BWOO— BWOO— BWOO—
"Mm~ that was fast of them. Sons of bitches."
Delam spat a curse as he listened to the horn.
Everyone was too winded from running to speak, but if they could have, all thirty soldiers would have sworn much the same.
Naturally so.
How long ago had the formation collapsed and the mage forces been beaten, and now here they were finally blowing the retreat horn.
This was plainly sounded not because anyone cared whether the common soldiers all died, but because the knight and mage forces had come into danger.
"Don't stop! Stragglers get left behind!"
"Hah, hah... yes, sir!"
Delam pushed the soldiers on and drove across the battlefield.
An all-out sprint was too much, so a quick march.
Running along strung out like that drew the eyes around them.
The barbarians glared at Delam's group too, but didn't attack.
An hour had already passed since the first battle began.
War being the business of dragging out every scrap of strength in a short span, the barbarians would have nearly exhausted their stamina as well.
Above all, there were plenty of others to chase besides Delam's group.
The Fior Kingdom's soldiers were retreating in twos and threes, and who would go after a lot that plainly still had legs when there were routed stragglers to pick off?
Thirty soldiers running with their weapons unified to spears looked in particular like a porcupine — a "mountain madman", as the nickname goes.
Which is to say, block them and you die.
"Filthy kingdom dogs, di— khuurgh!"
"Get lost!"
There were a few barbarians with a thorough spirit of challenge, of course.
But they were silenced at the same moment they lunged.
Delam's shortsword took the head off the leading barbarian, and the spears of the soldiers running up behind turned the rest into skewers.
"Ugh!"
"What's with him, what's wrong?"
"Go on ahead, sir! My leg's hurt, I can't walk any farther......!"
"Stop here and you die, you know? Hey, big fellow over there. Carry him. And whoever's carried holds the other man's spear for him."
"Th-thank you, sir!"
"When your strength gives out you take turns carrying him and running. It'll be hard, but bear it a little longer. It isn't all bad for you either."
He'd said it clearly before they set out.
That anyone who fell behind would be left.
But that was for a critical situation, and this wasn't one.
At Delam's order the big soldier struck his own chest.
"It's fine, sir! If a little hardship on my part can save a comrade, I'll gladly take the hardship!"
"Fine bastard. But I didn't mean that — I meant that if arrows or magic come down, he takes them for you, so it's not a bad deal."
"Ah......! Then I'll carry him."
"You want to die?"
Mark stepped up timidly and didn't even break even.
There was no telling with this one whether his nerve was big or small.
They saw to the wounded man and ran on for how long after that?
Since the command element and the mage corps' area was certain to be a shambles, Delam's group was running sideways, and sideways again, across the plain.
But was that the mistake?
-Aaaaaargh......
A faint scream came from up ahead.
And not just one.
Pleading and shrieking repeated at short intervals.
Several soldiers were even lifted into the air.
Their heads had already gone, so naturally there was no landing.
"B-barbarian warrior, sir!"
"I have eyeballs too, so I can see it verrry well."
As Decurion Haintel reported, it was a barbarian warrior.
In Kingdom of Fior terms, a [warrior] was of knight class.
So naturally, that barbarian warrior ought by rights to be off fighting tooth and nail with Fior's knights right about now.
But this one was different.
A deserter, perhaps?
Or some patriarch blinded by revenge?
The aged barbarian warrior was clinging doggedly to the tails of the retreating Fior soldiers and conducting a slaughter.
In that short moment the men sacrificed already numbered five.
Just then someone was seen running up from in front of the soldiers.
Equipment plainly a cut above the common soldiers'.
Leather armor beneath chain mail, and a gambeson layered under that; the man wore a centurion's mark.
"Come, barbarian!"
The centurion drew a longsword and roared.
Hearing that voice, Delam's group faltered to a stop.
A reflexive act.
Because there had been mana in the shout.
From centurion up you were an officer — high-grade manpower.
Which was why a basic mana formula was provided.
