Chapter 11: The Dabicon Is Burning
Dawn broke.
The morning sun shone brilliantly on the surface of the Dabicon River.
The combined forces of Elfrieden and Lastania began moving on their operation to exterminate the lizardmen.
Quickly, quietly they got into position. Each of them in their respective places, each performing their duties, eagerly antic.i.p.ating the beginning of the final battle.
For my part, I was on Naden’s back, over the Dabicon river north of the fortress.
“Grr...” Swimming through the sky, Naden let out a (telepathic) groan of dissatisfaction.
If she had been in human form, she’d have puffed her cheeks up, I was sure. I knew why too.
“I’m really sorry about this, Naden.”
“You’d better be. Why do I have to carry her?”
“Hehe, that’s because I’m the cornerstone of this operation,” Excel giggled.
That was the reason Naden was upset. Excel was riding on her back with me.
“There’s a custom that says a dragon should never let anyone but her partner ride on her back!” Naden complained.
“Oh, but that’s why I’m not riding on your back, you know?” Excel teased.
Excel was sitting on my lap while I straddled Naden’s back. In addition, to keep from falling, she had her slender arms wrapped around my neck.
We were posed like a knight letting a princess ride with him on his white horse, you could say.
This was because I needed Naden to carry Excel, but she would only let her partner ride on her back, and though she was the grandmother of one of my partners, the logic of “the partner of my partner is kind of like my partner” didn’t work for Naden like it did for Aisha and the others.
“She could have just used a gondola, you know!” Naden said with a growl, but Excel was unperturbed.
“I wouldn’t like that. It’s boring. I came all this way from the kingdom, so you can allow me this much, at least. Right, sire?”
“Souma, say something!” Naden snarled.
...What did she want me to do? Naden was my important fiancée, and Excel was a key person in the coming operation, so I couldn’t turn her down. That was why I kept my warning her at a minimum.
“Excel, don’t tease Naden too much. She’ll throw you off for real, you know?”
“Hehe, I’m sorry. Her reactions are just too cute. I couldn’t help myself,” Excel said and stroked Naden’s back. “Besides, I feel a strange kinship with Naden. I mean, look, we’re so similar. We have antlers on our heads, and though the colors are different, we have similarly shaped tails too, don’t we?”
“Well, yeah, I guess we do...” Naden admitted.
“The sea serpent race is said to have been descended from sea serpents that are also called kouryuu or jiaolong, so maybe they were ryuus just like you.”
Yeah, that thought had occurred to me too.
The idea that Juna’s family, the House of Doma, were descended from something vaguely similar to humans like loreleis was one thing, but it had never sat right with me that the descendants of ma.s.sive sea serpents were shaped like humans. Maybe those kouryuu sea serpents had been ryuus like Naden, and that was why they had human forms.
Excel chuckled and smiled. “Maybe members of the sea serpent race aren’t half-dragons like the dragonewts, but half-ryuus instead.”
“But I’m not meaty and voluptuous like you,” Naden muttered.
“Chalk that up to individual variance.”
“It’s not fair!”
And the two of them started arguing.
One was talking in my head, and the other was sitting on my lap, so it was pretty noisy.
Hal had Ruby in her dragon form come up next to us. “Sorry to interrupt your fun, but it’s almost time for the operation to start.”
“Gotcha,” I said. “Let’s get started then.”
Looking around the area, there were several hundred wyvern cavalry hovering in the air and waiting for my command.
The time was ripe.
I gave the order to the woman sitting on my lap. “Okay, Excel, make it flashy.”
“Understood, sire.”
Erasing the smile from her face and putting on the look of a serious retainer, Excel removed her arms from around my neck, crossed them in front of her, and lowered her head. The speed with which she could change modes was like flipping a switch. It was little wonder she was renowned for how capable she was.
“Now, let we show you my full power, the reason why I was once the talk of Elfrieden, and the reason why I am called the mage who is invincible anywhere there’s lots of fresh water.”
Excel clasped her hands in front of her and focused. As she did, her body tilted, so I hurriedly put my hand around her waist to support her.
As I held her surprisingly delicate hips, Excel giggled. “Thank you, sire. Hold me just like that, if you would.”
“Murgh...” Naden telepathically voiced her displeasure, but this was part of the operation, so she was going to have to deal with it.
Excel closed her eyes, holding her hands tight as if focusing. Then...
Splooooooooooosh!
