The Calm Before the Storm (2)

Knock, knock, knock!

"Albar de Sternfelt. May I come in?"

"Come in."

Click. The door creaked open. With the Third Prince's leave, I stepped inside.

"Sorry to drag you out at this hour."

"Not at all, Your Highness. What's the situation?"

The Third Prince handed me a sheet of parchment.

So that's how His Highness already knew.

On it were the latest numbers and movements of the Second Prince's army—and, more importantly, the flow of their money.

What leapt off the page was that money trail. The nobles had scraped together a fortune, and every last coin of it had gone to the Blue Magic Tower.

"How did you find this out?"

"…I was the one who introduced Count Windhafen to the Second Prince, was I not? Of course I still have a few strings I can pull."

Right. He was the one who'd egged on the Second Prince's conspiracy in the first place. The early days of that faction were, for all intents and purposes, this man's handiwork. Given that, it wasn't strange at all that the Third Prince's intelligence network still had roots in the east.

"By the way, Your Highness—what does the Blue Magic Tower actually specialize in?"

I knew less about the Magic Towers than I cared to admit. Everything I had was surface-level gossip that had leaked outside their walls. Rank structures, how they were run—those were transparent enough even from a distance. You couldn't hide that sort of thing if you tried, and there was no reason to hide it anyway. What I didn't have was the part that mattered: which magics each tower researched, and what they were actually good at.

Research notes and results circulated only inside the towers, so outsiders were always going to be in the dark—but a bigger share of the blame sat with me. I simply hadn't cared. I had the grimoire Master gave me. I never needed to cling to Magic Tower spells. In any ordinary life I would have paid a premium to get my hands on magic from the towers—the mecca of the craft. Inti's grimoire was so far beyond them that I hadn't bothered. The result, unfortunately, was that I was now ignorant of the towers themselves.

"Most mages can recite the histories of the continent's Magic Towers as if they were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nursery rhymes. Why is it that you… ah. Of course."

…? Why did he trail off like that? He seemed to have arrived at some private understanding, but I had no idea which part of me had explained it. Well. Not my problem.

The Third Prince began his briefing on the Blue Magic Tower.

"The Blue Magic Tower deals primarily in water, ice, and weather, as I understand it. You've seen the freezing artifacts in noble kitchens, yes?"

"You mean refrigerators?"

"Refrigerators? Well, I take your meaning. Most of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠those temperature-control artifacts are Blue Magic Tower work."

So these people mainly used something like Water Release from a certain ninja manga? …Though in that manga, the nickname readers gave the poster boy for Water Release was, well, something I'd rather not repeat. Surely we weren't about to get someone like that here too?

"From what we've ascertained, they've hired only one man."

Huh? With that much money, they'd hired one person?

"Who?"

"The Vice Tower Master of the Blue Magic Tower. Frostrich."

"No family name. Commoner-born, as I understand it."

The Third Prince added that last part, but it hardly mattered. What mattered was how many Circles this one hire actually had. Anyone they'd spent that kind of fortune to bring in would not be ordinary.

"How many Circles?"

"Sixth. The Vice Tower Master of the Blue Magic Tower is Sixth Circle."

Yeah. That was enough to come alone. Sixth Circle. A genuine Archmage.

There was a reason Sixth Circle mages were called Archmages. From that threshold on, it was a realm of talent that effort alone could never reach—and the power sat on another plane entirely. Long-range spatial magic like Teleport, weather-manipulation magic like Weather Control—all of it was Sixth Circle. Even I, reasonably fluent at the Fifth Circle, hadn't so much as grazed the Sixth. It was a domain packed with spells of vast scale and crushing force, or ones that seemed to throw common sense and the laws of physics straight out the window.

The Third Prince said weather manipulation was one of the Blue Magic Tower's specialties, didn't he? That alone was a headache. From what I'd seen in Inti's grimoire, it might not be enough to whip up a full-blown storm, but it could drop a serious amount of rain without any trouble. If the rain falls only on our side while the enemy sits in clear weather? That by itself would be a nightmare. Stamina would drain twice as fast, fatigue would linger, and even with spring coming we'd still see hypothermia cases piling up. No direct casualties required. That much could swing an entire battle.

"Well? Do you think you have an answer?"

"It'll be difficult. But I don't think we're completely without options."

