Permanent Occupation (1)
Lester County.
A forward stronghold at the very northern edge of humanity, once overflowing with ambitious adventurers. Thalia gave a brief account of why that place of hope had come crashing down in a single morning.
"There was a traitor," Thalia said, her expression dark.
"This is all the information I have on the traitor. 'He Who Exists as a Shadow.'"
"Sounds like an Awoken Ability."
"Yes. A reinforcement type... or possibly a manipulation type. The city of Lester was well fortified, but no one imagined they would be tripped up by a shadow. It is the reason I left the Steel Guard as well. I judged that cleaning house mattered more than fighting on the front line."
"You believe the traitor is still among us?"
"It would be stranger if there weren't one."
The first name that came to mind was Chris. The boy had already betrayed us once.
Granted, Chris had been far too young when Lester fell, and he hadn't even been there at the time. But given how the demons had come swarming through the moment he opened Stormrock Fortress's gate, as if they had been waiting for exactly that, he must surely have had some means of contacting them.
"A shadow always falls at your feet."
I spread the map of the duchy across the table.
"But stare down at it forever and you'll never take a step forward. Three hundred years ago, our ancestors stood not to defend but to advance. We will retake the city of Lester and teach the world whose descendants we are."
"Well said, my lord."
"Let's give it a damn good try."
The two knights burned with fighting spirit.
"Here, and here."
I pointed to the lands north of Stormrock. They had once been the domains of minor demon lords, but Vitten and Thalia had already swept them clean.
"We start from here..."
I moved my finger slowly northward.
"...and push all the way to here."
My finger stopped on a region circled on the map with unusual care. At its entrance stood an inscription:
— Dragon Lair: Black Dragon Ulkaard —
"There's no rush. Little by little—but surely."
I let the pause hang for a moment, then allowed myself a faint smile.
"We begin the permanent occupation of the Demon Realm."
The knights snickered as they laid about with wooden swords. The trainees they struck hopped and yelped, pleading their pain. Whether or not the trainees suffered, the knights cared only for dragging screams out of them. What they were doing was less training than one-sided bullying.
"Filthy bastards," Mabel muttered with distaste.
"Shall I go and quiet them, my lord?" offered the man standing across from him.
"Leave it. Men like that are better to have around than not."
Mabel was in the middle of a meeting with the officers of Orchid, his personal knight order. Orchid had displayed unwavering loyalty from the day of his defection to the Empire down to this very moment.
Too few men worth trusting.
The ones horsing around outside the barracks were knights gathered from every corner of the Empire for the sole purpose of driving out Iden. To Mabel, who had grown up watching nothing but the hard-bitten knights of the north, they looked pitifully soft.
"And the Seven Pillars? Still no word?"
"None, my lord. Only Lord Sandor has declared his willingness to join us."
"Pathetic bastards. And these are the pillars of the Empire, are they?"
Mabel fumed. The army he had scraped together numbered some thirty thousand. In raw headcount, it was on par with the total fighting strength of the Esterzy Duchy.
But Mabel had seen that monster—Iden—fight with his own eyes at Andrassy. A mere teenager, standing in a realm equal to the power Mabel had gained only by abandoning his humanity.
And every last one of the man's followers was a marvel in their own right. As if it weren't enough that the commander of his knight order and his fiancée were both Grand Masters, one of the Imperial Seven Pillars had gone over to his side, and the man toted a magma dragon around as a pet, no less...
...At this rate, we lose. Plain and simple.
He could see exactly where this army was headed. But neither could he keep dithering forever. Mustering a force this size alone devoured a fortune, and the men gathered here, ignorant of his true intentions, were desperate for him to set out at once.
In the end, Mabel's grievances turned toward the imperial family. If the crown would only take a more proactive hand, every one of his troubles would resolve itself.
"Your Grace!"
The meeting was still underway when his aide came tumbling headlong into the barracks.
"Urgent report! The Esterzy Duchy and the Kingdom of Sirakos have concluded a trade agreement!"
"What?" Mabel shot to his feet.
"Sirakos? Did I hear that correctly?"
"C-Certain, my lord. I confirmed it myself, over and over."
The aide stammered out the rest.
"We cannot yet be certain, but... there is intelligence that the traitor has secured a naval stronghold on the northern sea."
Mabel violently unfurled a map. Then he drew a long, unbroken line from the Kingdom of Sirakos to the Esterzy Duchy. His subordinates held their breath, following the line his hand traced.
"Good heavens..."
Groans leaked out among the men.
"The duchy that sat isolated in the north—joined to Sirakos, it is the Empire that now finds itself encircled."
"If the northern sea links up with the western ocean, sealing the land routes becomes meaningless."
"No one alive can match Birgir II at sea. We must stop this agreement before it advances any further."
"..."
Mabel glared at the map as though it were his blood-sworn enemy. The aide shuffled his feet and pressed on with the report.
"Word that Birgir II and the traitor have joined hands is spreading through the territory beyond all control. Sir Kane and Sir Godfrey have abandoned the camp. Before long, Sir Victor will..."
"Is there more?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm asking whether you have anything left to blather."
Conflict played across the aide's face.
"There is... in truth, one further matter. Two days ago, the traitor Iden reportedly marched out in person at the head of an army."
Mabel's eyebrows twitched.
"Which front? Sart? Or Regdar?"
"Not the south."
"...What did you say?"
"He marched north."