Suddenly there was a swelling in the surface of the Dabicon directly below us, and five ma.s.sive pillars that could have been mistaken for high-rise buildings rose up. They were so ma.s.sive, the sight of them was overwhelming.
The droplets that splashed off the forcibly raised water hung in the air like smoke, and in an instant, we were in the middle of a light shower.
The scene in front of me shocked me silly.
This is Excel...when she gets serious...
It seemed what Excel had said about being invincible anywhere there was a lot of fresh water was no exaggeration. I was guessing the only reason she was limiting it to fresh water was that, at sea, all magic was difficult to use.
Fighting her in a desert would be one thing, but if I had to take on Excel over a river where there was abundant fresh water, I’d have to be prepared to commit all the wyvern cavalry here.
“Souma!” Naden shouted. “Look straight down!”
“Whoa...” Doing as Naden said, I looked down and let out a gasp of admiration.
No river had a fixed width, and a river’s depth varied from place to place. That meant a place where any given river was thin and shallow made for an ideal crossing point.
Basically, that was the area right below us.
That said, the Dabicon was known for being a ma.s.sive river, so even at a crossing point, the river was about 200 meters across, and the water was up to shoulder-level, even on a large man. It was just barely crossable on horseback.
However, Excel was pulling the water up now. That lowered the water level, making it so we could even see the rocks at the bottom. Excel released her clenched hand, then lifted it up.
“Water G.o.d Calling,” she whispered.
With those words, the five ma.s.sive towers of water took on a shape like snakes with their heads raised. Then, when she brought her hand down, there was a loud hiss, and the five ma.s.sive snakes of water dove into the surface of the river downstream.
The water from upstream was pulled up, and then flowed to the opposite side of the shallows downstream. This produced five great arches of water.
That caused a great drop in the water level beneath the arch, and the narrow area where it was shallow expanded greatly.
This was the plan Hakuya had come up with.
If the shallows we were going to cross were narrow, and it was difficult to bring a large army to the opposite sh.o.r.e, we could expand the shallows, and have the lizardmen on the opposite side come to us.
Hakuya had concluded that based on the information I’d given him and sent me the number one water mage in the country, Excel Walter, along with many other water mages.
Incidentally, the other water mages were in little boats floating on the river’s surface, slowing the current of the water that would flow from upstream to downstream, and adjusting the current of the water Excel sent downstream so it didn’t flow backward.
Thus, a shallow path across the Dabicon with five great arches of water over it was formed.
I felt like I was watching that one miracle from the story of Moses.
“Hakuya sure came up with an amazing plan...” I sighed in admiration.
“Sire, this magic is extremely taxing, so I would appreciate it if you moved on with the operation,” Excel told me with a pained look on her face.
Whoops. It was such an incredible sight, I had stopped thinking.
I quickly gave the order to an equally astonished Hal. “Hal! Like we planned, have the lizardmen cross at once!”
“Huh?! R-Right! Let’s go, people!” Hal, who had come to his senses, ordered.
“““Yeahhhhhh!””” the wyvern riders around him roared.
Then, with Hal and Ruby the red dragon leading the charge, half of the wyvern cavalry flew to the opposite sh.o.r.e where the lizardmen were.
Halbert and Ruby were at the front of the wyvern cavalry as they reached the opposite bank where tens of thousands of lizardmen were camped.
They were flying high enough that no lizardmen attacks came at them, but the countless flying chimertype monsters attacked Halbert and his team.
Halbert pierced the monsters with his two spears, and Ruby cooked them with her fire.
Hal told the wyvern cavalry, “Listen! Our job here is to act as herders! Now let’s drive those scaly, long-tailed lambs to the opposite bank, like shadow hounds chasing cotton sheep!”
“““Yes, sir!””” the wyvern riders replied quickly and spread out.
Taking out any monsters that crossed their path as they went, the wyverns reached the edge of the lizardman pack and breathed fire toward the ground.
Bompf! Bompf! The flames. .h.i.t the ground one after another.
“Gugyagyagya!”
The lizardmen pushed and shoved one another to get out of the way of the flames, and the pack was gradually driven toward the Dabicon.
Halbert had Ruby blow flames that were incomparably greater than anything the wyverns could produce and drove the lizardmen into the shallows.
“Haha! My fiancée is vicious! Go on! Run! Run!” Halbert yelled, getting excited.
“Murrgh, that’s not a nice way of saying it,” Ruby grumbled. “You can expect Kaede and me to give you an earful later!”
