by Dojyomaru
“You’re a good shot, but you’re so focused that you lose sight of other things,” Kuu continued. “I’ll protect you, since I don’t have much other choice.”
He tapped himself on the shoulder with his cudgel, in front of a wide-eyed Leporina.
Hearing him say he’d protect her, Leporina just barely managed to suppress a smile as she readied her bow. “Normally it’s my duty to protect you, Master Kuu.”
“Ookyakya! Well, hey, it’s fine to change things up once in a while, right?”
“I guess so. It feels kind of nice.”
With that lifting her spirits, a great many lizardman died to Leporina’s arrows.
It would not be until later that Leporina would feel the agonizing shame of knowing that her invincibility here had earned her the nickname of Death Bunnygirl.
◇ ◇ ◇
While the left and right wings ensured the lizardmen didn’t spread out, they gradually narrowed the space between them as they crushed the enemy. Because the center was putting up a hard defense, the lizardmen were unable to escape by moving forward while they were subjected to a pincer attack from the left and right.
If they were to try to retreat, the Dabicon was to their backs, and the shallows had already narrowed.
Water mages in boats were also standing by, using water magic to pierce any lizardmen that tried to cross and preventing their escape.
Huh? I realized while watching, even though they were in a desperate situation, that none of the lizardmen were trying to jump into the river. They were only trying to cross at the shallows.
Can the lizardmen not swim?
The lizardmen had reptilian faces, the rest of their upper bodies were scaly and humanoid, while their lower bodies were like those of carnivorous dinosaurs. Maybe because they were such warped creatures, they couldn’t swim well. Was that why there had been such a traffic jam on the other side of the river?
While watching the lizardmen, a thought occurred to me. Warped creatures... Just what are monsters?
Some creatures were born with unique traits that arose through sudden mutation.
Their entire bodies might be white, or they might have two heads.
But those traits only applied to the individual. Was it possible for such a large number of these warped creatures to occur naturally and form a pack?
I guess thinking about it now doesn’t do much good...
I decided to leave questions with no clear answer for later. For now, I had to focus on what was in front of me.
“Looks like they’ll be done on the ground pretty soon,” I commented.
There was no response.
I looked to Naden for agreement, but she still said nothing.
“Naden?”
“I really do feel something weird to the west,” she said.
Even while fighting, it seemed Naden had her mind on the west.
I looked westward myself, but I saw nothing. Still, ryuus and dragons were sensitive to magic. If Naden said she sensed something, there probably was in fact something out there.
“That weird feeling, is it a bad one?” I asked.
“Hmm... Not bad, more like familiar. But something’s weird about it...”
I heard another voice in my head. “Naden!”
Hal and Ruby pulled up alongside us.
Ruby said, “Hey, Naden, this feeling...”
“You feel it too, Ruby? Isn’t it a bit weird?”
“Yeah. It feels familiar, but different.”
It was somewhat surreal, seeing a black ryuu and a red dragon both cock their heads to the side in confusion.
Hal and I who were both left sitting on their backs, out of the loop, looked at each other with no idea what to make of it.
Then the situation changed, with the ground being affected first.
Caught in a pincer motion by the left and right wings and hit by the concentrated fire of water mages if they tried to flee across the narrow shallows, the lizardmen had their backs to the river and could only wait until they were crushed.
However, they seemed to feel ready to grasp at any straw.
With death before their eyes, their wild instinct for survival awakened. Some began throwing themselves into the river.
Sploosh, sploosh, sploosh!
Once one jumped in, another imitated it.
Their capacity for learning that we had used to teach them to hunt monsters was showing itself in an unpleasant way now.
Once the trend started, there was no stopping it.
The individuals close to the river jumped in one after another.
Like I had suspected, the lizardmen’s physiology made them poor swimmers, and they struggled against the powerful current. If this were a normal war, we could have called this a victory.
However, though this battle was large in scale, it was not a war, it was only the extermination of hazardous beasts.
“That’s...kind of bad, huh?” I said.
It looked like the lizardmen were being washed away, but if they washed up on the shores downstream alive, it would expand the damage and cause problems.
“Hal, can we attack the lizardmen in the river with our forces in the air?!” I called.
“No way! Everyone’s got their hands full with the flying monsters! If we have any of the wyvern cavalry break off from here, you’ll have flying monsters escaping instead!”
“Urgh...”
He was right; the wyvern cavalry was currently engaged in dogfights with the flying monsters. Most of the reinforcement army’s air force was being used for logistics. On top of that, in order to keep it secret, I hadn’t brought any of our best equipment like the Little Susumu Mark V.
It seemed that our limited air power had created a gap.
“Your Majesty, I’ll use my magic again,” Excel suggested from between my arms, but she must have overused her magic. Her face was pale, and it was blatantly obvious she was pushing herself.
“No,” I said. “You’ve already used up everything you’ve got, right?”
“But at this rate...”
“If you die on me, it’ll be a loss for the kingdom. Let’s find another way...”
While I was trying to figure out if there was anything we could do, it happened.
“Souma!” Naden suddenly shouted inside my head. “Look at the sky in the west!”
“Huh...? Wha?!”
