51. Toward the Academy (2)
51. Toward the Academy (2)
"Craft."
I sealed the carriages inside walls of packed earth and stone. Unless someone physically lifted the carriages, there was no way to harm Karina. I told the knights, visibly startled by my Skill, to guard her well, then threw myself into the chaotic battlefield.
Goblins, orcs, werewolves, trolls, monsters I couldn't name... Every so often I caught glimpses of humans in suspicious garb shouting something and charging at the knights. Were those Cult of Halphas bastards?
What a shitshow.
Where the hell did they all come from?
And had they all been boozing or something? Why were their eyes so red? Looking closer, they almost seemed about to burst. Even at a glance, they didn't look right in the head.
Definitely not in a normal state. And what happened to the damn sentries that nobody noticed until they were practically on top of us? When I scanned around, I saw the soldiers hadn't managed to form ranks and were getting picked off little by little.
Had a month without incident made us complacent?
The journey had been absurdly uneventful, but I still hadn't expected everyone to relax enough to miss an attack. Or maybe, because our force was so large, no one had even considered that we might be attacked.
"...First I'd better protect the non-combatants."
I quickly scanned the area and found the priests and servants clustered together. Soldiers guarded the perimeter, but a troll's relentless assault was slowly driving them back. I kicked off the ground and circled behind it. I didn't know whether it shared a human's weak points, but taking out the monster giving the soldiers the most trouble came first.
Earthen structures couldn't inflict meaningful damage, so this time...
Right behind the troll, I activated my Skill.
"Craft."
The ground collapsed. The troll, which had been proudly displaying its five-meter height, suddenly lurched as the earth dropped away beneath it, bringing its head down to eye level. Over its shoulder, I could see the soldiers' faces flooded with confusion at the sudden development. Before the troll could recover, I scrambled onto its shoulders and drove the shovel blade into the back of its skull.
Once, twice, three times.
No tree stayed standing after ten chops. As I hammered away like a madman at the troll's needlessly hard skull, its movements began to slow. The soldiers quickly caught on and attacked its limbs so it couldn't strike me. In the end, our combined assault brought even the fearsome troll crashing onto the dirt with its head split in half.
"Anyone injured?"
"No. Thanks to you..."
A smear of soup remained at the corner of his mouth. It looked like he'd been eating when he hurriedly grabbed his weapon. I looked at the soldier who had been dragged into this mess without even finishing his meal and said,
"I'll handle things here, so go support the others. Tell your comrades too."
"Yes? But..."
"I've got a way."
"...Understood."
Taking down the troll seemed to have made my words more credible. Maybe this was a good chance to show the soldiers what I could do. In military terms, I was worth about a company of combat engineers.
Probably.
Fortunately, the soldiers didn't argue. They scattered to help the others. That left only the priests and servants. I shouted to the frightened group.
"Priests! And servants! Stay together! Do not move!"
At my command, the priests and servants pressed tightly together. Good. It was nice when people listened.
This was all thanks to the endless assortment of things I'd built during this boring journey.
I eyeballed the rough dimensions and planted the shovel in the ground.
"Craft."
A huge earthen hut, crude to the point of looking tacky, rose around the priests and servants. With nothing but dirt for material, I couldn't call it especially sturdy, but stones or clubs wouldn't break through it easily.
For good measure, I made a simple moat around it to block any goblins that might approach.
That should hold against most things.
I took my eyes off them and scanned the battlefield.
Where had Millia and Reni gone? Reni aside, Millia's combat ability probably topped out at a hard-fought match against a chihuahua. I stabbed the shovel politely into the heads of charging goblins while I searched for Millia.
"Millia!"
"Yohan! Save meeeeee!"
I looked at the orc chasing after Millia as she ran toward me in tears. The orc, clutching a rusty axe of unknown origin, seemed to have taken a particular liking to Millia's red hair, because it ignored everyone else and moved only to pursue her.
"Craft."
I raised an ankle-high barrier between Millia and the orc. When it tripped and exposed an opening, I launched myself forward. The orc's bald green head rushed toward me, its eyes fixed on mine. It tried to raise its axe to block, but it couldn't stop my attack from that broken stance. I pulled the shovel blade, buried halfway into its head, free. Brain matter and blood spilled from the split skull.
It was a sickening sight.
"Yohan! I was so scared!"
Don't cling to me. Splattered brain matter had made my clothes sticky.
"See that building over there? Go there."
"Got it!"
Millia dashed inside the building I'd made.
It was time to keep moving.
I threw myself toward the collapsing battle line.
First, the ones wearing Cult of Halphas robes. Killing humans felt unpleasant, but what was the point of hesitating now? Hydra, bear, or human—they were all living creatures.
I swung the shovel blade at the neck of a human who was unmistakably an enemy.
