The Decisive Battle
What? There's a limestone mine nearby?
Turning the clock hands back for a moment, to when the rebel army mustered for the holy war had just finished gathering at Clermont-Ferrand Fortress.
Still nursing regrets over the unfinished housing construction, I had leapt at the news of a limestone mine near the fortress and immediately set about attempting mass production of cement. Manpower for the work was more than plentiful—overflowing, even—and Clermont-Ferrand Fortress itself was in urgent need of repairs and reinforcement. I meant to put my previous life's skills to use and spread advanced technology.
Saintess! How long has it been since you were injured in that accident, and you're already back on site... What are you doing right now?
I failed at making cement.
...
Please take your hands off me.
And just like that, I failed.
In this backward age there were neither facilities capable of processing limestone on a large scale nor the cheap Chinese mixers I would have used to blend cement. Modern cement production as I knew it was naturally impossible, and the traditional cement these people already knew how to make was thoroughly unsatisfactory in both quantity and quality.
Since reinforcing the aging walls was the top priority, I made do with what I could produce and used it. But the scale of cement manufacturing shrank far below my initial expectations, leaving a massive stockpile of limestone sitting in the warehouses.
Ugh. Feels weird, like I'm violating international law and cooking up chemical weapons.
So I ordered that limestone processed into quicklime and stationed throughout the fortress.
It was an order made with clear combat use in mind.
Yes. From the very beginning I had intended to use lime powder on the battlefield.
If the royal army's assault proved fiercer than expected and the fortress teetered on the brink of falling, I would need a way to repel the enemy even if it meant sacrificing my reputation. I was not the only one who had put honor on the betting table—the Duke of Orléans had done the same.
Of course, the calculation that scattering a little lime powder in an age without international law would hardly cause much trouble was mixed into the decision as well.
"It's going to hurt. That's what it was made for from the start."
The Duke of Orléans had smashed through the gate with a lance charge, scuttling any large-scale use of chemical weapons. Yet the sacks of lime powder I had placed throughout the fortress became my trump card.
"Indeed. Not something one can simply endure through sheer fighting spirit."
But why was that crazy old man still perfectly fine after being doused head to toe in chemical weapons?
The Duke of Orléans brushed the lime powder off with an impassive expression. His face should have been melting after being completely covered from the head down, yet he calmly gripped his sword and rose to continue the fight.
If a faint note of pain had not been mixed into his voice, I would have thought I had thrown ordinary rock dust instead of lime.
"Why fight so hard? Neither an incompetent king nor greedy nobles seem worthy of your devotion."
The sight was both familiar and strange, and the thought I had meant to keep to myself slipped out unbidden.
It was a foolish question, really. We had not begun fighting for any grand ideals. I had raised a rebellion alongside Count Montpellier, and the Duke of Orléans had come to suppress it as a noble of the kingdom. That was all. We had merely discovered, by chance, that we resembled each other. There had never been any lofty reason for this fight from the start.
"The Saintess may see it that way."
Still, the reason I harbored doubts was precisely because he resembled me. An empty shell with nothing left but responsibility. A machine running on inertia. A human who gave his heart to nothing worthless.
People like us cannot pour our true selves into anything unless someone first captivates us.
In truth, everyone is like that. Ideology. Faith. Family. Drugs. A human bound by something will gladly offer their flesh as a burnt offering. Those who are not bound can never set themselves ablaze, no matter what they try.
"But I have lived my entire life this way. Giving my utmost to every task set before me, and when trials came, gritting my teeth and fighting them with everything I had."
So the Duke of Orléans, as he appeared to my eyes, was a rather bizarre man. It felt like watching a heartless corpse walking around on two legs.
"Even if the Goddess herself ordered me to die, I have not the slightest intention of accepting it meekly."
I had been mistaken.
The Duke of Orléans was a man who lived more passionately than anyone. He had devoted everything to his life itself, and the memories of devotion he had piled up became, in turn, the reason for further devotion. The Duke was by no means a man who did not know honor. Carving away his own honor with his own hands and using any means necessary—that itself was his honor.
"So if you still have methods left, bring them all out. Taking them out one by one will be too late."
The Duke of Orléans—no, Maximilian de Gen, the incarnation of chivalry—gripped his golden-gleaming sword and charged at me.
A flashing blade cut through the air, and mana that had pierced the flames tore into my flesh.
"Hah."
That I survived without dying was close to a miracle. If my reaction had been even a fraction slower, if the Duke's sword had been even a little longer, that single strike would have taken my head.
"Then gladly."
But I dodged. By a hair's breadth I managed to avoid a fatal wound. The Duke was not at full strength right now. The lime powder that had absorbed moisture was steadily draining his stamina.
"This next one will be even hotter."