Roarrrrrrrrrrrr!
Ruby’s roar echoed, and the frightened lizardmen fled blindly across the shallows.
Once a pack began moving in one direction, it wouldn’t change course easily.
Having deemed further pursuit unnecessary, Halbert told the a.s.sembled wyvern cavalry, “That should get the pack to go to the other side. We’ll leave enemies on the ground to Ludwin’s main force, while we return to Souma... His Majesty... and exterminate the flying monsters! We’ll support the main force from up in the air!”
“““Yes, sir!”””
Then Halbert and Ruby turned south, along with the wyvern cavalry.
The lizardmen on the far sh.o.r.e had started to move.
Looks like Hal and the others pulled it off, I noted.
The lizardmen were crossing the path through the shallows beneath the water arches.
Watching the lizardmen splashing through the shallow water, it reminded me of a nature program I had seen long ago introducing gnus crossing a river.
If this were a nature doc.u.mentary, this’d be where the crocodiles attack...
Although it was the guys crossing the river in a pack that looked like the crocodiles, in this case.
“Is there any need to let them reach the opposite sh.o.r.e?” Naden, who was watching the same scene, asked. “Around half of the pack is in the river, so wouldn’t it be easy to have d.u.c.h.ess Walter cancel her magic and wash them away?”
“Well, if they were armored soldiers, that’d be the right answer, but they’re buck naked. Washing them away might not kill them, right? If we wash them downstream, it’ll make killing them a pain, so we’ve got to let them cross and then encircle and wipe them out.”
“For my part...I’d like them to hurry up and finish crossing, though,” Excel said with effort, sweat beading on her forehead.
I guess if it came to controlling this much water, even the usually aloof Excel couldn’t keep a cool face. Her teeth were gritted, and her hands were shaking.
“Sorry,” I said. “I need you to hang in there just a little longer.”
“I know.” Excel wore a forced smile as she diligently continued wielding her magic.
Eventually Hal and his group, who had finished their job of driving the lizardmen here, rejoined us, and the entire lizardman pack finished crossing the Dabicon.
“Augh, that was exhausting!” Excel raised both her hands up into the air as if stretching.
Spla.s.sssssh!
In the next instant, the water arched over the shallows collapsed, and fell as a solid ma.s.s of water.
The great amount of water that fell to earth created a huge splash, and when that splash came down, it rained for a short time over the river.
The riverbed, which we had been able to see for that short time, vanished, waves formed, and the boats of the other water mages that were supporting Excel swayed.
We watched it all while getting soaked by the rain.
“...Should’ve brought a rain gear, I guess,” I said.
“My clothing is my scales, so my clothes are waterproof,” Naden said.
Whatever the case, with the shallows returned to their prior state, the lizardmen’s retreat was cut off.
While I was feeling relieved it all went well, Excel slumped to one side.
“Excel?!” I cried.
When I put my arms around her waist and held her, Excel laughed weakly.
“Ha...ha... I’m fine. I just used too much power.”
She was too exhausted to even form a proper smile, and her shoulders were heaving with every breath. The rain had made it so her clothing clung to her body, which was making her look awfully sensual.
“You did well,” I said. “Leave the rest to us.”
“I’ll do that. Heheh, it’s certainly a perk, having His Majesty hold me like this. Juna would have a fit if she could see us now.”
“That’s a real nice personality you’ve got there.” My shoulders slumped at how much fun Excel seemed to be having.
“Murgh... Maybe I oughta zap her in Juna’s place,” Naden said, sounding peeved.
If she fired off any electric shocks now, while we were both wet, she’d get me too, so I was hoping she wouldn’t.
Well, our role in this was over. The ground unit would handle it from here.
Or so I thought, until...
“Huh?” Suddenly, Naden’s whiskers twitched like a pair of whips.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Mmm... Yeah. There’s something to the west... Hm?”
Naden must not have known what it was herself, because her words were vague.
However, Naden’s sharp senses were apparently picking up something, and I was worried that something outside my predictions was about to happen.
When the tens of thousands of lizardmen finished crossing the shallows that Excel had expanded with her magic, they came across the forces of the Kingdom of Friedonia in formation.
Hungry from being unable to feed themselves on the other side of the river, all they saw was a herd of food.
There didn’t seem to be any of those ones that flew in the sky and breathed fire, either.
So, in order to sate their appet.i.tes, the lizardmen raced toward the camps of the Kingdom of Friedonia.
