The Wolf on the Ramparts
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The Khan Kingdom's army flooded toward the castle. The soldiers on the other side were also short-statured beastmen, but being the enemy made them look somehow larger and more menacing than their own allied forces.
“Chik! Chik! All units, prepare to fire!”
The beastman adjutants barked their orders. Along the ramparts, the archers nocked their arrows in perfect unison and took aim at the pitch-black wave of enemy soldiers surging closer and closer.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Even though the wave had entered bow range, the tide thrashing against the base of the walls showed no sign of stopping.
“Fire! Squeak!”
Countless black arrows rained down, and the wave below rippled and churned as soldiers struck by the shafts toppled one after another. Behind them, fresh soldiers trampled the corpses and came charging in a roaring flood.
“Squeak! Take aim again!”
“Faster on the reload! Loose!”
Arrows poured down once more like a torrential rain.
It was considerable firepower. The black shafts punched straight through armor and buried themselves in enemy soldiers, and one-shot-two-kill hits were far from rare.
“Heh heh heh! You all saw that, right? Right?”
On top of the wall, Rick's face glowed with excitement.
“My enchantments are basically made for siege warfare, aren't they? You reinforce the soldiers' arrows and weapons ahead of time, and they just do their thing—”
“Focus before something pierces your big mouth.”
Meilin's retort made Rick's jaw snap shut.
Simon allowed himself a small smile and turned his eyes back to the front.
The morale of the Khan soldiers was ferocious in its own right. Fearless in the face of the arrow storm, they hurled battle cries into the air and threw themselves at the castle gate. Soon they were hammering it with weapons like lumberjacks' axes, the gate shuddering violently as debris splintered and flew.
“Battering ram!”
On the hilltop, they were rolling out siege rams as well—carts fitted with metal-shod logs, pushed by squads of soldiers toward the gate.
“Simon! I enchanted the gate too, but if those rams keep smashing it, it won't hold long!”
“Leave it to me.”
Sixteen skeletons in total stood in waiting around Simon. Eight of them were Skeleton Mages, staffs in hand; the other eight were ordinary skeletons.
“Throw them!”
The ordinary skeletons hurled Oil Fruits, which tumbled and rolled down the slope in front of the gate.
Then came cross-operation—parking the regular skeletons and connecting to the mental frequencies of the eight Skeleton Mages. Magic circles began to draw themselves above the staffs they raised.
“Dark Blaze.”
⟨ Dark Blaze ⟩
It couldn't match Meilin's Dark Flare, but it was a lower tier of the same jet-black flame family.
Fire blossomed above the magic circles, swelling like flowers in bloom. Perhaps influenced by Simon's mana color, the flames burned a bluish-green.
“Let fly!”
Fwaaahaaaaang!
Eight blue-green fireballs split the gray sky as they streaked upward.
Tracing gentle arcs through the air, the fireballs swung their heads down toward the base of the gate.
The pupils of the Khan soldiers trembled. The searing blaze bearing down on them looked like a living fire demon gaping its jaws wide open.
“F-flee!”
Kwaaaaaaang—!!
The fireballs detonated in unison, incinerating the soldiers where they stood. And the moment the Oil Fruits scattered across the ground caught the flames, they burst open one after another with explosive pops, splattering oil thickly over the earth.
Fire leapt across the oil, and a towering sea of flames rose around the wall and the hill.
“Whoa!”
Rick let out a cry of admiration.
The flames devoured not only the soldiers climbing the hill but the siege rams themselves. Burning soldiers rolled screaming back down the slope.
“Chik chik! That's a Guardian for you!”
“The Guardian fights with us! Squeak!”
The fire show sent allied morale soaring in turn. Meilin, standing beside him, scoffed and turned up her nose—yet a smile crept onto her lips all the same.
“Jet-black flame magic's not bad at all, is it?”
“I've still got a long way to go.”
He spoke humbly, but Simon felt his own share of accomplishment.
A summoner's strength was in numbers.
He couldn't cast high-tier dark magic like Meilin could—not yet—but being able to unleash eight Dark Blazes at once was a clear-cut advantage that put him in no one's shadow.
“Ex-extinguish the fire!”
While the Khan Kingdom's soldiers cleared away the flames and oil and readied their next ram, the assault on the gate ground to a halt.
But the Khan Kingdom had already prepared its next move.
“Ladders!”
Towering siege ladders swung up against the walls, and soldiers swarmed up them in a flash. Some hooked grappling claws and came clambering over.
“Squeak! They're on the wall!”
“Hold them!”
The defenders atop the wall fought to keep the Khan soldiers from climbing over.
Then arrows came lashing down onto the ramparts, and allied soldiers began to fall. The Khan Kingdom's archers on the ground had started loosing volleys up onto the wall.
“Target their archers!”
Now the archers of the Aon Kingdom struck back. The archer duel raged just as fiercely, and the sky became a ceaseless rain of arrows passing back and forth.
Simon, who had been quietly watching the battle unfold from the wall, turned around.
“Adjutant.”
“Yes! Commander-in-Chief!”
The beastman adjutant waiting behind him bowed his head.
“The gate is more than enough for me to handle alone, so concentrate all our strength on the walls.”
“A-are you certain? We would hate to place such a burden on you—”
“It's fine.”
Even as he spoke with the adjutant, Simon was already flinging fireballs down from his Skeleton Mages.
The commander nodded and diverted the gate garrison to the walls.
The outer castle walls are low—I'd expected them to break easily, but they're holding up remarkably well.
The south gate that Simon's group was defending, along with every other gate of the castle, remained unbroken.
However.
This war had powerful wildcards of its own.
“Hold! Hold the line! Squeak!”
