Chapter 381
Chapter 381
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 381
>Chapter Title: Waiting for the Moment
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After the Urbuna raid incident.
The Lamburg Duchy and the Urbuna House—both powers—accelerated their preparations for war.
Aggressive stockpiling of supplies.
Massive reinforcements of troops.
War merchants flocked north like crows, lured by the scent of money riding the winds of war.
Even mercenaries dreaming of wealth and glory were no exception.
Amid all this, both sides scattered declarations of war almost daily.
Mages of Urbuna, rise up. To reclaim our land, our history.
The justification put forth by the Urbuna House was the legitimate exercise of rights.
Those in tune with the times scoffed at Urbuna's false pretext, but the vast majority of Urbuna territory's residents unleashed their fury at the duchy that had occupied their lands for centuries.
The duchy, for its part, was not sitting idle.
Subjects of the duchy, a pig denying history lurks there. Rise up, for your roots.
The duchy side vilified Urbuna as "pigs blinded by greed, rejecting history," rallying the hearts of its citizens.
They stirred patriotism in the subjects' souls and instilled unwavering loyalty.
Boiling hostility.
Hatred spread upon the winds.
Just a few months prior, these people had crossed each other's territories, their lives intertwined—now they severed ties and honed their blades.
And so, as the north seethed.
Roughly a month later.
Sizzle—!
……The Lamburg Duchy's defensive line.
Fireworks bloomed across the night sky.
Soon—
……Boom!
An earth-shaking explosion.
"Assault—!"
"Everyone, prepare!"
Shouts from the duchy's soldiers echoed far and wide. Flames devouring the barracks lit up the surroundings in harsh light, as desperate screams rent the air.
Right on their heels—
"Charge!"
"Drive out the occupiers!"
Urbuna House soldiers surged forward like a tidal wave, their war cries ringing out.
Magic flares flashed in every direction, followed by explosions. After each blast came pitiful screams once more.
……The war had begun.
* * *
The war, ignited by Urbuna's assault.
It was ferocious.
"Don't fall back!"
"Defend with your lives... Guhk!"
Soldiers slaughtering one another.
Blood sprayed toward the heavens, drenching the earth.
Flash, flashes!
Overhead, mages battled for mana supremacy, their mana lights flickering in the struggle for aerial control.
But in one fleeting moment, if control slipped to the enemy...
Groooan!
Vast magic unfurled without mercy.
A spell woven by over a dozen mages combined shook the entire battlefield, trailed by the screams of soldiers.
A single spell claimed dozens of lives.
A breathless deadlock, where neither side could claim clear dominance.
"Kill them!"
"Chase them down!"
At times, the Lamburg Duchy seized victory.
"Push forward!"
"If they won't surrender, cut them down!"
At times, the Urbuna House did.
Those who surrendered were taken prisoner—but those who fought on met the blade in the end.
The front lines shifted daily.
……Yet all balances shatter from the smallest change.
"……Guhk!"
It began with a blue-eyed mage vomiting blood.
"Kelvin...!"
"Focus! We can't lose control... Guhk!"
The duchy's mages, locked in a contest for battlefield mana control against their Urbuna counterparts, collapsed one by one, coughing up blood.
The cause was plain.
The arrival of a mage powerful enough to overturn the fierce stalemate.
……Black Stone.
Around a month into the war, the Black Stone mages who entered the fray instantly shattered the equilibrium among mages and seized control of the battlefield's mana.
And then...
Rumble, grooo rumble—!
An earth-shaking tremor.
Crunch, cruuunch!
"……!"
"Guhk."
Spikes erupted from the ground, skewering the bodies of Lamburg Duchy soldiers.
Those on the front lines, entangled with Urbuna troops, escaped the spell's backlash—but the soldiers farther back were pierced in an instant by the earthen spikes, their screams filling the air.
All at once, in three locations.
"B-Black Stone!"
"Retreat! Fall back!"
Excluding Black Stone's chair, Gait, the three mages flipped the battlefield in a heartbeat and claimed the advantage.
……That was when the Grand Duchess's oathbound warriors made their move.
Four oathbound warriors entered the field.
- Berserker Kishuk
- Wing Shooter Charomata
- Iron Wall Kalomas
- Canceller Purshna
The four oathbound warriors punched straight through the soldiers guarding Black Stone.
Leading the charge was Iron Wall Kalomas.
Berserker Kishuk followed in his wake, carving through the ranks, while Canceller Purshna disrupted the mages' castings before their spells could activate, rendering them inert.
Wing Shooter Charomata provided covering fire.
All four were equipped with sacred treasures supplied by the Grand Duchess—even Urbuna's mages were powerless before their onslaught.
Just like that.
The four oathbound reached the Black Stone mage Ainge in the blink of an eye and formed up.
"Ainge-nim...!"
"Hmph, worthless scum!"
Black Stone Ainge sneered at the four oathbound warriors arrayed before him.
Bugs in armor, harboring venom—they were still just bugs.
Berserker? Wing Shooter? Iron Wall? Canceller?
Trash that had made a name for itself among mercenaries, at best.
Tap, snap, snap!
Even surrounded by the oathbound, Ainge casually flicked his fingers and smiled. A grating sound echoed across the battlefield.
……But then.
