Caw— Caw—
A crow settled onto the ground.
The earth, dyed red, was nothing short of a banquet.
Countless of its kin had already swarmed in, blackening the field.
The crow burrowed into one of those clusters.
But even a crow has to draw a line at spoiled meat.
It shoved its beak into the freshest-looking morsel it could find.
Peck, peck.
"You fucking... what the hell!"
-Kyaaak!
FLAP-FLAP-FLAP!
The crow thrashed, its beak caught fast.
At the sudden commotion the surrounding crows took wing all at once.
Sadly, this one could not.
A monstrous grip had already snapped its neck.
"What the hell, is everyone dead......?"
The man barely managed to push his upper body upright.
He flung the crow aside and looked around.
What lay before him was a sight both familiar and horrific.
All he could see were corpses, corpses, corpses.
Regrettably, the overwhelming majority of them were human.
The monsters made up, what, ten percent by ratio?
What that meant was simple.
The great war between humanity and the demons, waged with the fate of the world at stake!
And in it, humanity had been crushed, utterly......
"I'll be... joining them soon enough."
The man, [Delam], smiled bitterly.
His flank had been torn wide open, as though some enormous beast had eaten its fill of him.
The blood pooled inside it had already gone black and rotten.
The mana circulating through his body was faint as a single thread.
Once even that vanished, it would truly be the end.
Slide.
"Hmm?"
Just then a shadow fell across Delam's head.
He raised his head unsteadily, and there before him stood some old man.
A robe and a beard, both snow-white, entirely out of place on a battlefield.
It was a face Delam knew well.
The Cardinal of the Empire's state religion.
The [Church of Radiance].
"Cardinal, why are you here?"
"......"
"What's become of the Empire? Of humanity?"
"......"
Delam asked, but the Cardinal did not answer.
He only stood there, his body trembling.
Had the journey out here in the dead of winter chilled him that badly?
CRACK!
"Guuurgh!"
The Cardinal swung his staff the very next instant.
Struck square on the crown of the head, Delam toppled straight over.
And that was not all.
From where in that old, withered body such strength welled up, who could say — but the enraged Cardinal seized Delam by the collar, shook him back and forth, and bellowed.
"You goddamn son of a bitch!"
"Cardinal......?"
"It's because of you! Humanity is finished because of you!"
Maybe it was the blow to the head; his mind was a fog.
But even in the middle of it he couldn't let that pass.
Because he'd just heard something deeply unfair.
"And how is that my doing?"
"How!? Did you not butcher every hero of every nation in the name of unifying the continent!? Under that damned bastard of an Emperor, you killed off every last hero who could have stood against the demons!"
"Ahh."
"Ahh? Ahhh!? You oil-fried son of a......!"
The Cardinal was so furious he couldn't get the words out.
Then, face gone crimson, he fired them off like a repeating crossbow.
"I told you to ease off the killing! I told you the God of Radiance had granted me a revelation — that if humanity weakened, the demons would invade! So why did you not listen to a damned word I said and kill them all anyway!"
"My apologies... I thought you were lying."
"If only you hadn't killed Brunhilde of the Flash! If only you hadn't killed Naold the Great Mountain! If only you hadn't killed Rune Master Tamuka! If only you hadn't killed Allendor the Dragon Lord! If only you hadn't killed the East's— you killed a filthy lot of them, didn't you, you bastard fit to be hacked to pieces!"
The Cardinal's screaming went on after that as well.
But to Delam's ears it merely echoed, distant.
His mind was drifting away, and the Cardinal's voice receding with it.
Delam could tell.
That his own end was not far off now.
So he squeezed out the last of his strength and left his final words.
"Cardinal... I'm dying now."
"Good! Hurry up and die, die!"
"That's harsh... I only did my best......"
"That hole in your face just says whatever it likes, doesn't it!"
"In any case, I'm sorry...... I'll be watching from the other side... so, Cardinal, gather up what's left of humanity... and bust your ass for me......"
"Wh-what did you say!?"
Death!
The end of a life, the thing every soul ought to fear!
And yet this one was different.
Far from fear, he looked more at peace than anyone had a right to.
In truth, that made sense.
Delam's life had been suffering itself.
A body that started as a conscript and climbed all the way to Supreme Commander of the Empire.
He had written a myth, no less.
It would have been impossible even for a man born into one of the great noble houses.
And a lowly commoner had achieved it......
How brutal that road must have been hardly needs saying.
And now, at last, eternal rest was being handed to him.
Death was the end of all things, yes — but also the beginning of peace.
If there truly was some afterlife up above the sky—
He would rest easy there and cheer humanity's struggle on.
'No regrets.'
Delam quietly closed his eyes.
Or rather, he meant to, and committed a blunder at the last moment.
He'd gone and pissed the Cardinal off from the bottom of his heart.
The Cardinal had lived his whole life as a clergyman, in poverty and purity.
But all that discipline was meaningless before Delam's parting encouragement.
Eyes rolling back, the Cardinal stammered as he shouted.