The fighting atop the wall was just as desperate. The defenders had to dodge the arrow storms raining up from the ground while cutting down the enemy soldiers swarming up the ladders.
“Chik! Clear the ladders first!”
“Raise your shields! Do not retreat! Squeak!”
Commanding this stretch of the wall was a veteran beastman adjutant.
He encouraged his soldiers until his voice cracked, wielding his sword in the very front line himself. He was shoving the ladders bodily away, knocking down the enemy soldiers climbing them—
Tak— tadadat—
A strange sound came from below the wall. He leaned out and looked down.
“Hm?”
Something was climbing up the face of the wall.
A wolf.
No—more precisely, a werewolf.
“What in the—”
His words never finished. The instant their eyes met, the werewolf that had sprinted up the wall in a heartbeat drove its claws into his throat.
“Squeak! When did it get up here!”
The Aon soldiers guarding the wall came rushing at it.
Along the werewolf's wrists grew triangular, blade-sharp claws—like daggers of bone. They dyed themselves a deep, deep jet-black.
Shraaaaaak!
Shraaak!
Every time the werewolf swung its claws, soldiers fell bleeding to the stones. Its movements were on a different plane entirely from the rank and file—before a spear could even be thrust, they were cut by wolf claws and torn apart by fangs.
“Squeak!”
“It's too strong! Chik!”
The soldiers formed square and charged, but their very physical specs were outmatched. The werewolf vaulted over their heads like an acrobat, and when it landed behind them, its claws tore the soldiers' throats out.
“Shoot that wolf first!”
The archers at the far end of the wall nocked their arrows and took aim at the beast.
Seeing this, the werewolf raised its palm before its snout. A magic circle spread across the open hand, and it opened its jaws.
Auuuuuuuuuu!
Wolf Howling — an acoustic wide-area curse that paralyzes all who hear it with primal dread.
The faces of the archers with their drawn arrows flooded with absolute terror, their legs quivering helplessly. Some dropped their arrows; others felt warmth spreading through their trousers. Seizing that opening, the werewolf fell upon the crippled archers and slaughtered them.
One lone intruder, and the wall was being ravaged.
[Gwahaha!]
From the maw that had only been growling low until now, a young boy's voice suddenly rang out.
[This is fun as hell!]
The werewolf turned its back to the wall and shouted down.
[Milena! Send up the rest!]
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Three siege ladders floated up into the sky, defying gravity, bobbing gently. More than a dozen Khan soldiers rode on each of them.
“Ssit! Cut down the Aon Kingdom dogs!”
“The Guardian fights with us! Ssit! Ssit!”
The Khan soldiers leapt down onto the ramparts. And at the base of the wall, a girl in a Kizen uniform wiped the sweat running down her brow.
“Coming all the way out here just to be a ladder shuttle. Honestly.”
At her gesture, the ladders hanging in the air descended back to the ground.
“All right.”
She turned to the Khan soldiers waiting in line.
“Next group—hop on, please.”
“Yes, milady Guardian!”
[Haha! Hahahahah!]
The werewolf prowled the ramparts at its leisure while the siege ladders ferried soldiers up like elevators, and the tide of battle turned.
Before anyone realized it, there were stretches of wall where the Khan Kingdom's soldiers now outnumbered the defenders. Left unchecked, the entire wall might fall.
[This is great! So this is why they told us to grind out all those endless-quest games before coming to Kizen!]
Thirty Kizen students had joined this war as Guardians. Now deep into the second half of their first year, these young necromancers had long since shed their beginner's skin, and their power was considerable. For the small, slight, physically weaker beastmen, this werewolf was simply a wall they could not stop.
[Found you!]
The werewolf spotted another of the commanding 'adjutants' and sprang on all four legs.
Whoom!
It was a leap that surpassed every limit.
The old adjutant couldn't even react to its speed. The moment its fangs were about to sink into the back of his neck—
Kang!
A sword suddenly cut in between. The werewolf slid backward, dropping to one knee.
It parried my attack?
“Hyah-cha!”
The one who had slipped in front of the adjutant was a blond Kizen student wearing a sly, crooked grin. The werewolf, catching up on the situation a beat late, bared its teeth in a smirk.
Of course. A necromancer should be stopped by another necromancer.
[You're later than I expected.]
The boyish voice coming out of the werewolf's enormous, savage maw was truly incongruous.
Rick ran a hand lazily along his jaw.
“Hmmm—let's see now.”
His eyes narrowed shrewdly as he began sizing the werewolf up from head to tail.
“A necromancer who specializes in transformation dark magic—Metamorphosis—isn't exactly common at Kizen. Ten or so of us, right? Ah, one got expelled recently, so exactly ten now.”
[......]
Rick's tongue moved quick as a whip.
“And a werewolf of this quality? You didn't learn that at Kizen—it's your family's bloodline, isn't it? Plus an acoustic wide-area fear curse on top. Well then, that pretty much settles it, doesn't it?”
Rick grinned and bent at the waist in an elegant, gentlemanly bow.
“Lady Canis McGrory.”
[......]
“Since when does a high-noble young lady make a hobby of imitating a boy's voice?”
At those words, the werewolf's expression went deathly cold.
[...Who the hell are you?]
This time, a girl's voice slipped out. Rick shrugged.
“Rick Hayward of Class A!”
[How did you figure it out just by looking? Glek's the famous werewolf Metamorphosis user, not me.]
“Ah, Glek Crow! Special Admission No. 9, of course he'd be famous. But for someone trying to hide their traits, running that kind of bluff on—”
WHOOM! WHOOM!
Rick pulled a huge metal case out of subspace, the corner of his mouth curling upward.
“—you picked the wrong opponent.”