"Kh-khuurgh......!"
The track of the spear blade sweeping across the barbarian's throat.
A simple movement — affectionate, even, if you looked at it a certain way.
But the party concerned seemed to think somewhat differently.
Seeing as he clutched a throat spouting blood like a fountain and gurgled.
"Huh......? Delam!"
"Damn it... I told you to stay next to me."
Delam came up beside the barbarian, whose breath had stopped.
His face uncommonly full of irritation.
Now that he thought of it, Mark had no memory of it.
He'd certainly been running alongside Delam......
And when he came to his senses, a barbarian was swinging a scimitar.
Mark flinched and apologized.
"S-sorry."
"Forget it, just don't get separated from here on."
Delam said it while wiping his forehead.
It wasn't from sweat.
They were droplets of blood, whose he didn't know.
Beaded there in dots, running down and making long tracks.
The look of a man who had bathed in blood, in a word.
But Mark wasn't frightened.
If Delam hadn't thrust that spear a moment ago?
He wouldn't be able to have even this thought right now.
"Delam, than— huh? Behind, behind!"
The eyes of Mark, about to say thank you, went round.
He looked behind and pointed.
Because a barbarian was charging in with an axe raised.
"Kraaaaah!"
Whip.
But Delam didn't even turn to look.
Instead he flipped the spear end over end and extended it straight backward.
THUNK!
"Kheugh."
The axe fell from the barbarian's hand and rolled across the ground.
Natural enough, since his throat had been pierced and he'd died instantly.
Done by a spear blade thrust carelessly, as though it were a bother.
'No — without even looking?'
At the impossible feat Mark's mouth fell wide open.
In which case there was one thing to do now!
Mark grabbed the hem of Delam's trousers and cried out in earnest.
"Master Delam, please save me!"
***
[Weapon Master]
One of the titles Delam held.
To be able to handle every manner of weapon at [master] level or above.
It was a glorious title that could only be received by meeting that condition.
Knights are a combat class.
A breed that does nothing but train, aside from the time they spend eating and sleeping.
Which is to say they are genuine madmen who spend all day agonizing over how best to kill an opponent.
It was skill enough that madmen like that acknowledged it as mastery.
And not in one weapon but in many, all of them!
Past difficult and into impossible.
The sort of thing you'd only find in a legend, you might say.
But in the 121st year of the Fior Empire.
From that point, [Weapon Master] was no longer a legend.
It became reality.
One and only... because Delam made it so.
Which raises a question.
Just how strong is a [Weapon Master]?
And when, precisely, does he show his strongest face?
"Kraaaagh!"
"Kheugh!"
"Uwaaaaah!"
Right now.
A battlefield strewn with weapons of every kind!
Sherrick.
The scimitar in Delam's hand split a barbarian's neck.
In the instant that barbarian rattled out the last breath of his life, Delam was already releasing the scimitar and sweeping the man's waist.
What he came up with was a short throwing axe.
"Die!"
At the same moment another barbarian lunged from the side.
What he gripped was a broadsword.
Ninety centimeters of blade fell vertically toward Delam.
SCREEEK!
But the broadsword soon lost its force.
Because it had been caught between the two throwing axes Delam thrust out.
Then the axes rotated in opposite directions, generating an overwhelming external force in an instant, and the barbarian lost his grip on the broadsword.
And that was the end of it.
CHUNK, CHUNK, CHUNK!
"Khueeeugh!"
The two axes bit into the barbarian's arm, and then into his neck.
Delam didn't watch further; he spun and threw the axes.
The axes flew tracing unstable curves.
And then two barbarians who had just come running crumpled.
Their foreheads and their throats split, respectively.
Last of all was the spear, naturally.
Delam flicked the top of his foot and floated a spear off the ground.
The spear rose to eye level.
He didn't even grab it — he merely tapped the butt of the shaft with his elbow.
WHEEET!
The barbarian who'd been hesitating over whether or not to charge was run through by it.
