Hero
Hero
As Asilie had said, as dinner time approached, the encampment briefly became noisy with those returning from the defensive line.
So I considered slipping out to check, but Asilie grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and blocked me, so I couldn't.
"If you go out now, it'll be chaos? I'll bring you food, so just wait."
"But I just wanted to see people's faces..."
"Ragnis and Yekaterina will come on their own, so just wait. If I run into them, I'll bring them along."
I had suddenly become superstar Eldmia. At the time there had been no other choice, so it was unavoidable, but now that it was over, it felt like I'd done something truly troublesome.
Of course, even if I went back to that moment, I'd do the same thing.
After about ten minutes of lying in bed petting Laika, I sensed a presence, and Asilie returned carrying a tray with an abundant meal, very carefully. It was no joke—the menu was so utterly normal that I instinctively sat upright, unable to believe my eyes.
What was I looking at? I had considered myself lucky if there were chunks in the stew, but here was a whole roast chicken, a hearty stew, bread, all the works.
"What in the world...?"
"It's food the command post has been providing steadily ever since before Eldi woke up. I asked for two servings, and they piled it on as though the tray might break."
In fact, the tray was so full that I worried she might have dropped something on the way, so I could tell there wasn't the slightest exaggeration in Asilie's words.
"Isn't this special treatment a bit too much?"
"If someone who single-handedly blocked a surprise attack and bought time for the troops to move says getting a decent meal is unfair, shouldn't we question their mental state first?"
From what I heard, while it was true I was being treated especially generously, the food distribution for all participants in this subjugation was unprecedentedly good. The idea was to give the impression that, even though the royal forces hadn't moved en masse, they would definitely support those who stepped forward to stop this, or so they said.
And by giving even better treatment to those who performed well, they were stimulating people's morale. It was a truly effective method.
"The adventurers and mercenaries are actually eating better than the private soldiers the nobles brought along. Ragnis did come carrying her house's banner, but she's here under Sir Radnelbandes's command, so she's in a similar situation."
So that's why she wasn't at the nobles' meeting.
Considering that everyone sitting there was an incompetent officer from the Noble Council, Duke Lesrom might have manipulated things behind the scenes to make it turn out that way.
"Come to think of it, you didn't run into Ragnis?"
"Yeah, not everyone's back, only the wounded arrived first. But they said the gap isn't that long, so she'll be here soon."
Hmm, so I had a reprieve from getting my back pounded.
With the single-minded intention of filling my belly while I could, lest I later get indigestion from eating poorly, I was having dinner with Asilie. Before long, the noise picked up outside again. This time it seemed real. As I sped up my meal, the presence gradually drew closer. When it stopped in front of the tent, I put down the chicken leg I was gnawing and prepared to welcome my guest.
And I was a little surprised by Ragnis's unexpected appearance as she lifted the tent flap and entered.
"Haa, I'm a bit late today, Asilie—aaah?!"
It took me a slight delay to comprehend that the ponytailed warrior woman in reddish light armor, carrying a shield and spear, was her. Ragnis, who had let out a deep sigh as she entered and was helping Yekaterina inside, belatedly spotted me and let out a shriek.
"Eh, Eldmia?!"
"Whoa, you've become a real warrior, Ragnis. No, not a warrior—a battle mage, then?"
The sight was so ridiculous I forgot even the threat to my back, and I greeted her with a playful remark. Then, as I talked with the two, who were surprised but happy to see me unharmed, I explained I was fine and told them about tomorrow's operation—and got hit twice as hard for it.
"Are you crazy?! You're doing that again?!"
"I told you, I'm doing it because it's doable. More importantly, it hurts like hell. Please stop hitting me."
In the few months since I last saw her, Ragnis had put on an incredible amount of muscle, and her palm was devastatingly hard compared to my last memory. While I was being mercilessly beaten, to the point I wondered if I'd gotten up fine thanks to the spirit's help only to end up bruised by her, Yekaterina, who had been deliberating with an extremely serious expression, carefully interjected.
"Even so, isn't that plan kind of completely insane...?"
Though, contrary to her attitude, her choice of words had been quite blunt. But no one there was about to challenge her opinion. Suddenly surrounded by skeptical gazes, I steadied my nerves—which were starting to waver despite my certainty—and calmly explained.