"And those are?"

He looked like a man waiting for some stroke of genius. I was going to have to disappoint him.

"We keep feeding infantry into the line. The Magic Corps and the knights deliver the real blows."

In other words, we would overload the enemy mage. I always say this: no matter how much of a fantasy this world is, no matter how monstrous an individual may be, they're still human. There is a hard ceiling on what one person can do. Granted, that ceiling might sit as high as hundreds or thousands of ordinary men stacked together. In that case, you ram those hundreds and thousands into them. Sorry to the infantry who'll get ground down. Victory has a price.

This was probably the only solution—especially now, when we were facing not just a Sixth Circle mage but, almost certainly, a Sword Master as well. We'll have to stack a wall of infantry and hold, so the Sword Master can't physically close the distance.

Ah. One last thing. If we were going to keep the infantry from being chewed up any worse than necessary, there was something we absolutely needed.

"Your Highness, could I trouble you for a bit more funding?"

"What is it now? Something else the Magic Corps needs?"

"No."

Not the Magic Corps. The infantry.

I told him what we required.

"Orai, orai!"

"What on earth is that supposed to mean? Ah—put that over there, if you would."

Hans had come over to pick at me. As long as the gist got across, did he have to be so snippy about it?

Anyway, what the Weispentel territorial troops were hauling ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just then was a load of iron shovels. Roughly fifty of them? That was about one for every two men—a little short of ideal, but not a bad number. The other infantry units are getting them at a similar ratio, right? I think so. In that case it wouldn't be the few thousand I'd asked for. It would be tens of thousands of shovels issued across the army.

I got an earful for it, too. Something about whether I planned to bankrupt not just the territory's budget but the whole country's. Even though we'd issued shovels of wrought iron instead of steel, it had apparently cost a staggering sum—enough to show up as a percentage of the entire nation's tax revenue. Money on a scale I couldn't easily picture. Tch. In my past life we could've issued every man a steel entrenching tool, folding function and all.

That was what you got when metallurgy developed as a parasite on magic and never learned to stand on its own. Damn medieval fantasy. Still, after all that trouble, at least we got wrought-iron shovels into people's hands. I'll take it. Better than stone. I'd settle for that.

And what did I want the shovels for? Trench warfare, of course.

It wasn't as if trench tactics didn't exist in a medieval fantasy otherworld. Digging pits for ambushes or as traps was already a well-worn trick; nobody here would call it revolutionary. But has anyone ever put this many men to digging trenches at once? Probably not.

I had several reasons for thinking so. First: iron was scarce, so shovels were scarce. More precisely, shovels light enough to actually use. Some commoners were still working with stone tools, you know? That was what happened when metal was simply too expensive. Because magic could more or less handle everything, technology hadn't grown along those lines. Production had gone high-mix, low-volume, and metal had become a precious commodity. This batch was wrought iron, so the quality was nothing to brag about—but they were still metal shovels, and we had them in bulk. That would do.

Second: on a battlefield where the knight meta had taken over and ranged projectile weapons had fallen by the wayside, a trench might slow an advance, but it was no fundamental answer. Bows, javelins, slings—most of what infantry could throw had a hard time putting a dent in full plate. If you wanted to actually hurt a knight, you'd need something like a mechanical crossbow… and as I said, metal was a precious commodity. In a meta that dumped everything into knights with overwhelming defense and stamina, a trench couldn't mean much more than a grave for infantry.

We, however, had a solution. The Altar Cannon.

Even a knight couldn't shrug off a Fire Ball coming off an Altar Cannon. A clean hit meant serious injury at minimum; if you were unlucky, you were done in a single shot. Skilled knights could see them coming and dodge or cut them down, of course—but could they do that when dozens, even hundreds, of shots were in the air at once? As far as I could tell, the only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠people who could pull that off were Sword Masters.

The civil war will probably be decided in three places. First: whether the enemy infantry can break through the trenches. Second: whether the enemy Sword Master can break through our knights. Third: how many variables the enemy mage can force onto the field.

Even if we handle the first two, the third is the real problem. We couldn't even gauge how well the other side could wield Sixth Circle magic. Jumping to conclusions was the fastest way to get people killed. In the end, we'll only know once we clash.

I could only pray the result would be ours.