Chapter 3: The Battle of Aidenberg

Winston Ferrius looked down on the Highserk army from the hill. The Highserk Imperial Army was moving toward the shadow of the hill where Grand Duke Youth Myard, whose position was farthest from the Ferrius army, had dug in.

“Broadly as expected.”

Going by Highserk’s record so far, they used their mobility to create local advantages in numbers and troop quality and overturn bad odds.

“Yes. It seems the Highserk Empire means to finish off the weak Myard troops first, then meet us in a decisive battle.”

A corps of strategists who had come with Winston from home stood around him, setting pieces down on a map.

“Judging by the enemy’s command position, they will certainly fall on the Myard lines. They have deployed three infantry units, about two thousand men each, on the flanks of their main body, probably to buy time against us.”

Winston nodded in satisfaction at the strategists’ report.

“Elite as they are, to think they’d try to hold off us Ferrius troops with six thousand men. You’ve grown arrogant, Berger. I’ll end your record here.”

Winston ran his eyes over the map again and pictured the deployments. Wear down the troops of Myard, a vassal state, make it dependent on Ferrius militarily, and bleed the Highserk Empire’s forces at the same time. To Winston, it was an ideal development.

“Nothing overlooked in the fortifications?”

“The Myard lines have anti-cavalry palisades, standing shields, and even simple dry moats dug with earth magic. Militia are mixed in, but taking a hill held by over ten thousand soldiers will take time.”

“The remaining worry is the Jeff Cavalry Battalion.”

The Jeff Cavalry Battalion was reputed to be the strongest cavalry in the northern states. That it was the Highserk Empire’s spearhead and had carried its rapid advance was common knowledge among Winston and all the Ferrius officers and men.

“When we go on the offensive, we expect a mobile defense by their cavalry. Several thousand casualties are certain.”

“Victory demands sacrifice. The cavalry battalion is not invincible. If most of the infantry is lost, they’ll sour as well. Without infantry, there is no final victory.”

Winston stopped and tapped the table lightly.

“We bring victory back to King Barriston at home. Understood? Don’t slip. When Highserk and Myard are both exhausted, we decide the outcome with a single blow.”

---

The two armies assembled for the decisive battle on the plain near the capital, Aidenberg. The Duwei Squad joined the Liguria Battalion and waited in its fortified position for the order to sortie.

“From the vanguard’s intel, the Ferrius main army has joined them too. About fourteen thousand, plus four thousand Myard regulars and seven thousand militia from the emergency levy. Twenty-five thousand in total.”

The officers’ war council was already over, and information had been passed down in top-down fashion to the non-commissioned officers, Squad Leader Duwei among them. Against roughly twenty-five thousand enemy troops, the Highserk army, after losses on the march, had fewer than eighteen thousand. The Myard troops’ resistance at the border hadn’t been for nothing, apparently.

“So that’s why the enemy finally came out to fight.”

Jose nodded as if satisfied. Since Walm and the others had invaded the Principality of Myard, there had been almost no real field battles. Sieges, pursuits, mopping-up operations, all of them long, tedious, and costly in casualties.

“They wore us down while they called in their precious master.”

“They’ve had five years to build up their forces, so we can’t let our guard down…”

Jose tapped Noor’s helmet as she groaned. A light ring reached Walm’s ears.

“Highserk’s been at war for five years and can still put this many troops in the field. The homeland is… well, outside a few regions, development is slow, but the standing army is all battle-hardened veterans. Even with a gap of six or seven thousand, it’s not a gap we can’t overcome.”

“I’m itching to get at them.”

“You say that, but you’re probably shriveled up again.”

When Jose made a grabbing motion, Barito’s cockscomb swung from side to side. He clearly hadn’t forgotten being grabbed before his first battle.

“Come on, give me a break…”

Jose was making fun of Barito, but Walm saw it differently. After a number of battles, the two were not exaggerating when they said they had graduated from recruit status. The Duwei Squad’s standards were just too high.

Of course, Walm had no intention of telling them. They might get cocky and get themselves killed, and that would be his problem.

“That’s enough. On to the main point. The Liguria Battalion will wait in the rear with the Jeff Cavalry Battalion.”

The squad leader dropped a bomb. As far as Walm knew, Highserk, and Gerald Berger above all, favored the hammer-and-anvil tactic, breaking through one wing and then pincering or half-encircling to bury armies stronger than their own.

The driving force behind it was the Jeff Cavalry Battalion, said to be the strongest in the neighboring countries. Right hand to Gerald Berger and known as the empire’s spearhead, they were warriors who loved to crush enemy cavalry battalions and pry open the soft bellies of infantry. Behind them, a light infantry battalion was usually attached to assist and support.

“…Why the Liguria Battalion? Against the Commercial Trade Federation of Liberitoa we never once worked with cavalry.”

Jose asked, more serious than usual. Walm was equally unsure how to react to being told, out of nowhere, to coordinate with cavalry. On the Liberitoa front they had used a few cavalry, but never a battalion of them. The main fighting force had always been infantry, and Walm had only spoken with cavalry a few times, usually messengers or men sent to harass the enemy.

“Can’t be helped. The vanguard’s light infantry battalion has taken too many losses. And we can’t pull the main force facing Myard. So the Liguria Battalion, which has plenty of experience, got picked as the light infantry battalion. This is going to be rough.”

The squad leader, who usually laughed off everything, wore a grim face. Walm had learned that when he wore it, things were bad.

“I-is it really that bad?”

Barito, whose cockscomb had lost some of its spirit, asked.

“It’s bad. You can’t fall behind the cavalry’s speed. Your heart’s about to burst, your lungs and legs are shaking at the limit, and if you stop, the men behind you swallow you and the formation turns to mush, and if you fall, you get trampled to death. You have to kill the man in front of you while you run.”

Squad Leader Duwei’s words had weight and realism. The scene came easily to mind. Walm could picture it all too well.

“And my squad’s on the front line! This is what happens because Walm goes wild with 《Heavy Strike》!”

Unbelievably, the one who caused the most chaos was pinning the blame on Walm.

“Doesn’t Squad Leader Duwei cause even more chaos than I do?”

Walm protested right away, but the squad leader just looked away.

“One 《Heavy Strike》 user would be one thing, but there are two of you, and then Willart’s magic on top. I guess even Platoon Leader Kozul couldn’t hide it any longer.”

If you asked Walm, the portly platoon leader loved doing just a moderate amount of everything. He hated racking up too many exploits and getting posted to dangerous front lines. It had probably leaked upward.

“The Liguria battalion commander patted me on the shoulder and said he’s ‘counting on me.’ I knew something was off. It was supposed to be a squad leaders’ and platoon leaders’ council, and there were company commanders all over the place. What’s with ‘My company’s proudest elite squad’? I’d never even talked to that company commander before!”

With the troubles piling up, the squad leader was in a foul mood. It wasn’t any of Walm’s business, exactly, but all he could do was steel himself and rest his body until the real fighting started.

---

On the plain outside Aidenberg, the capital of the Principality of Myard, a battle to decide the fate of nations was about to begin. Against the high command’s predictions, Ferrius and Myard had formed positions in two main groups. One was the Ferrius main army, fourteen thousand soldiers sent from the Kingdom of Ferrius. The other was Myard’s four thousand regulars and seven thousand militia.

The two groups were separated, but they were positioned to support each other, and they held two small hills that gave them the advantage on the plain. Both positions were ringed with anti-cavalry palisades, which made it hard to use a cavalry battalion’s single blow to kill their commanders and throw their command into chaos.

Attacking through the valley between the hills risked a pincer attack, and two battalion-sized units were holding it in strength, with solid lines of communication built between the hills. The Highserk Empire, Walm’s own country, had set up behind the hill held by the Myard troops, out of sight.

Of the nine battalions, four were spread out in a line abreast. Three battalions stood behind them, and behind those waited the Jeff Cavalry Battalion and Walm’s Liguria Battalion. According to the advance intelligence Walm had been given, the four battalions at the front would assault the hill, the three held behind would withstand the Ferrius offensive, and the plan was to wipe out Myard first.

The Liguria Light Infantry Battalion and the Jeff Cavalry Battalion were surely meant, once the vanguard had broken the anti-cavalry palisades and other obstacles, to smash the Myard command post with everything they had. Walm couldn’t help picturing how large and how hard their task would be, and he felt gloomy. Then, with no warning, the real battle began. The sound of explosions and the screams of men and horses came riding the wind to Walm’s position. Even for Highserk’s elite soldiers, famous for their strength, attacking a hill with few men was brutally hard.

While friendly troops fought a death struggle at the front, Walm went on waiting. The frustration of being unable to join the fight, the relief of not being thrown into the meat grinder, and the tension all mixed together. As everyone’s nerves wound tighter, the squad leader spoke.

“…No matter how I look at it, this is taking too long.”

“Maybe their defense is stronger than we figured.”

For the outnumbered Highserk, speed was what mattered. The deployment was meant to emphasize mobile warfare and defeat the enemy piecemeal. And yet the noise on the field didn’t sound like four battalions on the attack. There was fierce energy, but the defensive line wasn’t breaking at all. Walm couldn’t shake the sense that something was off, either.

“Maybe we kept too many on the flanks.”

Walm voiced the thought he had had looking at the deployment. If taking out the Myard army took time, they would have to buy time against Ferrius, who would come at them from the flank and rear. Right now three battalions were covering the flank. With Ferrius not moving, those three were completely idle.

“True, two battalions on the flank should be able to buy time, too.”

Jose agreed with Walm.

“Yeah, but even so, I can’t see why they wouldn’t use the cavalry or the light infantry.”

Light infantry were often treated as handymen. When a breakthrough got hard, they were thrown in, and they cleared the road for the cavalry. Space and distance were crucial in war, and Walm could understand holding the light infantry back as depth to follow up behind, but if they couldn’t accomplish the main goal, there was no point.

“I can’t believe Commander Berger would misread things, but…”

The speech in the city of Sarria came back to Walm. A commander who had fired up that many soldiers and ended the border battles quickly. He couldn’t be losing his marbles. Just then, a new war cry came from the left side of the hill and rang in Walm’s ears.

“Ugh, the Ferrius main army!”

From what Walm could see, there were at least four battalions. Two battalions of the middle line on the left side moved to meet them. Even so, the enemy outnumbered them nearly two to one. Buying time would be all they could manage.

“Isn’t the order coming yet?”

Barito said, flustered.

“If this keeps up, we’re in trouble…”

Noor, the least experienced in the squad, voiced her unease.

“Myard’s reserve is coming from the right side of the hill too! Damn, that’s a full battalion!”

Bad feelings tended to come true, and Myard’s only reserve unit was about to be thrown in from the right side of the hill.

“I can see a fresh Ferrius battalion way out on the left. They’re going to make a wide encirclement!”

Things had reached the point where Walm felt the need to break through part of the encirclement forming around them and regroup. While the soldiers spoke freely, only the squad leader seemed sunk deep in thought.

“Squad Leader Duwei?”

Jose called the squad leader’s name, having noticed a moment late.

