A Variable on the Battlefield
The alchemical constructs I'd planted in the gorge fell into two broad categories.
The first was a supply source designed to saturate the entire gorge with moisture.
The second was a refrigerant that would use that thick blanket of moisture as a medium and freeze the monsters solid.
The two worked in synergy, locking the beasts in ice, and in that opening the fully recharged mana cannons unleashed a barrage on the frozen horde.
Watching them get swept away in a single stroke, I couldn't help the triumphant look that spread across my face.
"Hell yeah! That's what I'm talking about!"
[Now that's the true power of an alchemist!]
Fifteen thousand of them, all told.
Even accounting for the fact that the monsters had charged in with zero strategy, that was the same scale as an average regular army corps of the duchy.
Who would believe two mere Nigredo-rank alchemists had pulled this off?
Even the expedition force up in the fortress was staring down with faces that said they couldn't quite accept it.
"Huh."
"Whoa. No, what the—whoa."
"That's insane. You're telling me Nigredo-rank alchemists did that?"
Some gasped in awe, some were struck speechless, some were already analyzing whether it could actually be replicated—countless eyes drank in the spectacle unfolding across the gorge.
With the monsters' feet locked in place, the mana cannons found their optimal firing solutions and carved the ten-thousand-strong numbers down even further.
Thanks to that, only five thousand beasts remained in the gorge.
In exchange for cutting a force of twenty thousand down to size in just two volleys, the mana cannons had overheated into a practically unusable state—but allied casualties were zero.
Faced with the absolute best outcome the expedition's leadership could have hoped for, Casian couldn't hold it in any longer and burst out laughing.
Unbothered by the stares gathering around him, he laughed, then bared a fierce grin and roared,
"An alchemist just racked up a monstrous achievement all on his own—you're not seriously planning to hand him the finish too, are you? The remaining five thousand are ours!"
At Casian's cry, the expedition force's eyes lit up.
The expedition totaled thirty-five hundred people.
Even stripping out the noncombatants, that left three thousand—and they were supposed to cede the rest of the glory to an alchemist?
As warriors first and pioneers second, their pride simply wouldn't allow it.
Fine, grant that half the credit for the ten thousand monsters that died trapped in ice belonged to the mana cannons.
Even so, five thousand kills had already fallen into my lap. If they handed over the rest as well, what was the point of joining the expedition at all?
They might as well have lounged around in the city and only set out once the entrance opened.
Having read their thoughts perfectly, I decided not to push any further.
"Not like there's much left for me to do anyway."
[We've used up all the constructs, after all.]
"This much is more than enough."
I was heading into the inner keep, fully intending to sit out the rest of the battle in comfort, when an ominous commotion from outside made me turn my head again.
And what I saw was strange.
"What the hell is wrong with them?"
[The monsters are ignoring the expedition and charging straight this way.]
The beasts and the expedition force were fighting, sure.
But most of the monsters were ignoring the expedition entirely and closing in on the inner keep.
No—more precisely, they were charging straight at me.
I wondered if I was imagining it, but the way their gazes locked onto me made it clear this was no hallucination.
"Son of a bitch. Why the hell are they coming for me?!"
[Did you maybe spray some kind of monster-luring perfume before we got here?]
"Do I look that stupid?!"
I knew perfectly well how vicious monsters were. I wasn't enough of an idiot to commit suicide like that.
Besides, you'd been with me the whole time.
We shared the same body and couldn't get far from each other, so you'd seen everything I did.
Well—it was a bad enough situation that I could understand wanting to deny it.
The expedition force did everything they could to stop them, but the monsters didn't care if they died doing it. They bulldozed past with pure mindless force, and a huge number of them closed in on the inner keep.
At least two thousand, easy.
The fact that the expedition had still managed to hold three thousand of them back spoke volumes about their skill—
Unfortunately, this wasn't a situation leisurely enough to stand around admiring the expedition's competence.
I dumped every last minion out of my subspace pouch and shouted at the people staring blankly from inside the keep.
"Everyone, deploy your minions! Fall back into the inner keep and run a delaying action!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
"Priests, raise barriers with holy arts! Inner keep escort troops, grab every piece of furniture stationed in the fortress and build barricades—now!"
Most of the people in the inner keep were noncombat personnel.
Priests, engineers, alchemists—if the monsters reached them, there wouldn't even be a fight.
So I issued orders with the plan of holing up inside the keep and holding out until support arrived from outside, and people moved with sharp efficiency.
Having just watched me freeze an entire monster legion with alchemical constructs probably helped. They followed my commands without hesitation.
"Get inside!"
"Seal the windows first!"
"Is there even a place that can hold this many people?!"
"There's a grand conference hall! No windows, and it's deep inside for security—if we pack them in, it should roughly fit!"
