Chapter 79: Chapter 79
“Stop right there!”
“I don’t want to!”
As a girl with fox ears and a tail giggled and ran away, a dark blue-haired boy shouted while chasing after her.
Passersby watched the two playing tag and smiled warmly, remarking that they were playing lively today as well.
The Barbelka family had few offspring, so there were no relatives of his age, nor were there children of appropriate age to be friends even in baron households of suitable status.
At best, his closest relative was his cousin Cheryn, who was five or six years older than him and already had the domain in her grip.
In that respect, Ravana’s daughter, Kiri, was the perfect playmate for Blois, the Count’s son.
The ever-lively, cheerful girl easily befriended the timid, shy boy.
Blois likewise did not discriminate against Kiri, who belonged to the same race as Lord Protector Shan (the knight he admired) and treated her simply as a knight’s daughter.
Blois’s mother and the Count’s wife, Sina, sometimes looked upon this with displeasure, but she said nothing about it.
After all, the strongest knight in the domain was an Altoan, and her terrifying niece, Cheryn, also defended them.
The sight of a mere Altoan girl playing together with the Count’s son was like a symbol showing that something was changing.
Such a peaceful atmosphere extended beyond Palles Castle as well.
Commoners living in the cities and villages praised the Princess’s grace, saying they were able to spend the cold winter comfortably thanks to the warm stove magic devices.
Children who no longer had to gather twigs to light fires threw snowballs at each other while blowing white breath, while adults drank hot tea, discussed the future, chatted about rumors they heard, or passed the time making children.
Was that all?
From plows that could easily till the soil, to stakes that prevented weeds from growing, to flails that made threshing much easier.
As magic devices made by dividing lower-grade mana stones into fractions of tens were distributed to every village, farming work became noticeably easier.
Cooperation with Viscount of Treba played a big role in this.
Just like the Shedil region, that place adjacent to the Demonic Realm had a vast accumulation of miscellaneous mana stones built up over many years, which could be brought in exchange for food supplies and substituted by fashioning them into magic devices.
Thanks to this, some of the young people who had less work to do and were idling about stepped into the military.
Originally, for uneducated commoners to rise in the world, what better way was there than earning a living by the sword?
Especially when it happened to be an era of war, perfect for making a name for oneself.
“Alright, everyone run from now on!”
“Uaaaaah!”
Those who came to the army in that manner broke sweat under the command of Sir Roden, who had become a knight for his merit in the hydra subjugation, learning to wield spears and swords and march in step.
Veteran soldiers who had trained longer and participated in several battles snickered or offered advice while watching the recruits.
Around the time winter passed in each person’s own way and spring arrived, news of the war that started in the south reached the north.
“War again!?”
“Has the time finally come…?”
While surprised, the people of Palles accepted it as something that was bound to come sooner or later.
It was because everyone vaguely felt that the current peace would not last forever.
And before long, a messenger arrived from Duke of Morayen, who was illegally occupying the region southwest of Palles.
Cheryn, opening the letter, frowned and muttered.
“Cooperation…?”
The contents of the letter sent by the Duke were simple.
Since Prince Elvin, backed by the King and the Kingdom of Ruman, was likely to completely crush Conrad before long, they should join forces first to maintain the balance.
It was a decision made from a thoroughly strategic perspective that the longer the two princes, the largest pillars among Pendia’s divided forces, held out against each other, the more advantageous it would be for minor factions like them.
Cheryn immediately summoned her retainers.
*
“Is there any need to cross the river? We can just leave them to fight and prosper here.”
“No, it is right to march together this time! If we leave them alone and Prince Elvin completely unifies the central and western regions following the south before coming north, we won’t have any options then.”
“That is correct. No matter how strong we have become, it is too early to fight the entirety of Pendia.”
The knights, officials, and nobles gathered in Palles Castle fiercely debated according to their respective views and interests.
Various opinions (from staying still, going out to fight, to supporting only a small force) were put forward and refuted.
As time passed, the outline of the discussion shifted toward joining the war.
It was because no one could refute the logic put forth by a certain baron.
“If we do not join the war, Duke of Morayen might side with Elvin and finish off Conrad together. In the first place, his relationship with Conrad is uncomfortable since he backstabbed him; he could take this opportunity to turn his spear after receiving a promise of payment to return to Libert from the King… no, from Elvin.”
For the Palles faction, the best outcome was for Prince Elvin’s force to lose strength while crushing Conrad and Duke of Morayen one by one as he came north.
The core of this argument was that such a convenient thing would never happen.
That if it were the Duke, instead of quietly acting as a shield for Palles, he would somehow find a way for himself to survive.
If that happened, Palles would have to face both Elvin, who had preserved his forces almost perfectly, and Duke of Morayen.
