THSK Vol. 3 Chapter 4

Chapter 4 – The Young Elite Who Turn Back a Great Host

1

The battlefield I had been given was nothing but one punishing moment after another.

Immediately after the fighting opened, too many Kingdom soldiers overwhelmed us; our men panicked, began fighting as individuals, and went down with no coordination between them at all. I felt the danger of things not going as planned, but the battle had already begun, and there was no meaning left in lamenting anything now.

“…General Ritziareite. The front line is all but destroyed… please, give the order to commit every unit we are holding back.”

The dragon-mount soldiers who had been concentrating on reconnaissance above couldn’t bear to watch what was happening below and had moved into combat as well. Even when it meant a dive that amounted to throwing a life away, they kept scattering their lives one after another.

“Even if we commit everything, in this state it is plain that we would simply lose soldiers for nothing.”

“But then the men at the front, who are barely holding the Kingdom’s army, will be sacrificed.”

“That is…”

—What is the right answer here?

Lady Valtrune was away on another task. Full authority over the Provisional Elite Corps rested with me.

“Where is Petra?”

“The front is so badly tangled we cannot even distinguish which are ours and which are theirs…”

What held the key to victory today was setting off the magic tools. A great quantity of explosive tools had been laid across the Dyrst region, and the only person who could give the order to fire them was, at present, Petra alone.

—I should have placed her further back.

Had I known the enemy’s assault would be this fierce, I would have built a formation with more thought for defense. My appetite for cutting even a little into their numbers had got the better of me, and I had put irreplaceable mages relatively far forward.

“General Ritziareite. Your next order…”

“…………”

The enemy had already broken the Corps’ line. If our soldiers kept dying and we lost the ability to obstruct the Kingdom’s advance, this whole area would pass into the Kingdom’s hands at a stroke.

“Is there nothing for it but to go to the front myself?”

Time was passing, moment by moment. Without a decision, all that would grow was the number of dead.

“…Continue to hold!”

“H-hold, ma’am?!”

“Yes. Hold.”

The conclusion I reached after agonizing over it was that we wouldn’t yet intervene in the fighting. The situation was certainly severe, but if I moved now, the entire plan to take the Kingdom’s army in one net might be reduced to cinders.

“But General Ritziareite, the front line cannot last!”

“I understand perfectly well how narrow this is… but.”

Calming down and thinking it through, I decided I must not cut off the possibility that Petra was alive. The Corps still holds the seed of a reversal. We were being pushed back along the whole line, yes, but if all of this was part of the plan she built, then it would be wrong of me to interfere with it clumsily.

Draw the enemy in, and blow them apart in one motion with the tools. If Petra gives the word and the tools destroy that great host, there is a chance of winning.

—I am betting on you, Petra.

“To all soldiers. We will not commit our remaining strength. We continue to hold the second and third defense lines. We intervene at the front only after the great detonation. Tell the dragon-mount soldiers as well to refrain from engaging as far as they possibly can!”

“Ma’am!”

This has to be right. And if this judgment proves wrong, then I will take the whole of the responsibility and step down from command of the Provisional Elite Corps.

“I believe in all of you.”

2

At the rear position of the Provisional Elite Corps’ first defense line, Dyrst region.

The first defense line is the one that meets the Kingdom’s army head-on, ahead of everyone else, and the person given command of this place was none other than me, Petra Farban.

Obstruct the enemy’s advance, and use the detonation of the magic tools to do a fast-moving enemy damage of half-destruction or worse. That is one of the duties laid on me.

The brown dust filling the whole of my view had covered the Dyrst plain, and it was impossible to tell even where, or in what numbers, the enemy soldiers were massed. The one thing that could be said with certainty was that their strength overwhelmingly exceeded ours. The instant that advancing host appeared, I understood that sealing its momentum off completely wasn’t possible.

“Come on, Petra. There’s no beating that many… the Kingdom’s army is way too big.”

“Don’t complain.”

“B-but, y’know…”

Steano scratched his head with a weak expression and stared out at the front. What he was looking at was one of our units being trampled by the Kingdom’s host with nothing much in the way of resistance, and the color went out of his face at once; anybody could see how shaken he was.

“Whoa… they got flattened in a second there.”

“So it seems.”

“‘So it seems’… at this rate they’ll come at this position too.”

He walked round and round the same patch of ground, unable to settle. What was there to panic about? Everyone had known from the start that the Kingdom’s numbers were overwhelmingly greater than ours and that stopping their advance in a straight fight would be difficult.

What we had to think about was one thing only: how many Kingdom soldiers we could blow away when the tools went off.

“Skittering around in front of me is getting on my nerves! Settle down a little!”

“Yeah, but, look…”

“You don’t have to be that frightened. We’ve got the magic tools. Blow the Kingdom’s main force away at a decent moment and the shape of this turns over easily.”

“Even so, when exactly are we turning it over? Looks to me like they just break through.”

Steano pointed out the way the line was crumbling piece by piece across the field. It was an ugly sight, no question. However hard we dug in to stop the Kingdom’s advance, we couldn’t beat the sheer weight of numbers, and unit after unit was being crushed.

At this rate the Kingdom’s army would stay spread over a wide area, and it was easy to see the Corps simply losing on numbers.

“…We haven’t drawn them in far enough to use the tools yet. We need a few more of them inside the blast area.”

If they kept being defeated in detail, holding the line would become impossible, and eventually the formation would collapse all at once. To rebuild the front I had to buy time, however little.

“Steano. Signal the dragon-mount soldiers to make an air attack… let them do as they like much longer and even sweeping them with the tools gets difficult.”

“‘Kay. I use the smoke tool, right?”

“Yes. The red smoke. Don’t get it wrong.”

Having sent Steano off, I gathered the mages nearby.

“Everyone here.”

Every one of them wore an anxious face.

“Petra-san, what do we do?”

“I think this is a bit beyond us.”

“Are we going to be killed like this?”

Why were they all so faint-hearted? However bad the position we had been put in, we had one shot at turning it over completely. I put in a cough, then let my eyes go over all of them.

“All of you, calm down. Nothing has decided that we lose yet.”

I tried encouragement and it didn’t seem to take. With that scene spread out in front of them, words alone were evidently not going to lift anyone.

—Then for now I will simply overlook their nerves.

“You there.”

“Er, yes?”

“You’ll take over from me and give the order for the tools to fire!”

“What—?!”

I went on before the bewildered mage could recover.

“I am going to the front line and crushing every enemy soldier who still has any push left in him. I don’t expect to have time to be giving orders about the tools, so I’m entrusting that to you.”

“Wait, are you serious?!”

“I am. There’s nothing strange about it. I’ve simply judged it to be the best thing to do.”

Standing at the very front as a mage and putting down oncoming soldiers reliably, in the right order, isn’t an easy thing. Most of the mages in the Corps are young, and only know how to operate with front-line soldiers guaranteeing their safety.

—But I can manage risk accurately on a dangerous field with a lot of enemies on it. At the academy I went through combat for mages under realistic conditions again and again. I can get the most out of everything I learned.

“Anyone can give the order to detonate. If you don’t like carrying the responsibility alone, talk to everybody here and set the tools off at an appropriate moment.”

“Please wait. Then, Petra-san, are you really…”

“Obviously. I’m going to fight mixed in with the soldiers at the front.”

At that, every one of the mages made the same complicated face, as though they wanted me not to go.

“You can’t. It’s far too dangerous…”

“If you die, Petra-san, the first defense line really is finished.”

“Please reconsider!”

Voices going up on all sides to keep me from the front, and my mind didn’t change.

“Sorry, but whatever anybody says, I’m going.”

The order to detonate doesn’t have to come from me. Every mage has been shown how the tools are fired, and the reason I was given the role in the first place is that I was credited with putting down numerous enemy soldiers in the earlier fighting in Marquis Rigel’s territory. If what is being valued is my quality as a soldier rather than as a commander, then it is absolutely better for me to be at the front, fighting.

“I really am better suited to fighting actively than sitting still back here…”

“B-but going alone is too reckless…”

Reckless, perhaps that is fair. A mage’s role is mainly to support the front-line soldiers from behind, not to go out and stand in the line of fire on purpose.

Even so, I had no intention of bending.

“…Frankly, the chance of the Corps beating the Kingdom’s army in the current position is quite low. Sweeping them with the tools means nothing unless we can lure enough of them into the area where the tools are laid.”

As things stood, the Kingdom was fighting us while still holding a great deal of surplus strength at the back. If possible I wanted every one of those reserves committed forward too, and all of it blown away at once.

“That front line can’t hold much longer… which is exactly why I’m going to scatter their soldiers with magic and put pressure on them. To make them believe that if they don’t commit everything here, they’ll be pushed back.”

If the enemy took our bait and threw in their whole strength, we could be certain of blowing away the great mass of them with the tools, and the probability of a win would rise sharply.

“I’ve never once intended to lose. But I’d still be happier with better odds.”

Hearing that, Steano said ‘Fair enough’ and started walking toward the front himself.

“…Wait. Don’t tell me you’re coming too?”

“You don’t need ‘don’t tell me,’ you can tell. How many years d’you think we’ve known each other?”

“What are you posing for? We’ve known each other about six years, since the academy.”

He talks like a partner of several decades, when not remotely enough time has passed for us to communicate by exchanging a look. He scratched his head and pushed his lips out anyway.

“Six years is plenty long for us.”

“…Is it.”

