Chaos vs. Azure Dragon (1)
"I'm expelling you from the strike force, and permanently barring you from ever taking part in another battle again."
At that single remark, the mercenaries turned to ice.
Expulsion from the unit.
For men who lived and died by their reputations as mercenaries, what worse news could there be than word that they'd been cast out of their own company?
For one thing, they'd be shunned within their own mercenary band — or in the worst case, thrown out outright. And beyond that, the odds were high that no other band would ever take them in again.
It was only natural. Just think about it: through their own misjudgment and their own greed, they had very nearly handed one of two squads straight to the demons as an offering. In a situation like that, who would extend these men even a shred of trust?
I wished they understood that line of reasoning too... but perhaps such empathy simply didn't exist in them. Or did they genuinely believe they had done nothing wrong?
"Commander... you can't do this..."
"Can't do what? You've more than earned a punishment like this."
"Even without us — even if you spread that rumor to every mercenary out there — do you really think the strike force can hold together?"
"Now you're resorting to threats..."
Mercenaries made up no small share of the strike force — about fifteen percent, in fact. Because they treated their own strength as both law and currency, most of them were mid-tier Sword Experts, and their martial power was considerable.
Perhaps that was why plenty of high-tier Experts had been recruited in as well...
Of course, with them gone, the strike force would be badly weakened. It meant nearly two hundred men vanishing from the original roster.
But there was one thing they didn't know.
"What exactly couldn't be maintained?"
I already had a record of toppling an enemy main camp with a skeleton force. Ellie and I had once plunged into enemy lines alone, taken the heads of two ranked demons, and walked back out alive.
"Then let me ask you this instead. Why — why exactly — did you charge in without even obeying the vice commander's order to hold position?"
"The demons were lunging at us with their jaws wide open. In that situation, obviously you chase them down and finish the kill. You're telling us to hold the line? We were about to collide with the main body as it was."
"'Chase them down and finish the kill'... I see. Fine. That works perfectly."
"So our commander finally knows a thing or two!"
A mercenary clapped me on the shoulder and laughed heartily. I slapped the man's hand away hard and spoke.
"It makes you perfect candidates for exile."
"If you want to fight as individuals and chase down demons on your own, I have no right to stop you. Who's going to stop men who walk off to kill demons of their own free will?"
"But if you're going to act however you please in the middle of a war, then what is a commander even for? Command isn't some ornament that exists to look impressive."
"Leading a unit means calculating, in every possible situation, how your judgment will move your men — and making the right call, at the right place, at the right time."
"But you disobeyed orders, broke away from your squad, swung your swords however you liked — and ended up surrounded and isolated by demons."
"If only your own lives had been at stake, fine. But the knights couldn't bring themselves to look away from you, and their line collapsed in the attempt to save you."
"And even with reinforcements arriving, far from holding the line, it was under threat because of you — so Yeon-i, who was in command, had to step in personally."
"The rescue didn't come fast enough, and the front collapsed. If the knights had been even slightly weaker, the second squad would have been annihilated right there."
"Do you think you have any standing to raise your voices now? Your personal actions put an entire squad's lives on the line."
"How exactly am I supposed to accept that?"
"...Th-that's...! It was... a mistake..! Doesn't everyone make a mistake at least once in their life!"
Now they were resorting to outright absurd excuses. Even as a mistake, it was unforgivable. Their blunder had nearly cost not only their own lives, but 750 others along with them. Did they truly believe that calling it a mistake made it excusable?
I drew the Guardian Star from its sheath and leveled it at the mercenaries.
"Listen carefully. What you've just pulled is grounds for immediate execution."
...!!!
Their faces went deathly pale.
"Of course, Yeon-i shares the blame. Thinking with a clear head, she should have ruled out saving you from the very start — even if it meant you became the demons' dinner."
"But the ones who planted that cause in the first place... I'd say the fault lies more with you."
"And your actions nearly annihilated the entire unit? Execution is the obvious answer."
"There's no reason to let you live. But we're at a numerical disadvantage against the enemy right now, and you weren't the only ones who erred — so just this once, I'll leave your lives intact."
...
"So shut your mouths and crawl quietly into a corner. If you don't want to die."
With those words, I turned my back and walked out of Medical Tent 16.
"Haah... how am I supposed to report this?"
I had to report all of this to Ellie, and I already felt suffocated. I walked swiftly to the command tent and laid the whole affair before her. Ellie listened to everything, lowered her gaze, sighed, and said:
"Hyeon. Your punishment is off."
"...Huh?"
"I understand exactly what you were trying to do. But they nearly killed half our troops — do you honestly think that punishment fits? If it were me, I'd have executed them without a second glance."
...
"They're not even a regular unit — they're the only troops in this siege who operate outside the walls. Why are you being so soft about it?"
"That kind of thing demands thorough, cold judgment. We're at war right now."