Ludwin, the commander-in-chief of the kingdom’s forces, and Julius were watching them as they did.
On top of the small hill where the main camp of the allied forces was, they sat side by side, on top of their horses.
“There must be 50,000, just counting lizardmen,” Julius said. “More if we include the surrounding monsters. What a nuisance.”
Ludwin nodded at this a.n.a.lysis. “I agree. If this were the military of a foreign country, we might struggle, but we won’t come up short against a pack of beasts with no concept of tactics or strategy.”
“Yeah. Let me handle the right wing.”
“You intend to fight after all?” Ludwin asked, concerned. “The people of Lastania have fought enough. It’s all right to let us handle the rest, you know.”
Julius shook his head. “For the people of Lastania, this is a fight to defend their country. If we leave it to the kingdom at the very end, the people of this country won’t be able to consider it their own victory. In order to speed along reconstruction after the war, we must let the people of this country grasp victory with their own hands.”
“Reconstruction after the war...is it?”
Realizing that Julius was setting his eyes on what would come after the fighting, Ludwin was impressed. What he showed was not the perspective of a general who only paid attention to commanding the armies and attaining victory, but a king who thought about the whole country.
Julius. .h.i.t the hilt of his saber. “I’ve left the conscripts in the fortress, but I’ll have the regular forces and the refugee soldiers fight until the end.”
“I understand,” said Ludwin. “Were my position different, I would want to stand on the front lines too.”
“Wouldn’t that fox-eared second-in-command of yours get angry if you did?”
“Yeah, and that’s why I’ll be staying put in the main camp: to keep young Miss Kaede from getting upset with me,” Ludwin replied jokingly.
That drew a laugh from Julius. “Well then...I suppose we’ll have to settle this before our commander-in-chief gets too impatient.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you left me a piece of the action, you know.”
“Not a chance. I won’t be borrowing your help, I’ll put an end to the lizardman menace personally. Until we meet again.”
Watching Julius depart on horseback, Ludwin let out a sigh.
“Honestly... Fate can be a funny thing,” he said to himself, and then raised his hand up high. “Send the signal to the front line! Intercept the incoming lizardmen!”
Having given the order, the horns sounded.
Hearing the signal from the horns, Kaede stood on top of the watchtower they had built and raised her staff high. She was commanding from near the defensive fence that had been erected in the battlefield camp.
“That’s the signal,” she called. “Everyone, the lizardmen are coming! First, stop the enemy! Everyone, form a wall!”
There were earth mages gathered around Kaede.
When she gave the signal, the earth mages used their magic in unison, the ground swelled up before the front-line unit, and in less than a minute a long earthen wall was built.
For the lizardmen, who had been about to fall on the camp like an avalanche, they found themselves impeded by a dirt wall that suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
“Gueh! Guh...”
Because it was made of dirt, even if they hit it or clawed at it, they could leave a mark, but they couldn’t break through it. They looked around restlessly, but there were no gaps to be found in this wall.
Even so, in order to secure the “food” on the other side of the wall, they began scaling it. They had incredible tenacity, but they were lacking the momentum they’d had before.
“Archers, loose your arrows!” Kaede ordered.
The archers all began firing their arrows over the earthen wall in unison.
The arrows were fired upward in an arc with no particular target, but the high number of arrows and closely cl.u.s.tered state of the lizardmen worked together to cause hit after hit. Some of those arrows were imbued with magic, exploding or cutting up the area around them to create even more dead lizardmen.
Watching that scene from up in the tower, Kaede let out a sigh.
This is completely one-sided. It’s only because the lizardmen don’t have the sense to do anything but charge in on their own that we’re getting off so lightly. I was concerned what might happen if there were a demon here and it took command, but it seems my worries were in vain.
Under Kaede’s command, the front-line unit was able to stop the lizardmen’s advance. However, given the sheer number of lizardmen, they were not able to shoot all of them. Some managed to make it through the hail of arrows to climb the earthen wall. The earth mages were focused on keeping the current wall from breaking, so they didn’t have the leeway to create another wall.
A good number of lizardmen were crossing the wall. It could be antic.i.p.ated that they would attack the now vulnerable mages and archers.
However, on the other side of the fortification, the lizardmen encountered Aisha, whose power in combat was so overwhelming as to seem unfair.
One silent swing of Aisha’s greatsword was enough to slash several lizardmen who had scaled the wall and were about to land on the other side.