That was a battle with no chance of victory, no matter how much they stuck to a defensive war taking advantage of the Tesen River.
Cheryn, who was listening quietly, also nodded upon hearing this.
“Those words are correct. Waiting quietly until we are isolated is a poor move. To take the initiative in the situation, it is right to move first.”
“Should we start conscription immediately?”
“For now, we will not go as far as conscription. We will distribute equipment as reserve forces to all adult males, and assemble the armed troops and knights.”
At the mention of advancing across the river once again, the warriors swallowed their saliva.
Last time, they had merely toured neighboring domains to plunder, but this time, they were truly jumping into the middle of a battlefield.
Just imagining engaging in a life-or-death battle against several powerful knights making a name for themselves down south made their entire bodies itch.
Just as everyone had expressions mixed with expectation and concern, Cheryn unexpectedly made a tremendous statement.
“And this time, I too shall join the war.”
“Pardon!?”
“Princess, no matter what, that is…”
Among Pendians, especially in the eastern countryside where many New Faith believers lived, psychological resistance to women fighting was not large.
It was because against monsters, even a woman’s hand was needed.
However, in the culture of the Palles region, where disputes with monsters were infrequent, it was a very unfamiliar thing.
They were accustomed to the lifestyle of typical agrarian cultures, where men fought and women did domestic work.
Moreover, was she not the leader of a faction?
If something went wrong on the battlefield, the Palles faction, having lost its central figure, could collapse as a result.
“Conrad and Elvin are both personally taking to the battlefield to command. In such a situation, if I alone stay holed up in our stronghold, I will have no face to show to the warriors fighting in my place. Furthermore, if the leadership is far from the battlefield, isn’t it difficult to move flexibly according to the situation?”
“That is true, but…”
“Meanwhile, the governance of this land of Palles will be entrusted to my maternal uncle. As for the production of magic devices, I have delegated it to Court Count Tenon, so there is nothing to worry about.”
“Princess.”
The named Court Count Tenon, Orum, spoke with a grimace.
“Did you not promise to earnestly assist with my research starting this spring?”
“Please understand, Master. Would I have wanted to break my promise? It’s not my fault that Elvin is running wild.”
“That fellow showed no promise since he was young. Tsk, putting studies on the back burner and only chasing after women’s skirts…”
Realizing that the subject of Orum’s words was Elvin, the executives of Palles chuckled to themselves despite themselves.
But that was only for a moment; everyone’s gaze turned toward Shan, who was standing quietly to one side.
He was truly the Lord Protector personally appointed by Princess Cheryn, the proxy of all military authority.
In other words, in terms of military matters, the authority Shan held was superior even to the Princess.
If he rejected Cheryn’s participation in the war here, she would either have to give up and remain in Palles or strip Shan of his Lord Protector title.
That was how significant the authority she had granted her knight was.
“What does the Lord Protector think?”
“That’s right. Please say something.”
A few people who felt that Cheryn was overly confident or hasty urged Shan in that manner.
Shan, who was standing quietly, opened his green eyes vividly and asked Cheryn.
“Princess.”
“Speak.”
“Is Your Highness participating in the war necessary for our victory?”
“I guarantee it is absolutely so.”
“Then I have no objection. If it is a necessary risk, we must take it.”
At Shan’s attitude of calmly nodding his head, others let out sighs, saying, “Hah.”
Since both the leader of the faction and the military commander agreed, there was no choice, was there?
“Then, as stated earlier, I too shall participate in this campaign.”
Cheryn’s words echoed solemnly through the meeting room.
*
After the meeting ended, Shan took a walk in the garden with Cheryn.
Places throughout the garden that had been filled with only green left during the winter were now releasing the fresh scent of transplanted spring flowers.
As they would become busy preparing for the campaign from now on, there would not be much time to talk like this.
They had to enjoy the present leisure while they could.
“That aside, we aligned our words beforehand, but I wonder if it will really be alright.”
“I told you. This time, I definitely have to go with you. If it’s me, the moment Conrad or Duke of Morayen tries to pull any tricks, I can notice it right away.”
As Cheryn said that and raised her finger, a spider scurried up and stood up tall on top of it.
Cheryn, looking at it as if it were cute, soon set the spider down on the ground.
“Besides, it will be helpful on the battlefield too. Spiders can ride the wind and fly in the sky. Though they can’t fly freely and their eyesight is poor, the advantage brought by a field of view looking down from the sky cannot be ignored.”
“That is true.”
Shan, as someone with combat experience himself, also knew well how great an advantage a wide view could bring.
Battles were a succession of all kinds of variables, and war was a site where hundreds and thousands of such variables were intertwined.
“To be honest… more important than anything else is that I need greater authority. In that regard, you could call it my own greed.”