"You think sparing them means they'll come to you saying 'thank you' and feel grateful? No — not a chance. They'll carry hatred for you instead."
"And they'll do their utmost to hurt you. Why? Because if you, their commander, die, the rumor standing in their way dies with you."
"You're too soft, Hyeon. Not that I have any right to talk — I'm the one who handed you command of the strike force."
"So I'll take care of this matter myself. Don't worry too much — rest up before the next battle."
"I'm sorry, Ellie..."
"You know you look adorable when you wilt like that — you're doing it on purpose for me, aren't you?"
...
"Enough — go rest. It's a blessing that you, Yeon-i, and the rest of the unit came out alive. But they must be executed. They're men who hold a grudge against you, and there's no telling what they might do."
With that, Ellie grabbed her sword and strode out of the tent. That remark about looking adorable, too — that was Ellie's signature roundabout way of telling me not to worry, her own brand of comfort.
Even after she'd gone, I stood rooted to the spot, unable to do anything for a good ten minutes. It was the first time the seat of commander had ever felt so crushing. With the resolve to take at least one step forward from here on, I finally left the command tent.
No one was left inside by the time I walked out. However many battles were fought after Ellie and I left that tent, their faces were never seen again.
The demons' offensive paid their absence no mind, and their all-out assault kept pressing against our walls. Now and then they climbed up over the ramparts to attack the soldiers, but the archer unit under Seul handled it with composure, and we rode out each crisis.
Yeon-i and I had also returned to the unit, fighting steadily and laying down solid footing for victory, one battle at a time.
Little by little, the war had been tipping into our hands. But a single large-scale battle would hand that momentum straight to the demons.
It all began with one messenger's report.
The commanders of every unit were gathered in the command tent, debating how to steer the battles to come, when a messenger burst inside, dropped to one knee, and cried out:
"A large-scale force is moving toward the walls!"
Ellie questioned the messenger.
"Distance and numbers?"
"Roughly twenty kilometers out, sir! Estimated strength: around six thousand!"
Six thousand troops marching to assault the walls. Ellie immediately began preparing for their attack, but the six thousand failed to arrive on the expected day. Judging there might be a delay, she held the army on standby for another day — and still the great host showed itself nowhere.
The command split over two options: maintain combat readiness as they were, or stand down and grant the tension-worn soldiers some rest. The imperial commanders argued for standing down, but Ellie refused and ordered the readiness maintained.
Under her orders they kept the troops in a state of combat readiness, urging the soldiers on and holding the standby line — but whether the messenger's information had simply been wrong, not so much as a single demon first-strike materialized, let alone an army of six thousand.
About another day passed. The fourth day of the war. Crisis slammed into the imperial army.
The demonic energy of the borderlands had begun to corrupt the soldiers' mana circuits, and men suffering internal injuries started appearing one after another. Like an endemic sickness born of the wasteland, half the imperial army was reduced to a state where they could not take the field at all, and the medics' hands grew busier by the hour.
Fortress Sprickle didn't even sit that deep within the borderlands, yet the symptoms were severe. The Cheongrin Knights, to be sure, had operated many times in far deeper border regions and overcame the demonic energy with relative ease — but the soldiers who had fought from the heart of the Holy Empire, in lands that never strayed deep into the frontier, could not withstand it and collapsed with internal injuries.
With an act of nature no one could help, Ellie had no choice but to order the imperial army to rest.
And about a day later — now, the fifth day since the war began — the six thousand troops the messenger had foretold finally descended upon us. But Ellie had anticipated this, and the Cheongrin Knights had never stood down from combat readiness. In other words, roughly ten thousand troops were still fit to fight.
The problem, however, was that among those six thousand were no fewer than three ranked demons. And among them, the Successor of Chaos herself — Demolcy Chaos — had joined the battle. Fortress Sprickle was exposed, for all the world, like a candle in a storm.
The army of six thousand began to hammer at the walls, slowly at first, then with steadily growing ferocity. The garrison answered with arrows and magic —
"Commander! The arrows aren't getting through at all!"
For some reason, every long-range arrow burned away mid-flight, as if swallowed whole by demonic flame. Magic did land, but the mages' mana drain was so punishing that they could no longer afford to cast freely.
The demons, for their part, made no attempt to climb the walls — they were hurling everything at breaking the gate itself. In other words, their method was to nullify long-range attacks and bring the walls down in close combat.
So I led the strike force out through the rear gate to intercept the force hammering at the main gate — and what met my eyes... was a host radiating monstrous power. As if the first battle were meant to be merely an appetizer, nearly all of them were high-tier demons. No magic beasts, no lower demons — not even mid-tier ones. Reading the aura of every single demon before me, they were all high-tier or above.
But ours was a unit with strength to match. And so the battle for the gate began between the strike force and the demons.
