A Head Worth Kingdoms
Acting in the name of Eimanka XVI, sole Emperor of the continent, guardian of Heaven's Mandate, and Khan of the North, Duke Havlem launched the campaign to purge the wicked pretender who dared claim the title of Khan. At this the Emperor's peerless and loyal soldiers rejoiced, and even the frontier nomads who revere the sky raised their voices in cheer, so that even the wicked would at last know that the Mandate of Heaven rests with the Empire.
Even a war that seemed destined to be recorded in history books under a sentence like that was finally racing toward its end. Unless Kagan himself rose from the grave, the gap in military power the Empire had created was simply too vast to lose. That much was inevitable.
Looks like I won't make it back for the opening ceremony.
Once we crushed Dorgon, the war would be over. The problem was that the time spent preparing the departure ceremony, marching to the border, securing garrisons, fighting skirmishes, and winning over tribes had eaten so much of the calendar that summer was already dying. Even if I managed to kill Dorgon today, the postwar cleanup would push everything into autumn without question. That meant the First Department Head would have to serve as Academy inspector in my place. I felt a little sorry for the principal and for Villar.
At least we finished before the year turned. That's something.
A quiet sigh of relief slipped out of me. Compared to the two years we had spent grabbing each other by the throat, this war was ending in a matter of months. When I thought back to the days when high-ranking officers and staff had dropped like flies, the fact that the command staff had taken almost no losses this time felt almost unreal.
Still, I couldn't afford to let my guard down. Raise a defeat flag at the very end and throw the whole thing away, and the spike in my blood pressure might finish me off before any enemy ever could.
So I had gone into full preparation mode of my own.
"It is finished."
I nodded at the mage's careful report. Clenching and unclenching my fist a few times, I felt a grip strength that was clearly different from before.
Good.
The long-missed sensation of a proper doping high filled me with quiet satisfaction. No matter how many times I felt it, the performance of enhancement magic remained the absolute best.
"Well done. Thank you for granting my personal request so splendidly."
"You flatter me, Your Excellency."
I pressed a single gold coin into his hand. The mage bowed hastily as he accepted it. To a skilled mage, one gold coin was an ordinary enough sum, but as proof that he had answered a personal favor from the sitting Audit Department Chief, the coin became something precious. On top of that, it was a symbol that he had aided the husband of the permanent Magic Tower Master. From a mage's perspective, it was practically a royal gift.
"Master."
"Hm?"
After sending off the still-bowing mage, I was about to call for a priest when the Fourth Department Head spoke.
"The enhancement magic already cast upon you is excessive. Would it not be wiser to forgo the enhancement holy arts?"
It was a thoroughly reasonable point, so I allowed myself a faint smile. The effects of enhancement magic and holy arts were certain, but overuse brought equally severe backlash. If there were no side effects at all, every knight would march onto the battlefield under full doping.
Moreover, just as the Fourth Department Head said, the enhancement magic already on me was excessive. A reasonably skilled mage pouring his full power into an enhancement spell produced a result no ordinary body could endure. Adding enhancement holy arts on top of that could literally tear the body apart.
But it was fine. I had already done this before.
"It's all right. I tried it once in the past, and it turned out to be just within what I can handle."
"...Pardon?"
Her voice sounded faintly dazed, as though the answer had been completely unexpected. I had never told the Fourth Department Head that I had gone full-doping during the Kagan subjugation, so her reaction was only natural.
Honestly, what was there to brag about? I had gone into battle dripping with every kind of magic, holy art, potion, and artifact imaginable just to kill the enemy. Even then I had nearly died several times before miraculously finishing the job. It was nothing worth crowing about.
"Even if my body takes a beating, Beatrix will patch me up in no time, so don't worry."
"Ah... yes."
I pushed the point while she was still off-balance, and she accepted it quickly enough, nodding.
That aside, seeing the Fourth Department Head look this blank was a rare treat. I had gotten a good show.
"Still, it makes me happy to know someone is worrying about me. Thank you, Penelia."
"W-Worrying about Master is only natural."
When I pulled her into a grateful embrace, the Fourth Department Head trembled violently yet still returned the hug.
That familiar, comforting vibration. Yes—this was definitely my Fourth Department Head.
An army three hundred thousand strong moved to end the war. Whether the number was truly three hundred thousand I could not say, but inflating one's own numbers during a war was simply good breeding. And even if we fell short of three hundred thousand, we still exceeded two hundred thousand, so it hardly mattered.
Impressive, though.
The thought struck me suddenly. If this army of "a mere three hundred thousand" had moved from the eastern border, an entire country would already have fallen. Two countries, maybe. The composition of this expeditionary force was that extravagant.
Looked at another way, a host large enough to redraw the map of the continent was moving solely to catch and kill Dorgon. His head was worth more than most kingdoms. What a magnificent bastard.
"Inspector."
"Yes, Commander."
My wandering thoughts were cut short by the call of the Northern Theater Commander.
"We will make contact with them soon. If Dorgon has not fled, he will meet us at the head of his forces."
"If he were the type to run, he would never have shown himself in the first place."
"True enough."
The commander nodded and idly brushed the sword at his hip. A veteran of decades in the military, he was one of the Empire's acknowledged strongmen. Naturally he carried both tension and anticipation at the prospect of facing Dorgon.
"Still, seeing the Inspector at the vanguard rather than the center feels thoroughly strange."
