Chapter 74

To General Bel,

The Demon Lord merely feigns descent from the Northern Lands again, showing no true intention to move, it seems.

If we find and dispatch just four or five more high-ranking demons, we should gain considerable breathing room here.

I imagine I can leave my post for about thirty minutes without issue.

I’ll carve out some time to descend to Vallarand in two weeks.

Until then.

* * *

Reading the letter, Bel could almost hear the swordsman’s light and relaxed voice in his ear. Even the script was so airy, hastily scribbled that anyone receiving the swordsman’s letter for the first time wouldn’t be able to decipher more than a word or two.

Bel folded the swordsman’s short message twice, compressing it, then snapped his fingers. Instantly, the letter was engulfed in flames, reduced to ash.

The enemies mustn’t learn that the swordsman would arrive in Vallarand in two weeks.

Unlikely as it was… this was done as a precaution against the letter’s contents being leaked. If the archdemons learned of the swordsman’s appearance in Vallarand, they would surely cower and flee as usual, instead of daring to attack.

Absolutely couldn’t allow them to escape.

All four archdemons on this battlefield had to be killed. Every last one of them, without fail.

That was the least he could do, an atonement for the men who bravely faced death, following his commands.

His left arm throbbed.

Bel blew the settling ashes out of the tent, then quietly extinguished the lamp.

A deeper, lower darkness descended upon the general’s tent earlier than usual.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he had a proper night’s rest.

* * *

“Ed has deserted?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t until the next morning that I relayed the news of Ed’s desertion. There wasn’t any grand reason I didn’t tell him that very night, waiting instead for the morning.

Except maybe I was afraid Bell would find him and kill him.

Not that I cared whether he lived or died… but it felt a little… wrong. If I told Bell and Ed was captured because of it.

Bell would surely have a deserter dealt with according to military law. And wartime desertion was punishable by the harshest penalty.

…If Ed died, I wouldn’t be able to shake the thought that I’d provided the means.

The bed was uncomfortable enough as it was; I didn’t need to toss and turn any more than necessary.

“He deserted last night? When did you find out?”

“As soon as he deserted.”

“…Then why tell me only now?”

“You were sleeping, Sir.”

For anyone, but especially for a mage, rest and sound sleep were just as important as grueling study or practice.

If two people performed the same studies and exercises, the quality of magic would inevitably differ between the one who slept well, keeping their mind clear and clean, and the one who burned the midnight oil every night, exhausting their brain.

Disturbing a mage’s sleep was akin to degrading the quality of their magic. That was why, unless it was an absolute emergency, you should never wake a sleeping mage.

…Or so I added, a rather flimsy explanation, to Bell.

“That’s how I was taught.”

Bell’s gaze remained ferocious.

“Keeping quiet about desertion is the same as aiding it.”

…Was this a death threat?

I, for my part, clamped my mouth shut and simply gazed at him.

“Tch.”

Bell, as if annoyed, donned the robe he’d tossed on the bed in a brusque motion, and withdrew his sharp gaze.

The wine-colored robe was thickly smeared with mud, but he didn’t seem to be considering changing into spare clothes.

“For now, follow. I will brief you in detail on the operation I explained previously.”

Having donned the robe and roughly swept his jet-black hair back, Bell led Grisha and me out of the barracks.

It couldn’t have been more than nine in the morning, yet sunlight was nowhere to be found in the sky. The storm clouds that had briefly cleared yesterday had once again completely enveloped the sky.

We passed the barracks where the officers resided, and headed toward the Achilliptus Forest.

The farther we got from the battlefield, the lighter my shoulders felt. The clods of mud weren’t stained with poison or blood, and before long, I could see flowers blooming amidst the muddy piles.

Soon, a hill, upon which a colossal tree stood sentinel, came into view. A living tree that neither rotted nor died.

It was a hill with a different feeling altogether from the hill where Edgar had fled last night.

“…Could…could we rest a moment before going on?”

I asked Bell and Grisha carefully, with the hill directly before us.

“No.”

The reply was so firm that I couldn’t bring myself to ask why.

“…”

I bit back the curse that threatened to spill from my lips and began to ascend the hill diagonally.

My breath came in ragged gasps, and my vision swam. The two ahead of me glanced back at my distinctly slower pace, then frowned as they saw me climbing the hill at an angle.

“…What are you doing?”

“Don’t… talk… to me.”

I managed a reply, voice tight in my throat.

“I’m dying here, can’t you see? What’s with the chatter?”

Had I not known what sort of man Bale was, a string of curses would have erupted from me right then and there.

“…….”