Only, basic was basic in the end.
To reach the point of loading mana into your voice with that basic formula took truly tremendous effort.
And that officer had done it.
'But the matchup's bad......'
Even so, it fell far short of a knight.
Knights were people who had mastered secret mana formulas from childhood.
And who were barely made by repeating harsh training on top of that.
So the result of this fight was obvious as well.
Since a barbarian warrior was a knight's equal.
"H-hey, Delam. Our side's going to win, right?"
"No, he'll lose."
"Then what do we do?"
"That's obvious. We'll have to fight alongside him."
Bolt, obviously.
That was his real thinking.
Sorry to say it, but while that centurion was handling the barbarian warrior they would edge back, quietly, and take the long way around, far away.
Please buy us some time.
"Kraaagh!"
"Huh?"
Just then the centurion was carved apart by a two-handed axe.
His blood-spitting face was twisted with bitterness.
But the one more bitter about it was Delam.
Come on, surely he'd have thought the man could last thirty seconds?
It seemed the barbarian warrior was far stronger than expected.
'We're screwed.'
At any rate, there was nothing for it now but to fight.
But was that even possible?
Delam analyzed the barbarian warrior quickly.
-Technique and mind: far below mine.
-Mana and body: far above mine.
So the conclusion?
'Not happening.'
Now there was one method.
Time to take just Mark and run for it in earnest.
Delam looked at the soldiers and opened his mouth.
"I'll say this once, so listen well, all of you."
"......"
"I'll hold that thing off here, so run however you can. Especially — you there, my fellow decurions?"
"Sir!"
"Speak, sir!"
"Twenty-seven of these lads. Get them back to base camp, on your responsibility."
Snap!
Instead of answering, the decurions rendered a salute.
They were decurions the same as him, but that didn't matter in the slightest.
The other soldiers likewise shed tears and saluted.
"Heh heh, is the children's game over?"
The barbarian warrior, who had been watching, came slowly forward.
He had killed the centurion a while ago but hadn't charged straight in.
Because the antics these greenhorns were putting on amused him rather.
"You say interesting things. You'll hold me off? A brat whose head is still wet with blood — no, who looks like he hasn't been weaned yet?"
"......"
"Had the grandson you people killed lived, he'd have been just about your age. In that case, as your elder, I shall make you understand your foolishness. By hacking your comrades into pieces one after another!"
What circumstances lay behind it?
The barbarian warrior came on with madness running across his face.
The man's pace was by no means fast.
But the soldiers had already frozen and couldn't even think of running.
They only broke into cold sweat, like mice before a cat.
Because they all knew.
The gulf between a knight who used mana and themselves......
Slide.
The barbarian warrior smiled cruelly and raised his axe.
And in the instant the lead soldier's head was about to fall—
"......!"
The barbarian warrior fell back a step and looked to one side.
What was there was Delam.
Delam had thrown away every other weapon.
Body bent forward, he held only a single longspear at the ready.
It was like a bowstring drawn to its limit.
As though a mere touch would send it flying.
And run straight through the back of his neck.
Before he knew it, the barbarian warrior felt it.
The cold sweat running down over his own brow.
Body, mana, years, experience......
He overwhelmed the greenhorn in every respect but one.
Proof that in sheer spirit he was being pushed back.
"Whelp!"
Unable to accept that, the barbarian warrior roared.
But Delam spoke without so much as a change of expression.
To his soldiers, and to his enemy.
"Go. And... come on!"
***
There is a thing people commonly wonder about.
Can technique, in the end, overcome a difference in attainment?
[Technique carried to its extreme]
[VS attainment one dimension higher]
One side has tremendous technique but low attainment.
The other has low technique but high attainment.
The truth is it was a curiosity that could never be resolved.
Because if the technique is at its peak, the odds are the attainment is likewise.
Meaning that normally, the fellow with the better technique has the higher attainment too.
But here, right now.
That curiosity was about to be resolved.
