Wortenia Senki (LN) - Volume 18 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Battlefield Investigation

That night, in a corner of the palace, a man and a woman sat around a table. Spread out on top of it was a detailed map of the Cannat Plains, spanning the regions northeast of the capital. The map was dotted with game pieces that stood for armies on the battlefield.

The man’s name was Mikhail Vanash, a confidant and chief vassal of Queen Lupis Rhoadserians of Rhoadseria. Sitting opposite him was Meltina Lecter, who had been promoted to the role of defensive commander of the capital region.

This secret meeting between them was not a peaceful one. These two had the combined might of the Rhoadserian army at their disposal, and if they were to join forces, they could easily seize the capital itself. However, the power and authority they were graced with also meant there was no end to their concerns, and their important positions meant they had much to do. This meeting was so they could discuss how to deal with the cause of their troubles.

“So when will he arrive?” Mikhail asked Meltina, his eyes still fixed on the map. His voice carried a hint of displeasure, for whatever reason.

The agreed upon time had long since passed, and given Mikhail’s and Meltina’s positions, tardiness went beyond simple discourtesy. They were people of high standing, and normally they would have already left after spending so long waiting for no reason—especially considering who they were waiting for. Even so, Meltina couldn’t know everything that man was doing.

“Who’s to say?” she said, shrugging. “He has a way of coming and going wherever and whenever he pleases. He may be plotting some kind of scheme as we speak.”

Mikhail clicked his tongue, returning his eyes to the map. He knew that pressing Meltina for answers would get him nowhere.

Seeing Mikhail’s attitude, Meltina let out a sigh.

If he’s going to run late, he could at least send a messenger saying so. We’re busy people. What a troublesome man.

Meltina had her own share of complaints about the man Mikhail spoke of, and it wasn’t limited to his wasting their time. Akitake Sudou was overall a strange man whose allegiances were hard to place.

In the previous civil war, he’d been connected with the nobles’ faction as Princess Radine’s associate, but once the war began, he went against his faction and served as mediator when Duke Gelhart swore allegiance to Princess Lupis. After all that was over, he walked through the palace halls with his head held high, building connections with the current regime.

His attitude was so unfazed and nonchalant that Meltina could no longer complain about it; she simply regarded it with awe. It was for this reason that Mikhail, who abided by his knight’s honor, couldn’t bring himself to get along with Sudou.

If this was Sir Mikhail as he was just a few years ago, he’d have stormed out of the room by now. At worst, he’d have even drawn his sword.

Meltina herself realized that Sudou was worth exploiting, but she didn’t find interacting with him a pleasant experience. That was only half the reason Mikhail was so upset, though. They’d entered this room more than ten minutes ago, and for all that time, he’d been staring at the pieces on the map—for another reason altogether.

That makes Sudou’s tardiness seem like nothing in comparison.

Meltina felt much the same way. During the evening party at Count Salzberg’s villa, she had tried to have Ryoma Mikoshiba assassinated, but the news of the failed attempt hadn’t come as much of a surprise. They had planned the assassination out accordingly, but it was mostly meant to keep Ryoma in check. Had it worked, it would have been a great boon to Meltina, but its failure wasn’t a major problem.

It was the same for the plan they’d set into motion on the Cannat Plains. It was, ultimately, only a stepping stone toward the next major battle. However, things were very different if they didn’t deal much damage to the Mikoshiba barony.

No matter how many times I look at it, it’s still hard to believe.

The pieces on the board were set in the exact positions the units were deployed in during yesterday’s battle. They had questioned the surviving soldiers time and again to produce a report, which Mikhail had used to set the pieces now. It was, in all likelihood, a very faithful recreation.

No matter how Meltina examined the map, the units’ layout seemed to be without fault. The kingdom’s knights, led by Clay Nilsen, had had an overwhelming advantage. Of course, she could only assume that based on the positioning of the pieces, which didn’t reflect factors like the soldiers’ morale or the commander’s state of mind. That made it difficult to draw any decisive conclusions based on just that, but she could confidently say that this formation should not have taken a one-sided defeat. Mikhail, who was looking at the map with a bitter expression, probably saw the same thing.

Nonetheless, the reality of what had happened differed from their predictions. Their calculations had ended up shattering like delusions against the facts of the battle.

We gave Nilsen minimal forces because we didn’t want him to win by sheer numbers, but still, with this formation, I never thought the enemy would deal this much damage to him.

When they had prepared for this operation, Meltina and Mikhail had decided to take a gamble by limiting how many troops they mobilized. They decided to use only the Fifth Knight Order, led by Captain Nilsen. There were a few reasons for this.

First, strategically speaking, they had to minimize their numbers as much as possible to ensure that the enemy didn’t pick up on the presence of the ambush forces lying in wait. If they had mobilized a larger army, big enough to wipe out the enemy, then the enemy’s forces would have easily detected them and avoided the ambush.

