Battlefield Tour (6)

"Wow. That's something else."

The moment I stepped through the dimensional gate, I couldn't help but marvel at the vista spread out before me.

The gate opened onto the flatland at the foot of Hosiria Canyon, where Ivronik Castle stood. Of the slaughter that had once taken place here, not a single scar remained, and so I was free at last to drink in the canyon's full, breathtaking ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠beauty.

Sheer cliffs rose on either side as if to pierce the sky, their faces a chaos of knife-edged rock and knobby outcrops. Thin waterfalls threaded down between them, and through the mist they threw up, rainbows shimmered wherever the sunlight struck. Clear water gathered at the base of the falls and murmured along the canyon floor, and along the banks wildflowers of every color had burst into bloom, laying a faint perfume over the air.

These were things I had never properly seen back then — I'd been too busy climbing the cliff. And there were things here now that hadn't existed at all in those days.

Crowds packed the canyon floor, and vertical lifts climbed the cliff face. The walls that had been shattered in the fighting had become gentle mounds of moss-covered rubble, and in front of them a tidy row of shops — souvenir stands and what looked like cafés — had sprung up in a neat line.

So it really had become a tourist attraction. They weren't kidding.

And over it all, Ivronik Castle gazed down from the clifftop with the same lofty indifference it always had. Everything else felt foreign, but the castle itself was unchanged from ten years ago — the walls built as a continuation of the cliff, the hidden murder holes and traps, the spires thrusting up at intervals so that the entire canyon sat within their killing range. An impregnable fortress.

The wyverns that had once filled the sky, and the blood that had run down the walls and the cliff face — those, at least, were gone.

"Everyone, let's head up!"

The large lifts, reportedly donated by the dwarves, held ten people at a time, and five of them had been installed along the cliff. We had reserved ahead with the Ivronik Castle administration office, so we rented one lift entirely for ourselves and sent the students up in turns.

"Professor?! Why are we taking the lift?!"

Knightly came scrambling through the line of waiting students, looking thoroughly flustered.

"What, you want to crawl up instead?"

"This is a battlefield tour!"

"And? There's a comfortable way up. Why would I go looking for extra suffering?"

"Th-this isn't what I thought it would be…!"

I cocked my head at the despair on her face. What on earth was she on about?

"Did you hurt your hand?"

I pointed at the bandages wound thick around her palms, and Knightly wailed.

"I thought you were going to make us climb that!"

She was pointing at the infiltration route I had just been looking at — Linus's route.

"That? Are you out of your mind? How would anyone even climb that?"

This kid had well and truly lost it.

"That's enough. Get on the lift."

I shoved Knightly aboard and stepped on after her. The lift lurched, then began to climb.

"Wait for me!"

Kirlin came flying in like a bolt of lightning and scrambled on at the last possible second.

"Principal. That was reckless. You're supposed to set an example for the students."

"Heheh, sorry. It's my first time here too. I got a little carried away."

Kirlin gave an embarrassed smile and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"It is a bit cramped, though. If they were going to build these, they could have made them bigger."

And with that, she pressed herself flush against me.

"Sorry…. It's so tight in here, I don't have a choice…."

Through the white turtleneck she always wore, the feel of her chest was unmistakable — and blatant.

God. This dark elf, I swear…

The Principal of the academy, carrying on like this in front of the students. Fortunately, none of them were paying the slightest attention to Kirlin's clumsy little performance.

"Woooow…"

The students were too busy gasping at the view unfolding beyond the lift, and Knightly had already forgotten the whole climbing business, her mouth half open as she stared.

"Aigoo, so cramped…. Sorry, sorry…."

Meanwhile Kirlin, despite there being perfectly usable space, glued herself to me as if she meant to fuse us into a single organism.

"Eek… I bumped into you…. Just bear with it a little…. Why is it so narrow in here? Sorry…."

Nobody had asked, but she kept apologizing and making excuses, squirming and rubbing against me all the while.

"Aigoo…. Principal…. Please don't put your hand there…."

"Sorry…."

Kirlin, who had been pretending it was an accident, hastily snatched her hand back.

Watching her carry on like this, I had to admit Celine was still Celine. Ten years on, that razor-sharp intuition of hers hadn't dulled one bit.

The lift rose quickly and came to a halt on a narrow plateau directly in front of Ivronik Castle.

