Chapter 76. Angel of the Front Lines
Just as Sir Veron had said, the closer they drew to Rothpalen, the thinner the Duke's ranks became.
“How much farther to the front lines?”
“We still have a full day’s march ahead of us.”
“Still?”
The closer they drew to the front lines, the more subdued the Duke’s demeanor became.
Following his lead, the troops’ mood also grew solemn.
It felt as though the stench of death, blood, and steel was growing thicker.
The soldiers who had numbered in the hundreds at departure had now dwindled to double digits.
The Duke’s army was divided into the rear guard handling supplies, the main force, and the vanguard that went ahead to scout and search.
A sound reached the ears of those slowly advancing.
“Halt!”
The Duke halted the troops and strained his ears toward the front.
The faint sound of someone’s—
“Uwaaack—!”
—a scream. The Duke shouted.
“Battle stations, everyone!”
“Battle stations!”
The rear guard loaded oil-soaked arrows while the knights drew their swords and raised their shields.
Binaeril had no particular assigned duty, so he approached the Duke’s side and stood beside him.
“Surely not the advance party?”
The Duke nodded heavily.
They were passing through a plain overgrown with weeds.
It was Binaeril who first spotted the things leaping out from the front.
“Undead!”
The soldiers assigned to the advance party were embroiled in a melee with grotesque corpses.
Among them were knights Binaeril knew.
“We must help them!”
Without thinking twice, Binaeril rushed toward them.
He heard the Duke call his name from behind but ignored it.
Compared to the advance party of barely a dozen, the undead targeting them seemed to number over twenty.
“Lower your arrows!”
The Duke issued an order to the soldiers.
In a plain thick with grass, fire arrows could easily endanger allies.
“Your Grace, your orders!”
The knights, including Veron, looked at the Duke anxiously.
“Charge! Rescue Sir Binaeril and the advance party!”
“Charge!”
Uwoooah!
The knights with drawn swords charged toward the undead.
The earth groaned under the simultaneous thunder of charging hooves.
Area-of-effect magic could not be used in a melee where soldiers and undead were intertwined.
Instead, Binaeril unleashed a volley of magic bullets capable of holding off multiple undead.
Guuooo—
The defenseless undead could not withstand the power of the magic bullets and fell.
“Eden, save the people!”
The spirit that sprang from his ring responded to its master’s will.
Eden transformed the stone fragments on the ground into the shape of caltrops.
They couldn’t pierce the thick soles of the soldiers’ boots, but they could entangle the undead’s feet.
It was a wise response.
A voice burst from amidst the advance party.
“Sir Binaeril’s support! We’re saved!”
The advance party freely swung their swords at the undead whose feet were bound.
They pierced shoulders, aimed for hearts, and targeted heads. Those with great strength even cleaved their bodies in two.
But the undead did not retreat. The deathless, who knew no pain, only pressed forward all the more.
The moment the soldiers thought they had the momentum, they instead faltered.
“What are you doing! Pull back at once!”
“But!”
“Quickly!”
“...Follow the sir’s words. Advance party, fall back!”
Having fended off the undead’s attacks, the soldiers slowly retreated.
‘Now!’
The moment the battle line opened. The moment Binaeril had been waiting for.
Binaeril leaped from his horse and ran out, passing by the retreating advance party.
“Whoaaa!”
The soldiers’ startled cries rang in his ears as Binaeril stretched both hands forward.
Gathering mana, he chants the incantation fitting the image he had conceived.
Mana dwells in language, and language calls forth miracles. Miracles by the name of magic!
“World of blue-white that chills to the bone, everything in our path shall freeze solid!”
Jjeo-jeo—jeong!
The intense cold spreading from Binaeril’s fingertips froze everything ahead.
Grass, trees, and the rampaging corpses’ flesh alike.
“Stop, stop!”
The main force’s knights rushing to support urgently jerked their reins.
“...Sir Binaeril?”
Their drawn weapons and charging zeal turned to helpless bewilderment.
Some among the retreating advance party were so startled they fell backward onto their bottoms.
“What in the—!”
They had witnessed for the first time the area-of-effect magic Binaeril had unleashed with full intent.
Just as Binaeril had spoken, the world laid out before them was blue-white, as though a new season had appeared from a single person’s fingertips.
“Why have you all stopped?”
The Duke asked the halted knights as he arrived a step behind.
Veron, at a loss for words, pointed at the scene before them with his finger.
The Duke, too, was left speechless by the winter, the landscape of extreme cold that had arrived out of nowhere.
“Are there any casualties?”
From within winter’s embrace, Binaeril turned his head and asked the people.
“Asdal, report the situation.”
The Duke ordered the knight leading the vanguard to report.
“Yes! While advancing with caution, we encountered a horde of undead rushing from the front. We were ambushed while off guard, as there was still distance remaining to the front lines. I apologize.”
“Casualties? What was the total number of undead?”
“I cannot be certain, but there were roughly twenty. Thanks to Sir Binaeril’s swift support, there are no casualties.”
“...We must consider it fortunate that the bodies haven’t been cleared yet. Veron!”
Sir Veron hurried over at the Duke’s shout.
“You said there was still distance to the undeads’ spawning grounds. How did this happen?”
There was no way he could know.
Veron racked his brain and presented two hypotheses.
“In the less dire case, the undead’s spawning area may have expanded beyond what we have mapped. In the worst case... the front line’s defensive line may have already been breached.”