Likewise, it would have been problematic if the main force, which served as a buffer to halt the enemy army’s march, had been too large. If they had shown their numerical advantage, it was likely that Ryoma would have instantly ordered a retreat.

At the same time, they didn’t want to resort to asking the nobles from the surrounding regions for military aid. Since Queen Lupis sought to build a regime where the monarch held absolute power, creating any outstanding debts with the nobles would have placed her in a disadvantageous position.

The choice to limit Nilsen’s forces was both tactically and politically sound, but that aside, Meltina and Mikhail had had a bad feeling about Clay Nilsen.

I don’t want to say that this is all Sir Nilsen was capable of, but...

For a moment, that thought crossed Meltina’s mind, but at the same time, she knew that couldn’t possibly be true. House Nilsen was a line of knights that matched House Lecter in its abilities—a distinguished house that could be traced back to the kingdom’s founding. Clay Nilsen did openly brandish his pride as a descendant of high-ranking knights, much like the deceased General Albrecht had, but as far as she knew, he hadn’t treated his subordinates cruelly. In this country, where many misused the authority afforded to them by their noble status, he was quite the unusual man.

His abilities as a knight had been exceptional. His subordinates had trusted him, and he had been a first-rate commander. He had no lack of experience either, having claimed the heads of many enemy commanders during wars with the Kingdom of Brittantia. He’d excelled in spirit, technique, and physique, and maintained an unwavering loyalty to the Rhoadserian royal family. He was, without a doubt, an outstanding knight of Rhoadseria, worthy of carrying the responsibility of a commander. Meltina wasn’t one to dispute that, and she had hoped she could use his abilities to realize her ideals.

But this skilled knight had had his problems—problems that could prove fatal for Queen Lupis.

The responsibility doesn’t rest solely with Sir Nilsen.

Clay’s problem was that House Nilsen had been on good terms with House Albrecht for generations. Given that Rhoadseria had over five hundred years of history, that wasn’t at all odd. Rhoadseria’s strict class system and lack of social mobility meant that marriages between commoners and nobles were unthinkable. There were cases where nobles took commoner girls they found while touring their domains as mistresses and lovers, producing illegitimate children in the process, but it was unthinkable that they would make these women their concubines or legal wives.

From a modern perspective, where the ideals of fundamental human rights and equality were upheld, that might come across as a blatant act of discrimination, but in this world, where the class system reigned supreme, this was common sense. On the other hand, nobles and knights had a duty to maintain the honor of their family’s name, which was upheld much more firmly than one might expect in modern society. As a result, those in the upper classes had to marry within the limited pool of families in the nobility.

Most of Rhoadseria’s ruling class was bound by ties of blood on some level. That went for Meltina’s own family, House Lecter. She had blood ties to most nobles in the country, although her family didn’t actively nurture such relations with most of those noble houses.

When it came to House Albrecht and House Nilsen, the circumstances were different. Their ancestors had been inseparable friends, so the two houses maintained a close relationship that had remained uninterrupted throughout Rhoadseria’s history. Over the last few decades, they’d become even closer.

He probably did it as a means to maintain his influence and authority, though.

The first thing those who possessed power and influence concerned themselves with was gathering allies that would help them maintain and protect that power and influence. Therefore, Clay Nilsen had taken Hodram Albrecht’s sister as his wife, and his aunt and niece had married Hodram’s uncle and nephew, respectively.

Each family was a line of high-ranking knights, so their social statuses matched, but this meant that Clay Nilsen had secured his position as an ally and sworn friend to General Albrecht, head of the knights’ faction.

Normally, this kind of marriage wouldn’t be a problem, but Sir Nilsen was simply too close to General Albrecht.

General Albrecht was no longer among the living, but even so, he had reigned over the knights’ faction for too long, and his influence still lingered, even posthumously. Many people found fault with Queen Lupis’s regime, and some of them longed for the days when General Albrecht was still in charge. On top of that, the fact that Queen Lupis couldn’t judge many of the members of the knights’ faction after the last civil war was a major issue.

The knights are important when it comes to maintaining order within the country. If she were to execute them, the country’s military strength would weaken, so Her Majesty decided not to judge them for their transgressions.

The biggest miscalculation she’d made with this decision was that it was poorly received by the knights who had been treated badly during General Albrecht’s tenure as general, as well as those who had lost many things to the knights’ faction’s oppression. For example, Chris Morgan had been mistreated as a knight for a long time despite his impressive, godlike skills with a spear. Chris’s grandfather, Frank, was a close associate of Helena Steiner, and to that end, General Albrecht doubted and loathed Chris.

Frank was on his deathbed due to the crippling effects of Carrion disease. His family couldn’t obtain the necessary medicine to treat him, but the reason for that could be traced back to General Albrecht for applying pressure on merchants who supplied medicine, forbidding them from selling the nostrums to Frank’s family.

