Chapter 5: Everyday Life Built on Sand

Destroying roads and bridges as they went, the Liguria Battalion was nearing the assembly point, Sarajevo Fortress.

Opinion within the army had been split over abandoning every occupied area in the Kingdom of Ferrius, but a single word from Commander Berger had settled it: they would fall back to the old Myard border region. This key position sat on the border between Myard and Ferrius, and since the days of Kanoa it had served as a base against both the Demon Territory and Ferrius.

Mountains surrounded it, and any detour would mean crossing the Great Demon Territory, home to some of the most powerful monsters on the continent, so there was no way to go around. The terrain favored the defenders. After the Aidenberg campaign, however, the fortress’s garrison had fallen far below the strength needed to hold it, and it had failed in its role, falling to the Highserk Empire’s onslaught in short order.

The Highserk troops gathering here now had enough men to make full use of the fortress, and since it had fallen so quickly, the defensive works had taken only light damage and were reportedly already repaired. Walm saw plenty of Highserk soldiers other than the Liguria Battalion already inside the fortress’s sphere of control. Scouts, couriers, and engineers working on construction were mixed in among them.

“Looks like as many men as we had at Aidenberg are gathering here.”

The squad leader let his eyes flick around, checking the surroundings.

“Ugh, the road feels cramped.”

That complaint came from Jose, who had just dodged a passing horse.

“Better than having too few friends around, isn’t it?”

Noor sounded delighted, finding it all reassuring.

“We had it rough at the mine.”

Barito, remembering the death struggle there, let his cockscomb droop.

“True, it beats the mine, but I’d like to eat a meal in peace.”

What Walm held wasn’t a round shield or a halberd. It was a potato. He was peeling it with a knife as he walked, going by feel, and eating it.

A potato with neither water nor fire on it was starchy and horribly mealy, but Walm had been secretly heating his. If the soldiers around him noticed, raw potatoes would come flooding in from every direction with requests for cooking. He gave a small, scornful snort at Noor and Barito, who were gnawing away at theirs, and popped a heated potato into his mouth.

“…Walm.”

A chill ran down Walm’s spine. His cover had been perfect. Unless - he prayed his hunch was wrong, but the one standing behind him was, of course, Willart.

A cup of salt water held a peeled potato. Willart, a veteran magic user, had figured out what Walm was up to. He didn’t say it, but Walm understood: keep quiet in return for cooking mine.

When it came to fire attribute, Walm was better than Willart. He had picked up fine heat control at the mine, and he understood what was being asked of him. But he wasn’t about to do it for free.

“Take my water duty today.”

“…Tch.”

Willart clicked his tongue softly, but no refusal followed. Walm warmed the cup with fire magic. He had changed jobs from human cooking stove to walking human cooking stove.

Willart put the steamed potato in his mouth with satisfaction. The problem was the steam and the smell that came up while cooking. The aroma of potatoes boiled in salt water was far too tempting for a marching column.

“Willart, that’s a pretty nice thing you’re eating.”

The first to notice was the squad leader.

“What are you talking about?”

Willart played dumb, but with a potato stuffed in his cheek, he wasn’t convincing.

Jose followed up next.

“Hey, Walm, didn’t you hand Willart something just now?”

“You’re imagining things.”

Walm broke into a cold sweat and played innocent, but the questions kept coming.

“Walm, you can cook while you walk, can’t you?”

The squad leader went straight for the heart of it. Eyes turned to Walm with envy, in the hope of being freed from the nightmare of raw potatoes.

“Walm, you get it, right? We’re prioritizing the march, so nobody’s had a warm meal.”

Jose spoke to him like a teacher reasoning with a poor student.

“With steamed potatoes, I could keep going.”

“Yeah, if I had a steamed potato, I feel like I could still walk.”

When the two newcomers joined in, there was no stopping the resentful voices of the three idiots and the rest of the squad. Whatever Walm did, the tide was already decided.

“Fine. I’ll boil them while we walk. But you carry my stuff.”

Resigned, Walm handed out his bags and weapons to the squad members. In return, he received a pot to feed the squad’s stomachs and a huge pile of potatoes.

“Damn it, what did I do to deserve this?”

Willart poured water into the pot with magic. Walm began heating it with fire magic. The looks from passing soldiers were of every kind. If a soldier walks by carrying a pot and boiling potatoes, it would be stranger if nobody looked.

Walm spat the words out inwardly: of course this was how it would go. He had seen it coming.

Some of the soldiers passing by even tried to get boiled potatoes in exchange for copper coins or barter.

Platoon Leader Kozul sniffed it out too, and with the words “This is boosting my platoon’s morale,” he praised Walm and then plundered his boiled potatoes. What Walm got in return was raw potatoes. The heat for cooking, apparently, was free.

Thanks to that, he ended up boiling potatoes on the move again and again.