"I don't know how they're doing it, but with them using the gate as they please, isn't it more insane to keep fighting until their reinforcements—which have no end in sight—run dry?"
Ragnis, whose personal color from head to toe was red, finally couldn't contain her anger and shouted, her face turning crimson.
"Then why are you the one blocking it?!"
"Th-there's no one else to do it. And if the village we worked so hard to save gets damaged like this, it'd leave a bad taste in my mouth..."
I worried the shouting might continue, but surprisingly, as soon as she heard my answer, Ragnis shut her eyes tight and began to steady her breathing.
"......Hoo. Fine. Given that I also received so much help, it would be ridiculous for me to tell you not to do it now. But thinking rationally, it's hard to accept a plan where you jump alone into the middle of an army of thousands of orcs, achieve your objective, and then slip out unscathed. Is there really no other way?"
"Well, it's not that there's no way. If I jump in with at least two or three knight-class fighters, I'll make it out alive for sure."
"So jumping off is the given premise..."
Was there any other way against the anti-air defenses of the orc shamans, which even the wyvern knights had been unable to penetrate for three days? We could try breaking through the orc legion in a wedge formation from the defensive line, but we'd have to fight nonstop the whole way there and back, making it even more dangerous.
In contrast, jumping from the air allowed me to secure at least the entry point with certainty, so the likelihood of pulling off a smooth escape was high. And since I wasn't just charging in blindly but going in prepared, it wasn't an empty claim to say it was far safer.
"I told you, I'm not doing this without thinking. This gauntlet—I got it from the Empire, and I can use it. Even if the shamans launch offensive rituals, I can defend with this. Since I'm jumping anyway, they won't be able to attack me multiple times. At best, they'll land one solid hit."
I injected Magic Power to activate the gauntlet's barrier function—something I'd never had a chance to use before, almost as if showing off—and circular blue barriers formed on both sides of the gauntlet. If I looked surprised, realizing it took this shape, the suspicious stares toward me would only intensify, so I feigned nonchalance as if I'd known all along. The disbelief in the others' eyes subsided a little, except for Ragnis.
In truth, even Ragnis's intensity had waned a bit, she just kept her glare strong. As the one most knowledgeable about magic among us, it was a natural result.
"...So you're going alone because there's no one else who can do it."
"That's right. Jumping in together... well, Yekaterina could probably do it too, but."
The acrophobic civilization warrior Yekaterina flinched, but I couldn't ask her anyway. If it were a level that could be resisted with ordinary protective magic, the wyvern knights would already have held their ground and bombarded them. Even if someone cast protective magic on Yekaterina, it wouldn't guarantee the reliable safety we anticipated.
My trust in this gauntlet's performance lay purely in the fact that I could forcibly boost its output with Magic Power. Wasn't it a universal rule that prototypes, even if cost-inefficient as hell, were uncompromising in performance?
Marquis Bende of the Empire, who had given me the gauntlet, and Master Balkun, who had inspected it, hadn't faulted its performance, so it was likely reliable in practice.
"...Is there nothing I can do to help?"
"There is. Switching from defense to offense. I've already finished discussing that with the command post."
Once the wyvern knights and I departed, all defensive lines would simultaneously launch an offensive via magic tools. That way, if the orcs' forces could be drawn even a little further to the outskirts, my process of destroying the gate would be that much more stable, and it would be easier to spot areas with low orc density from above.
Ragnis listened with a gloomy face, seeming to hesitate as if to say something, but finally closed her mouth and just nodded. In the somewhat gloomy atmosphere, Yekaterina glanced around and, as if she had become quite close with Ragnis over those three days, casually put an arm around her shoulders and spoke with forced cheer.
"Well, Eldmia isn't the type to insist he can do the impossible! The more orcs we kill tomorrow, the safer he'll be, so let's do our best to help!"
"...Yeah, we should."
I was dying to ask when the hell they'd gotten so chummy, but it wasn't a subject I could bring up, so I just quietly picked up my half-eaten chicken leg again.
If I didn't come back safely this time, I felt like I'd get beaten until the skin on my back was flayed off.