For those reasons, Chris regarded General Albrecht and his clique with enmity. At present, Chris took his grandfather’s place as Helena’s right-hand man, but that didn’t undo the years of oppression General Albrecht had inflicted on him and his family.

There were many people in much the same situation as Chris. In fact, Chris was one of the lucky ones, because he was only treated coldly. Some of his enemies had been forced to watch their wives or fiancées being raped, while others were abused so terribly that they eventually chose suicide. And once a civil war ended, those victims were normally allowed to direct their rage onto their aggressors. The law of retribution, it seemed, was an unchanging truth in this world.

That’s just a natural conclusion, after all.

Victims of crimes longed to pass judgment on their aggressors, and when they weren’t satisfied with the judge’s sentence, they sought to take justice into their own hands. When the strong and weak changed places, victims sought retribution.

Meltina understood this, and this was why she’d kept a watchful eye on these young knights, who were now known as the queen’s faction. Since the situation hadn’t improved much since Queen Lupis came to power, these knights still had a reason to vent their frustrations.

But what we didn’t predict was that this resulted in Nilsen creating his own faction among the knights.

Same as how victims had their reasoning, the perpetrators had their own logic too. Even if the assailants did feel apologetic, they couldn’t very well pay with all their fortune or their lives. It was clear that it should have been Queen Lupis’s place to reconcile with the new faction, but at the time, she’d had to prioritize maintaining control within the country. And not long after, the O’ltormea Empire had launched its invasion on Xarooda. With those factors in play, she hadn’t had the opportunity to reconcile.

And so time went on, and what was originally but a small spark of rebellion had flared up and spread to uncontrollable levels.

I’m sure Sir Nilsen had no desire to rebel against the kingdom, but...

Meltina wasn’t doubting that, but the truth was that Clay Nilsen and his faction were a nuisance for Queen Lupis’s regime, so they had decided to use him for this scheme. Having one of their enemies clash with another meant they would profit both ways.

The Battle of the Cannat Plains was nothing but a stepping stone for our next battle. It would have been best if Sir Nilsen had taken that man’s life while he was at it, but Sir Nilsen’s loss doesn’t hurt us much. Plus, he revealed what the enemy is capable of, which puts us at an advantage. But...

Meltina hadn’t expected their army to suffer a one-sided defeat.

I can understand why Sir Mikhail is so upset.

It was easy to say that their prediction had been off, but they had invested time and preparations into this scheme. It was frustrating to see it turned upside down with such ease.

With that thought in mind, Meltina said, “I can only assume they knew the detachments were there ahead of time. That’s the only acceptable explanation.”

“Probably,” Mikhail muttered, not looking up from the map. “He must have some pretty skilled spies working for him. Or maybe...”

“Someone leaked our information?”

“There isn’t any positive proof of that, though.”

Clay Nilsen’s tactic had been to use his main force to stall Ryoma’s army so that detachments could strike them from the flanks once the timing was right. It was a fairly orthodox, by the book ambush tactic. If anything about it was novel, it was that he split the ambush detachment in two. Otherwise, it was an utterly uninteresting strategy, although it fit Clay Nilsen’s honest personality.

But he saw through Sir Nilsen’s plan. He had to have known there were soldiers lying in wait.

Meltina moved the game pieces over the map. The detachments Clay had lying in wait in the forest had taken a detour around the battlefield to strike at the enemy’s flank undetected, but Robert Bertrand’s and Signus Galveria’s units had suddenly attacked them and wiped them out. It had apparently been a one-sided slaughter. After that, Robert and Signus had struck at Clay’s force from behind, their forces emboldened by having wiped out the detachments.

“It’s not clear how he knew about the hidden detachments, but...” Mikhail looked up at the ceiling and whispered, “It only makes sense. They don’t call him the Devil of Heraklion for nothing.”

His words were full of bitter recognition for his enemy’s prowess, but Meltina could also sense jealousy, envy, and respect for Ryoma in them. She could tell those feelings were there because she also held similar feelings in her own heart. Any self-respecting warrior would surely feel the same way. Everything has its exceptions.

“Recreating the Battle of the Cannat Plains, are you? You two seem absorbed in it too.”

Suddenly, a third voice spoke up, prompting Meltina to swiftly turn around. Upon confirming who it was, she clicked her tongue loudly.

“Sudou.” Meltina directed a sharp glare at the man they’d been waiting for. He had finally decided to show himself.

Seeing Meltina’s gaze, Sudou sighed.

Such cold eyes... She must really hate me.

The glint in her eyes was one of loathing. Of course, few people would greet someone who was hours late to an appointment with open arms, and in that regard, Meltina’s behavior was reasonable. Sudou knew better than to audibly complain.

Meltina didn’t seem inclined to say anything else, be it out of resignation or some other reason. This silence was, perhaps, a small way in which she could get back at him. Mikhail, however, as the other offended party here, wasn’t going to keep silent.