“It’s a crisis, but… the frontline units haven’t taken heavy losses. The units sent to hold the Ferrius main army are just stalling. Something’s going on here. Something’s off.”

It was about the time when the battalion-sized Myard force on the right began coming down the hill. Messengers ran around the Liguria Battalion’s position. So it’s finally here, Walm thought, bracing himself. He covered his face with his hand and exhaled. The warm air pushed back against his palm and Walm felt it flow out through the gaps. It was a habit of his before a battle. The messenger must have delivered Commander Berger’s orders. Immediately afterward, the Liguria battalion commander’s voice rang out.

“Sortie! The target is the Ferrius command post. From the right flank, at full speed, run around the side of the hill and take the Ferrius command post. The cavalry is moving. Brace yourselves!”

“Huh?”

Most of the soldiers who received the order were too stunned to take in the situation. Walm’s mind raced too. In this losing position, they were ordered to charge the Ferrius command post, far to the rear, with two of their nine battalions.

Even if the hills were neighbors, it was three or four kilometers. A trained soldier without gear could easily cover it, but this was in full equipment, with fighting on the way and at the destination. In front of them lay the hill held by Myard, and to the right a Myard battalion was starting to come down. To Walm it didn’t seem sane, but he remembered the image of the friendly troops who couldn’t break through.

“Could it be… a feint?”

At Walm’s murmur, the squad leader nodded.

“They’ve been pretending the attack is stalling to draw the enemy out. And the Myard frontline troops have leaned forward and are tied up in combat. They just sent their last reserve from the hill toward our command post. Word of a change in orders won’t reach the front yet.”

“Even so, one battalion is still at the Ferrius command post. And part of the six battalions on the left might pull back to help.”

In answer to Jose’s skeptical remark, Walm told him what he had gathered looking down on the field.

“No. The enemy units that could most easily come back to help have already been drawn into fighting.”

The six Ferrius battalions were bulging outward to complete the encirclement, covering the left wing of the Highserk main body. The outer edge, built for encirclement, was farthest from the Ferrius command hill. Passing word to them quickly would be hard, and pulling back would take time. From what Walm could see, friendly units meant mainly to pin the enemy had been assigned first of all against the inner Ferrius battalions, the ones that could return to the command post fastest.

“It comes down to who wipes out the other’s command post first. A great victory or a crushing defeat.”

Thinking about what lay ahead, Walm wished that forecast would be wrong, but he couldn’t think of anything else. Even with three battalions devoted to delaying, they had been nearly surrounded and the enemy had nearly double their numbers. If they couldn’t take the command post, the left wing would be encircled and a crushing defeat would be unavoidable.

“Wh-what, an operation like some kind of gamble-”

Noor trailed off, speechless, but Walm, as a soldier, had no time left to think.

“Commander Berger must have his own odds of winning. Switch over. If you can’t focus, you’ll die.”

Everyone fell silent. Walm waited for the moment. There was no drum or trumpet to announce the sortie. The troops were packed close, and at first they kept tight spacing by platoon and company, but once they began to run, gaps opened a little at a time.

The two battalions began to run, quietly but at full speed. Walm kicked off the ground and ran with everything he had. The cavalry ahead ran like arrows and literally crushed the head of the enemy force coming down the hill. When Walm arrived a few minutes behind, the enemy was still in chaos. It was a perfect chance to form up and trample them, but passing through came first.

“Don’t stop! Runnn! Run!”

Platoon Leader Kozul, desperate, bellowed over his labored breathing. Walm wondered where the portly platoon leader found the strength, but for now he focused on the enemy in front of him. As he ran, he brought his halberd down on an enemy soldier blocking his path and cut through collarbone and shoulder. The next soldier he caught with a horizontal sweep, armor and upper body together.

Both wounds, if the bleeding were stopped, would have allowed a return to the line, but Walm judged this was no time for finishing blows. And he could easily picture the troops following behind finishing them off. The enemy units the cavalry had hit were terrifyingly fragile and in disorder.

Even in a mass like that, some were trying to recover quickly. Their noncoms and men must be good, Walm thought, and clicked his tongue. A sizable enemy force was waiting in front of him. There were probably a hundred.

“Willart, Walm!”

The squad leader called out Willart’s name, then Walm’s. The distance to the enemy was dropping under fifty meters. They had formed a pike wall in formation, and hitting it head-on would mean casualties. Walm understood the squad leader’s intent and began to work mana into a spell as he ran. Willart fired a step ahead. Five or six men in the front rank went down wounded, seriously or lightly, and a hole opened in part of the line. What Walm produced was a 《Fireball》, the same as Willart’s. The enemy unit, which had held on despite its losses in the front rank, was hit by 《Fireball》s landing beside the hole, and a big gap opened in the center.

“Break through!”

Squad Leader Duwei and the veteran Highserk soldiers wouldn’t miss a weak spot, and they naturally formed a wedge and broke in. Following behind Squad Leader Duwei, who literally tore away flesh and iron, Walm swung his halberd.

Like splitting a helmet, the blade went in at the back right of a skull, bit through the bone, and dropped the man in one blow. Another enemy who tried to stop Walm was run through at the shoulder and thigh by the short spears of Barito and Noor, who had been waiting at his side, and went down. The soldier trying to get up met countless Highserk boots. His dying cry cut off almost at once.

Highserk soldiers swarmed the thoroughly broken enemy. The numbers were even, and it had been a rare unit that had recovered fast from the cavalry charge, but its competence got it noticed, and it was trampled in no time. The effect spread to the scattered units around it. It was common knowledge by now, Walm included, that the Principality of Myard, having lost its standing army at the border, had mobilized a large militia. The militiamen, seeing a unit with a high proportion of regulars torn apart and trampled one-sidedly right in front of them by Walm and the others, rushed for the hill with its solid fortifications.

“Don’t run! Buy us time. If we hold them here we win-gyaa, aaah!”

The officers and men trying to rally had stood out too much. Even if told to run on past, the Highserk soldiers weren’t so soft as to leave a threat at their backs, as Walm well knew. The militia, watching veterans and quick-witted soldiers get skewered, broke in a total rout.

“Don’t waste time on small fry! Run for the hill!”

Squad Leader Duwei urged them on, and the squads around followed. Platoon Leader Kozul, between the running and the fighting, could only get out a faint voice. Even so, from that well-padded belly came sword work too sharp to imagine, and he slit the throats of two Myard soldiers. Walm, with surprise, revised his opinion of the platoon leader.

Dust rose, and the clatter of armor, swaying up and down and from side to side, echoed all around. Some soldiers dropped out from wounds or exhaustion, but most kept running. The hill was approaching right in front of Walm. The cavalry had charged and cleared enemy soldiers from around the hill. What remained was the battalion-sized force on the hilltop and the elite troops directly beneath the command post who held it to the death.

The wide hill rose, to Walm’s eye, twenty or thirty meters at best. To his exhausted legs, it felt like a mountain climb. The enemy threw everything at the Highserk soldiers trying to break in: arrows, stones, magic. Walm’s legs had grown heavy as stone, but a heat of fighting spirit that could only be called frenzy had spread through the entire unit.

Putting speed first, they had no mantlets or bamboo bundles, nothing to stop attacks from medium and long range. A soldier hit by an enemy 《Fireball》 became a flaming human ball, screaming as he tumbled down the hill. A soldier who took an arrow to the knee crawled along the ground, wailing. In an ordinary battle, the unit’s morale would have dropped sharply.

“Forward! Forwaaard!”

But fatigue and pain had eaten away the unit’s reason, and it functioned as a single killing machine whose only aim was to trample the command post. Walm saw fear in the Ferrius main army, which had the high ground and hastily built but real anti-cavalry palisades.

“Knock them down! Clear a road for the cavalry! There’s no way back!”

There was a truth in the words with which Squad Leader Duwei rallied the troops and cowed the enemy. If they stalled here, the main body would take a fatal blow, and the Liguria Battalion, stranded in the middle of the enemy, would be wiped out to the last man. The only way to live was to take the hill and kill the enemy commander.

“Pull!”

“Aaaah, aaaah!”

Jose threw himself at the anti-cavalry palisade with a shout, and Barito’s and Noor’s voices followed. The stakes sunk in the ground resisted stubbornly, but one by one, more men joined in pulling them down. Naturally the Ferrius soldiers weren’t going to stand by. To keep them from clearing away the obstacles that protected them, they thrust spears at the Highserk soldiers and shot arrows into them.

Walm threw his full strength and weight at the lattice-built palisade and hauled it over. In the middle of it, an arrow loosed by an archer came straight for his face. He ducked reflexively, and with a high ring, a dull blow and pain ran through his sallet.

“You there, stay put! I’ll be right there!”

Walm unleashed his anger at the pain, and the archer, perhaps rattled, sent his second arrow well over Walm’s head.

“Pulled it down! Open the road!”

The breaking point came quickly. Once one section gave, the palisades nearby were pulled out one after another. The order had come from the platoon leader. He was covered in blood and sweat and gasping for breath. The soldiers who had been about to rush in understood from the rumbling and war cries coming from behind what was approaching.

“Here comes the Jeff Cavalry! Anybody who doesn’t want to be trampled, get out of the way!”

At Jose’s words, the soldiers parted to either side like Moses’ sea. In the midst of fresh blood and corpses and screams and shouts painting the battlefield, the bloodthirsty cavalrymen charged in a straight line at the breach.

The Ferrius soldiers who tried to form a pike wall to stop them were broken by spells from the cavalry’s mounted magic users and crushed in the charge. The archer who had shot at Walm took a lance charge, had a huge hole put through his armor and belly, and became one of the scattered corpses. The cavalry’s final charge dragged the enemy position into a crucible of chaos. The soldiers knocked down what palisades remained and opened breakthrough points one after another.

“Don’t let the enemy commander get away! Kill him here!”

In wars of this world, where the way armies were run was not yet mature, a command structure, once lost, did not easily come back. If the enemy commander, the head, was struck down, the whole force would stop functioning. Conversely, if he escaped here, it would give them the strength to recover. Walm got inside the command post and kept swinging his weapon, and a fresh group appeared in front of him. Their gear was clearly different from the common soldiers’. They must be the personal guard directly beneath the command post.

“Out of my way, or die on foreign ground!”

When Walm threw out his taunt, the guard shouted back.

“Shut up!”

An enemy soldier holding a longsword in both hands came at Walm. For all his rough words, his footwork was fast and his strikes sharp. Against the enemy’s overhead blow, Walm thrust his halberd up from below. A high clang of iron on iron rang out. Walm pushed through with 《Heavy Strike》 active, and his blade cut the soldier’s hand off at the wrist.

“Guuuuh!”

Amazingly, ignoring the blood and the pain, the soldier gripped his longsword in his remaining hand and leapt at Walm.

Walm stepped back and thrust the halberd several times. The soldier turned aside the first two, but the third slipped into his throat and tore most of his neck open.

He didn’t fall right away, but he spat foaming blood from his mouth and pitched forward.

