When humans feel their lives are in danger, they tend to work miracles.
The procession heading north did not consist solely of veteran soldiers.
Their families were traveling with them as well, and among them were quite a few able-bodied young men.
Every one of the young men grabbed a shovel and dug like mad, while the elderly and the women piled the excavated dirt directly in front of the trap to form an embankment.
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE—!
In the middle of all that, a cloud of dust could be seen rising in the distance.
Judging by the way the ground itself was trembling, these were clearly no ordinary monsters.
Kaon calmly gave orders from atop the wagon.
“There are still fifteen minutes left. Drive in the spare spear shafts!”
“Move, move! It is His Highness's order!”
Sir Jerome, commander of the Imperial Third Knight Order, bellowed at the top of his lungs.
The civilians retreated behind the wagon line and trembled in fear, but the veteran soldiers were different.
Even under what had to be tremendous pressure, they calmly drove the spear shafts into the ground.
They also worked remarkably well with the old knights.
Thanks to long experience, the knights calculated how to place the spear shafts for maximum efficiency, while the soldiers receiving those orders knew how to secure the spears firmly in the ground.
“GRAAAH!”
“GRRRRRGH!”
Monstrous cries began to ring out from close by.
Ogres, with their enormous frames and tough hides.
Trolls, smaller than Ogres but possessing regeneration so rapid that their blood was used as an ingredient for potions.
As high-tier predators, even one required a team of four or five soldiers to handle.
With a thousand such monsters charging in, it was obvious that even if the soldiers risked their lives, they would be overwhelmed without barricades and traps.
But a small fortress had been built before their eyes.
More spears had been planted into the embankment so the enemy could not charge recklessly, and if they made it over, they would slide straight into the trap.
“Uh……? This actually seems better than I expected.”
Sir Mitchell, who had spent every day lamenting that they had been given troops nearing retirement, nearly had his eyes pop out.
The veterans had not been particularly impressive with the shovels, but their overall movements were so coordinated that there was hardly any need for separate orders from above.
“That Second Prince's lackey made a mistake.”
Time passed, and the enemies came right up to them.
Only then did the soldiers finish their respective tasks and take their positions atop the wagons.
At the very front, Sir Chester, the previous generation's Master, drew his sword and shouted.
“Nock your arrows! Aim for the Ogres' joints and the Trolls' heads! Fire!”
TWANG TWANG TWANG TWANG!
The soldiers' arrows flew.
After serving in the military for many years, a soldier eventually learned how to handle every weapon, not just his primary one.
If necessary, infantry could become cavalry, or be used as archers.
Sir Chester was in his late forties this year and had spent a full thirty years roaming battlefields, so he knew that fact better than anyone.
THUD THUD THUD!
Because the targets were moving, the soldiers could not hit exactly where they wanted.
Even so, roughly ten percent of the arrows struck their intended targets because the shooters had anticipated the enemies' movements and led their shots.
When those at the front collapsed, the monsters behind them piled into one another and became a tangled mess.
“GRAAAH!”
Even then, the monsters did not stop.
Every last one of them had gone berserk.
Perhaps that bastard author's interference had put them under some sort of mind control, because they trampled over their own comrades and kept charging.
About twenty percent of the enemy force was lost in that process.
They were wounded again while climbing over the embankment, then slid all the way into the trap and naturally impaled themselves on the spears.
The surface of the embankment was extremely slippery.
That was because it had been finished(?) with wet soil dug up from deeper underground, reducing the friction.
This, too, was an action born of experience.
The knights who had spent their lives in the imperial palace serving Kaon could only marvel at the sight.
There was a reason Sir Chester had been appointed field commander.
By the time the enemy finished crossing the embankment, its numbers had already fallen by roughly thirty percent.
The soldiers had kept firing arrows the entire time, so even the monsters that survived were far from unscathed.
“Pikes!”
The instant Sir Chester's voice rang out, the long spears were lowered.
The pikemen's role was to keep the enemy from approaching.
The real damage was being dealt by the arrows, while more and more monsters were being crushed and trampled by their own kind.
CRASH—!
At that moment, the floor of the wagon lurched.
They had used every trick they could to reduce the enemy's numbers, but the Ogres and Trolls, with their immense strength, had finally managed to break through one section of the wall.
The reserve unit waiting behind the line was deployed, but no one knew how long it could hold.
‘They are holding well, but they lack stamina.’
The fatal weakness of veteran soldiers.
Human aging was an entirely natural phenomenon, and stamina began to decline once people entered their thirties.
It was only natural that soldiers averaging in their forties would have less endurance than younger troops.
“The Imperial Third Knight Order follows me!”
“What? It is too dangerous!”
“Shut up and follow me!”
WHOOSH—!
Kaon's blood had already been boiling.
He had the feeling that Ogres and Trolls like these could be ground down in an instant.
Partly to see just how great the compensating effect of that bastard author's meddling had become, he charged straight into the front line.
SWISH—!
Streams of Sword Aura burst from Kaon's blade.
When he swung his sword diagonally, an Ogre's torso was split cleanly in two and slid apart.
SLASH—! SLASH—!
Basic swordsmanship alone was enough.
The enemy was not human, but a beast-like monster.
Their natural size and strength made them terrifying, but when it came to technique, humans held the advantage.
Kaon's performance was dazzling.
Every time his Sword Aura flashed, enemies were bisected.
“WAAAAAH!”
Even the soldiers who had barely been holding out found new strength.
The Imperial Third Knight Order that had followed Kaon struggled just to keep up with him.