“So after you’re so thoroughly late, you don’t even bother to knock before you come in,” Mikhail scoffed, giving Sudou a glance. “You really have no perception of manners, do you? If you’re going to loiter around Her Majesty’s castle despite your lowly station, the least you could do is adhere to decorum.”

His words sounded arrogant, but if nothing else, they were true. The fact that Mikhail was only resorting to sarcastic remarks in this situation was almost gracious of him, because normally Sudou’s head would have been sent flying by now.

Sudou was unfazed by their attitudes. An ordinary person would have become flustered and started apologizing, but Sudou simply walked toward the desk with his usual flippant smile.

“Now, now, you must understand that I am extremely busy,” Sudou said, his voice not the slightest bit apologetic. “I did keep you waiting for quite a while, but I ask that you understand my predicament here. I work day and night for the sake of this country.”

Mikhail glanced at him suspiciously. “Hmph, assuming you really are working for our country.”

Sudou shrugged. By now, he could calmly ignore people’s suspicious stares. He had a thick skin unmatched by any.

“Why, that’s slander. And I thought that you, of all people, knew how much I work for this country, Sir Mikhail.”

Their gazes clashed over the map, sparks flying between them. Nevertheless, Mikhail couldn’t deny Sudou’s words. And unlike in the past, Mikhail had learned how to keep his emotions repressed.

Seeing her colleague’s growth on full display, Meltina smiled. As she did, Sudou approached the map, his eyes flicking toward her. After looking at the positions of the game pieces, he sighed deeply.

“But honestly, Ryoma Mikoshiba really is a troublesome man,” he uttered, his voice a mixture of amazement and sarcasm.

The ambush detachments’ presence on the battlefield had been top secret information. Excluding Mikhail and Meltina, who had come up with this strategy, the only one who had understood the full picture of what they were planning was Clay Nilsen, who’d led the main force.

Still, there was no guarantee that the enemy’s scouts wouldn’t have spotted the detachments. Knowing this, Clay had split the strike force in two and had the other half lie in wait in two detachments in the forested area behind the main force—as per Meltina’s suggestion—but in the end, that had given Ryoma the chance to individually defeat each detachment.

“This formation... Though he tried to ensure success by splitting up the strike force, it resulted in both detachments being beaten,” Sudou said, picking up a few game pieces symbolizing cavalry from the Mikoshiba barony. He moved them in a wide arc toward the strike forces hidden in the forest. “The flaw with strategies involving surrounding the enemy is that they present a chance for the enemy to individually strike down each unit.”

“We knew that,” Mikhail said bitterly. “Lady Meltina and I kept that in mind, but...”

Sudou gave Mikhail his usual, constant smile. He wasn’t mocking Mikhail, though.

Surrounding the enemy to wipe them out is not the easiest play, but I find it hard to believe there was a problem strategically speaking.

Surrounding the enemy was a highly difficult tactic to employ, with the bottleneck being coordination between the units.

For instance, in the Warring States period of Japan, House Shimazu, who ruled over Kyushu from their base in Satsuma, used the tsurinobuse tactic, a model example of a surrounding strategy. Well, Sir Nilsen using his main force as bait while ambush detachments swoop in from the flanks to attack simultaneously is a bit different from the tsurinobuse, but it’s in much the same vein.

Meltina and Mikhail didn’t know about the tsurinobuse tactic, but even across different worlds, people seemed to come up with the same ideas. The tsurinobuse was based on fooling the opponent into thinking that their offensive drove the opposing army into retreat, guiding them into position where an ambush force could move in to surround and finish them.

House Shimazu won many battles using this tactic. The problem was that other warlords in the Warring States period didn’t employ it. Similar tactics were around, but those were merely analogous ones used throughout the entirety of the Warring States period. House Shimazu was the only one regarded and feared for having this trademark tactic.

The reason for that was the preconditions required for the tsurinobuse tactic to work. Ordering a false retreat was easier said than done. In a world with limited communications, one could deliver instructions to soldiers using flags, bells, and sounds, but those instructions couldn’t be very detailed. The commanders and soldiers needed to be disciplined and had to understand the tactic perfectly.

If the soldiers were to actually believe the situation was unfavorable, the entire battle would start falling apart. The decoy unit needed to retreat in an organized manner, and that was difficult to do. What’s more, the decoy unit and the ambush unit had to match their timing perfectly, which was also a tall order.

With all these factors, the tsurinobuse tactic was very lethal, but it was also a high-risk gamble that would either allow House Shimazu to turn the tables or have the rug pulled out from under them.

That said, I don’t think Lady Meltina’s judgment was wrong here.

Meltina and Mikhail had limited how many troops Clay could take along, but because of the coordination required to successfully surround and crush the enemy, using only the Fifth Knight Order, which were Clay’s direct subordinates, wasn’t a bad decision.