I made a deliberately blank, joking face, and he said ‘Hey’ and gave me a light dig back. I had meant to tease him, and Steano didn’t let the serious look go; he showed me a strained sort of smile instead.

“…Let me fight with you. I’m not completely useless, y’know?”

“I’ve never once thought of you as useless.”

“Huh?! But you’re always telling me I’m an idiot!”

“Obviously that’s banter. It’s also true.”

“That’s not backing me up, though. Petra-saaan?”

What a stupid face.

I have had many chances to treat Steano coldly, and I take them because I trust him. Otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed involved with the same person this long.

He was standing there with his eyes wide, still looking at me, so I gave his shin a light kick and jerked a finger to say get moving.

“Stop standing about. You’re coming, aren’t you?”

“R-right!”

I started walking and he caught up at a trot almost at once.

“Wait, Petra-san?!”

“I’m going to the front with Steano. Firing the tools is all yours.”

I didn’t look back once. I handed full authority over the tools to the mages behind me with my eyes fixed straight ahead at the field.

As an officer leading a large number of soldiers, this behavior is probably a disqualifying one. But if it wins, I don’t care what it is. Mud on my record is worth nothing to me. The only thing that matters is whether the process I chose leads to the best result.

“That all right? Looked like that lot were relying on you.”

“Don’t worry, those children will manage… besides, a girl like me standing at the back with her arms folded playing commander doesn’t suit anyone, does it?”

Those mages are older than I am to begin with, and have been soldiers longer. Being worked by someone younger who has only just left the academy must have grated on them considerably.

“They’ll find it easier moving freely.”

“Hey. That’s what’s called abandoning your post.”

“It is not. I handed the important work over properly.”

“You dumped it on him… well, no use saying anything now.”

Steano shrugged like a man giving up and moved, without making anything of it, in front of me. He drew his sword and put his eyes to work on our surroundings, and the way he did it was a proper knight’s.

“You. Make sure you protect me.”

“Right. As my Lady Petra commands.”

“…Also, pay back the money you borrowed from me.”

“You’re bringing that up now…”

Steano dropped his shoulders in the most obvious way possible. What was he genuinely depressed about? Of course it was a joke. If he’s going to claim we’ve known each other a long time, he could read what I actually mean.

He is slow, so I resigned myself to saying the thing directly.

“What I mean is.”

“Hm?”

“Don’t you dare die without my permission. Both of us are coming back alive.”

I finished and looked for his reaction, and he had that stupid face on again and had gone red.

“…No, hang on. Sudden affection, I’m confused?”

“Excuse me?”

“Wait, is that reaction, are you actually angry about the money?! Your voice has gone frightening.”

Oh, honestly, this idiot. Read the room a little and end the conversation with a quiet ‘yes.’ The fact that he says one thing too many is proof this man understands nothing about how a woman feels.

“…Haah. Of course it doesn’t get through to this idiot.”

“Wh, why are you angry? I’ll apologize for the money, all right…”

“Stop dragging that out. Be quiet and watch our surroundings.”

“Ugh, this is unreasonable…”

What is unreasonable about it?

All I wanted to say was that I trust Steano as a comrade who matters to me. And the first thing out of his mouth is ‘sudden affection, I’m confused’?

When, exactly, was I being affectionate? However you look at it, that was encouragement and nothing else. If words like that count as affection, then I am an indiscriminate, people-pleasing idiot of a woman who is affectionate with everyone.

No. Absolutely not.

I trust him, and Steano is still a stupid man. That is my position.

“…Haah. My opinion of Steano has hit the floor with that. I might start collecting on that debt tomorrow.”

“Wha—?! P-please, anything but that…”

“Oh, is that right. You’re panicking rather. Hmm.”

“Lady Petra… no, Your Excellency. I will stake everything I have on protecting you, so please, some mercy in your handling of this!”

“Hmm, only protecting me. What to do. To forgive an insensitive man like this, I’d need some considerable deeds of arms out of him…”

“Yes! I swear to protect Your Excellency absolutely and to kill a hundred of them, or a thousand!”

I tormented a thoroughly frightened, thoroughly fawning Steano for a good while, and then let my irritation end there, and gave him an outrageous order in its place.

“…Well, for now: keep me alive and kill an unlimited number of the enemy. Whether there are mitigating circumstances depends on how hard you work. Understood?”

“Yes! I’ll do my absolute best!”

“Good. Then we charge into that mess at once!”

I gave the order to charge to a Steano who was working himself up for no reason.

“Wait, we’re going there? Seriously…?”

He seemed to be coming out of his trance somewhat, and that wasn’t my problem. When I saw his pace drop, I broke into a run.

“Stop being frightened at everything. We charge together, nicely!”

“Ehh… incidentally, what’s the plan?”

“Obviously… no guard, full attack!”

“That’s not a plan anymore, that’s just brainless!”

Having declared it at the top of my voice, I went into a field stinking of blood with countless enemy soldiers closing on it.

“Hey, Petra, you’re a mage, you’re too far forward!”

“Be quiet. Hurry up or I’ll kill your share of them too!”

This is a field where lives are on the line, the place nearest the next world, where one mistaken judgment kills you easily. By rights it ought to be somewhere you fear the enemy in front of you, and instead I couldn’t keep my excitement down at fighting at the very front.

I could make a life out of standing on a battlefield and earning brilliant deeds of arms. Fighting spirit hot enough to throw the fear of death back had settled into me.

“I’ll give them a big one to get us started!”

I put everything I had into a working and threw it at the center of the enemy army. The frail magic they threw back in resistance was swallowed whole, and the great fireball burned a large number of Kingdom soldiers to nothing.

“Damn you—!”

A Kingdom soldier came at me with his sword at once, and I looked away with a cool face.

“Not happening!”

“Gah!”

Because the guarding of my immediate surroundings has been entrusted to a man I trust. Steano cut down the soldiers reaching us one after another, moving fast and wasting nothing.

Steano got permanently unremarkable marks in his academic work, but where the sword is concerned I recognize him as the best I know after Aldia. He may not be the strongest, but he is genuinely skilled, and a man like that doesn’t get the order of his targets wrong.

“Heh. How’s that, Petra? Not bad swordwork, eh?”

“It’ll do. A bare pass, I’d say.”

“That’s harsh marking…”

Of course it is. I know Steano very well. Praise him carelessly and he floats off on his own and makes strange mistakes. Here the correct move is to keep a level face, even if it is a lie, and hold to a moderate compliment.

“Right. Next!”

“Yeah. I’ll work for full marks.”

The road the mage Petra walks is the road of still winning. I believe in myself, use magic, and sweep away every enemy in the range I can see.

“Regret ever standing in front of me! And then open me a road!”

The great fire I sent out dyed the field red, and flames burning as though mad writhed high toward the sky. The Kingdom soldiers’ armor began to melt in the heat, and the ground I had walked became a mountain of the dead, black ash and heat drifting over it, making a road.

‘Too many of the enemy?’

‘No chance of winning?’

‘They’ll simply break through?’

‘You don’t want to die for nothing?’

‘You don’t see the point of fighting at a disadvantage?’

Truly idiotic.

Facts that plain are worth nothing to me. Whenever it is and whatever the situation, I hate losing. I go at a contest with everything I have, and however unlovely it gets, I do my utmost to the very end to take the win.

“Steano. Left is yours.”

“Got it. Right’s yours.”

There is someone here chasing victory alongside me. He wants to win as badly as I do, and he follows me down a road of carnage with a fair bit of cheek about it.

—Which is why, however hard it gets, I don’t give up on winning.

“Hah!”

“Hyah!”

Steano and I stood back to back, eyeing the many enemies around us. In this place the only ally either of us could rely on was the other. And even so, neither of us despaired.

“Tch. Cut them and cut them and there’s no end to it.”

“That’s fine. However many come, if we keep killing until the last one is down, it’s our win.”

To become a first-rate soldier who survives a battlefield, you need the greed to chase victory and a very bad habit of not giving up. Victory doesn’t come to people who decide immediately that a thing is impossible.

Whatever the result turns out to be, I will fight to the end. That is the conviction I hold as a mage, and the reason I decided to live here.

3

Red smoke spread out across the sky.

We riders had been watching the enemy advance from far above, and after a round of eye contact we began to descend slowly.

“Right, that’s the attack signal!”

“Time to flatten some soldiers!”

“Okaaay. Let’s do this!”

We had been holding station directly over the Dyrst first defense line for tens of minutes, so the riders were straining at it now that the moment had come.

“Everyone, settle down a bit~ though I do know how you feel.”

The signal to attack had gone up and I was as pleased about it as any of them. Honestly, just watching from above while the ground took a beating had been unbearable.

“All riders, prepare for the strike!”

The riders moved over the enemy soldiers’ heads and began circling, hunting hard for somewhere worth hitting.

—Hmm. Best target’s probably over there, where the mages look thin. The soldiers on the ground are keeping them busy, so they won’t have attention to spare for the sky.

“Right. We go in a bit behind the line where the two armies are meeting!”

“Understood!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The riders spread out from one another and watched for the moment to dive.

Not yet… not yet… right, now!

“Down!”

I said it short and went into the dive first, and the rest of them came down after me one after another. Not one enemy soldier had his eyes up. Well, even if they’d noticed, they probably wouldn’t have made it in time.

“All right, here we go, Pochi!”