“Gugih?!” The lizardmen let out a death cry as they were cleft in twain.
Having been impeded by an earthen wall, and subjected to the ranged attacks of archers, the lizardmen could only cross the wall in small numbers. To ensure the few who did met with guaranteed death, and to ensure the safety of the long-range attack unit, Kaede had an elite unit on the other side of the wall. The country’s strongest fighter, Aisha, was included in this, of course, but...
“Muh!”
As the top and bottom halves of bisected lizardmen fell to the ground, Aisha effortlessly swung her greatsword to clean the blood from it. Despite having won handily, there seemed to be a dissatisfaction and frustration in her expression.
The cause of that was Jirukoma and Lauren, who were in the same squad as her.
Aisha could see the two of them helping each other as they fought the lizardmen coming over the wall.
“Sir Jirukoma!” shouted Lauren.
Lauren stood in the way of two lizardmen that had tried to attack Jirukoma from behind as he fought, knocking one away with her shield and impaling the other with her sword. When Jirukoma realized he’d been saved, he cut down the lizardman in front of him using his kukri, then stood back-to-back with Lauren.
“Sorry, you saved me there, Madam Lauren.”
“It was nothing. I will protect your back, Sir Jirukoma.”
“Then let me protect yours as well, Madam Lauren. I won’t let you come to harm. I want to have three children with you after all.”
“Fwhuh?”
For a moment, what he’d said didn’t register with Lauren. The moment she realized it was his response to her borderline self-destructive proposal, her face went a bright shade of red. However, she quickly recalled this was a battlefield, and the silly grin on her face was pulled tight.
“Let’s be sure we win this, Sir Jirukoma!” she cried.
“Of course we will!”
Then a lizardman charged at the two of them, possibly in rage.
They readied themselves for it, but before they could do anything, a knife materialized from somewhere and buried itself in the lizardman’s forehead.
The lizardman fell heavily to land face first on the ground.
When they turned back, Komain was looking at them in exasperation, throwing knives between each of her fingers.
“Brother, is that anything to say on the battlefield? Could you have possibly chosen a more inopportune time?”
Jirukoma looked away shyly. “I’m clumsy about these things. If it weren’t a place like this, I don’t think I could ever say it.”
“Honestly... Madam Lauren!” Komain exclaimed. “I know my brother is hopeless, but please take care of him.”
“R-Right! Please, take care of me too!”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Jirukoma demanded, making sure no lizardmen got close to Komain. “You could have just waited in the fortress with Sir Poncho.”
“I can fight too,” she retorted. “I can’t abandon you when you’re out fighting.”
“But what if you get scarred before you’re able to be wed? Sir Poncho won’t have you like that, you know?”
“Sir Poncho isn’t that narrow-minded... Wait, no, we’re n-not like that!”
Seeing her stammer, Jirukoma and Lauren figured out the situation.
“It would seem there are more things we’ll have to talk about once this battle is over now,” Jirukoma announced.
“Yes,” Lauren agreed. “We absolutely must get through this.”
When the two who were now both her guardians said that, Komain’s face turned a bright shade of red.
Meanwhile, because she was watching the three of them from a distance, Aisha was frustrated. Not because she thought their behavior was inappropriate on the battlefield.
No, this is what Aisha thought:
I’m so jealous of Madam Lauren!
That was all.
I’m working hard because I want His Majesty to praise me too, but His Majesty is up in the air with Madam Naden. I want to fight back-to-back with His Majesty like that!
Souma would have only been a burden fighting beside Aisha, but that didn’t matter. Having actions that were symbolic of two trusting partners shoved in her face, it was only natural she would think, I want that for myself...
Aisha swung her greatsword with frustration in her heart.
I couldn’t sleep with His Majesty because I was the one on guard duty last night too. I’ll slam this frustration into the enemy in front of me!
It had been the same when Souma was forcibly taken to the Star Dragon Mountain Range. When Aisha got agitated because of her feelings for Souma, some sort of limiter inside her broke, and her destructive power went up considerably.
When Souma had left her behind and gone to the Star Dragon Mountain Range, her sadness had turned her into a force that could overwhelm Halbert, Kaede, and Carla all together.
Now, her jealousy toward Jirukoma and the others powered her sword.
I want His Majesty to compliment me too! I want him to adore me! For that, I must end this fight quickly, and go to where His Majesty is!
Following her emotions, Aisha scattered the lizardmen.