When Jose muttered, “Maybe a walking pot would work-,” Walm tried to unleash 《Ignis Fatuus》 at full power, and the entire squad had to hold him back.

---

In this world, fire points formed by magic could wipe out or cripple a mass of troops, so it had become common to deploy swarms of skirmishers and small groups ahead of the main body. For this defensive battle, numerous baileys of rammed-earth ramparts had been built in front of the fortress group, an undertaking that took the full strength of the Highserk Empire’s engineer corps.

In particular, the barbican bailey guarding the tiger’s mouth, and the Sixth Bailey, which deserved to be called an outwork fort even among the baileys, could hold two battalions’ worth of troops. It combined dry moats, horse barriers, stakes, earthen ramparts, and even a timber wall into one composite defense. Walm had never seen a position built with such care.

For the enemy, it was a key point that had to be eliminated at all costs as the first step in taking the fortress. If Walm had a problem, it was that one of the battalions assigned to the Sixth Bailey was the Liguria Battalion.

Infantry get used as handy substitutes for engineers and laborers whenever they’re not fighting. Walm was no exception. He packed down earthworks with tools and with his feet, drove stakes into the ground, and sharpened their tips.

The handy ones joined the engineers and helped reinforce the wall and assemble the posts. Excavated soil was packed into sacks and empty buckets and carried to the position to raise even a little height.

Stones for throwing and arrows were being hauled up onto the wall walk. The work was almost done, but engineer traffic was heaviest around the Sixth Bailey.

“Still, it’s awfully tall and wide.”

The ramparts were two or three tiers higher and broader than at the other baileys. Walm genuinely wondered where they had gotten that much earth. When the sun set and the end of work was called, a signal fire went up in the distance.

“Ah, they’re two or three days away.”

That was Jose, who had been working beside Walm.

“That’s just contact with their vanguard, so real fighting is three or four days off.”

“About that. Still, over fifty thousand enemy soldiers. The fortress is going to fill up with corpses.”

The dark-skinned youth looked around and let out a sour sigh.

“I just hope mine and the squad’s don’t end up mixed in.”

“No argument. A bit early for a last supper, but let’s go have an elegant dinner.”

“Don’t rush, Jose. Wash your hands properly or Mama will scold you.”

“Shut up. Let’s go.”

Walm followed Jose, who had spat the curse, to a corner where big pots stood in a row. The battalion had gathered platoon by platoon, every pot available had been mobilized, and battle rations were being made. Anything edible went in, and it all got boiled. A little spoilage was fine as long as you cooked it through; everything’s fine, all green. The ingredients were all slapdash.

When Walm had checked earlier, every pot held something different. Bits of chicken, pork, and orc meat, beans, cabbage, turnips, carrots, and potatoes, anything that came to hand, got stewed together.

Walm pulled a wooden bowl from his pack and held it out, and the cook-duty soldier ladled in the soup.

The taste was… well, at least it was warm. After a day of nonstop work, exhaustion and hunger covered most of the flaws. He ate it with the scraps of hardtack he had left over and sent it down into his stomach.

The squad had pooled copper and silver coins to buy some fruit wine, which Walm poured into his bowl. He puffed his pipe and exhaled purple smoke toward the sky. The twin moons had risen and begun their game of tag. Unlike the world Walm had once known, this one had no exhaust fumes or air pollution, and the starry sky was the most beautiful.

That was probably one of the things he had gained by coming to this world. Still, what he had lost might be greater. The things he had been forced to throw away in war, especially, had changed Walm, for better or worse.

“What’s with the sentimental look?”

Walm had been gazing up at the night sky from a corner of the wall walk when Jose came up, done with his meal.

“Nothing. I was just wondering how long this war is going to go on.”

“Until we win, obviously.”

“Until we win, huh.”

They had kept going until they won, and that was how things had ended up like this. To Walm’s mind, the Highserk Empire, which had gained everything through victory, didn’t know the words “peace talks” or “truce.” It baited its opponent, hit back when hit, and crushed the other side until it submitted. That was the Highserk Empire. And now it was fighting four nations at once.

It was a world where showing weakness got you eaten. Maybe Walm was simply naive. Even so, no matter how much they fought, the war never ended. It was as though wartime was the norm, and Walm felt a kind of suffocation, a sense of the end of the world.

“Feeling weak? Look, there are a lot of them, but we’ve got a solid position and a natural stronghold around us. We won’t get beaten one-sidedly.”

Walm agreed with part of it. Militarily speaking, Jose was probably right.

“Yeah, I guess.”

He gave a limp reply, but Jose said nothing more. In a few days, Walm would kill many people again so as not to die himself. He wasn’t nice enough, or good enough, to be killed for the sake of not killing. He raised the fruit wine in his bowl to his lips.

Sourness ran across his tongue and down his throat. When Walm grimaced, Jose laughed, enjoying it.

---

The battle began with a blinding flash and a booming explosion. Sieges usually opened with firepower from magic troops, but a magic exchange between armies of tens of thousands was nothing short of spectacular.

