The Special Duty Corps reconnaissance squad's survey report.
Naturally, ordinary troopers could not read it.
But Delam was the exception.
The Special Duty Corps commander had brought it to him in secret and pleaded.
Asking him please to help with drawing up operations.
Delam's weapon skill really was remarkable.
He handled seven weapons like a ghost in particular, so much so that the barbarians called him the [Seven-Weapon Man] and feared him.
But that was the tip of the iceberg.
The true talent the corps commander saw in Delam lay elsewhere.
Namely strategy and tactics!
It was always so.
With nothing but a simple movements report, he drafted operations both bold and precise, as though he were on the ground himself.
And astonishingly, most of them succeeded.
At any rate, that Delam was murmuring.
"Ah, damn it. We're screwed."
"......?"
The men looked at him with puzzled faces.
Even if he wasn't going to weep for joy, shouldn't he at least dance?
So why the funeral face?
"Has something happened? No — has something happened, sir?"
"This. This."
Instead of answering, Delam flapped the survey report.
At that, the Special Duty men coming over to congratulate him faltered.
And then edged backward.
This was a Delam who had handled every dangerous mission he'd ever been handed without a flicker of change in his complexion.
The process was simple too.
He would merely think a moment, propose an operation, deploy, and sweep through in one go like a storm and make the mission succeed.
So what was this now?
It wasn't even orders but a survey report, and he wore that funeral face.
Meaning something had gone seriously wrong.
And with Delam having just become the Special Duty Corps' vice-commander... with bad luck they might be dragged into it themselves.
Which was why they were backing off.
'The truth is, it was about time for this.'
Delam thought while looking at the report.
The Special Duty Corps' main mission was sabotage.
And within that, at cutting the enemy's supply lines and eating up their incoming reinforcements, they were veterans nobody could match.
Above all, Delam's existence.
Because Delam had driven the mission success rate up insanely, the barbarians' future had come to be fixed as one thing.
Namely, slowly withering to death!
'The Rune Master, as expected... a troublesome old man.'
It was two or three months at the outside.
Regrettably, the Rune Master seemed to have noticed.
That was how ominous the circumstances the report indicated were.
[Four days ago, the faces of five chieftains and their confidants confirmed]
[Smoke from the smithies has sharply increased]
[Unidentified wagons moving under strict guard]
[Rune Master sighted near the front]
......
"They mean to eliminate the Special Duty Corps."
That was the conclusion Delam reached.
Turn it over or flip it upside down, this was a trap.
A trap to devour the Special Duty Corps while pretending to prepare a general engagement!
But he wasn't greatly worried.
Since it was so blatantly a trap that his own side could not possibly fall for it.
And a week later.
"Vice-Commander, orders have come down."
"...Are all 300 of the Special Duty Corps by any chance to strike the enemy's rear?"
"Hah! How did you know?"
"......"
Delam ended up putting a hand to his forehead.
***
Inside the Special Duty Corps commander's tent.
The only ones inside were the corps commander and Delam.
Because of the outrageous news the commander had brought a moment ago.
The one who spoke the instant they sat down was Delam.
"It's a trap."
"...I have not even said what the mission is yet."
"It's obvious. The Sambala lot are preparing a general offensive, aren't they? And the Rune Master, the other chieftains and the famed warriors will all be gathering at the front."
"Correct."
"And I don't know what the mission is, but we're to strike the enemy's rear, aren't we? If I were the Rune Master, I think I'd want to use this chance to sweep the Special Duty Corps away entirely."
"That too... would be correct."
The Special Duty Corps commander's face darkened.
It had been some twenty years since he became a soldier.
And the latter ten of those he had spent not in some formal army but fighting large-scale pitched battles with other kingdoms, with a nation's fate at stake.
Meaning he had been through proper real combat.
Would such a corps commander not know that this was strange?
"I too think the barbarian bastards will be starting to regard our Special Duty Corps as a thorn in the eye. And that, as you say, they may have dug a trap. But—"
"But we can't refuse the mission?"
"Yes. With a dogfight breaking out at the front, they won't leave us alone to rest in comfort."
"Still, if the command element aren't fools... the Special Duty Corps won't just be blindly striking the rear, but hitting a specific target."
"Frightening fellow."
At Delam's words the corps commander clicked his tongue.
A thing he himself, twenty years ground down in the army, had only barely noticed — and this fellow had struck it dead-on without even hearing the mission.
He was truly glad the man was on his side.
And that he was his vice-commander.
Keep hold of him and promotion was a matter of time.
Only... if they could come back alive from this mission.
"Our target is the shamans. Word is they are preparing large-scale sorcery in the rear. And for reference, it is not a [pretense] — it is said to be genuinely under way in earnest."
"Sorcery... then we'll have to destroy the altar."
"Astonishing. Are you versed in sorcery as well?"
"That's just common knowledge."
"I did not know it, however......"
"Not knowing does no harm to living. What sorcery did our mages predict they were preparing?"
"It is not certain, but they said perhaps something on the order of weather-controlling sorcery. Turning the ground to a mire with torrential rain, with the intent of binding our kingdom's cavalry."
"Their imagination is impoverished."
Delam let out a dry laugh.
Mages as a breed all had strong pride.
So sometimes they spouted nonsense like this even knowing better.
In practice sorcery did fall short of magic in power, of course.
But it wasn't all drawbacks.
Namely, combinability!
Gather mages and it is one-over, one-over, one-over.
Whereas with shamans the power comes out as one plus one plus one.
