The Commander Returns to the Battlefield
"Pour the boiling oil down the walls!"
"There's no more oil to boil, sir!"
"Damn it all, then boil water if you have to! Block them from climbing up no matter what it takes!"
On the ramparts, the officers bellowed themselves hoarse.
With one stretch of the wall already collapsed, they could not afford to lose the battlements as well.
"What's the situation on the fallen-wall side?"
"The knights and mages are holding it together somehow, working in tandem, but..."
The trailing end of the report trailed off, but the officer could read enough between the lines.
Mana was not an infinite resource.
Worse, in the heat of war, even mustering half one's usual strength was a struggle.
Casting magic under that kind of tension burns far more mana than normal—and the spells themselves come out weaker.
In other words, they had held so far, but there was no guarantee the situation could go on indefinitely.
Gritting his teeth, the officer looked down below the wall.
The corpses of the orcs they had slain over the past several hours were piled up like mountains.
And atop those mountains of flesh, the living orcs were scrambling with everything they had to climb the ramparts.
...Hell.
This was hell itself, descended upon the mortal world.
A sudden surge of dread made the officer's eyes tremble.
With Theodore Veil—that towering star—missing, the only thing the defenders had left to believe in was a single mage who left nothing but ash in his wake, devoted to nothing but destruction.
Acting Commander Lloyd Schultz.
"Give me the spyglass."
Taking the spyglass from his subordinate, the officer peered far off at the enemy lines.
Even at a glance, Lloyd's condition—rampaging in the thick of it—was not good.
"Hah... hahk."
His combat robe, rolled through the sand, was torn in places, small cuts visible all over him.
Lloyd had no spare thought even to wipe the sweat streaming down his face; he simply stared down the opponent before him.
"Human mage. You're having trouble focusing on our duel, aren't you?"
Ulgar asked in a booming voice, his enormous axe resting across his shoulder.
The ground they stood on now was a vast clearing—a sacred dueling ground formed by living orcs standing shoulder to shoulder in a great ring.
A duel, is it...
It went without saying that the Orc Great Warchief would never do something that cost him for nothing.
And so it was a duel, yet not a duel at all.
If I only had to face that one, this would be far more manageable.
He was not fighting one-on-one right now.
It's coming.
Feeling the tremor rise from beneath his feet, Lloyd threw himself sideways.
But escaping the attack radius of the massive King Sandworm bursting up out of the earth was simply impossible.
"Kghk!"
An impact like being struck by a car at full speed shook his entire body.
Only the fact that he had managed to disperse the shock with mana had spared him instant death.
The moment Lloyd, barely gathering himself, squared his stance, a great shadow fell over his head.
"Your back was open."
"...!"
Whooong!
Ulgar's axe came whistling down toward the nape of his neck.
Guardian Sunflower
The instant he managed to snap his fingers, a colossal sunflower bloomed at his back.
BOOM!
The sunflower turned the axe once—and the moment it scattered into nothing, Lloyd's lips moved.
"Hwahwa Nanmu. Fireflower Frenzy."
"That spell won't work on me."
Fwoosh!
Magic power bloomed like flame, engulfing Ulgar's entire body.
The petals detonated with tremendous force—but they couldn't leave so much as a single wound on him.
"Hmm. So this is all human high-level mages amount to."
"..."
Lloyd gave no reply and glanced behind him.
He had long since been separated from the elite knights who had torn through the enemy lines alongside him.
Ulgar had cleverly driven a wedge between them.
And that was precisely to set up the situation I'm in now.
This was the heart of a battlefield, after all.
He had been nothing but a thorn in their side to begin with—there was neither reason nor loyalty for them to turn back and rescue him.
Lloyd drew a quiet breath.
...No allies should be caught in the radius by now.
World Liberation.
An authority granted only to those who had stepped into the exalted realm of Level 7.
Come to think of it, this works out fine.
He could only be grateful that no allies stood near him.
Because all his world ever left behind was savage destruction.
"...World Liberation. Yeonghwa Bokgae. Eternal Blossom, Forever Reblooming."
The moment Lloyd began to draw up his mana to unleash his world—
FLASH!
A colossal magic circle blazed to light from the ground hidden beneath the desert sand.
"...!"
At the same instant, Lloyd's face drained dead black as he vomited blood.
"Kghk! Khak!"
His mana circuits had twisted and reversed, mana flooding backward through his body.
As he collapsed onto one knee, Ulgar approached him slowly.
His mouth split wide at both corners, baring yellowed teeth in a grin.
"Krurk. It works well, as promised."
"Khak... What... is this...?"
"A parting gift from the humans."
More precisely, a gift left by the Black Finger—a magic circle that, the moment anyone attempted Liberation, forced the target's mana to reverse and dealt a crushing blow to their mana circuits.
Damn it all...
Lloyd wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, cursing himself.
To think he'd been taken in, hook, line, and sinker, by the tactics of a mere monster like an orc.
No—honestly, it's a fitting result for how dismissive I've been this whole time.
A Level 7 mage like me—what could an orc possibly do to me?
That arrogance might well have been the very cause of this outcome.
"Any last words?"
To Ulgar's demand for a final testament, Lloyd made no answer.
"Human pride."
WHOOM!
The great axe came hurtling down toward his neck with a savage cry.
Lloyd strained to throw up a defensive barrier—but he knew better than anyone that it could not possibly turn aside an attack of this magnitude.
Damn it...!
The moment his lips clenched tight without his meaning to—
CLANG!
With the shriek of steel meeting steel, rough breathing sounded from behind him.
