A Small, Lightweight Weapon (1)
Quite apart from Archduke Harth of the South declaring total war on the West, dark rumors had begun to race through the South at alarming speed, and fear was taking root among the citizenry.
"I heard the gate leading to the West vanished without a trace. Is that true?"
"Didn't you hear that thunder the other day? It was louder than an actual lightning strike, I swear. That has to be connected somehow."
"Every road to the West is sealed off now, and there's a ban on entry. Word is they're trying to keep people from seeing what happened to the gate…"
The farther a settlement stood from Gustav's point of impact, the lighter the damage—but across a considerable stretch of territory, every city had heard that roar, staggered by a few seconds depending on the distance, and there was no stopping the rumors that followed.
In particular, the stories leaking out from people who had gone to deliver military supplies to a garrison roughly five kilometers from the gate played a decisive role in fanning the panic.
"I'm telling you, I saw it with my own eyes! You know I deliver supplies to the barracks where the knights and mages stay, right? So I head out there that day, and all of a sudden the ground goes boom and this enormous roar hits. I go through with the delivery anyway, and the guys at the gate are all collapsed with blood running out of their ears, every window in the garrison is shattered, and everyone inside is bleeding from the ears too! Not a single person was left standing!"
Everyone knew that a single well-trained knight or mage could casually handle dozens of ordinary fighters.
So the testimony that those elite troops had not even been attacked by an intruder—that the entire garrison had been wrecked and every last one of them left sprawled on the ground bleeding from the ears—landed on the citizens like something out of cosmic horror.
"Our windows rattled like mad too. I thought it was an earthquake, but do ordinary earthquakes make that kind of noise? And you saw it, right? That mushroom-shaped smoke rising into the sky. It was definitely in the direction of the gate. Something happened out there. No question."
"There were already rumors the West was going to attack, and I guess they were true. Ugh, I'm terrified… What's going to happen to us? They're not going to do that again, are they? Just thinking about that sound still makes my heart drop…"
The rumors spread like wildfire, yet no one knew exactly what had become of the gate district, or what that earthquake, those rattling windows, and that thunderous roar had truly been.
As a formless dread took hold, rumor bred rumor, the stories grew more exaggerated by the day, and eventually baseless fantasies began to circulate as well.
That the West had summoned a demon. That a dragon from the extinct First Era had been sleeping alive in the West and had finally awakened…
The more anxiety swelled among the people, the louder the demands for explanation from the local lords became, and all of those voices naturally funneled up to one man: Archduke Harth of the South.
"Your Grace, the citizens grow more agitated by the hour. No matter how hard we try to suppress it, far too many people heard that roar for us to stop the rumors. We don't know how to explain this…"
"Your Grace, people keep trying to enter the restricted zone to check the gate with their own eyes. We are still enforcing the ban, but we are reaching the limit of what our manpower can handle…"
Harth answered with a snarl, his head splitting with pain.
"Not a single person gets near that place! If they won't listen, beat them and lock them up if you have to! Under no circumstances are people to see what is out there!"
Having issued a ban on approaching the gate to the West across the entire South, Harth clutched his head and fumed.
The rumors had spread too far.
No matter how hard he tried to muzzle everyone, too many people had heard the roar and seen the mushroom-shaped smoke climbing high into the sky. Even without a single eyewitness of the site itself, there was no way to stop the talk.
But worse than the rumors and the fear—far harder to endure—was the fact that a thousand defenders, including a Sword Master, had been completely annihilated by those primitive, half-witted barbarians of the West.
A Sword Master and a high-circle mage were strategic assets of the first order, each one of them. And he had lost a Sword Master in such an empty, humiliating way—along with a thousand well-trained knights and mages.
He could not even begin to estimate the budget needed just to rebuild the facilities reduced to ash, and the human resources he had lost could not be replaced with money.
Grinding his teeth, Harth turned over a few options in his mind.
Should I report to the capital that the West is plotting a civil war…?
That would guarantee a decisive response—but he shook his head almost at once.
For now, as long as he kept a firm lid on the South within his own sphere of influence, he could still manage the situation somehow. The moment he requested a punitive force from the center, the problem would leave his hands entirely—and it would amount to admitting that every rumor currently circulating in the South was true.
Damn it. My approval would be gutted, my standing would hit rock bottom! The capital and the East would seize the chance to grab every concession they could! That, at least, I absolutely cannot allow!
Tearing at his hair, Harth forced himself to recover what composure he could and analyzed the situation.
He himself had seen the horrific remains of the Southern Gate—kept secret from the public—which allowed him a somewhat more precise assessment.
This was never a problem I needed to go begging to the capital, or anyone else, about in the first place. Power on that scale had to be magic, and it was almost certainly a trump card that exhausted every means the West had available. They won't be able to rain down attacks like that one after another. The fact that they vaporized the gate and then withdrew instead of pressing the advance is proof enough.
Even under crushing stress, the colder he forced himself to be, the more he found the situation was not quite as catastrophic as it first appeared.
The West had money, yes—but not manpower. More precisely, not usable manpower.
However impressive an elf's magic or an orc's strength might look, that was talk that only held water in the First Era. In the Second Era, with the development of magic and aura, a single trained knight could cut down ten orcs without breaking a sweat.
The barbarians' lines of knowledge had long since been severed, their culture in decline. Launching an attack of that magnitude had been an extraordinary achievement for them—but that was all it was.
If they had had anything left in reserve, they would have pushed straight through. That they had not, and had even concealed themselves, suggested their real aim was to break the South's morale and force a frightened South to bow its head of its own accord—victory without further bloodshed.
But what if the South met force with force and charged?