We landed on top of the Kingdom soldiers without shedding any speed at all. Armor breaking, something crushing, iron shrieking against iron in a way that hurt the ears, all that noise went out across the entire field in an instant.

“A-air attack!”

“The riders have come down! Shoot them!”

I put more into an enemy line that was already confused by the sudden attack.

“We’re sweeping the lot of them!”

I pulled the reins and Pochi swung that long tail and rolled the Kingdom soldiers over, then crushed them flat under his bulk before they could get up.

“Right, next!”

Pochi gave a roar and bit into the soldiers in front of us this time.

“Kh, let go, agh! My arm! My arrrm!”

What he’d bitten was a Kingdom soldier’s arm. Pochi tore it away, worked his throat, and swallowed it whole. I did think it was rather sad for a man to have his arm taken off, but I put the pity down and shot him through the crown of the head with my short bow.

Looking around, the dragons that had come down out of the sky were biting Kingdom soldiers to death one after another. The ground units had been struggling against the Kingdom’s numbers, but our disruption had worked nicely, and where we riders had landed the flow had gone completely to the Corps.

“Hey, don’t run!”

“Come baaack!”

Riders with too much blood in them, chasing Kingdom soldiers who’d lost the will to fight and were running everywhere, on and on. Aggressive pursuit the moment the position turned over, a model example of the unit I command.

“Hmm. That’s awful.”

“No, before you call it awful, could you stop them? At that rate they’ll chase to the end of the earth and be off the battlefield entirely.”

At some point one of the riders had drawn level with me and was watching the same thing: our own people pursuing running Kingdom soldiers without a shred of mercy.

“Ehh~ well, enthusiasm’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s because the captain talks like that that people say our unit is full of free spirits…”

“Free spirits! That’s true enough!”

“I wasn’t complimenting you, you know!”

The most sensible person in the unit I command let out an enormous sigh and headed off toward the riders chasing the enemy about, looking thoroughly put upon.

“Right, you two! Stop wasting time and fight where you were told to!”

“Ehh.”

“Just a bit longer~”

“I’m not hearing excuses! Get back to your posts, now!”

The scolding was pitched slightly out of tune with the tension of an actual battlefield, and I turned my face away in spite of myself.

—She’s like a dragon-rider version of Petra-chan. Best not to cross her.

“S-so. Perhaps I’ll go and fight somewhere else.”

“Ah, Captain! Hold on a sec…”

“I’ll leave the fighting round here to you~”

Close. That was absolutely the air of an imminent lecture. Better to get well away before anybody says anything about a captain’s self-awareness.

Pochi caught what I wanted at once and leapt up hard into the air.

“Right, we’re running from the scary junior, Pochi. Solo charge over where the enemy look thickest!”

Pochi gave a small growl and beat his wings hard to take us where I’d pointed.

—Oh. Hold on, isn’t that…

What came into view ahead of me were two very familiar figures.

“Heeeey, Petra-chaaan! Steanooo~”

Delighted, I went to join in with the two of them.

4

“Heeeey, Petra-chaaan! Steanooo~”

A cheerful voice from behind and above, and my attention went to it in spite of me, because on a field this grim I hadn’t allowed for an entrance that stupid.

“Hey, Petra. An idiot has arrived.”

“Steano. Ignore it. Concentrate on what’s in front of you… that’s nothing but noise now.”

“Right, got it.”

I ignored the airhead of a rider closing from behind and chose to keep burning Kingdom soldiers down in front of me. There was no reason whatsoever to turn round and go ‘Oh, it’s Mia~ over here, over here~’ like two friends on a day off.

On a dangerous field a moment’s lapse costs a life. Without hesitating I kept burning enemy soldiers to death with fierce-flame workings.

…Besides which, I am not that cheerful a person.

“Yaaay. Petra-cha, gbbogh?!”

Except that the problem child of a rider was evidently not going to grant me the option of ignoring her.

An enormous dragon mount came in without shedding any speed at all, straight into the Kingdom soldier I was about to put a working into, and carried on, taking the soldiers behind him with it, sending men flying one after another. The noise of it was loud enough to draw the attention of the Kingdom’s army and the Corps alike.

“Wh-why is a dragon…”

“Nobody attacks like that…”

“I-is that thing all right…”

“Looks dead to me. Wait, it’s alive?”

Faced with a charge that reckless, everyone standing on that field was thoroughly bewildered.

“Q-quiet! All of you can go flying!”

—And Mia, for her part, seemed to dislike having her fighting picked at, because she set the dragon rampaging in an utterly indiscriminate way.

Nobody could stop a dragon rolling about in every direction at once. Against that unpredictable outrage, Steano and I could only watch with blank faces as the rampaging dragon kept downing enemies.

“…She’s probably stupider than me.”

“Stupid and reckless with her life… it’s a wonder she’s alive at all.”

Even with quality equipment on the dragon, a charge that violent could injure it badly. An ordinary person would fight rather more carefully. And yet…

“Good, that’s it, Pochi! I knew you’d do it!”

Muscle-headed tactics, made up as she went. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the dragon called Pochi, steered by a woman who doesn’t think.

“…That’s a lecture when we get back. It’s an important dragon, she can move it more gently.”

“Her instincts for a fight are good, though… she’s just alarming.”

As it turned out, Mia’s intervention broke well and we destroyed a Kingdom unit outright. But a reckless charge with a high probability of killing herself isn’t something I can forgive.

5

“Ow?!”

“You, we’re on a battlefield, have some sense of tension. Do you understand that that incomprehensible charge was dangerous?!”

“Ugh… we won, so you don’t have to be that angry.”

“Winning and losing has nothing to do with it! The problem is that you made that pointless charge! Do you understand how many people are inconvenienced if you die?!”

Mia, being scolded by Petra right in front of me. Not one person on our side stepped up to defend her.

“Waaah. S-Steanooo~”

She turned a pathetic, help-me face on me, but I couldn’t endorse that violent way of fighting either. And besides…

“Steano? If you say one unnecessary word, you know what happens.”

“Eep…”

I am currently a debtor who has borrowed money from Petra, and I can’t take any action that goes against her. Sorry, Mia. Stand there quietly and be told off.

I held a beautiful, rigid posture and took my eyes off her.

“Yep. This one is entirely Mia’s fault!”

“Ahh?! Steano, you cold-hearted—!”

An enormously overblown reaction, like a comrade sold out. No, that was pretty hard to defend, that was.

Petra likes a fight as much as Mia does, but she can tell the difference between what you may and may not do, so nobody can flatly condemn how she acts. Mia moves on whatever the moment feels like, which is how she ends up taking a long lecture for misconduct.

“You’re the captain of the rider unit, aren’t you? Do you think a captain charging an enemy army without thinking is going to be excused?”

“Ugh… then I’m a captain, so don’t be so angry with me!”

“I am the battalion commander of this defense line. Of course I’m angry!”

…Fair point.

“Waaaaah! Being that angry with me is too cruel!”

“Oh, honestly, there’s no need to cry… I’ll come with you afterward when you apologize to the people you inconvenienced.”

“Uu. Petra-chan… I love you.”

Snuffling tears and worse on the back of a dragon, Mia had precisely zero dignity as a captain.

—Also, why is this idiot a captain when I’m not? I feel the unfairness of the world.

“There. Finished crying?”

“Mhm… oh, thanks for the handkerchief.”

…Mother and daughter, are they.

The scene in front of me was so out of place I could have forgotten I was standing on a battlefield. Petra brushed the dust off Mia’s clothes, handed her a handkerchief, and stroked her head to settle her.

“Haah… you’re not hurt?”

“Nope. I’m fine.”

“Then that’s enough. Pull yourself together, we’re going to support somewhere else.”

“Yep!”

Having cried her way out of it and worked out that no more scolding was coming, Mia went back to her usual bright smile.

—Has this one actually reflected on anything?

I was aiming a suspicious look at her when…

“Nyeh~”

—Mia pulled down the skin under her right eye with a finger and stuck her tongue out at me.

—Ah. This idiot woman. I am absolutely not letting that go.

She may bob her head at Petra, but there is no color of remorse in her anywhere.

“Petra! This idiot hasn’t reflected at all. She just stuck her tongue out at me!”

“I-I did not! I felt Petra-chan’s deep love in worrying about me and I reflected intensely!”

She fired back the instant I informed on her.

“Hah! Would someone who’d reflected intensely provoke me like that? You liar.”

“Waaah, Petra-chan! Steano’s trying to pin a crime on me that I didn’t commit. That’s awful, isn’t it? The one you should really be scolding is him!”

“Hey, Petra. Don’t be fooled by this act. Three seconds from now she’ll do exactly the same thing!”

“I will not!”

“You absolutely will!”

“No. I absolutely will not!”

“No. Your ‘absolutely will not’ can’t be trusted!”

“You stubborn… you perpetual failing-grade alien!”

“Shut up! You were about the same as me!”

While the fruitless argument went on, Petra, head down, began to shake at the shoulders.

“Petra-chaaan. Scold this idiot Steano, won’t you?”

Mia hadn’t noticed that obvious fawning was, with Petra in this state, exactly the wrong move.

I understood at once that something about Petra had changed, and shut my mouth so as not to say anything unnecessary. And thanks to Mia’s blithe attitude, my choosing silence lost all its meaning.

“…You two?”

“Eep…?!”

“Fweh…”

A low voice with a chill at the bottom of it. Petra’s tone shifting brought beads of sweat out on Mia’s forehead.

“No fighting. Yes?”

