Bring Her Back at Once
Bring her back at once.
While Esilly was obliterating a serpent dragon with nuclear-grade magic, Orca—commander of the kingdom’s knight order—was receiving a report from one of her subordinates.
Not long ago, following orders from above, she had reassigned her subordinate and the order’s vice-commander, Esilly, to a rear-echelon unit. On paper it looked like a promotion from vice-commander to commander, but anyone could see that moving the capital knight order’s vice-commander to head a rear logistics unit was a demotion in all but name.
Commander Orca had felt a twinge of unease about demoting the woman who accounted for more than eighty percent of the kingdom’s military strength. Their victory in the recent war had been possible only because of her. Without Esilly, the kingdom’s lands would have been trampled by those vile imperial dogs; its men slaughtered, its women reduced to sex slaves. That she alone had saved the kingdom and every life within it was an immutable truth.
Yet even a knight commander had no choice but to obey when the higher-ups issued an order. So she had reluctantly sent Esilly to the rear logistics unit.
Esilly had been furious at the outrageous treatment. The last expression she had worn as she left the commander’s office was not her usual smile, but a cold, utterly blank mask. Orca could not forget that face—even though a full week had already passed and the girl should long since have arrived at her new post.
“Haa… So? She arrived safely?”
“W-well… it seems we’re in serious trouble…”
“Trouble? Did the imperial bastards invade again?”
The adjutant currently standing before her was the type who made a fuss over everything. Orca, long accustomed to his theatrics, simply smiled as if nothing were amiss and continued scratching out the report on her desk—the very report that would inform the higher-ups of Esilly’s safe arrival at the rear unit. She was waiting for him to spit out a proper answer already.
“What are you waiting for? Speak up.”
Orca lifted her head and looked at her adjutant’s face. For some reason it had gone deathly pale—exactly as it had four years ago, the day imperial soldiers first set foot on kingdom soil.
“V-Vice-Commander Esilly… never arrived at her assigned post!”
“Wh… what?!”
Commander Orca shot to her feet in shock. She hadn’t arrived? Eight days had passed since her departure; it was impossible that she still hadn’t reached the rear logistics unit. Even for a kingdom as large as theirs, the journey took only about four days. That was precisely why the confirmation letter had only just arrived today, on the eighth day. It made no sense.
That girl… Esilly? The one who could erase an entire legion single-handedly with her monstrous power? Attacked on the way to a rear post? Orca shook her head hard. Absolutely not.
“A-and this…”
Next the adjutant handed her a thin envelope. Could it be a letter from Esilly? Orca snatched it from him and tore it open. Inside, as expected, lay a single thin sheet of paper.
“I received it yesterday from a training-camp classmate who handles lost property… He said it had been left lying in front of the main gate and he’d been keeping it…”
Orca half-listened to the adjutant’s explanation while she examined the letter. The man already knew the contents; he simply pressed a hand to his forehead and heaved heavy sighs.
It was not a letter. It was a resignation form. And not even a proper one—its contents were a chaotic mess, complete with curses.
But that hardly mattered. To her, the substance far outweighed the insults scrawled across the page.
The higher-ups are fucking assholes… for treating me like a tool… I hereby apply for discharge… please approve it… you fucking bastards………?
She was so stunned she had read the entire thing aloud. A string of sentences she could never have imagined coming from the gentle Esilly. Commander Orca’s body trembled violently. Though the paper hid most of it, cold sweat was already beading on her skin.
This is bad…! I never imagined she would go this far!
She had certainly been angry. If Orca herself had received such treatment, she might well have turned the entire royal capital into a sea of fire. Once again: Esilly was eighty percent of the kingdom’s military power. The higher-ups had parked her in the rear, but they were by no means ignorant of her strength—or of her contributions in the war. Interests had tangled and forced their hand, yet…
No. None of that mattered now. The kingdom itself was about to be fucked; who cared about the rest?
“C-Commander? Are you all right?”
The adjutant spoke to his vacant-eyed superior. Her expression was not that of a general who had just won a war, but of one who had lost and now waited only for death.
“……Does the upper brass know?”
“Pardon?”
“Do they know Esilly wrote this absurd resignation and vanished?”
“……They still have no idea……”
Of course not. Even she had been in the dark for eight days; the higher-ups could hardly know. She had to clean this up before they noticed. But how? Orca’s mind was blank. Was there any way to bring back a girl who had written such a resignation and simply disappeared?
“Do we have any idea where Esilly might have gone?”
“There is a carriage reservation under the name Esilly at the depot, but…”
“Where to… Don’t tell me…”
A destination she did not want to imagine. If it were still inside the kingdom, she might somehow drag her back. But the place Orca feared lay beyond that. Naturally, the location that left the adjutant’s mouth was—
“Yes… She has already left the country and is headed for Free Port City. And… we found the vice-commander’s armor at the carriage station.”
Thud.
Orca could not fight the wave of dizziness and sank into her chair. Leaving the kingdom meant she had abandoned everything. The war had finally ended and a little quiet had seemed possible—only for Esilly to dump a resignation form at the main gate and walk out of the country. Orca had half-expected something like this might happen. She had simply never believed the diligent, kind-hearted Esilly would actually do it.
