42 - Chapter 38: The Triad Family's Unrivaled Might
Serious-san "Huh? The war just started normally..."
And so that day, the two armies finally faced each other on the Harvester Plains.
On one side, the Kingdom of Karim's Kessel Border Army.
On the other, the Leonesta Empire's Triad Border Army.
In terms of numbers, the Kessel army had the advantage. They had mobilized nearly their entire border army and increased their numbers by bringing monsters under their control. Their total number reached 70,000. In comparison, Triad had also deployed its entire border army after requesting reinforcements for territorial defense from surrounding lords. Additionally, citizens with little combat training had participated, and adventurers had been hired as anti-monster forces. As Radglyph had predicted, their total number fell slightly short of 40,000.
Although there was nearly a twofold difference in numbers, the morale of the two armies was contrasting.
On one side, Triad. They were high-spirited. From the citizens to the adventurers, they were enraged at Kessel for provoking a war and further ravaging their land, to the point where the Triad lord's family, who commanded them, feared they might explode. Exactly 16 years had passed since the previous war. Many of the soldiers active at that time had either retired or attained significant positions, and most were still alive. It was too recent to be called the distant past, but too old to be called recent.
To put it bluntly, bloodthirsty former soldiers who had aged had gathered like a class reunion. They were fully intent on going "Hyahha!"
Now, turning to Kessel. Many had similarly experienced the war 16 years ago, but their morale was not high. Rather, it was so low it might have broken through the bottom to reach a second bottom.
In the first place, war in this world... or rather, medieval warfare, is more materialistic than in the modern era. Especially for the side initiating the attack, the primary targets are the opponent's land, assets, and human resources. While the leadership might provide plausible justifications like old grudges, the citizens following them couldn't care less, and they participate precisely because the three aforementioned gains are permitted to the extent of their abilities. Even on Earth, the slogan of the Crusades was the recovery of the holy land of Christianity, but the believers and clergy who joined the army engaged in looting everywhere. They were even mocked as "pious thieves." As a side note, in Japan during the Sengoku period, burning crops and human trafficking were basic. In the Middle Ages, acting like barbarians is the default.
Ultimately, people follow because there is profit. Not only the militia who joined Kessel, but the regular army as well followed the orders from above obediently because of this, and they were likely going "Hyahha!" in their hearts. Since they had monster soldiers this time, which were expendable forces, they thought they could safely and easily indulge in looting.
However.
Once they actually marched, although they won a complete victory in the first battle, the further they advanced into enemy territory, the more the land was burned, people were gone, and their overstretched supply lines were targeted by wave-like guerrilla warfare. Their food supplies became precarious, and because poison had been put in the wells, they had to rely on distant rivers for water, preventing them from taking the desired march routes. Furthermore, the monster army, which was supposed to be their ally, began attacking their own side out of hunger.
They gained nothing, yet the danger to their lives was right beside them. To ask for morale to be raised in such a situation is madness. Just as the rank-and-file soldiers were about to give up, saying "Enough already," the decisive battle arrived. Since they had the numerical advantage, there was a feeling that this would somehow work out, but they were filled with a desire to go home as soon as possible.
That is why.
"Hmph. Not even a greeting to open the war. It seems the people of Kessel do not know manners."
"They probably don't even have the luxury for that. We made it so, and it is convenient for us as well."
Facing the Kessel army that began its charge without any ceremonial greetings, Midglyph, deployed on the left wing of the Triad army, gave a wry smile at his adjutant's sneer.
Clad in newly made light armor made of Earth Dragon, with a deep blue cloak bearing the family crest fluttering in the wind, he thought.
With previous common sense, he would have felt indignation while encouraging his allies, thinking they should first exchange a few blows. However, Midglyph's common sense regarding battle had changed thanks to the teachings of his excellent younger brother. Moreover, he is the next lord... the person who will be the center of future internal affairs. Now that he has been designated as the next lord, he understands why Geoglyph is obsessed with attrition rates and what human resources truly are.
"With this many monsters, we cannot afford to deal with them properly... it is best to crush them first."
Therefore, he looked with cold eyes at the enemy soldiers who had fallen so far that they could be called barbarians, charging with monsters as meat shields. His mindset shifted.
To increase soldiers, a safe place is needed. To grow soldiers, time is required. To lose soldiers means losing the time spent growing them... and by extension, losing money. It would be fine if it were pocket money. If it were money earned by oneself, one could dismiss it as inevitable without hesitation. However, that money is tax collected from the citizens. They do not pay it because they like to. They pay it because it is an obligation. They might not think deeply about the reason for the obligation, but if they knew the reason, they would conclude that a weak army is evil.
