When the Sacred Light Fades
The hitherto invincible winning tactics against the other races had been shattered.
Moreover, the enemy was waiting at leisure, as if inviting them to produce their next stratagem.
The soldiers, who through civil war had learned with their own bodies just how powerful war machines like tanks could be, only now understood the terror that the other races who had crossed over in army-sized units had felt.
The fear of the unknown—not knowing by what means or with what attacks the enemies would come.
Until now they had attacked one-sidedly; their own weapons and tactics lay fully exposed, while they could not know what assault the other side might launch.
"Hoo… huff……."
Naturally, fear of the unknown and mounting tension roughened the soldiers’ breathing.
The knights did not breathe as raggedly as the rank and file, yet their customary composure had vanished.
"Shall we attempt long-range bombardment with the artillery?"
"No. They will already have prepared countermeasures for that as well."
Akina shook her head at her adjutant’s suggestion.
"That does not mean the artillery units have become useless, however. Convey this to them in secret: wait until the moment our forces and theirs are on the verge of colliding, then strike the enemy’s rear."
"Yes."
One adjutant took the order and rode for the artillery lines.
"From this point forward, it is your time to shine."
"So it would seem."
The commander of the Purification Knights wore a confident smile, as though determined to demonstrate beyond all doubt in this battle just how absolute their power truly was.
"If the enemy are not fools, they will concentrate their checks upon you. I will attach a unit of knights; use them as the situation demands."
"It may prove unnecessary help, yet I shall express my gratitude nonetheless."
He made plain his conviction that he could simply purify the filthy undead—other-race undead, no less—with the light of God.
"I will now advance the soldiers and knights. Move as you see fit."
"A wise decision."
The power of the Purification Knights was holy power, and a special force specialized against the undead at that; it was difficult to handle in ordinary fashion. Judging it best to leave them free to decide for themselves, Akina raised her spear high.
"The story has simply grown simpler!"
"!"
She spread her aura, striking hard against the tensed bodies of those around her.
"The battle of tactics has merely become a battle of power! And I have never once lost a fight that turns upon power!"
Under the eyes of every soldier and knight, Akina strode forward.
"The enemies are undead! Do not fight by surrendering yourselves to momentum—fight steadily! Guard against that alone, and they are no different from ordinary foes in the end!"
Wooooong!
At the same instant a powerful wave of mana, unmistakable even to a complete layman, rolled out from her and her mount.
Akina’s Gift—Unity of Rider and Steed—had begun.
"All forces! Advance!"
She did not hurl herself forward on raw momentum; she took the van and advanced as though guiding the entire army.
"Advance!"
"Do not break formation!"
"Maintain speed!"
The junior commanders who had been rigid with tension only moments before now barked orders at their men as though the courage rising from their guts could no longer be contained.
Yes. We have Lady Akina with us.
Even with the tank corps, Lady Akina remains the core of this army.
And we have the Purification Knights as well. There is no reason we should lose.
Sensing the army’s momentum rekindled, Sirin smiled behind her helm.
"As overall commander she has raised their morale, has she."
"Enemy though she is, it is splendid."
"Even in our world there was no knight of that caliber."
Sirin’s adjutants likewise offered pure admiration for the way she had set ablaze an army whose spirit had been cooling to ice.
"Yet that is precisely why it is regrettable—that we must kill with our own hands a knight of such lofty pride."
"In the end, if we simply raise her as undead, will that not suffice?"
"True. She will resist at first, but a being of that pride, once she hears our kingdom’s circumstances, may well choose to aid us—especially if we promise to preserve her former territory as well."
For those to whom an enemy’s death became their own side’s strength, Akina’s noble and unyielding character became reason enough that she must be slain.
"What will you do?"
"The core of this war is Akina and the Purification Knights. Unless we crush both, this army will keep rising again."
Foreseeing that once she entered the fray she would have no leisure left for command, Sirin entrusted the army to her adjutants and rode to a position directly opposite Akina.
Prrrr—
Her beloved steed, which had shared even death with her, snorted and burned with fighting spirit.
"Among every foe we have faced, she may well be the strongest. Yet for us there is no such thing as defeat."
The horse nodded as though the statement were self-evident and stood ready to leap the instant its master gave the word.
"Halt! Magic gunners! Aim!"
Confirming they had entered the effective range of the magic guns—far longer than that of ordinary archers—Akina elected to nibble steadily at the enemy from afar.
"Fire!"
Papapapapang!
