The Massacre
Archduke Harth of the South, having entrusted the vanguard to the Iron Vanguard, could not imagine defeat even in the slightest.
Whatever the West had done, completely obliterating the gate linking South and West—along with its walls—was certainly threatening. But that one-off strike had gone no further.
If they still had the strength to unleash another attack of that magnitude, they would not have stopped at the gate; they would have kept pounding until several cities were gone, flaunting their military power for all to see.
That they had not meant they had poured everything into that single shot and could not press the offensive. It was a gamble, hoping the South would lose the will to fight after that surprise blow and simply surrender.
That idiot. Looking down on the spirit of the South? The damage is real, but it is not irreparable, and our core facilities took no hit at all! He thought turning the gate into a wasteland would make us panic and fold—not a chance! We will reverse the charge and turn the West into a sea of fire!
In truth, dragging more than fifty thousand troops—including knights and mages—was excessive. But Harth could not forgive the West’s savages for daring to kill one of their precious strategic assets, a Sword Master, and for reducing the gate and walls to rubble.
Nothing short of sending an absurdly large force to trample the entire West, beheading every barbarian in sight and reducing everything to flame, would cool his rage.
In that regard, the Iron Vanguard was the finest unit to put on the front line. Every man was at least a Sword Expert; the officers were all Sword Masters. Since the opening of the Second Era, the Iron Vanguard had never lost a battle against the demi-humans in all of history.
They possessed tremendous aura, were masters of the blade, could freely convert aura into defense, and every last one of them was an exceptional horseman with overwhelming mobility. The very name Iron Vanguard was a symbol of Southern victory; no mere competent swordsman could join.
Only those who survived brutal, exacting trials earned the right. Clad head to toe in steel plate and charging, those men could each cut down a hundred barbarians alone—that was the Iron Vanguard.
“There! Something ahead! Looks like a train!”
“A train?”
Receiving the Iron Vanguard’s report, Harth checked the front through a telescope as he rode. Sure enough, a single train sat on the rails—a black train so enormous its size was unmistakable even at this distance. The moment he saw the massive barrel mounted on it, Harth knew it was a cannon.
So that is what reduced the gate and walls to that state? Even if it is only a First Era conventional weapon, it is certainly huge. Of course that alone did not break the defense line, but it must have contributed.
It never crossed Harth’s mind that a single shot from Gustav could have vaporized the entire area. He dismissed it as merely “a very large, very strong cannon.” And the instant he saw it, he was certain of victory.
A cannon that size cannot fire close without catching itself in the blast! Even if they force a shot, they cannot fire again, and one round will not wipe us out! This fight is over!
Harth smiled in triumph and gave the order.
“Iron Vanguard! Wrap yourselves in aura, harden your defense, and charge! The enemy’s weapon is that giant cannon on the train! It will hit hard, but do not fear it! At that size they will get off one shot at best! Show them the will of the Iron Vanguard, who fear not even death! Sweep them away to the last man!”
“Uwaaaaaah!”
Nearly two thousand Iron Vanguard roared and spurred their mounts. Blue aura flared around the massive shields they held as they thundered forward, ready to smash through shield-first if need be.
By the time the distance had closed enough for the Western force’s weapons to be visible to the naked eye—
What is that?
Harth frowned at the fifty orcs holding weapons of a shape he had never seen in his life.
Only that many? No cover for an ambush on open plain like this, and the mages already confirmed there are no traps! That Isaac has lost his mind putting on airs!
He was already sneering at Isaac, thinking the battle would be even more anticlimactic than expected, when—
Dudududududu—
A tremendous noise erupted from the front. And then—
Thud—! Thud—!
In a mere three seconds, the Iron Vanguard at the head of the charge began tumbling from their horses in droves.
“Wh-what!”
Horses armored in war-plate collapsed where they stood; the mountain-like Iron Vanguard, clad in steel plate, shields, and aura, fell like puppets with their strings cut.
“If this is some kind of joke—”
Harth’s anger died mid-sentence. He saw blood pouring from the fallen vanguard, soaking the earth.
Impossible! Magic? No—no magic can wipe out two thousand Iron Vanguard in three seconds! At this range?! What the hell is happening!
Heart pounding, he snapped the next order.
“Sh-shield formation! Hold the front!”
“Yes, Your Grace!”
“Shield formation! Move up at once and protect His Grace—ghk—!”
Southern soldiers thrust out massive steel tower shields and began forming a defensive line. But something flying from far beyond, too fast to see, punched through those immensely durable steel shields like paper—and kept going, boring through the steel armor beneath and killing the men inside.
Soldiers who had stepped forward to form the shield wall died in heaps without ever knowing what hit them. Sensing something had gone catastrophically wrong, Harth urgently called for the mages.
“R-rear! Barriers!”
“Yes! Get His Grace back here at once!”
One mage teleported Harth to the rear while thousands of mages raised protective barriers in unison. A barrier powered by a mage corps of that size at full strength was said to be invincible—
Dududududu—
Craaack!
The invisible barrage kept coming. The colossal barrier shattered in less than a second. What followed was a massacre.
“Th-the barrier… ghk!”
“Guhh!”
“Aaaagh!”
“Wh-what’s flying—ugh…!”
If men in steel shields and plate could not hold, the relatively lightly protected mages had no chance. Thousands of mages collapsed in fountains of blood. Harth flattened himself against the ground in terror, trembling. Scattered before his eyes were countless tiny metal fragments.
“Metal shards…? Damn it all! What the hell is going onnnn!!!”
Harth howled as if coughing up blood, but there was nothing he could do.
