Night in the Kingdom and Capital
The battlefield.
A place where countless lives were extinguished in an instant.
People turned into lifeless lumps of flesh in the blink of an eye. Then, once they regained their senses, they realized the shallow puddle they had waded through was a sea of blood and let out a scream.
Underfoot lay corpses. A colleague they had spoken with only a day ago. Years, decades, centuries later.
Humanity had kept fighting endless wars for survival.
"Clear the way ahead!!"
"Is the circuit ready?!"
"Almost done!!"
Black waves surged beyond the hill.
Demons, monsters. Countless waves rushed in with the intent to swallow humans whole, and the soldiers gladly offered their own bodies as shields.
At the center, countless mages prepared spells.
A victory bought at the cost of countless lives. In other words, a massive spell that could only be attempted with countless sacrifices.
The mages sweated profusely as they drew magic circles to break through the approaching black waves.
After the magic circles were prepared and positioned, they poured out countless amounts of mana.
The black waves submerged themselves along with the blood pools and corpses in their own momentum.
Knights and soldiers stabbed, sliced, and hacked at the monsters in the waves with bloodthirsty expressions.
But it was futile. No matter how many times they hacked and sliced, the opponents kept pouring down from beyond the hill.
The difference in numbers was so vast that it seemed pointless to cut through water with a sword.
In that moment, the Legion Leader Ol Tore shouted loudly from behind.
"Ready! Everyone, fall back!!!!"
As if waiting for that voice, the soldiers and knights facing the black waves and the wave of demons all retreated hastily.
Hundreds of meters away, a magic circle rose from the ground, and a massive shield isolated everything inside and outside it.
The soldiers and knights who had barely launched their bodies caught their breath while staring at the monsters just a few steps away baring their teeth toward them.
A brilliant light illuminated the dark sky as a pillar of light began to rise. Soon, all the monsters in the area would be wiped out.
The mages had prepared the spell for a full month. This battlefield fortress had been protected with all their lives.
"Go to hell, you monsters."
One soldier slammed his body against the shield, raised his middle finger at the rampaging monster, and looked up at the sky.
The light pillar would reach the ground in just a few seconds. The goal of maintaining this battlefield was about to be achieved.
Boom!!
But there was no way that would happen from the soldier’s eyes, and nothing that was bound to occur actually did.
The light pillar prepared by the mages for a full month shattered.
In that instant, all the mages convulsed and lost consciousness.
Ol Tore felt the distortion of the mana he sensed at the exact moment the light pillar broke, and it had begun from somewhere.
When he looked there, what he saw was the Calamity Witch.
A sinister miasma that tightened his heart told him that the Calamity Witch was over there.
They could not win.
The Legion Leader Ol Tore realized it instinctively.
"Where is Lord Ivan!!"
"No matter how fast, tomorrow at the latest···!!"
There was no hero here capable of disrupting the attention of that Calamity Witch.
Crack.
Ol Tore gritted his teeth as if they would shatter.
If there had been even one hero, if there had been a hero who could buy time, perhaps…
One hero had not shown his face on the battlefield for months, and the other had to shoulder the burden of both alone and could not even come to this battlefield.
No matter how the mages gathered all their power, they were rendered powerless by the appearance of the Calamity Witch itself, a natural disaster.
The only way to maintain the front line right now was for someone to obstruct the Calamity Witch’s activities and create an environment where the mages could focus.
But who in the world? There was no hero, and even if the person here was up to the task, they would not last.
Right now, Ol Tore had to make a decision.
"Retreat!!"
He told every person on the battlefield with a voice that would burst their lungs.
If even the last remaining fortress and the protective barrier were broken, total annihilation would follow.
That was why they had no choice but to order a retreat from the battlefield.
Countless had died, and countless sacrifices had been made to reach this point.
What they had gained had been barely scraped together on a sea of corpses, but what they had lost had vanished in an instant, more emptily than anything.
Ol Tore barely managed to sheath the sword in his hand and stared at the waves coming from beyond the hill.
‘…If only Rigel were here.’
***
The kingdom’s capital.
Inside the small white house nestled between two grand buildings, silence reigned.
Today was the weekend. In other words, a day with no classes and no other schedule.
‘Bored.’
I had been lost in thought. Lying on the sofa in the middle of my living room, I was deep in serious contemplation.
I had not realized that having literally nothing to do would be this tormenting.
I had read all the books in the house, and the new ones did not look particularly interesting.
During previous weekends, I had spent them on academy schedules or buying necessary furniture, but today there was truly nothing to do.
‘Can’t just slouch around like this.’
No thoughts, no actions. And if there was no purpose behind it, that was the worst.