They were clearly beyond ordinary soldiers in Skill. They were trained to the bone. Around here, too, there were more Highserk corpses than anywhere before. Their target had to be close, Walm thought, and swept his eyes around.

“There’s a strange group deep on the left!”

It was Jose who noticed. The enemy soldiers around them were desperately trying to push back or hold their ground, but only that group was trying to escape from the far side of the hill to the flatland.

“Duwei Squad, stop them!”

Platoon Leader Kozul, nearly out of breath, picked out the squad by name.

“Ah, don’t ask the impossible!”

There were several groups trying to go down the hill. Most were probably decoys to help the commander escape, but this group was more desperate than the others.

“Reinus, Tibird, Danfan!”

The squad leader called out the names of the Three Idiots, but Tibird, their leader, answered with a seriousness not like him.

“Impossible! Three of us are taking on double our number!”

The squad had no energy to spare and was tied up in the fighting, and the gap between the enemy group and Walm and the others only grew wider.

“Damn you all!”

Squad Leader Duwei cut two men down at once with his war axe, but that was nowhere near enough. With small groups blocking the way, Walm gathered mana in his hands. An ordinary 《Fireball》 wouldn’t do. The group in full armor, fighting as dead men, was getting in the way. He needed to spread fire widely and keep its power.

What Walm pictured was the firestorm that had burned his homeland’s capital in his old world. He pictured hard what he had seen in books, on the internet, and on television. He bit down lightly and began to bring up fire magic and wind magic, one in each hand. Until now he had only ever used one element at a time. Strangely, he was sure that using them together was the best answer here.

A heat that seemed to scorch his skin wrapped his whole body. Countless winds swirled around Walm as if circling him. It wasn’t enough. Still not enough. Spit nearly dripped from his half-open mouth. With a natural ease, Walm was showing a concentration and a surge of mana unlike anything before.

“That guy! Kill him!”

The enemy commander noticed the anomaly, pointed at Walm and howled.

“Like hell!”

Several soldiers formed a suicide squad and rushed Walm, but Jose, along with Noor and Barito, blocked their path.

“Walm, do it!”

The one who shouted with emotion was Willart, who showed no agitation however many people he killed. Blue flame rose up around Walm and the wind scattered it all around.

“A runaway? No, but this is…”

Willart, who had been watching, let out a bewildered voice.

“Wh-what is that!?”

“My hair, aah, hot! Walm, we’re on your side!”

“Get back. You’ll be caught in it!”

The complaints from the soldiers around him quickly turned into cheers. Five Ferrius soldiers were engulfed all at once in fire and wind. Fire and wind are among the primal fears of living things. Flames that sear the skin, heat that makes you want to shut your eyes, wind that whips grass and hair around.

For the first time, fear showed in the Ferrius guards, who had held bravely even against the cavalry and Squad Leader Duwei’s 《Heavy Strike》. The ground where Walm walked was scorched as if the flames were eating into it, and sand and dust rose up. It was like constantly scattering 《Fireball》s all around. The only problem was the terrible fatigue that hit Walm. On top of a Skill he didn’t understand, his first, there was his accumulated exhaustion. Walm’s mana was about to run dry.

“Not yet…”

The enemy had escaped the fire and wind, but they hadn’t yet collapsed. Through blurring vision, Walm kept his eyes on the enemy and raised his halberd with trembling arms. The blow he threw with all his strength and mana burned through the enemy unit, splitting it in two with fire and wind.

“Ah, fire, it’s clinging to me-”

“Gyaaah, gaaaah!”

“Put it out, put it out, aaaah!”

It was hell, however mildly you put it, to watch dozens of men burn to death in flames. The stench of burning men lingered in Walm’s nose, and the screams rang in his ears. At the sight, as if the gates of hell had opened, the enemy’s will to fight finally broke. The fire had spread even to the group trying to flee.

Among the enemy soldiers still putting out fires and putting up a last resistance, one man stood out in particular. His clothes were embroidered with gold, and the work on his armor was the flashy sort worn at ceremonies. The sword in his hand had a sheen unlike iron or silver, and Walm knew at a glance it was made of magic silver, mithril.

“You’re the last one… You’re the commander, aren’t you?”

The fury of the fire and wind, which had made that hell, was rapidly dying down.

---

The one entrusted with command of the Kingdom of Ferrius’s Myard expeditionary army was Winston Ferrius, a member of the royal family. Second in line to the throne and top of his class at military academy, Winston, even without favoritism, was fit to be appointed commander in a major war.

He was skilled at handling large forces, and thanks to elite training since childhood, he was no worse than a knight in personal combat. He had experience from skirmishes to full field battles and had gone into this campaign with confidence. The staff officers and generals who supported him were all noted for daily training and experience and for being elite. That Winston was now seized by a sense of urgency stronger than any he had felt in his life.

“The enemy’s momentum won’t stop!”

“The palisades are being pulled down. The enemy is right in front of us!”

At the stream of bad news, Winston clenched his back teeth hard enough to break them.

“Even for the cavalry it’s one thing, but their infantry covered four kilometers fighting off a whole battalion on the way and reached the hill! Why are we being overrun by men like that!?”

Impossible. Yes, impossible. Winston tried to sort out the situation. The Myard army, with its militia, wasn’t suited to advanced maneuver warfare. For that reason, in the council before the campaign, the plan had been to strengthen the defense of the hills leading to the Myard capital, and once the Highserk army bit into either the Ferrius or the Myard position, pin it at the front line, close an encirclement, and destroy its field army.

The enemy had attacked the Myard position, full of weak soldiers, as predicted. On top of that, they hadn’t been able to break the fortified Myard position, and the line had stalled. When they had half-encircled the over-extended enemy, Winston had been sure that defeat was impossible. And now they were cornered.

Winston and his officers had considered, as one possibility, that the cavalry battalion, superior in mobility and breakthrough power, might break through one corner of the encirclement on its own and raid the command post. That was why they had carefully built palisades to neutralize its breakthrough power. They had also held two thousand men in reserve, to double as reserve force and command post guard. Unlike the Myard troops, Ferrius soldiers trained daily and were highly proficient. They should have been able to match even Highserk soldiers who spent their lives at war. That had been the commonsense view. And it was being overturned by an unorthodox light infantry battalion.

Winston had never heard of light infantry following a cavalry charge. Even if they could follow, they would be too exhausted to fight properly. Highserk had done it anyway. Together with the cavalry, they had trampled the Myard infantry units that had been pressing the left wing, and they were even breaking through the Ferrius soldiers who had taken up defensive positions on the hill.

“…Lord Winston, it’s dangerous here. We have no choice but to fall back and join the rearmost battalion of the right wing.”

One of the strategists, having made up his mind, began to persuade Winston.

“Nonsense. You’re telling me to abandon the command post and run?”

On the right wing the main force was in the middle of a fierce assault. If they abandoned the command post and gave up the hill, the main force would take heavy damage. It was a proposal Winston couldn’t accept.

“If the commander is killed, the whole army will collapse. We must give up the hill now and regroup!”

“Ugh, uuugh…”

At the strategist’s opinion, Winston groaned and wavered. The enemy was a force of about four thousand. If the battalions coming back could just join them, they could still hold. The Myard units on the left that had been scattered still had fighting strength left, because the enemy had put speed first. If they could only buy time, Ferrius’s victory was certain.

Winston couldn’t decide. If he gave up the hill here, victory on the plain would slip far away. At the front, the roar of spells thundered. The screams carried on the wind must be Ferrius soldiers’. As a soldier and as a royal, Winston couldn’t bring himself to give up his duty and decide to retreat. Just then, a blood-soaked soldier tumbled into the command post.

“What is this, in front of Lord Winston!?”

Ignoring the knight who scolded him, the soldier shouted.

“The palisades are broken! The enemy cavalry is pouring in! We can’t hold any longer!”

It was news enough to plunge everyone in the command post into despair.

“Lord Winston, withdraw at once! We’ll hold here!”

The first to react were Winston’s personal guard.

“Take him out!”

Before Winston could reach a decision, his guards and the strategists pushed him and carried him away from the command post.

“Pull out the decoy groups too. The enemy’s right on top of us!”

The command tent burst apart in an explosion. The enemy had reached Winston’s immediate surroundings.

“Stop them at all costs!”

“Here they come. Light infantry!”

At the edge of his vision, Winston saw the guard, in whom he had placed absolute trust, being cut down by common enemy soldiers. One was a man built like a bull, but another caught Winston’s eye. An unremarkable, harmless-looking man had activated a Skill and cut through a guard, armor and all.

“H-Highserk soldiers, how terrifying.”

If even their common soldiers had that kind of Skill, then a decisive battle on the plain had been reckless. They should have shut themselves in a siege and dragged the capital, Aidenberg, into it, Winston realized.

Even so, the guards worked to get their lord Winston away. The problem was that in this world, individuals who could overturn tactics and a difference of dozens of men existed. Winston felt heat on his back, and as he tried to turn, he realized the soldiers on either side of him had thrown themselves over him. Immediately afterward, an unbearable heat and raging flames were scattered all around.

“Wh-what…”

What Winston saw, through a drifting consciousness, was a landscape of fire and wind. The soldiers who had desperately tried to protect Winston were wrapped in flame, flailing their arms and legs as if dancing, and went still. The soldier who had shielded Winston had half his body scorched and breathed in gasps.

“Hey, pull yourself together!”

Winston remembered an old tale of the battlefield. His tutor, a veteran soldier, must have told it to him. “If you see blue flames on a battlefield, they are the send-off fires to the underworld. If they invite you, death awaits. Its name is-” Winston had thought it a mere superstition, a tall tale, but it was real, and it was closing in on him.

“《Ignis… Fatuus》.”

The enemy with that Skill was the unremarkable soldier from before. He was walking calmly between the burning soldiers, coming closer.

“You’re the last one left… The commander, I take it.”

Like a man looking at weeds he had missed, the man told Winston this with no expression at all.

---

Having used his mana to the limit, Walm was hit by extreme exhaustion. His legs were heavy as stone from the long run. His comrades had been left behind in the fire, and there was no one near him.

“You’re the last one left. …The commander, I take it.”

If they would just answer when asked, it would save him trouble. He had expected no reply, so he was surprised when, astonishingly, one came.

“I am. Your tone is too high for a mere soldier. I am Winston Ferrius, commander of the Kingdom of Ferrius’s Myard expeditionary army.”

It could be a body double. Walm didn’t know what the man looked like. But in the man’s manner and his clipped speech, he sensed a natural grace and dignity.

“Surrender.”

There was no point in killing him needlessly. An enemy commander, and royalty, taken prisoner, would work in their favor in negotiations between nations.

“I still have my limbs, my sword, and my honor. My men are fighting. I have no reason to surrender!”

Winston drew his sword from its sheath with a snap and stepped in toward Walm from a high guard. His movements were better than expected. Walm, who had taken the royal commander for a mere figurehead, had to reconsider. He turned the high strike aside with his halberd and thrust, but Winston turned the tip aside with his sword and circled around to Walm’s left.

