?"

"We were just about to send someone to look for you!"

In the couple of months that Adam had spent living in the Tsuitsui Clan, Goro and his siblings had become quite fond of him. After all, he trained with them every day and even guided them in most cases. Naturally, they had formed a sense of deep camaraderie.

"Auhh." Adam offered them a smile.

"So?" Goro approached him and asked with an arched brow. "What took you so long?"

Oh, you know, just chatting with a mysterious hermit, who also happens to be a Mana Core Magus and a Sect Leader of a clandestine organization, Adam mused.

On the surface, though, he simply said, "Auhh-auhh!"

He wrote down on a piece of parchment that he was ensuring that all the ambushers were dead.

Goro nodded. His expression turned grim. "So, explosives, eh?"

He walked back to the table, then deeply studied the map. "If those ambushers had managed to reach us, the casualties wouldn’t have been minimal."

"Those bastards!" A young man standing beside Goro cursed. "How dare they use explosives!"

He was called Yorihiko Tsuitsui, a powerful Mana Vortex Magus and also the vice general of the twenty-five-hundred-man army.

"All is fair in war," Goro sighed.

Kagenami Tsuitsui, the Chief of Intelligence, spoke in a grim voice, "I’ll inform my scouts to be vigilant. If the first wave of ambushers came at us with explosives, the subsequent waves may also be the same."

Goro nodded with a dark look on his face. "Have the scouting groups be led by a Mana Vortex Magus."

"Yes, brother!"

Adam watched as the siblings discussed strategies. When he was training with them, all of them had easy-going and nonchalant attitudes. But now that they were in the middle of a war, each and every one of them had an aura of a combat veteran.

Noticing this, he couldn’t help but silently sigh.

These guys are good.

Suddenly, the Chief Medical Officer of the army, Jinzo Tsuitsui, patted Adam on the shoulder. "Brother Ao."

"Auhh?"

"The hems of your robes are singed in some parts," Jinzo murmured. "Come, let’s get you treated. There might be hidden injuries. With a war looming over us, we must be vigilant."

Although Adam didn’t need healing, he felt that he should be away from the main camp. After all, although the others did not bring it up, he knew that his abrupt fits of crazed laughter were not conducive to the serious environment.

And so, he followed Jinzo into the medical tent.

***

Time slipped by on the road. A month later, after surviving two more ambushes they managed to thwart on time, Goro’s army finally arrived at Kurogane Pass without a single casualty.

The army’s morale grew solemn as they looked at the behemoth of a structure in the distance. Riding at the vanguard, Adam observed what the men around him were going through.

Fear and nervousness were the common sentiments among the men, but there was one thing that these men did not have. Doubt.

In the distance, Kurogane Pass looked like a gaping wound carved into the spine of the Black Iron Mountains. It was narrow, jagged, and reverberated with the low howl of mountain winds.

Steep cliffs towered on both sides, rising like the jaws of an ancient beast. Moss-darkened stones and iron-gleaming ridges gave the pass its name, and even in daylight the gorge seemed half-shrouded in dusk, as though sunlight hesitated to enter.

An oppressive stillness permeated the air, and a quiet weight pressed upon the chests of the Tsuitsui warriors.

At the heart of the pass stood the great fortification, known simply as the Wall. It stretched from cliff to cliff in an unbroken line, its foundations carved directly into the mountain face.

Nearly eighty meters high and forged from layered blackstone steel, the Wall gave the unsettling impression of having been grown, not built. Its plates interlocked like scales, its surface cold and seamless.

Torches burned along the battlements, their flames flickering in the wind. Against that wavering glow stood shadowy figures... tall, motionless silhouettes stationed at regular intervals.

"So this is it," Goro murmured, his eyes narrowing as he gazed at the dark Wall standing proudly in the distance. "It’s much bigger in person."

Adam couldn’t extend his senses that far, so he was in the dark—quite literally. All he could do was listen to the feedback provided by the people around him.

The Chief Strategist of Goro’s army, Seishin Tsuitsui, scanned the tall cliffs on either side of the narrow pass and muttered, "It’s impossible to climb those cliffs. Even with magic, you can only go so far before mother nature decides to humble you."

"So the only way is through," Goro muttered solemnly. "Kagenami, how many men do you think are occupying the wall?"

"According to intel from spies, a little more than a thousand." Kagenami had a grim look on his face.

"I see." Goro’s grin deepened. "So the only way is through, eh?"

The sun was about to set, and the army had been traveling the entire day, so Goro gave the order:

"Set camp! Double—no, triple the number of torches in the camp. Let’s put some pressure on the Tiesha Tang bastards!"

When the sun rose, the gruesome and bloody clash that would later be remembered as the Battle of Kurogane Pass, one of the most brutal conflicts in the realm’s history, would finally begin!

Share