A manufactured smile with a shadow on it. On what ought to have been a field full of noise, the cold coming off Petra brought a silence down as though time had stopped for a moment.

Neither Mia nor I had any option except to nod immediately.

“We’re sorry. We’ll get along. We won’t fight anymore.”

“Is that so? I’m glad. And if what you just said was a lie… mm?”

“We swear it isn’t a lie!”

Not a word of protest from either of us. Mia and I looked at Petra’s about-to-snap smile and put our foreheads to the ground at the same moment.

In conclusion: when Petra genuinely loses her temper there are two patterns, the shouting one and the quietly-pressing one. Personally, this one frightens me several grades more than a shouting Petra.

6

Beginning with the lecture to Mia and ending with settling a fruitless argument between Mia and Steano, we could finally concentrate on the fighting.

“You two are going to fight at the very front, of course?”

“Yes! As my Lady Petra commands!”

The pair of idiots went off amicably at the head of the ground units.

The Kingdom’s army had withdrawn from where we had just been fighting, which let the Corps take possession of a wide area, and we were now heading somewhere new where the enemy soldiers were thick.

“…Enemy in numbers! Our people are surrounded!”

“Understood! You two are up. Scatter that rabble!”

“Yes! We’ll kill them in an instant for Lady Petra!”

The two of them kept up the grandiose speech, answered in perfect unison, and ran for the enemy ahead of everyone else. I drew a light breath and pointed at their backs.

“Everyone else, follow those two. Begin the attack!”

“Ma’am!”

Mia with her short bow and her enormous dragon mount, and Steano with his gift for the sword. Those two are forever squabbling noisily, but where fighting is concerned I trust them a great deal. Honestly, neither is suited to standing above anyone and giving orders, but as soldiers fighting at the front they have a potential that shines far past any ordinary soldier.

“Hold them for me…”

“Leave it!”

“Yeees!”

Watching the two of them meet the enemy and fight hard, I set about preparing a working at once.

There was no need for something large and showy that tears a formation apart. We had force enough to push the enemy in front of us back. What I ought to use was…

“…Barriers on my own people. Nothing else.”

If I let a wide-area attack go in this situation, the worst case is a disaster that catches my own people. Back on the field earlier, before Mia arrived, the only ally near me was Steano, so I could throw magic without reservation. Now the circumstances had changed, and there was no reason for me to be firing whatever I liked. This wasn’t a moment for exercising personal power however I pleased.

“Change how you fight to suit the situation. People who can’t become first-rate mages are the ones who misjudge at the decisive moment. …Hah!”

I am a first-rate mage. I find the optimal answer and draw victory in.

I laid barriers on the soldiers fighting ahead of me and then sent my eyes around us.

“Hyaah!”

“Sei!”

Mia and Steano were attacking the enemy in front of them with real aggression, which had put the enemy’s opening tempo a beat behind. The other soldiers holding both flanks to protect them thrust out swords and spears to keep the enemy from closing, and kept them checked well.

Everyone was working together and fighting from an ironclad formation. What I could see was a board on which the Kingdom’s army was struggling to attack and their advance had gone sticky.

The enemy would be impatient, thinking about how to solve the two greatest threats in this place, Mia and Steano, and wanting to put pressure on them. All I had to do was kill any move against those two before it happened.

“That’s where you are, then!”

“—?!”

A little behind where the Kingdom’s army and the Corps were engaged, I could see several mages hidden in the shadow of a long row of Kingdom soldiers, quietly taking aim at the pair of them.

I put a working in immediately, and the mages gave it up and raised a barrier to protect the soldiers.

“Damn her…”

“Change of plan. We kill that woman first.”

“There’s one of her. All of us together and she’s finished!”

Having obstructed their move, I had turned the enemy mages’ target from Mia and Steano onto myself.

The enemy mages began building their workings, the pressure of it coming off them in waves, and I moved into a counterattacking stance at once.

“Hmph! Very good. A crowd of nobodies can’t beat me however many of you there are. Let me teach you what a difference in ability looks like!”

—Advantage or not, this is a fight the Corps can’t step down from.

If we could push the Kingdom’s army back here as well, the enemy would certainly become impatient. And then the Kingdom would try to commit an even larger host and crush a Corps that was defending the whole enormous Dyrst region with a handful of people.

—If we can get the enemy to stand on our ground, victory comes a great deal closer.

“Listen! This is where we prove ourselves! If you don’t want to lose disgracefully, hold this place as though your lives depend on it!”

Immediately after I shouted that encouragement at my people, innumerable bolts giving off a pale light like the first of the dawn were loosed across the whole of my view. Every one of them came straight at me.

Even if I threw up layer after layer of barrier around myself with everything I had, right now, whether I could cancel every bolt wasn’t certain. On the feel of it, at about seventy percent I should expect to take at least one hit.

“If one lands badly I might die… but!”

I drew a deep breath in order to sweep every bolt aside. At this stage it isn’t a question of whether I can. There is only doing it.

“For me, thirty percent is no different from a hundred!”

I am not a woman to be caught by worthless probability.

I released every barrier I had given my people and raised a solid one around myself. The bolts struck it and burst, one after another.

“Please… hold.”

A sound like breaking glass every second, and the explosions and the waves of heat getting steadily closer. A countdown toward dying, ticking nearer.

—How many barriers do I have left, and how many bolts do they have left?

A test of endurance with a life on it, and where it ended…

“…Ah.”

—tipped, as it happened, toward the invaders.

7

I felt heat appalling enough to burn a face.

The last barrier shattered into powder and the fragments came down over the whole of me, and then melted away into nothing.

“…Kh!”

Covering my head with both arms, I made my peace with dying.

—I did everything I could do. If that isn’t enough, I’ve no regrets.

Blown away by the impact of the bolts, badly wounded, out of the fight. That was what I expected. Except…

“Heavy unit, cover our people, quickly!”

“Ma’am!”

A woman’s voice from behind me.

“Petra! Hnn!”

The light of the bolts that had been lighting my face was cut off, immediately after that voice, by some large obstruction. A dull shock traveled through the air, the feel of bolts being turned away.

There was no pain in my body. I simply hadn’t caught up with the situation.

“Wh… at…?”

I brushed the dust rising off the ground aside with a hand and slowly opened my eyes. Standing there covering me was a single soldier in enormous armor, with a great shield up.

“You, surely not…”

“Are you all right, Petra?”

I heard that gravelly voice and my eyes went wide.

“Ambros?!”

Hard armor, unnecessarily broad across. A great shield thick enough and tall enough that you would wonder whether he had brought an iron door from somewhere. And that huge frame, with a core in it like a fortress.

“Yeah! I’m glad I made it in time!”

There was no mistaking him. This dependable, giant of a man was Ambros.

“Next! Dragon-mount units, help break their front open!”

“General Ritziareite, the heavy unit…”

“Follow the riders and advance! The rest, work on protecting the mages!”

And the owner of the first voice I had heard was General Ritziareite, who leads the Provisional Elite Corps.

“Reinforcements…”

The pain I had been carrying in my stomach eased all at once. With them arriving, I understood that holding this area was no longer in doubt.

“Petra. I’m glad you’re unhurt.”

“I’m sorry. I went to the front on my own authority.”

“Not at all. Thanks to you the front has recovered. The plan won’t collapse now.”

Ritziareite, astride a dragon mount, put down a Kingdom soldier bearing down on her with a beautiful piece of spearwork. Our soldiers, who had been fighting one engagement after another, visibly relaxed at her arrival.

“I’m going to support Mia and the others. This area will be all right, won’t it?”

“Yes. Leave it to us!”

Words with trust in them. To answer what she expected of me, I fixed my eyes on the enemy from behind Ambros.

“What is that… he took bolts and he’s still standing?”

“And he took all of that on himself, how hard is that shield?!”

“D-don’t flinch! Keep firing until he stops breathing!”

The enemy mages threw magic at us again, and Ambros’s ironclad guard wouldn’t let a bolt through.

“Gh… Petra, the counterattack’s yours.”

Enduring the bolts on that great shield and his own body, Ambros turned his eyes toward me.

“…Yes. Leave it to me.”

There was no need to say much. If Ambros holds in front, I need spend no attention on defense and can think about one thing only: sweeping the enemy mages away.

“This will take a little time.”

“That’s fine. Take as long as you like.”

“Thank you. The wall is yours.”

I put the possibility of Ambros being broken through out of my mind and began building a high-power working carefully. Destroy the enemy mages and the rain of bolts concentrating on him stops dead.

So many of our people had come to help us. In a safe place with nothing interfering, I put everything into the construction.

“…Right, I can fire whenever!”

Ambros nodded when I said it.

“Good, any time you like!”

“Yes. And this is our great reversal! Drop dead!”

From behind Ambros I released all the magic I had stored at once, and it pulled in even the enemy’s puny little bolts as it went.

“…She built a working on that scale in that little time?”

“Impossible! We can’t stop it!”

“All units, withdraw—!”

Kingdom soldiers running in every direction, and of course there was no getting clear. A great many people were pulled into my working, and where the Kingdom’s army had been became scorched ground burned entirely black.

“Right, their formation’s well and truly broken!”

“Now! Flatten them with everything!”

Mia and Steano pressed and scattered the enemy soldiers who were left. The difference in numbers had turned over, and the few surviving Kingdom soldiers at the back began to fall away in scattered groups.

“Hey! Get back here!”