One of the biggest problems with organizing an army was mixing together units with different chains of command. At its core, a war was fought with a mass of people, and it took a long time for people to build trust with each other. Soldiers from different units didn’t necessarily see people from other units as their comrades, even if they were in the same Rhoadserian army. If nothing else, soldiers didn’t regard soldiers from other units in the same light as they did their squadmates.

That was also true for the battlefield. In order for soldiers to march to the same beat, they needed to understand and know one another.

An uncoordinated army is no different from a raging mob.

Take, for instance, an army made up of commoner conscripts. They became emboldened when their army had the advantage, but they scattered right away once the tide of battle turned against them. Each soldier only cared about saving their own skin; they had little concept of loyalty, to say nothing of concern for those around them or the overall state of the battle. Conscripts were certainly a good choice to build up large numbers, but they didn’t necessarily live up to the potential their numbers implied.

Of course, the Fifth Knight Order hadn’t done something as reckless as employing conscripts to bolster its ranks. If they had needed more soldiers, they’d have taken knights from other knight orders in Rhoadseria. Even so, mixing in soldiers from different units with different chains of command was risky.

In professional baseball, there were cases where an all-star team that had bought up all the good players from other teams ended up losing to a team without any standout players. In those cases, the loss was still attributed to the losing team’s lack of coordination. The same reasoning applied here.

Based on her tone, it seems Lady Meltina thinks limiting Sir Nilsen’s forces was a poor choice, but forcing in knights from other orders might have been an even worse move.

Sudou’s intention wasn’t to speak in Meltina and Mikhail’s defense, but from an impartial point of view, he didn’t believe their plan was inherently flawed.

Which means, the issue must be...

Sudou himself had predicted that Ryoma Mikoshiba would win the Battle of the Cannat Plains, and his prediction had proved right.

But that was only my thoughts on the overall result of the battle.

Sudou had indeed predicted that Ryoma would win, but he had also predicted that this victory would cost him half his forces. However, the investigation report of the battle found that most of the corpses on the Cannat Plains belonged to Rhoadserian soldiers.

There were between twenty-five hundred and three thousand knights in the Fifth Knight Order. Meanwhile, Baron Mikoshiba’s army had only roughly five hundred men.

This meant that Ryoma had won despite being outnumbered by nearly six to one. The Battle of the Cannat Plains was only a preliminary battle building up to the war to come, though. Historically speaking, this fight wouldn’t have much impact. The history books would only regard it as a trigger for the northern expedition. However, the details of that battle would leave a brilliant mark on the annals of military history.

And they even slew Sir Nilsen too.

Slaying the enemy commander on the battlefield was easier said than done. Fundamentally speaking, human lives all had the same weight, but status and position could make that weight fluctuate in practice. A king’s life and a slave’s were technically worth the same, but with the price tags society placed on people, the former’s life was worth more than the latter’s. Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing was inconsequential; it was simply the way of the world.

In much the same vein, a commander’s life was worth more than that of a soldier locking blades with the enemy. Any one soldier was expendable and replaceable, but officers capable of commanding the battlefield were few in number. Naturally, many commanders fortified the defenses around them. That way, if they sensed the situation was going against them, they could choose to retreat. This was a privilege an ordinary soldier didn’t have.

That means the battle was decided before Clay Nilsen could choose to retreat.

At first, when Ryoma Mikoshiba’s unit clashed with Nilsen’s main force, Nilsen had sent runners to the detachment units, but this had turned out to be the chance Ryoma had been waiting for.

After receiving Nilsen’s message, the detachments lying in ambush had begun marching toward the battlefield, when they had been attacked by Robert Bertrand and Signus Galveria. Signus had attacked the eastern detachment, while Robert had attacked the western one.

Based on what survivors from the detached units had testified, both of their units had between 100 to 150 troops, but the two commanders leading the enemy charge boasted strength worthy of war gods. Their axe and staff had roared through the wind, sending people flying and crushing the detachment units.

At that point, the outcome of the battle was already decided.

Sudou removed the two pieces that stood for the ambush detachments from the map. Mikhail and Meltina watched him do so, their expressions bitter. As harsh as reality was, they couldn’t deny what had happened.

After Robert Bertrand and Signus Galveria defeated the detachments, they struck the main force that was stalling Mikoshiba’s army from behind. Sir Nilsen’s formation fell apart, and he died in battle. Then, having regrouped with all his forces, Mikoshiba returned to his stronghold in Wortenia.

Having moved the pieces around, Sudou got a better image of the battlefield, which made it obvious why Meltina and Mikhail kept staring at the map for so long.

Yes, the more you look at this, the harder it becomes to accept.

It still wasn’t clear how Ryoma Mikoshiba had known about the detachments Nilsen had sent out, and because of that, Meltina and Mikhail couldn’t come to terms with this outcome. They kept looking for flaws in their plan, even though there were no such flaws to be found.

But I suppose the answer to that question lies with Koichiro Mikoshiba.