Which is to say, given only a fine captain like a Rune Master, there was no telling what miracle dozens of shamans might work.
And they were going to use a mere weather-changing sorcery?
'What was triggered before the regression was... Diaroia, was it.'
In the original history Delam was conscripted a year later.
Sambala at the time had been considerably cornered.
So they'd aimed for a single reversal with a grand sorcery, and the Kingdom of Fior's side had merely stood and watched it.
Because they'd judged, as the corps commander had said, that it would be something on the order of weather-changing sorcery.
But what was actually triggered was an entirely different sort.
Diaroia — in the Sambala tongue, [food poisoning].
Exactly as the name had it, food poisoning went around among the soldiers.
And on a tremendous scale, at that: one in five caught it.
Counted in numbers, ten thousand.
And those ten thousand passed it on again to the comrades who hadn't caught it.
The Fior command element snorted, of course.
It wasn't as if some deadly toxin had been scattered — a mere food poisoning?
Being ignorant barbarians, was food poisoning all they knew?
But the command element soon came to understand.
The terrible power food poisoning holds.
Namely the fact that it [does not kill].
'Though leave it alone and it certainly does kill.'
The problem was manpower.
Do people to treat the patients drop out of the sky?
People to hand out medicine, people to clean up watery shit, people to launder the used cloth, people to spoon-feed the patients, and so on.
That work was naturally all done by soldiers.
Then who fights?
'Who fights, indeed. They can't fight......'
Nor could they simply leave them to die.
Comrades dying pointlessly on a battlefield, and the reason not the enemy's spears and blades but being too busy shitting water.
Refuse to treat that?
The soldiers' morale would obviously hit the floor.
Hundreds a day would desert.
The truth was that the gap in strategy between Fior and Sambala was overwhelming.
And even so, before the regression the war had run three years.
Half a year of that was because of that food poisoning, so as for how powerful a grand sorcery it was, saying more would only tire the mouth.
"Tsk tsk, checkmate all round."
"So it has become. Originally, in the meeting, they meant to gather knights of intermediate grade and above and send a small elite force, but—"
"The problem is Sambala preparing a general engagement, I'd guess. Send high-grade manpower to break an altar, and if a great pitched battle suddenly happens the losses could be catastrophic."
"In the end we're all there is."
"Haah."
Delam let out a deep sigh.
The commander, feeling needlessly sorry, added,
"Bookish types are slow-moving, after all."
"You know well, as ever."
"Hmm......"
Delam scratched his chin and reckoned the numbers.
Their strength was 300 Special Duty men and three or four low-grade knights.
Could a trap really be overcome with that?
'Seems impossible.'
Delam knew the Rune Master well.
Since he'd scrapped with the man for a considerably long period afterward as well.
He was the one who'd won in the end, but... at any rate, the Rune Master he knew would clearly not miss this chance.
'A road that leads to death.'
A dry laugh came out of Delam's mouth.
The truth was that the best thing at a time like this is not to go.
Break your own leg, or desert.
But Delam knew.
That the moment he did, everything would be finished.
Never mind the exploits he'd painstakingly built in the army all vanishing — he would never again be able to climb to a high seat.
'Whatever else... knights would never acknowledge a man who ran because he valued his life as a comrade or a superior.'
Isn't a broken leg an accident rather than running?
Nobody thinks so.
-Fuck, they say a barbarian war-chief is coming out at tomorrow's pitched battle. Should I just break a leg and not go......?
An imagining every knight has had at least once!
So who is going to be fooled by a trick that shabby.
In the end, run here and there was no road.
And if Delam could not climb to a high place, the odds were high that he would be unable to stop the demons of the future.
He might as well live it up in dissipation until then and hang himself when the demons descend, saying it had been fun.
'But I can't do that, can I.'
Delam checked over his own capabilities once more.
And on that basis he put questions to himself.
[Can I come back alive on my own?]
-Probably?
[Can I bring most of the men back alive?]
-That's a stretch.
[Can I make the mission succeed?]
-Hmm......
How long did he spend reckoning through the possibilities like that.
At last Delam's mouth opened.
"I might just be able to?"
Delam's mind began to spin at full speed.
***
Rustle, rustle-rustle.
Deep in the Sambala tribal confederation's rear.
A body of troops moved between a stand of oaks.
At the very front, three low-grade knights, the corps commander, and Delam.
Behind them followed all 300 Special Duty men.
The infiltration went smoothly.
You'd have thought they'd run into a barbarian patrol somewhere along the way even by chance, and without any such thing they advanced straight on.
The longer the peaceful stretch went on, of course, the more Delam's face rotted.
'As expected......'
It could be that they were simply lucky, of course.
But luck, on a battlefield?
Delam knew it very well.
That luck exists always in order to screw him.
So the reason they weren't meeting barbarians wasn't luck either.
The bastards were artificially keeping them away.
Delam asked the corps commander,
"About when will the pitched battle start?"
"They can't go at each other in the dark, so at sunrise, I'd say."
Delam requested a brief discussion.
The corps commander and knights gathered around and listened.
"It's been two days now without seeing a barbarian. That means their side knows all about our infiltration."
"That is rather a leap... is what I would like to say."
"So we have to change our approach."
"How, exactly?"
"Doesn't a bad feeling come precisely from moving on a board someone else has laid out?"
"...Meaning?"
Delam looked off into the distance with a hardened expression.
The dark before the dawn had yet broken.
Walking into a trap is not to his taste.
But if it absolutely has to be done—
"Then there's nothing for it but to break the board itself."