"I'd better prepare an assassination."
The next day I moved with Mel toward the location that had been reported to us.
A dwarven army consisted solely of a 'bomb corps' and a 'supply corps,' and it would be dire if the bastards entered the territory, so I meant to confirm it myself.
"Boss, the place we spotted the dwarves is east of the Kranel Mountains!"
Alton was a petty kingdom partly because it sat at the continent's edge, but the greatest cause was rugged mountain terrain where transport could not develop.
Naturally Mel's margraviate too was ringed by winding mountain ranges.
Everything in this country that could be called a territory was like that.
"Let's go to the highest point."
It was a hard road for the untrained Mel, yet she moved with me without showing a thing.
"Your shoulder really is the warmest and comfiest, Boss!"
Because she was merely riding on my shoulder.
Didn't my monstrous strength block even the knife-edged mountain wind?
It was no different from a first-class seat.
In any case, on climbing the highest range near the Kranel territory, there was a fact one naturally came to learn.......
"Mel, without war and monsters, your territory would've gone under long ago."
Margrave in name, with nothing to her name.
The most usable flatland in the margraviate held the castle, and that was the whole of the scenery.
Beyond that it possessed no commercial value at all.
"But except for the center, everywhere's about the same."
Mel readily admitted her territory was unimpressive.
"The capital does at least have one great plain....... but by imperial standards it's the size of a single farm."
"Even taking the whole country into account, there's nothing worth eating. Hmm......."
No, there was one thing.
My Arcane Ore mine.
At this point I began to doubt the invader's intent.
'Every war has a purpose.'
The Kranel Margraviate.
Its local specialty was monster byproducts, and its one distinguishing feature was a knight order good at killing monsters.
And yet Count What's-His-Name, one of the central nobles, was invading with dwarves in tow, insisting on striking us.
Where would you find a crazy bastard who starts a war with nothing to gain.......
"Why raise troops in a surprise attack at this point in time?"
At the royal event, Mel had said several times that the 'Panier Barony' and the 'Kranel Margraviate' were pursuing friendly union.
Put bluntly, it amounted to: 'The Panier Barony is land I intend to eat, so touch it and I will kill you!'
To a noble who wanted the mine, it would have sounded like this:
—To obtain the mine, strike Margrave Kranel directly!
So my judgment was this.
"If the mine is the objective, this will be more of a headache than expected."
"Hmm....... the mine probably isn't that famous? Only the original one is publicly known, too."
But Mel seemed to think there was another objective.
Not long after, we reached the range's highest peak.
There, I learned the truth.
"The objective isn't the mine, it's clearing out a faction. Are they proposing a war of extermination?"
"So it seems. For a central noble sunk in political games, his soldiers' bearing is sharper than expected."
The enemy camp was clearly visible even to Mel's two eyes, not only to my sight.
The pressure it gave off was one thing, but what impressed most was its scale.
"Did he conscript his entire territory?"
This was war without a declaration.
It was plainly a surprise assault, and yet that Count What's-His-Name bastard appeared to have dragged along not only his territorial army but conscripts as well.
And commanding them—.
"Mercenaries."
A mercenary company other than Bloody Retribution.
They were leading the territorial army and the conscripts.
With this I was certain.
"That vicious civil war is happening again."
The kingdom eaten into by two worms had finally begun to rot and collapse.
This country's long tradition, the game called territorial war, was gone.
Which meant the vicious civil war I had experienced in my past life was beginning in earnest.
And.......
"Boss, what's the dwarves' scale?"
Concentrating monstrous strength into my eyes, I saw a structure of peculiar texture among their camp.
The dwarves' encampment, giving off a deeply horrific energy.
Evidence that the bastards had formed a group.
"Dwarves at unit strength."
"The dwarves committed an actual army?"
"So it seems."
In my past life, in the days I lived as a mercenary of the Kingdom of Alton.
The young me back then roamed from war to war at random, so I didn't know the exact details.
I was ignorant and unlearned.
As can be seen from the mere fact that I was scouted by garbage like the Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company and followed them around.
But the me of now.
Mercenary King Jack was different.