Flames danced, torn-off limbs flew through the air, and soldiers struck by clods of earth dropped like stones. Ice flowers bloomed, and blood dripped from the pierced bodies of soldiers to color them. 《Water Bullet》s struck men in the head, robbing them of their balance, and they drowned on dry ground.

The Highserk army, holed up in its carefully built positions, held the advantage in the exchange, but among the four-nation alliance were people who struck on a different level. Their light-bearing holy-attribute magic carved away the ramparts and erased the Highserk soldiers who had been hiding behind them.

Under a barrage of the four attributes, part of the ramparts collapsed. Supported by magic troops, the alliance began creeping forward, using earth golems formed with earth-attribute magic as shields.

Interdiction fire began to stop the advance. The archers, whose arrows did little against the golems, kept shooting in high arcs at the enemy soldiers likely hiding behind them. A few soldiers with Skills like 《Strong Bow》 and throwing Skills managed to destroy golems with projectiles of a destructive power no ordinary man could produce.

Soldiers who had lost their cover hid behind shields and folds in the ground, but the attacks converged on them and casualties soared. Meeting more resistance than expected, the four-nation alliance built earth walls and communication trenches as it began working on the bailey group.

“Relief! Move the platoon to the Third Bailey!!”

Kozul’s platoon had been assigned to the Third Bailey, built on the left wing. The Ninth Bailey, where the Liguria Battalion had been placed at the start, sat in the center of the group and doubled as a hub for communication routes and supply stores. On the third day of fighting, the exhausted frontline battalions were being swapped with the Liguria Battalion, which had been waiting in reserve in the bailey.

Six thousand men were at the very front of the bailey group, with four thousand more waiting behind them.

With the fortress front turned into a bottleneck, fifty thousand soldiers could not deploy at once. Eight to ten thousand at most. The enemy rotated units daily and kept up their attacks.

“We’re counting on you.”

Half of the platoon pulling back was wounded. They were badly under strength too, which meant heavy fighting ahead. From the flat earthen berm they called the warrior’s run, Walm peered out over the plain. Zigzagging communication trenches stretched to the foot of the bailey, and from there the enemy was closing in behind earth walls and standing shields. On the slope, soldiers of every kind lay exposing their corpses.

“Haaah, so this is where soldiers go to be buried.”

Jose said it sardonically.

“Five countries’ worth are down there.”

Noor’s face twitched as she said it.

“There’s even a Craist knight lying there. Did he just get unlucky?”

Barito was looking at a knight of the Reharzen Knight Order, half buried in the dirt, his head gone.

“Must be a casualty from last night’s all-out attack. If we leave him there, he’ll turn into a dullahan or something.”

The squad laughed at Squad Leader Duwei’s remark, but as far as Walm was concerned, what they were doing was not exactly cute.

Walm shot 《Fireball》s at the enemies struggling up the slope, and Willart added 《Ice Lance》s, then 《Water Bullet》s to turn the ground into slush.

Noor and Barito kept throwing stones at the heads of soldiers who had lost their shields and bamboo bundles. Walm was stunned to see Squad Leader Duwei, of all people, flinging whole logs by himself.

Duwei’s squad and the squads on either side of it were smashing the enemy’s attacks one after another, but not every sector could hold.

“Walm! Is Walm here!?”

A messenger was shouting Walm’s name. Life on the battlefield had taught him that it was usually bad news when somebody shouted for you. Unfortunately, no birthday surprises were due for a good while yet.

“Here! What is it?”

The messenger found his man, ran over, and started explaining quickly.

“Orders from Kozul’s platoon. One of the breakthroughs the enemy’s forming in the Eighth Squad’s sector, smash it with 《Ignis Fatuus》. I’ll guide you, so follow me.”

“Ugh, putting out fires again?”

“If anything, it’s arson.”

The dark-skinned comrade slipped in the correction between shots with his bow. Walm couldn’t have cared less.

“Is this the time for jokes?”

Walm would have loved to refuse, but he was a poor grunt with no right to, so he had no choice but to follow the order.

The place he hurried to had been plugged by Platoon Leader Kozul with reserve troops, but enemy soldiers were packed across the slope as if to fill it, like a swarm of ants on bait. The enemy had no intention of passing up a golden chance to open a breach.

In a world where hand-to-hand fighting was the main event, charging in a dense formation was powerful, but there were individuals with area attacks, such as magic or Skills, so timing was key.

If Walm’s magic had run dry or he had arrived too late, it would turn into a melee with friend and foe mixed together, and nobody could safely attack. But the enemy still hadn’t quite broken through, and they were packed as tightly as could be.

Even with their defenses braced with shields and bamboo bundles, it was an ideal place for Walm’s 《Ignis Fatuus》.

“Lend me two shields.”