Bale and Grisha, who had been ahead of me, exchanged a puzzled glance before continuing up the hill.

They’d climbed straight up, taking barely five minutes. It took me a full twenty.

…And that was *after* subtracting the ten minutes I’d spent resting.

“Haa… Crap… Haa.”

Atop the hill stood a small cabin. Built of wood, it looked freshly completed, without a single sign of wear and tear. I opened the cabin door and stepped inside.

Since no one was waiting outside, Bale and Grisha had to be in here.

“Finally, you’ve arrived.”

A bright lamp illuminated the cabin’s interior. Standing beneath it, Bale’s face was shadowed as he greeted me with a weary sigh.

A large map hung on the cabin wall. It depicted the detailed terrain of Valerand, and various shapes were drawn on it with a quill. Next to each shape were small inscriptions: ‘High Demon’, ‘Archer Variant Horde’, ‘Archlord Stronghold’.

“You are late.”

Inside the cabin were not only Bale and Grisha, but also Rex, Lire, and Alter.

“Here, drink.”

Lire handed me a cup filled with cold water. She must have been preparing it for me before my arrival.

Too exhausted to be touched by Lire’s thoughtfulness, I raised the cup to my lips.

It wasn’t quite…life-saving. My arms and legs still ached. But it gave me the sense that I wouldn’t actually die, at least.

“Sit. Time is fleeting.”

Lir gently tugged at my arm, the one holding the water, guiding me toward a chair. Alter gave a careful bow of his head, and Rex snapped to his feet, offering a salute.

I returned a sloppy salute with my free hand, following Lir as she steered me to a seat.

“Here, sit here.”

Lir was insistent, even using her fingers to emphasize that I should sit on her left.

Well, she probably wouldn’t want to sit next to someone she barely knew.

Considering her personality, it wasn’t all that strange.

After all, Alter was sitting on her right.

I sat where she indicated.

“From this moment forward, everything discussed here is classified. The second you step outside this cabin, no one is to breathe a single word about anything that passed between us here.”

Once everyone was seated, Bel adjusted the lamp hanging from the ceiling, focusing the light on himself and the map.

Bathed in the direct light, Bel was, I reluctantly had to admit, quite handsome. His dark, deep-set eyes and slicked-back, jet-black hair managed to retain their allure, even after what must have been days without a wash.

…We’d shared a barracks for days, but this was the first time I’d really looked at his face like this.

“If you agree, nod.”

The deep circles under his eyes and slightly raspy voice didn’t exactly inspire confidence… but we all couldn’t help but give a heavy nod.

With Bel putting it like that, who was going to say, “I’m going to blab everything outside?”

…No, even if the guy standing there wasn’t Bel, no one in this atmosphere would be stupid enough to shake their head.

“Good. Then let’s discuss the ‘Harvest’ operation scheduled for two weeks from now.”

Bel picked up a quill lying on the desk and drew four triangles on the far right side of the map.

“The enemy’s archons number four: Maltiel, Raguel, Ariel, and Michael.”

Bel then moved the quill to the far left side of the map, sketching out two circles.

“The number of soldiers capable of facing an Overlord of the enemy army in a one-on-one duel? In our forces, there are but two. Myself, and Grisha.”

Alter, the 8th Circle mage and former Tower Master, was present, of course… but even he, it seemed, was not considered a force capable of confronting the Overlord on equal footing.

“We are critically short on general-class power. Our soldiers continue to fall, while those blasted demons use the fallen to swell the ranks of their mutations.”

His words were true. The war situation was overwhelmingly unfavorable. Defeat was a certainty.

“Even if we force our way into the enemy lines, the imbalance in general-class power will predetermine our loss. And if we simply drag things out, the situation will not change. Our numbers will only dwindle while theirs multiply.”

“Isn’t there one more among the general class?”

Grisha asked, raising her hand with a perplexed expression. Her eyes… were somehow fixed upon me.

“…Me?”

Me, general class…? You’re saying I’m on the same level as Bel standing over there?

Capable of standing against an Overlord in single combat?

This holy woman must have finally cracked after prolonged exposure to the horrors of war.

“Vin is excluded. While his current abilities aren’t vastly different from ours… his growth potential far surpasses it. If he were injured fighting the Overlord, the entire continent would suffer a great loss.”

…On what basis are they judging me to be general-class?

I’ve barely made it to page 80 of ‘The Fundamentals of Intermediate Magic’. I’m only just into the second chapter of ‘A History and Understanding of Lightning Magic’.

“Hmph…”

I can’t exactly confess my secrets now, can I? This is truly driving me mad.