This was beyond her ability to handle alone. If she tried to bury it now…
“I’m going to the royal palace at once.”
“……Understood. I’ll send word ahead.”
The adjutant saluted, opened the door, and left. Under normal circumstances Orca would have returned the salute, but right now she had neither the presence of mind nor the heart for it.
A hall both silent and majestic. At its center sat six men in splendid attire around a round table. These were the true power brokers of the kingdom—the masters of the Heaven-and-Earth Round Table, known as the Six of Heaven and Earth, who could wield authority greater even than the king’s.
Or rather, that had been true in the past. After the war, much of their power had been returned to the king; they no longer exerted the same vast influence. Still, each retained authority within his own domain, so the gathering was not meaningless. Their mere assembly was enough to keep the king and the other nobles in check.
They had convened this time over the matter of Esilly, former vice-commander of the capital knight order. Only recently they had voted to reassign the former vice-commander to the rear logistics unit—as a precaution against a potential threat. No matter how great her achievements, the terrifying power that could erase an entire legion was simply too frightening. So after the war they had left her idle for a while, intending to call her back whenever her strength was needed again—say, if the empire invaded once more, or if they decided to invade the empire themselves.
Of course, that plan had now gone up in smoke. They had just heard the current situation from the commander of the capital knight order.
“W-what are we supposed to do now?!”
One of the Six, the Minister of Finance, spoke first. Looking at the resignation form she had supposedly submitted made him swallow hard—not from anger, but from pure dread at the present situation.
“This is a disaster… I have more goosebumps now than when we first heard the empire was invading… Look at my arm.”
The Minister of War spoke next, trembling. In truth, the two who best understood her power were the Minister of War and capital knight commander Orca. That was why he had pushed to send her to the rear logistics unit; leaving that kind of strength in the capital had been far too dangerous.
“I… I clearly opposed it! I said we should give the savior of the kingdom the greatest possible reward and whatever post she desired!”
This time it was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He had argued for proper compensation for Esilly, only to be persuaded by the other five of the unanimous-vote Round Table and forced to agree. Of course, that meant nothing now. Esilly had left the kingdom and was already bound for Free Port City.
“So you’re saying we made the wrong decision?! We, the Heaven-and-Earth Round Table?!”
“Minister of Foreign Affairs, hold your tongue. You agreed as well, did you not?”
The Minister of General Affairs and the Minister of Justice barked at him. To them, a decision of the Round Table was absolute.
“I… I’m different from the rest of you! There’s no talking to you people! I’m leaving!”
“Hey now… really…”
But the Round Table of today was no longer what it had been. Muttering under his breath, “I have to get out of here,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs fled the chamber. Everyone present fully grasped the gravity of the situation. They simply found it absurd that a single female elf barely twenty years old could reduce them to such panic—even while knowing that same female elf could turn their homeland into a sea of fire.
“What now? If the empire learns of this… the kingdom is finished.”
The empire had retreated strategically not because the kingdom had defended well, but solely because Esilly had erased an entire legion with impossible magic. If they discovered she had resigned from the knight order and left the country… the kingdom’s lands would be ravaged once more, and this time the kingdom itself would be annihilated.
“We know that, so be quiet! That’s why we’re gathered here! Commander Orca!”
“……Yes.”
Commander Orca answered in a daze. In her eyes the country was already finished. They refused to admit their own mistakes—even though the empire’s invasion had been largely their own fault to begin with.
“Go find Vice-Commander Esilly at once and bring her back. Promise her everything. Persuade her by any means necessary and return her to the kingdom.”
“……She won’t listen to me.”
“Then are you content to watch the kingdom fall right here?!”
Noise she wanted to clap her hands over her ears against. Under normal circumstances she would have answered that roar, but Orca only nodded without a word.
While such shouting echoed through the royal palace, none of it reached the ship where Esilly—having just defeated the serpent dragon—was throwing a party. Her laughter, mixed with that of the crew and passengers, was loud enough to startle the seagulls flying far overhead.
“Wahahahaha!! Miss Esilly, you really can drink! I like you!”
An adventurer raised his mug and drained it in great gulps. Known by the moniker “Wolf of Aloin,” he emptied the entire tankard with gusto.
“You’re not half bad yourself, mister! And this grilled serpent dragon… it’s ridiculously good.”
Glistening with fat, the meat was the very serpent she had hunted with nuclear-grade magic, now serving as party food. Ownership of the kill belonged to Esilly alone. She was casually doing something no ordinary person would ever dare attempt.
“Of course it is! This is direct-fire grilled serpent dragon straight out of legend!”
“Is that so? When I reach the Western Continent later I should sell some and make a bit of money.”
“Then let me recommend a few buyers!”
He was a veteran adventurer who knew dozens—hundreds—of such places. Esilly smiled, deciding she was lucky, and lifted her enormous mug high.
“Oh, thank you. Shall we toast, then?”
“Oh! Cheers!”
The two of them laughed and clinked their mugs together. Whether the kingdom was in crisis or not was none of Esilly’s concern.