"That insolent whelp..."
Mabel's breathing turned ragged. His men watched his trembling fist with uneasy eyes.
"...He dares to look down on me!"
Mabel's roar shook the barracks to its rafters.
"Hm?"
My ears had suddenly started to itch. According to the old wives' tale, your ears burn whenever someone is gossiping about you—which had to be nonsense. Otherwise, a duke like me would be itching from dawn to dusk.
I was on the march north with the Steel Guard. Uld had stayed behind in the duchy, while Kalman, the Steel Guard's acting commander, had made the expedition roster.
I had declared the recapture of the city of Lester with every confidence.
That didn't mean I wanted a fuss made over it. However firmly the people of my territory backed me, who genuinely enjoys squaring off against the Emperor? Making ends meet was hard enough as it was—nobody welcomes a lord who mobilizes the army at the drop of a hat.
So I had kept this expedition as small as it could be: two hundred knights and thirty priests, the whole of our strength. And since we never once strayed from the road, we reached the Demon Realm a mere ten days after setting out.
"Unchanged."
Kalman offered his brief verdict as he surveyed the Demon Realm.
A sky black as pitch. Trees gone jet-black and hardened... For the record, all of that was money. Those black trees were black steelwood.
That the land itself was in such a state went a long way toward explaining why my father, for all his countless victories, had never managed to push the front line forward. Ground seized by the demons was slowly eaten away by demonic energy until it degenerated into nothing more than a breeding ground for monsters.
"Such a rusted-through... such a wicked energy seethes here."
Colin shuddered, his beard quivering.
"It is a bleaker sight than I had imagined."
The speaker was Daron, head of the underground church. For all his gloomy words, his eyes were sparkling with anticipation. What else would you expect from a man who had entombed himself underground of his own free will?
"So what's the plan?"
Kalman's question meant, plainly: how do you intend to turn the Demon Realm back into the land of the living? The knights of the Steel Guard and the garrison soldiers of Stormrock Fortress were watching us with keen interest as well.
"The old-fashioned way."
I tipped my chin at the priests. One of them stepped forward and sprinkled holy water across the ground.
"O Steadfastness of Steel!"
As the priest traced the sign of the cross, bright radiance spread from his body in a spray of light-motes. In the same breath, the soil within a three-meter radius regained its original color.
"See that?"
I jerked my chin toward the purified ground.
"There's no work here for blade-swingers. Possessed land is a job for priests."
"I see."
Kalman nodded, apparently satisfied. The other priests followed suit, pouring out holy water as prayer and consecration began in earnest. Holy light flashed across the plain without pause.
"Then it is my turn."
Daron rolled up his sleeves as well.
"O Solitas!"
His ringing voice rolled out grandly over the plain.
"Father of raw iron, Thou who temperest the flame! Heart of the forge, Thou who bearest the soul of shining steel!"
Dazzling radiance burst outward from where Daron stood. Fifteen meters of ground were purified in a single stroke—a display of power the other priests could never hope to approach.
No wonder Colin sings his praises till his jaw aches. The man's ambition is well earned.
By now every gaze had settled, quite naturally, on one man. The most revered of all the priests of the holy city. Bishop Colin stepped forward.
"...We dare to hope."
His majestic voice shook the air on every side.
"We beseech Thy holy name—tend, we pray Thee, this ailing land. With steadfastness and firmness and unchanging constancy, with wisdom like bedrock and mercy that knows no wearing, pour out Thy boundless grace!"
FWAAAAAH———!
A colossal explosion of divinity erupted around Colin. The scattering motes of light made it hard to keep one's eyes open. When the radiance at last subsided, a purified domain some thirty meters across remained in its wake. Fresh green shoots had even begun to sprout from the soil Colin had cleansed.
"Heh heh. So it's not dead yet after all."
Colin chuckled, thoroughly pleased.
"...No easy task."
Kalman murmured it while gazing at the far horizon of the Demon Realm. Repeat this little performance two or three hundred more times, and we would secure territory the size of a single village. To salvage even one of the small domains marked on the map, we would have to camp out here for weeks, months on end.
Everyone was absorbed in their own task. That was when I quietly walked off toward the untouched ground.
The truth was, there was an experiment I wanted to run. The scene before me was the trace of a divine being—the Demon King—being driven out by borrowing the power of another divine being, Solitas.
But as it happened, I had a divinity of my own.
Granted, in the Daoist worldview, the standing of a freshly minted immortal was nothing to boast of. Against a great god of Solitas's caliber—one whose influence reached across an entire world—I could not dream of standing shoulder to shoulder.
But what I needed right now was not the power to strike down the Demon King. I only needed enough to drive off his stench.
"Whew..."
My nerves were on edge. It was, after all, my first time praying to myself.
"...Hear me."
I knew instinctively what had to be said. As though fate had scripted it, as though this were an examination with a single correct answer, I drew the next words up from the depths of my soul.
Suddenly I felt eyes on me. Kalman was watching with an expression of rare fascination. I extended my index finger and issued the command in a languid voice.
"Return to your original form."
A crushing sense of depletion washed over me. It was nothing like exhaustion. This was the recoil of wielding far too great a power. I watched the dark sky split wide open, watched a white aurora descend like a curtain. Everything within my sight rippled like a mirage, and within that radiance I saw new life budding forth.
The Northern Grand Duke's Daoist Arts Are No Joke — Episode 119