Could those Western savages actually stop them?
Once the certainty settled that they could not, Harth summoned his knight-commanders and senior mages.
He had declared total war, but until now he had issued no concrete directives. Now the orders were clear.
"Gentlemen. From this moment, the South will mobilize every military asset at its disposal and advance on the West. It is true that they used a trump card to devastate the gate district and inflict heavy losses on us. But with the West's pathetic manpower, preparing another attack of that scale will take considerable time. So we will not give them that time. We strike first."
The South's military officers had seen for themselves what had happened at the gate, and they had been grinding their teeth toward the West ever since. When the order to advance finally came, they were overjoyed.
"At last we can wipe those damned bastards out."
"The ones who dared do that to Sir Simon—and then desecrated his corpse to mock us. We will crush them thoroughly this time and make sure they never rise again."
Surveying his fire-breathing commanders, Harth issued his orders.
"I will join this offensive myself. Until I take Isaac's head with my own hands, this rage will not subside."
"If Your Grace rides with us, the men's morale will soar!"
"Muster every force except those required for local security and the bare minimum of defense. We will make them feel the gulf between the South and the West in their bones. The Iron Vanguard takes the vanguard."
The commanders startled at that.
"The Iron Vanguard? Isn't that using a butcher's cleaver to kill a chicken?"
"If the chickens are bold enough to peck a man, then a butcher's cleaver is exactly what you need to restore discipline."
At Harth's words, the commanders bowed their heads.
"As you command!"
Once we returned to the West, we immediately began distributing supplies and redeploying troops for the next battle.
Gustav was not the only weapon we had spent all that time preparing, so the work proceeded with seamless efficiency.
"Since we've kept out of sight, the South will almost certainly conclude that attack was a one-time strike that threw their full strength into a single blow—and they will advance."
"Isn't that a problem, then? You said yourself, Lord Isaac, that Gustav can only fire when the enemy is very far away."
I nodded at Lumina's point.
"You're right. Gustav is useless against an enemy at close range. That's why we prepared something else for exactly that contingency. I wonder if the distribution is finished."
"The orcs each took one and are inspecting them now. Maintenance should be complete by this point."
"Is that so? Good. Let's go check together."
I went to the orc encampment and called them over.
"Hard work, all of you. Is the maintenance done?"
The largest and most formidable-looking among them rose from his seat and approached.
It was Kraktore, the most renowned warrior among the orcs.
"If it isn't the Great Chieftain. We just finished maintenance. No issues across the board—we can deploy whenever you need us."
At Kraktore's words, Lumina's brow furrowed slightly.
"Lord Isaac is not the Great Chieftain. He is the Chief Administrator of the West."
"Hmph. Our elf friend still loves finding something to pick at the moment an opening appears."
"That is not picking—it is a simple matter of fact… Wait. 'The moment an opening appears'? Anyone hearing that would think I find fault with everything on principle!"
…Wasn't that more or less accurate? I got an earful of lectures myself on a regular basis.
Of course, saying so out loud would only double the volume of scolding that came back, so I swallowed the thought and raised a hand to Lumina in a calming gesture.
"Let them call me what they like. From an orc's perspective, Great Chieftain is hardly strange. Besides, 'Chief Administrator' is just a label those rotting central bastards slapped on me."
"Hahahaha! Our Great Chieftain is refreshingly straightforward—I like a man who talks sense!"
"That's enough chatter. Kraktore—everyone has learned how to handle the equipment, I trust?"
Kraktore thumped his deep-green chest with pride.
"Of course, Great Chieftain! Perfectly mastered! Everyone likes them—nice and compact, light enough to handle easily!"
"…Compact and light, you say."
"Exactly! And the power is a whole different story from how they look, so everyone's thoroughly satisfied! Incidentally—handing these out means we finally get to fight with them, doesn't it?"
"If the South moves the way I expect—"
Just then, several avian demi-humans flew in and called out to me.
"Lord Isaac! An enormous force is massing near the Southern Gate! At a conservative estimate, at least fifty thousand! Knights in steel armor are waiting at the front on horseback—it looks like they're coming this way!"
"The Iron Vanguard, then."
At that name, a shadow fell across every face present.
"Fifty thousand troops… That is effectively the South's entire standing force. They truly mean to wipe us out. And the Iron Vanguard, of all things… Our elves, the orcs, the beastfolk—all of us have a history of being trampled under those hooves."
"I have never faced them myself, but I have heard they were utterly terrifying."
Unlike Lumina and Kraktore, whose expressions had darkened, I felt not the slightest concern.
"The Iron Vanguard will not so much as lay a blade's edge on the West. Kraktore—fifty of your orcs alone would be enough to annihilate that force. Five minutes at the absolute longest."
Doubt spread across Kraktore's face.
"Haha, Great Chieftain. Even if you're trying to raise morale, isn't that a bit much? Not Gustav—just these little toy-sized weapons—wiping out fifty thousand troops, with the Iron Vanguard in the front line, in five minutes? We've test-fired them, so we know the power doesn't match the size, but still…"
"Trust me, Kraktore. It is absolutely possible. For now, we should start by packing the Gustav train full of ammunition."
"Hmm… If the Great Chieftain answers with that much conviction, then we will believe and follow…"
Not entirely free of doubt, Kraktore rose to move the ammunition crates.
He took two steps, then turned back.
"Ah—Great Chieftain. One more thing. We never heard a name for this weapon. Does it have one, the way Gustav does?"
"Hm? You haven't heard the name? This is called…"
I glanced briefly at the weapon Kraktore was holding as lightly as a toy, then told him.
"It's called a minigun."