This was the ground the Demon King's army had once sown with poison gas and minefields in defense of the fortress. Now it was a packed marketplace, swarming with tourists, guides, and street vendors.

"We got up here too fast…."

Kirlin stepped off the lift and clicked her tongue, looking distinctly disappointed.

"Special Task Academy students, this way!"

Orendi conjured the academy emblem in midair and called the students together. When we headed over, Professor Ismera was standing there with her entire face crumpled in disgust, one hand clamped over both her mouth and her nose.

"What's wrong? You said there wasn't any poison gas left."

"There are too many people. I cahn't breathe at all."

I'd meant it as a joke, but Ismera forced a smiling squint and answered in a thick, nasal voice. So, in plain terms, she found the crowd's body odor unclean. Typical pureblood elf.

"Greetings! Welcome to the graduating class of the Special Task Academy!"

Once every student and professor had come up, a guide from the castle administration office waved a flag and led us onward. As we crossed the plateau and entered the castle, he began explaining the history attached to the place.

Along the Empire's northern border stretched the Hosia Mountain Range, a chain of such extreme terrain that no human army had ever truly conquered it. For generations it had served as the Empire's natural rampart — more than enough to hold back the warlike petty kingdoms and tribal confederacies that refused imperial rule. No force large enough to threaten the Empire could cross it. The deep mountain valleys teemed with monsters and fugitives fleeing wanted posters, and no one in their right mind would risk the range if they had any other choice.

There was, however, a single passage through which people could come and go: Hosiria Canyon. The very place where Ivronik Castle now stood. The wildly serrated mountains broke off as if sheared by a blade, forming a passage barely a hundred meters across. Because this was the only safe way over the Hosia range, it had been one of the Empire's most vital strategic points since ancient times.

And so the Empire undertook a construction project that defied all reason: the raising of Ivronik Castle. Not content with sealing the near-vertical cliff behind a wall twenty meters high, they began building a fortress at mid-cliff, from which every approach could be watched and defended. Despite every interference the northern enemies could throw at them, and despite accident after accident on the site, the Empire finished Ivronik Castle in fifty years. For centuries afterward, it stood as the Empire's stubborn shield.

"But that glory became nothing more than a story in the history books about ten years ago, when the Demon King's army rose."

Ivronik Castle had no means whatsoever of stopping wyvern riders — a type of soldier the world had never seen. Once the Demon King's army seized the castle, it was turned against the Empire, wrapping around the imperial heartland and covering the enemy's rear. The Empire tried to take it back, of course, but the fortress had been built in a location that was nearly impossible to assault in the first place. Add the poison gas and the mines the Demon King's army employed, and the imperial forces suffered staggering losses in a siege that dragged on and on, each side washing blood with blood.

In the end, it was only when the Imperial Palace deployed Linus, Hero of the Continent, that the hellscape in this narrow canyon was finally brought to a close.

"At the time, Sir Linus realized that a frontal breakthrough of the poison gas and the minefields was impossible, and so he devised a method of infiltration that was perfectly bold — and perfectly original."

The guide pointed his flag down toward the cliff below the castle.

"That is the infiltration route by which Sir Linus, Hero of the Continent, climbed the cliff alone and opened the gates of impregnable Ivronik Castle."

Yellow markers stood out at regular intervals, running from the castle wall, down the cliff, all the way to the distant ground far below.

Wow. I never imagined they would mark the exact path Linus and I had climbed. Looking at it now, though, it really was high. The fact that we had even thought of climbing that — it struck me all over again what a lunatic thing it had been.

"Urgh!"

Beside me, Pelemiya clapped a hand over her mouth and doubled over as if she were about to be sick.

"You all right? Fear of heights?"

"N-no, I'm fine…. Hup—"

"Go see Priestess Maya and have her take a look at you."

Pelemiya couldn't even answer. She staggered off toward Maya at the rear of the group.

"Professor Pelemiya doesn't look well. She's been like this ever since the tavern."

Lina watched her go, worry written all over her face.

"A disaster she brought on herself."

"Pardon? What do you mean?"

"It's a long story."

What I had shown Pelemiya were my memories of the battle to recapture Ivronik Castle. She almost certainly hadn't been able to keep a proper meal down since.

I walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down the infiltration route Linus and I had climbed. Nothing remained of it now. But back then, blood and corpses had been sliding down that rock face. Even now, the screams of the soldiers who had gone flying through the sky that day still lived in my ears.