"Hahk, hahk. Not too late, am I?"
"...Galahad?"
Lloyd stared at the knight who had shielded him, momentarily dumbstruck—then rounded on him at once.
"What is the meaning of this! I distinctly told you never to come here no matter what happened!?"
"You— I save your life and this is the thanks I get?"
KAANG!
Deflecting the massive axe, Galahad was already panting hard from that single exchange alone.
He bit down hard as he stared up at Ulgar's enormous frame, twice his own size.
"A mage agreeing to a one-on-one duel without a shred of sense—you're the one who's lost his mind, if you ask me."
"It's not as if I wanted—"
"Fall back."
"What?"
"I said fall back. We'll buy you the time."
We?
The moment that question formed, a battle cry rang out behind him, and several orc heads came rolling across the sand.
"The 1st Knight Corps...?"
The men he'd assumed had scattered and returned to the Citadel—why were they here?
Before the question could even resolve, dozens of knights formed an iron ring around Lloyd.
"...Don't read too much into this."
Galahad at their head muttered gruffly, not even glancing back.
They—the 1st Knight Corps—had learned one truth on this battlefield.
That their commander's disappearance had nothing whatsoever to do with Lloyd.
A man who'd scheme such a petty, vile frame-up could never possess such magnificent self-sacrifice.
The brooding mage who shut himself in his barracks, mind unreadable—that was the image Galahad and his knights had always held of Lloyd Schultz.
But a few hours fighting beside him on this battlefield had turned that notion one hundred and eighty degrees.
...He's not the kind of man who'd stoop to something so cowardly.
Watch a man's back and you know the man.
Though a mage, he had always stood at the very front, shouldering the danger himself—sending the knights to comparatively safer ground whenever crisis struck and taking on the role of bait.
Maybe we simply needed someone to pour our fury onto.
All they'd needed was a target for the shame of having failed to protect the commander they revered.
Galahad took the axe's weight, gripped his sword tight in his numbed, tingling hand, and spoke.
"Go. What the Red Citadel needs right now isn't a sharpened sword—it's a pillar to stand on."
"..."
Lloyd stared long at the knight's broad back, then slowly rose to his feet.
"...Disobeying orders in a combat situation. There will be disciplinary action for this later, so all of you had better brace yourselves."
"Have you lost your mind? Don't make our sacrifice meaningless!"
Ordinarily, Lloyd would have heeded those words.
His own survival was the greater gain for the Red Citadel—the more efficient choice.
But...
He slowly turned his head and looked toward the Red Citadel.
More precisely, toward the powerful surge of mana he had been sensing from there for some moments now.
It worked.
Lloyd, the first of anyone to realize it, let out a light laugh.
"Well now. As far as I can tell, not a single soul here needs to die today."
"What in the world are you—"
"Ten minutes. Just hold out thinking you only need to last that long—"
That was where Lloyd's words cut off.
Because the powerful presence he'd felt had begun crossing the battlefield at an impossible speed.
He narrowed his eyes and looked back.
Don't tell me the commander just charged in blindly to save us? No—even for him, this speed is...?
The distance was shrinking with every blink of an eye.
As if it were leaping clean across space itself.
And before long, the reason became clear in Lloyd's vision.
"Thank you for holding the line."
"Hoo, hoo... Think nothing of it..."
Oscar, who had used Flash seven times in a row, was gasping for breath.
But he didn't regret it for a moment.
Because as a result, he had delivered the master of the Empire's proud Red Citadel right to the enemy commander's doorstep.
"You've made quite a mess of your face in just a few hours, I see."
"...You came back."
Only after confirming the man's face did the tension finally drain from Lloyd's expression.
"Commander."
Theodore Veil.
The master of the Red Citadel had returned.
"C-Commander, sir!"
"How did you— I mean, where have you been all this time...!"
At the return of Commander Theodore, whom they had believed lost, the eyes of the knights who followed him went wide as saucers.
"Heh heh, we'll swap stories later. First, we'd best clear the field, don't you think?"
He said this as he gazed at Ulgar's bewildered face.
"I'll take the enemy commander. You men handle the cleanup around us, would you?"
"Be careful, Commander. There's a magic circle in place that reverses your mana if you attempt Liberation."
"Ho, there's even a spell like that? Well, it won't matter."
Gripping a single sword, he strode forward lightly, as if out for a stroll.
"After all, I'll hardly need to liberate my world for the likes of this."
With those words, the commander shot forward and struck Ulgar like a bolt of lightning.
At the same instant, the knights—morale surging past its limit—began mowing down the surrounding orcs like straw.
"...Now this is war."
A Level 7 knight or mage was a strategic weapon capable of turning the tide of a war itself.
With the balance between the two sides shattered, this place was nothing more—and nothing less—than a scene of outright slaughter.
RRRRUMBLE!
Then a tremor shook the ground beneath their feet, and the King Sandworm burst out, its maw gaping wide.
"Lloyd!?"
Oscar shouted in alarm.
He had naturally assumed Lloyd would dodge with Flight—but the mage couldn't even lift a hand before he was swallowed whole.
But worry proved fleeting. The massive body of the King Sandworm, having gulped Lloyd down and soared high into the sky—
"...Dance of the Dancer."
—was carved apart from within by thousands of whirling petals, vanishing in midair without even a corpse left behind.
And the moment Oscar witnessed Theodore Veil sever Ulgar's head in the next instant, he knew it for certain.
It's over.
The undefeated myth of the Red Citadel had carried on this day, too.