“Hey, idiot, idiot, idiot! That’s too far out even for a rider. Come baaack!”

Watching Mia and Steano become entirely certain of victory and let their guard drop, I put a hand to my chest and let out a long breath.

That was close. Without the reinforcements, being wiped out entirely was a real possibility.

Then I looked up at Ambros and put out a fist.

“We won because you people came. Thank you.”

“Mm! I’m glad I was of use!”

Ambros and I knocked our fists lightly together.

We had helped our own people, who were being pushed back, and succeeded in turning the battle over. If Ritziareite and Ambros hadn’t appeared to rescue us, the side that lost might well have been ours.

“Right. Shall we go and hunt the stragglers?”

“No, we’re not. Holding this place is plenty of work done. Wait quietly for General Ritziareite’s orders.”

“Mm… is that so. Then that’s fine!”

For a man who had just weathered that many bolts, Ambros’s face was bright and showed no fatigue at all.

8

With the Corps having driven the Kingdom’s army back at two separate points, the Kingdom’s army was visibly confused. Their skirmishing units milled about as though they couldn’t work out where to go and help, and pulled back toward the main body one after another.

Having grasped that an offensive designed to enclose the whole Dyrst region was no longer working, the Kingdom’s army was expected to try to break through at a single point with everything they had.

Preparing for a single-point offensive on the largest scale yet, Ritziareite gathered everyone present into one place.

“Petra, we worked hard and killed absolutely loads of them!”

“Yes, yes, me too! That wipes out my earlier disgrace, doesn’t it!”

With the Kingdom’s army driven back repeatedly, our spirits were climbing steadily. Mia and Steano had their arms round each other’s shoulders in high excitement.

“You both did well. Good.”

“Got it!”

“Yaay! Petra-chan praised me!”

Praised honestly, the two of them went up another notch.

“General Ritziareite, thank you truly for coming to help us.”

“Not at all. I am the one who should be grateful. You changed the shape of the battle. I was alarmed when we lost contact with you, but you rampaged so spectacularly that I could work out where you were.”

Ritziareite, who had been at the operations post, had come to the front as well. Everything from here would be a total engagement.

“We have come this far with our entire strength. There are no further reinforcements to be had… Petra, you understand what that means, don’t you?”

“Yes. That we fight the final battle for the Dyrst region as we stand.”

“Exactly. The tools go off where we are standing right now. We pull the front back once, and when the enemy army comes to this place again, we detonate all of it at once. That is our only path to a win.”

We had driven the Kingdom’s army back with our trump card still in hand. If they intended to destroy us, they had no option but to come with their whole army.

“Even in small numbers we are fighting the Kingdom’s army perfectly well. Let us draw them in as we are and take the whole of them in one net!”

“Yes!”

After this the Kingdom’s army had two options: continue the offensive, or pull out entirely because of the severe damage they had taken.

If they gave up on taking the Dyrst region, so much the better. We could build our strength for the next invasion and wouldn’t have shown our card.

But what had to be thought about was the case where the Kingdom pressed on. The Corps had soldiers spread over a wide area, and the numbers in each place were thin enough that the concentration of enemy strength anywhere would break us easily.

“General Ritziareite. I think we should gather the first defense line’s people together for now.”

“Petra. I was thinking exactly the same. If the Kingdom aims at a single point, we do not have the mass to hold it.”

A plan to detonate tools laid in the ground means nothing unless the enemy can be held in place; the momentum of their advance has to be killed. Throw their whole strength and ours together, and slow the movement of the battlefield down.

That is the best move available to us.

“Mia. You are captain of the rider unit, are you not?”

“Th-that’s right, but…”

“…Then why are you here alone on one dragon?”

“Um… ah. I-I just got separated. Please don’t worry about it!”

An unsightly excuse. She will have handed the unit off to somebody without permission and slipped away because she wanted to move freely.

Ritziareite seemed to be taking Mia’s excuse at about half value and answered ‘Is that so’ with no interest whatsoever.

“Which means, then, that your dragon-mount unit is still somewhere out there. Is that correct?”

“Er… hmm. Probably?”

“Then I am sorry, but call them back here quickly. Dragon mounts are a valuable asset. The more of them we can scrape together, the better our chances.”

At Ritziareite’s instruction, Mia sent her dragon into the air at once.

“I’ll hurry and gather them~”

“I’m counting on you.”

Mia left the site at a truly impressive speed.

“Hey, Petra.”

“Hm?”

“She absolutely ran because she didn’t want it getting out that she slipped away on her own, didn’t she.”

“There’s nothing else it could be. Well, never mind. General Ritziareite doesn’t seem bothered either.”

There should not be time to be scolding Mia now, and the proof of it was that she was still giving her other subordinates detailed instructions.

“What do we do?”

Steano, who had come with me, would be moving with me to the end.

“Nothing changes. Keep guarding me.”

“Yeah.”

Ritziareite finished giving orders and the soldiers who had gathered moved off to their tasks. Seeing that the people around us had thinned, she walked slowly over toward me.

“Petra. I would like to leave you in combat at the front, going forward.”

“…Truly?”

It was hard to believe I had heard it correctly. By rights my role was to command from the rear and read the state of the whole first defense line. Which I had, admittedly, handed to a subordinate myself.

“Is that all right?”

“Yes. I entrusted you with full authority over the timing of the tools because I judged your ability to command and organize to be high, but that evidently was not satisfying enough for you.”

“That’s…”

Her face wasn’t the face of a woman reproaching me. If anything, she put a hand gently on my shoulder and smiled warmly.

“The very front needs a mage with your power. Will you go?”

Eyes with expectation in them.

There is no word I would rather hear. Having my skill as a mage counted on is what pleases me most; when somebody says your power is needed, it feels as though my worth has been made plain.

“How is it… you may refuse if you dislike the idea.”

Ritziareite drew her brows together slightly at my not answering, and I said ‘No,’ left a beat, and nodded hard.

“Of course. Allow me to go!”

“Good, that helps. If you hold the soldiers at the front together, the plan should certainly work.”

“Yes. Leave it to me.”

Ritziareite signaled the dragon-mount soldiers she had brought, mounted, and left.

“I will pass you information from the air as it comes. Those of you remaining here, fall back for now.”

The many dragons in the air climbed steadily higher so as not to be attacked, and flew off toward where the Kingdom’s main force was.

“Steano, we’re going back!”

“Yep. Understood.”

“Ambros, you’re free at the moment?”

“Mm, right!”

“Then come with me.”

I took Steano and Ambros and several hundred soldiers and pulled the line back.

It wouldn’t be long before the Kingdom’s army moved. All that was left was to wait for the riders’ reports and meet the enemy in perfect condition.

9

Petra’s safety was confirmed, and the Kingdom’s advance had settled for the moment. From here we entered the final stage, the one that rested on the magic tools.

“General Ritziareite. The enemy army shows little sign of moving… but they are changing formation. They may be preparing something.”

“Keep watching. Once the new formation is complete, they may begin.”

Astride a dragon mount, I searched out what the Kingdom’s army meant to do.

For the present they were collecting the soldiers who had withdrawn from the front and reorganizing. Ranks of soldiers plainly more numerous than the Corps.

And at the center of them was Euris Leto Reshfeld, second prince of the Reshfeld Kingdom.

“…That is the Second Prince.”

We had climbed high enough not to be noticed, so people showed no larger than beans, but one figure’s coloring was clearly different from the soldiers in iron around him.

The other riders had evidently picked him out too, because they all arrived at the same view: that is the Second Prince.

“That selfish Second Prince, is it… so he invaded on a whim?”

“Hardly. Starting a war is not something even a prince can do easily.”

“True. It would take considerable circumstances to move the Kingdom’s army.”

The other riders exchanged opinions among themselves. Nowhere in my view was there another person dressed showily besides Prince Euris.

—Then I think we can take it as settled that Prince Euris is directing this battle.

“You. Fall back for now and report the situation. I believe they will move shortly.”

“Understood.”

If Prince Euris is in command, he won’t be producing complicated schemes one after another. He will have come at this believing that weight of numbers wins it.

—If they had a fine strategist I couldn’t rule out our trap being seen through, but from what I can see there is no one Prince Euris speaks with more than a commander must.

I had thought to stay a little longer and observe, but I judged the likelihood of any unusual tactic to be as close to zero as makes no difference, and told the riders around me:

“…I predict they will simply push with the difference in numbers. Leave a few to watch and let us return to the first defense line. If we can hold their leading units in place, we can manage.”

I moved the reins and turned the dragon toward the sky we had come through.

—Now. It seems the full confrontation is about to begin.

10

“Your Highness! Imperial resistance is fierce and we judge a breakthrough by a small force to be difficult. We request reinforcement!”

“What did you say—?!”

The soldier who came with the report was covered in wounds from head to foot. I had been watching from a distance, and small force or not, our numbers were overwhelmingly the greater.

“What are you doing? You cannot even scatter an enemy that small?”

“B-but, Your Highness… the enemy has numerous capable mages and dragon riders, and we, having only ground forces, are in a position where we cannot press the attack home.”

Mages and dragon riders, is it.

It is true that the Kingdom’s army I command is short of mages. For this invasion I couldn’t obtain the full cooperation of the royal court mages; they came out with some worthless line about not setting foot in another nation’s territory without my father’s order, and I gave up on persuading them.

—Damn it. Are ground forces alone useless no matter how many bodies I gather?