"Y-you! You mean to run? With the few people who are left suffering under demons and monsters right now, you mean to duck out alone into death?"
"No... it's not like... I want to die......"
Delam grinned and let his head drop.
And never opened his eyes again.
The finest commander of his age, who had conquered a continent under his Emperor!
Such was the end of the [Imperial Supreme Commander].
"You despicable wretch!"
And so Delam did not see it.
The Cardinal, having lost all reason, raising his staff high toward the heavens.
Offering up everything he was to his god......
"O God of Radiance! Grant this sinner no rest! Let him wash away his own labors and his own sins!"
FWOOOSH—
An explosion of light that covered the entire plain.
That was the great work of the Empire's one god, the God of Radiance.
Tick, tock......
A work that would wind back even time itself!
***
[The Seven Years' War!]
It was not the official name.
People simply called it that because the war had already dragged on for seven years.
And before much longer it would be changing to the Eight Years' War.
The war's beginning had been nothing much.
The third prince of the Kingdom of Fior.
That prince had visited a neighboring kingdom and died there.
Not murder, not poison — just an accident, plain and simple.
So the neighboring kingdom had nothing anyone could really pin on it.
A simple matter that would have ended with a decent show of condolences.
And these idiots couldn't manage even that.
[Wasn't that little shit a spy? Good riddance!]
The sheer nerve, to send an official diplomatic document reading like that!
The king who had lost a son gladly answered the provocation.
With a declaration of war.
And so the war began.
-Your Majesty! Our own forces will suffer heavy losses as well. Should that come to pass, the only road left is mutual ruin — we beg you, halt this war!
Such were the nobles' pleas.
But the result was an absurdly easy victory.
The enemy king who had provoked it, along with every last royal, vanished as dew upon the execution ground, and the kingdom left masterless was annexed into Fior.
Watching all this, the King of Fior had a thought.
-I could get used to this. And conquest... is a bit of a thrill, isn't it?
With the blood of a conqueror woken in him, the king went straight for it.
His army, having taken few losses, was hurled at another kingdom at once!
And once again the occupation succeeded.
Before long, eleven kingdoms remained on the continent.
Thus the curtain rose on the war of conquest......
***
"...that's what they say."
"Which bastard said that?"
"The merchant who came yesterday. I heard it from his escort mercenary!"
The older boy from the house up the hill prattled on, delighted.
But Delam, listening to him, wore a distinctly unimpressed face.
This place was the [Roof of the Continent].
A spot remote enough to be called the back end of nowhere even on this continent.
Which was why the ravages of war never reached this far.
Now and then a mercenary out hunting monsters, or a peddler with a load of odds and ends, would show up and pass along worthless stories like this one before moving on.
"Delam, you're not exactly reacting."
"Then what reaction am I supposed to have?"
"Doesn't your blood boil? It's a war! It means commoners like us finally have the chance of a lifetime to make something of ourselves!"
"Sure~ assuming you don't die."
"We're the conquerors, what's there to worry about? You wouldn't know, but the Kingdom of Fior is invincible. Invincible! A hundred battles, a hundred wins."
"Ugh......"
A sigh finally leaked out of Delam's mouth.
And along with it, a look that said the boy was pathetic.
The stung boy shouted.
"Hey! Have you got no dreams at all? How long are you going to live out in this backwater digging potatoes? You're incredible with a sword, too!"
"Says who?"
"The hunter."
"That man doesn't know the first thing about it. Without a mana formula, you can swing a sword as well as you like and it's worth exactly nothing."
"Which is all the more reason to become a soldier. You earn merit, you're granted a mana formula, and you become a noble."
"Oh, I'm sure."
"You gutless bastard!"
In the end the older boy flung down his pickaxe and left.
Probably off to the mercenary who'd told him the story.
Delam clicked his tongue and squatted back down.
Every time he turned the soil with his hoe, potatoes rolled out.
But there were few of them, and even those weren't large.
Delam's expression grew worse and worse.
Potatoes stood up to drought, and this was the yield?
This place was the Roof of the Continent.
The elevation was high enough that the word [Roof] had gotten stuck in the name.
The weather was accordingly cool, so wheat didn't grow well either.
About all you could farm here were potatoes like these, or buckwheat.
There was an upside to it, too.
Thanks to the cool air and the steady breeze, the grass grew fast.
There weren't many dangers like wolves or monsters, which made it perfect for herding sheep.
'Still, this winter's going to be rough.'
If the potatoes were like this, would the grass grow well?
Not a chance.
Sheep that couldn't graze properly had no choice but to go scrawny, and beyond the thin fleece, they wouldn't give much milk either.
Which meant the villagers would go hungry.
On top of that, when the summer went like this, the winter was usually bitterly cold.
'Was there a blizzard that year, or wasn't there?'
It was something from more than forty years ago, so the memory was hazy.
Delam scratched his head and muttered.
"Well, at least nobody's going to starve to death, right? Not unless the village's young men all get conscripted at once and dragged off to a battlefield."
Delam, thirteen years old, summer.
The conscription officer arrived the very next day.