The lizardmen were just being made into collateral damage.
“Eep?!” I exclaimed.
F-For some reason, a cold shudder was running down my spine, but... I must be imagining it.
“Unahhhhhh!” Naden shouted.
Bzzap!
The electric shocks that Naden threw every which way burned the monsters to a crisp and knocked them from the sky. Naden the black ryuu and I, along with Halbert and Ruby the red dragon, worked with the wyvern cavalry to secure air control and prevent flying monsters from attacking the forces on the ground.
“If you want to die, line up!” Halbert shouted.
Even on Ruby’s back, Halbert was swinging around his two spears, while the rest of the wyvern cavalry was using magic-imbued arrows to attack.
“Everyone’s so flashy...” I murmured.
For my part, I was using a crossbow, firing, reloading, pulling the lever to draw the bowstring, and firing again. Fire, reload, pull the lever. Fire, reload, pull the lever. Fire, reload, pull the lever... It was a repet.i.tion of those same tasks. It seemed plain compared to what the others were doing, but I still managed to down three small flying monsters like that.
I peered over the side, looking at the battle unfolding beneath us.
Because of the hard fight that Kaede, Aisha, and the others in the central front-line unit were putting up, the lizardmen that had rushed to the center had lost their momentum.
The left and right wings, seeing their opportunity, were moving to encircle the lizardmen.
This was an extermination battle. If we left any alive, they would only cause trouble later.
Everyone, hang in there...
I prayed for the victory of the soldiers fighting below.
The one leading the right wing was Julius.
“Shield bearers, don’t allow any gaps! Spearmen, stay behind the shield bearers and only stab those that charge in! While ensuring you don’t get too far ahead of the group, move up little by little!”
In a normal war, speed was of the essence, and you would deliberately scatter the enemy to disrupt their formation, but this time, exterminating the enemy was the goal. In order to ensure none escaped, they would squeeze the enemy little by little, like strangling them with silk.
A red lizardman leaped, landing on top of a shield bearer. It was the type that breathed fire.
As the red lizardman opened its mouth wide, it took a deep breath, preparing to spew flames at the defenseless soldiers behind the shield bearer.
“I won’t let you!” Julius shouted.
He hit the lizardman in the mouth with the side of his sword, preventing it from inhaling, then kicked it in the belly to get it away from the shield bearer. Next, he placed his hands on the ground, causing countless thorns to grow out of the ground with the magic Gaius had specialized in, cutting the red lizardman to pieces.
“Guh...ruhruh...”
The fire of life vanished from the pincushioned red lizardman’s eyes.
Having confirmed his enemy was dead, Julius raised his voice. “Don’t let them through! Now is the time to put an end to this accursed battle! Crush the enemy completely, and end this battle in a victory for us!”
““Yeahhhhhhh!””
The soldiers of the right wing were fired up.
Meanwhile, around that same time, the master and servant pair from the Republic of Turgis were with the left wing.
“d.a.m.n, it’s boring not being able to go out past the guys with shields,” Kuu muttered while clubbing any lizardmen that looked like they might get past the shield bearers with his cudgel.
While drawing her bow and nocking an arrow, Leporina scolded him, “It must be this way, Young Master. We can’t leave any gaps for them to escape.”
Even as she said that, Leporina loosed an arrow and terminated a lizardman. This sort of sniping from a place of safety was Leporina’s specialty.
“If you want to kill enemies, why not take up the bow yourself, Master Kuu?” she went on. “No matter how many I shoot, there never seems to be any less of them, and it’s a real problem.”
“I don’t have your aim, Leporina. Besides...”
A rock one of the lizardmen had picked up and thrown in desperation came flying straight at Leporina. Leporina, who had let her guard down, covered her face with her hands, but before the rock could reach her, Kuu’s cudgel pulverized it.
“You’re a good shot, but you’re so focused that you lose sight of other things,” Kuu continued. “I’ll protect you, since I don’t have much other choice.”
He tapped himself on the shoulder with his cudgel, in front of a wide-eyed Leporina.
Hearing him say he’d protect her, Leporina just barely managed to suppress a smile as she readied her bow. “Normally it’s my duty to protect you, Master Kuu.”
“Ookyakya! Well, hey, it’s fine to change things up once in a while, right?”
“I guess so. It feels kind of nice.”
With that lifting her spirits, a great many lizardman died to Leporina’s arrows.
