Volume Two: The Great War
Chapter 14: To the Front Lines
It began with the development of defensive magic.
The advent of a revolutionary defensive spell that allowed no mana to pass through it fundamentally changed the nature of battle.
Magic was activated with mana.
No spell could penetrate a wall that didn’t admit mana. Every kind of offensive magic was nullified.
A fire spell capable of burning a vast area was erased by a single barrier, and its caster was shot down by a gun—a weapon created for underachievers with little mana.
Exchanges of magic vanished from battle almost overnight. In their place, everyone traded physical attacks—in other words, gunfire. Guns, once treated as nothing more than minimal tools of self-defense for those with little mana, became the central weapons of war.
Several years had passed since that technological breakthrough.
Firearms had developed rapidly, producing machine guns, artillery, and many other weapons.
“Sigh… Repeatedly charging without knowing any of that was sheer stupidity.”
Yet it took the Kingdom of Lunoa a month to learn that reality firsthand.
For the past hundred years, the great powers hadn’t fought one another. There had only been skirmishes between small countries, and those limited wars had already abandoned magic in favor of firearms.
That was why Lunoa and the other great powers had researched firearms and begun mass-producing them.
The great powers knew about the new kind of war in theory and had adapted their national systems accordingly.
But they hadn’t accepted it as reality. Their fundamental assumptions had never changed. Nobles charged as they always had, casting spectacular magic, only to be riddled with bullets by mercenaries who had fought on many battlefields. They possessed the baseless confidence that true, superior nobles would somehow be different.
“Well, I was one of those who didn’t understand either.”
Having shared that confidence, I smiled wryly.
If I was allowed an excuse, there had been two misunderstandings about anti-magic barriers.
No one had thought a group could deploy one as an enormous circle covering an entire area. It had also been believed that an individual barrier could be used only for a limited time, but multiple users could divide the mana cost among themselves and maintain it indefinitely.
Neither technique had been needed in the small wars of the past, so neither had been attempted. Once required, however, both worked with surprising ease.
“Those are only excuses, though.”
It took a month for great powers that didn’t know war to experience what war had become.
The Kingdom of Lunoa was fortunate that its enemy was another great power that had made exactly the same mistakes.
Both sides merely inflicted enormous casualties on each other, leaving the overall situation unchanged.
“Sigh…”
Now the battlefield had become a hell where everyone, nobles included, dug trenches with unfamiliar shovels and exchanged rifle fire.
“You really can’t stop sighing, can you?”
The man sitting beside me spoke as I muttered to myself.
“…Can you blame me?”
Once I decided to go to war, I acted very quickly.
I left our territory on the same day I consulted Father.
After a short journey, I reached the vicinity of the front and, mingling with ordinary soldiers, boarded a wagon bound for the front lines.
“Let’s finish this quickly and go home.”
The man beside me spoke with remarkable ease.
“No. It’ll last a long time.”
The First World War hadn’t ended by Christmas.
Neither would this one.
“No, no, that can’t be right. The newspapers say—”
It would be a long war.
The instant the man tried to deny my prediction, a shout came from outside.
“The front line has collapsed!”
“…What?”
“Move.”
“Huh!?”
It seemed we had already reached the new front.
We were still only halfway to our original destination. While the man beside me stared in confusion at the sudden cry from outside, I unhesitatingly flung open the cloth covering the bed of our wagon.
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