‘Not bad.’
***
The battle descended into a melee.
Strategy was something used when fighting humans.
They had already reduced the enemy's numbers as much as possible beforehand, so from here on, it was a matter of force against force.
Every last reserve had already been committed.
Chester Filtein finished directing the battle and was about to leap into the front.
“Hmm?”
Then he doubted his own eyes.
One side of the wagon wall that had surrounded their forces like a fortress wall had been breached, causing all the monsters to swarm toward that point, where the reserves were holding them back.
Sir Chester had expected the veteran soldiers to last only a short while and was about to jump in to restore the balance, but the Third Prince had already entered the fray.
While everyone else was horrified, something astonishing happened.
SLASH—! SLASH—!
“WAAAAAH!”
Sword Aura raged wildly.
The symbol of a knight.
Blue blades that only those who had awakened mana could wield surged in every direction.
Sir Chester stared in shock.
Because the Third Prince was personally holding the very front line, the battlefront was not wavering.
‘His fundamentals are solid. He said he built his strength on his own, so although his swordsmanship is simple, it would take more than ten years to develop fundamentals that strong.’
The Third Prince had already awakened mana.
He was displaying power at least at the level of an Intermediate Knight, cutting down enemies all around him.
With just a little more effort, it seemed entirely possible for him to break through his limits.
Chester's eyes burned intensely.
‘If His Highness were to reach the level of a Master, he would earn the reverence of knights everywhere.’
There would not be many occasions when a prince of such exalted status personally stood on the front line, but the symbolism alone would have an enormous effect.
Knights revered strength.
Even Chester, who had risen for the sake of revenge, felt his heart race, so there was no need to mention the others.
Even the imperial knights accompanying him were following behind the Third Prince with half-crazed eyes.
Sir Chester drew his sword and plunged into the heart of the melee.
‘I will make certain His Highness reaches the level of a Master!’
***
The battle ended.
Corpses lay everywhere, and the stench of blood hung thick in the air.
Ogres and Trolls split in half were scattered all over the ground.
Dozens had died on their side as well, and the wounded numbered several times that, but considering they had faced a thousand large monsters, the losses were practically negligible.
“WAAAAAH!”
The soldiers and civilians who had narrowly escaped death shouted Kaon's name.
Kaon barely managed to suppress the laughter trying to burst out of him.
No matter how light their losses had been, quite a few people had still died, so openly laughing would have made for a very strange sight.
‘The performance matters.’
Swinging his sword like a madman had left him utterly exhausted, but he needed to change how the people saw him.
While the soldiers finished off enemies that were still twitching and began sorting the corpses, Kaon had the fallen returned to their families and ordered that they be given at least simple funerals.
In truth, since the dead were veteran soldiers, there were still able-bodied men in their households, so he did not necessarily have to compensate them.
But Kaon, who still had the sensibilities of a modern person, refused to do that.
He personally visited the bereaved families, however briefly, offered words of comfort, and gave them compensation money.
“Thank you, Your Highness!”
“Khuk…… For lowly people like us…….”
‘This is a cliché too, if you want to call it that.’
In modern society, it was something that should have been done as a matter of course, but in this barbaric age, no such custom existed.
If a soldier died, he had simply been unlucky.
Only when knights died did the state provide substantial compensation, and even then, that was all.
They had died honorably for the nation, and they expected anything more?
In this world, even that would earn them criticism.
It was not as though Kaon had no worldly motive of changing public perception, but he was also simply doing what ought to be done.
“To think someone like him was rumored to be a scoundrel. Why on earth?”
“It must have been the Second Prince's scheme.”
The common people thought simply.
The knights, meanwhile, had assumed Kaon had deliberately pulled all that shit to keep himself away from imperial power.
The post-battle cleanup was more or less complete.
The veteran soldiers left the intact monster corpses where they were and focused on collecting the Trolls' blood.
Sir Chester hurried over and reported.
“My lord! This is an extraordinary victory. If we sell nothing but these monster corpses, I believe we could cover the Northern Army's entire annual budget.”
“Oooh!”
At Sir Chester's words, the imperial knights could only marvel.
Mitchell asked Chester,
“Sir Chester, are monster corpses really that expensive?”
“That depends on the type, of course. Ogres and Trolls are powerful creatures, but are they not also materials for armor and potions? There is not a single part of them that goes to waste. During my military service, recovering even one Ogre or Troll corpse would have been enough to open a shop.”
“They are that valuable?”
“Why are you asking something so obvious?”
The knights with little field experience had no choice but to be swayed by Sir Chester's words.
That was a good thing.
Someone of Sir Chester's standing was practically treated as an elder among knights.
Clap! Clap!
Kaon clapped his hands at the knights chatting among themselves.
Everyone's attention turned to him.
“Will selling a few monster corpses really cover the price of all this trouble?”
“What?”
“We should collect some side income too.”
“By side income, you mean…….”
“Tsk. What is my nickname? Am I not the Imperial Family's scoundrel? That scoundrel was attacked in the Grankan Marquisate. And by a thousand large monsters, no less. Should I really stay quiet about that?”
“……!”
“Go and bring Marquis Einsid here!”
“I will go at once!”
A grin forced its way onto Kaon's face.
No matter how hard he tried to hold it back, this was impossible.
“Hahaha! Well now, this is something to be grateful for, isn't it?”
KRAK-BOOM—!
At that moment, a bolt of lightning struck from a clear sky.
That bastard author's mood had definitely soured.