“And we have no dragon mounts either. …Damn it, this is infuriating.”

The irritation wouldn’t settle. But one of my people spoke up.

“However, Your Highness. They may have a quantity of dragon mounts and mages, but in the end they are a small body of a few thousand at most. We have taken heavy damage, and we still hold more than thirty thousand. If we mount an offensive with the entire army, we should be able to destroy them without difficulty.”

“I see… yes, quite so!”

At the start I didn’t know the enemy’s numbers, so I moved about ten thousand and had them probe. Now that the other side is known to be a few thousand at most, going to crush them with everything is one option.

I called a commander over at once.

“You.”

“How may I serve, Your Highness?”

“From now we begin the reduction of the Imperial army with the entire army.”

“…I beg your pardon?”

“Did you not hear me?! The entire army. We put down those irritating soldiers in one motion, with the entire army! I will not entertain objections! Give the order at once!”

“Y-yes, Your Highness…!”

Honestly, slow-witted people are exactly the problem. With this many soldiers there is no possibility of our losing, dragons and mages are beside the point. Battles are decided by numbers. However strong the soldiers on the other side may be, faced with soldiers filling every direction, they can’t possibly survive.

“For Reshia’s sake, I will take this Dyrst region…!”

I will win this battle without fail and, exactly as she wishes, present this land to the Svell Order. If it is for her, there is nothing I can’t do, and that is the first reason I have for exercising the power I hold as the Second Prince.

11

The time was two in the afternoon, four hours since the Kingdom’s invasion began. The Kingdom’s army, driven back once, resumed its advance and began to move slowly, and exactly as we had planned, they appeared to intend to overwhelm us with the difference in numbers.

“They’ve come. We obstruct the enemy’s advance. All units, begin moving!”

The Kingdom’s army moved its entire strength, swinging round from the left, and the whole of the force we had massed at the front began moving left in answer.

“I do hope this ends here…”

The tools’ detonation area covers the whole of the Dyrst region, so a Kingdom army trying to come round from the left can be handled as well. The question is how much damage the detonation does to the enemy.

The power of a single tool has already been tested: a fine piece of work that destroys everything within a radius of several meters. No matter how hard the armor, it can’t withstand one.

If it goes as it did in rehearsal, it should succeed. It will be all right.

“Hold them. Draw as many of the enemy as possible into the detonation area and strike all at once. Fuu.”

I said the same thing over and over under my breath, with a deep breath in between.

“…And if it fails, we are destroyed.”

It is an operation with a great deal of risk in it, and the strain on me was greater than anything I have experienced. But nothing is achieved by being afraid here, so I tapped my cheeks twice and roused myself.

“Right!”

There are many companions around me. We have trained hard, and though the time has been short, bonds have genuinely formed. Becoming a general of the Provisional Elite Corps became the meaning of my life and the strength I fight with.

The Empire I love, and the place I share with the companions who matter to me, can’t be lost here.

With an appalling number of enemy soldiers in front of me, I raised my spear and declared:

“All of you are my pride. Let us fight it through to the very end.”

“Yes!”

I am about to order a head-on collision with the Kingdom’s great host knowing that a great many of my companions will be lost. There is no guarantee that a single one of us survives.

Even so, we will keep advancing over the bodies of our own.

As proud soldiers of the Provisional Elite Corps, obeying the command of Princess Valtrune, to strike down these evil invaders…

12

“All units, charge!”

The order came down from Ritziareite, and the total engagement with the Kingdom’s army finally opened.

The cavalry at the head thrust their spears forward and collided with the enemy’s cavalry, and horse against horse, riders on both sides went down onto the ground as though crushed.

“Magic units, ready! Fire!”

Then, with Petra’s shout, innumerable bolts colored the sky. They drew a clean arc and came down into the center of the Kingdom’s army, and with a great roar red fire spread out across where they landed.

“Forward!”

“Let’s go!”

Our numbers were plainly insufficient, but we had a special asset with the potential to break an enemy formation in an instant: dragon mounts. Their entry into a fight is enough to make up a hopeless difference in strength.

The Corps set its aim on the enemy ahead without hesitating and pushed forward, ducking the storm of bolts and arrows crossing overhead and cutting down the soldiers who reached us.

“Petra. There are too many people, I can’t move!”

“You can’t fall back either!”

“I know that.”

With enemy and ally alike packed too tightly, our movements were badly restricted, and along the line where the two armies met, bodies were piling up.

“H-hey… we’re being shoved hard from behind.”

While I was complaining, Petra, pressed up against me in the same crush, got a sudden look on her face.

“No, this is fine.”

“What?”

“It’s going to plan, is what I mean. The front being jammed and movement stopping is not a bad thing. The worst case would be our own people moving to run from the front they’re supposed to hold.”

Hearing that, I dropped into a crouch at once.

“I see. So we’ve stopped the enemy army moving, exactly as intended.”

“Yes. All that’s left is blowing them away with the tools!”

“Well, if that’s the case, we hold here even if it kills us!”

By digging in so as not to be pushed by the enemy’s momentum, we made the enemy send people forward and forward again to try to get their line moving. Blow them up once they had packed themselves in, and all that would be left was cleaning up the remnants.

“…Kh.”

“Endure it with everything!”

The front began to be pushed back by degrees, and we put our bodies together and dug in desperately to keep from moving off the ground where we stood.

“Now. Use the tools!”

Ritziareite’s order came down, and the mages standing by to fire them set off every tool at once.

And then the tools under the earth threw off a light bright enough to hurt through the gaps in the soil.

“Wh-what is that—?!”

“Hey. Wait… this is—!”

Some among the enemy mages seemed to grasp what was coming, and there was no possibility of the Kingdom’s army leaving that ground.

Immediately afterward, earth leapt into the air across a wide area, and so many Kingdom soldiers went up with it, the end of soldiers packed too tightly together being to get blown apart by magic tools. The ground shook hard and I nearly went over backward.

“Careful, you.”

“S-sorry…”

Even in shaking that made standing difficult, Petra put a hand on my back at the moment I began to go and set me slowly upright with an entirely untroubled face.

“How are you still standing in that?”

“Strong core.”

“Didn’t know that about you…”

Surprised by unexpected new information, I turned my eyes back to the blast.

What had appeared there was a crater deep enough and broad enough that a lake with a radius of several hundred meters might form in it, which told you everything about the tools’ power.

“…You have to be joking.”

Black smoke rose out of the bottom of a crater with real depth to it, and the Kingdom soldiers who had been in the air came down one after another, and what spread out was a scene full of appalling corpses.

“Now! Press the attack!”

The great bulk of the Kingdom’s army had been caught in the detonation and destroyed. What remained on their side was the thin skim of the best of them who had been at the very front contending with the Corps, and the limited units at the very rear who had been lucky enough not to step inside the blast area.

“That settles it.”

Petra said it with a cool face and threw magic after the fleeing Kingdom soldiers like a pursuit.

Watching Kingdom soldiers writhe in pain, I moved out in front of her.

“You’re merciless.”

“Mercy isn’t required. It’s a field where you live or die.”

“Well… yeah, fair enough!”

And I brought my sword down on a Kingdom soldier lying nearby who could no longer move.

“You’re no different from me.”

“…No. I suppose not.”

It hardly needs saying that the Corps had taken the advantage in this fight. What was left was disposing of the remnants, and there were plenty of soldiers going after them; Petra and I looked to be finished for the day.

13

Red light wrapped the whole of my vision, and a roar loud enough to burst an eardrum came with the blast and brought despair down on me.

“Gaaaaah…!”

“It’s hot… it’s so hot…”

The only screaming came from the men just in front of me. The Kingdom soldiers standing at the center of it burst apart with the detonation without making any sound at all.

“That… can’t be… my army…”

“Your Highness, it’s dangerous. Please fall back!”

The remains of Kingdom soldiers came flying toward me, thrown out by the blast, and thanks to the barrier I had ordered raised I took no injury.

But that one detonation had cost me more than seven-tenths of my soldiers.

“…What… am I supposed to do…”

“Your Highness. We must withdraw now! Our chain of command is in pieces, we have no coordination at all!”

“No… then Reshia’s wish can’t be granted.”

My head went white, and I began walking slowly toward the enormous circular crater the explosion had opened. I looked down into it, and Kingdom bodies lay strewn across the bottom in appalling numbers. Some still had the shape of people; a great many could only be taken for red, ruined lumps of meat.

“…I can’t win this. Can I.”

The soldiers left on the far side of the crater were being cut down by the Imperial army one after another, and sooner or later they would come across this crater and turn their blades on us.

“Your Highness! It’s dangerous there. Come, this way… gah!”

One of the generals pulled at my hand to run with me, and abruptly threw up blood and went down. Looking properly, there was an arrow through his forehead.

“…It’s finished. All of it, ruined.”

There was nobody left around me. I had been abandoned entirely, and the sound of horsemen was closing from both sides.

I made every preparation in order to grant Reshia’s wish, and am I going to die in a place like this?

“We’ve found the Second Prince!”

“No Kingdom soldiers nearby. Taking his head!”

What was coming was not my own soldiers. The killing intent winding around me got thicker and thicker, until my breathing came apart and I could not properly draw air.

—So I die here.

For the first time in my life I understood that I was about to die.

I had entirely underestimated a battlefield. I had thought of nothing but that a difference in numbers would carry it through. Every one of my calculations was soft. What I needed was to see through the enemy’s scheme and give orders that answered it flexibly.

