Peer Mountains (1)
“Shield-bearers, rotate positions!”
“Send in the next unit.”
“Where’s the archer support? How much longer?”
Shouts rang out from every direction. The Kenipra Gate—the main passage linking the Peer Mountains to Prode—looked like the end of the world.
“Get the wounded to the rear. I’ll hold this stretch myself.”
Hugo Bacler, lord of the Kenipra region, stepped forward in person and filled the gap.
“My lord, that’s too dangerous!”
“Leave it to us!”
The knights who saw him nearly lost their minds and rushed toward him.
“And if you fall back, who covers that flank? Get back to your posts!”
He spoke while hacking through an orc’s arm. His sword was already dyed green with monster blood.
“Do not yield. I will stand with you to the end.”
“Uwaaaaah!”
His cry wrenched the soldiers’ morale all the way back up. Nothing put steel in a man’s spine like knowing his lord fought beside him.
“Gah—!”
“The shields—the shield line’s broken!”
But spirit alone could not close a gap that size. There were simply too many monsters.
“If we fall, the families behind us become fodder. Fight until you die!”
“Kuoohhh!”
Hugo’s shout was swallowed by the monsters’ howls.
“As admirable now as you ever were.”
Someone appeared at Hugo’s back. A voice he had never heard before.
“Who are you?”
The young man only smiled at the question.
Whoosh.
“What—?”
Hugo nearly dropped the sword in his hand.
Dozens of fireballs bloomed into being behind the youth’s back.
With a soft glide of his hand, the fireballs answered his command and streaked toward the densest knot of monsters.
“Kieeeeek!”
“Chireuk!”
“Kweeeek!”
Ugly, gut-churning screams erupted on every side. The clustered monsters rolled across the ground as the flames leapt from one body to the next.
“What just happened?”
“Somebody want to explain what I’m looking at?”
“Who the hell did that?”
Even the soldiers, suddenly free of the monsters’ crushing pressure, could only stare blankly at the spectacle.
“A mage?”
Monster roars still filled the battlefield, yet that single word cut clean through to every soldier’s ear.
“A mage! A mage has come to help us!”
“We’re going to live!”
“We can go home!”
“A Magic Tower mage came to save us!”
The atmosphere that even Hugo’s blood-spitting shouts had failed to shift flipped in an instant. A fierce belief that they could win took root in the soldiers’ chests. On a battlefield, a high-circle mage was precisely the kind of presence that could force such a dramatic change.
“High-circle mage support! All units, reform the lines! From this moment, we counterattack!”
Watching the scene, Hugo judged this the perfect opening and issued the order. The soldiers moved under his command, building a formation and driving the monsters into the fire pits.
Whoooosh.
Even then, fireballs kept streaming without rest toward the enemy.
Ellen, did you modify Fireball somehow?
Proveng asked the youth still flinging fireballs across the field.
I reworked the formulas from Burning Hands into it. The mana cost dropped dramatically.
Good heavens. Are you so desperate to hear that I have nothing left to teach you?
I still have a great deal to learn from you, Master. Your lessons may be daily, yet they feel new every time.
Proveng’s words had not been empty flattery. Magical refinement was not something just anyone could do. Mages spent years—sometimes decades—of research to produce results like these. Ellen had done it in a matter of months.
He had never been anyone’s intellectual inferior to begin with. But ever since he had seen that unidentifiable door, something had clearly changed. Even the densest passages in a grimoire opened to him at a glance. Magical formulas yielded to improvement the moment he examined them.
It has to be connected to that door.
His thoughts could go no further than that.
I’d heard the stories, but seeing it myself I still can’t believe it.
The monsters that had been herded into the fire by the soldiers’ advance suddenly changed their movement. The larger beasts pushed to the front and held the line while the smaller ones behind them darted through the gaps opening in the shield wall.
“Tighten the shield ranks! Spearmen, step up and stop anything that rushes through!”
It was like watching a war between men and men. Hugo’s orders shifted by the second, and the monsters’ movements shifted in answer.
I thought I could thin them out a little more, but at this rate my mana won’t hold.
Ellen could feel the strain creeping in. Even an efficiently refined spell had its limits. Keep this up and his body would hit mana exhaustion first.
No other choice, is there?
“Hup.”
Ellen tensed every muscle and gathered every scrap of mana in his body into a single point.
Earth Break.
Rrrrrumble.
He cast the 4th Circle spell Earth Break. A massive tremor rolled through the ground, and the earth between the monsters and the soldiers split open. A few beasts tumbled into the fissure, but the gap was far too small to swallow them all.
Earth Break. Earth Break.
Ellen stacked the spell again and again until he reached his absolute limit.