The soldier standing by caught on and handed them over. Walm slung his halberd across his back and checked the state of the round shield. Then he took the mask from his waist pouch and put it on. The oni-faced mask trembled in small shakes, as if imagining what was about to happen.

He took a breath through the gap in the mask and clung to the rampart, where spears and swords were still trading thrusts. The soldiers who had been grappling in melee drew back from the rampart at once, like a receding ripple. Watching them go, Walm activated 《Ignis Fatuus》.

The enemy soldiers were caught off guard. The Liberitoa troops, who had been killing each other daily at the Refun Mine, had reacted fast and cut the effect of 《Ignis Fatuus》 in half, but today’s opponents were Craist regulars. At the sight of the mask, some braced, some tried to rush in, a mix of reactions. Their instant shift to attack was admirable even in Walm’s eyes, but it was little different from setting themselves on fire.

“Gyaaa, aaah, aaah!!”

“It won’t go out! Put it out for me!”

“Move, move, get out of my way!!”

The blue flame that burst out in an instant was sticky, clinging to the enemy soldiers as it spread across the whole area. The 《Ignis Fatuus》, fanned out around Walm, created a choir of screams.

Curses, roars, and screams never stopped on a battlefield, but the shrieking before Walm was the loudest he had heard in all the wars he had fought. Everyone within ten meters, to varying degrees depending on their magic reserves, was becoming a human torch, one after another. Those who rolled down the slope early were the lucky ones.

“Fall back, fall back for now!!”

Those who had been burned, unable to move freely because of the dense formation, writhed in agony with their muscles cooked stiff and fire in their lungs, unable to breathe.

“W-wait, please-”

“Ah… uh, aah-”

Oddly, wearing the mask kept him from being shaken. Maybe it was because no one could see his face, so he could play someone else. Walm shifted the 《Ignis Fatuus》 from a fan to a straight line and lengthened its reach. The whole slope around him burst into flames. If the rampart hadn’t been earth, even the defensive position would have caught fire.

“It’s 《Ignis Fatuus》! He’s real! He’s the one the Liberitoa men talked about!”

Walm leapt out onto the slope and kept scattering raging flame and hot wind in every direction, but a few soldiers who had recovered their composure were trying to hit him from a distance.

Arrows rained down in numbers, but strong winds knocked them off course, and the hot air made it hard to see, so none connected. He took the various spells on the blast and the heat, held off the few that reached him with his round shield, and scattered fire in concentrated bursts at the spots where he guessed magic troops and archers must be.

Forty seconds in all. Before his magic ran dry, Walm returned to the rampart. Rather than celebrating driving the enemy back, everyone was speechless at the burned corpses scattered across the slope.

“Haah, haah, fuuuh…”

Walm had spent most of his magic and was gasping for breath when someone spoke to him.

“Well done, Walm. Thanks to you, the rampart didn’t get breached.”

Platoon Leader Kozul, who must have been watching from somewhere, met him with applause. With the soldiers frozen in front of this slaughter, he was the sort of good superior who didn’t forget to praise his men.

“Thank you, sir.”

He took off the mask and thanked him, and the other soldiers, shifting gears, welcomed him back as well.

The damage from the 《Ignis Fatuus》 that had struck the dense formation was catastrophic: over a hundred enemy soldiers dead, as many or more wounded, and the rest pulled far back to the communication trenches. The smell of cooking flesh clung to his nose forever. The mask had stopped trembling, as if satisfied.

---

The treatment station set up in the field camp had a nonstop stream of soldiers being carried in.

“We’re out of ointment! Get any free soldiers to help!”

“A broken leg? That can wait. Severe cases first!”

“Press hard! Even if the wound closes, they’ll die from lack of blood!”

Blood, pus, waste, medicine, and incense burned to cover the smell all mixed together and gave off an unbearable stench.

Ayane Sugimoto had realized that the kind of wounded being brought in had changed. She had treated all kinds of battle wounds, arrow wounds, bruises, internal bleeding, but nearly every patient carried in during this past hour had severe burns from fire-attribute magic.

The Craist soldier who had breathed in flame had burned airways and was struggling to breathe from the burns. Ayane pushed her washed fingers without hesitation into his mouth and throat, pouring magic in to check the damaged areas. Experience had taught her that treating places you couldn’t see with your eyes was harder. A minute of continuous healing magic later, the soldier, whose throat had been burned raw inside and out, had recovered enough to breathe.

“First aid is done.”

Normally she would also have to treat the burns on his hands and feet, but there were far too many soldiers who needed her. At the treatment station, they had to weigh what would leave lasting disability against what was needed to keep a man alive, and proceed with care. Ayane moved on to the next patient with frustration. This soldier had terrible burns on his lower body.

“Ah, aah, it hurts, it hurts… Help me, I don’t want to die.”

Ayane took the hand of the soldier, begging for his life as if delirious.

“It’s all right. You’ll be all right.”

It sounded as if she were saying it to herself as much as to the patient. She took off his greaves and reached for his trousers, and noticed that the skin and cloth had fused together.