The people filed into the inner keep with surprising calm and took shelter in the conference hall.
Meanwhile the priests activated holy arts, sealing windows and corridors behind barriers, and the rear-guard troops hauled out every scrap of furniture to erect barricades along the hallway.
And I directed the entire process.
Things were so urgent I'd completely dropped the polite speech, but the pioneers followed without a word of complaint.
"Heavy furniture on the bottom! Wedge tables and chairs in on top of that!"
[Don't just stack them vertically—set diagonal braces too!]
Back when I worked as a hunter, I'd thrown up barricades every time a Gate Break hit.
Drawing on that experience and adapting the barricade techniques used in Alchemist Story, I sealed the corridor shut. What took shape was a makeshift rampart that no monster charge would punch through easily.
"Good. This should hold for at least ten minutes."
"How do you even know this kind of stuff?"
"My master was really into this sort of thing."
"Figures."
I casually name-dropped my master at the pioneers staring at me in astonishment, then turned a calm gaze down the corridor.
We held the only passage leading to the conference hall, so there was no worry of the evacuated personnel coming under attack.
The expedition outside would be racing to reach us one way or another. All we had to do was hold, and victory was ours.
The only real question was whether we could last until reinforcements arrived.
"We'll just have to do everything we can."
The pioneers who overheard my mutter broke into grins.
"I like that fire."
"With a personality like that, aren't you more cut out to be a pioneer than an alchemist?"
These were people who, while everyone else was blinded by glory, had either volunteered for escort duty knowing how critical the rear was, or simply suited defense better than offense and ended up in the inner keep.
Anyone who'd made it onto an expedition force was guaranteed to have the skills to back it up. Feeling steadier for their presence, I waited—
And combat erupted throughout the inner keep.
The minions I'd stationed to delay the monsters' arrival for as long as possible were fighting, and thanks to them we bought ourselves four full minutes.
From here on, though, it was on us alone.
Monsters poured into the corridor from every direction—floor, walls, ceiling, it didn't matter.
"Damn. There's a disgusting number of them."
"This isn't going to be easy."
Watching beasts trample over beasts as the horde surged forward, the pioneers swallowed hard.
That pre-battle tension always hit right before the fighting started.
Still, a healthy dose of nerves was an asset in combat, so everyone tightened their grips on their weapons and dropped into low stances.
The pioneer at the front, shield in hand, glanced sideways at me.
"Maybe you should head inside too?"
"Without me, you'd all die. Why would I run?"
"Ha. So you don't trust us to handle it?"
"There's an option with a higher survival rate. Running from that would be the weird choice."
I laughed freely, yanked a potion from my belt, and hurled it with everything I had.
The vial traced a clean arc, shattered against the floor, and countless thorned vines erupted upward, snaring a portion of the monsters and choking off their approach.
Ordinarily that alone would have been effective—but these beasts were tougher than anything I'd imagined.
CRUNCH!
"KRAAAAAAGH!"
The ones coming up behind simply trampled and pulverized their own kin tangled in the vines, forcibly punching a path through.
I clicked my tongue at how much sooner than expected the barrier had fallen, then pressed a hand to the floor.
Through alchemy, I manipulated the stone that made up the corridor and raised a wall.
A slab of rock surged up from the floor and sealed the passage. The monsters howled and clawed at it.
It wouldn't hold forever, but it should buy us two or three minutes of—
BOOOOM!
"...Son of a bitch."
Before the thought even finished, a monster that had swollen both hands into massive hammers smashed straight through the wall and charged. My expression soured.
I was weighing whether to push the Oathbound soldiers to the front against the gorilla-like bulk barreling toward us when—
A pioneer in the rear loosed an arrow.
The shaft split the air, punched clean through the monster's eye, and in the same instant a pioneer flashed past my back and swung a massive shield into the beast's throat.
WHAM!
The perfectly coordinated strike dropped the monster dead. The pioneer with the greatshield planted their feet and bellowed with absolute confidence,
"None shall pass beyond this point!"
Huge ears standing tall atop her head, a sleek tail, a tiny frame.
The cry of a mouse beastgirl in full heavy armor made my eyes go wide.
I knew that appearance.
"Strawberry...?"
[Our 1-Tier tank companion?]
I hadn't expected her to be in the inner keep at all, and for a moment I just stood there stunned.
Then, on a hunch, I glanced back—and sure enough, a slick-looking half-elf man was already nocking another arrow to his bowstring.
"And that's Rothric."
[Our 1.5-Tier utility.]
Alchemist Story was packed with all kinds of companions, so it wasn't strange for named allies to show up on a commission like this—but I genuinely hadn't expected to fight alongside them here. A welcome smile tugged at my face.
With these two here, we could hold the line.