[Mana Formula, Flurex Arts]
Flurex, for short.
Back when Delam had become Supreme Commander.
The Emperor had granted him an entire western duchy as proof of his loyalty, and told him to choose one mana formula for his house to use down the generations.
Five mana formulas, every one of them at a level to make a man shiver.
Among them was a formula domineering enough to blow away a mountain.
And a formula whose rate of mana accumulation was the highest on record.
But what Delam actually chose was an unexpected thing.
Flurex Arts.
A mana formula originating in the distant East.
The truth was, it was a slightly ambiguous specimen.
It was not strong, not fast, and not profound.
And yet there was only one reason Delam picked it.
'Stability! When you're running the formula, it's safe enough that somebody could club you from the side and not one of your mana circuits would take damage.'
Delam had gone from commoner to Supreme Commander.
Which meant he had suffered no end of assassination threats.
And to the Empire's enemies he was the top-priority target for removal, so he had to worry about attacks from within and without at the same time.
When is a knight at his most vulnerable?
Precisely when training his mana formula.
The work of accumulating mana is extremely delicate; even a slight shock from beside you inflicts a heavy toll.
But Flurex, as said, was tremendously safe.
Attacked mid-training, he could respond instantly.
He'd chosen it for that, and there had been an unexpected benefit as well.
It was so stable that—
'I can do it while moving.'
Delam grinned and roused his mana.
A gloomy column of conscripts, marching as though toward the pit of hell.
Mana flowed in through the soles of Delam's feet as he walked among them.
'The sole of a human foot is arched.'
There was a reason it was shaped that way.
It was in order to defy gravity and drive blood up to the heart.
When a person walks, treading from heel to ball.
The arch compresses and springs back, pumping the blood upward.
Delam had grafted that human gait onto Flurex.
The result: with every footfall, mana flowed in through the ground, and as it passed the arch and he set down the ball of his foot, that mana spread through his whole body.
Naturally, this was out of the question with any other mana formula.
Merely attempting it would send the mana into reflux.
It was a feat possible purely because of Flurex, the formula of stability.
Slow at gathering mana, is it?
Nobody masters it for that reason, is it?
Then take its stability as a weapon and run it around the clock.
While walking, as now; while sleeping; even while taking a shit.
And as a result, Delam's mana volume right now was—
"What are you smiling at, you little shit."
"Huh?"
Just thinking about all the mana he'd gathered made him smile.
So he was snickering to himself when someone beside him picked a fight.
He looked to see who it was, and the face was familiar.
'Was his name Mark?'
He was from the same village, and Delam had seen him around now and then.
A punk long past his coming-of-age ceremony who lived like a loafer, and was shunned by the villagers for it.
An unprecedentedly childish brat who mistook people ignoring him out of sheer annoyance for proof of his own greatness — and who had gone so far as to volunteer.
The reason for picking a fight was obvious.
All the attention had gone to Delam out of nowhere.
When he was the one who'd wanted the conscription officer's notice.
"Hey, cut it out. Why are you going after a kid?"
"You stay out of it."
"What? A bastard younger than me......"
"We're the same rank of soldier, so what's age got to do with anything?"
The older men from the village tried to stop him, but it only made him rave harder.
Delam put out a hand to Mark and said,
"Hey! Let's shake on it like men and make up."
"What? What did you just say. Hey?"
"You're the one who said we're the same rank of soldier, you bastard."
"You......!"
Mark ground his teeth, then snorted.
After that he snatched Delam's hand as if grabbing it.
The difference in their builds was nearly double.
Delam was on the large side for his age, granted.
But Mark was far larger than that.
How much of his parents' marrow had he sucked out to manage it.
His intent was obvious.
What happens when an adult takes a child's hand and squeezes?
If he meant it, he could break the fingers.
And Mark, sure enough, bore down hard.
Squeeeeze.
"Get on your face and beg and I'll forgive you."
"Getting on my face is a bit much... but sorry about that."
"Too late, you little sh— aaaaargh!"
Mark suddenly leapt into the air.
A scream, out of nowhere, in the middle of a march.
There was no way it didn't draw every eye.
Sparks flew from the eyes of the soldiers who came running over in one stride.
"You little bastards, what's going on!"
Marching was an essential virtue in a soldier.
But that didn't mean anyone enjoyed it.
What's fun about walking under a blazing sun all day?
It's nothing but hard and irritating.
So the soldiers were right at the point of blowing up.
Delam spoke first.
"Sir, this fellow suddenly started screaming."
"Y-you little shit! You're the one who said let's shake hands and then crushed my hand! Sir, look at my hand, look how red it is!"
"Me, sir? With this hand?"
The soldier looked back and forth between Delam's hand and Mark's.
But no matter how he looked at it, there was no way Delam, with hands barely bigger than fern shoots, could do anything to Mark.
Delam went on.
"The fact is, he's been saying he doesn't want to walk since a while back — that if he pretends to be hurt he can pass the ration sack he's carrying to somebody else — and then he suddenly went and smashed his own hand against a tree."
