The Mage of Ashes (4)
The barren desert stretched out before them, with the Red Citadel visible in the distance.
The mood in the encampment, where orc barracks stretched endlessly in rows, was far too leisurely for an army on the eve of battle.
And no wonder — wherever the eye turned, there was nothing but their own kind as far as they could see.
With numbers like these, it seemed to them that no enemy in the world could possibly defeat them.
"……"
Of course, that was merely what the orc soldiers, who knew nothing, believed.
At the heart of the encampment, inside a massive barracks, a pair of eyes stared at the enemy lines marked across a map. It was Ulgar, the Great Warchief who had united the desert orc tribes for the first time in hundreds of years.
Humans…
Two of them lurked within that Red Citadel — two humans even he could not guarantee victory against. In truth, he had barely escaped with his life in their last battle.
A dull throb. Today, of all days, the long scar cutting diagonally across his face stung all the more bitterly.
But that knight must surely be dead by now.
There was no way he could still be breathing. The purest form of Grace had been forcibly poured into an unprepared body, after all.
Yet the reason he could not simply unleash a full-scale offensive, even while thinking this, was simple.
"……"
Fear. A gnawing anxiety — what if that knight was still alive? — was what made Ulgar hesitate.
Just then, sensing a presence behind him, he whipped around in alarm.
"…!"
Standing there was a human man and woman. Inside the Great Warchief's own barracks, deep in enemy territory, they displayed an air of absolute ease.
Even more astonishing was Ulgar's manner toward them.
"You've come."
At his words, the woman simply crossed her arms in silence, offering no reply. Instead, the man spoke up.
"Keeping well? Ul… what was your name again?"
"Ulgar."
"Right, that's it. Anyway."
The man flashed a careless grin and asked, "Why on earth haven't you started the war yet?"
"…My preparations are not yet complete."
"Wrong."
The man shook his head and turned his gaze to the map spread across the table in the center of the barracks.
"You may be nothing more than lesser monsters, but you've gathered eighty thousand troops. What more preparation could you possibly need?"
"War is not such a simple thing."
"My, my."
A soft, rich smile spread across the man's lips.
"You've grown, haven't you? Now you're even trying to lecture me."
"…That was not my intention. I apologize if I offended you."
"No need for apologies. Just don't forget whose grace allowed you to unite this desert in the first place."
"I am always grateful."
"Good. But do you know something? This world runs on give and take. Whatever you receive, you're expected to give something back."
Tap, tap. The man rapped his finger against the citadel marked on the map.
"The Red Citadel. Attack it within three days."
"But the finer details of the operation—"
"It is an order given directly by the Fifth Finger."
The man was smiling, but his eyes were cold. Feeling an indescribable revulsion crawl over him at that expression, Ulgar had no choice but to nod.
"…Understood."
The old project — the research into the Seeds of Corruption — had been concluded, and a new project had begun. Its purpose was singular: to restore Commander Theodore back into a human being.
"Hmm. Is it impossible to rip the demonic energy out of the Commander's body entirely, root and branch?"
"If you're asking whether it's possible, then yes. The odds of success are quite high, too. He simply won't survive it."
"…Because not even the minimal mana required to sustain his life would remain?"
The research proceeded mainly through Lloyd proposing possibilities and Oscar answering them.
"Then in the end, there's only one way."
Having eliminated a host of alternatives through process of elimination, Lloyd spoke.
"The way the Seed of Corruption transforms a living being into a demon. We apply that process in reverse — nothing short of that will do."
"That's what I think as well."
It meant transmuting the entirety of the target's demonic energy back into mana. Naturally, such a method was not something that simply fell out of the sky.
"…I'll be honest with you. I have no confidence in devising something like that. Alchemy isn't my field."
"That's fine. Deconstruction and analysis of magic happens to be mine."
Oscar exuded strong confidence, then turned to a different concern.
"The real question is whether the Commander can endure the process."
Where mana was the purest of energies, demonic energy pursued nothing but assault and destruction. It was, by definition, an alien force that could never arise naturally — a scale whose weights had tipped unmistakably to one side.
In other words, it was easy to stain a blank canvas black with mana. But scrubbing out paint that had already dried into it was another matter entirely.
"Above all, the pain… it will be several times worse than the agony of becoming a demon in the first place."
"The Commander I know is a soldier and a knight stronger than anyone. He'll overcome it."
"You put quite a lot of faith in him, it seems."
"…Not particularly. I'm merely stating a fact I've witnessed with my own eyes."
Oscar rested his chin on his hand and sank into thought. It delighted him, in a way, to see Lloyd — a man afflicted with a profound distrust of humanity — capable of placing his trust in another like this. But what he needed right now was not such a vague affirmation. He needed conviction.
The conviction that Theodore Veil could survive the process.
To find out, Oscar went to speak with the Commander himself.
"Answer me honestly, Commander. Could you endure pain even greater than what you suffered when you took the Seed?"
"Isn't it a bit past the point of asking whether I can or can't?"
Bound head to toe in bindings that held his whole body fast, the man managed a feeble smile.
"Making what can't be done, done — that's the true spirit of a soldier. Endurance is my specialty, so worry not."
"Then may I ask a few more questions? How does your current condition compare to when you were human?"
"…Hard to say. Honestly, if it weren't for the demonic energy and the regenerative power, I'd still have believed I was human."
It was an almost laughably obvious answer, but the body that housed the demonic energy shared a great deal in common with that of a demonkin.
After putting a few more questions to him, Oscar nodded.