"Whelp!"
The barbarian warrior swung the two-handed axe.
A thing the size of Delam's whole upper body.
Because of which, before the axe even arrived, an oppressive wind pressure and a shearing whistle rushed in as though to split Delam in half.
WHUMP!
But the result was a miss!
The two-handed axe only tore up the innocent plain.
The astonishing part was Delam's evasive movement.
At the same instant he slipped aside, he trod firmly down on the flat of the axe head.
And with that recoil flung his body backward.
Ordinarily, on a battlefield, a weapon's edge was only lightly honed.
With a mountain of enemies to cut, if you set the edge too keen?
You'd kill a few men and the edge would be gone entirely.
Which was why Delam's ankle went unsevered and he came away safe.
Not that it was something just anyone could do, of course.
"Like a loach, you are!"
The barbarian warrior, a little surprised, promptly snorted.
A light body and a sense of physical balance like an acrobat's.
Impressive, granted, but that was in fact all it was.
If a fly is buzzing about, you strike it with your palm.
And once it falls to the ground, you simply step on it then.
WHAM!
The barbarian warrior caught the retreating Delam in a single bound.
The two-handed axe swung again.
This time, perhaps meaning to prevent any more cute tricks like the last one, it came down vertically, with the momentum to split his whole upper body.
"Hup!"
This time Delam did not evade.
A spear blade thrusting abruptly into the two-handed axe's line of travel.
It was an exquisite moment.
Because it was the instant just before the axe's force reached its peak!
"Whaaat?"
The spear blade entangled the axe and went for his fingers besides.
Flustered, the barbarian warrior hurriedly changed the axe's trajectory.
He pulled back slightly, meaning to knock the spear away.
But he failed.
Because the spear rotated counterclockwise and came in clinging.
Whirl!
The barbarian warrior put his strength in to shake the spear off.
With an overwhelming difference in muscle, he thought it would be easy.
And yet, strangely, it wouldn't come.
Doggedly pressing, withdrawing, driving in......
However hard he tried, the spear clung on like a leech.
The secret lay precisely in the stance.
Delam, with his left leg, his waist and the spear perfectly unified.
When the leg moved the waist moved, and when the waist moved the spear moved, and the strength of his whole body rode wholly on that single spear.
Which was why, despite muscle power standing in a complete relation of superior to inferior, he was overcoming even that matchup.
"Nnngh!"
The bigger problem was the spear tip.
The tip rode back and forth along the axe haft, attacking.
There was simply no predicting where it would come thrusting in from.
FA-BAT!
Just then the barbarian warrior's reaction slowed for an instant.
At the same moment Delam surged far forward and drove the spear.
The spear shot out aiming for the emptied philtrum.
"Haugh!"
But the place blood sprayed from was the barbarian warrior's cheek.
Thanks to dynamic vision enhanced by mana, which had barely caught it.
Escaping by a hair, the barbarian warrior fell back a long way.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
"What... are you?"
Having backed off one heavy step at a time, the barbarian warrior asked.
What lay in that voice, gone thoroughly serious, was a sense of crisis.
The ancestral god dwelling within him was giving warning.
That his opponent was not a brat but a warrior like himself.
That if he kept underestimating him, he would not see tomorrow's sun......
The glorious moment of being acknowledged by a true warrior!
But Delam was no longer even looking at the barbarian warrior.
Click.
Having opened the locket and looked once at his mother's portrait.
"Hooooo— haah."
He had merely breathed in the leaf's clean, cool fragrance to the full.
"Ah, sorry. What did you say?"
"...I asked what you are."
"Me? A farmer. My mother was tremendously good with sheep, but I somehow had no gift for it. Whenever the sheep saw me they'd get frightened and run, so......"
"What?"
"Instead I was the farmer who grew the best-tasting potatoes in the village. Boil them and they came out fluffy and delicious. And—"
Delam leveled the spear and said,
"You're this year's last batch of fertilizer, you bastard."