Name - 2
The Southern Front — a place countless soldiers called the grave of veterans.
Yes. That was exactly right.
In the game, the Southern Front had been portrayed as nothing short of hell itself. The North and the Center were blessed with favorable terrain, smooth supply lines, and only the occasional elite or raiding force slipping through. The South was the opposite in every way.
Dense rainforest where mages could barely cast area spells. A wretched environment that forced you to ration food because supplies crawled in at a glacial pace. High humidity. Thick fog. Sodden earth. Flat ground. It might have made for a decent defensive position if you were building fortifications — but as a front line in a war that dragged on for years, it was a miserable stretch of earth.
Of course, that also meant it was a nightmare to break through from the other side. Still, the enemy was a terror that rose from the mud again and again no matter how many you killed, falling upon your comrades without warning. That was the selfish exchange rate of this place: one human ground down just to stop a single beast cub.
Across a land so steeped in blood that the reek of it never dried, a single dark figure emerged. He didn't even give his rank and name. Rigid with tension, sweat beading on his face, he looked thoroughly rattled. We weren't the sort of callous people who would tear into a green recruit over something like that, so we pretended not to notice the omission, returned his salute, and fell in behind him. The guides assigned to us never seemed to end well. A small part of me hoped this one would survive.
I breathed in the fog, faintly laced with the copper tang of blood. The oppressive damp that weighed my body down was so thick with the stench of iron that it wouldn't have been strange if droplets of blood were seeping into my lungs with every breath. I frowned.
Perhaps he caught my expression. The soldier who had greeted us when we stepped down from the carriage — our guide — glanced around at the party, gauging our faces. Getting used to the smell of blood was still beyond me even after a month, so I steadied myself, smoothed my features as if ironing them flat, and put on my usual performance of composure.
The Southern Front was closer to a dim, humid swamp of dense forest than anything else. The ground squelched and dragged at every step, adding weight to the body. Thick water-fog choked the vision. Moisture in the air clung to the skin as if begging you not to go any farther. Of all the places I had known, this was the most unpleasant.
I prided myself on having covered a fair portion of the front lines over the past month of commissions — but the Emperor seemed intent on growing us slowly. Most of our assignments had clustered in the North and the Center, so we'd never had a real chance to come south. Even on the few occasions we had, it had been nothing more than skimming the outer fringes. We had never set foot in the heart of the South. Not once.
No one spoke. The silence held for a long time. How many times did the wet slap of mud against boots repeat itself before the faint glow of torchlight began to show through the undergrowth beyond?
The low-ranking soldier who had guided us saluted and headed back toward the tents. I watched him go with a suspicious eye — his movements still awkward, still wrong for this place. The Southern Front was the grave of veterans. The environment was so harsh that only those who had survived long enough in the North and Center were sent here — people who could at least turn that despairing exchange rate of one human life for one beast into something closer to one for two. And yet here was a fresh recruit. It bothered me a little.
Well. It probably wasn't anything major.
I had already learned how far the knowledge I carried from the game had diverged from this reality, and how often events refused to follow my expectations. Summer appearing on the front before summer had even arrived. Spring attempting an assault and getting crushed. I had only ever faced the Hero directly during the attack on the Imperial Capital — that alone should tell you how thoroughly things had gone off-script.
Honestly, my self-assurance had worn thin. I couldn't properly use what I knew. I stayed passive. Even when I did push forward, I couldn't trust that the results would be good. A dilemma.
I let out a quiet breath. It wasn't that I was powerless. But the world I had imagined from the game was not this world. Even if lives vanished without meaning, I had wanted somewhere — anywhere — for a light of hope to flicker and illuminate that dark night sea. That was the world I had wanted.
But this place was no other world. Strip away the magic, the clear-cut enemies, and the existence of a god, and it looked uncannily like the one I had come from. Fantasy shattered, and what remained was cold reality.
Turning over these scattered thoughts, I entered the tent assigned to us. The entire process had unfolded without a single word of conversation, so naturally that it only proved how thoroughly we had adapted to the front over the past month — and how much of our humanity had been scraped away. Only one thing had grown without end: our care for one another. When people died day after day all around you, and only the three of you kept seeing each other's faces, of course you grew closer. We were certainly more intimate than at our first meeting. We simply never said so out loud.
I checked the notebook and various items I had stowed in the subspace, along with a scroll labeled Voice Chat, then closed the bag again. The Hero's subspace was convenient, no question — but carrying things in a bag at your side rather than always on your person meant you could draw them a few seconds faster in a fight. That was why I used this form.
And with that, today's idle thoughts were done. I wiped away the clutter that would only keep me from sleep, lay down on the bed, let the tension drain from my body, and sank into sleep.
Or rather — I tried to.
A shrill peal of bells shattered the quiet and rang through my skull as if it meant to split my head open.
Heal
Damn it. Did they really have to wake me the moment I'd finally drifted off?
I was thoroughly irritated — but I knew there was only one reason the bells would be ringing in a situation like this. I finished assessing the situation in an instant, grabbed my gear, and stepped outside.
My first Wave since arriving in this world.
Black darkness surged beyond the palisade. Ominous points of red light bored into us like eyes. And past those red points, I spotted something strange. Broken palisades standing amid black ash where only traces remained of whatever had burned — why?
Ain, Jerome, and I made no effort to hide our tension as we formed a defensive line along the palisade, relying on one another and on the soldiers around us. I and a handful of older clergy were stationed at the center. Squires and Knights, heavy with shields and armor, faced forward. Spearmen and archers drawn from freemen and slaves finished their clumsy preparations.
The noise of something hammering the palisade swelled, then erupted into a detonation.
KRAK—
CRRRAACK—
A scraping sound. The sound of something forced apart. The palisade collapsed without resistance and let through whatever waited on the other side.
"Load."
The commander's voice was inorganic — the worn-out voice of a human who had been ground down to nothing — issuing emotionless orders to the soldiers.
Creeeak—
The sound of something being nocked to a string hummed in the ears.
Humm—
Clergy and a few mages prepared spells that would not set the forest ablaze. White clusters of light and small-scale magics glowed in multicolored mana-flare, forming constellations at our backs.
Light Arrow
Light Arrow
Light Arrow
I began my own preparations. Three white lights rose behind me.
"Loose."
The commander's order fell. Soldiers repeated a sequence of motions like machines. It was, in its way, an ideal battlefield.
The pure white light pouring from the Holy Sword as the Hero swung it — the way black mud was carved away in chunks as if he were slicing tofu with nothing more than the touch of the blade — looked like something out of a legend. Jerome, one of the few Holy Knights to be found on this front, clad in silver plate, was every bit a central figure of the battle as well.
As for me, there wasn't much to do. Fire off holy power from the rear. Heal those who took wounds and fell out of the line, then shove them back into the pit of hell. That was my role.
Sometimes I wondered whether I was a saintess or a demon. Did those people truly want to keep living through that kind of suffering?
A useless thought. I wiped it away and focused on what was in front of me. I erased the sound of screaming. I would do only what I could do, save only those I could save, and live for myself alone.
And then a single faint cherry blossom petal drifted down in front of me.
Someone's voice rose.
"Ah—"