Anxiety (6)
We arrived back at the village just as the sun was setting.
"Hah... I'm exhausted..."
I'd been swinging spear and sword, casting magic and Holy Magic—all of it—and my body was spent.
"Just a little farther now."
Encouraged by Sister Mary's words, I dragged my legs forward one heavy step at a time and entered the village.
"We can rest now."
My older sister looked utterly worn out from everything she'd been through. Even with Holy Magic restoring her stamina and healing her wounds, it never brought you all the way back. Healing, especially, drained your strength.
But rest would have to wait.
"Sis, you did great. Go rest first."
"What about you, Juli?"
"I have to report what we found, of course."
She seemed to understand how serious it was, because she just nodded.
"You really worked hard today."
I pulled my hardworking sister into a hug and praised her. I was so, so glad I'd brought her along...
If I'd gone on that reconnaissance with only Sister Mary and no sister of mine?
Something terrible might have happened...
I walked my sister home, while Sister Mary went to gather everyone.
The key figures in the village's defense assembled at the self-defense force training grounds, and I headed there as well.
"You said you have something important to tell us?"
The Instructor came straight over the moment he saw me.
"Yes. We heard the Forest of Delusion was restless, so we went on a reconnaissance."
He must have sensed it himself—his expression turned grave.
Priest Daniel and the Holy Knights were present, along with a good number of the self-defense force—not everyone, but many of them.
I explained everything that had happened in the Forest of Delusion in thorough detail, leaving nothing out.
"A Monster Wave?"
The term was clearly unfamiliar to them, so I explained what a Monster Wave was as well.
When I finished, the murmuring grew louder. Of course it did. If a Monster Wave was real, it meant the village was in danger.
"I don't know if it will actually happen. But there are demons who were deliberately trying to make it happen."
I continued. The Lindel Kingdom—those barbarians—had been scheming. The Monster Wave was meant to throw us, no, the Varga Kingdom into chaos. The real goal was the invasion that would follow...
"This is only my theory, but I believe the schemes they ran in the capital are all connected to this."
"If chaos spreads in the capital, reinforcements get delayed. And in that window, they swallow up the land?"
I nodded.
"Hah... It really does all fit together, doesn't it?"
"It's the worst-case assumption, though."
"It's probably the truth."
The Instructor agreed. The one silver lining was that the plot unfolding in the capital had already been stopped. And we'd managed to disrupt the scheme in the Forest of Delusion, at least a little.
Having told them everything, some of my anxiety eased. Now we would face this danger together.
"There's a great deal to discuss."
"I'll leave the rest to you."
I was exhausted, so I decided to head home.
With the Instructor there, they'd handle it well enough... Tomorrow I needed to go to the outpost and deliver the news, so I should get to sleep early.
I woke up the next morning, ate breakfast, and heard from Priest Daniel about the previous night's discussion.
The discussion had split into two camps.
The first proposal was to strengthen the village's defenses. Since no one could say for certain whether the Monster Wave was real, they should focus on defending the village as they had been—no, focus even harder on it.
The second proposal, put forward by Priest Daniel, was to gather only the most capable people and send them into the Forest of Delusion to cull the monsters. Either trigger a Monster Wave in reverse, or clear out the monsters in advance so that the displaced ones would cascade into empty territory like falling dominoes. Neither option was bad, so a heated debate followed.
In the end, though, the self-defense force's proposal to focus on village defense won out.
"The main concern was that if we left our posts and the village came under attack, the damage would be severe."
That was a real weak point. Sending people into the Forest of Delusion on a regular basis would leave gaps in the defenses. Strengthening the village's fortifications, on the other hand? It might mean a prolonged fight, but the defense itself would be airtight.
When you weighed everything, focusing solely on defense was the right call if the goal was to minimize harm to the village.
"Is that so?"
"Of course, if you have a better strategy, Saintess, we can pursue that instead."
Nothing particular came to mind for me either.
"I don't have anything either."
After getting a full briefing from Priest Daniel, I headed straight for the outpost.
This time the Young Master must have been there, because the moment I arrived he came rushing out... How he even knew I'd come was enough to give me chills.
"What brings you here?"
Looking at the Young Master standing in front of me, I couldn't help picturing a dog wagging its tail. A big dog. A retriever, was it? Something like that.
Thinking that was probably rude of me. And there were more important matters at hand.
"I came to share some important information we obtained in the Forest of Delusion."
"Information... you say?"
The Young Master took on a cautious demeanor.
"Yes. Information you absolutely need to know."
This being my third time explaining it, I managed to be more fluent, cleaner, and more organized. But the people here didn't know what a Monster Wave was either...
Well, with monster territories having shrunk as they had, it was a phenomenon that no longer occurred. So that made sense.
"It all fits together far too well."