Neither magic nor Skills were available any longer. Walm had hoped for support from the soldiers nearby, but they were blocked by the fire and by the men trying to rescue Winston. He barely had the mana to spare for strengthening his body. He focused on one thing only, how to kill the strong enemy in front of him. Sword and halberd crossed again and again, each aiming at a fatal wound.

Winston’s sword cut Walm’s arm, and Walm’s halberd grazed Winston’s neck. A thin line of blood welled up at the neck, but it was nowhere near fatal.

They shoved each other apart in a clinch, and space and distance opened. Walm gripped the very bottom of the halberd shaft and thrust from a distance a step farther than before. Caught by a reach beyond what he had expected, Winston lost his balance.

Walm pulled the halberd back and threw it at his head. Winston coolly knocked it down with his sword, but Walm, who had stepped in, hid his draw behind his left shoulder, pulled his longsword, and swept. Winston stopped moving and dropped to his knees. His neck was cut halfway through and blood poured out without stopping.

“Ugh, I… may lose… but Ferrius… has not… lost yet…”

Winston forced the words out, bowed his head to the ground, and died at Walm’s feet.

“I’ve killed the enemy commander!”

Walm took a deep breath and shouted. The victory cry spread across the battlefield at once. The Highserk soldiers grew livelier, and the Ferrius soldiers who had held out to the end fled down the hill as if rolling. The Highserk soldiers weren’t so soft as to let them go. Walm, at his limit and panting, heard a horse’s neigh beside him. A group of cavalry had appeared. From the group in heavy armor, one man rode toward Walm.

“Did you kill Winston?”

It was Commander Jeff, head of the Jeff Cavalry Battalion, a name every Highserk soldier knew.

“Yes, sir.”

It was a check on results. Jeff, who had been looking into the corpse’s face, slowly nodded at Walm.

“That’s Winston Ferrius himself. Well done. A great feat. What unit, and your name?”

Walm had expected only to confirm whether it was a decoy, so his reaction was slow.

“…Kozul Platoon, Duwei Squad. Walm, sir.”

“So, Walm. I meant to take Winston’s head myself, but this is a splendid job. The light infantry battalion will regroup on the hilltop and move on to the finishing touches. Rest until then.”

His fatigue had already hit its limit. If the man had been anyone but a general, Walm would have thrown his limbs on the ground.

“And in recognition of your merit, Commander Berger will probably give you a reward. Don’t die before then.”

Having said that, Commander Jeff turned his horse, took his battalion, and rode down the hill. Enemy soldiers who hadn’t gotten away were swallowed by the battalion’s formation and left their bones on the ground.

From the hilltop, everything was visible. Racing across the battlefield like a single living creature, the cavalry hit the rear and flanks of the enemy units fighting the Highserk infantry battalions on the plain, again and again. It was like wolves attacking a flock of sheep, Walm thought, and swallowed.

But more frightening than the cavalry’s striking power was that merely by passing nearby, the cavalry forced the enemy to respond, and their formations visibly crumbled, and the units caught in the pincers were wiped out. It spread in a chain through every part of the battlefield. Even to Walm, the defeat of the Ferrius-Myard allied army was obvious.

“Walm, you all right?”

Jose, filthy with dust and blood, came over, worried.

“I’ll live. I’m awfully tired, though.”

“Being tired means you’re alive.”

“Are the others okay?”

“Everyone’s fine. Barito and Noor look like they’re about to drop, though. Squad Leader Duwei, no need to ask.”

No one would believe Squad Leader Duwei had been killed in battle. Walm was sure he would keep charging even if he were skewered all over. Walm was about to sit down from fatigue when a voice stopped him. The owner of the familiar rough, deep voice was Squad Leader Duwei.

“Don’t you dare sleep. You’ll go down and not get up. Drink water a little at a time. In five minutes the pursuit starts. Once that’s done, we’re dismissed.”

Right, the battle was still going. Walm put some water from the canteen at his waist in his mouth. The thirst in his throat eased in an instant as it was sucked into his stomach. He looked sideways. The body of Winston Ferrius, whom he had killed, was wrapped in what was left of the enemy tents and guarded. He had somehow survived the hardest part, but there were still peaks ahead. On the hill, several kilometers away, where Myard had made camp, fierce fighting went on.

---

“The Ferrius army has collapsed completely! Three battalions have already been wiped out. The remaining battalions are retreating!”

“We also have a report that Winston Ferrius has fallen…”

“The Ariand and Garry units have broken and run! The h-hill is completely surrounded!”

The death of Winston Ferrius, the supreme commander on the Ferrius side, was enough news to push the Myard troops into despair. The remaining Youth Myard tried desperately to reorganize, but what ruined it was the Jeff Cavalry Battalion, Highserk’s pride.

They kept hitting the rear and flanks of the units that had been fighting the Highserk infantry battalions, running wild, and when the formations broke, they were finished off by organized bodies of infantry. Youth tried to retreat in an organized way using messengers and magic tools, but ironically the Ferrius soldiers and low-ranking officers who fled in disorder, each on their own, suffered fewer losses.

Already more than six thousand Ferrius soldiers were dead, and the Myard troops had more than five thousand dead.

What remained was only the left wing infantry unit that had broken early, and the three thousand who had barely escaped onto the hill. Thinking back on it, Youth believed they had been deliberately shut up on the hill. When he thought about why he had bowed his head to a neighboring country and endured for five years, the strength nearly drained out of his body, but he held on, thinking of his people and the one daughter he had left.

To keep his country from total collapse at Highserk’s hands, Youth had practiced scorched earth in the old Kanoa Kingdom. He had destroyed important facilities, carried every portable bit of food into Myard, and burned all the remaining grain. Youth had taken in as many of the old Kanoa people as he could. Even so, he knew from informants in the cities that the old Kanoa people still living in Highserk-annexed land loathed and hated him.

Hated and loathed, he had taken Ferrius’s proposal, shamed and ashamed, all for his homeland, but now he could no longer tell whether it had been the right choice.

“The Adoa unit, which tried to break out of the encirclement, has been driven back!”

The last hope of escaping the encirclement had failed. What Youth could do was already limited. Through the magic tools set up in the city, he told them that defeat was unavoidable. The citizens who could flee had probably already started escaping to neighboring countries.

“There’s nowhere to run. If this goes on…”

A worn-out staff officer muttered with his head hung. At another time, Youth would have scolded him, telling him not to give up, but the situation was now completely decided.

“…So this is the end.”

The encirclement kept shrinking, and fierce attacks came from every direction. Youth decided he couldn’t let his soldiers die for nothing any longer.

“We surren-”

The words Youth had started to say were drowned out by shouting. The invaders at his headquarters were Highserk soldiers, but their banners marked them as the city of Sarria’s units.

“Sarria soldiers!”

When his former countrymen spotted Youth, they shouted with bloodshot eyes.

“There he is! The traitor Myard!”

“Kill him! He burned my farm, my family and all!”

“Death to the betrayer!”

They were people who had lost families and property to the scorched-earth tactics. Youth had heard that some of the soldiers had run wild with looting and rape, and he had hunted down the soldiers who went too far and punished them. Even so, that wasn’t even atonement to them.

It was only natural, in a way. The hatred of the people of Sarria hadn’t faded in five years. It had grown. That he hadn’t been able to imagine something so obvious, Youth bit his lip at his own incompetence.

His personal guard tried desperately to stop them, but they lacked the strength to hold back the frenzy of the Sarria soldiers. Youth, without even drawing his sword, waited for his former countrymen to close in.

“Lord Myard!”

Even at the moment of his death, there was no answer to what had been the right choice.

“Forgive me.”

There was no time to think about whom, or what, he was apologizing to, as countless blades pierced Youth. The last thing that came to his mind was the beloved daughter who remained in the city. The man who had cut away so many people as necessary sacrifices for his country thought, at the end, not of the country but of his family. How selfish that must be. In his fading consciousness, all Youth could do was laugh at himself.

The body of Youth Myard, skewered with thirteen spears and swords, was lifted up and displayed on the hilltop. The command structures of both the Ferrius and Myard armies were completely lost, and the setting of the sun on the Principality of Myard became certain.

---

Even after the enemy’s main force was destroyed and the three thousand surrounded Ferrius soldiers had surrendered, fighting continued. The battered units were disarming prisoners and turning the hill they had taken into a temporary headquarters. As for the rest, the cavalry battalion and the light infantry battalion, both known for their speed, were hotly pursuing the remnants of the Ferrius force trying to flee to its homeland.

They had lopped off the head that was the commander, and five battalions had been destroyed, but two battalions’ worth of strength remained. If they got away unscathed, it would affect future diplomacy. Under those circumstances, the Liguria light infantry battalion was ordered not to hold the hill but to clear out Aidenberg, the capital of Myard. Ferrius and Myard soldiers who hadn’t managed to join the main force were hiding in the city as soldiers in civilian clothes.

Aidenberg, which had put its weight on defending the border, had no large defensive works. That was one reason the Ferrius-Myard alliance had chosen to fight on the plain. Outside the city, on the way to Ferrius, a river flowed, and the city could only be entered from the plain.

To enter the city from the river side, you had to use a ferry or cross one of just two bridges. The bridges were key points and functioned as defensive positions, and even now that Highserk’s victory was certain, the defenders went on resisting. Fortunately the weak resistance was soon put down, but one of the two bridges had been destroyed by Ferrius to slow the pursuit.

The Liguria Battalion had several priorities. The first was to secure the food supply depots. Myard, a fertile grain region, exported grain actively to neighboring countries, and Aidenberg, the center of trade, held many granaries and the military provision stores that had fed the army.

The second was to capture, protect, or kill influential people and holders of power. Simply killing everyone who had been hostile would not make for successful rule. To annex the territory efficiently, a certain number of Myard notables were needed, Walm had been taught after joining the army. The important posts would go to the lords and nobles who had secretly come over beforehand, but the rest of the governing posts and seats of profit would go to notables, as a show of mercy. A carrot and stick, as it was called, and with it Highserk had unified a region known as the Crucible of Chaos, where small states had sprung up everywhere and warlords carved up the land.

The third was keeping order. Many desperate remnant soldiers remained in the city, looting, raping, and hiding. On top of that, some Highserk soldiers were looting in defiance of military law.

Compared with Walm’s old world, this one was more tolerant of looting and rape, but at important strongholds, Highserk held them in check. For the Highserk Empire, which meant to swap the head and keep using the land and people as they were, excessive violence would get in the way later.

Of course, there were those left unprotected to let off steam for the soldiers. They were the notables who had slipped off the chairs. Former high nobles of the old Kanoa Kingdom, and the late Youth Myard, who had become the ruler of Myard, belonged among them. The elegant old mansion, which probably had hundreds of years of history, was being ransacked by a crowd of soldiers.

“These are Myard soldiers, aren’t they?”

It was Noor who had turned her eyes to the piled-up bodies.

“To soldiers who’ve lost their country, I guess it just looked like a treasure house without a watchdog.”

Jose glanced at the bodies, but showing no interest, he turned his eyes straight to the mansion.