“Maia.”

When Ayane called her assistant, Maia skillfully cut away the fused part with a knife, then slit open the remaining clothing.

The burn went through to the subcutaneous tissue, and in places the skin was white or black and ruined. It was, as Ayane’s first assessment had said, an extensive burn that would be classed as third degree. Even modern medicine would struggle to treat such a wound, but Ayane had healing magic of the highest rank. Repeated use of magic made her vision swim, but the other healing mages had run out of magic.

If Ayane stopped here, the soldiers begging to be saved wouldn’t even see tomorrow’s night sky. She gritted her teeth, held on to consciousness, and kept casting. For Ayane, who lacked Yuuto’s and Makoto’s fighting power, the treatment station was her battlefield.

When the sun was nearly set, the flood of patients finally stopped. Casualties from the day’s fighting were still coming in, but none of them were severe. Even so, Ayane couldn’t be glad. She knew one of the reasons why no seriously wounded were arriving. Beside the treatment station, the soldiers who couldn’t be saved were laid out so thick there was no room between them.

To keep the dead from turning into monsters through the demonic miasma, army chaplains were sprinkling holy water while they spoke their prayers. Ayane stood there, overwhelmed by her own helplessness, when someone spoke to her from a cot nearby. It was a soldier she had treated.

“H-Healing Mage…”

It was the Craist soldier. Of all things, he had sat up and was bowing his head.

“You should still be lying down!”

As Ayane ran over, the soldier reached out to her and said it over and over.

“Thank you, th-thank you so much.”

There were many lives she hadn’t been able to save, but being thanked by a patient in tears made Ayane feel a little saved herself.

“The one in the mask, the mask… he was the 《Ignis Fatuus》 user. I felt the hot wind on my skin, saw the blue flame, and I thought I was dead. I was lucky. All the others around me, all of them…”

Ayane gently patted the shoulder of the sobbing soldier and laid him back down.

“Drink plenty of water. You still need to rest, so no getting up.”

The soldier went on murmuring thanks until he lost consciousness and fell asleep, breathing quietly.

Ayane remembered how the other patients had also kept whispering about the terror of 《Ignis Fatuus》. The Beckoning Fire of the Underworld, spreading death over a wide area, an enemy with no nickname of his own who came disguised as a common soldier, and they were all afraid. The power was part of it, but the war that made people turn such magic on other people was what froze Ayane’s spine.

She prayed with all her heart that the mad flame would never be turned on her two childhood friends.

---

In one corner of the camp where the Kingdom of Craist’s army had pitched its tents, the key figures of the army had been assembled. The tent flap was shut tight, everyone else had been cleared away, and a heavy air hung inside. The war council was in an uproar, and the cause was the bailey Craist’s army had been assigned to take.

The first to speak was Gran Reharzen, commander of the Reharzen Knight Order, who had been summarizing the state of the battle.

“As everyone here knows, even if we take the bailey in front of us, the Highserk Empire still holds several more baileys, and beyond them the fortress proper, Sarajevo Fortress, remains.”

At Gran’s words, everyone went over the situation in their minds. Of the thirteen baileys built, six had fallen into the four-nation alliance’s hands since the fighting began, but they still hadn’t reached the outwork fort at the core of the bailey group, and seven remained.

The soldiers in captured baileys made no attempt to hold to the death. After a certain amount of damage, they withdrew to the baileys behind and kept resisting, so the harder the alliance attacked, the more enemy soldiers piled up. Losses were heavy too. Without Ayane, one of the Three Heroes, some units would have collapsed under the stream of wounded.

“Even so, Craist’s army has taken two baileys and led the alliance. But that was until yesterday.”

Gran paused, then continued.

“You all know how the breakthrough attempt went, when our infantry pushed up to the enemy bailey through the communication trenches. A hundred and two dead, a hundred and seventeen wounded, and two hundred-man units vanished from the rolls. That calamity was the work of a single enemy soldier.”

The commanders of a thousand and the knights who had controlled the two units all made sour faces at once, as if they had bitten something bitter.

“The Skill thought to have been used was 《Ignis Fatuus》. In terms of raw destructive force, Yuuto and Makoto are probably stronger. The problem is its duration and range. I’d like the surviving leader of ten from the front line to speak.”

All eyes gathered on the man who stepped out from the edge of the tent. Even through the bandages, the painful traces of his burns were plain to see.

“…Isn’t he too badly hurt? You needn’t drag a wounded man into a war council. Couldn’t we have simply compiled his report?”

Johanna, a knight of the Reharzen Knight Order, knit her neat brows. Gran knew that, as capable a subordinate as she was, Johanna kept a softness in her, for better or worse. He was about to answer when the leader of ten cut in.

“My arms and legs may not move, but my mouth works fine. And I asked the commander myself to let me come here. I’m sorry to have put you to unnecessary concern, Lady Johanna.”