Either way, it was bad news for the Duke’s forces.
“Even if we knew which was correct right now, there would be no solution.”
The Duke, who had been pressing his knights, turned his ire toward Binaeril.
Feeling the sting, Binaeril furtively avoided his gaze and replied.
“Next time, please wait for the order. One cannot go rushing out like a stallion with its tail on fire.”
“I apologize....”
The Duke let out a deep sigh.
Had Binaeril been his retainer, it would have been a rash act worthy of great punishment, but it was also true that thanks to him, the soldiers’ lives had been saved.
“Still, thank you. Thanks to you, not a single casualty was suffered.”
“Even so, I apologize....”
“We press on for now. Replace all vanguard personnel. Veron will take charge of the vanguard this time.”
Not far from Rothpalen, the Wulm forward base.
“They’ve hit Sector 17! Get out there now! Now!”
“Hasn’t the supply arrived? We can’t hold out like this for long!”
“Hey, you there! What’s going on!”
“We have a casualty.”
Gustav’s face darkened as he saw the soldier being carried in on a stretcher.
He was the knight in command of the Wulm forward base.
“How bad is it?”
The soldier carrying the casualty shook his head slightly.
It was a signal that there was no hope.
Gustav slightly lifted the blanket.
Rotting skin. The corruption was already progressing.
Then a hand shot out from the stretcher and grabbed Gustav’s thigh.
“Commander, I’m fine so please hurry....”
Wounds from demonic beasts leave behind miasma. To soldiers without any resistance, even a small wound was fatal. Let alone such a large one.
In another situation, he would have the casualty evacuated for treatment somehow, but this was the front line. The front line fighting undead, no less.
The meaning of a casualty could only be all the more grave.
Gustav pulled the blanket up to cover the casualty’s face.
It was something he could not say while meeting his gaze.
“Move him to the burial grounds.”
It was at that moment that Binaeril and the Duke’s forces arrived.
“Gustav!”
“Your Grace!”
Gustav ran up at once and saluted before the Duke’s horse.
Dozens of soldiers followed behind him.
They were the supplies and reinforcements the soldiers had been desperately awaiting.
“Gustav. You’ve done well.”
The Duke patted the knight’s shoulder.
That alone was enough to move him to tears. Because this was a front line that could not be adequately described even as hell.
“The time has come to end this war.”
Then Binaeril, seeing the casualty being carried away, asked.
“Is there no doctor here? Where are you sending the casualty?”
Gustav looked at Binaeril and asked with his eyes. It was a face he had never seen.
“This is Lord Binaeril. My guest, and a mage.”
A mage!
Gustav started and greeted Binaeril as well.
“There is a doctor, but he can only treat light wounds. Severe casualties... are being sent to the burial grounds.”
“The burial grounds?”
“But he was still alive?”
“Um, Sir Binaeril.”
Sir Veron grabbed his collar and explained on his behalf.
“Those with no hope are all buried. As I mentioned before, because they may rise again and attack allies.”
Binaeril looked at Sir Veron with a stunned expression.
Then he turned his gaze to Duke Dux to confirm the truth.
Duke Dux also avoided Binaeril’s gaze with an uncomfortable expression.
“This is absurd, Your Grace.”
“There is no other way. Wounds from undead corrupt faster than those from other demonic beasts. This is not an order I gave because I wanted to.”
Binaeril recalled a memory from the past.
In Fairhill village, Veritas had once treated the injured son of the village chief.
If it was a wound from which corrupted miasma could be extracted for treatment, there was a possibility he could do it.
“I will do it.”
“Bring the casualty here. I will try to treat him.”
“You have such skill as well, sir?”
“I cannot be certain. But I will try.”
A troubled light flickered through the Duke’s eyes.
He did not want to deepen the soldiers’ despair with false hope. But.
Had Binaeril not shown unbelievable feats until now?
“...Very well.”
Confronted with the casualty, Binaeril immediately hit a snag.
‘Why on earth!’
‘—The undead bastards’ miasma tastes foul. It’s terrible.’
‘For such a ridiculous reason!’
Before his eyes, a person was dying.
A long gash across the chest. A faint light of hope bloomed in the soldier’s pained eyes.
The hope that perhaps he could be saved, that perhaps a mage would have a way.
A heavy burden settled on Binaeril’s heart.
‘—See, this is why you shouldn’t start things alone without my consent. Didn’t I tell you in Fairhill? It’s meddling. If you had just looked away, it would have been over.’
But he could not simply accept that they would bury a man alive without even trying.
If Veritas would not help, it was something he had to do alone.
‘But how?’
He tried to use his imagination, but he couldn’t grasp it at all.
Binaeril was not born with a talent for healing like Rike, nor could he identify miasma with special eyes like Rike.
[Binaeril?]
When Binaeril was confused, Eden spoke to him.
Upon hearing Eden’s voice, a thought flashed through his mind like lightning.
Veritas had told him. Eden had the power to reject things that Binaeril deemed negative.
‘I was able to dispel a lich’s mana with Eden’s power. If so, perhaps this miasma too...?’
Binaeril immediately conveyed what he had realized to Eden.
[I’ll try!]
Eden’s cheerful voice, as always, flowed into his mind.
A small ray of light sprang from Binaeril’s ring and hovered over the soldier’s wound.
Then a miraculous thing happened.
“The wound, the wound...!”