To the Maslantia Front (4)
"Very good."
Hands clasped behind my back, I surveyed the garrison.
The soldiers were all taking their rest, every last one of them.
Under normal circumstances, they should have been riding the momentum of their victory—storming the Resistance stronghold and waging war this very moment.
But thanks to my strongly voiced opinion, they'd been granted a little over two days of rest instead.
Two days should be plenty of time for the Resistance bastards to regroup.
I was wearing a contented smile when—
"Good morning, my Lord—!"
One of the demons snapped off an energetic salute at me.
I gave him an approving nod, and no sooner had he lowered his arm than he sprinted off toward the demon standing in front of him.
Well, well. Look at these kids, so properly mannered.
I was watching his retreating figure with satisfaction when the guy suddenly brought his fist down hard on the back of the head of the demon walking along in front of him.
"Good morning, you little bastard!"
For a moment, I thought my eyes had deceived me.
Why was he suddenly smacking the back of another demon's skull?
The demon who'd been struck turned around and looked at him.
I fully expected him to fly into a furious rage, maybe start a fight on the spot.
Instead, the guy broke into an innocent, beaming smile.
"Khekhek! That's right—a good morning indeed!"
I stared at the scene, dumbfounded.
...What is this?
From then on, the guy went around whacking other demons on the head one by one, like he was playing some rhythm game.
"Good morning!"
"Have a nightmare last night, you bastard?"
Not a single one of them got angry.
On the contrary, they all greeted him warmly in return.
As I stood there frozen in bewilderment, someone spoke up beside me.
"Haha, our soldiers are a bit... cheerful when it comes to greetings."
It was Commander Sirius.
I asked, my face a picture of disbelief.
"You call that a greeting?"
"Yes, indeed. It's a sign of camaraderie."
A hollow laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
A greeting like that? Demon customs really were a far cry from human ones.
"Is life here not too dull for you, my Lord?"
"I'm fine, so don't worry about it."
"That is a relief. If it pleases you, I would love to show you how our soldiers spend their rest time. Would you care to come this way? They're playing a very entertaining game right now."
A fun game, huh.
I was curious, I'll admit.
What did demons do for fun in their free time, anyway?
I nodded.
"Right this way, my Lord."
I followed Sirius along for a while.
Up ahead, soldiers were snickering as they crowded into a circle around something. I wedged my way through the gaps between them.
!
What unfolded before my eyes was nothing short of shocking.
One of the demons was sticking his head inside the gaping maw of a hideously ugly griffin.
It looked exactly like those Thai handlers performing the trick of sticking their heads into a crocodile's mouth.
These lunatics!
"Our soldiers are fearless to a fault—they enjoy this kind of thrill in their spare time. What do you think?"
Sirius spoke with the pride of a father boasting about his own children.
Ignoring him entirely, I smacked the head of the demon in front of me.
The guy turned around with a puzzled look on his face.
"M-My Lord?! Loyalty! Good morning!"
He snapped off a salute, face positively radiant.
Oh, right. Hitting someone's head IS the greeting.
I let out a sigh and spoke.
"That guy with his head in there. Get it out. Now."
"Yes, sir! Understood!"
The guy scrambled over and gave the demon's body a mighty yank, and the head popped out with a pok.
The soldiers, their fun thoroughly ruined, clicked their tongues in disappointment.
I tsked.
"Everyone, attention. Games like this are henceforth forbidden. All of you will read books."
"B-Books, you say? Aren't those things only read by those weakling humans?"
"I'd rather exercise! A weak body means a hardworking head, and all!"
Good-hearted but dim-witted bunch, aren't they. What are they going to do if their necks get severed?
Then a sudden question occurred to me.
Why had I just stepped in like that?
Wouldn't losing even a single demon like that have been good for the Resistance bastards?
I shook my head.
...Still, no matter how I look at it, I don't want to watch someone's head get bitten clean off right in front of me.
This was going too far.
That was exactly when it happened.
"Uh, uh-oh! Catch that thing!"
"No way...! Our garrison's mascot!"
Crack!
The griffin snapped the chains binding it with brute force and launched itself into the sky.
It had never been tamed, of course.
The only being capable of taming a magic beast was the Lord of the Black Sea, the one I'd fought against.
These guys had simply dragged a magic beast in from somewhere and kept it chained up like some neighborhood stray mutt.
"Terious! Don't go!"
"Come baaack—!"
Undeterred by their cries, the griffin called Terious vanished into the distance.
The soldiers wore hollow, defeated expressions.
"...Terious."
"He's gone."
"Ah, damn it all."
It was honestly pretty funny to watch, but I figured if I kept hanging around, I'd turn into a fool too.