With a spear buried in his belly, how much agony must there have been!
What finished him was the dagger that flew in after it and lodged in his throat.
Which had of course left Delam's hand.
"M-monster!"
"A berserker! A berserker cursed by Ahide!"
"A child, and already with the blood of a god......!"
At that point even the barbarians couldn't hold.
They were barbarians famed for being valiant and frenzied.
But even they flung down their weapons and fled at speed.
What they said as they went, he had no idea of the meaning.
Still, one thing was certain.
That what beats a madman is, as ever, a bigger madman.
"Good grief, that's rough."
Watching them, Delam sighed and sat down.
Perhaps because he'd moved in earnest for the first time in ages, it had been very hard going.
However superior his weapon skill, he wasn't invincible.
A thirteen-year-old body had not yet ripened into an adult's.
Never mind the size of the muscles — his stamina was far below an adult's as well.
And then there was reach.
His arms and legs were short, so he had to expend more force for nothing.
An enemy his full-grown body could have killed with a single stroke had cost him the labor of two swings to open the throat.
'Same goes for mana.'
Six months now since he regressed.
He'd gathered hard, and he'd even mastered Flurex, which let him gather mana while asleep — but the absolute difference in time was not something he could do anything about.
His current mana was at a level below a low-grade knight's.
Far short of what he'd had before regressing.
"D-Delam! Are you all right?"
Even so, the result was appalling.
It should have been a battlefield riotous with every kind of confusion, noise and screaming.
But the area around Delam and Mark alone was quiet.
Because the enemies had all died or fled.
"Here, have some water!"
Mark unfastened his canteen and handed it over.
Delam, without even the strength to speak, emptied it in one go.
A liquid at once cold and hot warmed his throat.
"What's this, it's liquor?"
"I mixed in a bit of the issue from yesterday. I was going to drink it before the charge, but I gave that up and brought it in place of water."
"Why'd you give it up?"
"Because I figured you'd throw a fit......"
"You know me well."
Delam tapped Mark's head with the canteen.
Presently, having caught his breath, Delam shouted.
"I am Decurion Delam! Soldiers of the Kingdom of Fior — and any bastard who wants to live — gather here!"
The booming voice rang out through the area.
They were the words of a young Delam, but the soldiers did not hesitate.
Everyone who hadn't died got themselves up somehow and gathered.
That was only natural.
What had Delam just done?
He had literally [butchered] several dozen barbarians.
A man who hesitated after seeing that had no right to live.
The number that gathered was roughly thirty.
The number who had charged alongside Delam in his vicinity had been two thousand.
And out of them only a handful had survived......
It was a wretched sight, without question.
"Are there decurions here? Hands up!"
"Here, sir!"
"M-me too......"
Out of the thirty there were two decurions.
Delam gave the two of them orders and had them control the soldiers.
The first thing they did was search the area.
They discarded the weapons in their hands and each picked up a spear.
They might be of the same line unit, but in practice they were strangers.
They'd never trained together, so how were they supposed to move in step?
'When that's the case, unifying the weapons is simply the best answer.'
Weapons changed, next came armor.
The armor issued as standard by the kingdom was a [gambeson].
Basic armor made of cloth.
For what it was, though, its performance was quite good.
A properly made gambeson would come through a sword strike unharmed.
Of course, that was the story when it was made [properly].
Anyone who expected such performance from an issue item was an idiot.
Which was why some conscripts fitted themselves out with extra gear at their own expense.
Sure enough, searching turned up plenty — leather armor, gauntlets, boots.
Delam armed himself with whatever had the least blood on it.
For weapons, four throwing daggers and a shortsword at his waist.
And last of all, he took a longspear in hand.
"Delam, but our kingdom's winning, right? Everything around us looks like dead barbarians......"
"Oh, sure."
Delam snorted at Mark's question.
What follows the front lines colliding with each other is a melee.
Shield locked against shield, spear and blade after each other's lives.
But there was never a case of fighting alone.