It would not be until later that Leporina would feel the agonizing shame of knowing that her invincibility here had earned her the nickname of Death Bunnygirl.
While the left and right wings ensured the lizardmen didn’t spread out, they gradually narrowed the s.p.a.ce between them as they crushed the enemy. Because the center was putting up a hard defense, the lizardmen were unable to escape by moving forward while they were subjected to a pincer attack from the left and right.
If they were to try to retreat, the Dabicon was to their backs, and the shallows had already narrowed.
Water mages in boats were also standing by, using water magic to pierce any lizardmen that tried to cross and preventing their escape.
Huh? I realized while watching, even though they were in a desperate situation, that none of the lizardmen were trying to jump into the river. They were only trying to cross at the shallows.
Can the lizardmen not swim?
The lizardmen had reptilian faces, the rest of their upper bodies were scaly and humanoid, while their lower bodies were like those of carnivorous dinosaurs. Maybe because they were such warped creatures, they couldn’t swim well. Was that why there had been such a traffic jam on the other side of the river?
While watching the lizardmen, a thought occurred to me. Warped creatures... Just what are monsters?
Some creatures were born with unique traits that arose through sudden mutation.
Their entire bodies might be white, or they might have two heads.
But those traits only applied to the individual. Was it possible for such a large number of these warped creatures to occur naturally and form a pack?
I guess thinking about it now doesn’t do much good...
I decided to leave questions with no clear answer for later. For now, I had to focus on what was in front of me.
“Looks like they’ll be done on the ground pretty soon,” I commented.
There was no response.
I looked to Naden for agreement, but she still said nothing.
“Naden?”
“I really do feel something weird to the west,” she said.
Even while fighting, it seemed Naden had her mind on the west.
I looked westward myself, but I saw nothing. Still, ryuus and dragons were sensitive to magic. If Naden said she sensed something, there probably was in fact something out there.
“That weird feeling, is it a bad one?” I asked.
“Hmm... Not bad, more like familiar. But something’s weird about it...”
I heard another voice in my head. “Naden!”
Hal and Ruby pulled up alongside us.
Ruby said, “Hey, Naden, this feeling...”
“You feel it too, Ruby? Isn’t it a bit weird?”
“Yeah. It feels familiar, but different.”
It was somewhat surreal, seeing a black ryuu and a red dragon both c.o.c.k their heads to the side in confusion.
Hal and I who were both left sitting on their backs, out of the loop, looked at each other with no idea what to make of it.
Then the situation changed, with the ground being affected first.
Caught in a pincer motion by the left and right wings and hit by the concentrated fire of water mages if they tried to flee across the narrow shallows, the lizardmen had their backs to the river and could only wait until they were crushed.
However, they seemed to feel ready to grasp at any straw.
With death before their eyes, their wild instinct for survival awakened. Some began throwing themselves into the river.
Sploosh, sploosh, sploosh!
Once one jumped in, another imitated it.
Their capacity for learning that we had used to teach them to hunt monsters was showing itself in an unpleasant way now.
Once the trend started, there was no stopping it.
The individuals close to the river jumped in one after another.
Like I had suspected, the lizardmen’s physiology made them poor swimmers, and they struggled against the powerful current. If this were a normal war, we could have called this a victory.
However, though this battle was large in scale, it was not a war, it was only the extermination of hazardous beasts.
“That’s...kind of bad, huh?” I said.
It looked like the lizardmen were being washed away, but if they washed up on the sh.o.r.es downstream alive, it would expand the damage and cause problems.
“Hal, can we attack the lizardmen in the river with our forces in the air?!” I called.
“No way! Everyone’s got their hands full with the flying monsters! If we have any of the wyvern cavalry break off from here, you’ll have flying monsters escaping instead!”
“Urgh...”
He was right; the wyvern cavalry was currently engaged in dogfights with the flying monsters. Most of the reinforcement army’s air force was being used for logistics. On top of that, in order to keep it secret, I hadn’t brought any of our best equipment like the Little Susumu Mark V.
It seemed that our limited air power had created a gap.
“Your Majesty, I’ll use my magic again,” Excel suggested from between my arms, but she must have overused her magic. Her face was pale, and it was blatantly obvious she was pushing herself.
“No,” I said. “You’ve already used up everything you’ve got, right?”
“But at this rate...”
“If you die on me, it’ll be a loss for the kingdom. Let’s find another way...”
While I was trying to figure out if there was anything we could do, it happened.