The philosophy I had learned from the knights, one I had agreed with.
My body had already recovered, and my mind was perfectly clear with no stress at all.
Simply lying on the sofa was a waste of time.
I sat up abruptly and looked at myself in the mirror placed in the corner.
I had already washed up, and the clothes were simple enough for a casual outing. I should have gone for a walk instead of just sitting here.
"Ugh…"
I bit the headband on the table and swept my side and front hair up with my hands, gathering it in my palm.
I then held the headband in my right hand and tied my hair up.
I slipped on my boots, tapped the front and back to check for any discomfort, and stepped out the door.
Outside, the night was just beginning to fall and it was chilly. It felt especially cold today, though the wind was not blowing hard.
My home was in a quiet residential area with nothing special, so to experience something different from the usual, I had come out of the neighborhood.
Unlike the academy, which always had avenues of trees everywhere, the ordinary streets of the capital had a somewhat hard, vintage feel with walls built entirely of bricks.
There were places that looked worn out here and there, and in the inner parts of the alleys, there were ordinary streets that seemed to signal danger.
As I walked slowly, taking in the capital I had never really observed with my own eyes before, I stopped in front of a building.
It was a bar.
A bar, sometimes called a pub, was a little different from the noisy inns where adventurers and soldiers drank and roared with loud voices.
‘Now that I think about it, I’ve never once drank in a body like this.’
Rondo, that senior, wondered why such noisy bars were good.
I would come to this kind of bar whenever I came to the capital and drink, but I actually liked this kind of place.
‘Let’s just drink a little cleanly.’
Clink.
As I opened the door and entered, dim lighting and dozens of bottles of various colors on the shelf came into view.
At the same time, many eyes focused on me, but I ignored them and sat on the bar chair.
"Welcome. Miss. Are you of legal age?"
Eh.
I could not help but be startled by that. I had never had the bartender ask that before, but now I was forced to be startled.
"Y-yes, I am."
"…Hmm."
The bartender, with her hair tied in two braids, looked at me suspiciously.
Did I look that young? Surely I wouldn’t be turned away at the door?
I rummaged through the pockets of my clothes and found a brooch with the Farnike Academy emblem.
I must have tucked it in somewhere by mistake after putting it on my uniform.
"I’m a student of Farnike Academy."
"Yes, if so, what can I do for you."
That alone did not seem like enough for her to understand, but luckily the bartender went along with it reasonably.
The legal age to enter the academy was adulthood by kingdom standards, so it seemed she had accepted it reasonably.
The conversation of the people who had been chatting casually around stopped for a moment at my words, but it soon resumed as before.
If it was a young lady of the level to come to the academy, she would go somewhere more upscale instead. Places like this on the streets were not worth entering.
"What would you like to drink? If it’s your first time, how about something sweet?"
"No, this one please."
I looked at the menu, pointed at a familiar drink from my memories, and ordered. The bartender blinked and looked at me.
"Oh, young lady… I mean, customer. That drink is quite hot and bitter going down, are you sure?"
"It’s fine. I’ve drunk a lot of it before."
In my memories, it was a drink with a moderate burn that I remembered as easy to drink lightly.
I nodded and spoke to the bartender, who was slightly taller than me, and she paused before opening her mouth.
"I understand."
The bartender bowed her head and turned her body to start blending.
While she did that, I looked around the entire place. The people here seemed to be locals who had established themselves in the capital, and their clothing looked neater than that of adventurers or ordinary people.
‘The atmosphere is pretty good.’
The bartender’s actions were polite, and the store was also neat.
Leaning my chin on my hand, my eyes on the drink, a glass containing the drink I had ordered appeared with a clink.
"Here it is."
"Mmm, nice. Exactly the same as I saw several years ago…"
"Several years ago…?"
"Colloquial."
With this face, several years ago would be a problem.
Anyway, since the drink I had ordered was exactly the kind I remembered drinking before, memories of the past began to surface.
Back then, I had come with some friends and chugged it in one shot without knowing anything. I really had the stamina back then, so I could do that kind of thing.
My small hand held the cup with a slightly cool sensation.
‘Looks like a bit more than before. Back then it was smaller.’
Still, it didn’t seem like enough to get drunk. The amount to get drunk on was four or five glasses of this.
I took a quick sniff of the aroma at the tip of my nose and, with a slight smile, closed my eyes and gulped down the drink.
The next moment, what I saw in front of my eyes was the familiar ceiling of my house.
And a headache as if someone was squeezing my head.
The night was quiet, the capital’s streets were asleep, and somewhere in the distance the light pillar still stood.