A Man's VS Game 3
People—men especially—have a tendency to get hung up on primitive, childish questions. And those childish questions almost always veer toward running mental simulations of fights that will never actually happen.
So who is stronger?
Starting with lions versus tigers, monkey aliens versus bald superpowered guys, giant gorillas versus radioactive dinosaurs—and if you go a little further, people will even pit the warships from sci-fi movies against each other in combat.
"Whoa, that ogre's thrashing around way harder than I expected."
"Take a good look. That's why knight orders hire mercenaries and adventurers when they hunt ogres, even though they've got excellent swordsmanship."
And so Han Se-ah's viewers were watching with their own two eyes what happens when an ogre faces off against an army in the world of Heroes Chronicle, tearing into chicken and popcorn as they did.
Through Han Se-ah's camera, their eyes could vividly see a rampaging ogre demolishing a well-organized base, and their ears could hear me explaining things to my party members—which was really for the viewers' benefit. How fun must that be?
Every time a warehouse or a barracks got smashed, every kind of emoticon flooded the chat. They didn't even have the mental bandwidth left to type full sentences—just exclamations and emoticons stampeding through in a herd.
"Even with a body that huge, there's nothing they can do about it. Even accounting for it being a frenzied ogre, they look like they're struggling."
"There's a reason specialized giant-hunting mercenary companies exist."
"You son of a—!!!"
The roar of what seemed to be the mid-boss drew the ogres' aggro. Some immediately latched onto the fortress and started pounding the outer walls, while others began tearing apart the heavily armored halberdiers who'd been harassing Ogre Unit 2 like they were toys.
The heavily armored soldiers skillfully wielded halberds that looked about four meters long—roughly the height of a mana-beast. But standing before them was a ten-meter-tall ogre. Elite troops who should have been dominating with overwhelming reach through chains, nets, and halberds were instead being crushed by the ogres' long, lanky arms. Watching it was pretty satisfying, honestly.
The chains and nets seemed designed for catching humans—far too small to restrain an ogre. They were tough enough not to tear or break, but they didn't impede the ogre's movements at all.
Well, of course not. It's not like both ankles were bound. A person wearing an extremely sturdy bracelet on one hand doesn't suddenly lose the ability to move their arm. Since these were made for humans, they couldn't wrap around both arms and both legs of a ten-meter giant simultaneously.
"How dare a so-called Hero! And a so-called mage!!!"
"The Hero's a girl and the mage is a girl too."
With Han Se-ah and Charlotte both cheering for the ogres like that, the voice that had been drifting out from deep inside the fortress cut off abruptly.
I muttered under my breath that maybe he'd died of sheer rage—and she giggled, jabbing her elbow into my side. Apparently my random nonsense had hit her taste perfectly; that smug little curl of her lips was something else. I hadn't realized she was listening right next to me. Good thing I hadn't been talking about games.
At the same moment, the fortress gates swung open and a barrage of artillery poured out. It wasn't just raw damage, either—the shells seemed loaded with all kinds of magic, a riot of colors and effects.
"Hmm. Their combat style seems pretty similar to Hanna's."
"Wh-what? Mine?!"
"You both fight by deploying various magical tools and explosives at just the right moments to make up for limited mana. And you're both dead serious about crafting explosives through alchemy."
"………."
An explosive shell that erupted in blue flames and evaporated an ogre's hide; a freezing shell that froze an entire forearm solid with a sharp crack; a shock shell that sent an ogre striding toward the open fortress gates stumbling backward—shells of every kind came flying in as if they'd crammed an entire artillery battalion into the fortress, hammering the ogres while I took the opportunity to tease Han Se-ah.
By the time the thick gunsmoke finally settled, an old man came walking out from inside the fortress, step by deliberate step.
If the previous Lich had looked like a human skeleton that had learned to walk, this old man was something else entirely—a monster molded into human shape, or a human forcibly stretched and warped beyond recognition.
He stood well over two meters tall, but without a single muscle on his body—rail-thin. No, past rail-thin; it almost looked like he had no skin at all. With hollow cheeks and sunken eyes glaring this way, he looked like a walking mummy.
"You insolent brats. How can a mage behave so crudely? Just what do your eyes see when they look upon this beautiful workshop of mine?"
"…Beautiful? What exactly is beautiful about it?"
The grotesquely emaciated old man appeared leaning on a staff woven from human bones, and the one who answered him was Irene, who had been quietly watching the ogres.