So that the line isn't broken, you have to keep up a pushing-and-pulling fight, holding the defensive line together with the comrades near you—
"Was there any pushing and pulling back there?"
"...I don't remember, but I don't think there was."
What that meant was simple.
That one side had been beaten one-sidedly.
And here, that side was the Kingdom of Fior.
On the front line, once you were pushed back it was over.
There was no future but being butchered in an instant.
Naturally, Mark of course, and those thirty pitiful bastards searching the corpses nearby, should have met the same fate.
The reason they had survived even so was one thing.
Delam.
It was the product of Delam, with overwhelming force, deleting the engagement in that whole area outright, pushing and pulling be damned.
"Everyone gather! There's no time, so leave what you haven't got."
"Assembled, sir!"
At Delam's shout the soldiers nearby swarmed in.
A movement faster than they'd have managed under a commander's direct order.
It was a sign of how much they trusted Delam.
"Is there anyone who knows this plain's geography well? Hands up!"
"I know it, sir. My home is near here, and I crossed it a few times helping my father with his trading trips."
"Our position now?"
"I'd guess the center of the plain."
"Then for now this is the safest place."
"Here is?"
"Yes. Listen."
A battle normally proceeded in three stages.
The first was the clash of the line corps, like Delam and Mark.
Then the general engagement of the main army, made up of masses of heavy infantry and foot soldiers.
The last was precisely the hour of the knights and mages.
Of those, the knight orders' targets were the command element and the mages.
The mages intercepted both the charging knight orders and the enemy's magic.
Which is to say, the rearmost part of the battlefield was the main fighting ground.
"So what about here, the center? It'd be safer, if anything."
"Whew, we're saved......"
"It's still early to relax, though. That's the case with an ordinary enemy — so who is it we're currently fighting tooth and nail against?"
"The barbarians of the Sambala tribal confederation!"
"Right, a confederation of several tribes. Which means their chain of command is all over the place, and there's no rule saying some mad chieftain won't suddenly charge this way announcing he's going to clean out the center."
"Uwaaah... still, the odds of that are low, right?"
"Just about nil."
DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DOOM.
Just then the ground began to tremble finely.
For a tremor like this to come through intact on a wide plain?
That meant an event of correspondingly enormous scale had occurred.
'Several thousand cavalry, or large-scale magic.'
FWOOOOSH!
Sure enough, an enormous ball of fire rose on the far side of the sky.
And not only fireballs — a blizzard raged, and vast golden spears fell onto one point of the battlefield or exploded in midair.
The elites of two nations.
Knights and mages, barbarian warriors and shamans, unleashing all their power in earnest in order to kill one another.
"Th-that's magic! It's a mage, Delam!"
"I can see it too, idiot."
Delam and Mark took in that magnificent view from the battlefield.
Magic of every element embroidered the sky above it.
Detonations and roars rang out ceaselessly against that backdrop.
Then, a little while later.
Delam, who had been quietly watching how it was going, spoke.
"Mm... we're screwed."
The knight forces weren't visible, so he couldn't tell about those.
But he could tell the mage forces were being clearly overpowered.
Whether the confederation's barbarian warriors had fallen on their own mages, or whether it was simply a shortage of mana, he didn't know.
Either way it wasn't good.
Because it meant the probability of defeat had risen sharply.
"We retreat immediately. Everyone wet your mouths one last time."
"B-but the retreat horn hasn't sounded yet."
"I see. What's your name?"
"Haintel."
"Right, anyone who wants to wait for the retreat horn together with our great and honorable Decurion Haintel stays here."
"......"
Has this bastard lost his mind?
Every one of the soldiers glared at Haintel with a sullen face.
Haintel, flustered, said,
"Uh... I only meant that's how it is."
"Then everyone move!"
And so they all began to retreat.
Like salmon going back up a river.
For reference, a salmon's odds of reaching its spawning ground are 10 percent.
Far lower than a soldier's odds of surviving his first battle.