“You can have power and money, but when it falls, it’s over in a moment.”

Maybe it hit close to home for a merchant’s son, because to Walm’s eyes the usually cheerful Jose looked a little sentimental.

“I get it, sort of, but getting left behind clutching valuables. Pathetic.”

Clever ones had already given up and slipped away, living quietly among relatives in the city as civilians, or had tried to escape from the city. Those piled up here had been blinded by greed and got left behind.

“They were the former lords, and look at them, ungrateful wretches. From the servants who survived, their relatives were killed by looters before we arrived. And it wasn’t only soldiers. Civilians were mixed in.”

There was a note of contempt in Squad Leader Duwei’s voice.

“The mansion has plenty of hands. We’ve been ordered to patrol the city. Got what you need?”

The squad members’ backpacks and hip pouches were stuffed with leftover loot and ingredients left in the food stores. While Walm worked at the patrol he had been ordered to do to keep the peace, in between he was engaged in legal banditry. Though he was following the rules of the country and the organization, it was morally unforgivable.

There wasn’t a civilian on the city streets. All Walm passed were Highserk soldiers. Every so often there were captured stragglers among them. Anyone who had put up even slight resistance, or been caught by a badly behaved unit, became a fresh stain on the road, and was hauled off in wheelbarrows by fellow prisoners.

“Wait! I’m not a soldier!”

A man dragged out of a building shouted his defense, but the soldiers’ hands didn’t slacken as they stripped his clothes.

“Fresh blood from an arrowhead wound. Take him.”

On the man’s back, there was indeed a mark where an arrow had surely gone in. It was one of the wounds Walm had seen most often on past battlefields. There was no mistaking it.

“No, that’s not it! A stray arrow came when I went outside. I’ve never been on a battlefield!”

The man kept making a desperate excuse, but the soldier went on without changing his tone.

“Want to be handled as a soldier in civilian clothes?”

The soldier pointed with his chin at a wheelbarrow. It was piled with corpses. Fresh blood dripped from the bed, and Walm could even trace where it had come from. Even so, the man, who had tried to speak again, gave up when he saw the soldier put a hand on his sword as a final warning. The man hung his head, then glanced back at the building he had been dragged from. A young woman and a child, probably his family, were watching anxiously.

“Be grateful you won’t be killed. This time you’ll probably be released after a few months of labor. Walk.”

The man exchanged a last look with his family and obediently joined the line of prisoners. It was a sight you could see all over the city. People with fresh cuts or bruises that looked like battle wounds, or burns, were also taken in, depending on the case. There were ordinary civilians mixed in. Walm felt gloomy, but there was no way to tell the difference. If any slipped through, it could get in the way of keeping order, and they couldn’t let rebellious elements with military experience loose.

On top of that, for better or worse, the Highserk Empire seemed to treat human life itself as a resource, Walm had come to think. Enemy nations at war with it were asked for ransom for hostages, and lower-ranking prisoners were sold inside and outside the country. There were several paths for enemy soldiers after annexation. Working for a fixed period to repair cities and facilities damaged in the war, or on civil engineering work at home or abroad. The rivers and roads in Highserk had been built that way.

Depending on the individual’s work and the supervisor’s judgment, the quickest were released in a few months, and the longest after several years of labor. Some were even promoted to supervisor, and many, those with nowhere else to go especially, enlisted in the Highserk army.

As Walm walked through the city, a commotion rose from one street. Walm almost raised his halberd by reflex.

“Sounds of fighting…?”

Barito braced himself, but Squad Leader Duwei denied it.

“Too strange for a killing. A scuffle?”

Hearing the noise, Walm ran toward the center of the disturbance. It was an ordinary townsman’s house. At the entrance stood soldiers from another squad that seemed to have been on patrol.

“What happened?”

He asked an older soldier who was blocking the doorway.

“These guys went too far. They broke into the house and raped the woman. Beat her husband to death too. Then they went wild when we tried to restrain them.”

When Walm looked inside, four young soldiers were pinned to the floor and bound. Beside them a woman sat crying, and a man lay there, the life gone from his eyes. He had been beaten about the face, and his nose and teeth were broken.

“Stupid bastards. They get up to mischief, with no permission to do so.”

The men looked familiar. Walm searched his memory for where he had seen them, and remembered. They were the ones who had been dragging a woman off at the border fortress.

“What happens to them?”

The soldier folded his arms as if thinking it over.

“Normally it’d be a beheading, but we won, so… Besides, they’re Sarria Battalion men who fought hard against the Myard troops. Probably get off with a flogging and some labor with the prisoners.”

Hearing that, the young Sarria soldiers tried to shout curses, but after a few kicks to the face, they quieted down.

“Just a flogging?”

For killing and raping civilians, the punishment was far too light. The words slipped out of Walm before he could stop them.

“It’s common. We can’t kill every one of them, or there’d be no soldiers left.”

The squad leader, listening from beside them, joined in.

“A flogging is something else. The tough guy screams on the first lash, and by the second and third he’s crying. The skin peels off, the flesh gets scraped away. Even if you pass out or piss yourself, the next lash wakes you up and you pass out again. Some even die. Think you can take it?”

Squad Leader Duwei looked down on the Sarria soldiers as if looking at filth. At the thought of the flogging, perhaps, the Sarria soldiers suddenly went meek.

“You heard it, you idiots, the squad leader’s kind advice. If you want fewer lashes, go quietly.”

They had looked like hungry young wolves, but they were led off by the older soldiers like obedient dogs. Walm had been wary of an attack, but there was no fighting in the area he had been assigned. What happened was scuffles over rounding up beaten soldiers, and looting and rape by Highserk and Myard soldiers who ignored military law.

---

The first night after the fall of Aidenberg arrived. The Duwei Squad had taken an abandoned riverside hut as their quarters and was on patrol in two shifts. Walm usually hung out with someone, but tonight he was savoring a cigarette alone. It would have been unthinkable in the middle of a battlefield, but thanks to the thorough pacification during the day, order in the city had recovered fast.

On top of that, a curfew strictly forbade anyone but Highserk soldiers from going out at night. Except for the reckless and the foolish, nobody walked the streets. He tossed some salted river fish, a spoil of war, into his mouth. It would normally go in soup, with the salt soaked out first, so it was terribly salty. If he hadn’t been as drained of strength and mana as he was now, Walm wouldn’t have eaten it.

To get rid of the lingering salt, Walm took out his flask and sipped. The alcohol ran through his mouth and dropped into his stomach. He breathed out lightly and looked up at the sky. In it, the twin moons floated faintly as if chasing each other. On a half moon or full moon, the nights seemed brighter than in his old world, but tonight it was a crescent, so the surroundings were dark.

Every time he looked at the moon, he was forced to remember that he was in another world. He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with elemental magic. There was no going back to a life of carrying a lighter, however much he wished. White smoke slowly filled his lungs. When Walm breathed out, the smoke spread into the sky and vanished.

As if the fierce fighting of the day had been a lie, silence ruled the night. Walm didn’t dislike talking to people, but he liked spending a little time alone like this now and then. In army life, time alone was precious. Other squad members sometimes took time alone too, when it was safe.

He scratched his head and let his whole body go slack. Like this, he could tell how much his exhausted body and mind wanted sleep. His head was dull, but Walm didn’t miss the faint sound. It was coming from a corner of the boat landing.

Ferries and fishing boats had all been taken to chase the Ferrius remnants. If anything came, it would be someone who, like Walm, had come to enjoy being alone, or someone trying to slip out of the city. It might be a small animal like a cat, but this was definitely not the sound a small animal made.

Besides soldiers, many townspeople were trying to escape the city. Early slips were overlooked, but the Highserk Empire, not wanting its population to drain away, was now restricting movement out of the city.

“Who’s there?”

There was no answer. They might think they could stay hidden, or be wondering what to do. If nobody was there, Walm would look like a complete fool. He flicked the cigarette onto the ground and stepped on it. Most of his armor and gear had been left in the hut. All he had on was his gauntlets and longsword.

“I’ll ask one more time. Who is it?”

When Walm deliberately rattled his sword, a figure came out of a hut used for fishing.

“You’re not Highserk soldiers. There’s a curfew at night. Do you understand?”

There were two people. They were hidden in darkness, so he could make out only their outlines.

“W-we’re very sorry.”

An old man and a girl apologized in trembling voices. What to do? If they weren’t up to anything, a stern warning and sending them home would do, wouldn’t it? Walm took a few steps closer and cast a spell.

“《Torch》.”

Walm looked away from the light and studied the two. In the light that appeared, an old man with white hair, eyes wide with surprise, and a girl with golden hair stood out.

They looked like a grandfather and granddaughter trying to get out of a city where rape and robbery were rampant. Their clothes were ordinary townsfolk’s, but something caught at Walm.

The old man had wrinkles fitting his age, but his chest and shoulders were broad, and he must have been well built in his youth. The girl’s hair was dirty with soot, but she had little body odor. And her fingernails and fingers were clean. People who did hard labor had rough, angular, dirty hands. She had no sunburn marks either.

“…Why are you outside?”

“The city is dangerous, with thieves and rapists everywhere. We were going to stay with relatives abroad.”

Walm’s gut told him these two were not commoners. High-ranking soldiers, wealthy merchants, or else… nobles.

“Are you a soldier?”

“No, not now. I only fought in a war decades ago. I can’t even hold a sword now.”

The old man explained to Walm, looking frightened.

“For a retired man you’re well built. Someone your age should have a bent back. And the young lady has very pretty hands. Was she a sheltered girl?”

“Good health is my only virtue, and my granddaughter lost her parents when she was young, so I raised her with great care so she wouldn’t have to suffer.”

Without confirming or denying, Walm stared quietly at the two. When he closed the distance by a step, the old man’s eyes changed. His skin prickled. He was clearly a very capable man. He didn’t see weapons in their luggage, but there might be hidden weapons, or something taken from a magic bag. There were even martial monks who could outdo weapons bare-handed. He couldn’t let his guard down.

It wasn’t certain they were nobles. And even if they were, the main figures had all been captured or killed. What good did it do for Walm to try so hard to block a few small fry at the bottom of the heap from getting away?

The old man’s real ability was unknown, too. He was clever enough to pose as an amateur and seemed to be willing to do anything. If Walm prodded at him carelessly, a snake might jump out of the grass. A few seconds of staring dragged on until an incongruous sound rang out. The source was the girl. In the middle of this tense moment, her stomach had growled. She had quite the bold stomach.

“Um, this is…”

The girl, her white face turned bright red, was awfully cute.

“Ha, hahaha!”

The two stared at Walm, who burst out laughing.

“Sorry, sorry. You were cute and I couldn’t help it. If you keep her this pampered and clean, some bad soldier will grab her. If your house is still standing, go home. I’ll let you go this time.”

The two bowed to Walm together and started to disappear into an alley.

“Wait.”

The two tensed instantly. Walm went back to the spot where he had been smoking and held out a bottle and a small bag.

“It’s half eaten, but you must be hungry. Fill your stomachs with it.”

