Chapter 48

The southern part of the continent.
A week’s journey by carriage along the coastline, past Count Navigatou’s territory.
Here and there, dark puddles of blood whose owners could no longer be known had settled into the ground.

Two years. That was how long monsters and humans had been killing each other here.
The word ‘end’ felt only distant.
Humans had long since grown exhausted by the state of the war, which had not shifted even after a full offensive.

The small villages had long since been caught in the war and burned down,
and ash that had yet to cool dyed the sky gray amid the burning smoke.

The corpse of a soldier pierced by a spear lay sprawled across the field,
and severed body parts of monsters rolled about and rotted everywhere.

Bloodstains and pieces of flesh from those who had once had names were soaking the ground.

“Ugh.”

Serpens covered his mouth.
At the sight of such devastation for the first time, his stomach twisted so violently it felt as if it had been torn apart.

The disgusting smell spreading from afar had unsettled him from the start.
The stench of rotten food, which he had smelled countless times.
Yet a foulness far worse than that assaulted his nostrils.
He was forced to hold his breath to escape the copper reek of blood and the festering stench of decaying corpses.

Serpens covered his nose with one hand and staggered forward.
Every time his shoes struck the ground, something damp squelched beneath his soles.
He had a feeling that the dampness was not just from the natural softness of the coastal soil.

Uuugh-

A faint groan came from not far away.
When he reflexively drew his sword, Lucas pressed the boy’s sword down.

Serpens’s eyes trembled.
Then he hurriedly turned his gaze away.

There was a soldier collapsed on the ground, wearing armor stained with blood.
His hand was stretched pitifully toward the boy.
That trembling hand soon lost its strength and fell.

“Uweeegh.”

Everything he had been holding back surged up.
Serpens finally emptied his stomach,
and Lars patted the boy’s back.

“Bro. I think we should’ve moved by magic after all.”

Lars looked at the boy with worried eyes.
Lucas shook his head at him.

“It is worse inside the battlefield. It is better to at least prepare him mentally.”

Because his words were right, Lars let out a deep breath.

Lars was already used to battlefields like this.
He had experienced such horrors many times.
Of course, being used to it didn’t mean he was fine with it.
There were times when he wanted to simply close his eyes.

‘Even I feel this way when I’m used to it, so the kid…… he’s having it rough.’

Serpens’s group entered the center of the battlefield.
They encountered monsters several times on their way.
Most were weak monsters aiming for the corpses.
Before they could even recognize the group, Lucas made them end up like the corpses they had been feeding on.

“Lars Musica?”

When they reached the outpost, someone recognized Lars.

“We’re here as reinforcements.”

One sentence from Lars.
Those words quickly spread through the outpost.
Some showed tears, and some smiled with joy.

Some doubted Lars’s existence.
What if he was an illusion made by monsters?
Some even raised their swords and shouted for him to reveal his identity.

At those words, Lars didn’t show his nameplate.

Whiiish-

He merely whistled.
At the same time, a fierce wind swept across the sky.

The people looked up at the sky in a daze.
The ash and smoke that had covered the blue sky scattered as if torn apart.
The sunlight pouring down.
It wasn’t warm, but that brilliance sparkled in the people’s eyes.

“Ah…… truly…….”

That was enough.
That was how Lars proved himself.

“Now, shall we hear about the situation?”

The tent at the center of the outpost.
Inside, Serpens and his companions were conversing with two knights.

“So, the main issues stem from three types of monsters?”

Lars asked the knights.

The knights nodded, their expressions grim as if recalling a nightmare.

“That is correct. High Orcs have set up camp beyond the large hill to the west. Their scale exceeds that of an ordinary unit, so we are struggling.”
“The High Orcs shouldn’t be that much of a problem, though.”

Lars took a sip of the water placed in front of him.
When a salty, fishy taste spread through his mouth, his brows furrowed.

“That is correct. Sir Wade and I have reached the Expert level. Also, there is a 5th-class magician in the tent on the other side. If it were just an all-out war against the High Orcs, this conflict would never have dragged on for so long.”
“Then the problem is the Basilisk beyond the orcs and the unidentified monsters.”
“Yes. Those monsters were…… impossible to handle.”

Lars fell into thought.
The Basilisk, a monster shaped like a snake.
Its most distinctive trait was the eight legs attached to it, four on each side.

‘Hmm, since it has legs, doesn’t that make it a lizard, and not a snake?’

Lars had only faced a Basilisk once.
Poisonous fumes sprayed in every direction.
Petrification magic activated through its gaze.
It might be one thing to face it alone, but dealing with it in a group was more than a little troublesome.

“Lars. What is a Basilisk?”

Serpens, who had been sitting quietly, asked carefully.
Simple refreshments had been placed before him, but the boy hadn’t touched them.

“A really big lizard.”
“How big?”
“Well. I only saw one once, so I’m not absolutely sure.”
“How big was the one you saw?”
“About fifty meters.”
“What? Fifty……?”

Serpens’s eyes and mouth grew as wide as they could.
Fifty meters.
It was a size he never imagined.

Lars wasn’t lying.
Nor was he exaggerating.
According to his memory, fifty meters was accurate.
If anything, he might have understated it, but he had certainly not overstated it.

