A Hundred-Kilometer Assassination
About a hundred kilometers from the northern fortress.
Freemont Village.
Warriors caked in sweat and grime were hiding behind a hill in the ruined village, every one of them holding his breath and waiting, faces taut with unbearable tension.
"It's coming!"
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Footbeats that shook the very bones of the earth rolled toward them. An undead elephant, its skeleton bare and gleaming, was charging into the village with a trunk as thick as an ancient tree raised high overhead.
"That's the Named Undead, The Devourer!"
They had destroyed over a hundred undead in the village already, but The Devourer alone had been beyond anyone's reach. As one, the warriors burst from cover atop the hill and drew their bows.
"Loose!"
Shwaaaaak!
Shwaaaaak!
Arrows rained down like a storm, yet they couldn't so much as scratch the colossus's hide. If anything, it only seemed to enrage the beast further, and it barreled straight for the warriors.
"It's true—no strength of ours can bring it down."
"Stick to the plan! Lure it into the gorge behind the village!"
The warriors fell back in quick, coordinated retreat, and The Devourer thundered after them. Soon they had drawn the undead beast into a narrow gorge, and they held their timing, waiting for the moment.
"Captain! Now!"
Thwap!
While the elephant undead was still chasing the warriors, a man lying in wait on the hillside leapt down in a sudden ambush.
"Hyaah!"
He raised the flag in his hand and slammed it down squarely onto the beast's forehead. There was a wet crack as the tip of the flagpole tore a wound into The Devourer's brow, and in the same instant the creature's violent thrashing flung the man clean off his feet.
CRASH! Tumble-tumble!
The man came down hard, rolling across the dirt. Bones cracked, a jagged stone's edge sliced open his thigh and left blood streaming down his leg — and still he grinned.
"We... we won, you bastard!"
The Devourer advanced on him with murderous eyes, step after bone-shaking step. Right on its forehead, where the flag had struck, something like a target mark had been etched in black, as if painted on with ink. The man roared.
"Everybody get down!"
Everything happened at that very moment.
RUUUUMMMBLE!
The air itself howled, and mountains, rivers, and trees began to tremble. Even The Devourer — a monster that had charged headlong at anything and everything in this world — froze mid-stride. The sky darkened all at once, bruising over like a spreading welt.
Shweeeeeee—!
From impossibly far away, a straight line of jet-black came flying down like a meteor. To the watchers' eyes it was nothing more than space itself warping, a black streak arriving in a single blink.
What followed was a detonation that felt as if it would split their eardrums, and a wall of earth surging up like a tidal wave.
As dust blurred the world into a haze, only a handful of warriors glimpsed it — the black line striking The Devourer squarely in its forehead.
The line didn't just land; it bored through flesh and buried itself deep, punching a colossal, caved-in crater across the beast's entire skull.
—Gyeeeiiiieeee!
The infamous Devourer shrieked. Its massive frame wavered, swayed —
KUUUUM!
— and collapsed limply into the dirt.
The warriors who had been flattened against the ground raised their heads, confirmed the sight, and erupted in a unified roar of triumph.
"We did it! We did it! We finally brought down The Devourer!"
"Glory to His Grace the Grand Duke!"
The warriors thrust their weapons toward the heavens, chanting the Grand Duke's name over and over. The villagers who had been hiding now finally emerged, trembling with relief.
Another victory proclamation rang out across the North.
And at that very moment—
Hweeeeeeeeeng―
More than a hundred kilometers away, in the fortress. The Grand Duke — who stood with her bow still raised, the strands of her hair rippling in the wind — lowered her arm.
"Whoa, hold on! What did you just do?"
"Nothing remarkable."
The corners of her mouth lifted.
"Assassination."
"...?"
"I shot down an enemy from a hundred kilometers away, is what I did."
Simon stared blankly out the window in the direction the arrow had vanished. Outside was nothing but an ordinary village scene, snow drifting down in silence.
"Can you actually see the target?"
"Of course not. I merely sensed it."
She gave a slight nod of her head.
"This concerns legion command as well, so let us talk the rest outside, over a bit of wind."
Simon and the Grand Duke stepped outside.
Simon, looking somewhat wrong-footed, kept sneaking glances at her. The Grand Duke walked on with her bow slung over her shoulder.
"Is something the matter, impudent brat?"
"No, it's just... um."
Simon scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
"Aren't you cold?"
Though they had stepped out into a wind that howled and bit, she was still wearing nothing but that single short set of training clothes.
"No mere deep freeze can bend a northerner's pride, boy."
Seriously, Simon thought — the culture of the northern people was utterly beyond him. The two of them came to a stop before a great tree that had grown within the fortress walls.
"One premise, first."
The Grand Duke halted and looked back at him.
"I shall teach you everything I can teach — but you and I are not the same."
She pointed in turn at Simon, and at her own chest.
"Every legion possesses its own distinct character. Depending on a commander's personal disposition, the Manager's abilities, and the Ancient Undead under their command, a Legion Commander's power varies beyond counting."
"I suppose so."
"So first we ascertain what you possess, and shape our path around strengthening it. One moment."
She paused mid-stride, lifted the bow from her shoulder, and aimed at the sky. With another thunderous crack she loosed an arrow, then slung the bow back as though nothing at all had happened.
"Y-you're busy, aren't you? I've been curious for a while — what's the principle behind those arrows you fire?"
"Mm, good. That's as fine a place to begin as any."
She took a seat on a chair near the tree.
"In the North, there are those we call 'Flagbearers.'"
In the Carlos Northern Territory, a Flagbearer was a captain-level post — one who led a war band. They bore that name because they carried the singular authority to raise the banner that could guide the Grand Duke's arrows.