“Uwahahahaha! This is absolutely killing it!”
“Those guys who just went down—were they really the Iron Vanguard? You sure you didn’t plant some nobodies and lie to us?”
“Kwahaha! Look at those bastards getting swept away like autumn leaves!”
To the very end, Kraktore and the orcs had not quite managed to hide a last thread of unease. But the moment the miniguns opened fire, the Iron Vanguard charging in the first rank began spilling from their saddles within three seconds—and the mood flipped completely.
To them, the Iron Vanguard’s peerless swordsmanship and aura, their shields and steel plate, the sheer speed of a cavalry charge, had always been pure catastrophe.
From the close of the First Era to this day, the entire history of the demi-human races had been one of defeat against humanity’s elite units like the Iron Vanguard. Watching one of the forces that had crushed them most thoroughly die without even closing the distance was pure, overwhelming ecstasy.
“Wahahaha! Kill them all! Iron Vanguard, mages—nothing to fear!”
“This is the debt of our entire race’s history, you pieces of trash!”
A minigun was monstrously heavy on its own; add the weight of the ammunition and the brutal recoil and you were looking at well over a hundred kilograms at minimum. The orcs were shouldering them one-handed and firing as if they were toy guns. Even with that kind of raw power, the orcs—unable to use magic or aura—had lived under humanity’s merciless slaughter…
Not anymore.
All that vaunted magic and aura meant nothing in front of modern weapons. The aura wrapping the Iron Vanguard tore like tissue. The massive barriers the mages raised burst like tofu. They had said at least fifty thousand troops were coming.
It took less than five minutes for those forces to suffer near-total annihilation. When fifty thousand men failed to lay a finger on fifty orcs and were annihilated from a kilometer away, the lucky survivors completely lost the will to fight and surrendered.
Kraktore, wildly excited, called to me as we approached the mountain of Southern corpses.
“Great Chieftain! In all my life I never dreamed we would win a victory this one-sided, this overwhelming!”
“Do you have a little more faith now, Kraktore?”
Kraktore made a deep, rumbling sound in his throat—the habit orcs fell into when their emotions ran high.
“You settled our people’s lifelong grudge! What more is there? This Kraktore and every warrior under me—if the Great Chieftain ordered us to douse ourselves in oil and leap into a firepit, we would leap gladly!”
“No. Do not follow orders like that. You are precious residents of the West—especially skilled ones. Treasure your lives.”
“Khh…!”
Orcs who had never been treated as people in their lives wiped away tears of emotion at those words, making soft, choked sounds as they wept.
Meanwhile, high above, the birdmen wheeled through the sky, surveying the battlefield after the fighting ended. Their young female leader, the beastman Abella, flew down to me.
“Lord Isaac, there don’t seem to be even five hundred left alive. None of them even thought about running—they’re just frozen where they stand.”
“Good work. Abella, you and yours are done here. Head back to the train and rest if you like. Or tag along and watch—whichever you prefer.”
“Heehee! Looks fun, so I’ll stick around and help out while I’m at it!”
The rest of us began taking the survivors prisoner. Overwhelmed by the sheer disparity in firepower, they offered no resistance and accepted their bonds in a daze. And among those survivors…
“Well now, if it isn’t the Archduke of the South. You once claimed Western air was too filthy to touch your clothes and sent Leon to the negotiations in your place. Change of heart?”
Archduke Harth was among them. Like the others, he was staring blankly at the sky, his mind gone.
“This can’t be… This cannot be… It’s a dream… It’s only a dream… This can’t be real… I’m having a nightmare… Something like this is impossible…”
Having witnessed a one-sided slaughter so complete that “crushing defeat” did not begin to describe it—a battle that had never even been allowed to form—he was in full cognitive dissonance, denying reality itself.
“Unfortunately, this is reality, so waking up is not an option. If you had simply accepted the terms I offered early on, this tragedy need never have happened. A pity, truly.”
Harth finally came back to himself enough to look at me. Then he started raving.
“You…! Isaac, you bastard…!!! You… you used black magic! Plague and curses! Nothing else could make this—”
“Black magic? Plague and curses? When you have real power, you have no need to lean on such filthy tricks.”
“Don’t lie! You’re a heretic! You’ve colluded with black mages—I’m sure of it! The Empire will brand you a traitor, and the Holy Nation will send Inquisitors for this! Don’t think you’ll even make it to hell when you die! You filthy, disgusting—”
Watching Harth spit nonsense with his mind gone, I clicked my tongue in pity and called the subordinates following me.
“Lumina. Kraktore. Rondar. Abella.”
“Yes, Lord Isaac.”
“Orders, Great Chieftain?”
“Still work left, boss?”
“You called?”
“It seems our dear Archduke of the South is having difficulty accepting reality after the shock.”
“Want me to fix that for him, Great Chieftain?”
Kraktore growled and lifted a minigun in one hand. Harth flinched hard at the sight of the weapon—but—
“No need. We brought something that will make him face reality soon enough without that kind of violence. Let’s see… Lumina? Of the military facilities in the South, which is closest to a civilian city?”
“According to reconnaissance from the leopard beastmen, there is a large-scale depot of military supplies, food, and weapons thirty-two kilometers northeast of the previous firing position.”
“Perfect timing. Divide the prisoners among the support trains—five armed guards per train. If any prisoner causes trouble, kill them all. Everyone else, grab only what is useful and come with me.”
My next words drew a great cheer from the demi-humans on the field.
“We must give our dear Archduke of the South a personal demonstration of Gustav.”