When I looked at the western sky as Naden had told me to, I saw over a hundred of these short line-like things floating there. As those lines approached, I realized they were extended wings.
There was a group of large winged creatures flying here in formation.
Wyverns...? No, they were larger than wyverns, and they had front legs. That meant...dragons?!
Then one of the dragons in the formation picked up speed, stopping in front of us in no time. It was a pretty white dragon.
Seeing that dragon, Naden and I both cried out in surprise.
“Pai, is that you?!” I cried.
“So what I was feeling really was you, was it?” Naden called.
That white dragon was Pai Long, Naden’s friend who I had met in the Star Dragon Mountain Range.
Pai the white dragon saw us and gave a little bow. “It’s been a while, King Souma. You too, Naden.”
It really had been a long time.
Naden and Ruby headed over to Pai’s side to ask questions.
“Pai...that’s you, right?” Naden burst out.
“Hehe! Do I look like anyone else?”
“Hmm? I felt you coming, but something seemed different. I dunno, it was different from the Pai I know. Right, Ruby?”
“Yeah,” Ruby agreed. “It’s like it’s you, but not you. That’s how the magic felt.”
“Ahaha!” Pai laughed. “You’re sharp.”
As the three of them were talking, I heard a voice from Pai’s back. “Pai, could you let me greet them too?”
Pai hurriedly went, “Oh, that’s right!” and tilted her he
ad to the side. I could see there was a knight in platinum armor with a full-face helmet riding on her back.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the knight said. “Since you ride on a black dragon with an unusual form, I take it you must be King Souma of the Kingdom of Friedonia.”
“Yes, and you are?”
When the knight removed her helmet, a beautiful woman with very short hair appeared from inside. The woman put her helmet under her arm and saluted me.
“I am a princess of the Nothung Dragon Knight Kingdom and Pai’s knight, Sill Munto. Hearing of our ally the Kingdom of Lastania’s peril, I led 200 of the knights here.”
I feel like there were multiple things to be surprised about just in this introduction.
First, that dragon knights from the Dragon Knight Kingdom had come to support us. It seemed they had already dealt with the demon wave on their end. I guess that was to be expected from the country with dragon knights, the most powerful type of soldier.
Next, that the one who was coming to our aid was a princess. We had our own princesses who wanted to go out and fight themselves, though, so I wasn’t that surprised.
Finally, what surprised me, Naden, and Ruby the most was that Pai’s knight was a woman. I had heard that the contract between dragon and dragon knight was formed for the purpose of creating children. So, in the event that their knight turned out to be a woman, because of the vague nature of biological sex in their species, a dragon would change into a male form to procreate.
In other words...
“Pai, you’re a man now?!” Naden exclaimed in surprise.
“I sure am,” Pai easily confirmed it.
Oh, right. Maybe what Naden and Ruby had said about a familiar presence that felt different somehow had something to do with this.
That made sense... Wait, I had bigger things to worry about now!
“Madam Sill! I know this is sudden, but lend me a hand!” I called.
“Hm, whatever with?”
“We have the lizardman pack cornered, but a number of them have jumped into the river and are trying to escape! I’d like your knights to exterminate them!”
While I explained that as fast as I could, Sill gave me a firm nod.
“Understood. Let’s go, Pai.”
“Okay!”
Sill put her helmet back on, then spurred Pai onward as she returned to her dragon knights.
She raised her sword. “We will exterminate the lizardmen that escaped into the river. Follow me!”
She dove swiftly downward, with the dragon knights following. As the dragon knights flew over the surface of the river, the dragons all breathed fire in unison.
Bwooooooooosh!
The flames spat by the formation of dragons licked the surface of the river as they spread out. Those flames cooked the drifting lizardmen without mercy.
What intense fires those dragons produced. Well, if they had a group of 200 of them that were strong like Ruby, that was to be expected, I guess.
Looking down from the sky, it looked like the Dabicon was burning.
Watching that scene unfold, Naden murmured to herself, “I dunno, it’s all such a shock, my head’s starting to hurt.”
I stroked Naden’s back in silence.
Not long afterward, the ground unit finished exterminating the lizardmen. We could hear the victory cries of the soldiers below us.
We had won.
Though there was that one surprise at the end, this was how the series of battles ended in victory for the allied forces of Friedonia, Lastania, and Nothung.
Chapter 12: The Victory Banquet
It was the night after the day of the combined forces of the Kingdom of Friedonia, the Kingdom of Lastania, and the Nothung Dragon Knight Kingdom exterminating tens of thousands of lizardmen that had attacked as part of the demon wave.
In the fortress near the Dabicon river, there was a banquet being held in honor of today’s victory.
There were large pots prepared in the fortress courtyard and camps, and the soldiers sat in a circle around them, sharing liquor provided by Friedonia and Lastania, and having a jolly good time.
Their excess rations had been set aside for the occasion, but some brave men had heard it was possible to eat monster meat, and they were cooking and eating the remains of some of the more edible-looking ones that had been lying dead outside.
While the soldiers were having a raucous good time outside, we were in a specially prepared dining hall inside the fortress.
Present were me, my fiancées, our close companions, and important figures from all three countries.