I smiled faintly at the half-joking remark. I was hardly the only one who looked out of place at the front.
"You yourself are a commander, yet you stand personally at the vanguard, do you not?"
"With the Duke of Victory present, what is a mere theater commander? If I do not at least take the front, people will call me a salary thief."
There was a peculiar sincerity in the words, and both of us burst out laughing. Yes—when the Duke of Victory himself served as supreme commander, even a theater commander was little more than a subordinate officer.
Of course, actually swinging a sword at the front still required a rather eccentric personality.
"At any rate, I am glad we can finally end this nightmare. The mere fact that Dorgon still lived forced the Northern Theater to remain on constant alert—more than words can express."
I could only nod. Even I, working in the Imperial Capital, had gone half-mad whenever Dorgon's name came up. How much worse must it have been for the man responsible for the entire North? Between him and the former Marquis of Sorden, every day must have felt like their blood was drying in their veins.
That the source of all that suffering had raised an army again was regrettable, but if we succeeded in killing him now that he had shown himself, a massive thorn would be removed. For the commander, it was a golden opportunity to spend the rest of his life in peace.
"So I leave it to you, Inspector."
"Of course."
The proposal was simple: the moment Dorgon appeared, we would charge him together and beat him half to death. I accepted without the slightest hesitation.
I wanted to kill Dorgon with my own hands—but I had no intention of stubbornly insisting that only I was allowed to do it. If pride made me lose him, there would be no greater disaster.
...Truthfully, I would have preferred to finish him alone, but I could not put private feelings ahead of the affairs of the state.
Besides, I've already faced him alone and let him slip away more than once.
Years ago there had been plenty of chances to kill him by myself. I had simply failed to take them every single time. Nothing was uglier than a man who had wasted his opportunities and then tried to be stubborn about it.
A horn blared. The earth itself seemed to shudder.
At the same time, the rain of arrows that filled the sky and the sinister aura of shamanic arts felt almost familiar. These bastards greeted us with arrows and curses every single time they appeared, so familiarity had been forced upon us whether we liked it or not.
But consistency also meant the effects were reliable—
"Mages, respond immediately. There is no need to consider what comes after."
—and it meant we had already built countermeasures of a sort.
At the Northern Theater Commander's order, the mages unleashed defensive magic and counterattacks in unison. Just as he said, this was the final battle; there was no tomorrow to conserve for. Power mattered more than mana efficiency.
First wave blocked.
I watched the sky where magic and shamanic arts clashed noisily, then dropped my gaze to the ground. Using arrows and curses to seize attention, the nomads had—as always—used their mobility to close the distance until they were right in our faces.
The second wave is still a pain in the ass.
Calling it a "second wave" made it sound grander than it was; in reality they simply charged straight at us, so detecting them was easy enough. Detecting and repelling, however, were two different problems.
They came wrapped in defensive shamanic arts, so half-hearted attacks would not stop them. Pour everything into the second wave, and the first wave would hammer us instead. Better to take the second wave with our bodies than try to block falling curses the same way.
"Show the serfs the fury of the steppe!"
"Carve the will of the wolf into this land!"
The great warriors at the front roared, and I saw soldiers flinch. Well, of course they would shrink back when men with ugly faces on horseback started screaming about fury and wolves.
And ahead of even those great warriors, Dorgon said nothing at all. He simply wore a deep smile and locked his eyes on me.
Creepy bastard.
Maybe it was because he kept talking about wolves, but his sense of smell seemed as sharp as any canine's. Even at this relatively close range, picking out exactly the person he wanted in a crowd like this should have been impossible.
I glared back at him and drew my sword. Come to think of it, Dorgon had been this disgusting for years; there was no point fretting over it now.
"I'll go first."
"Do so. I will follow shortly."
The moment the commander agreed, I charged toward Dorgon. The plan was for me to draw his full attention so the commander could burst in from the flank. Crude, but effective. If we were going to fight two-on-one, we might as well squeeze every advantage out of the numbers.
"We meet again, Karl Crassius!"
The instant I left the commander's side and took the lead, Dorgon laughed and accelerated.
Wait—was that bastard insane? The chieftain was pulling so far ahead that his own men couldn't keep up. Had he just abandoned command?
"Yes! I knew a man like you would come forward! Thank you for saving me the trouble of hunting you down!"
Hearing that, I realized that from his perspective I was just as much of a lunatic. I could have waited until numbers wore him down and then appeared, yet I had shown myself from the very beginning.
First the Khan Derby, now the Madman Derby. The North really was a den of lunatics without equal in the world.
"A gift for you! No need to refuse!"
When only a few meters remained between us, Dorgon pulled a scrap of paper from his robes and tore it.
As if by a lie, the roar of the battlefield vanished.
...Ha.
More precisely, the place itself had changed.
So this is what it feels like to be on the receiving end.
The forces behind me were gone. Only Dorgon remained in my field of vision. The exact tactic I had once used to peel Kagan away from his army had just been used on me.
I was going to lose my mind. Should I feel honored that he considered me an existence on the same level as Kagan?
"Well? A nostalgic place, is it not?"
I let out a hollow laugh at Dorgon's mocking words. Just as he said, the location was painfully familiar.
"Did you want to die in the same place as your father? What a filial son."
"That stings a little. I simply offered a friendless man the chance to be buried alongside his friends."
Because this was the place where I and those comrades of mine had fought Kagan.
This bastard really was completely insane.