That is why it is necessary to win this battle and show them. That the taxes carved out of their daily food were by no means wasted. Paving that path is the role of the lord.
The blue blood flowing through his body became excited.
What he is about to perform is a massacre.
There is no hesitation. From the start, an excellent mage is synonymous with a strategic-class weapon. The fact that he has entered the battlefield means exactly that. Staining one's own hands with blood is a duty as a noble.
He murmured the incantation of a spell that imitated his brother's magic.
"Carve into the darkness, the falling castle of illusions."
That brother finishes the incantation of this spell, which originally takes several minutes, with a single incomprehensible word called "Decode." He asked once how he did it, but the answers were incomprehensible words like reversible compression and dynamic encoding.
"Drive in the distorted wedge, eclipse the sun, and rot away."
Therefore, the whole family quickly gave up on imitating him. Instead, they steered toward shortening the incantations. While shortening incantations is primarily a technique achieved through an individual's repetitive training, his brother made an interesting proposal at that time. He said that if preparations were made at the spell's activation point in advance, the incantations regarding the effect range, penetration rate, and efficiency could be ignored.
After several experiments, Midglyph mastered this, and although it was limited to cases with preparations, he was able to compress a third-tier magic formula down to three phrases. Considering that the recruitment standard for court mages is the three-phrase compression of sixth-tier magic, one can see how excellent he is.
And Triad had deployed on this battlefield in advance... the preparations were complete.
"Now, show the inverted illusion here, O rebels, sleep beneath the ravaging land..."
He chanted a field magic that his brother had used in that mock battle, which could be called the first defeat of Midglyph's life. However, for Midglyph, who did not possess super-idiot magic power like him, complete reproduction was impossible, and he had to downgrade it slightly.
Still, it became a spell sufficiently usable against an army.
The magic circle raced across half the battlefield... across the land of the Kessel army, and the earth deformed with a sound like a ground fissure.
"...Grand Dust."
The brother who once did this had said, "If it's against an army, breaking their footing is basic, right?" which was, again, incomprehensible.
●
The earth groaned, and the footing of the charging Kessel army collapsed.
Because complete reproduction was impossible, it was a pitfall extending horizontally like a trench, but if such a thing appears while the entire army is charging, the result is obvious. The vanguard was sucked into the pitfall like a waterfall, and the middle ranks, who noticed halfway, were pushed from behind by those who could not stop, and nearly half were swallowed by the pitfall. If the Three Idiots were here, they would have run to the joke and laughed loudly, saying "Look! People are like a medal game!"
"...Shortening a third magic formula to three phrases. Your son is truly formidable."
A man watching the scene from the main camp voiced his impression with a look of trepidation.
The middle-aged man with silver hair slicked back was named Balzal Rakkas. A robe noble working as a civil servant in the imperial center, with the rank of Viscount. Originally, he had no relation to Triad, but he was here as an imperial envoy tasked with the role of military supervisor.
The Leonesta Empire and the Kingdom of Karim had reached a temporary end to their war. Of course, since their territories bordered each other, conflicts of various sizes occurred frequently, and this time was the same. Balzal was the Empire's overseer to ensure that.
To put it bluntly, the true feelings of the land-owning nobles... or rather, the nobles who had profited from the territorial expansion policy of the emperor from two generations ago, were that it might be time to start a full-scale war again. However, the previous emperor and the current emperor have both focused more on internal affairs. They will fight defensive wars, but their policy is to avoid wars of aggression as much as possible.
In short, it was a tacit message from the emperor to Triad not to overdo it, but this was their first move.
"Indeed. It is a common-sense level of excellence."
Moreover, since the father, Radglyph, was nodding with satisfaction as if to say "As expected of my son," Balzal held his head in his hands.
Of course, Radglyph had not ignored the emperor's message. However, he believed that in this case, there was no such thing as overdoing it, and he had informed Balzal in advance. In the first place, Kessel's march was a surprise to the Kingdom of Karim, and while the previous war had been a coalition army of surrounding lords, this time it was Kessel alone.
According to the reports from the grass Radglyph had planted in the Kingdom of Karim, the central government of Karim was surprised and flustered by the very act of deployment, let alone the occupation. Even if relationships worsened this time, it would not immediately become a war staking the prestige of the nation. Since Triad also had the slogan of territorial defense.
Therefore, he was acting like a thug, thinking "Isn't it about time we just wipe out those eyesores? Boss? Oh, we have a justification, so we can just make up some random excuse." Truly terrifying is the barbarian value system of the Middle Ages.