Sensing the man’s strong will, Johanna readily admitted her mistake.

“No, I was hasty. Please go on.”

“When the order for the all-out charge came, my unit was in the fourth row, climbing the rampart. Just as the front row was about to jump into the berm on top, someone shouted. An 《Ignis Fatuus》 user was there-”

The leader of ten paused for breath and went on.

“I’d had a chance to talk with a company commander of the Liberitoa infantry next to us, and he told me about 《Ignis Fatuus》. I wondered if it was some tall tale, or a rumor from the battlefield that had grown legs, but nearly all of that company had burn scars on them, so I believed it to a certain degree. That decision decided who lived and who died.”

As if enduring something, the leader of ten continued.

“The soldiers within five meters of the 《Ignis Fatuus》 user, those on the first spear, vanished into blue flame without time to cry out. All dead instantly. Among those within ten meters, the ones who couldn’t use a protective magic membrane and physical enhancement were burned by the flames. Even my unit, fifteen meters away, was scorched, and some took burns in an instant. Everyone within twenty meters must have been hit by the fire in some way.”

Everyone attending the council knew magic attacks well. From the power and the range, they estimated it was comparable to 《Firestorm》, ranked among the upper tier of fire-attribute magic.

“In our daily drills, when you’re hit by magic, the standard response is to hide behind cover or drop flat. Against 《Ignis Fatuus》, that doesn’t work. All you can do is run. Even behind cover, even inside the communication trench, the flames got in on the hot wind. The end of the communication trench became a literal crematorium. Blue flame and hot wind kept blowing in bursts. Unless you have a knight’s level of magic, you can’t even get close. In the first and second rows, the only one who survived was a single knight.”

Johanna knew that knights of the order had been killed and wounded, and when she had gone to visit them, the horror of their wounds had left her speechless.

“I got my unit out with everything I had before I even asked my superior for orders. Even so, half of them were burned. …When I was a child I laughed at the Beckoning Fire as a bedtime story, but I’m sure the Fire That Sends Souls to the Underworld is based on a true story.”

A heavy silence settled over the tent.

“Of all places, it had to be in the bailey assigned to our army.”

When the leader of ten had left, one of the commanders of a thousand said it bitterly.

“Pushing in with sheer infantry numbers is pointless. We’ll have to use ranged attacks, or surround and kill it with troops whose magic is at knight level.”

Gran, who had been thinking all along, spoke heavily.

“The problem is how to drag the 《Ignis Fatuus》 user out.”

“Going by what we heard from the Liberitoa soldiers, he normally blends in with the ordinary soldiers. Indiscriminate sniping or area attacks won’t be reliable.”

The commander of a thousand, who had been collecting the lessons from his men and from allied forces, answered Gran.

“In that case, we’d have to deliberately create a salient to lure him out.”

“…Let my unit do it.”

The one who volunteered was Johanna. Gran hesitated. He knew every one of his subordinates’ traits. Johanna’s abundant magic could strengthen her body and form a sturdy magic membrane, which made her well suited for this mission. On the other hand, she was undeniably too concerned for her subordinates and comrades. Gran drove a nail into her.

“I’ll leave it to you. But you must wait until the target takes the bait. Cast aside personal feelings. If you fail, our losses will grow. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. I will make it succeed, without fail.”

Johanna’s eyes, full of resolve, held Gran’s without turning away.

“Yuuto, Makoto, you two will deliver the decisive blow from long range with the other magic troops. Even though the enemy soldiers are unaccustomed to this, it’s a heavy responsibility. See it through.”

Gran understood how cruel this was for two who were so young and had lived lives untouched by war, but on a battlefield you used whatever you had, cats, dogs, even children.

“…Understood.”

Gran looked away from the two who had answered heavily and set about putting the operation into action.

---

A continuous rumbling of the earth began pulling Walm out of sleep. He stretched his limbs out of his filthy cloak and lifted his head from the pack and waist pouch he had been using as a pillow. He felt dampness on his left hand, looked down, and his mood plunged. Noor had grabbed his left hand and drooled all over it.

Furious at the unfair treatment, Walm pinched Noor’s nose shut with his free hand, going for suffocation. As Walm had intended, Noor began thrashing in distress. The collateral victim was Barito. Flailing arms and legs struck him again and again, and he groaned and covered his head with both hands to protect his cockscomb-style hair.

Satisfied, Walm let go and wiped the dirt from his hand on the ground, then burned the grime off with fire magic. The stuffy mass of men had fallen asleep pressed together. The three idiots were tangled up, as ever, in their awful sleeping positions, and Squad Leader Duwei was sawing away with a huge snore.

From far off came the sound of magic hitting and voices full of hatred. The wind carried the stench of entrails and filth. It was just like any other day for Walm. He took out his canteen, wet his dry throat, and bit through a piece of dried sweet potato with his back teeth. A sticky chew and a spreading sweetness on his tongue. After finishing the whole piece, he tipped the canteen again and lay back down.

