A Premature Order
“……!”
Hadel’s brow twitched hard.
The advance order that had just reached him had come at an unbelievably early moment.
His eyes flew wide. He flung the letter in his hand as if casting it away. By then, a dark fury had already settled deep in his gaze.
“What kind of absurd order is this? The agreed time was three days. Barely a single day has passed!”
Hadel shouted at the man standing before him—Sergeant Major Sharokl, aide to Major Leorn.
Sharokl, however, answered with a face utterly unmoved by Hadel’s rage.
“Weren’t you the one who formed the reconnaissance detachments and built this division in the first place, Captain Hadel? If there had been no problems with the operation, the Commander would never have issued such an order.”
“Don’t give me that nonsense!”
Hadel raised his voice. The soldiers nearby flinched at a presence that looked ready to draw steel.
“You want to move the main force without even knowing the enemy’s exact position or the size of their strength? Do you have any idea what will happen if we shove ourselves blindly into the Kar tribe while they’re sharpening their blades?”
He clenched his fist tight.
They had won once. Only once. And with that single victory, had everyone already forgotten the countless humiliating defeats they had suffered before?
If we charge without preparation, another catastrophe will follow.
Hadel dragged in a deep breath, then stepped forward.
“Stand aside. I will go speak with the Commander myself.”
Sharokl’s eyebrows gave a slight jump.
“I have been entrusted with full authority regarding the Commander’s orders and sent here for that purpose. Are you saying you dare refuse that order?”
“It is not a refusal. It is persuasion. This order is far too reckless!”
Hadel’s shoulders rose and fell. He drew a long breath.
Certainty that his judgment was right tangled with a fierce anger at a situation where no one would raise a voice against an irresponsible command.
What in the world are the other officers doing? Every last one of them watching Leorn’s face, mouths shut, sitting still…… pathetic bastards.
He tried to hold it down, but the rage kept climbing.
Sharokl did not yield a single step. His tone was cold; his eyes were unpleasant.
For a moment, a heavy silence pressed between the two men.
Murderous light glinted in Hadel’s gaze. The man had Leorn’s backing as Commander, yes—but Sharokl’s conduct just now had clearly crossed a line.
Hadel looked at him and began to speak.
Or rather, he was about to, when—
“Captain!”
A soldier came running toward him, gasping for air. Hadel turned his head and snapped irritably,
“What is it?”
“Among the reconnaissance units…… survivors have returned!”
Hadel’s eyes wavered.
“What……?”
He was already moving after the soldier before the words had fully left his mouth.
And there he saw them—the soldiers of the reconnaissance detachment he himself had sent out, gathered together.
“……What happened?”
Judging by how few of them there were, they had clearly been hit hard by the enemy. Despair tried to take hold of his thoughts again.
But then—
“Sergeant Major Arteon saved us.”
“What?”
“Who did what?”
When Sharokl cut in, Hadel’s brows twisted into a sharp scowl. He wanted to drive the man off then and there, but hearing the report came first.
“Continue.”
“We had fallen into an enemy trap and were fleeing when…… Sergeant Major Arteon and the 3rd Platoon appeared. They killed the entire Kar vanguard and rescued us.”
The returned soldier described the situation in careful detail—the despair of that moment, and the way the flow of the battlefield had begun to shift because of one man.
Hope began to take root in Hadel’s eyes. Sharokl’s face, by contrast, twisted darkly. Instinct told him the plan was starting to unravel.
And then—
“……I see.”
Having heard the soldier’s report, Hadel thought hard for a moment, then murmured under his breath.
Perhaps the present situation at the front…… something……
Could still be made of it.
He could not understand why his heart pounded like this whenever that name reached his ears. By every measure it was the worst of circumstances—and yet it felt as if the entire atmosphere could still be turned on its head.
Once he had ordered his thoughts, Hadel turned. He looked at Sharokl and said,
“Lead the way. I will see the Commander myself.”
“But…… Captain…… that is……”
Sharokl hesitated. Under the present mood, this no longer looked like persuasion of Leorn so much as forcing a way through.
At Sharokl’s words—
Shrring!
Hadel drew the sword at his waist. The cold edge came to rest against Sharokl’s throat.
“Will you die right here, or will you lead the way?”
Hearing that, Sharokl could hold out no longer. His lips pressed tight; his shoulders trembled with humiliation. Head bowed, he slowly turned.
With a resolute light in his eyes, Hadel followed at his back.
He was not the supreme commander of this army. Even so—
The main force must not advance now.
He knew exactly what had to be done.
Thud. Thud.
Hadel’s footsteps toward Commander Leorn’s quarters were no different from those of a soldier marching toward a battlefield. Holding the present situation steady mattered that much to him.
And at the same hour—
Thuck!
“…….”
Drenched in blood, Arteon spoke with eyes that did not so much as flicker.
That was the last of them.
The Kar vanguard that had been hunting them at the front was finished. Which meant that now—
Ssshh.
“3rd Platoon. We locate the enemy main force and return.”