Based on that, Radglyph intended to crush them thoroughly. Although he had the mindset of a yakuza boss, there was a limit.
"Are you referring to the rumored third son?"
"Yes, Geo uses the first magic formula in a single word."
"A legendary-class spell, in a single word..."
It was Geoglyph.
If Midglyph is a talented person who can understand geniuses and seems likely to succeed, and Ludglyph is a hard-working talented person... then Geoglyph is an incomprehensible eccentricity in this world. Geniuses are simply hard to understand, but if you calculate backward from the results they produce, you can usually be convinced. If you trace that path in reverse, you are impressed while being appalled that they actually thought of and performed such a thin tightrope walk.
However, it is nearly impossible to understand all the results an eccentricity produces. How does it happen that it turns out like that? He explains with all his might, but it leads to results that make no sense. Even the path he takes, wondering why he took such a detour, only to find upon looking back that it was the optimal solution, and then at the timing of the finish, he recovers foreshadowing from actions that seemed useless, as if to say "I knew this would happen!" How many times had Radglyph been appalled, thinking "I don't understand this at all"?
"But... that child is no good."
Therefore, Radglyph stopped thinking deeply about Geoglyph.
"As a mage, he is undoubtedly hero-class, and as a ruler, he would likely display skills that leave a mark on history, but he is far too hedonistic. On top of that, the concepts he envisions are all too far ahead of the times, making it hard to gain understanding from those around him. With that personality, he cannot commit to being a figurehead, and the most he could do is be a lord of a single independent region. For a time, I thought about pushing him as my successor, but..."
His character is not bad. It is just that his abilities and tastes are too far outside the norm... no, they are from another dimension. The only saving grace is that he can communicate normally. At least, while raising Geoglyph, Radglyph might have been surprised or appalled by his abilities, but he was never troubled by him.
But even so.
"...I cannot let him gamble in my home territory. He is beyond my control."
Therefore, he allowed him to become an adventurer. Of course, with the promise that he would come to the rescue when the territory was in urgent danger. Geoglyph, who should be in the imperial capital by now, has likely heard about Triad's current situation. He will probably come for now, and since this commotion will likely be over by then, Radglyph thinks they can report their recent situations to each other as father and son for the first time in a while.
"If he is beyond the control of your Excellency, the parent, then it would be impossible for anyone else. I shall inform His Majesty of that. That for now, it is best to just watch."
He had heard rumors that the son, even as an adventurer, was causing disturbances here and there. He had also had an audience with the emperor, and it seemed the emperor had taken notice of his abilities. However, that is not something an ordinary person can handle. Rather than using him as a tool, it is the type of person who brings more profit if you form a friendship and have them provide convenience voluntarily.
Since he had been educated to be fitting for the lowest rank of nobility, he probably wouldn't make a blunder that would needlessly incur the emperor's displeasure, but depending on the emperor's movements, he might mess up, so Radglyph had warned him, and Balzal seemed to have understood that intention correctly.
"I am glad you are also an intelligent person. I feel that especially because the military supervisor in the previous war was terrible."
"He committed corruption and ran so far toward self-preservation that His Majesty himself ended up getting his hands dirty. Truly, all of us in the current generation are straightening our collars."
There was also a military supervisor in the war 16 years ago when Radglyph made his name.
The central nobility and the border lords mock each other, and the former are nobles without land who take pride in their status, so their ways of thinking are basically incompatible. It is fine to value noble pride, but their words and actions are not grounded. If the war situation is favorable, they proclaim it is because they are in the camp, and if it becomes unfavorable, they push the responsibility onto others, and if they are chosen to suggest a plan, the plan that comes out is "The brave imperial army must simply charge with every fiber of their being."
The resulting casualties and reconstruction are not worth considering for the central nobles who do not manage territories. Therefore, the land-owning nobles, who actually conscript, train, and lead their citizens to the battlefield, do not look kindly upon them. It is natural, as they must think about the aftermath whether they win or lose.
16 years ago, the war dragged on that long partly because of such backgrounds. The emperor seems to have reflected on this, and after the war, things became much cleaner.
The continuation of that day was here now. However, this time there is an army woven by his excellent sons.
As a father, Radglyph is proud, but he cannot rely on them alone. Probably, the opportunities for father and sons to be on the battlefield together are not that many. He believed that in one of those times, he must be a goal for his sons as a parent.
"Now... they are in a nice state of confusion. I shall do a bit more preparation so the adventurers can hunt easily."
Monsters are indeed tough. Some are killed by falling into pitfalls or being crushed by those following, but some survive and try to crawl back up. The plan is for the adventurers to hunt the monsters that crawl back up, but he will deliver a finishing blow.
