Northern Fortress Defense (3)
The time had come.
I looked over the two soldiers who had spent the past several days going along with this absolute madness of mine. The ones who beat the drums in time with every strange sound I made. Even with Irene's orders as supreme commander behind them, being conscripted only to end up doing this should have been enough to send anyone into a full-blown crisis of faith. And yet they had followed every one of my absurd instructions without a word of complaint.
"Everyone. You've worked yourselves to the bone until now. Everything we've practiced has been for this exact moment. I'm counting on you until the very end."
"Yes, sir! Understood!"
"We'll follow the drill to the letter!"
I smiled at that, then turned toward the enemy and shouted.
"They're starting to come! Everyone, get ready!"
"Yes, sir!"
The two soldiers who had been practicing this bizarre performance with me took their seats in front of the drums set up on either side of the altar.
"Just do it the way we practiced. Today is what matters most! Think of it as pounding on the gates of heaven itself—give it everything you've got!"
"Understood!"
At my words, the two soldiers lifted drumsticks instead of the cold steel weapons they usually carried. And then—
They began hammering away at the crude makeshift drums with everything they had.
Standing between those pounding drums on either side of the altar, even I felt a surge of exhilaration, as if I really had become some deranged cultist performing an unholy rite. Yes. This was going to work. If my prediction was right, this was the answer.
"Haaaaa… ahhh… ahhh…!!"
I closed my eyes and made a show of gathering power. I knew full well that every last one of these theatrics would look, to any objective third party, like the ravings of a complete lunatic.
If this is going to work, then I have to commit to being an even more thorough lunatic.
From this moment on, I was going to become the man who called down lightning. And to become that man, I had to look unmistakably, irrefutably insane to everyone watching. If I held back out of embarrassment and half-assed the performance, it would just look like a natural disaster had happened on its own—not something I had summoned. Besides, carrying on like this was the perfect way to plant terror in the enemy's hearts.
Right now, I couldn't settle for being merely crazy. I had to become the kind of madman who stood out even among madmen—someone with no redeeming features whatsoever. What else could you call a man who claimed he was going to bring down lightning, if not a lunatic?
So—
"…Heavens!!!! Hear my voice!!!! Answer me!!!!!"
I roared up at the sky, louder than the drums themselves.
But… something was wrong. I could see the enemy troops advancing. The timing should have been perfect by now. So why… why weren't any raindrops falling?
The man ordered to destroy the fortress with thirty-three thousand troops and a full complement of siege engines was Julian, a general of Serpina's army.
His original proposal to attack the fortress had been rejected once already—but this time, his lord had summoned him again, saying the situation had changed. The order had come out of nowhere, yet Julian's mood was anything but sour. If anything, he felt rather pleased.
I knew my judgment wasn't wrong.
A middle-aged man with brown hair, seasoned and battered by countless battlefields, Julian smiled to himself in quiet satisfaction. His wits left something to be desired, but he had enough hard-earned experience in combat that Serpina treated him as a subordinate of some standing. Still, what Julian wanted was something higher than that. He wanted a position in Serpina's army that no one else could fill—a place uniquely, irreplaceably his. It was the same ambition every officer hungry for glory carried in his heart.
Take the fortress, use it as a base, and strike Kelstein Castle one more time. I can do it.
Cradling that grand ambition, he finally drew near the Brans army's fortress—when a voice called out.
"General Julian!"
"What is it?"
An aide approached with a grave expression.
"Sir… on top of the fortress walls, a man who appears to be with the Brans army is behaving… strangely."
"What?"
Still in the saddle, Julian spurred forward to the vanguard and looked up at the fortress. What met his eyes was a sight he could scarcely believe.
A young man with white hair, all four limbs intact and functional, stood with both arms flung wide, screaming at the top of his lungs. The distance made it hard to catch the exact words—but he seemed to be flailing his arms about and pointing in their direction. And the soldiers flanking him weren't standing guard at all; they were pounding away on what looked like drums.
What the hell is that?
The utterly bizarre spectacle threw him for a moment—but when he thought about it, it was strange-looking and nothing more. There was nothing in it worth being wary of. Strip it down to the facts: one man in the middle was screaming and doing some kind of weird dance, and the soldiers on either side were beating drums. That was it.
In a battle they had no hope of winning, instead of focusing on the defense, they were wasting time on that? And if this was some kind of "ritual" meant to summon something… then from Julian's perspective, they couldn't have been a more convenient opponent.
There's no easier enemy on a battlefield than the ones who start leaning on religion.
"The gods will protect us." "The gods will grant us strength." Those sweet, empty phrases the faiths used to peddle had long since lost their pull once the age of chaos began. The clearest proof was how thoroughly the preachers who used to rant and rave across the continent had vanished without a trace.