The knights attending the meeting wore grave expressions.
"Y-you said you eliminated the group that was orchestrating this?"
"Yes. It would be nice if that stopped the Monster Wave, but that's unlikely. When those people don't return, someone will come looking for them."
"Everything fits so perfectly that it's making me uneasy."
One knight's anxious words rang out, and the unease spread like a contagion.
"A large-scale offensive—just how many are we talking about?"
"Can the soldiers we have here even hold them off?"
"Wouldn't it be better to head back right now and prepare for a siege?"
"Maybe we should evacuate the people instead?"
The contagious anxiety bred chaos and conjured up fears that didn't even exist yet. To suppress it, I cast a Holy Magic spell for mental calming.
"Has everyone calmed down?"
Having your mind forcibly settled felt pretty awful. Judging by their dazed, vaguely irritated expressions, everyone else felt the same way.
"Miss Julian, what have you decided to do?"
"Our village?"
"Yes. I imagine there was a great deal of deliberation there as well."
I relayed exactly what Priest Daniel had explained to me that morning.
"Creating a Monster Wave in reverse is certainly a novel idea."
"Well, it wouldn't have been easy, and it was scrapped because of the problem of weakening our defenses."
The Young Master fell into thought. I'd heard there were about a thousand soldiers stationed at this outpost. A thousand could be considered a lot—but the problem was that no one knew the enemy's scale.
If the numbers were comparable, fine. But if the enemy vastly outnumbered them? They'd be forced into a thoroughly disadvantageous war of attrition.
Unless they had enough mages to shatter the enemy's strategy and tactics...
The meeting didn't last long. It wasn't something that could be decided easily in the first place, and my presence there was a bit odd to begin with.
"You're heading back, then."
"Yes. There isn't much I can do, but I plan to put up more fortifications and prepare."
The Young Master looked at me with worried eyes.
"I'd like to tell you to run, since it's dangerous."
"You've helped me so much that I'd like to listen to most of what you say—but that one, I don't think I can."
"Yes, I know. Then at least, please don't push yourself too hard."
He was worried about me... I knew I shouldn't feel this way, but it made me a little happy.
"D-don't worry too much. I did request aid from the Church."
"Is that so?"
"I don't know when they'll arrive, though. And also..."
I stepped closer, rose up on my tiptoes, and whispered quietly.
"There are already six Holy Knights in the village right now."
The Young Master's eyes went wide.
"Last time, they said the merchant caravan was a joint venture with the Church."
"Ah, so then..."
"There were Church people among them."
And so I had left people behind for the village's defense.
"Anyway, don't worry too much about our side—worry about yourself, Young Master."
"Yes, I understand."
"Well then, I hope we meet again alive."
"I'd rather you didn't say such ominous things..."
The Young Master looked mildly displeased, and seeing that, I laughed.
"You're right. I hope we can laugh about what I just said later on."
I turned and left, and the Young Master saw me off in silence.
Back at the village, I raised more fortifications around the perimeter. Focusing especially on the side facing the Forest of Delusion, I built walls until the once wide-open village began to look like a small fortress.
"You've been working hard."
A Holy Knight approached. His name was... I couldn't remember.
"I have to do at least this much."
"It really drives home how important mages are in war."
"Is that so?"
The Holy Knight patted the wall I'd built as he spoke.
"How long do you think it would take to build a wall like this?"
Uh, well...?
"W-well, I don't know? I've never thought about it."
The closest thing I could recall was the village construction work. Factoring that in and making a rough estimate...
I'd built it with magic in two days. If you replaced that with ordinary manpower...?
"About ten days?"
"Haha. Something of this scale would take over a month."
A month?!
"It takes that long?"
"Without magic, you couldn't even pack the earth this solidly. There's a reason walls are built from stone."
You either fitted stones of matching sizes with no gaps, used lime mortar, or made bricks entirely from scratch.
Building the way I did—crudely yanking up the earth and roughly fixing it in place—was nearly impossible without magic.
"Earthen fortifications like these are especially difficult."
"I suppose so."
I found myself freshly appreciating just how remarkable magic was.
"I don't know how much of a difference this wall will make, but at the very least, it will put people's minds at ease."
"You're right..."
I looked at the wall I'd raised. The whole time I'd been building it, I'd kept fretting. Would it even help? Should I make it taller? Thoughts like that.
"Thank you."
"Not at all. Looking at this puts our minds a little more at ease as well."
He said he'd been a Holy Knight for nearly ten years, but he'd never properly experienced war, and that made him afraid.
"I worry that someone might get hurt because of my mistakes, and I worry whether I'll even be able to fight properly."
He touched the wall again.
"With this wall here, at least those worries ease a little, don't they?"
He laughed heartily and headed back.
Hearing that put my own heart at ease as well.