"M-My Lord? Are you leaving already? The highlight hasn't even—"
"Enough. I need to rest."
Leaving a protesting Sirius behind, I hurried off toward my tent.
Stay here any longer and I'd actually grow attached to these idiots.
Meanwhile, at the same hour.
Inside the Resistance's temporary encampment.
"...Lord Robert, something is wrong. The demons are showing no movement whatsoever."
"...That's impossible."
Robert was chewing his fingernails to shreds.
Anyone with even a scrap of sense would have seized this very opportunity to strike at their stronghold.
And yet—no movement at all?
No matter how he turned it over in his mind, it made no sense.
Damn it all, if this keeps up, moving the soldiers out before dawn yesterday was a complete waste.
The truth was, since the previous dawn he had deployed hundreds of soldiers to dig up every last stretch of open ground leading to the stronghold.
The plan had been to dig pitfall traps, slow the demons' advance, then bleed their numbers down bit by bit with soldiers lying in ambush.
But now there was no movement whatsoever, and it was driving him half-mad.
And no wonder—his soldiers, unable to rest properly since dawn the day before, were still crouched in those traps, waiting for demons that never came.
"Fuuuck—!"
Robert let out a howl of frustration.
Had they somehow caught on that he would act this way?
Or was there a spy in their midst who'd leaked the strategy?
Every possibility imaginable circled round and round his skull.
No. They're definitely coming.
He shook his head, brushing the dark thoughts aside.
Just as one plus one equals two was an undeniable fact, it was equally undeniable that they would come for the stronghold.
"Sir Robert. What shall we do? Shall we... relieve the soldiers?"
"Don't spout nonsense, Adjutant! Doing that would render everything we've worked for utterly meaningless. They hold position. Absolutely. The enemy will not let this chance slip away."
He stuck a cigarette between his lips, his face taut with anxiety.
"More importantly, what's the status on the reinforcements?"
"They should be arriving soon, my lord. Count Galliver's forces are on their way as we speak."
Robert's mood lifted.
Galliver—an early Expert, one of the true powerhouses.
Far more reassuring than a few thousand soldiers.
With him here, the tide of this war would surely turn.
He was in the middle of that very thought when—
"Commander—! *Wheeze*... Commander!"
A soldier came sprinting up to Robert, gasping for breath.
A nameless sense of dread crept over him as he asked.
"What is it?"
"W-Well, sir! It seems some magic beast flew right into the soldiers lying in ambush near the stronghold!"
"A magic beast?! Was it those demon bastards' doing?"
"...It, it doesn't appear so, sir! But the beast is stashing wild boars it's hunted into the traps we worked so hard to dig!"
"What did you just say?!"
Deep furrows carved themselves between Robert's brows.
That meant the traps they'd labored so hard to dig were being dismantled before their eyes, pointlessly.
"You useless idiot! Then you catch that damn beast by any means necessary, obviously!"
"...My apologies, sir. The thing is quite quick, and it's giving us no small amount of trouble."
"I don't want to hear it! You worthless fools! You can't handle one single beast that wandered into our laps?"
That day, the Resistance burned through a truly impressive amount of time and physical stamina hunting down a griffin that had appeared out of nowhere.
Two days passed.
So the day of the decisive battle has finally arrived.
Thud. Thud!
An army of thousands marched toward the Resistance camp, kicking up clouds of dust.
Given that they'd taken no notable action this whole time, the enemy had surely been pouring their efforts into reinforcements and regrouping.
"With you leading us personally, my Lord, my heart is at ease."
"Don't get the wrong idea. I have no intention of taking the field myself."
I had decided to join this operation in person.
The reason? For some unfathomable reason, I just couldn't bring myself to trust these humans.
If, after all this, they still produced no results?
Well, then even I couldn't say what I might do.
"Haha... of course. You mean your mere presence beside us is reassuring enough. That said, the road is rather rough here. Do watch your step."
And rough it was.
The ground ahead was riddled with traps visible to the naked eye.
The handiwork of the Resistance bastards, no doubt.
But wouldn't you normally cover them with dirt so they couldn't be seen?
It was a moment that made me seriously question their intelligence.
"Humans in sight—!"
"Prepare the trebuchets—!"
And at last, we arrived at the stronghold.
As if they'd been waiting for us, long-range attacks came hurtling in from the Resistance.
Flaming arrows and ice magic.
Clang!
In perfect unison, the soldiers snapped their shields up overhead without a hint of disorder.
The rain of arrows and spells hailed down and rebounded off the shields.
Sirius bellowed with all his might.
"Full army—CHARGE!"
OOOOOH!!
With a thunderous roar, the soldiers broke into a sprint toward the fortress gates.
The real war had begun.
Resistance coins... let's gooo!