Chapter 31

On the second day after Aethlyn and Sergeant Vilev returned from the trench, the Fenrir Detachment left the Kran Trench and began moving to another location.

The detachment moved in three groups. The first group left at dawn, the second was scheduled to depart soon, and the third was set to leave the trench around sunset.

Sergeant Vilev was in the third group. Among the werewolf people, the leader supposedly took the rearmost position of a moving column, which was likely why he was leaving with the final group.

‘He’s packing so meticulously.’

Sergeant Vilev tied up his neatly organized luggage over and over again. It was the seasoned touch characteristic of someone who had wandered endlessly.

She did not particularly want to know what was inside the duffel bag. Surely it was packed to the brim with terrifying blades or war trophies.

Be that as it may, ever since returning to the trench, Sergeant Vilev had been surprisingly taciturn. He had always been the sullen type to begin with, but compared to before, his word count had plummeted even further.

Aside from the occasional moment when he conveyed something to the detachment’s subordinates, he did not engage in even the briefest pleasantries with the battalion’s regular soldiers.

At the man’s blatant display of keeping his distance, the members of the Fourth Platoon felt a heavy sense of disappointment.

“I thought we got a bit closer, but I guess not.”

“Hey, Doist. Give me the sergeant’s address. I’ve got something to ask him in a letter later.”

“Ah, no way! You should tell the sergeant directly!”

With the afternoon passing and two-thirds of the Fenrir Detachment’s personnel already pulled out, the atmosphere in the Kran Trench was peaceful in the extreme. The Imperial soldiers showed no movement, perhaps preparing for the oncoming winter. The monsters were no different. Whether they had gone into hibernation or headed further south to warmer climes, they did not even loiter around the vicinity.

Having finally finished preparations for his full departure, Sergeant Vilev rose from his seat. He immediately turned his head and gazed at where Aethlyn was standing.

“……”

He was in full combat gear. Wearing his helmet and face covering as well, he looked ready to be deployed into an operation at a moment’s notice. Under those conditions, the only things Aethlyn could see were his eyes.

Amber pupils shimmering brilliantly between sharply carved, deeply sunken eyelids. Meeting that quiet and steadfast gaze gave her a strange feeling.

‘It was only for a few days, but somehow it feels like a person I’ll remember for a long time.’

Sergeant Gennadi Vilev. A Wildman soldier who had introduced Aethlyn to her first battle. A werewolf non-commissioned officer. Parting ways in such an ambiguous state felt somehow regrettable. Not that she could do anything about him keeping his distance, though. Aethlyn spoke to him as if nothing were amiss.

“Looks like you’re leaving now.”

“Yes. Lieutenant.”

“Are you heading out for the next operation?”

“Yes.”

“Where to?”

“That… I cannot tell you.”

“Right. Naturally you can’t.”

That was the end of it. Words wouldn’t come, as if her throat was tightly blocked. Not even clichés like ‘good luck’ or ‘say hello if we meet again’ would surface. Aethlyn still couldn’t gauge her relationship with the man.

Were they close? Were they on awkward terms? Or were they truly nothing at all?

‘The latter, I suppose.’

It was just as Aethlyn was about to turn away with a bitter expression.

Suddenly, the sergeant’s eyes flashed sharply.

He abruptly spun around and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“It’s the Imperial Army!!!”

Following that, a horrific shriek echoed across the sky.

Screeeeeeech!

It was the cry of a wyvern.

The moment she heard Sergeant Vilev’s roar announcing the appearance of the Imperial Army.

She could think, speak, or do nothing at all.

It was only after hearing the wyvern’s chilling cry reverberate from the distance that the reality of it finally set in.

‘It really is the Imperial Army.’

And a wyvern cavalry unit, at that.

Though she couldn’t formulate a single concrete thought on what she ought to do or how, years of relentless training made her body move on its own. Aethlyn shouted as she unzipped the mask pouch at her waist.

“We’re under enemy ambush! Take up combat posture!”

Donning her mask with a reflex-driven motion, Aethlyn looked up at the sky. A sight that defied all belief began to unfold before her eyes. Through the hazy gray clouds, dozens of tiny black dots were appearing.

After a few seconds, it became certain.

Those countless black dots were all wyvern cavalrymen. Even at a rough glance, there looked to be well over a hundred riders. The moment she tallied that count, overwhelming despair washed over her.

‘Lie. That makes no sense.’

The spectacle before her eyes was betraying all of Aethlyn’s common sense and knowledge.

‘There’s no way this many wyvern knights could be here.’