This was only speculation on Sudou’s part, and he couldn’t prove it, but he was confident that this was almost certainly the reason Ryoma had found out about this plan.

From what I’ve heard, he was staying in Pireas at the time.

Sudou had previously received a request for a meeting from one of the Organization’s Elders, Liu Daijin, otherwise known as Liu Zhong Jian. However, Sudou hadn’t seen Koichiro Mikoshiba in person during that meeting. Still, Koichiro Mikoshiba was known by all members of the Organization. He was regarded as a hero, and that title carried a weight that even Sudou couldn’t ignore.

Because of that, Sudou had the Organization’s people assist Koichiro as per the man’s wishes, while keeping an eye on him at the same time. He knew that Koichiro came to Pireas in pursuit of a girl called Asuka Kiryuu and that he stayed in an inn under the guild’s management.

But he and his group vanished from their inn, leaving Asuka Kiryuu here in the capital.

If Koichiro Mikoshiba had decided to leave despite Asuka Kiryuu’s presence in this city, he could have only gone to one place. He had gone there with information on Queen Lupis’s plans and delivered it to Ryoma, who had just made his escape from the House of Lords.

I swear, that man always exceeds my expectations in the most troublesome ways.

Sudou chuckled, feeling emotion rising up from his heart. Seeing this, Meltina and Mikhail looked at him suspiciously, but Sudou wasn’t in the right state of mind to care much for their staring. Had Sudou been all alone in this room, he’d have laughed out loud.

Well, there’s no need to jump to conclusions. For now, I’ll just have to wait and see how he worms his way out of the next war. And if he does manage to wiggle his way out of that...

And that laughter would have been of joy—of elation at having found the last piece of the puzzle that would grant his wish.

“Sudou... What are you thinking?” Mikhail asked when Sudou’s shoulders finally stopped shaking with restrained laughter.

Oh, my, no good.

Sudou spoke cautiously, masking his true wish. “You see, I was just thinking that Ryoma Mikoshiba really is one lucky man.”

Sudou was speaking from his heart, but those words also contained a hint for the solution to Meltina and Mikhail’s concerns—a present from Sudou to them, in a sense, meant to solidify the trust Sudou was trying to build between him and them. Meltina, however, didn’t understand that hidden meaning and could only regard him with apprehension.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked.

Mikhail nodded in agreement. Neither of them understood what he was getting at.

Sudou snorted. “No matter how smart and well-prepared someone might be, if a person doesn’t have good luck, they’ll fail at everything they do. A lucky man will find the right means to deal with a situation at just the right time. That’s all.”

If the information about the detachments hadn’t been leaked to Ryoma, the Battle of the Cannat Plains would have ended very differently. If Ryoma hadn’t been supported by two powerful commanders like Robert Bertrand and Signus Galveria, he surely wouldn’t have been able to dispatch the detachments as quickly as he had. If he hadn’t had the famed former mercenary, Lione the Crimson Lioness, leading his main force, the force might not have weathered the numerical disadvantage until Robert and Signus regrouped with them.

If, if, if... There were so many ifs, so many hypothetical possibilities, and at every turn, Ryoma Mikoshiba had made the ideal choice. Thanks to that, he had been able to return to the citadel city of Epirus without any major losses.

“Of course, I acknowledge Ryoma Mikoshiba’s skills. When you get right down to it, his victory at the Cannat Plains could be attributed to his meticulous nature. I won’t deny that. But at the same time, factors other than his capabilities played a big role in this.”

“And you’re saying those factors were that he was lucky?” Meltina asked.

“Yes...”

Mikhail clicked his tongue. Nothing was more important to a warrior on the battlefield than luck. A warrior’s duty was to risk their lives in battle, so one had to pray to the powers that be that they were blessed with luck.

Knowing that his mortal enemy was blessed by those higher powers wasn’t something Mikhail was pleased to hear. Meltina, by contrast, spoke up cheerfully.

“Luck, you say? That’s good to hear. After all, there’s no defending yourself against luck.”

Mikhail, doubting his ears, gave her a look.

“Luck is the will of the gods, and there’s no point in lamenting it,” Meltina said as she shook her head. “Besides, no one stays lucky forever. Luck eventually declines, for everyone. If luck saves him from an arrow, we only need to shoot a second shot. And if luck saves him from a second shot, we fire a third.”

Unlike her expressionless demeanor earlier, her eyes now glinted with bloodlust.

Sudou silently snickered at her transformation.

It’s like I thought. All she needed was a little confidence. Well, she is still young. 

As aide to Queen Lupis, Meltina had risen to a high station while still very young. Many had mocked her in the shadows, calling her a brownnoser of the queen who threw her weight around with borrowed authority, but Meltina herself had realized she had no merit to her name, so she had put in the effort to gain the abilities necessary to fulfill her position.