At her command the ranked soldiers loosed a volley that slammed into the skeleton infantry.
Those skeletons, whose whole existence was shield and weapon, had their shields pierced; yet because only bone remained, the ones struck in the body suffered little structural harm.
Instead, once a skeleton took a hit—because the attack was wrought of mana—its form simply collapsed and crumbled to dust.
"Raise the fog!"
When Sirin next issued the order to the vampires, a dense fog rolled between the two armies and sealed the expeditionary force’s sight.
It seemed to disorder the senses as well as vision; nothing beyond the mist could be felt.
Dudududududu——
Hearing the thunder of an undead charge while fog blanketed their eyes, the expeditionary soldiers frantically leveled their muzzles toward the haze.
"Cease fire! Mages! Sweep the fog away with wind!"
Akina checked the panic, then ordered the mages to clear the mist.
When the magic corps drove the fog aside with wind, they saw that beyond it the undead were advancing slowly, still in formation.
The earlier sound of a charge had been nothing more than noise conjured by a single vampire’s magic.
Thus the tactical duel continued—each side deploying a move, the other answering or parrying.
There was, of course, the commanders’ desire to inflict some damage and open the war from a position of advantage, yet—
This is enjoyable.
I’ve never fought a battle of tactics like this before.
If we simply stepped forward and fought it would be simple, but—
I want to keep savoring this delightful contest of minds.
Akina, who had been winning through the superiority of her weapons, and Sirin, who was leading an army for the first time in decades, both found pure pleasure in the cerebral duel of command.
Two women of similar temperament, similar style of leadership.
From the mere fact that powerhouses capable of annihilating several armies alone were choosing a battle of tactics rather than raw force, each sensed that the other shared her nature.
Yet the joy of discovering a worthy rival lasted only a moment; those who failed to understand their fight burst out from the flank.
"Purify the undead!"
"You wicked other races! As God’s proxy I shall purify your sins!"
The Purification Knights—escorted by an entire knight order—had gone berserk.
Tch. It cannot be helped.
She disliked it, yet the charge was not pure folly.
Strangely, even while commanding undead, Sirin refused to attack aggressively; if matters continued thus, time would simply drain away without end.
Still, she had wanted to probe a little longer, to learn why the enemy moved so defensively. A pity.
"All forces, charge!"
Issuing the order so the Purification Knights would not be isolated, Akina locked her gaze on Sirin.
Sirin likewise watched Akina, waiting for the chance to strike.
"In the name of God!"
The instant the Purification Knights thrust forward and struck the undead ranks, the expeditionary artillery opened fire on the undead rear.
A magic circle of crimson light bloomed in midair, met the shells, and exploded—yet the circle itself remained unscathed, as though it had taken no real damage.
As expected, even their defenses against artillery had been prepared to perfection.
Now the only thing left to trust was the power of the Purification Knights.
Whenever those knights, weapons steeped in holy power, struck the undead, the creatures did not merely crumble; they collapsed like puppets whose strings had been cut.
"Hahahahahat! It’s nothing!"
"You may found a kingdom in your own world, but in ours that is an absurd dream!"
Already the Purification Knights had annihilated undead by the thousand, displaying their full might.
Holy power radiated from them like an aura; merely passing near them caused impure beings to dissolve or fall apart.
Yet the undead they were destroying were only the lower sort—soulless, mindless.
The true threats, the vampires, had long since withdrawn to safety.
Then the main body of the expeditionary army crashed in, widening the breach the Purification Knights had torn.
"Begin."
At Sirin’s command to activate the trap circles, the vampire mages poured mana into the arrays already prepared.
Ziiing!
The nearly complete circles, the moment they received mana, shot an ominous red light skyward into the clouds.
The dark clouds that drank that light gradually changed color, until not only the clouds but the very ground itself was bathed in crimson radiance.
"Mages!"
"I do not know! It is a mana wave I have never seen before!"
The knight commander escorting the mages demanded to know what spell it was, yet because it was other-race magic they of course could not identify it.
Thus the mages simply readied themselves to defend the instant the enemy’s working took form.
What revealed the circle’s true effect, however, was not a mage’s voice but a cry that rose from the very heart of the enemy lines.
"Wh-why!"
"Oh God!"
"Th-the holy power! The holy power is gone!"
The rampage of the Purification Knights halted; despair that their sacred power had vanished rang across the field.
"The holy power has disappeared!?"
"Of course. Did you think that even in our world there were no groups who possessed holy power and persecuted us?"