I needed distance. I pulled a bottle of oil from my robes and hurled it. The Duke simply twisted his body and avoided it; the well-sealed cottonseed oil spilled uselessly onto the ground.
I had brought a second bottle precisely for this.
"O sword."
The second bottle struck the Duke's chest dead-on and shattered. Dull-colored oil coated the armor already stained with blood. Now all I needed was fire, and I could kill him.
"O life of mine, built up through suffering."
The Duke once more clad his sword in mana. An overwhelming presence crushed down on my shoulders. The gold-tinged blade began to tremble as if it would burst. I could not face it. I could not endure it. The moment that sword swung, I would die for certain.
"O trajectory of mine, continued through a lifetime!"
"Choke on white phosphorus!"
That was why it was the perfect opportunity. The instant the Duke of Orléans was certain of victory, the instant a full-powered sword strike had been unleashed so thoroughly it could no longer be taken back—I shattered the third bottle I had sealed tightly.
White flames that seemed to have leaked from hell engulfed us both at once.
...To tell the truth, the decapitation operation I first conceived had a fatal flaw.
A decapitation operation is one in which a tiny number of personnel eliminate the enemy's leader, inducing extreme chaos and the collapse of the command structure. Therefore the personnel committed to the operation must possess both outstanding skill and firepower capable of reliably eliminating the target. Rebecca perfectly satisfied those conditions. Count Montpellier, who barely scraped the rank of Senior Knight, and Arturo, said to be rather talented, also fell more or less within the acceptable range.
The problem was me.
I had never specially trained my body, had never learned to handle mana, and even the Divine Power I had finally obtained was rotting away from lack of talent—a mere brat. Not only was there no corner of me that could help in combat, but as the protected VIP I would only drag my allies down. Simply being present on the field made me a cancerous mass that lowered the operation's success rate. Yet if I pulled out, the operation could not even be executed. To give the pretext of a parley any persuasive power and lure the Duke of Orléans into the hunting ground, the Saintess herself had to appear at the meeting place.
So I thought of a way to temporarily boost my combat power, and after much deliberation the conclusion I reached was white phosphorus.
I knew it was a horrific idea, but I had no other options. Weapons that could be improvised in a backward region were not that common, and the only method I could think of to inflict fatal damage on a living weapon clad in full plate armor was that. I had already brought the materials intending to make matches, so all that remained was to finish the white phosphorus, pour it into bottles, and seal them well.
Immediately afterward the Duke of Orléans blew up the meeting place, delaying the actual deployment of the white phosphorus a little, but what was destined to happen eventually happened. The flames filled with the malice of the twenty-first century blazed hot even in the heart of the Middle Ages.
"Hot! It's hot! Is this the judgment that falls upon an apostate?!"
But why was that crazy old man still not dying?
Was the quantity insufficient? Or the purity too low? I had at least secured minimal space with a counter-fire, but he was basically bathing in white phosphorus—so why?
I no longer even had the strength to stay on my feet.
"I still have strength left to swing my sword once more... yet only if one of us lives will victory and defeat be decided."
Having lost all hope and staring blankly at the sky, I heard the Duke of Orléans begin spouting strange nonsense.
"I acknowledge my defeat."
It was a truly incomprehensible statement.
"Let the world hear! This foolish apostate Maximilian, for the crime of raising his sword against the merciful and just Saintess of Flame, has received the judgment of heaven!"
Before I could even voice any doubt about that bizarre performance, the old knight's roar shook the battlefield.
"Though my strength proved insufficient and I fall like this, I have not a single regret for having sought to seize the throne even if it meant taking the Kaiser's hand!"
It was a last will. The farewell of an old knight who had made fulfilling responsibility his pride—a farewell riddled with lies.
"That seat was originally mine! Even in death I shall become a ghost and curse the hateful Goddess and the Saintess!"
Crazy old man. He had never once tried to take the Kaiser's hand, never once burned with ambition to claim the throne. Simply because he had to take responsibility, he was carving himself down this far.
"Ah, no need to make that face. The Saintess has won, and I have merely fulfilled the responsibility of the defeated."
The old knight gave an awkward smile and shook his head. In that brief span his vocal cords must have been damaged; his voice began to crack and rasp, yet he paid it no mind and sank down with a refreshing smile.
"The moment those white flames bloomed, the match was already over. A man who has lived long enough thrashing about on the brink of death only looks ugly."
He was dying.
"I merely... wanted a splendid end."
There was nothing splendid about it. After denying his own life with his own mouth, after trampling honor and everything else into the dung heap and grinding it underfoot—what was splendid about that? He was just a crazy moth flying into the flame.
"...What a shame."
If only we could have met a little sooner.
The old knight closed his eyes.
Maximilian de Gen, Duke of Orléans, met a luxurious end, taking the fate of the dynasty as his burial goods.