Wyvern knights were the elite of the elite within the Barbaros Empire. Stories went that the might of a single knight matched an entire infantry battalion. And because of that, they were fiercely ‘expensive.’ The cost required to train just one of those knights matched the cost of an entire infantry battalion.

Consequently, the Empire exercised extreme caution when operating wyvern knights. While utilizing individuals for reconnaissance happened often enough, committing a force this large all at once was a rare occurrence indeed.

‘If they were deploying a cavalry force of this massive scale, there surely would have been some kind of precursor.’

Staring at the black shapes growing sharper by the second, Aethlyn thought.

Why hadn’t she known?

Hadn’t people said the Imperial Army would keep a low profile with winter approaching, anyway? Yet the reality crashing down on them now simply shattered all reason and forecasts. Several soldiers began to wail.

“No! I don’t want to die!”

“Mother! Mom!”

It was a primal reaction. Aethlyn recalled the time she had first headed to the trench here.

“Those are Imperial scouting wyverns. They’re a bit terrifying, but they usually just circle around and leave without attacking, so it’ll be fine.”

Even back then, it had given her goosebumps, but this was on an entirely different level. An intense wave of oppression bore down on her whole body, as if gravity had suddenly multiplied several times over. Her legs trembled as if she were a newly born foal. Aethlyn pulled the glove off her left hand, shoved it into her pocket, and activated her magic circuit.

‘Don’t think. Just do as you were trained.’

She mustn’t think. Thinking meant death.

It was the advice her late grandfather, Duke Wintercrown, had given her. With the solemn tone of a true soldier, he had said:

“You must never think on the battlefield. Thought is death. Only action guarantees survival.”

Thought makes a person weak and awakens fear.

Therefore, thought is death.

Of course, even that was technically a thought.

The thought of trying not to think. The desperate thought of somehow dodging the death looming right before her eyes.

And that ‘thought’ did not last long. For the wyverns suspended in the open sky went into a vertical dive straight toward the ground.

Screeeeeeech!

The horrific cry of the wyverns shook the trench and the very ground beneath them.

She had no memory of the roughly one hour that followed. Aethlyn looked down at her own hands, soaked through with blood, and panted heavily. The inside of her mask was filled with sweat and moisture, but she couldn’t take it off. Poison gas had been dispersed.

‘They’re not spraying any more, which means the infantry will be swarming in soon.’

Throwing them into terror with wyverns, shaking them up with a barrage of artillery and poison gas, and then committing infantry en masse to sweep them away. It was the textbook Imperial offensive.

‘I have to retreat.’

The Kran Trench wasn’t even the main issue right now. Not just the front lines, but other trenches further back were on the verge of collapsing all at once. Aethlyn shook her blood-stained left hand.

The magic she needed most at this exact moment suddenly came to mind.

‘Teleport magic.’

But it was far too late.

“To use attack magic without a single break like that… It completely defies reason. Even if the setting dictates that your magic circuit is unusually strong.”

That’s right. Aethlyn’s magic circuit was at its absolute limit.

Having already abused bind, crush, and all sorts of offensive magic, she simply had no more to squeeze out.

Maybe she should have used teleportation to escape from the very beginning.

‘But I couldn’t do that.’

With her subordinates and comrades being pulverized right before her eyes, how could she cowardly run away? Doing so would be a betrayal of every single value Aethlyn had upheld thus far.

A sharp ringing in her ears deafened her, abruptly cutting off the surrounding sounds. Her eyelids kept drooping due to the lack of oxygen. To somehow hold onto her slipping consciousness, Aethlyn muttered whatever came to mind.

“If it had been Arthur, it would have been different.”

If it were him, he would have easily teleported away even in a situation like this. He could have gone back to headquarters to request reinforcements. The tragedy of the Kran Trench lay in the fact that Aethlyn had come here instead of Arthur.

Perhaps Arthur should have been the firstborn.

Perhaps it was right for Arthur to join the Magic Army and inherit the headship of the family.

Perhaps…

At that moment, the cry of a beast and the dying shriek of a wyvern echoed from close by. Aethlyn turned her head toward the sound. Beyond the blood-smeared field of view through her mask, she saw three members of the Fenrir Detachment tearing into a wyvern. They were no longer in human form. In the shapes of monsters—half-wolf, half-human—they were fighting back against a fellow beast. When one of them bit off the rider’s foot, the wyvern shrieked in agony and sprayed acidic breath all around. Alongside it, another werewolf melted away.

‘It’s hell.’

This is hell.

And at that exact moment, a colossal impact engulfed Aethlyn. Was it an artillery shell?

Suspended midair, she lost consciousness right then and there.