“Isn’t that already sufficient?”
Guaranteed, no one in the land of Palles could defy Cheryn.
Though it had been barely two years since she settled in earnest in Palles, she was already recognized not as an ornament merely ruling through lineage and her mother’s memory, but as a complete ruler.
“If limited to the land of Palles, that is true. But I must become the Queen of Pendia.”
“Ah.”
“If I entrust all battles to you and squat in the back, what else would I hear except that I am a woman who cannot do anything without putting a man at the front?”
Although the entire Arman Alliance, which held Great Emperor Baren Armando as its progenitor, was inclined that way, Pendia had an extremely developed warrior-worship culture even among them.
It was the belief of many that even if one did not need to be at the level of a knight, anyone who was a king or a lord ought to be a warrior.
In such a situation, her identity as a mage princess would seem excessively fragile when ascending the throne as queen.
If it were an ordinary man who polished martial arts, he could stay holed up in his stronghold and wait for his knights to bring victory, but she could not do so.
At the very least, she had to show the grit of leading an army herself and waging battle.
“Still, going out like this makes me uneasy. Your Highness doesn’t know how to use a sword, right? It would be better to do at least some training before leaving.”
“Even without you saying so, I practiced before.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Actually, I originally wanted to become a knight, not a mage.”
This was something he had never heard before.
At Shan’s intrigued expression, Cheryn smiled brightly and spoke.
“I think it was when I was ten years old; starting from when I learned what Pendia’s reality was like, I thought things couldn’t go on like this. Setting my father aside, whether Conrad or Elvin became king, there would be no future. Only I (only if I became queen) could Pendia be revived.”
To have come up with such thoughts around the age of ten, she was certainly an extraordinary person from birth.
When Shan was ten, he was practically close to a beast that could think of nothing other than eating and sleeping.
No, even now, having grown to about fifteen or sixteen years old and learned many things, if placed in a prince’s seat, he felt he would live without particularly having such thoughts.
“Anyway, so at first I tried to become a female knight. But after training a little, I was told to give up because I had no talent. Hearing those words made me angry, so I secretly stole the sword of the knight who was tutoring me. I thought if I trained with a real sword, it would go well.”
“So what happened?”
“It turned out like this.”
Cheryn immediately took hold of the hem of her skirt and lifted it up.
Her pure white calves, thighs, and petticoat were revealed under the sunlight.
However, instead of being startled by the obscene sight, blushing, and averting his gaze, Shan stared intently at her thigh with a stern expression.
On one side of her exposed left thigh, a large scar remained.
Considering it looked like a significant amount of time had passed, for it to be that noticeable, it must have been a fairly severe injury at the time.
“Who did that to you?”
Several candidates immediately came to mind.
Conrad, Elvin, the King, or perhaps the knight who she said she stole the sword from…
Shan, who was glaring as if ready to tear whoever it was to death the moment he found out, ended up with a blank expression at the words that followed.
“I did it myself. While practicing swinging the sword alone, my legs got tangled and I tripped. Because I had snuck in, stolen the sword, and practiced, I couldn’t complain to anyone; while weeping loudly with a cloth wrapped around the wound to stop the bleeding, I rummaged through the alchemy materials my master back then had left in the royal palace laboratory and made the medicine myself.”
Cheryn, who was boasting that thanks to that she clearly realized she had talent in magic, stopped talking upon seeing Shan’s distorted face.
Unable to hold back any longer, he ultimately burst into intense laughter.
“Why are you laughing?!”
“No, it’s just that getting hurt by tripping over yourself is so…”
“That can happen! I was a child!”
“I don’t remember, but even when I was five years old, that probably wouldn’t have happened to me.”
Since that was something difficult to deny, Cheryn pouted her lips yet could not argue back.
Shan, who stopped laughing after a moment, spoke while wiping his tears.
“Why didn’t you ask Priestess Asha to heal it last time?”
“Who knows what stories that person would spread after seeing this scar?”
Cheryn shook her head in annoyance, saying that the moment word spread that the Princess had a large scar on her thigh, all kinds of malicious rumors would pour out.
Though she was already called the Witch Princess and harbored a handful of ominous rumors, there was no need to add more.
“Anyway, what I’m saying is that training from now on won’t be of much use. I have no talent for using my body.”
“If that’s the case, then it can’t be helped. Still, I know one training method that definitely works.”
“What is it?”
“Running.”
Cheryn could not refute Shan’s words that this was a skill that anyone, no matter how lacking in martial talent, could learn, and one that could save a life in an emergency more surely than anything else.
“So, let’s go run together starting right now.”
“Uh, I have work to do from now on.”
“You’re not as busy as before, are you? From today until the departure, you can make time every day, right?”