"Th-that's not true! Sir, believe me!"
"Believe you, you say? Are you giving an order......? I'm not even a trainee yet, just a scrap, so I would never dare say such a thing. Whatever judgment you make, sir, I'll accept it gladly."
"No! That's not what I meant!"
Mark corrected himself, too late.
But it was far, far too late.
The eyes of the soldiers, whose mood had been thoroughly ruined, were blazing as if to say they'd be disposing of one corpse today.
"You dare deceive a superior? You fall back to the rear of the column."
"Aaaaagh!"
Mark was dragged off by the hair.
At the sounds of the beating that followed a moment later, Delam murmured.
"Ugh, what a piece of garbage. Just keep me out of the same unit as that one and I'd have nothing left to wish for."
"......"
The people around him edged away.
The mana he gathered tasted especially sweet today.
***
Walk, walk, and walk some more.
It was a march long enough to blow out their leather shoes entirely.
Even so, it might not have been all bad for the young men.
They had lived their whole lives in villages of two hundred households at most and ten at fewest, and now they had gone around the whole north and broadened their view of the world.
It would have been better still if they hadn't been conscripted, of course.
"We've arrived."
The final tally of conscripts came to two hundred.
The place they arrived at was a training camp.
At the camp they learned the basic knowledge needed on a battlefield.
Basic drill, the chain of command, and so on.
'Though really, it's more of an indoctrination facility.'
What matters most for a soldier on a battlefield?
Strength, force, strategy... soldiers had no need to know any of that.
That was the domain of knights, mages, and officers.
There were exactly two things conscripts had to do.
[Absolute loyalty] and [absolute obedience].
And what made those possible was precisely indoctrination.
"You lot are fortunate."
"......"
So said the knight who had guided them to the camp.
The conscripts couldn't quite bring themselves to answer, so they said it with their faces instead.
What in the hell are you talking about.
But astonishingly, the knight's words were true to a degree.
Originally, conscripts had been thrown straight onto the battlefield with no training whatsoever.
Which was why it was commonplace for them to get tangled up with their own side, or to die on the blade of a fellow soldier who hadn't understood an order.
In the end the kingdom had come to a realization.
That the commoner conscripts they had believed would keep coming forever, like insects laying eggs, would also run dry if they weren't [used sparingly].
And also that the more basic education came with them, the higher the odds of winning a battle.
At any rate, once the training camps were built.
The soldiers' death rate did drop by a meaningful margin, so that knight hadn't said something entirely wrong......
"Two hundred and eighty-nine men from the northern Tarn region, conscription complete."
"Transfer confirmed! Thank you for your trouble, Sir Obern."
"It is only what must be done for the kingdom. Now I trust the Baron will make these men into His Majesty's loyal soldiers."
"But of course."
The exchange between the knight and the camp commandant.
Delam listened to it as he passed through the camp gate.
The scene that unfolded before him was warm familiarity itself.
Meaning it made him want to vomit.
'Wow, it really has been a while.'
Camps like this had been built all across the kingdom.
And they all looked identical, as if stamped from a mold.
The training course was similar too.
The camp was divided into six zones in total, and up to five hundred trainees per intake rotated through the zones as they completed their training.
Week one, zone one.
Week two, zone two, and so on.
Take all six weeks and training was finished.
Meaning it was off to the battlefield to die.
'Three thousand per camp, then.'
Of course, they didn't always turn out three thousand.
In normal times it was about a hundred per intake.
And those were professional soldiers, not conscripts.
But the important part was that it [could be done].
If the war situation turned dangerous and the kingdom threw away its future and everything else?
A hundred thousand in two months, a million trained soldiers a year.
'The way I see it, the single biggest engine behind the Kingdom of Fior growing into an empire is exactly this training camp.'
That was his opinion as a commander, of course.
Kings and nobles would be delighted at how well it was built, at what a tremendous system it was — but what did the soldiers who actually had to be ground up in there think?
Sure enough, things looked ominous from the entrance onward.
-You little shit! Is that how I taught you?
-I-I'm sorry!
-If you can't copy it, die! Die, you bastard!
-Aagh! Aaaaagh!
Horrific sights appeared here and there on the way to the barracks.
All over the place, instructors were beating trainees.
And not as some token corporal punishment, either.
They didn't stop even when a head split open and bled.
There were plenty of soldiers anyway, so the madness came through plainly: one or two who wouldn't listen could be used as compost for all anyone cared.
"Th-this is insane."
"We have to go through that too......?"
The conscripts' steps quickened.
Horrific screams and crimson blood spraying up.
They'd thought themselves lucky not to be dragged straight to a battlefield, and it turned out this place was just another hell, only slightly less exhausting.
'Still, coming back after so long, it's got its charms — not bad at all. I want to finish up fast and get out to the battlefield.'
Delam, on his second run, was perfectly fine, of course.
If anything he was humming as he reviewed his plans.
Which was why it never occurred to Delam.
That the only things which enjoy hell are demons......