What he handed over was a bottle of salted river fish and a small bag of dried beans.

“Th-thank you.”

The girl took them, bewildered. The old man looked at Walm as if he couldn’t understand.

“It was a terrible day. This is hypocrisy to dull my guilt. Don’t be shy, there’s no poison in it.”

When Walm held out the bottle and the bag, the girl reached out and took them. Her hair had been hidden under her hood, tied up inside it to keep it out of the way, as golden and supple as a wheat field. In the glow of the 《Torch》, her eyes caught the light. They were gold too, the same as her hair.

“Thank you very much.”

Walm found himself staring at that gentle smile, one that would please anyone. It was only a short phrase and a gesture, but each part of it was lovely, and hinted at a high level of education.

“Ah… you’re welcome.”

Walm lit a cigarette and left. On the way back to his squad, he looked at the river. With so little light at night, it was extremely hard to see across to the far bank. Even so, one boat was crossing the river without a torch or magic, hidden in the darkness.

“So you can’t go home after all.”

It must have been ridiculous, an invader like him sympathizing with the victims. They were people whose family or neighbors he might have killed. In the end it was legal murder, with war as the permit. And Walm, whose love for country and home was thinner than most people’s, and who had been swept into the war by circumstances, had no cause and no pride to speak of.

“How could that ever be forgiven? You hypocrite.”

Where they would go after losing their way of life might be terribly hard. Walm was getting used to this world, for good and for bad. He no longer had any confidence that he could keep the humanity and morals he had built up in his old world.

---

“I-I’ve come to the wrong place…”

The place where the Liguria battalion commander had ordered Walm to report in person was the former Myard mansion, now seized by the Highserk army and turned into the Myard Area Army’s headquarters.

The bloodstains and bodies from the massacre Walm had witnessed had all been cleared away, and two platoons stood guard over the mansion at all times. Commander Berger’s own personal guard held the area around the command room, with a company’s worth of men keeping watch.

Even among the Highserk Empire’s elite soldiers, the elite of the elite had uniform equipment and plenty of captured gear, but compared with Walm, who wore a lot of looted pieces, it was like comparing a pedigreed hound with a stray mutt living day to day. Exposed to the curious stares of the guards, Walm and the rest of the squad were gathered in what had probably been a guest room.

“Squad Leader Duwei, what did you do?”

Barito, his cockscomb wilting miserably, whispered to Jose.

“Beats me. It’s not a jail or a prisoner camp, so I doubt it’s anything bad.”

“I can hear you. Do you think I did something wrong? …Well, probably they’re giving us a reward for our service.”

Wherever his usual self had gone, Squad Leader Duwei was oddly hesitant.

Recently, they would have been talking about the reward for killing the Ferrius commander, Winston Ferrius. Walm agreed, but none of the squad was used to formal places, so they all sat like borrowed cats. The best they could do was polish their gear and brush the dirt off their clothes. Of course, their weapons had been taken by Commander Berger’s attendants, confiscated, strictly speaking, so Walm thought wryly that they must look like a clean-looking band of thugs.

“Please, have a seat.”

Prompted by an attendant, Walm and the others quietly took chairs at a long table.

“Y-yes.”

Tea and sweets were served to them at the same time. The sweets were as good as any Walm had eaten in his old world, and the squad, having taken one bite, froze up again.

At the taste of civilized sweets for the first time in twenty years since his death, Walm nearly cried. As he savored tea and sweets, he suddenly noticed something. Everyone was trying so hard to behave politely, but it was all so stiff that it made Walm want to laugh.

Walm didn’t know this world’s manners either. So he could only bring the sweets and tea to his mouth by the ordinary manners of his old world.

“That Walm bastard looks awfully relaxed.”

“Weirdly used to this. It’s infuriating.”

“Walm, you’re a farmer from the countryside, right?”

“He studied up in advance to humiliate us.”

“…Coward.”

“Squad Leader, Walm’s smirking a little.”

Against Walm’s comparatively calm behavior, the squad members, the Three Idiots first, heaped abuse on him.

“What are you all talking about…”

The reliable men who had been Walm’s comrades were gone. In their place were executioners denouncing a traitor.

As he went on making his desperate defense, Walm noticed that the door of the room had opened a little, quietly. The other squad members reacted a beat behind. However inexperienced and out of place they were, they were soldiers all the same, even here. Everyone’s reaction to the person who appeared was fast.

Walm leapt up from his chair and stood stiffly at attention to receive the figure. The Highserk Empire’s living War God, Commander Gerald Berger, who had led eighteen thousand men to complete victory in the war with Myard, walked leisurely into the room with a faint smile.

“I thought it was a lively room, and here are all good soldiers.”

He must have been quietly enjoying himself outside the door, listening to Walm’s struggles and the squad members’ flustered state. Walm clicked his tongue. What a mischievous, prankish old man. Commander Berger sat quietly across the long table from Walm.

“Sit down, don’t stand on ceremony. We can’t talk if you stand. Isn’t that right?”

The squad obeyed the supreme commander’s order at once. An attendant poured fresh hot tea for Commander Berger. The sweet aroma tickled Walm’s nose. After enjoying the scent for a moment, Commander Berger took a sip of tea and set the cup down without a sound.

“I fully expected the Jeff Cavalry Battalion to bring back Winston’s head. I was surprised when I heard the report. I never thought infantry would run four kilometers while fighting, break the palisades, and break into the headquarters. And on top of that, kill Winston.”

He looked naturally at each of the squad members in turn, meeting their eyes, and continued.

“Jeff was frustrated. I made the Liguria battalion commander pass on my highest praise, and I heard there was a squad that stood out even among them. I wanted to give you your reward in person, so I had you come here.”

“Your words are too kind for us.”

It was a surprise to Walm that Squad Leader Duwei could use polite language. The other squad members couldn’t hide their agitation either.

“You are Squad Leader Duwei. I’ve heard of your heroic work. A 《Heavy Strike》 user who has supported Highserk for many years. Soldiers like you are irreplaceable to the Highserk Empire.”

“Th-thank you very much.”

Squad Leader Duwei couldn’t hide his joy as he answered. Unlike Walm, the squad leader was patriotic and loyal to his unit, for all his gruffness. Walm could see how someone would go soft when the War God praised him to the skies.

“And you’re Walm.”

Walm stiffened a little at being called by name. The old general’s eyes looked him over as if appraising goods.

“Half a year since enlistment. You were tempered in the fighting against the Commercial Trade Federation of Liberitoa, true, but in addition to the 《Heavy Strike》 you learned from Squad Leader Duwei, you’ve learned magic from Magic Soldier Willart, and you even use 《Ignis Fatuus》. A splendid talent.”

《Ignis Fatuus》 was Walm’s new Skill from the fighting against Ferrius. It scattered wind and flame around him and dealt lethal damage over a wide area. He hadn’t known what it was when he activated it, but Willart had told him that its past users included heroes of old and outstanding adventurers.

“Thank you, sir.”

“I saw it once in my youth, and I’d rather not be roasted by it. I’m truly relieved that you’re a Highserk soldier.”

Commander Berger smiled lightly and wet his throat with a sip of tea.

“Rinett, would you bring it?”

The attendant called Rinett brought in something wrapped in a worn cloth.

“This was worn by a group of mysterious men in armor from another world, who ran wild against the three great powers. The material is unknown. It has some resemblance to mithril and adamantite. Its previous owner seems to have been able to use 《Ignis Fatuus》. It should suit you, who use 《Ignis Fatuus》 as well. Don’t be shy. Try it on.”

It looked a lot like a menpo, a face guard from the Warring States period. The design was a mix of oni and skull, but the color was a vivid red. Walm put it on his face, cautiously. It fit with surprising perfection. And it was light as a feather.

“Splendid. A perfect fit. It’s yours now. Everyone who stands against you will be startled by that mask.”

It was the first time he had held it, but Walm felt a deep nostalgia. He couldn’t help being sure that this face guard had somehow drifted in from his old world. As Walm took off the mask to thank him and raised his face, the mask shook, shockingly, and rattled.

“Huh!?”

Walm held himself back, by soldier’s pride and reason, from throwing it away by reflex. Unable to take in what was happening, he looked from the mask to Commander Berger and back.

“U-um, it’s shaking…”

The mask vibrated violently, like a cicada in its last throes or a phone on silent. His face twitching, Walm asked Commander Berger for an explanation.

“Ha ha ha, it seems it’s taken to you. It’s very picky, so it’s been a headache.”

Until just now, Walm had taken the old general for a man with understanding even for the lowest soldiers, but he was a slippery old fox.

“It’s cursed!”

Noor, who had been waiting beside Walm, shouted. Even Jose, on his other side, half rose and moved away. The mask kept vibrating as if protesting.

“C-Commander Berger!?”

Walm begged for help, but the old man across from him just kept laughing.

“Ha, forgive me. There’s no real harm so far, so don’t worry. It’s a kind of weapon with a will of its own, one of the sort that turns up now and then. It just shakes sometimes to match its joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure. I couldn’t wear it, so I’m glad it found a worthy owner. Take good care of it.”

Afterward, as if nothing had happened, he continued the conversation and handed out rewards to the squad members one by one. Because of Walm’s example, everyone took theirs with suspicion and caution.

“Haah, I’m worn out.”

Walm’s group, released from the guest room, were on their way back. The one who unusually let out a groan was the squad leader. The squad members were all keeping their distance from Walm. They might be strong against physical threats, but they seemed weak against curses. The only one showing interest was Willart, Walm’s magic teacher.

“So what are you going to do with that, Walm?”

“Ah, well, I mean… The commander gave it to me, so I should take care of it.”

“Whaaat, you’re not going to throw it out?”

Before Noor finished, the mask vibrated harder than it ever had.

“Noor, you!”

“Don’t say pointless things!”

Scolded by the squad leader and Jose, Noor apologized over and over, to whom, who knew.

“Eek, I’m sorry, I was joking! I’m so sorry!”

Perhaps her desperate prayers got through, because the vibration finally stopped. Walm needed to change his way of thinking. In a world with magic and Skills that ignored the laws of physics, what was a vibrating mask with a will of its own? Besides, there were even people who were reborn into another world.

The commander himself had vouched for it. It shook a little, but he told himself to be glad he had gotten excellent armor.

---

Two months after taking Aidenberg, the Highserk Empire turned its spear toward Ferrius proper. With three battered battalions as the core, it formed the Myard Area Army’s expeditionary force. Excluding the two units that had gone ahead, four battalions began the invasion of Ferrius’s border region. Commander Berger and the high command weren’t so generous as to leave a weakened enemy alone and let expensive troops sit idle.

With its field army and surplus strength gone, Ferrius’s border defense was, however you put it, fragile. Ferrius was avoiding attrition at the border, building up its forces while drawing the Imperial Army inland to drive it back, was how Walm read it.

By contrast, the Highserk Empire had taken the border with only two battalions, and the villages and towns of the surrounding countryside fell one after another. The movement avoided areas with strong defensive works and was devoted entirely to cutting down the enemy’s capacity to wage war.