“……Yes, sir.”
Moldur quietly marveled at the reports that kept arriving one after another.
Given how heavy our losses were…… they could easily have thrown down a decisive gambit in haste.
Outwardly he kept the look of a man at ease, but inwardly he clicked his tongue at the Imperial army’s caution.
They themselves had taken severe damage in the previous battle. Naturally he had expected the Empire to push its main force forward at once and try to drive them back. Even if the Empire had suffered heavily before, in sheer size of the main body they still held a clear advantage.
Instead of charging blindly, however, the enemy had put reconnaissance units out front, concentrating first on reading the terrain and probing the disposition of allied forces. Even with the advantage, they were moving with a calm that bordered on the astonishing.
……Just as Lord Ulgraak said. They are nothing like the Imperial army of old.
If one went on thinking of the days when overwhelming numbers simply crushed everything in their path, one could take a brutal beating. Which was why—
Did Lord Ulgraak foresee even this?
His respect for Ulgraak could only deepen. Had the man not already read this Imperial movement and formed a special strike force of elite warriors?
They were already wiping out the Empire’s scouts with thorough precision. Before long—
“They must be in considerable panic by now.”
They would not dare advance their forces lightly. It was no different from having taken damage they never saw coming.
“In that case…… the first contest goes to us.”
Moldur murmured low.
The main forces had not yet collided, but Moldur understood. War was built from the results of small clashes like these, stacked one upon another until they made a current—and that current, in the end, decided victory.
With a composed face, Moldur looked out into the fog-shrouded front. Then he moved, heading toward the place where the warriors waited in ambush.
For now, they needed to husband their strength and hone their blades for the coming clash of main forces.
“…….”
Meanwhile, Ulgraak had settled alone in a quiet place to recover from the wounds of the previous battlefield, immersing himself in his mana cultivation method.
The Kar tribe’s distinctive cultivation art could concentrate mana on an injury and raise the body’s recovery. It demanded considerable focus, but it healed wounds taken in battle far faster than natural mending—and right now, that was exactly what he needed most.
……Already four days.
Four days had passed since he had sensed the Imperial advance and taken up position here. In that time Ulgraak had poured every scrap of attention into watching the wartime situation and mending his injuries in preparation for the fight to come.
Thanks to that, he could now raise his left arm without strain.
Only—
“…….”
Ulgraak’s mind remained wholly seized by a single scene from the past.
“Arteon, was it.”
That boy’s thrust.
Ulgraak called the moment up again and again. He had blocked it with the flat of his axe blade, yes—but—
If I had knocked that attack aside and countered……
No. If from the start he had not underestimated his opponent and had driven him with everything he had—would the outcome not have been different?
Countless possibilities circled through his head.
But Ulgraak soon exhaled roughly and rose to his feet. Review was necessary; being devoured by the memory was not. He would face the boy again in any case.
When that time comes……
He would finish it for certain.
A cold light flashed in Ulgraak’s eyes.
But then—
“Ta—Taman!”
Several warriors, Moldur at their head, came running in a frantic scramble, shouting. At their urgency Ulgraak’s expression hardened by instinct.
“What is it?”
At Ulgraak’s question, one of the warriors hastily caught his breath and spoke.
“I—it is……”
And then the shocking report that followed.
As he listened, Ulgraak’s face twisted hideously.
“……What?”
A tremendous fighting aura poured from his body. Ulgraak turned the question on Moldur.
“Have you confirmed it?”
At that, Moldur looked to the warrior beside him. The man steadied his breathing and nodded.
“Not all of them—but we confirmed the corpses of the warriors in one sector. However…… we found one rather unusual detail.”
“Unusual?”
The warrior recalled a single spear discovered among the dead—the spear buried in a tree, and, in a straight line with it, the body of one fallen warrior.
“It was clearly…… a spear thrown from the brush behind them…… and the force was tremendous enough to punch clean through a warrior’s body and drive the blade all the way into the wood.”
“What?”
Moldur started in open shock. Piercing a trained warrior’s body was already one thing—but for the spearhead to bury itself fully in a tree——
At that report, Ulgraak’s gaze sank cold and still.
And in that instant, a figure rose in his mind……
“It’s him.”
He was beginning to understand why every warrior of the strike force had died. If the ones who had ambushed them that day had started running wild——
“Moldur.”
“Yes, Taman.”
Moldur’s face went rigid. He too grasped at once how grave the situation had become.
Ulgraak spoke.
“Forget every other concern. From this moment……”
Ulgraak’s eyes settled into a deep, still calm.
“Pour every scrap of focus into killing that man.”
Right now, that one could fairly be called the Empire’s sharpest blade. If they could break that blade——
“Moldur. You will take the warriors and move yourself.”
That the situation was still unfolding meant they had not yet returned to their main force.
“Do not, under any circumstances, allow them back to their main body. Here…… you will take him. Without fail.”
At Ulgraak’s command, Moldur nodded with a grim, resolute face.