With the collapsed wall between them, the two began to talk—almost as if a debate between a dark mage and a candidate Saintess had spontaneously convened.
The mid-boss and Irene's confrontation had begun out of nowhere.
Irene, true to her calling as a nun of the Goddess Church, spoke of the sanctity of life. The mid-boss, true to his nature as a dark mage, spoke of seizing the lives of others and the efficient methods of handling them.
"Life is a grace the Goddess has bestowed upon this land. No one has the right to take another's life as they please!"
"Such tiresome talk, nun. That which is precious only shines when it falls into the hands of someone who knows how to use it efficiently. If a life is simply going to drift along and wither away for nothing—wouldn't it be more valuable for me to put it to use?"
The Lich I'd struck with my Holy Sword—left with nothing but a head and sealed away in a temple—had been the type to declare, Life is finite, so the Goddess is useless and only death is truth! This dark mage, on the other hand, felt more like, Life force is precious, so rather than leave it alone, I'll process it finely and turn it into art!
So of course Irene's righteous words weren't going to get through to someone who treated other people's lives like raw materials for his own self-satisfaction.
As the stream of mockery toward Irene and blasphemy against the Goddess kept coming, the apprentice commanders and their hired forces waiting quietly in the rear finally couldn't take it anymore. Flags waving, they advanced toward the walls.
I let the ogres soak up the artillery fire, and the walls are open—but he'll have escort troops. Watch the patterns with the apprentice commanders, land the finishing blow on the mid-boss, then deal with the boss monster. Good call bringing the ogres. Just how many shells are they firing?
A legion of adventurers and mercenaries charged forward, leaping over the rubble of the collapsed wall. And the mid-boss, wearing a bitter little smile as he snickered about how barbaric and ignorant humans truly were, raised his heavily armored halberdiers once more.
Sure enough, something like skeletons or ghosts must have been inside those suits of armor—the ones the ogres had smashed to pieces rose again the moment the mid-boss's staff turned a gloomy purple. What he consumed in the process was a dark-violet crystal he crushed in the hand not holding the staff.
…That thing. Wasn't that a crystal made by grinding up human souls?
"Y-you savage…!"
Irene's fists trembled as she realized what it was. But having been raised so gently that she'd never even properly learned to swear, all she could do was clench her fists tight and glare at the dark mage.
Even as he prepared dark magic against the adventurers swarming in from that distance, he seemed to catch Irene's fury-filled gaze—and grinned, a grotesque smile. With no skin on his face, the expression stretched his jaw long and twisted his features into something ghostlike.
I was just thinking I should step in, land a hit, and take care of Irene's mental state… when a thought suddenly struck me.
The Ice Cross Knights—where are they?
Oleg, who should have been at the very front bellowing at the top of his lungs, was nowhere to be seen. Everyone had gotten caught up in the mood and charged out, so I'd assumed he'd be leading the vanguard—but the only flags raised high were the blood-painted ones. Glancing behind me, I spotted the Ice Cross Knights clustered with the mages, murmuring among themselves.
Oleg said something to Charlotte and Marie, then shook his head firmly. Then, snorting out a sharp breath through his nose, he strode over with that distinctive expression of his—the one that said he'd made up his mind.
Those unhesitating footsteps didn't stop in front of me or Han Se-ah. They stopped in front of Irene. Alissa came dashing after him and stood shoulder to shoulder with Oleg as they both addressed her.
"Sister."
"Yes? What is it?"
"You're furious, aren't you."
"…Pardon?"
"Doesn't it make you angry? That bastard. All he's done is line up some barracks tents, and he goes on about efficiency this and savages that like he's some great artist or mathematician—sounds just like those southern pigs."
Ah. So he'd gotten scratched by something like regional pride.
Apparently the mid-boss's words and mannerisms had overlapped with people who looked down on the North—the ones who actually faced monster waves head-on. Since the Empire's expansion was a mission granted by the Goddess, they couldn't attack that part of it, so instead they belittled northerners as uncultured brutes who just pushed forward with raw physical force.
With the Demon King's army ahead of them, having witnessed dark magic, and seeing the mid-boss overlap with the kind of people they already despised… for all those reasons, Oleg was snorting sharp breaths through his nose in a full-blown rage, and Alissa wore a resolute expression that said there was no stopping him. The two of them pulled something from their magical gear kits.
"So let's hit him with one."
"We'll trust you, Sister."
A bomb vest that looked awfully familiar.
……Goddess? Is this why you told me to bring them along?