She was constantly torn between her pride, knowing she was doing her best, and her dread, wondering if she had overlooked something important. This was why she was desperate to analyze the Battle of the Cannat Plains; she was afraid that it was through some fault of hers, by some mistake she’d overlooked, that the battle had ended in defeat. Nevertheless, despite looking and looking, she hadn’t found any mistakes or flaws, which had only made her more anxious.

Fortunately, Sudou’s explanation made some puzzle piece that she’d missed click into place, and that feeling was the reason behind her current expression.

“And no matter how much luck that man has on his side, we’ll just have to pressure him with greater numbers until we trample over his luck. That’s why we’re organizing two hundred thousand troops to subjugate the north.”

She turned to the man sneering before her and declared, “And Sudou, you’ll cooperate with us.”

She spoke out of belief and faith in her beloved, respected queen. Mikhail could only nod, affirming his colleague’s words.

With the meeting over, Sudou left the room. Meltina and Mikhail wordlessly watched him leave, their gazes cold as ice. If Sudou had seen them, he’d have reconsidered his opinion of them.

The emotions in their eyes were very human—mockery and scorn. They saw themselves in the center of the stage. They gauged their relationships with others through benefit and loss, and they saw their fellow men as pawns to be used.

“That man... He’s a real piece of work,” Mikhail muttered.

“True, but you knew this the whole time already, Sir Mikhail,” Meltina said.

Mikhail nodded. “I know. And I realize that if we’re going to bring about Her Majesty’s ideals, we’ll have to manipulate people like him too. To make sure we make those ideals a reality, I’ll cast aside my knight’s honor if I have to.”

“Yes. I’ll give up the moral high ground to make sure we weaken the nobles’ power and turn our homeland into a kingdom that’s truly ruled by Her Majesty. I’ll use that man for all he’s worth to see that we do it. We will make that ideal a reality.”

The two of them nodded at each other. Everything in Lupis Rhoadserians’ name... That was their justice. That was their conviction.

♱

After his meeting with Meltina and Mikhail, Sudou walked through Pireas’s back alleys, the devil’s smile smeared across his face. If the queen’s two attendants were to see him now, they wouldn’t dare consider using Sudou like a tool.

A total of two hundred thousand soldiers... This war really holds the country’s fate in the balance.

Ryoma’s massacre at the House of Lords had earned him the wrath of Rhoadseria’s nobility. As a result, the nearby nobles had begun mustering their soldiers around the capital’s outskirts, and the number of those soldiers was growing by the day. Many more soldiers were marching to the capital all the way from southern Rhoadseria. When Meltina said the expedition force would be two hundred thousand soldiers in size, it was no exaggeration. All of Rhoadseria’s nobles were pooling together their soldiers to assemble one large army.

Deploying an army this large to wipe out one frontier governor felt like excessive force. After all, Baron Mikoshiba’s forces were at least ten times smaller than what the Kingdom of Rhoadseria planned to field.

Normally, you’d assume this war was over before it even started, but... Heh.

Sudou still couldn’t say that Rhoadseria would win this war, because he’d seen Ryoma Mikoshiba’s abilities in person. After ordering an Organization sniper to shoot Ryoma through the stomach, Sudou had lingered in the Cannat Plains and observed the battle. He could vividly remember the individual strength each and every one of the Mikoshiba barony’s soldiers had exhibited.

They had mobility and defense, and their charge when they went on the offensive... They were all first-rate, if not better. And their commanders were skilled too.

Sudou’s thoughts wandered to the woman he’d watched command the main force to use stall tactics.

Lione, the Crimson Lioness. Since her days as a mercenary, she’s been known for her abilities, but the way she stalled for time without taking many losses was impressive. She probably has a wide outlook that lets her see the entire battle. Maybe it even borders on clairvoyance?

Though he knew that was impossible, Sudou couldn’t help but toy with the thought, a sardonic smile on his lips. Clairvoyance was a Buddhist term that described the ability to oversee everything, and needless to say, Lione hadn’t been graced with such supernatural powers. However, her outlook was vast enough that it made Sudou wonder if she did.

Sudou didn’t know if it was some quality she’d been born with or if it was a skill she’d honed through live combat in her mercenary days, but either way, she was exceptionally talented as a battlefield commander. What’s more, her efficiency as a frontline commander was especially noteworthy, mostly owing to her balance of offense and defense. A leader who could command both on the front lines and from the rear was notably skilled. If Lione were to serve some country or another, she would surely rise to the rank of general with her talent.

Let’s not forget Robert Bertrand and Signus Galveria’s charging force. I imagine even the O’ltormea Empire’s royal guard would be hard-pressed to stop their attack. I wonder how many people in the Organization can match them. Perhaps we would beat the pair one-on-one, but on the battlefield? I doubt it.

In the Battle of the Cannat Plains, the Twin Blades had demonstrated that they were strong enough to change the tide of battle. Their prowess went beyond that of a mere human. Not only did they boast great personal strength, but they were extremely talented frontline commanders.