It was only barracks gossip, but Walm had heard that the aim wasn’t to beat Ferrius to death but to make it bleed. Even Highserk, known as a mad dog, was avoiding costly sieges that would wear it down fast.

Walm’s Liguria Battalion was among the four sent as reinforcements, making six battalions in all, the Ferrius expeditionary army, planning a deeper invasion. Of them, two battalions, including Liguria, were trying to surround a mine fifteen kilometers from the border.

“The Ferrius forces kept falling back, but they’re not giving this place up.”

Jose said, looking up at the Ferrius army in the mine. Highserk’s rapid advance had stalled here for the moment.

Three thousand Ferrius soldiers were packed into the mine, defending to the death. In addition to multiple lines of defense, the summit was held, and a frontal assault would cost more men than a siege. The sapping tactic Highserk had used on the Myard border wasn’t effective against the hard bedrock.

They were thought to have six months to a year of provisions stored, so a starvation siege would take patience.

They had to commit a certain number of troops to avoid being hit from behind, which was why two battalions were stuck around the perimeter. They launched sporadic attacks day and night as harassment and carefully chipped away at the outer edges, but if they weren’t careful, Walm looked set to spend more than half a year keeping company with the people on that summit.

“All right, shout!”

At the squad leader’s signal, the soldiers shouted all at once and beat their swords and shields. Some even added trumpets and drums. Though the dawn had barely broken, the discord and the men’s roars were the worst possible alarm clock for the enemy soldiers.

This sort of provocation and harassment went on every night, and about one time in five there was an actual raid. Last night, Walm and Willart had played with fire, literally. The enemy’s defenses were in an uproar, and they must be worn out in body and mind, Walm thought, and smirked.

A little after Walm started the racket, abuse and stone-throwing began from the enemy position. They were completely out of effective range, but now and then some came near his feet.

Even so, it wasn’t enough to kill or wound anyone. After about half an hour of harassment, Walm’s job was done. All together, as if satisfied, they began to pull back to camp.

“Since when did we become a choir?”

A good joke from Barito set Walm roaring with laughter. The enemy bristled again at the sound of his voice.

“Barito, you say something good now and then. Look. The Ferrius guys seem to want an encore.”

Squad Leader Duwei, who had banged his war axe against his shield with a clang, nodded in satisfaction.

“We don’t do charity work.”

When Walm said it with a show of reluctance, Jose cheerfully joined in.

“We have to collect the gift money, after all.”

“All they give us for a gift is stones. Cheap bastards.”

Compared with the fighting so far, building an encirclement and waiting for the enemy to starve was an easy job for Walm. A few days earlier, the enemy, unable to hold out, had tried a sortie, but they had been hit from four sides the moment they left their positions and gotten nothing, and had gone back to the mine. A mine was well suited to drawing the enemy in to defend, but the exits were limited, so the points they could attack from were easy to read. They were steadily pushing the Ferrius soldiers into a corner.

Two weeks into the siege, with no major battles, the encirclement went on. While repeating harassment and provocation, Walm built up his training with Willart in magic and in the Skill called 《Ignis Fatuus》. Even with magic, once it got out of control it hurt those around him, but 《Ignis Fatuus》 was in a different league. A careless move could drag in friendly units down to squad level, so he was practicing control in an abandoned mine tunnel.

Adjusting the firepower was hard, and every part of the inner walls was black with soot. Walm could now give it a certain directionality, but that no friendly casualties had occurred at the Battle of Aidenberg was, to say the least, down to luck.

Hardest of all was sustaining the Skill. It burned mana at a terrible rate, and at the longest, forty seconds after activating it, Walm’s mana was dry. With no mana, he couldn’t use 《Heavy Strike》, and his physical ability dropped sharply. A misjudged duration would be fatal on a battlefield.

He was also teaching Noor and Barito. He kept up sparring and strike drills with the squad members, starting with Squad Leader Duwei, who didn’t get enough exercise, and Barito, who took a wooden sword to the head, cockscomb and all, grabbed the squad leader shouting “Just kill me already!” and it became one of the squad’s running jokes. Of course, a second after Barito grabbed him, he ended up hugging the ground, and Noor got caught in it too.

Remembering the rookies’ idiotic faces, Walm let out a breath of fatigue. His daily Skill control practice burned a lot of mana. After thirty seconds of 《Ignis Fatuus》, the tunnel had turned into a high-temperature boiler room. The bats that had originally lived there had moved out as the Skill was used again and again. The ones who hadn’t escaped were all steamed. Walm still had energy to move, but a terrible weariness hit him. He was so listless he thought of stretching out his limbs and lying down.

“Hey, Walm, done?”

His name was called from the tunnel entrance. The familiar voice was Jose’s.

“Yeah, any more and I’ll drop.”

Walm started toward the outside of the tunnel. It was a pain, but on the way, he collected the mess tins and pottery hanging along the path.

“You were so slow, I got worried.”

Jose smiled, but Walm didn’t take his words at face value.

“What you were worried about was this, wasn’t it?”

What Walm held was dried fish and meat. He didn’t know who had thought of it, but they were treating him as a natural cooking appliance. At first, food held too close to 《Ignis Fatuus》 had burned to nothing, but after trial and error, they had evidently found the right spot and distance.

By now even people from outside the squad brought food. There were even soldiers who had made steamers themselves and enjoyed steamed cooking.

He wanted to protest, but it wasn’t only the squad leader. Platoon Leader Kozul and even the company commanders treated Walm as an excellent cooking tool, so he had no choice but to give up. According to the company commander, “It’s the proper reuse of mana spent in training.” He even stressed the end of the sentence.

Platoon Leader Kozul also recommended it as “important work to lower enemy morale with smell.” Walm was convinced that, whichever way you looked at it, their real aim was to feed their love of good food.

On top of that, after he used it, the tunnel’s heat killed pests and vermin, and the area near the entrance was warm and comfortable, and was becoming a gathering place for the troops. It wasn’t only Walm. Willart, too, was working like a lion as a human water pipe while the siege dragged on, and he was in a foul mood.

“Don’t say it like that. Walm, you enjoy my cooking too, don’t you?”

With food shipped in from Myard and organized plundering of local food, the Highserk army’s supply was working well. Even so, human appetite was a terrible thing, and the dullness and blandness of their meals was being solved by individual effort.

The squad members, hungry for food, had turned into wild bird hunters, chasing birds every day. It was a shock to Walm that the top catcher was Noor.

She was good at catching game with traps, thrown stones, and a bow. Her grandfather had been a hunter, and she had often gone into the woods to earn her keep. Barito, who had been left behind by his fellow recruit, was desperate to raise his standing, but Walm thought it was a losing bet.

“I guess so.”

Walm honestly admitted Jose’s point. Jose pulled apart a steamed bird and handed some to Walm. The salted steamed bird had tender meat, and the more he chewed, the more flavor it gave. It was delicious, a perk of the job you might say, but since it burned so much mana, Walm insisted it was necessary calorie intake.

“Well, this life will be over soon, too.”

Jose muttered, then put the rest of the meat in his mouth.

“What do you mean?”

At Walm’s question, after pausing to chew, Jose spoke again.

“Apparently the number of enemy deserters has been going up the last few days. It seems more and more of them think surrender can’t be helped. The harassment, and apparently the smell really works on them.”

The dark-skinned young man laughed hard and slapped his legs.

“Think about it. They’re surrounded, with raids and noise day and night. They’re fighting hard while eating their preserved rations bit by bit, and the other side is eating delicious-looking food.”

Walm imagined it. On top of attacks around the clock, their provisions didn’t run out but they had to ration them. Meanwhile, the enemy army ate as it pleased, spreading savory smells. Their morale might hold up for a while, but if it dragged on, that will would surely bend.

“…True.”

“So that’s how it is. Let’s enjoy what’s left of this vacation.”

Jose’s attitude, trying to enjoy the last of a long holiday, was truly thick-skinned, and Walm secretly thought of learning from it.

---

Three days after the talk in the tunnel. A large-scale operation was about to be carried out against the Ferrius army, whose morale kept sinking. This mine had several forts built into it, and it was a group of defensive works with good depth. In this situation, the Highserk army aimed to take the south wall, one of the enemy’s tiger’s mouths. So far it was the usual story, but Walm couldn’t accept the position he had been put in.

“Damn it, why do I have to sneak into a fort and set fires? I’m not an arsonist.”

The mine’s location worked against them. In forts, where the room to deploy troops was limited, it was hard to overwhelm them with numbers. So the order Walm got was for a small number to make a night raid and set the wall on fire to cause confusion.

“It’s an honor to be picked personally by the Liguria battalion commander.”

The squad leader’s line was all the more irritating for not being sarcasm or teasing.

“I hear a wind user will go with you as escort, so relax.”

Operations that could rely only on individual ability could hardly be called a properly functioning organization. Walm wanted to deliver that argument, but sadly, a mere soldier with some Skill had no right to refuse.

Even with a wind magic user capable of real combat attached, only twenty men were being committed. The enemy had well over two hundred. After the chaos was made, Walm had been told, two companies’ worth of troops, Duwei Squad included, would break through at once, but if they dawdled, enemy reinforcements would arrive.

He had no enthusiasm at all, but neither time nor his superiors would wait for Walm. Seen off by the squad members, he headed for the assembly point. It was the tent where the company commander, normally someone he would never go near, was waiting. After exchanging greetings with the guards at the entrance, Walm stepped in. About thirty soldiers had gathered.

Though it was a large tent, it felt rather cramped. Usually Squad Leader Duwei passed on the plans and policy, so it was the first time Walm had taken part directly in a war council. The leader of the temporary raiding platoon had been sent from the Liguria Battalion. Walm recognized a few familiar faces.

“Everyone’s here.”

The one who spoke was a company commander of the Liguria Battalion.

“The plan is simple. After breaking through the wall with wind magic, take part of the wall. The target is a corner of the defensive tower on the right.”

The company commander pointed to the exact place, then traced the map and went on. Walm lowered his eyes. The brand-new map showed the details of the mine’s defenses. It must have been drawn from prisoners and scouts.

“After securing the wall walkway near the flanking tower, Walm will burn the flanking tower’s defenders to nothing with 《Ignis Fatuus》. Make an entry point centered there. Hold the tower at all costs until then. Seal the entrance with 《Ignis Fatuus》. The fire will stop the enemy and make them stand out against the dark. Just don’t burn our own men.”

A dry laugh answered the company commander’s last words. Walm would have laughed too, but he would surely earn some disapproval if he did. He quietly kept his mouth shut.

“If you’re found before you get in, withdraw at once. We’ll cover your retreat. That’s all. Good luck in battle.”

There were a few more exchanges, but his first war council ended in less than ten minutes. Having wrapped cloth around his gear to stop any stray noise, Walm crawled along the ground toward the fortress gate.

Dirt and the juice of green weeds stained his clothes and armor. Mud stuck even to his face, but he left it, since it would get dirty anyway by the time he reached the target.