‘That was when I was 7th-class, so…….’

It had been when he was quite young.
Late teens? Early twenties?
At around that age, he had set out to subjugate a giant monster.

Lars glanced at Lucas.
That was when he had first met that man.
And from then on, he began calling Lucas bro.

“If you faced a Basilisk, the damage must have been tremendous. You’ve managed to hold out well.”

At Lars’s words, the two knights lowered their heads.

“We can only call that luck. Honestly, if the Basilisk had aimed to annihilate us, the southern coastline would already belong to the monsters.”
“If it had aimed to?”
“Yes. According to our experience so far, the Basilisk does not act outside a certain area. It only appeared when we tried to attack the High Orcs directly. As if it were protecting something.”

Lars slowly tapped the table with his finger and fell into thought.
Then he quickly made a decision.

“Understood. I will handle the Basilisk.”

Relief flashed across the faces of the two knights.

“Then what remains are the unidentified monsters. They are monsters whose identity we still do not know.”
“Ah…… those things.”

Lars looked at Lucas.
Unidentified monsters.
He had explained them to Lucas.
Monsters of unknown origin, mostly made from the corpses of monsters.
They were monsters that could take giant forms or human-like forms.

If there was one relief, it was that Lucas had already faced one before.
And that had been in a battle at Count Navigatou’s territory in the south, not too far from here.

“I will handle them.”

At Lucas’s low voice, the knights’ gazes moved.

“I have been wondering since earlier, but who is this……?”
“That is Lucas. Lucas Liberator.”

The knights blinked for a moment.
They couldn’t understand Lars’s intention.
They had been curious about what he did, not what his name was.
But a moment later.

“Huh……? Huh?”

Their eyes grew round, and their mouths froze in silence.
The shock they felt was engraved on their faces, which had even forgotten to breathe.

Serpens walked with his whole body stiff.
His busily moving brown eyes showed the boy’s nerves standing on edge.

In front of that boy, Lars was humming as he strode along.
That was why the boy was struggling.
He was already tense enough to die, and now he also had to keep up with the person ahead.

“Lars! I said walk a little more carefully!”

The boy shouted in a whisper, as quietly as possible and at the same time as loudly as he could.

“I told you it’s fine, kid. No matter what we do, these things won’t notice us.”

Lars pointed at a High Orc passing by him.
He shouted loudly enough to split one’s ears at the monster wiping the blade of its giant axe.
The High Orc silently maintained its arms and armor.
Just as he had said, the shout had no effect on the monster, but it had a tremendous effect elsewhere.

“Ah, come on! What are you going to do if there’s an orc that isn’t under the magic!”

Serpens clutched his startled heart.
Every single one of Lars’s actions made him nervous.
Right now, Lucas wasn’t with the two of them.
As they passed through what seemed to be thousands of orcs, one small mistake could tear their limbs apart.

‘Damn it, I should have begged to follow Lucas.’

Serpens was moving beyond the western hill, to the place where the Basilisk had reportedly been seen.
In contrast, Lucas had headed north alone to deal with the unidentified monsters.

‘Why did that man have to say he would take me with him!’

The boy’s gaze was fixed sharply on Lars, but the person in question was still humming.

“I said not to worry.”

Lars said, flicking his fingertip lightly.
As if responding to the sound, the surrounding air rippled with a humming resonance.
The boy looked around with suspicious eyes.

“Can the two of us really kill a lizard that’s fifty meters long?”
“Of course.”
“To be honest, I’m nervous. Lucas would obviously handle it well, but I get the feeling we won’t.”
“Keke, is that so.”
“If we had at least brought the people from the outpost……”
“Those people will stand by, then engage the orcs in an all-out battle the moment we deal with the Basilisk.”
“What if we cannot deal with it?”
“We can. I guarantee it.”

The boy blinked and looked up at Lars.

“Just what kind of magic did you use, and how, for you to be so confident?”
“A bit of this and that, like building harmonies.”
“A bit of this and that, like building harmonies?”
“It’s a spell that properly mixes perception interference, concealment, and dimensional distortion.”
“So you just mixed a bunch of good stuff together, right?”

Lars shook his head.

“I told you. It’s like building harmonies.”

Serpens frowned.
Seeing that, Lars grinned and began explaining.

“Let’s say one type of magic is one note. I used three notes, so there are three types of notes being mixed. Okay?”
“O……kay.”
“Let’s say we stacked three different notes. What happens if the stacked notes fail to harmonize?”
“It would sound bad, of course.”
“Exactly! It would sound bad. Magic is the same. If you cannot mix different types of magic harmoniously, dissonance is born.”
“I…… see?”
“You have to mix them stably, like building harmonies, for the most suitable spell to form.”

Serpens thought for a moment, then eventually let out a sigh.

“Sorry. I lack both musical knowledge and magical knowledge, so I don’t know how impressive what you did is.”
“Keke, it is fine. I’m the only one in the entire empire who explains magic this way.”

The boy looked up at the magician.
What made him able to always be so cheerful?
When they first met, before the emperor, and even among thousands of monsters.
How could he be this carefree?

Serpens let out a deep breath and followed Lars.
After listening to his explanation, it seemed some of his tension had eased.