"Mm!"
The barbarian warrior's corpse.
The woman knight, arriving before it, let out a sudden groan.
It was because of the soldier kneeling in front of the barbarian warrior.
The decurion's mark on his chest was unmistakable.
Astonishingly, a mere decurion had killed a barbarian warrior!
But there was something more astonishing than that.
Namely the decurion's age.
'To be this young!'
The Kingdom of Fior's conscription age began at fifteen.
Of course, when nutrition was poor there were often cases of a body small for its years, but that boy didn't look like one of them.
He wasn't thin, and his physical balance was perfect.
Which is to say, he was simply young.
Or else exceedingly youthful in the face.
"Remarkable......"
The woman knight admired him and reconstructed the fight between the two.
A magnificent battle carving scars of every kind into each other's bodies.
At the final moment, each delivering his last blow.
And the one who fell being not one side but both of them.
The boy had probably wrung out everything he had.
Sending his comrades ahead first, he'd have clung on doggedly, burning his soul, like a lead hound going at a brown bear.
To hold him even a little longer.
To drag out even a little more time.
And then heaven's fortune had followed the boy, and the barbarian warrior's carelessness and insufficient mana had produced this result — so it seemed.
"My respects!"
The woman knight drew her greatsword, stood it before her, and observed a silence.
Honoring the true valor of a boy hero who had saved his comrades while his own breath was cut off — and who had not even fallen in death!
"......?"
But strangely, her cheek itched.
Wondering what it was, she opened her eyes, and nearly dropped a child she wasn't even carrying.
Because it was someone's gaze.
The gaze of the boy she had taken for dead!
"You......! You were alive?"
"Legs."
"Ah?"
"My legs have gone terribly numb......"
Thump.
"Boy!"
With those preposterous words, Delam collapsed.
The woman knight came quickly over and laid Delam out straight.
She slapped his cheeks lightly, but he only hung limp.
This time it seemed he had lost consciousness entirely.
"Dear me......"
After considering a moment, the woman knight searched her armor.
What came to hand was the feel of a hard bottle.
Sloshing red inside it was a precious, precious [potion].
The woman knight popped the cap with her thumb and tipped the whole thing into her mouth.
Then she laid her own lips over Delam's.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
Delam took it down greedily.
In a manner unbecoming of a man who had lost consciousness.
***
"Nnngh... nnnngh......"
"Ugh, ugh, ughhh."
Delam abruptly opened his eyes.
He wanted to sleep longer, but it was too noisy around him for that.
Groaning came from every direction.
"Ugheeergh......"
But Delam soon came to make a similar sound himself.
Because his whole body had begun to hurt as though it were tearing apart.
That was not a figure of speech.
Not his arms and legs, but far deeper inside them.
Under the skin, parts of the thin tendons had torn, and a considerable portion of the paths that connect mana — the so-called [mana roads] — had been severed.
It was tremendous damage.
Enough that any other knight would have despaired on the spot.
Because a mana road is precisely the road along which mana moves.
Damage it and mana no longer moves well, and—
That meant a fall in attainment.
'Recovery is going to take a good while.'
Even so, Delam took pains not to show it.
Part of it was that he was lucky merely to have survived, of course.
But the bigger problem than that was the place.
What came pushing up his nose was the smell of blood and pus.
This was the distinctive smell of a medical tent and nowhere else.
The groans coming from around him were the sounds of the wounded.
'The cruelest place on a battlefield.'
People commonly say that combat is like hell.
But the real hell unfolds after combat is over.
Soldiers missing arms and legs. Arrows lodged somewhere in the body, and pus welling up in muscles a blade has torn through.
The one saving grace was the presence of the priests.
Priests of the Church of Radiance treated them with all their zeal and devotion.
And even so, 20 percent of those carried in here died, and another 30 percent were discharged with permanent disabilities.
And what of life after discharge?
'The bottom beneath the bottom.'
There is much to say, but he would keep it short.
Because the very first thing Delam did after becoming Supreme Commander was to pay compensation to soldiers disabled in service.
Every last noble opposed it, but having heard news of the comrades who had gone back to their home villages as disabled veterans, he could not look away.
And even that excluded the dead.
Because giving to all of them would have wrecked the kingdom's finances.
'And the result of raving like that and grinding up living lives to unify the continent... was a single meal for the demons.'
Delam laughed to himself despite himself.
At the time he'd believed it was something that absolutely had to be done.
That the world would become better for it.
That since he could sweep away every royal and noble of every kingdom, that alone was at minimum a meaningful thing.
But thinking about it now, it really was nonsense.
Royals and nobles were, in the end, much like thugs.
However hard you clear them away, again and again, some other fellow arrives from somewhere and takes the seat, calling himself your better.
Why had he not understood that before regressing?
When it was so obvious.
Had he been brainwashed?
'As if. I knew, and made an effort to look away......'
Naturally.
Because it was a thing that denied his entire life.
In the end there were exactly two ways to make a better world.
[Drag everyone down]
[Or pull everyone up]
And to do that he'd first have to unify the continent—
"Wow, this is fun."
Was this how a man goes mad with lust for power?
That was the thought that came to him.
The truth was that now, having even regressed.
He had no further interest in royals or nobles.
He was a regressor.
One who had gone back up through time to correct his errors.
And even if it wasn't by his own will, he would do what had to be done.
Stop the war, gather the heroes......
'And butcher the demons to the last.'
That was all of it.
But lately his thinking had been changing a little.
Precisely speaking, you might say a doubt had arisen.