"When an enemy appears too mighty for warriors to withstand, the Flagbearers hurl themselves into the fray at the risk of their lives and plant a flag upon it."
She mimed tapping her fingertip against her own palm.
"A tiny undead of my own making dwells within each flag, and when it strikes the foe, it leaves a mark upon them like a target. I remain here in this fortress, and the moment I sense that undead's presence, I am bound to send an arrow flying to that spot — at any hour, in any circumstance."
Tchk.
She raised the black bow.
"And this is the Gale Bow, wielded by Hate, the Manager of my 2nd Legion. It can strike down enemies at even the farthest distances."
So it was a weapon cut from the same cloth as Simon's own Greatsword of Ruin.
But what caught Simon's attention lay elsewhere.
"You sense the lingering thoughts of Legion-type undead, and fire your arrows toward them?"
"That is so."
"Wh-what's the extent of it? How far can you sense them?"
She lowered the bow and spoke with a face like blank stone.
"The entirety of the northern territory I rule."
If one were to name the defining trait of Jean Arskalt, the Grand Duke of the North, as a Legion Commander, it was this — an extreme breadth of range.
She was capable of sensing the thoughts of every Legion-type summon spread across her northern domain. She could simply scatter her legionized undead across the land, and the moment an enemy appeared, those undead would move on their own to meet them.
Originally, the territory ruled by the Arskalt family had been far vaster. But now, with the offensive of monsters and undead grown so relentless, the range of her thoughts extending from her fortress had become, in effect, the territory itself.
'Then don't tell me—!'
Simon's mouth fell open.
Those undead soldiers he'd seen moving all on their own, without a single necromancer at their side, ever since he'd arrived in the North. Every last one of them had been under the Grand Duke's remote command from miles away.
It went beyond astonishment into pure reverence. She was not called a hero of humanity for nothing.
"Of course, it is no infinite power."
She touched her brow.
"The farther the distance, the fainter the thoughts grow, and my orders to the undead become simple ones at best. And if thousands of thoughts kept ringing in my ears without pause, even I would go mad, would I not? I keep it all suitably throttled."
"Th-that's still incredible."
Simon couldn't hold back his awe.
"Defending the North has demanded every trick I know, and somewhere along the way I gained this ability too. Now then, impudent brat — how far do your thoughts reach?"
Simon scratched the back of his head.
"I felt like I could reach roughly as far as I could see, but I've never actually measured the exact range."
"Well, that's convenient. We have plenty of wide-open North here to check it in."
Simon, after all, had spent most of his time on Roke Island, and had almost never issued commands to a Legion-type undead at any great distance.
Whenever he had needed to run an independent force, he had handed command over to his Ancient Undead, leaving Simon himself too busy fighting in the Bone Armor to bother.
Seeing him look rather sheepish, the Grand Duke smirked.
"No need to be so impatient. The circumstances you faced were simply different."
Simon possessed a great many captain-grade undead, and so he had focused on developing his own personal strength rather than his command range.
The Grand Duke, by contrast, held only two Ancient Undead. Rather than expanding that number, she had devoted herself to researching the most effective ways to use them.
Above all, the northern territory was vast, and she had to win many battles at once to protect her people.
Her obsession with protecting every soul within her grasp had taken shape in the form of an abnormally wide ability range.
"Setting my case aside — there will be strengths of yours that surpass mine."
She said this even as she fired another arrow off toward somewhere far away.
Even in the middle of a lesson, she had just destroyed a Named Undead and saved countless northern lives.
'Incredible.'
Simon was glad, now more than ever, that he had come north to meet her.
It was his first time meeting a senior Legion Commander worth the name.
His horizons felt as if they'd been blown wide open.
"Next, then."
Her questions pressed on.
"How many undead can you control at maximum?"
A Legion Commander could in principle control an unlimited number of Legion-type undead. So what she was asking now was the number of summon-type undead he could control as an ordinary necromancer.
"It's a little embarrassing to say... but nine, these days."
His capacity had surged recently with the creation of the Chaos Dullahan, and the number had risen — but it still felt awkward to admit it in front of her.
"You're doing well."
"Huh?"
"Kizen's guidelines are correct, I say. You've never undergone training to expand the number of undead you can control, have you?"
Simon nodded.
"It is accepted wisdom that a necromancer who has studied the dark arts for less than two years must not yet widen the limits of his thoughts — do so, and the mind may waver or simply come apart. Focus on building control and knowledge, and let your maximum number of undead grow slowly. That said."
She pointed at Simon's chest.
"'We' are a little bit of an exception."
Simon's eyes went wide.
"You hold Ancient Undead in your service that would drive an ordinary necromancer mad at the mere touch of their thoughts, and you already command a great many Legion-type undead besides. Whether by intent or by accident, a Legion Commander's mental fortitude is of a different order. Over this period, I want you to work on raising your maximum controllable undead count. As that number grows, so too will your strength as a Legion Commander."
Simon nodded, his chest swelling with emotion.
[Khehehehe!]
Pier's presence, watching on, cackled with amusement.
Honestly, it was still too early to be expanding his undead count — at least another term, until the first semester of third year, would be the accepted wisdom. But Nephthys seemed to have judged that there would be little leisure to stretch out the timeline. Over this period, she clearly expected a great leap in Simon's growth as a Legion Commander.
"That should do for assessing your capabilities."
She said:
"Lastly — a field test. I'd like a brief look at your actual skill."
"Leave it to me!"
Simon grinned and bumped his fist against his palm.
Combat.
The field in which Simon had the most confidence of all.
"Tell your Manager to have your forces stand ready."
As she raised her arm, far in the distance there came a sight like a wave breaking — her beloved steed and the Phantom Dullahan cavalry pouring out across the land.
"Two legions, deploying together!"