A sickening, revolting sensation crawled up my hand to my shoulder. The head dropped to the ground, scattering blood. A nasty sight, but maybe one I'd see countless times from now on. I turned my eyes from the corpse and cast around for the next target.
Reni was practically holding one section of the line by herself, while the knights held the north in formation. That left the east for me.
I moved toward the eastern side, where orcs and goblins were pressing the line in a mob. As I got closer, the thick smell of blood hit me. The damage in the east was severe. Ten dead already? I passed soldiers dragging wounded comrades to the rear and approached the fight.
Come to think of it, this was my first battlefield.
But I wasn't scared.
Because after ten years of fighting monsters bigger than elephants, I'd learned to keep my cool no matter the situation.
I planted the shovel in the dirt and closed my eyes for a moment. I pictured it clearly. What kind of structure did I need right now? I ran through everything I'd built before.
Walls, pillars, moats, houses...
That would work.
"Craft."
A wall rose up behind the enemy line. A wall meant to separate the monsters at the rear from the ones rampaging at the front.
I activated the Skill in rapid succession, splitting the eastern battlefield in half, then added the finishing touch.
"Craft. Craft. Craft."
No matter how powerful an army was, it became helpless once the ground gave way beneath it. I raised barricades bristling with sharp earthen spikes and stopped the horde of rampaging monsters.
"Pull back slowly and reform the line!"
My shout, loud enough to hurt my throat, seemed to reach the soldiers. They gradually fell back and reformed their ranks. Those too injured to fight pulled out, and the able-bodied raised shields and methodically dispatched the charging monsters. No matter how crazed the monsters' attacks were, we held the numerical advantage.
After all, the expeditionary force numbered a full thousand.
"East side's under control now. South is..."
...I'd been so busy checking the battlefield that I hadn't checked on Karina. I ran straight for the carriage.
Fortunately, the area around the carriage was quiet. The knights keeping guard lit up when they saw me and called out.
"What is it?"
"How are things here?"
"Damned monsters tried to attack, but we beat them all back."
I looked where the knight pointed and saw the corpses of orcs and goblins. Even two trolls lay dead. As expected of elite knights chosen to escort the Saintess, they'd dealt with the enemies decisively.
I shifted my gaze to the walls. They were cracked in places, but still mostly intact. I used my Skill to repair the walls, then turned my eyes back to the battlefield.
The fight wasn't over yet, so I had plenty left to do.
The night on the battlefield wasn't over yet.
---------------
The battle that had raged from the dead of night until dawn finally ended when the morning sun cautiously peeked out, as if testing the mood.
Soldiers recovered the remains of their fallen comrades while priests moved among the wounded using healing magic. The scene was so devastating that I had to look away.
A dark cloud hung plainly on the faces of everyone who had fought.
That was only natural.
No one could rejoice at surviving when their comrades, their subordinates, had died.
"Thank you. Without you, we would have suffered devastating losses."
"...It was nothing."
I couldn't speak casually even to an older man, so I made an effort to answer politely. Carbonaro, a knight with an impressive mustache, seemed sincerely grateful. Until yesterday, he had looked at me as little more than Servant Number One, so the sudden change in his gaze made me a little uncomfortable.
That kind of look made me uncomfortable.
Being stared at like that by a guy wasn't my thing.
If it were Karina looking at me like that... ahem.
"Say, have you ever thought about joining the knights?"
What was this, some kind of grad school recruitment pitch? I had no intention of becoming a knight. I just wanted to live in peace. I couldn't exactly throw myself into mortal danger for that.
"I have things I need to do."
"A pity."
I deflected the knight-recruitment pitch with some vague mumbling, then asked what I'd been curious about regarding the attack.
"Anyway, how did this happen? There were definitely sentries posted; it shouldn't have been so easy to break through..."
"...The soldiers on watch seem to have been caught by illusion magic. I never imagined they would bring monsters and attack us like this. This was my failure. I should have prepared countermeasures for this kind of assault. I simply never thought anyone would attack an expedition with this many troops..."
"We'll have to stay on edge from now on."
"Indeed."
Undisguised worry surfaced on Carbonaro's face.
That was only natural.
Even at best, Kalon Academy was still a month and a half away.
Our route was obvious. The possibility of traps and ambushes along the way couldn't be dismissed. And what they were bringing wasn't even human—it was monsters. I didn't know the method, but they seemed to be brainwashing and marching monsters around, which meant they could replenish their forces far more easily than we could. Troublesome opponents.
But we had very few options. Given Karina's condition, even racing there at full speed would be cutting it close.
More attacks were sure to follow, and the enemy might already have laid traps along the route.
But even so, we had no choice but to push forward.
"...I have a plan."
The plan had only just occurred to me, but it might work better than expected.
"Oh, yes? What is it?"
I began explaining my plan to the commander.