Radglyph raised his right hand and began the incantation.
"Sky of echoes, call forth the wind of clinging hot sands."
The basis was a legendary spell passed down in the Triad family.
"Blurring heat haze, now reveal yourself as the scorching heat of despair."
Since the power is strategic-class, it is a second magic formula that originally requires a long incantation of nearly three minutes... something categorized as a Great Magic, but it was shortened to three phrases by the youngest son.
"Red radiance, become a sword that pierces despair, hardship, and even calamity."
He had said... "Great Magic is not a collection to be happy to own. It is a powerful weapon. Weapons must be used. As simply as possible," with an evil smile. Radglyph had been a bit lenient at the time, but standing on the battlefield again, he understands the meaning.
A caster who chants a Great Magic that takes three minutes to activate on the battlefield can be easily killed by a beginner spell that completes in one phrase. To activate it accurately in the optimal place without being interrupted, it was necessary to shorten it as much as possible. Trapped by fixed ideas, he had neglected the study, believing that Great Magic takes time. He took his hat off to Geoglyph's ambition for improvement.
Incidentally, the boy had filled one item on his todo list of lines he wanted to try, saying "I've always wanted to say this, the line of the Hegemon King."
"Dainsleif."
A swarm of giant swords of flame pierced into the pitfalls, and flames like an eruption scorched the heavens.
●
Ludglyph also knew that the alias Flame Demon belonged to his father, Radglyph.
In the war 16 years ago, Radglyph Triad, who burned the enemy along with the battlefield and single-handedly created a mountain of charred corpses and a large number of burn patients regardless of severity, was feared as a demon by the surviving enemies, and he called himself the Flame Demon in reference to the flame magic he excelled at, for the reason that "it doesn't sound gritty enough yet."
Such a father stood on the battlefield again and unleashed the legendary magic that is the synonym of Triad. Ludglyph, seeing that sight for the first time, thought.
"Hmm... this feeling of despair..."
Immediately after multiple flame swords the size of main pillars fell from the heavens and were slammed into the trenches Midglyph had created, they triggered a massive explosion. However, the blast, with nowhere to go due to the trench walls, diffused its destructive power upward and along the walls, burning to death the monster army and the mixed Kessel soldiers who had been stalled.
Given the situation, if the Three Idiots were here, they would have laughed loudly and joked, "This is just a Bomb-man!"
"The alias Flame Demon is still in full effect."
"Same for the old man, but the compatibility with big brother is too good."
Ludglyph nodded at the impressed expression of the vice-commander, Leidrich.
On Earth, the concept of utilizing the advantage of the terrain is a basis of military strategy, but in this world, it has not developed much in the face of the overwhelming power of magic. In the midst of that, the Thirty-Six Stratagems appeared. Even for Triad, that concept is still shallow, but it is beginning to exert its might in its first practical application.
"Well then, let's go too."
From within that crematorium, Ludglyph noticed durable monsters crawling out while on the verge of death. The Lotus Gang and the local adventurers following them were the mobile force... or rather, the sweepers of such stragglers.
"Now, listen, everyone! The young lord shall now grant you enhancement magic! Receive it into your bodies with all your heart!!"
(The expectations are heavy, hey. Unlike the rest of my family, I'm not good at magic.)
Ludglyph gave a wry smile at Leidrich, who turned around and raised his voice before the assembled soldiers, and looked at their faces.
Except for the adventurers participating temporarily, he remembered them all.
Ten years since then.
Ten years had passed.
Breaking away from his rotten self.
The bond of souls forged in a harsh environment.
Ten years of running just to become strong, without arrogance or twisting.
The true value of that... is now being questioned.
"O you who turn your backs on nostalgia and hold up a torch toward tomorrow, the time is ripe."
From the start, Ludglyph is not a mage. Therefore, he cannot use legendary magic that could be a finishing move like his father, field magic like his brother, or super-shortened incantations like his younger brother. He doesn't have a shred of such talent.
"Turn the days of wandering and continuing to walk into nourishment, and destroy the young phantom that admonishes yourself."
That is why he narrowed it down to just one.
Magic for leading soldiers, standing at the vanguard, and returning leisurely while cutting through the enemy army.
"Even if it be a bubble, crawl up again and again, and fulfill the oath of that day now."
Defensive power to repel all attacks, doubling their own attack power, increasing movement speed, and even providing slight automatic recovery.
In other words, All-in-Buff.
"My experience is the true treasure, Overlap Experience."
Ludglyph's magic, specialized in that one point, was complete.
Next time, tomorrow again.