The Northern Territory was located in the far north of the Debei Kingdom, bordering the chaotic and lawless Wilderness.
Getting from the Southern Territory to the Northern Territory required crossing more than half of the Debei Kingdom's domain.
The only route was Lion Heart Avenue, which led to the Debei Royal Court; from there, one had to take Iron Tree Road north to reach the Northern Territory.
Riding hard without rest would still take about ten days.
If it were just Levi alone, with those legs of his—practically a four-wheel-drive, turbocharged engine—he could have made it in four or five days of non-stop running.
But considering Liya and Zat were with him, a conservative estimate for the three of them to reach the Northern Territory was over half a month.
Having already run out of Kolon's line of sight, Levi suddenly felt the ground begin to tremble.
"Boss, what's going on?"
Zat scratched his head, having clearly felt it too.
Levi's brows furrowed slightly. The situation felt inexplicably familiar.
'Huh? Sweat?'
Levi looked at the fine beads of moisture that had suddenly appeared on the back of his hand.
'This suffocating feeling, like a python coiling around me... am I already drenched in sweat?'
"Boss, look! What's that?"
Zat suddenly pointed back in Kolon's direction, where a massive cloud of dust was billowing up.
"That's fucking cavalry!"
At a single glance, he saw at least a hundred Armored Cavalry. Levi shuddered involuntarily as a chill shot straight to the crown of his head, and the color instantly drained from his face.
Every single one of these cavalrymen was fully armed, and even the lions they rode were clad in Iron Armor.
Leading them was a Golden Armor Knight riding a Golden Lion.
If it were ordinary cavalry, Levi wouldn't have reacted this way.
This was Damon's Golden Lion Group. Their mounts were called Haka Golden Lions, a type of fantastical beast with greater speed and endurance than any horse, and a brutal, bloodthirsty nature.
Only a Knight who had raised one from a cub could form a bond with it, and as a result, the two shared an almost telepathic connection.
This was also the reason for Damon's title, the "Highland Golden Lion."
This legion was comparable to the Debei Royal Court's Griffin Knight Order; though not numerous, they were the elite of the elite.
They had been instrumental in quelling the Lizardman uprising on the border.
Even Zat, a Beastman whose insight was as short as his hair, had heard of this legion. He exclaimed in alarm,
"Boss, this is bad! The Golden Lion Group is said to be the absolute elite among cavalry!"
"Elite, my ass! It's the elite I love to beat!" Levi said viciously.
The cavalry was incredibly fast. Even though Levi's group had a significant head start, they were still catching up.
He could have escaped on his own, but this oaf Zat was clearly a dead man.
Having gone to such trouble to trick this Heroic Unit into his service, how could Levi possibly abandon him?
"Levi, we can't escape."
Liya's face was also drained of color in fright at the sight of the cavalry, and she murmured.
Although she was a flower raised in a greenhouse, she knew the power of cavalry—and worse, that this was her granduncle Damon's Golden Lion Group.
The three of them stood no chance of resisting.
Realizing Damon was surely here to capture her, Liya quickly said,
"Levi, put me down! You have to run! As long as they capture me, Damon definitely won't chase you."
"Miss Liya, why are you boosting their morale and crushing our own?!"
Levi slapped Liya on the butt, indignant.
"Watch me, your Lord, show you a thing or two! I'll let them know what a real heavy artilleryman is!"
Setting the blushing and indignant Liya on the ground, Levi turned to face the hundred-strong cavalry.
'It's not like I've never fought a hundred cavalrymen before.'
"Boss, Zat will follow you to the death!"
Thinking Levi was about to turn back and fight the cavalry to the death, Zat gripped his thick, long Wolf Fang Club, a vicious glint in his eyes.
Levi, however, held up a thumb in front of him, closing one eye and then the other to gauge the distance. He concluded they were about a thousand paces apart (one pace being 1.5 meters), and the gap was rapidly closing.
With a mere thought, an Iron Spear, one and a half meters long and weighing ten pounds, appeared in his hand out of thin air.
This was a weapon he had stored in his Conquering System's item slot. He had ten full sets, with five spears per set.
Holding the Javelin, Levi assumed a throwing stance. He narrowed his eyes, aimed at Damon at the very front of the charge, and waited for him to enter effective range.
...
「Meanwhile.」
Spurring his lion onward, Damon also saw Levi's action.
'Has he gone mad? What threat could a throw from this distance possibly pose?'
Damon, who had concluded that the distance between them was well over a thousand paces, thought Levi had lost his mind.
He had heard of this arena champion's reputation and acknowledged that Levi had some skill.
But not to this absurd degree. Even if Levi was waiting for the range to close, the ideal throwing distance was just over a hundred paces. Yet, making a lethal throw from even that range was beyond the limits of human strength.
To throw that Iron Spear over a hundred paces and still have it be lethal... he feared that not even the brawny Beastman beside Levi could manage such a feat.
And if the distance fell below a hundred paces, at the speed of cavalry, they would be upon him in a dozen breaths, making a throw meaningless.
In the end, Damon could only conclude that this Knight had most likely been scared witless by his formidable cavalry.
...
Nine hundred paces... eight hundred... seven hundred...
Silently calculating the distance, Levi's eyes were calm, as steady as an old dog.
Zat's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed repeatedly. The charge of a hundred cavalrymen—the Golden Lion Group, no less—generated a momentum that few could face without a trace of fear.
He glanced at the impassive Levi, his heart filling with ever-growing admiration. 'As expected of the boss I swore allegiance to. He doesn't even bat an eye in the face of such a crisis.'
Six hundred paces... Five hundred!
The moment they reached his effective range, a sharp glint flashed in Levi's eyes.
He hefted the Javelin a couple of times, then aimed at Damon at the edge of his vision, pulling back his shoulder to gather power.
Shoulder, waist, arm—all of his muscles twisted together like a rope. The veins on his hand bulged as he abruptly spun and whipped his arm forward to throw.
WHOOSH!
The javelin shot forward like a bolt of Lightning, its trajectory nearly impossible to follow with the naked eye. In the blink of an eye, it crossed the five-hundred-pace distance.
Damon saw only a streak of black light rushing toward him, and the face beneath his helmet turned deathly pale in an instant.
"How is this possible!!!"
But his rich battlefield experience made him subconsciously gather Combat Qi in his sword and swing it to deflect the Javelin that had flown five hundred paces.
CLANG!
Sparks flew from the impact.
An immense force traveled through the blade, ripping the sword from Damon's grasp. He had succeeded in knocking the Javelin off its trajectory, and it grazed past his ear.
The passage of the Javelin was accompanied by a sonic boom from the friction with the air, which left his ears ringing and temporarily deafened him.
Within a single breath, the Javelin reached a Knight behind Damon, viciously punching through his Iron Armor and piercing his chest, sending him flying like a weightless willow catkin.
The Javelin's immense force was only spent after it knocked that Knight and the one behind him off their lions.
"Is that even human?"
Damon stared at his own hands, the skin between his thumb and forefinger split open, and swallowed hard.
And that was with the help of his Combat Qi. If he hadn't used it, his hands would have been crippled, even if he had managed to deflect the Javelin.
A mere mortal had, with his own power, thrown a Javelin with the force of a ballista.
This Rogue Knight, who had never known fear, felt it for the first time.