What Julian preferred far more than praying for divine favor on the battlefield was judgment grounded in hard numbers. According to the latest intelligence, the fortress currently held roughly ten thousand troops at most. That number could never stand against thirty-three thousand men loaded with siege engines. And this wasn't even an ordinary citadel—it was a fortress. With a force disparity this large, their army was going to win no matter what.
What a complete lunatic.
Yes. That was how lightly he took it. Capturing the fortress was just a stepping stone anyway. The real prize was Kelstein Castle. If he could retake Kelstein using this fortress as a base, he would catch Serpina's eye—and that would mean advancement. His counsel would have contributed to the central push Serpina's army had long dreamed of. He was getting older. He was a warrior who found peace only when he was out on the field, but a man couldn't stake his life on the battlefield forever. He wanted to step back now and watch his family prosper.
"What should we do, sir?"
"Not worth the attention."
Julian muttered the words flatly, then turned and bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"All of you! You've marched hard to get here, but nothing is more precious to us than time! Seize the fortress as fast as humanly possible! Tell every soldier assigned to the siege engines to get ready!"
"Yes, sir!"
On Julian's order, the soldiers began charging the fortress one after another. A situation hanging by a thread. Even in that moment, Julian was certain of his victory. No—it didn't even feel like a victory. It was simply a process. Nothing more.
And for the sake of landing a blow on the people who thought this was "just a process"—
I kept roaring at the top of my lungs, striking every dramatic pose I could manage.
"Heavens!!!!!"
Any second now, the raindrops will start falling. They have to!
I had no idea when the lightning would strike. But in the game, lightning only ever came down when it was raining—so the rain had to come first. And yet no matter how long I waited, there was no sign of rain. The sky was heavy and swollen with dark clouds… and somehow, not even a single droplet was falling.
I muttered under my breath, as if reining myself in.
Don't get nervous!
Right now, this performance of mine was being watched by the enemy, by the soldiers of our fortress, and by Irene standing right beside me. Irene was one thing—but the soldiers holding the walls on her orders would already be starting to feel the unease. If I so much as let a flicker of anxiety show, it would be a disaster on multiple fronts.
"Haaaah!!!!"
I tried to reset the mood with a suitably impressive battle cry. But the sky remained pitch-black and utterly silent. This was the window when the rain should have been pouring down, locking in the perfect conditions for a lightning strike—and still, nothing.
No!
I couldn't be wrong. A natural disaster. And making it look as though I was the one wielding that natural disaster. That was the only answer. An Intelligence of 100. Ten thousand hours of game experience. Every inference built on top of that. Every compass needle was pointing to this as the correct path, wasn't it?
It's fine! The rain will come! If it were an earthquake, telling us to stay in the fortress wouldn't make any sense! It has to be lightning!
I whispered the words to myself and kept cycling through the same theatrical gestures, shouting all the while. Meanwhile, the battle cries of Serpina's soldiers were starting to punch through the noisy drumming with alarming volume. The siege engines were nearly ready to open fire. If one of those catapult stones came flying at the wall I was standing on, I could die right where I stood.
It's fine. If that were a real risk, the prediction would never have told me to hold the fortress in plain sight of the enemy. Putting my own life in danger would have disqualified it as the most efficient answer. And if the plan had simply been a sudden retreat, it wouldn't have mattered whether the enemy could see us or not.
It had always been like this before. A messenger had burst in at the exact moment anyone would have sworn negotiations with Lynn had collapsed. The moment our forces arrived at Kelstein Castle, a rebellion had erupted at Cherien Castle. Everything had unfolded exactly as I predicted.
So why was I this anxious? Why was I… for the first time… entertaining the thought that I might have made the wrong call? Because not even a raindrop had fallen, let alone a bolt of lightning? Because no matter how long I waited, absolutely nothing was happening?
"Haaaaaaaaah!!!!"
I poured even more force into a meaningless battle cry.
No!
No. I must not doubt myself. Believe. I am right. My words are always correct. My Intelligence is 100!
"Heavens!!!!!!!!"
And then—at last, only then—
"W-wait—?!"
"What? What's going on?!"
I heard the soldiers cry out in shock, voices tumbling over each other in confusion.
"Th-that is…!"
Even Irene, standing right beside me, was struck speechless.
The sky was still only heavy and overcast—nothing about it looked like a lightning storm was about to break. And yet… over the place where Serpina's army was massed, I had the strange sense that a shadow had fallen.
…Huh?
Only then did I register that something was wrong. Slowly, I lifted my head… and looked up at the sky I had been screaming at this whole time.
Yes. Only when I saw the sky did I know—for the first time—that my perfect chain of reasoning had failed.
No lightning struck.
What the brain with Intelligence 100 had predicted as "the thing that would actually happen" was————
A colossal meteor, falling toward the earth.