Rrrrrumble.
Dozens of Earth Breaks layered onto the same stretch of ground summoned something that felt like a true earthquake. The cracks in the earth yawned wider and wider, and the distance between monsters and soldiers stretched open with them. Once the gap grew too vast to leap, the monsters flailed in confusion—but there was nothing they could do.
“Whoa…”
“Is a mage the same thing as a god?”
Soldiers coated in blood stared, utterly lost in the sight. Ellen splitting the earth open looked, for a moment, almost divine.
“Hoo…”
Having burned his mana down to the last drop, Ellen exhaled hard.
“We’ll have to fill it in again because of the Little Gate, but for now it should buy us some time.”
He spoke to Hugo, who was already walking toward him.
“Understood. You have my thanks.”
“Father!”
Rene, who had been standing behind Ellen, ran to Hugo. Having thrown herself into the fighting the moment they reached the Kenipra Gate, her body was caked in blood and dust.
“I heard through a messenger that the Little Gate had been repaired. But this man…?”
Hugo pointed at Ellen. Rene glanced at him and her face brightened.
“It seems the royal court has finally answered our request. This is Baron Remi Veritati, dispatched as royal support.”
Rene introduced Ellen as if showing off a prize.
“Viscount Hugo Bacler. A pleasure to meet you. I am Veritati.”
“You already know me—I’m grateful. News reaches me late out here; I failed to recognize you. Veritati, was it?”
Kenipra itself was far from the capital, and so closed off that Hugo had never even heard the rumors about Ellen.
“For the moment, this should settle things. Let’s return to the castle.”
“As you can see, the situation here is far from good.”
Deep lines cut across Hugo’s brow.
“Any other reinforcements still on the way? We don’t have much time to spare.”
“There are no additional reinforcements. I am the entirety of the royal dispatch.”
If one needed a picture to define disappointment, Hugo’s face would have served perfectly.
“Damn it. Is Count Edgar waiting until this place is completely overrun before he bothers to report?”
Count Edgar was the man overseeing the entire northwestern region of Prode. Kenipra fell under his jurisdiction as well. Ellen finally understood why no report had reached the royal court until things had gotten this bad.
That bastard Edgar is burying the failure so it never reaches the capital.
The man was blinded by ambition for glory. Hugo had sent report after report that the monsters’ movements were abnormal and that reinforcements were needed. Edgar, terrified that frequent reinforcement requests would hurt him in the royal evaluations, had simply refused to pass them on.
“Coming here, I could see how urgent the crisis had become.”
“As you just witnessed, the monsters are moving strategically. Not always—but whenever the situation turns against them, they fight like soldiers taking someone’s orders.”
A flicker of fear showed in Hugo’s eyes.
“Not long ago the Little Gate was breached and monsters poured through in a flood. Even then that dog Edgar ignored my reports. He said the royal evaluation was close and he’d report once it was over.”
Ellen had never known how this war truly began. Only after most of the Kenipra region had already fallen to the monsters did the royal court launch a full-scale subjugation—and only then had Ellen learned of the conflict at all.
Countless people had died in that war. The monsters had used ambushes, cut supply lines, and employed real tactics. Even after the campaign ended, no one ever uncovered why the beasts had fought with strategy.
Around that same time, Hameron vanished without a word.
For reasons unknown, Hameron had stepped down from his seat as a high-circle mage and left the Magic Tower, spending the rest of his life as a wandering mage.
This time, I’ll find out why.
He had to learn why the monsters had gone berserk—only then could he stop the nightmare war of the past from ever happening again.
“Lord Bacler. I’ll stop this war.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If I uncover the reason the monsters have grown so savage and so intelligent, we can put an end to this war.”
Hugo had thought the same. But he could not act on it. Discovering that reason had been all but impossible.
“To learn it, you’d have to go where they are. You understand what that means, don’t you? That place is the Peer Mountains.”
That was exactly why Hugo could not investigate the cause. Assembling a survey team to enter the Peer Mountains under these conditions was itself an absurdity.
“Yes. Which is why I intend to go there.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Walking alone, unprepared, into a place crawling even with high-grade monsters was nothing short of suicide.
“It isn’t a small force. It will take those monsters days to circle back toward the Little Gate. I’ll find a lead and return before then.”
Seeing the iron in Ellen’s resolve, Hugo felt an unexpected trust take root.
“Very well. I requested a full legion. You came in its place—so show me. Show me that you can do the work of that legion.”
Ellen rose from his seat.
“I will. And while we’re on the subject, I’ll leave at once.”
“I’m counting on you.”
Ellen’s gaze turned toward the Peer Mountains. He almost thought he could hear the monsters’ unearthly howls even from here.