"Thank you for your help. I've gathered quite a bit of useful material for the research."
"Hmm? Material? No — wait, who are you, anyway?"
"…I beg your pardon?"
At that moment, the Commander — both eyes grown red to the whites — suddenly fixed Oscar with a murderous glare and muttered:
"The number of soldiers residing in the Red Citadel is all chicken meat. The orcs of the desert are many as cockroaches — autumn and winter. But the sword I swing bears magic upon it, making it well suited for use as a ladle."
"……"
It was a perfectly deranged passage, comprehensible by no ordinary measure.
Oscar turned his head and shot Lloyd a glance. The latter, apparently quite accustomed to the sight of the Commander spouting nonsense, quietly led him out of the room.
"The stretches where he can hold a normal conversation are getting shorter by the day. Which would mean his mind is coming apart."
"Deteriorating that badly already… that's not good. I can feel how little time remains."
"Then we must hurry. Do you think you can finish the research in time?"
Oscar shrugged.
"The Commander said it himself, didn't he? Make what can't be done, done. I suppose I'll have to steel myself with the same resolve."
"…I'll say this up front — I won't be able to offer any real help."
Before Oscar could even ask why, a tremor ran through the underground laboratory, violent enough to rattle the whole chamber. It was the same intermittent shaking that had begun days ago.
Lloyd gazed up at the ceiling in silence, then spoke.
"The orcs finished their muster five days ago. No more tribes seem to be joining them, either."
"Then that means…"
"Yes. They must be itching for a fight by now. A full-scale battle is coming, sooner or later."
War. A single word with the power to squeeze the air from the room.
"How large is the enemy force at this point?"
"Eighty thousand."
"Good lord."
The number alone was enough to make the head spin. Considering that the Red Citadel housed only twenty thousand soldiers, the enemy held them outnumbered four to one.
"Will you be all right?"
"Setting aside exceptional individuals like chieftains and generals, an orc is roughly a 3rd-level threat at best. Taken individually, we can't simply say we're at a disadvantage. It'll come down to quantity versus quality."
"Coldly assessed — which side has the edge?"
"…One hand cannot hold off two, let alone three."
The moment Theodore Veil, a 7th-level knight, fell, the scales had already tipped. Even so, under ordinary circumstances, a few years of defense would have been a safe bet.
After all, the Red Citadel — home of the undefeated myth — had managed as much until now.
"…But with the variable of the King Sandworm in play, even that is wishful thinking now."
"Certainly, that massive body ramming into the walls would bring them down without effort. My question is rather this — can the main force hold out until my research is complete?"
"You already know the answer. No need to ask."
Make what can't be done, done.
Recalling those words, Oscar let out a dry chuckle.
Lloyd's prediction had been exact.
Three days after the two men's conversation —
Boom! Boom! BWOOOM!
From the earliest hours of dawn, the thunder of colossal war drums shook their ears. It was a kind of ritual performed by orcs on the eve of marching to war.
"……"
"……"
The mages lined up along the Red Citadel's walls gripped their staffs ever tighter as they watched the orc host advance. On their faces, where only thin breaths escaped, fear and resolve coexisted in equal measure.
The orc army crawling toward the citadel looked like an endless gray-brown tide rolling in from the horizon.
We're supposed to kill every last one of them?
Cursed orcs — there's a filthy mountain of them.
The mages strained against that crushing pressure, longing to hurl fire — but Lloyd, hands clasped behind his back, remained silent.
"Commander, awaiting your order at any time."
"Hold."
In the end, it was the orcs who struck first. The spears they hurled blackened the sky before arcing down in a deadly curve.
Lloyd's eyes flicked toward them, and he gave the order.
"Deploy the shields."
"Deploy the shields!"
The moment the mages' cry went up, a curtain of flame unfurled across the empty air.
FWOORRRR!
The blazing veil — turning the Red Citadel redder than ever — burned the incoming spears to ash, deflecting what it could not consume and keeping the damage to a minimum.
"Commander! They've reached the base of the walls!"
"Give the order — quickly!"
Lloyd endured. And endured.
Then, the instant the orcs at the front began scrambling up the walls, their massive muscles rippling—
at last, his lips parted.
"Full Bloom."
In the same breath, nameless flowers bloomed wide across the parched desert earth before the walls. The blossoms linked together like a single road, cleaving the great orc host cleanly in two.
"Krruh?"
"Flowers…?"
Not one of them could have known, even rising from the grave: those flowers were called Fire Lilies — and they were found only in the deepest lava fields, with the property of exploding when set alight.
Lloyd gazed down at the orcs staring at the blossoms in utter bewilderment — and gave his fingers a light snap.
"Petals of Fire, Dancing Wild."
FLASH! The flowers blazed with light all at once, and one after another, they detonated.
The blasts tore through the orc ranks, flesh scattering in every direction, and the enemy formation collapsed in the space of a heartbeat.
Astonishing.
It went without saying that a miracle wrought by a single mage sent their own army's morale soaring.
Finding that flower was impressive enough — but to conjure that many blossoms in a single breath?
Even a rough count by eye put them at several thousand.
That one explosion swung the initiative of the entire battlefield in an instant.
"……"
Lloyd watched the surging orcs for a moment, then glanced back over his shoulder, toward the barracks that held his laboratory.
How much longer could they hold that host at bay? There was no telling.
Please — finish it in time.
——!!!
Then, with the King Sandworm charging with a shriek that threatened to split their eardrums, one of the walls came crumbling down.