"Vice Commander. Can you lure the demons out and use the terrain to whittle their numbers down, even a little?"
"...I can."
At Yeon-i's answer, I nodded at once and gave her a third of the troops to maneuver. A head-on engagement would plainly put us at a disadvantage, so I built the fighting around luring tactics.
Now that I had seen with my own eyes that the Successor of Chaos was among their number, I could not retreat from this gate. The only one who could face her was me — a fellow Successor. And so Yeon-i took command of the lure.
Perhaps she meant to bury, once and for all, the whispers of the misjudgment from the first battle: she steered the troops along optimal routes and shaved our losses to the bone. The demons, on the other hand, reaped nothing but losses — crushed beneath falling rock, or plunging off cliffs, unable to check their charge.
Then, just as Yeon-i returned and we settled into a defensive posture to read the enemy's movements — the soldiers before me were torn apart in a single breath, collapsing to the ground as so much shredded cloth. One look at their bodies said there would be no saving them.
Guided by instinct, I drew the Guardian Star from its sheath — and saw her: a grey-haired woman taking aim at our troops. Swinging a sinister black scythe that would tell anyone who laid eyes on it that she was the Successor of Chaos, she came straight at me.
The moment she attacked, as if it were a signal, the vast demon horde surged at the walls and fell upon the strike force.
"All forces! Fall back, throw off the enemy, and get inside the walls however you can!"
Kiiiiing—!!!
Scythe and blade shrieked against each other with a tremendous sound — but by then, it no longer reached either of us.
"So you're... the Successor of the Azure Dragon..?"
A voice far too low for a woman echoed at my ear, and I gave no answer, pouring everything into parrying her scythe. If this had been a simple one-on-one duel between her and me, I'd have entered it without a worry. But right now, I couldn't be sure our unit could stand against a pack of supreme demons.
I knocked her scythe away hard, then seized its shaft and slammed it down, driving the blade deep into the earth.
"Huh..?"
Caught completely off guard, the Successor of Chaos strained and grunted, unable to pull the scythe free of the ground — and I turned my back at once, guiding our troops into as full a retreat as I could manage. The supreme demons, swinging their weapons to butcher our soldiers, never noticed me coming up behind them, left their attacks wide open, and met their ends in vain.
"Commander!"
"If you have time to shout my name, get further inside the walls!"
A Death Knight swung a massive greatsword down at my skull; I wreathed my blade in lightning and cleaved through him in a single stroke. Unable to withstand the slash, the Death Knight was cut clean through — armor and all — and crumpled, neutralized.
At last the rear gate opened, and the troops began filing through — when—
KWAAAAAANG—!!!!
A tremendous roar, and smoke boiled up from the left wall. Having repelled the supreme demons' attacks and shepherded the troops inside the walls, I stared at a sight I could not believe was real. The first wall of Fortress Sprickle, unable to bear a combined strike from three ranked demons, came crashing down.
Of course, the moment the wall broke, demons began seeping through the breach. Every soldier we had — Ellie included — threw themselves into desperate battle against the invaders. The remaining troops were falling back toward the second wall, the whole field caught in a dilemma of advance and retreat. I accepted the situation as best I could and gave my orders calmly.
"Everyone, reinforce the breached wall."
"What?! You mean to hold that force off alone, Commander? Absolutely not! How—"
"With the left wall down, if the gate falls too, it's completely over. Hold out just a little longer and the vice commander will arrive."
"But...!"
"Right now the battlefield matters more than worrying about me! That's an order. Move to reinforce."
...
Biting their lips, the knights wheeled about, left me behind, and rushed to reinforce the breach.
Just as I was about to hold "conversation" with the supreme demons through our weapons, a path opened through their ranks — and Demolcy, the Successor of Chaos I had seen before, began walking slowly toward me.
...
"Successor of the Azure Dragon. Where do you think you're running?"
...
I wanted to avoid fighting her if I could. Not because she was, at heart, a good person — that wasn't the issue. It was that the reach of her scythe made her an opponent I simply could not match.
But the situation shifted in an instant. If I couldn't repel her here, we might lose the war on this spot. Which left me no choice but to draw my final card.
Divine Beast Incarnation — Azure Dragon
My outward form shifted bit by bit, remaking itself in the image of the Azure Dragon — and without a moment's pause, I harnessed lightning and swung my blade at the Successor of Chaos.
CRACK! KRRZZZT—!!!
My blade, driving forward trailing fierce currents, split her scythe clean in two as if the thing were a joke. Casting aside the halved weapon, she wove a new scythe out of black smoke in the next heartbeat and put distance between us. But her eyes had changed from before — they were now the eyes of a beast of prey that had finally begun its hunt.
And so, across the whole of the Tide of Corruption, the first confrontation between the Four Divine Beasts and the Four Perils was about to begin.