The way they turned around to attack the main force after they wiped out the detachments... It was poetry in motion.

The most important part of surrounding an enemy was the coordination between the split units. In particular, coordinating when the units were to charge into Clay Nilsen’s main force was particularly difficult. Nonetheless, Signus and Robert had gotten the timing down perfectly.

I feel like I got a personal demonstration about the reason they were called Count Salzberg’s Twin Blades.

In terms of individual strength, some of the Organization’s members could match those two. Sudou himself could kill them if he was so inclined. A fight on the battlefield, though, was between groups. Beating the Twin Blades there would require more than just personal strength, and it was doubtful anyone in the Organization could do so.

Plus, there’s the twin girls serving Ryoma Mikoshiba. It’s all very fascinating. It does seem like Mikoshiba is a dark horse worth betting on.

Because of the quality of both its soldiers and commanders, the Mikoshiba barony had the edge, so it was hard to say the Kingdom of Rhoadseria truly held the advantage.

But the numbers really are problematic. One must never underestimate a numerical advantage, even if that army is nothing more than a disorderly mob. He’ll need a plan to beat a force that large.

Sudou’s intuition told him that Ryoma Mikoshiba was plotting something. Ryoma was currently occupying the citadel city of Epirus, but the Organization’s spies had discovered that his forces had diminished to roughly half their original size. In that case, he would need to reorganize his army to make his plan work, which was why he’d returned his forces to their home base. The problem was that Sudou couldn’t guess at what his plan was.

The most likely option would be to turn nobles who are displeased with Queen Lupis’s regime over to his side, but...

If Sudou were in Ryoma’s shoes, he would definitely use the nobles. It was the most effective way to narrow down the numerical disadvantage.

But to do that, he’d need someone in the queen’s faction on his side. Count Bergstone and his relatives were stripped of their territories after this uproar, so...

Count Bergstone, who’d been a comrade of Ryoma’s since the civil war, would have been the perfect candidate to help Ryoma draw in other nobles to his cause, but now the count was in no position to move. Even if Count Bergstone were to act, it was hard to believe he’d achieve much. Meltina and Mikhail had already set countermeasures to see to that. In other words, if the count were to act right now, it would be too late.

But then another man crossed Sudou’s mind—Furio Gelhart, the head of the nobles’ faction and the man who triggered the civil war.

Viscount Gelhart would certainly have a negative opinion of Queen Lupis.

Gelhart once went to war with the queen under the banner of the false Princess Radine. Sudou’s negotiations had reduced his punishment to a mere demotion to viscount, but there wasn’t a more perfect candidate to use for such a plan. Nonetheless, Sudou instantly denied the possibility of Ryoma using Viscount Gelhart.

A privileged noble like Viscount Gelhart would never associate with a former commoner like Mikoshiba. Besides, since the queen has agreed to restore his duke title in exchange for his cooperation with this war, he will help her at all costs.

Indeed, from what Sudou had heard, more and more noble houses had responded to Viscount Gelhart’s call to arms and were sending out their soldiers. Even with his title demoted to that of viscount, the influence he’d spent years building up wouldn’t crumble that easily. If nothing else, the other houses loyally served him in preparation for when his ducal title would be restored.

At the same time, there’s no telling what Viscount Gelhart is planning. I can’t completely discount the possibility that he’s working with Mikoshiba.

Having worked as a mediator for Viscount Gelhart in the past, Sudou was still close to him. Recently, however, the viscount had grown distant. Even considering that the viscount had returned to his domain to organize his forces for the subjugation of the north, Sudou still got the feeling that something was off. He couldn’t say for sure if Gelhart was really cooperating with Queen Lupis to have his title restored, or if he was doing it out of other considerations.

Many of the nobles who are distant from Queen Lupis were invited to the evening party the Mikoshiba barony held at Count Salzberg’s estate. I’ve heard Mikoshiba made quite the show of his financial strength. Now, let’s see... How will things turn out?

Who was friend and who was foe? Honestly speaking, Sudou couldn’t predict what the nobles might do. And on top of everything, the expedition from the Church of Meneos was soon to arrive.

Hearing that the church dispatched the Temple Knights’ Eighteenth Order was a bit of a surprise.

The Eighteenth Order was stationed in a neighboring country, so it made sense that it would be dispatched to Rhoadseria. Still, there must have been some meaning behind the fact that the church’s top brass had deployed the Eighteenth Order, which had caused the tragedy of Gromhen, to the very kingdom that was the victim of that atrocity.

“If the Eighteenth Order were chosen because they were closest, there’s no problem,” Sudou whispered to himself. “But, well, I could just ask Cardinal Roland later. Either way, all I can do is keep working to see my ideal fulfilled.”

With that, Sudou swiftly disappeared into the alleyways, looking up at the bloodred moon floating in the heavens as if he was relishing in the sheer chaos of this situation.