"That's a dwarven unit that handles bombs, no doubt about it."
The genial party everyone enjoyed at the royal castle was the last amusement.
Now this country's nobles would have to forget their territorial wars.
That was the only way they'd live.
Because from now on, the scale of the armies that joined a war, and the very manner of war, would change.
"Boss, the purpose behind them playing such a strong hand. We ought to know it, right?"
Mel knew that well too.
And so she proposed:
"Let's grab just one of them!"
***
On the road invading the Kranel territory.
Count Hario's army took a day's rest before crossing the range.
Among the canvas tents stood a distinctly angular structure, built right beside the most important place—the commander's tent.
The soldiers inside were notably short and lumpy of body.
It was the dwarves' quarters.
"Captain, that piece the big knight bastard had. Isn't it just something that trickled in from the Empire?"
"How would a knight from a piddling kingdom like this be carrying an old-generation piece? I hear those get treated as terribly expensive outside."
The Dwarf Kingdom had split into two factions.
The old generation, which valued tradition and devotion, and the new generation, which worshipped technology and progress.
And not long ago one side finally seized complete superiority.
The defeated dwarves were the old generation, and most of them defected to the Empire.
"The Empire's odd too. What's so good about those relics that they hand them citizenship papers? I hear they're giving them all kinds of benefits......."
"They're morons."
"Right, morons for sure. Seeing as a staff made five hundred years ago is still the symbol of the Imperial Mage Tower Master, there's a good chance the Empire's froth too!"
Old generation or new, dwarves loved beer.
Hence they liked to liken empty things to beer froth.
"As if a five-hundred-year-old staff is anything special."
A magic staff said to have been made five hundred years ago by a legendary dwarven artisan.
The imperial house still treated it as a national treasure and promoted it as the symbol of the Imperial Mage Tower Master.
'Artisans cannot keep pace with technological progress on a national scale. For all the rumors, the Empire is a relic after all.'
So thought Rohwehin, captain of the bomb corps the Dwarf Kingdom had dispatched.
He was a textbook new-generation dwarf, a living witness to the miracle of the moment technology defeated tradition.
Rohwehin raised his beer mug.
"Come now, we are living inside history!"
Praise the sweeping revolution led by the dwarven royal house—Yedwarf!
Extol that great Industrial Revolution!
"Look at this disordered mana of nature. Compared to our kingdom's precise mana circuits it's no different from a wilderness."
Having left dwarven territory, he had begun to feel just how great his homeland was.
The Dwarf Kingdom's carriages run on mana stones.
They blanketed nature's chaotic mana with orderly mana circuits, and the kingdom controlled everything in the nation.
A myth achieved over a full two hundred years.
As a result the Dwarf Kingdom came to possess technology surpassing even that Great Empire's.
"These savage humans who can't even do mana communication."
Of course, dwarven technology still had its shortcomings.
In a wilderness like this, without pure mana circuits, mana communication devices didn't work properly.
But it would be different going forward.
'The Nuke.'
A continent-class strategic weapon built with the full strength of an entire race.
An ultra-high-density mana bomb mounting a mana fusion reactor; a single blast annihilated all the mana of nature.
It had the power to sweep away every miscellaneous thing on the land at once.
Land from which everything had vanished was, from a dwarf's standpoint, nothing less than the finest gift.
Because they could raise buildings with the newest prefabricated methods and build a new city.
This kingdom was the start of that experiment.
'It might be a headache if the necromancers latch on.......'
Of course, the Industrial Revolution had not been without side effects.
Over two hundred years the Dwarf Kingdom replaced the natural mana in land and mountains with pure mana circuits.
So what became of the mana that had originally been in nature?
All of it turned into dead mana.
Mana, dead or alive, passes as a single form of energy.
Which was why the black mages and necromancers who commanded undead had swarmed in.
"No matter how much those bastards chase our tails, they won't know the Kingdom of Alton plan."
As yet, no unpleasant trace of black mana could be felt in this country.
They had to weaken this kingdom as much as possible before the bastards noticed, and carry out the 'nuclear test' successfully.
Such a crucial juncture, and yet.......