Was that really going to be enough?
If he stopped the war, would all the heroes survive?
And if those heroes gathered, could they take on the demons?
'No — to begin with... can those heroes even be gathered?'
The reason Delam had butchered every hero was simple.
Because they were enemies.
And also because they could never be harmonized.
A hero is a being with his own conviction and his own justice, one who believes his own way is best and who has strength and power besides.
Beings more familiar with [collision] than with [compromise].
Such are heroes.
And now, if the war disappears, are those bastards going to laugh together, ha-ha and ho-ho, join hands and fight the demons?
Is such a thing possible?
Which was why it kept whispering.
The wildness inside Delam himself.
The avatar of destruction, the demon of the battlefield......
"You're awake."
Just then someone spoke to Delam.
A blunt voice that suited a battlefield.
But at the same time a clear, lovely one that didn't match it in the least.
"Don't get up. Your body is still a wreck."
"Nnngh... yes, ma'am."
Delam, struggling to raise his upper body, promptly gave up.
Instead he only turned his head and looked at the voice's owner.
There stood a woman knight of some sort.
"Uh... Rubian Vistache?"
"You know me?"
Delam's eyes went wide.
Do I know you?
Of course he knew her.
Naturally, seeing as Delam himself had personally taken her head......
Lick.
Tense, Delam licked his lips without meaning to.
***
[Wraith Blade] Rubian Vistache.
Eldest daughter of House Vistache, one of the kingdom's great houses.
From childhood she was famous for a character straight as a split bamboo.
The story of how she joined the knight order was already legend.
She had a partner in a political marriage, and he cheated on her, they said.
She beat him with her own hands and then bolted for the knight order — wasn't that how it went?
Her skill was considerable as well.
A dogged hard worker, with tremendous talent for the sword besides.
In the future she would even become the foremost disciple of the Sword Master Roel.
'But that's the problem.'
Had a late adolescence come for her?
After Roel died, Rubian changed 180 degrees.
She abruptly joined the rebels and began raiding the imperial army.
With a senior knight who had been faithful to chivalry throwing away honor and everything else to wage guerrilla war, the damage could only be severe.
In the end Delam went out himself.
Dug a trap, waited, and finished her off.
She had died without resisting, which left him with an unpleasant memory.
All she left behind was resentment toward the Emperor.
'Well... it's obvious. Roel, who back then was nothing but loyal, had attached himself to the princes and begun meddling in the succession. So the Emperor, feeling the sting at the back of his head, had him assassinated or something along those lines, no?'
Or she might have been in a romantic relationship with Roel.
Roel was also famous as a sculpturally handsome man.
If a woman's handsome boyfriend died, losing her head over it was understandable.
Of course, this was merely rumor.
Wasn't it Delam who heard Rubian's last words?
And what he'd felt at the time was less love than utmost respect.
At any rate, the conclusion was simple.
That a woman knight who would amount to something in the future had appeared.
'Getting entangled with knights isn't in the plan yet.'
Among knights there were an unusual number of broken personalities.
In fact, isn't that what training is?
A series of processes in which you gather mana and train your swordsmanship while agonizing over how you might kill people better.
Being such fellows, it would be stranger if they had good characters.
Which was why he'd meant to do it as late as possible.
And to raise his rank a bit first, then make their acquaintance.
That had been the plan... and now, suddenly?
Still, the party in question was Rubian, famous for being rigid.
Perhaps it was fortunate, if anything.
Lick.
"...Why are you licking your lips?"
"Ah, it's nerves, ma'am. From meeting a knight."
"There isn't some other reason, is there?"
"Some other reason, ma'am?"
"That you were in fact awake at the time......"
"At what time, ma'am?"
"Ahem. Never mind."
Rubian cleared her throat as though embarrassed.
Then she asked about a number of things.
Mostly matters relating to the decisive fight with the barbarian warrior, and Delam revealed only half his skill, in whatever way made sense.
That the barbarian warrior had been in an exhausted state, that he'd been old on top of it and sluggish in his movements, that he hadn't seen any scene of the axe glowing......
Summarized, it came to roughly [I was impressive, granted, but that fellow at the time was worn out to the point of not even being able to use mana].
'She's here to verify my war merit, no doubt.'
Adjusting war merit was Delam's specialty.
Since it was one of the things he did every day from the commander's seat.
And in the course of the conversation Delam obtained a good deal of information as well.
First, that it was a full three days since he'd lost consciousness.
And news that the soldiers, Mark included, were all alive, and so on.
'That's a relief.'
The truth was, sending the soldiers off to flee first back then.
That hadn't been out of altruism.
Naturally — he was the man who had to protect humanity.
Did it make sense for him to die in exchange for saving a mere few soldiers?
Rather, it was because there was no use in it.
Throwing the soldiers out as bait wouldn't have made escape any less remote.
The barbarian warrior would have butchered them in an instant and come after him in the end.
Fighting together was the same.
If anything they'd only have obstructed his concentration, which was why he chose it.
So he'd sent them off first with fine-sounding words, at least.
But Rubian's thinking seemed to be different.
"Boy, I respect you."
"Out of nowhere, ma'am?"
"For one whose strength is great to face a strong enemy is a contest and a challenge. But for a weak one to stand against a strong enemy is courage. And all the more so if it is for the sake of comrades—"
Rubian laid a hand on Delam's shoulder and said,
"That is true chivalry."
"Uh, yes, ma'am."
A face flushed red, and eyes as though burning.
Why was it that to Delam they looked like an easy mark?