The king and queen of Lastania, who had been left behind in Lasta’s castle, were now here, having arrived in a wyvern’s gondola.
Incidentally, for some reason, Princess Tia had already been at the fortress, and she’d surprised me by greeting us with Roroa after our return from battle.
Given the look on Julius’s face like he’d bitten into something unpleasant, I suspected he’d already known about her sneaking in. It seemed she was driving him crazy.
That aside, there were people from Friedonia, Lastania, and Nothung everywhere having pleasant conversations.
Given my position, I figured I ought to go talk to a bunch of them, but...for now, I was stuck with Aisha and couldn’t move around.
At the start of the banquet, Aisha had grabbed my arm tight and made no attempt to let go.
It didn’t bother me that various soft parts of her were pressed up against me, but she was squeezing a little too hard, and I couldn’t move.
“Um, Aisha? Could you loosen your grip a little?” I pleaded.
“I don’t want to.”
...Well, there you have it.
From what I heard, she had been stuck watching Jirukoma and Captain Lauren’s lovey-dovey atmosphere on the battlefield. Just what had those two been doing out there, anyway?
Incidentally, out of consideration for Aisha (or maybe just because dealing with her would be a pain right now) Roroa was with Julius and Princess Tia, and Naden was with Pai, whom she hadn’t seen in a while.
Aisha looked at me with eyes like an abandoned puppy dog. “Um...is this not okay? I did my very best in today’s battle.”
Her eyes clung to me. Seeing those eyes, I finally understood her feelings.
Oh, I see. Aisha wants me to praise her.
She wanted my approval. The sort of approval given from one in a higher position to one in a lower position. (Like from a parent to a child.) The desire for that sort of approval comes from a feeling of wanting that person to indulge you. Aisha wanted me to indulge her.
It might have something to do with the fact that, as I had slept in the same bed as Roroa and Naden last night, she’d been alone outside guarding us.
With my free hand, I patted Aisha on the head. “You really did well, Aisha.”
“Hehe.” Aisha finally showed me a satisfied smile.
Princess Tia’s parents, the king and queen of Lastania, came over and looked at us with smiles.
“You two certainly get along well,” the king said.
“They really do,” the queen agreed. “They’re so innocent.”
Th-They saw, huh? I felt a little embarrassed, but the King of Lastania offered me a bottle of wine.
“Here, Sir Souma, Madam Aisha.”
“Oh, thank you very much,” I said.
“W-We’re much obliged,” Aisha agreed.
We accepted the King of Lastania’s invitation to drink together.
Once four glasses of wine had been poured, we toasted together.
The King of Lastania drank all his wine in one gulp and thanked us with good cheer. “You know, I really am grateful for your reinforcements. If not for the Kingdom of Friedonia’s support, our country might have fallen. In place of my people, I thank you. If I had the martial prowess of one like Sir Julius, I could have fought myself, but I was completely useless...”
“No, you’re being too humble,” I said. “The r
eason our reinforcements made it in time was because of the hard fight put up by Sir Julius and the people of this country. We only helped a little, at the request of the Empire. In any case, I’ve gotten the sense that the Lastanian royal family are very much loved by the people of this country. I’m sure you were able to provide emotional support to your people.”
I poured more wine into the King of Lastania’s empty glass.
“Dealing with the Demon Lord’s Domain is an issue that concerns our country too,” I went on. “If there are any movements inside the Demon Lord’s Domain, or within the Union of Eastern Nations, please contact us. We’ll do whatever we can to help.”
“Thank you.” The King of Lastania bowed his head with a smile.
My words weren’t just lip service. The Kingdom of Lastania wasn’t just a member of the Union of Eastern Nations; they were allies of the Nothung Dragon Knight Kingdom in the west. They were the perfect go-between in negotiations between our two countries, and I definitely wanted to continue relations with them.
“Still, this certainly is an incredible sight,” the King of Lastania said as he looked around the banquet hall. “Here we have you, Sir Souma, representing the Kingdom of Friedonia, and Madam Sill, a princess of the Nothung Dragon Knight Kingdom. From what I hear, Sir Kuu is also the son of the head of the Republic of Turgis, is he not? That all these young people who will carry the future of this continent are gathered here, in this one small country in a corner of the Union of Eastern Nations... well, it’s a surprise.”
Yeah, he was right, there were almost too many of us here. But...
“The next generation of Lastania is looking like it has a bright future too, isn’t it?” I asked. “You have Sir Julius, Jirukoma, and Captain Lauren after all... Oh! I know this is a bit late, but congratulations on Madam Tia’s marriage.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I am truly glad to have a reliable young man like Sir Julius marry into our family. We knew how Tia felt about him, so there would have been no objection from us, but I would have felt a little hesitant asking someone who was once the crown prince of the Principality of Amidonia to be the king of a much smaller country like this. However, it seems my worries were in vain.”
Smiling as he spoke, the King of Lastania’s eyes were focused on Julius, who was talking with Princess Tia and Roroa, with the same stern look on his face as ever. Still, though Julius’s face was stern, there was no sign of the conversation letting up, so they were getting on well enough in their own way.