"Of all things, those old codgers latched onto this little country?"
Not long ago, at the duke's banquet, a man named Jack had produced an extraordinary item.
On verification it was plainly a piece made by dwarven artisans.
"Those old-generation bastards must hate the homeland, something fierce, eh?"
"Those bastards never had any patriotism to begin with, apparently."
By the nature of the dwarven race, their temperament split in two.
One was the loyal subject who stayed in the kingdom and served the nation; the other was the sucker who chased after others for his own desires.
"Morons who trail after a knight they fancy and offer up weapons to him."
Such is the new generation's view of the artisans.
The old generation regarded making a weapon for a warrior they acknowledged as the greatest achievement of their lives.
They became oddities who hammered iron for that warrior alone, the way a woman keeps her fidelity.
Wasn't it just the eccentric hobby of perverts, dressed up as the artisan's spirit?
Wasn't those perverts' obsession even more vicious than the bond between a divine beast and a saint?
And Captain Rohwehin was a dwarf as well.
Which is why he recognized it.
"The bastard called Jack is exactly the sort who provokes those old perverts."
That enormous knight.
He was the sort of being who could set fire to the hearts of mad artisans.
Rohwehin, who as a small child had for a time admired his artisan grandfather, could recognize it.
"Captain, there are plenty of bastards like that."
"He's not ordinary. That Jack bastard smells different. Perverts on my grandfather's level would come running for him."
The man had to be killed at once.
'If the bastard's name starts to spread, the scattered artisans might all gather to him.'
Dwarven artisans didn't make weapons for just anyone.
Skill to handle the weapon was a given.
On top of that, they preferred men of ramrod-straight temperament.
Jack fell squarely into that.
It was then.
"Sure did! The old dwarves were fond of our Boss, all right."
A woman's voice came from somewhere.
The timbre was too delicate for a dwarven woman, and the direction it came from was the ceiling.
The dwarves turned their heads.
But what entered their eyes was not a woman; it was a knight so large he seemed about to burst the tent.
A frame so enormous it raised the question of how he had gotten this far unnoticed.
"W-When on earth......."
At dwarf eye level, what was visible was the belly of his armor.
Craning their necks as though they would break, they saw the face of an enormous man.
A somewhat youthful face, yet a frame calling to mind a pseudo-giant and boldly masculine features combined to give off the aura of a powerhouse.
On his shoulder sat a lovely woman with her legs crossed, and her eyes shone strangely even in the dark room.
She said:
"You lot were incomplete."
It was a meaningful remark.
As though she were speaking of the dwarves' [bomb].......
Captain Rohwehin thought they had to be killed at once.
But—.
"Urgh......."
An unknown force gripping the space was pressing the dwarves down.
A heavy, intense energy that made even breathing uncomfortable.
As though they had entered the domain of an archmage said to rule the mana flow of an entire region.
It felt as though an eternity had passed.
But only a minute or so had elapsed to this point.
"Boss, that one's the captain. Let's assassinate everyone but him!"
In that brief moment the woman decided something and said it to the being she rode.
SHRK—.
At that, the enormous being drew the sword strapped to his back.
An unidentified knight who carried an innocent-looking woman on his shoulder.
"......."
Unsuited to his frame, he was taciturn, and his movements were exceedingly quiet.
Against the deep night sky, the greatsword swung toward the dwarves' necks.
The blade gleaming like obsidian grazed their necks, and an ominous mist flowing from the sword swallowed their corpses.
Only one dwarf survived to witness this sight.
"These are bad dwarves."
The enormous knight murmured to the pitch-black blade.
"You may eat. Making good dwarves is a boon to the world—."
And then.
SLURRP——.
The mist flowing from the sword devoured every last man of Rohwehin's unit.
Everything vanished without leaving a single trace, as though no one had been there from the start.
"You, I'll take along for interrogation."
The enormous knight approached Rohwehin.
Rohwehin was seized with terror.
Because he had realized the identity of the enormous knight, and of the innocent-looking woman on his shoulder.
'T-These must be the henchmen of an evil god!!!'
He had seen demons.