“Souma!” Naden suddenly shouted inside my head. “Look at the sky in the west!”
“Huh...? Wha?!”
When I looked at the western sky as Naden had told me to, I saw over a hundred of these short line-like things floating there. As those lines approached, I realized they were extended wings.
There was a group of large winged creatures flying here in formation.
Wyverns...? No, they were larger than wyverns, and they had front legs. That meant...dragons?!
Then one of the dragons in the formation picked up speed, stopping in front of us in no time. It was a pretty white dragon.
Seeing that dragon, Naden and I both cried out in surprise.
“Pai, is that you?!” I cried.
“So what I was feeling really was you, was it?” Naden called.
That white dragon was Pai Long, Naden’s friend who I had met in the Star Dragon Mountain Range.
Pai the white dragon saw us and gave a little bow. “It’s been a while, King Souma. You too, Naden.”
It really had been a long time.
Naden and Ruby headed over to Pai’s side to ask questions.
“Pai...that’s you, right?” Naden burst out.
“Hehe! Do I look like anyone else?”
“Hmm? I felt you coming, but something seemed different. I dunno, it was different from the Pai I know. Right, Ruby?”
“Yeah,” Ruby agreed. “It’s like it’s you, but not you. That’s how the magic felt.”
“Ahaha!” Pai laughed. “You’re sharp.”
As the three of them were talking, I heard a voice from Pai’s back. “Pai, could you let me greet them too?”
Pai hurriedly went, “Oh, that’s right!” and tilted her head to the side. I could see there was a knight in platinum armor with a full-face helmet riding on her back.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the knight said. “Since you ride on a black dragon with an unusual form, I take it you must be King Souma of the Kingdom of Friedonia.”
“Yes, and you are?”
When the knight removed her helmet, a beautiful woman with very short hair appeared from inside. The woman put her helmet under her arm and saluted me.
“I am a princess of the Nothung Dragon Knight Kingdom and Pai’s knight, Sill Munto. Hearing of our ally the Kingdom of Lastania’s peril, I led 200 of the knights here.”
I feel like there were multiple things to be surprised about just in this introduction.
First, that dragon knights from the Dragon Knight Kingdom had come to support us. It seemed they had already dealt with the demon wave on their end. I guess that was to be expected from the country with dragon knights, the most powerful type of soldier.
Next, that the one who was coming to our aid was a princess. We had our own princesses who wanted to go out and fight themselves, though, so I wasn’t that surprised.
Finally, what surprised me, Naden, and Ruby the most was that Pai’s knight was a woman. I had heard that the contract between dragon and dragon knight was formed for the purpose of creating children. So, in the event that their knight turned out to be a woman, because of the vague nature of biological s.e.x in their species, a dragon would change into a male form to procreate.
In other words...
“Pai, you’re a man now?!” Naden exclaimed in surprise.
“I sure am,” Pai easily confirmed it.
Oh, right. Maybe what Naden and Ruby had said about a familiar presence that felt different somehow had something to do with this.
That made sense... Wait, I had bigger things to worry about now!
“Madam Sill! I know this is sudden, but lend me a hand!” I called.
“Hm, whatever with?”
“We have the lizardman pack cornered, but a number of them have jumped into the river and are trying to escape! I’d like your knights to exterminate them!”
While I explained that as fast as I could, Sill gave me a firm nod.
“Understood. Let’s go, Pai.”
“Okay!”
Sill put her helmet back on, then spurred Pai onward as she returned to her dragon knights.
She raised her sword. “We will exterminate the lizardmen that escaped into the river. Follow me!”
She dove swiftly downward, with the dragon knights following. As the dragon knights flew over the surface of the river, the dragons all breathed fire in unison.
Bwooooooooosh!
The flames spat by the formation of dragons licked the surface of the river as they spread out. Those flames cooked the drifting lizardmen without mercy.
What intense fires those dragons produced. Well, if they had a group of 200 of them that were strong like Ruby, that was to be expected, I guess.
Looking down from the sky, it looked like the Dabicon was burning.
Watching that scene unfold, Naden murmured to herself, “I dunno, it’s all such a shock, my head’s starting to hurt.”
I stroked Naden’s back in silence.
Not long afterward, the ground unit finished exterminating the lizardmen. We could hear the victory cries of the soldiers below us.
We had won.
Though there was that one surprise at the end, this was how the series of battles ended in victory for the allied forces of Friedonia, Lastania, and Nothung.