From the color of the sky and the rising morning sun, Walm judged that two or three hours had passed since they had swapped places with the reserve unit. It was too early to get up.

Walm, worn out in body and mind, fell asleep quickly, but his sleep didn’t last long.

“Wake up! Everybody up!! A major enemy offensive! We’re moving out right now!”

Squad Leader Duwei, who had somehow gotten to his feet, shook Walm’s eardrums with a roar. As wake-ups went, it was a decent one compared to being forced awake by enemy magic or Skills.

Walm jumped up and, almost unconsciously, put on his gear. In under a minute, the whole squad was lined up, ready to fight.

“Listen up! Platoon Leader Kozul has ordered the squad to support Parma’s platoon. As usual, the enemy has dug their communication trenches forward, built cover, and is about to swarm us. We’ll disrupt that as much as we can, and when a breakthrough looks about to form, Walm will wipe it out with 《Ignis Fatuus》. Easy job. Walm, save your magic. Jose, look after the newcomers. Willart, with Walm slipping out to light the fires, you’ll carry more of the load, so wring yourself dry. Reinus, Tibird, Danfan, watch for gaps and plug them, same as always. All right, let’s go. Send the Craist soldiers back to the earth and up to heaven again today!!”

“““Yeaaaaah!!”””

With that lively shout, the squad plunged into combat. Dust from magic impacts rose into the sky, and arrows with a whistle flew back and forth between the two armies.

Walm grabbed a fistful of fist-sized stones and threw them at a Craist soldier struggling to hold his ground on the slope. After a dull thud as they struck flesh, the soldier lost his balance and pitched headfirst onto the slope.

The soldiers trying hard to right themselves were admirable. Impressed, Walm gave them another gift of fist-sized stones. Unable to hold on, the soldier rolled down to the bottom.

Even so, Craist soldiers who found protrusions and tiny hollows kept advancing. A 《Fireball》 hit a standing shield planted on the slope. Splinters and dirt flew in every direction, and the soldier hiding behind it was knocked out from cover by the shock.

An arrow stabbed into the back of a soldier trying to duck behind the wreckage. The air trembled from the bowstring that had pushed the projectile out. At the edge of his vision, Walm saw Noor nocking a second arrow of her own.

The second shot went straight into the collarbone of a Craist soldier leaning out from cover. At the smooth motion, Walm whistled in praise. In close combat Noor was only about as good as the average Highserk soldier, but her Skill with a bow was the best in the squad.

That left the other recruit, Barito, with the cockscomb, in a very precarious position. As Walm’s thoughts ran that far, it suddenly hit him.

That’s no good. I’m overthinking again.

His hands and feet were busy welcoming the enemy, but letting his mind wander to idle thoughts in the middle of a battle was Walm’s bad habit. He pushed his evaluation of the rookies into a corner of his head.

Of all the assaults they had had to endure so far, this one showed how serious the enemy was. No matter how many soldiers fell, they stubbornly built footholds and cover on the slope, trying to break through the defensive line. Even the magic troops, who usually supported from the edge of their range in the rear, were leaning forward. Maybe the conspicuous cockscomb offended them, because a spell flew at Barito.

“Wooooah!?”

Barito ducked into a hollow in the ground like a wild rabbit. Water magic stabbed into the earthen mound and formed a pillar of ice in an instant. Walm drew his longsword and smashed the obstructing icicle.

The finely shattered ice came down over Barito’s whole body, and he let out a silly yelp.

“Eeek!”

“Ha!”

Walm snorted a laugh, and Barito complained, looking sheepish.

“You don’t have to laugh so much - wait, in front of you!!”

This time it was Walm’s turn. An 《Earth Bullet》, probably formed by earth-attribute magic, flew straight at him. Earth, one of the four attributes, was a more useful magic than its plain look suggested.

Fortifications, anti-siege work, expanding forces with golems. Even just what Walm knew of, the kinds used on battlefields were many, and 《Earth Bullet》 was the most basic, the staple of earth magic.

It was far more efficient with magic to bend and manipulate existing matter than to create something from nothing out of mana. It would have been harder not to see 《Earth Bullet》s, which could be fired in volume to pin heads down, on any battlefield.

Walm spotted the face of the magic trooper behind a golem, stunned. He seemed badly shocked that his pride and joy had been smashed by a sword. Refusing to give up, the man kept firing 《Earth Bullet》s at Walm, twice, three times.

“Looks like you want to play in the mud.”

Just as he knocked down the third, a 《Fireball》 came flying from another direction. Walm made a show of dodging, but he was looking at it coldly. Fire-attribute users were strong against fire of the same attribute.

Flames that would burn others were merely hot to a fire user. Since gaining 《Ignis Fatuus》, Walm had acquired resistance to fire and heat. Even among fellow fire users, that resistance was in a league of its own.