The lights that had been lighting the distant wall walkway drew closer. Magic stones, glowing moss, black water, a mix of lamps of all kinds, but they were enough light to spot anything approaching. It was still more than a hundred meters away, but there might be soldiers with sensing Skills or night vision. Getting this close had worn Walm’s nerves to the bone. He could even make out the faint shapes of enemy soldiers. Some were even yawning.

Not that he was defending the enemy, but with an hour of harassment every night again tonight, their concentration and attention must have scattered.

Otherwise he would have been spotted along the way and would be the one with enemies on his tail. Walm slowly wiped the dirt from his face with his hand and put on the mask. The mask shook faintly, as if in delight. It seemed to be looking forward to the fight ahead.

“Be a good boy. It’ll start soon.”

Astonishingly, the mask, which had a will and apparently intelligence too, gave in to Walm’s coaxing and stopped vibrating. He calmed the shaking, kept his breathing to a minimum, and pressed his body to the ground as much as he could. The signal agreed on beforehand came. Walm threw off all his camouflage and accelerated toward the wall in one rush using wind magic.

“《Burst》.”

The soldiers blessed with wind acceleration dropped onto the wall together. An enemy soldier who noticed the odd sound poked his head over the wall in front of Walm. His eyes went wide and his throat moved as if to shout something, but Walm’s longsword was faster, and took his head off.

“Wha-”

The soldier next to him tried to scream in panic, but a comrade’s war hammer shut him up by force. The surprise attack was going much better than expected. Walm silently dealt out death to more soldiers than he could count on one hand, and burst into the flanking tower. Just inside the entrance was a waiting room, where six soldiers were taking it easy.

“Enemy-aah, aaah, gyaaah!”

Having gotten this far in, there was no need for stealth. The words meant to warn of the night attack became screams at once. Walm activated 《Ignis Fatuus》, and the room turned into the bottom of hell. Soldiers wrapped in fire in the cramped room rolled on the floor trying to put it out, but flames from every direction wouldn’t let them.

Dodging the fire, the Highserk soldiers went around finishing the enemy soldiers who were rolling about. Up on the roof they were a beat slow to notice the commotion below. Walm ran up the stairs and set fire to the roof of the defense tower as well. With its way out blocked, the fire was pushed by the wind and blew out through the gaps between the parapet and the roof.

Soldiers caught in fire threw themselves to the ground to escape the blaze. The burning wall walkway and the living torches were enough firepower to let the entire area know there was fighting.

“Enemy attack! Up, get to your posts!”

“The third flanking tower is on fire! What’s that blue flame?”

“Why is a stone flanking tower burning!? Is it Liberitoa’s black water?”

Soldiers swarmed out of the buildings inside the fortress like bees from a poked hive. Walm marveled that they had crammed so many soldiers in there.

“Walm, they’re coming from below!”

One soldier shouted. He was the leader of the temporary special platoon. On the flanking tower’s roof, men were shooting arrows and firing spells and clearing out enemies. To avoid hitting his own side, Walm stopped the Skill. He slid down the stairs. He passed comrades with bows on their backs heading up to the roof.

“We’re in position. Do it.”

The platoon leader’s signal came. The hard part was cleared. All that was left was to hold. Walm sent 《Ignis Fatuus》 toward the two doors connecting to the wall walkway and the stairs going down into the wall.

“Hiii!?”

“Back, get back, quick!”

The Ferrius soldiers who had tried to charge in all fell back. The unlucky ones were the ones too slow to escape. They screamed for a few seconds, then died as their lungs burned from fire and lack of air. Walm kept 《Ignis Fatuus》 going. It was only a few dozen seconds, but for the defending side it was a fatal span of time. The huge signal fire and bonfire told the friendly forces the operation had succeeded.

The voices of the waiting companies echoed through the night. Walm, who had always been mixed into the group and hadn’t been able to grasp the sound of it all, realized only now, on the enemy’s side, that the volume and killing intent aimed at him surpassed any enemy he had faced. As an ally, it was reassuring. There was just one problem: whether his own army might attack him by mistake.

“They won’t attack us by accident, right?”

“…Probably.”

Walm called to the soldiers on the roof, but the reply was unreliable.

“Retake the flanking tower before the enemy’s main force arrives, at any cost!”

Below, the enemy commander, raging, was struggling to restore order. Walm wished they would just keep scrambling around on the ground. Over thirty seconds had already passed and it was getting hard to keep the Skill up. Walm stopped it. The residual heat, along with the embers, was still burning. Breathing hard, Walm caught an unbelievable sound: several light footsteps running up the stairs.

“Enemy soldiers are coming up!”

“What kind of joke is that!?”

Walm called to the platoon leader, but a doubtful voice came back. If only it were a joke, how happy he would be. The footsteps closed in until they were before his eyes, and he finally saw what they were.

It was a group of three men. Facing them, Walm realized all three had some kind of Skill and magic. Probably one specialized in strengthening his body with mana, one had fire magic, the same element, with heat resistance, and the last had water magic.

Walm didn’t want to admit it, but they had come up putting out fires and protecting the other two with water. The fact that he had prioritized keeping the fire up over firepower had contributed to this.

“Cover me!”

“In that fire? Don’t ask the impossible. I’m about to collapse, being roasted from below.”

There were no allies near Walm, since they were avoiding the flames. He nearly grumbled about what the escort was for. The enemy soldiers had already gotten into the room. Walm slammed his halberd at the lead soldier. A 《Heavy Strike》 with a whistling swing, but it was easily stopped by a two-handed sword.

Walm had felt like he had gotten stronger, but this was no joke. Three against one with skilled opponents was like dancing a dance in a minefield where a single misstep wasn’t allowed.

Using the last of his mana, he activated 《Ignis Fatuus》 again. The soldier skilled at body strengthening stopped 《Heavy Strike》 but wouldn’t take a direct hit from 《Ignis Fatuus》. The other two wouldn’t try to stop 《Heavy Strike》 but did take 《Ignis Fatuus》.

After knocking back the two-handed sword, a longsword and water magic came at him from the side. Walm turned aside the longsword with his gauntlet and stopped the water magic with 《Ignis Fatuus》, but his mana was spent in an instant. The soldier who had strengthened his body took the front, while the fire and water users concentrated on support. If all of them had been skilled swordsmen, Walm would already be down. The magic users were probably the type specialized in medium and long range and weak in melee.

Four seconds remained. If he fought as usual, he would clearly be played with and killed once his mana ran out. He picked the soldier of his own element and unleashed 《Ignis Fatuus》 on him. The man braced behind a round shield against the fierce flame and held it off, but Walm kept raising the firepower.

“Ugh, gu, ah, aaaah, aaaaah!”

It looked like it would fail, but against firepower that set even stone floors and ceilings on fire, 《Ignis Fatuus》 finally broke through the soldier’s heat resistance and wrapped around the man.

“Waigna!?”

One soldier shouted the name of his burning comrade and swung his sword to stop Walm’s 《Ignis Fatuus》. The enemy’s coordination was disrupted slightly there. The water magic soldier, who had been scattering water to protect his comrades from the blue flames, ended up pouring water over the burning soldier. He was a man who cared for his comrades, but that didn’t make him a good soldier. In fact, that was his downfall.

The fingers of the body-strengthened soldier, which had been exposed to fire closest of all, had reached their limit. In spite of the arm swinging down with force, the two-handed sword flew off in a completely wrong direction. The man tried to pick it back up, but Walm’s halberd tip found the man’s heart first. Only one remained.

Just as Walm tried to turn his attention to the last one, the soldier with the pierced heart threw his arms around Walm, pinning the halberd down.

“Do it, now!”

Spitting dark blood from his mouth, the soldier shouted. The last one was the water magic soldier. Instead of the support work he had done until now, he was clearly moving to finish Walm off.

“Let go!”

Walm spat out a line like a villain’s and drove a backhand blow with the gauntlet into the dying soldier’s face. Even so, the grip only loosened a little.

The man who had roared charged at Walm without stopping. Walm blocked on reflex with his gauntlet, but the sword swung down from the topmost guard couldn’t be slowed and drove deep into his shoulder.

“Gah, that hurts!”

The body-strengthened soldier, seeing that one blow, fell to the ground as if satisfied.

“Die! Die, die!”

The man kept trying to drive his sword in, but Walm crashed into him and wrapped his arms around him. Even the enemy soldier couldn’t swing his sword properly at such close quarters. Blades struck Walm’s gauntlets and torso, but he avoided effective hits.

Tangled in one mass, they rolled over and over on the ground. It was a complete brawl. Bleeding badly from the shoulder, Walm couldn’t put any real strength into it. The man tried to mount him and leaned forward, pressing with his weight. The air was forced from Walm’s lungs, but he quickly used his armpit and arm to grab the man’s neck. A choke hold, the kind called a front naked choke, or a front strangle.

“Gh!? Uuugh!”

Punching at Walm’s belly to escape, the man tried to get away, but Walm hooked a leg around his waist and pressed in even closer. Whether it was a few dozen seconds or several minutes, he couldn’t tell anymore. He carefully twisted the neck until it broke. Even a soldier with a pierced heart had pinned Walm down with unnatural strength. It wouldn’t be strange if a man with a broken neck were still lively.

Luckily, Walm’s worry proved baseless, and the man stopped moving entirely.

“Haah, haaah, damn.”

Walm steadied his breathing and rolled the corpse onto the floor. He had nearly died. With no mana and no strength, and having pushed himself to move while bleeding, his dizziness was severe. His whole body was dirty with his own blood and others’ spray. Mana-rich warriors and soldiers often made a sort of pseudo-membrane of mana to stop bleeding and keep their insides in, fighting like berserkers, but there was nothing Walm could do, out of mana.

He sensed a presence behind him and turned around, and a man was swinging down a longsword.

“What-”

It was the same-element soldier he had burned first, still alive. His whole body burned, he hadn’t even raised his voice, but his killing intent alone hadn’t faded. His arms wouldn’t even lift anymore. Walm gritted his teeth and braced for the pain, but the man simply collapsed onto him. Walm writhed desperately and got out from under him.

“Still alive?”

The voice belonged to the platoon leader he had been talking to on the stairs. An arrow was buried deep in the back of the enemy soldier’s head.

“Yeah, you saved me. If you’d come a little sooner… I’d have been turned into ground meat.”

Walm made a light joke, but he had no composure left.

“No man could step into that sort of inferno.”

The soldier said, looking from the dead enemy soldiers to Walm and back. He wanted to protest, but he was bleeding badly.

“…You really look like you’re about to die. I’ll lend you a shoulder. Get treated upstairs. We’ll hold for the last few minutes.”

The soldiers who had taken refuge on the roof of the flanking tower came down one by one and shored up the entrance. Friendly forces had already rushed to the wall and were about to leap onto the walkway. Right beside where Walm had been laid on the floor, the same-element soldier he had burned first lay dead. Unlike the other soldiers who had become living torches and fallen, he had burned to death inside without falling.

“Ah, sorry. You’ll have to put up with your temporary roommate.”

The soldier treating him cracked a grim joke. Walm couldn’t complain. He had burned them to death, after all.