The expeditionary force’s reaction and the undead’s reaction crossed like blades.
The world that had birthed the Camelde Kingdom differed in its monotheism, yet beings who wielded holy power had existed there as well.
Those who had founded a kingdom and prospered despite such beings naturally possessed more than one method of countering sacred power.
Had the system differed from our world’s, this would have grown far more troublesome. Is it that the existence called God is similar no matter the world?
Sirin found it amusing that the system by which gods bestowed holy power upon their faithful was identical, and that the conclusions the gods themselves had reached were likewise alike.
"Thank you for enduring until now! The time for counterattack has come! Ravage them!"
At her command the vampires who had held their breath until this moment exploded outward in every direction.
Hwaaak!
"Ugh!? I-I can’t see!"
"Stay back! Don’t come near!"
"You idiot! If you spray like that—kuh!"
Each vampire was both a powerful warrior and a mage; they slaughtered the soldiers while scattering blood-red fog.
"These wicked undead bastards!"
"Do you think such petty tricks will work on us!"
Of course such methods failed against the knights, yet against them the vampires simply swung their weapons without artifice.
"Kuk!"
"Stronger than I expected!"
Vampires ordinarily luxuriated in their private domains, but the Camelde Kingdom had forever been forced to withstand the assaults of the living; every one of them had spent centuries honing technique.
Physical specifications might be comparable, yet the sheer years of skill each individual had accumulated were more than enough to press the knights hard.
"Hyaaat!"
One knight among them succeeded in driving his blade into a vampire’s body.
The vampire only smiled and met the eyes of the man who had stabbed him.
"Uh… what… did I just…?"
The knight who had locked gazes with the magic eye suddenly saw the vampire before him as a comrade writhing in agony upon his own sword.
Slash!
Seizing the instant the knight faltered, the vampire lightly severed his head and drew the embedded blade free.
The wound closed almost at once; the vampire moved on in search of fresh prey.
"Rise!!"
Next a vampire skilled in magic poured mana into the fallen knight’s corpse; the dead man rose as a mindless zombie and leveled his sword at his former comrades.
Though the zombies could no longer wield mana, knights whose bodies had been tempered by prana remained a serious threat even as low-grade undead.
"Hwahahahahahat!"
"Where do you think you’re going! Did you not cry out that you would purify us!"
The greatest problem was the Purification Knights themselves, rendered powerless the moment their holy power vanished.
Never having imagined that their link to God could be severed, they had fallen into half-panic and thought of nothing but flight.
"Wh-why!"
"God cannot see us!"
"Uwaaaa! No! I refuse to die outside Medelgard’s sight!"
Fanatics who could accept even death as martyrdom so long as they believed God watched them, the Purification Knights now found that very strength turned into fatal weakness.
Losing holy power to the enemy’s magic meant the connection with God had been cut; this place had become an unholy domain beyond divine sight.
Convinced that death here would bar them forever from God’s side, the Purification Knights became cowards who fled in pure panic.
"Kuk! Open a retreat path for the Purification Knights!"
The knight unit Akina had ordered to support the Purification Knights and obey their commands fought desperately to secure an escape route.
Watching them, Akina knew she herself must intervene—yet she could not move lightly.
If I act rashly they will drive straight into the opening I leave.
This is not a duel between knights; it is war. How long am I to stand and watch the unit collapse?
Exactly as she foresaw, Sirin waited for the moment Akina would try to seal the breach, ready to strike the instant that opening appeared.
This was no contest of personal valor; it was a war upon which the fate of an entire force hung.
Shushushushushuk!
In that instant a colossal rain of mana arrows poured from the sky and blanketed the heads of the undead army that had been crushing the expeditionary force.
"Uueuk!?"
"D-defend—kuhup!"
Lower undead shattered into fragments beneath hundreds of mana shafts; the vampires caught among them suffered heavy wounds and were forced out of the fight.
Akina and Sirin both snapped their gazes toward the source of that powerful mana surge. There they saw Lillian and Priscilla forming a protective formation with their subordinates around Kaisent and Lilith, both of whom held bows.
"Spray freely toward the place I indicate!"
"Yes!"
Lilith pointed to the most critical point among the allied lines, tilted her bow high, and loosed; a single mana arrow split into many mid-flight.
Beside her—who was already firing seven shafts every second—Kaisent stood with his own bow drawn in identical fashion.
At the allies’ moment of crisis, the powerhouses who had remained silent until now finally revealed themselves.