"……What?!"
The air's mana froze solid, refusing to budge.
Canceller Purshna's handiwork.
Of course, she could halt Ainge's magic for only the briefest instant. ……It was surely just an instant.
Slash.
"……!"
A berserker's greatsword sheared off Ainge's arm like butter. Iron Wall Kalomas's shield smashed into his face right after.
"Guhk...!"
And the finishing blow.
Crunch!
An arrow from the Wing Shooter lodged between his eyes.
"Time?"
"20 minutes, 12 seconds."
"……Close. We pull out now."
Having severed Black Stone Ainge's lifeline, the four oathbound warriors withdrew through the Urbuna lines once more.
And so, as the flames of war swelled.
Somewhere along the Lamburg Duchy's defensive line.
"……."
The masked mage waited for his moment.
For the instant his prey revealed itself.
* * *
The death of Black Stone Ainge delivered a massive shock to the Urbuna forces.
Black Stone.
Urbuna's star had fallen.
At the unbelievable news, Urbuna morale plummeted—and the Lamburg Duchy did not miss the opening.
"……The fifth oathbound has appeared."
"Beast Tamer Parselick."
"Who would've thought the Grand Duchess would recruit that savage."
Beast Tamer Parselick.
Strictly speaking, Parselick was no foreigner.
His mother hailed from the great plains, but he was unequivocally an imperial citizen, born and bred in the empire.
Yet he had inherited such pronounced traits of the steppe nomads that he was often mistaken for a barbarian—a detail irrelevant now.
What mattered was his ability.
"……He commands a hundred horses."
"Not even warhorses, yet they trample soldiers without fear. At times, they carry soldiers into the fray and dominate the front lines."
An incomprehensible spectacle.
Even if he bore the blood of nomads who moved as one with their mounts, commanding a hundred horses alone... ordinary horses, treated as warhorses?
And that was not all.
Soldiers untrained in horsemanship mounted them and rampaged across the field like seasoned cavalry.
What did this mean?
Parselick's command over the herd was so absolute that the riders' riding skill was irrelevant.
To rephrase it:
"……As long as grass grows on this land, the duchy effectively commands a cavalry force unbound by supply lines."
Parselick alone controlled the hundred horses—all the fodder they needed was a single man's portion.
The rest grazed the earth.
Soldiers to ride them?
Plenty to be had upon reaching any garrison.
For the Urbuna forces, already crippled in their mage operations by Ainge's death, it was a message of utter despair.
To pit Black Stone or their mages against a mere hundred cavalry...
"The four oathbound."
"For some reason, they track Black Stone's position relentlessly."
"Information must be leaking somehow..."
The four artifact-clad oathbound from the duchy were an unknown quantity.
The capabilities of their artifacts, the duration they could wield them—no one knew.
With defenses like that, their activation times couldn't be overly long...
In such circumstances, rashly deploying Black Stone or the mage corps might only bolster the enemy's spirits.
……Faced with this, the Urbuna commanders could scarcely contain their turmoil.
"If Parselick's ability resembles the nomads', it can't be infinite. We just need to bide our time..."
"How long do we wait?! Might as well wait to die of old age!"
"Parselick isn't the problem right now. Don't you see the real threat is those four oathbound?!"
"……No, neither Parselick nor the four matter. Information from the main house seems to be leaking somewhere—we need to root out the spy first..."
Parselick, rampaging across the lines with his mobility.
The four oathbound, appearing whenever Black Stone mages surfaced.
Urbuna's secrets spilling from some unknown source.
The commanders had assumed that, war begun, they would encircle the ducal capital within three months at latest and force a surrender—even accounting for the mage corps' losses from the Salvatium purge.
It was then that a voice rang out.
"……Enough."
A single word from Black Stone chair Gait brought an icy silence to the command tent.
Every commander's gaze turned to him.
They were asking.
The four oathbound, Parselick—if he stepped forward, it would be resolved. Why hold back?
Gait knew their stares well enough, but offered no explanation. He simply closed his eyes.
'The masked mage.'
The fallout was no small thing.
He had crippled one Black Stone mage and left dozens of Urbuna's elite mages in critical condition.
No fatalities, curiously—but a grievous loss for Urbuna all the same.
The greater loss, however, was to Gait himself.
'I can't move under these conditions.'
The masked mage—possibly allied with the duchy—had tied his hands.
And beyond that?
'Has he sniffed out the spy among Halaborg's oathbound?'
The spy they'd planted wasn't relaying anything useful.
The spy's value extended beyond intelligence, of course... but it was regrettable nonetheless.
In the end, no clear path forward.
'……This mood won't hold forever.'
The Grand Duchess's gambit was cunning enough, but if they dragged it out, momentum would swing back to Urbuna.
The issue was the damage in the interim...
'In the end, must I take the field?'
Gait's thoughts had reached that point.
When the tent flap parted and someone entered.
The commanders' voices erupted immediately after.
"We pay respects to the patriarch!"
"We pay respects to the patriarch!"
At their words, Gait's eyes snapped open. He rose and bowed.
"We pay respects to the patriarch."
The patriarch had returned.
……Preparations complete.
At that single fact, a fierce heat flickered in Gait's eyes, which had been coolly composed moments before.
The moment of counterattack was at hand.