A battlefield I walked onto knowing nothing… what I was capable of doing there amounted to nothing at all.

“I’m sorry… Reshia…”

I called up the face of the woman I love, sat down where I was, and closed my eyes.

14

“Now, we destroy the last of them!”

The tools’ detonation had turned the position over. The Kingdom’s great host, more than forty thousand at the start, had been caught in the blast and was now a few thousand at most, roughly equal to our own numbers, or slightly fewer.

Naturally we pursued.

Once we had scattered every enemy we had been contending with, I pointed at the far side of the crater.

“The commander leading the Kingdom’s army is almost certainly Euris Leto Reshfeld, second prince of the Reshfeld Kingdom! Strike him down the moment you find him!”

The Corps’ soldiers went round the great circular depression on both sides and shifted to hunting the Kingdom remnants left on the opposite bank.

—And with that it is over, I think.

The time had been short, and the fatigue had piled up until I could have believed I had been fighting for months. It was less that my body was heavy than that there had been far too much to think about.

“Haah… I would like to pray that fighting this hard does not continue.”

Having delivered my own verdict on a decisive battle that had proved a far harder fight than expected, I mounted a dragon and flew out over the crater.

The tools’ power was immense; it had neutralized tens of thousands of enemy soldiers in an instant. Without the groundwork of that detonation, I believe the side that lost would have been the Corps. It was, beyond any question, a victory of planning.

“We’ve found Prince Euris!”

What I could see from the dragon was Prince Euris, abandoned even by his own soldiers, sitting alone on the ground. He plainly had no will to fight left; it looked like a situation in which nothing remained but to wait for his head to be taken.

“It really did end in a moment.”

One of the Corps’ soldiers began walking toward him. He would finish it, and this battle would be over. That was what I thought as I turned the dragon and took my eyes off Prince Euris.

Then a fine, rapid shaking, quite unlike the tools’ detonation, opened cracks in the ground.

“What—!”

I turned back at the sound of a soldier’s short, strangled cry.

“…What is that?!”

There, having broken up through the ground, was the head of an enormous serpent. And looking properly, it had swallowed Prince Euris, and only him, whole.

“Everyone, get clear of that place!”

I gave the order in the panic of something entirely unforeseen, but the black serpent showed no sign of hostility toward us; it kept Prince Euris in its mouth, went back down into the earth, and disappeared.

What had just happened?

That an enormous serpent like that was moving beneath the Dyrst region was something I had not known.

“Watch your surroundings! You need not pursue the Kingdom’s army. Concentrate above all on securing your own safety!”

Being able to fly on a dragon, I could feel safe enough; the soldiers standing on the ground where the black serpent had appeared began checking under their feet constantly.

“…This will have to be reported to Lady Valtrune.”

Our victory over the Kingdom’s army had lasted a very short while, and now a suspicion had surfaced that a dangerous monster was lurking in the Dyrst region.

I would be told later that the enormous black serpent was a Divine Beast the Saint had brought with her, but that was a matter for after everything had ended.

15

I was breathing, barely, inside a warm darkness.

I had seen the Imperial soldiers close on me and raise a sword to kill me. But the moment of my death did not arrive. A hair before the edge cut my neck in two, something came out from under my feet and shut me inside an unfamiliar dark space.

After that I understood nothing. No sound reached me from outside; my clothes were fouled by a slightly rank, viscous liquid, and all I could do was breathe in and out inside a swaying dark.

What in the world was happening? Where was this? Was I even still alive?

I stayed where I was, entirely unable to grasp the situation, and then the swaying stopped and a thin light came into the darkness from outside.

“…Where is this?”

I came out through the opening, and it was not imperial territory; it was the top of a hill thick with grass and trees, with the whole of Philnotes laid out below.

“Lord Euris. Are you unharmed?”

“—! That voice, Reshia?”

“Yes, Lord Euris. I am Reshia.”

Soft air and a voice with no thorn anywhere in it. I turned, and there stood Reshia with an enormous black serpent at her side.

“…And the black serpent?”

“This child is a Divine Beast granted to me by the Lord God Svell. It will never do you any harm, so please be at ease.”

“A Divine Beast… then at that moment—!”

So that was it. What broke up through the ground and shut me into that darkness was this black serpent. I had not seen it properly in the instant it happened, but I remembered something faintly like black scales catching the outside light and glittering.

“Do you mean you sent this creature to the battlefield to save me?”

I asked, and she nodded several small times.

“Yes. I was worried about you, Lord Euris. I told this child that if anything happened, it was to take you and flee the field.”

“I see. So that is why I am alive…”

The person who had kept alive a man whose death was all but settled was Reshia, and nobody else.

“Lord Euris, I, I’m sorry!”

She suddenly dropped her head and began apologizing.

“I never… at the start I never thought you might die…”

The Kingdom’s great defeat in the Dyrst region. She appeared to feel responsible for it. But every fault in this defeat is mine.

“No… none of it is your fault, Reshia. The whole cause is that I was not equal to it.”

She saved my life and now tried to take the blame for the loss as well.

What was it that I wanted to do? I wanted to see her happy. That was supposed to be all of it.

…And look at the result. I could not take the Dyrst region she wanted, and I have put a great weight of worry on her.

“I am pathetic.”

I had never experienced failure before. My conscience hurt for the first time. The single thing that registered was the weight of my own body, gone as heavy as lead.

Nothing remained in my hands. What I gained in this battle was soldiers lost for nothing and a bitter memory of failure burned into the back of my mind.

16

Having finished with the Saint and gone to support the Provisional Elite Corps, I doubted my own eyes.

“…Is all of it over?”

Across the plain of the Dyrst region there were no armies still fighting. No noise of magic being traded, no cavalry or dragon-mount soldiers moving about the field with any energy.

For a moment I wondered whether the Corps had been destroyed, and then saw a Corps soldier walking directly in front of me and understood there was no possibility of that.

“What’s happened here?”

“There’s no sign of the Kingdom’s army… wait, look at that!”

The rider I was sharing with raised his voice in surprise, and where his eyes went there was a great black depression that had no business being there. Heavy black smoke came up out of the bottom of it, with fires in places.

“That’s where the magic tools were laid! Hasn’t the ground caved in badly?”

I narrowed my eyes, and in the hollow that must have been the blast center numerous charred bodies were lying. Riders were circling around the edge of it. There was nobody in sight wearing anything like Kingdom armor.

“Don’t tell me they actually did it?!”

“The Kingdom’s army is gone, so that’s exactly what it means!”

The riders broke into grins at once and raised their weapons to the sky as though celebrating.

A complete victory, then. It did not feel real to me.

The Kingdom’s great host had evaporated entirely and the Provisional Elite Corps held the victory. I had of course done everything I could to make a win possible, but that they would drive the Kingdom’s army all the way to destruction…

“Sir Aldia. We did it! It’s our victory.”

“Yes. So it is…”

The Corps had fought it through admirably without any need for me to arrive.

In the end my part in the day appears to have ended where I left the White Serpent near death. Overturning that overwhelming difference in numbers and taking the victory, the Corps had made me recognize again that it is, in name and in fact, the strongest army there is.

Corps soldiers were dotted around the edge of the crater.

—Petra, Steano, Ambros.

The three of them had their faces turned toward one another, talking happily, sharing it.

Ritziareite, still on a dragon and still giving orders with a serious face, looked as though something in her expression had eased a little.

“…It’s over, then.”

I said it looking at a field that had drawn to its close from a distance, and the rider nodded at once and held the dragon hovering where it was.

“Looks like there’s no part for us. Shall we head back?”

“Then take me to Rune-sama. I want to tell her the Corps beat the Kingdom’s army.”

“Understood!”

How would Princess Valtrune react to good news like that? Delighted, without minding who saw, or would she tell us to tighten up further for the full war with the Kingdom that waits ahead?

Either way what I have to do does not change: obey the orders Princess Valtrune gives, and carry out a personal knight’s duty to make what she wants happen, sparing nothing when the moment calls for it.

17

What the Order’s army had been aiming at was never made clear. The meaning of the words the Saint left, and why the Order fixed so hard on getting hold of the Divine Demon Orbs, produced no satisfactory explanation however far we looked.

“Your Highness. There are no Order soldiers anywhere nearby. I think we may take it that they have withdrawn completely.”

Every trace of the enemy had gone, and we had recovered nearly all of the Order’s dead and the belongings they left. In the forest the White Serpent had wrecked, only the painful scars of the fighting remained.

I nodded at once and started walking toward the Dyrst plain.

“I see. Then let us go and support the Provisional Elite Corps as well. Things may be difficult over there.”

“Ma’am.”

The soldier walked at my side, watching our surroundings constantly.

I was anxious about how the Corps was faring, and my pace grew faster than usual without my deciding it. We came out of the thick trees and went along the long game trail that leads to the plain.

“Rune-sama.”

“Yes?”

My name, called suddenly from above. I looked up, and Aldia, who was supposed to have gone to the plain on a dragon, had come back with every one of the riders he had taken with him.

“Al. Weren’t you going to relieve the Corps?”

“Yes. I have a report on that…”

“Don’t tell me… you aren’t about to say they were destroyed.”

I put a hand over my mouth and murmured it to myself. If I was going to hear the worst possible news, I would have to return to the imperial capital immediately and request that the Imperial army be deployed.

“…Tell me what happened.”

I braced myself and asked him. He opened his mouth with the same serious face he always wears, not a fraction different.