“U-Uh…”
Thanks to having run away whenever Roden came seeking him to handle all sorts of miscellaneous work, Shan could amazingly smell out when someone was making excuses to run away when they had no work to do.
Cheryn nodded with the feeling of prey bitten by a hunting dog.
*
While two pairs of boys and girls ran around the garden and the secret training ground for tag and physical conditioning, Palles’s war preparations progressed rapidly.
This accelerated further as positive replied returned from the letters delivered to Duke of Morayen and Conrad.
First of all, the scale of the army mobilized this time became much larger than during the previous plundering expedition.
Three hundred fifty armed troops, originally directly under Count of Palles before coming under Duke of Reinel: that was, Cheryn.
Around two hundred Altoan mercenaries, whose numbers grew as those who used to be relatively young aged and joined the army.
The barons also drafted two hundred soldiers, twice as many as before, making a total of seven hundred fifty men.
This increase in force was not only due to many soldiers volunteering as hands freed up, but also because they reduced the ratio of troops left behind within Palles.
Unlike last time, since they allied with both Duke of Morayen’s and Conrad’s forces, there were no enemies likely to raid the Palles mainland.
In addition, Viscount of Treba also sent support troops upon hearing the news.
Although they could not support a large force as they were in the middle of subjugating monsters within their domain and carrying out internal reorganization, an additional eighty support troops (a level squeezed out in their own way) were added.
Thus, the supreme commander of the large army numbering over eight hundred in total was naturally the famed Lord Protector Shan Barendil.
Added to that were twenty knights, including Sir Ravana the Slaughter Rabbit, the strong Sir Roden, and Baron of Lugen Yurk; combined with their squires and mercenaries, the cavalry numbered around one hundred.
Finally, when dozens of non-combat specialists such as priests, mages, and blacksmiths were combined, the total number reached about one thousand.
Standing at the head of this tremendous rank, Shan quietly looked down at the armor he was wearing.
After sending Kamad’s armor, which had finally reached the end of its lifespan in the previous battle against the hydra, to the forge, he had been issued new armor made by Cheryn.
It was crafted with utmost devotion by the most skilled blacksmiths of Palles, and a somewhat more advanced magic formula than before was applied to it.
Five mana stones embedded on the inside transmitted power throughout his body.
On top of that, since he wore armor made of hydra hide underneath, it was difficult to suffer a fatal injury in a fight between humans under normal circumstances.
It was truly at a level where it could be considered a walking fortress wall.
As a bonus, Arwin, whom he rode, was also newly armored.
Barding had actually been made into a magic device by embedding pieces of hydra mana stones into it.
Considering that even highest-tier knights who clad their whole body in magic devices generally used normal items for barding, it was an enormous luxury.
Of course, this warhorse from Mount Horais that he rode was a fellow worthy of such treatment.
As if liking the power transmitted from the armor, Arwin snorted and stamped the ground forcefully.
Not only Shan, but others as well obtained rich new armaments in this manner.
In particular, thanks to enchanted hydra armor being distributed to the soldiers, it was right to consider the Palles army virtually twice as strong compared to its numbers.
Since stabbing or slashing at the chest or helmet area would never kill them in one hit.
While the knights and soldiers were full of spirit over their armaments, Cheryn rode her horse and stood before them.
Unlike her usual dress-wearing self, armed in custom-fitted plate armor, she looked truly like a goddess of war.
Of course, in reality, without using magic, she was merely a weakling who could not defeat even a single ordinary soldier.
Clearing her throat lightly to draw attention, she drew her sword and shouted.
[“From now on, we depart for the south! To teach those who call Palles and the inhabitants of this paradise cowards holed up in a safe place! Because we can no longer stand by and watch them plunder our families!”]
Thanks to sound amplification magic similar to what the announcer used during the past jousting tournament, her shout resounded far away.
It reached a distance where not only the soldiers but also other onlookers nearby could hear it.
[“Not all of us will return alive. However, I swear! As the lord of Reinel and the daughter of the woman who loved the land of Palles, I will do my utmost so that more people can return to their hometowns!”]
At words that other kings and nobles did not say, the soldiers felt a peculiar emotion and drew their weapons in response.
Usually, in such a situation, wasn’t it customary to encourage fighting for the kingdom, for noble lineage, and for all kinds of glory?
However, that did not mean it felt strange or unpleasant.
Not to mention those born in Palles, to the Altoans as well, this land was like a second home.
If this place was not to be trampled by invaders, they had to fight.
In that regard, Cheryn’s declaration was content that was easy to sympathize with.
To soldiers who were not deeply educated, this reached them faster than attaching all kinds of excessive rhetoric.
“For the Princess!”
“May Palles last forever!”
To face the enemies coming up from the south, the young queen and the magic army of a thousand following her began marching south.