As a result, some of the flames reached Walm, but, covered in a magic membrane that included his equipment, he came through literally unharmed. The problem was that hands had reached out from somewhere to hold him in place.

“Hey, you’re using your comrade as a wall?”

Walm glared, veins standing out, at Jose and the two recruits, who had ducked in behind him.

They had had cover and room to run, but they had picked the best option, a meat shield, and Walm was livid at his comrades.

“Man, Walm, you’re awesome.”

“Wow, even when that fire hit you, you were fine.”

“Perfect, no need for fireproof gear.”

Three different reactions from the swarthy, black-hearted one, the cockscomb, and the archery fanatic. If looks could kill, Walm was confident he could have finished all three.

“Tch, you’re all so damn annoying.”

Walm wanted to get in their faces, but the enemy soldiers, seeing that Walm and company weren’t coming out of the hollow, took it as proof they had killed the troublesome ones, and surged forward in high spirits.

“Follow me!!”

Soldiers poured out of the communication trench all at once. The proportion of knights was higher than before, and to Walm’s eye, this was the real thing. The knight running at the front was especially troublesome. Flowing purple hair, and a slenderness that showed even through the armor. If that was all, Walm would have written her off as a woman who had become a knight on bloodline alone.

But then the round shield she raised glowed with magic and canceled a 《Wind Blade》. When a friendly soldier leaning out from the rampart was pierced by a thrown spear, Walm changed his mind. An 《Iron Wall》 user, and one with an absurd amount of magic. A melee brute despite her looks, with a crowd of muscle-brained knights who threw themselves into death traps without a second thought. Walm didn’t want to face that. About the only one suited to it was Squad Leader Duwei. The squad leader’s eyes lit up, and he smiled. Walm wanted no part of a close-quarters killing match here.

“Waaaalm, use it nowww!!”

Platoon Leader Kozul’s desperate cry reached Walm’s ears. Understanding the intent of a superior who didn’t want a melee either, Walm pulled the mask from his waist pouch. The mask kept vibrating, unable to wait. The terrifying - no, convenient - thing about the mask was that it stuck to his face. It let Walm move and use magic without worry.

He burned through the magic he had been saving all at once, and hot wind and flame rose from his whole body. Even so, the female knight in front of Walm did not flinch. Her sharp eyes were fixed on Walm alone.

In peacetime, with no killing intent in those eyes, Walm would have welcomed it. But with neither of those true, the current situation was, putting it mildly, the worst. Even so, Walm’s advantage held. There had been people before who could keep moving inside 《Ignis Fatuus》.

But Walm was lucky today. He had his friends’ support, and the enemy was still in the middle of charging up the slope. All he had to do was pour out his magic and burn up the enemy below him.

At the instant he unleashed 《Ignis Fatuus》, the group suddenly stopped, dropped low, and pressed as much of their bodies against the ground as they could. Some of them were even forming earth walls and trenches with earth magic. Against ordinary magic, that would have worked, but against 《Ignis Fatuus》, unless you sealed off every direction, defenses meant little.

The scenario Walm had feared, enemies charging straight into 《Ignis Fatuus》, was gone, but a question rose with it.

Why had they stopped dead and braced themselves, despite all that momentum? Why had Craist soldiers who had been burned just the other day chosen the same charge?

Was he overthinking? Spinning his thoughts needlessly again? Walm tried to switch gears, but then he stared in shock at the magic swelling in the communication trench behind them.

“No way.”

He focused his eyes at once, hunting for the source. A black-haired, black-eyed boy and girl, out of place here, were staring right at him. He knew only a few magic powers so strong they were visible. Several of them were swelling at once. Looking closer, he saw many other magic troops hiding there, too.

Goosebumps rose all over his body, and cold sweat ran down.

Walm glared at the boy and girl and cursed himself. They had lured him in. He had fallen into the enemy’s trap. A jumble of spells filled his whole view, and among them a light so bright it nailed his eyes in place. Leaning his body toward wherever the density seemed even slightly thinner, he unleashed 《Ignis Fatuus》 at full power. The collision of countless spells produced a massive explosion. The shock whipped his hair, and flying debris and the blast beat his whole body.

As though eating into the 《Ignis Fatuus》, the spells weakened only slightly, kept their momentum, and rushed at Walm. He worked the hot wind to push his body even slightly backward and float, but it wasn’t enough.

“Walm!!”

He saw Squad Leader Duwei at the edge of his vision, calling his name, but the flood of light swallowed even the squad.

“Aah!”

As a last resistance, he tucked in his arms and legs, covered his ears, and exhaled. Pain ran through his stiffened body. Flash, blast, shock; he could feel his whole body being scraped away. Exposed to the surge of power without knowing front from back or left from right, the feeling drained from his body.

Again? Am I dying again-

The sensation of being twisted was the last thing before his vision darkened and went out. The noise that had been so deafening disappeared, and Walm’s consciousness vanished completely.