“In fact, when we reached the Corps… in the Dyrst region…”

“…………”

“There was no Kingdom army there.”

“…What do you mean?”

No Kingdom army. Which meant…

“A complete victory for the Provisional Elite Corps. The enemy stepped into the area where the magic tools were laid, and it appears many of them were blown apart with the detonation.”

When he had finished the last of it, the tension went out of his cheeks and he smiled a little.

“Rune-sama. We have held this land!”

Why is it, I wonder. It still did not feel real.

The Dyrst region, once taken by the Kingdom. That invasion was the first spark of the great war that eventually pulled in the whole world and drove the Empire to ruin. The Kingdom and the Order holding Dyrst. The Empire sending soldiers again and again to take its own land back. The fighting grew steadily fiercer and spread beyond the Dyrst region to the neutral city of Philnotes, to Reshfeld Kingdom territory, and eventually as far as the Roscheld Republic, until it had become a world war.

I can picture scorching fire thrown into an imperial capital covered in darkness, standing up high like a pillar.

At the very least, by turning a past defeat into a victory at today’s fork in the road, that tragedy will not now repeat by the same route. There will be no more battles that produce casualties beyond any need, and everything after this is a different thing from the old war, it will be a war against a Kingdom-and-Order alliance, without other nations intervening.

“…I see. So I have overturned one piece of fate.”

My chest went hot, and I was so full of it that I could not tell what expression I was wearing.

The dragon came down to the ground and Aldia hurried over to me.

“Rune-sama.”

When he reached me, the other soldiers drifted away of their own accord, and it became a space with only the two of us in it. In the forest nothing could be heard but birdsong and the sound of grass and flowers moving in the wind.

“Al.”

Looking at him kneeling in front of me with his eyes closed, I remembered the strongest enemy I ever had, the one who stood in my way as a knight of the Kingdom. The man who was once the Empire’s greatest threat had become the personal knight I can place more trust in than anyone.

I owe him more than I can ever repay.

“…I’m glad you’re on my side.”

“That is my line, Rune-sama. Being able to serve you makes me happy.”

We will paint over a hateful past and build a new history. And as we take the first step into it, we will have to meet a threat at its maddest, one I never even registered in the past.

“Al… about the Saint. I don’t think any of the advantage our memories give us works on her. She is the thing to be most wary of from here.”

“I understand. That woman is dangerous in particular… and what she said. The matter of the Progenitor God Svell, whom the Order worships, wanting our lives, I think we had better look further into that as well.”

We have made an enemy of a Saint loved by a god, and even the progenitor god Svell, who is said to have made this world, finds our desperate efforts to survive tiresome.

For now there is no trace of a god having interfered. Perhaps because we were following the same history as before the regression.

…But that is no longer true. The Empire weathering the Kingdom’s invasion has put a distortion into history. Of course we intend to keep fighting a fate of ruin, and to keep working against the flow of the world as a god ordained it.

“Al. I will not bend until the last moment of my life. Even if a god becomes my enemy.”

“Understood. I intend to serve you until the last moment of mine as well.”

I have no sense that anything from here will go as we want. I could feel a violent history we know nothing about beginning to run.

And even if there is such a thing as fate, and even if it is something our strength can never change, I am certain I will not give up. Exactly as I did when I chose the road that walks alongside Aldia, I decide my own future.

18

“Damn it! The invasion of the Dyrst region has failed? Do not talk rubbish at me!”

With a force in his voice unfitting for a man of the cloth, the old man in front of me swept the documents and writing tools off the desk and onto the floor with everything he had.

A slightly fat old man somewhere past sixty, bringing a fist down on the desk over and over. The upper half of his face was red enough to burst a vessel, and his long white beard shook with his fury.

“Reshia. I told you, did I not, to take control of the Dyrst region and secure the orb workings without fail. That place is the holy land of the Svell Order. We have the duty and the right to hold it!”

The Archbishop of the Svell Order bore down on me, his footsteps loud.

“And yet, why? Beaten by an Imperial army of all things, and creeping back alone!”

—Haah. This is exactly why old men who have outstayed their usefulness are so tiresome.

I wanted to spit poison inwardly, but I am the pure and blameless Saint Reshia, and I show my true nature only to people where showing it cannot possibly disadvantage me.

I made my face conspicuously frightened and bowed deeply to the Archbishop.

“I, I am so sorry! …The Empire’s soldiers were far too strong, and even with the Divine Beasts we could not stand against them…”

“Tch. Useless creature!”

Spraying spittle in the most unpleasant way, the Archbishop threw himself down grandly onto a sofa in dreadful taste.

“Listen. That place will be taken. It will. This time it seems our luck was poor and that brainless Second Prince Euris botched the command of the army, so the plan stalled, but I have not given up!”

“…But, Your Grace. Every one of the priests you sent with me was killed. My healing was not in time, and not one of them came back alive.”

“Hmph. Getting my own aides killed for nothing… a useless Saint.”

Grumbling all the while, the Archbishop toyed with that pure white beard and growled, and then produced an order.

“…Yes. You cannot fight, and you cannot properly command an army, but you do at least have charm. Use that charm of yours and go and seduce the First Prince this time!”

He had begun saying outrageous things again.

The reason I came to make contact with Prince Euris in the first place was also an order from the Archbishop. As the Second Prince, his was a relatively easy character to bring round; the First Prince has a far more troublesome one. I am hardly better myself, but the First Prince is said to be wicked in a way that comes along once in a generation, and I would rather avoid involvement with people who look difficult to manipulate.

“Y-Your Grace… that is simply impossible now!”

“Be quiet! Hold your tongue and do as I tell you! You were the one who said you wished to be of use to me, which is why I hand down orders at all. Do not get above yourself merely because you are a Saint!”

“…Yes. Understood.”

“Hmph. So long as you understand. And take the greatest care never to act against my orders.”

“I shall keep it in m, haah.”

The Archbishop left the room before I could finish. Did nobody ever teach him that one hears a person out to the end?

With him gone, I let out a deep sigh.

“…So the target really is the Divine Demon Orb. One of the materials required to develop Madmiasma.”

I looked over the paper on ‘Madmiasma’ I had stolen from a drawer in the Archbishop’s desk.

A dangerous drug producing drastic change in the human body. In its user, marked loss of reason is observed in exchange for enhancement of the body and of magic.

“That is what it says on the surface, but…”

There is no possibility of that Archbishop fixating on developing a drug whose effect goes no further than that. There is no question that the Divine Demon Orb is, alongside miasma, an important material in producing Madmiasma. The question is the detail of what it does.

Miasma is a poison itself: it grants overwhelming power and takes in exchange the reason a person needs to be a person. Be charmed by the power, be swallowed by the miasma, and you never return to being a proper human being. You are reduced to a pitiable monster with no heart left.

“The Archbishop must know how dangerous miasma is… so why did he put a hand to developing something like Madmiasma?”

The symptoms of a person exposed to miasma and a person who has taken Madmiasma are identical. If they produce the same effect, there has to be a reason to shun the one and want the other.

I turned over several of the things the Archbishop is likely to think, and arrived at one conclusion.

“…Forever, I suppose.”

A person eaten by miasma loses their heart and becomes a monster nobody can control. And besides having no reason, and besides the enhancement of body and magic, such people have one other characteristic: the aging of the body slows dramatically.

They are not immortal, but absent some serious cause they do not die for a very long time. The body scarcely weakens at all, and the parts of it the miasma has taken harden past anything you would call living, so the risk of injury falls too.

Though eventually the whole body mutates and can no longer hold the shape of a person.

The Archbishop is surely developing ‘Madmiasma’ in order to get the particular effects miasma has on a person without trouble, while cutting away the side effects he does not want.

…And in that case, was the Divine Demon Orb adopted as the material that suppresses those side effects?

“There was a tradition, I believe, that the Divine Demon Orb has the power to hold a heart in place… and he believed superstition like that?”

If this hypothesis is right, the Archbishop is a very great fool. His intention is transparent, to secure the heart he would otherwise lose and obtain a body that lives forever, and by my reckoning the day his ideal comes true will never arrive.

Miasma is a substance that should not exist in this world at all, and mere human beings cannot possibly handle it. Its influence is bad enough to distort the very order of things; it was a thing that troubled even Lord Svell. So a merely pretty stone has no power whatsoever to neutralize the poison of miasma.

What the Archbishop is attempting is wrong, and it is dangerous enough to spread the miasma contamination, which has so far been confirmed only in places, across the entire world.

“Forever is not a thing anyone should want.”

A life with no end to it is crueler than anything. Living creatures try to live each day with everything they have precisely because there is an end. To escape death and keep living forever is an act that steps outside the order of the world.

“…So the Archbishop is, after all, someone I shall have to dispose of with my own hands.”

I remembered what I swore to Lord Svell: that anything distorting history is to be removed.

Miasma is a thing that should be erased from this world completely, and if he intends to misuse it, then the Archbishop too becomes one of the people I must dispose of.

The Saint Reshia keeps faithfully to the oath she exchanged with her god. I always intended to use the Svell Order and discard it immediately, but if the Archbishop’s scheme runs against Lord Svell’s will, I cannot let it pass.

“For now I shall have to move without making the Archbishop suspicious.”

First, seduce the First Prince. I have no appetite for it, but I should carry it out at least for appearances.

I went off toward the room where the priests are, to arrange with the church staff for a carriage to the royal castle.