Week 4 of the Kkajan dispatch.
Today as well, Danil was busy casting magic while working the night shift.
If there was one thing different from usual—
“Ugya-gya!”
—it was that this was a demonstration, not work.
—Thwack!
Thirty imps fired Dark Bolts at the same time.
The training dummies struck by black lightning were riddled with holes.
“Hooh. The firepower’s not bad, either. About the level of flaming bolts shot from a crossbow?”
Rud applauded.
Danil asked him, who had been watching the magic demonstration from the beginning,
“Will this be of help?”
“Will it be of help? Is that even a question?”
Rud let out an incredulous laugh.
“Those imps can become firefighters on the battlefield!”
Rud shouted.
“A battlefield is always a complicated place. Even if you try to support your allies, enemies block every path, and your own men get tangled up, making it impossible to advance. But your imps are different. They fly! Anytime, anywhere, they can rush to wherever help is needed and provide covering attacks!”
His voice trembled with excitement.
“Firefighters who can swiftly go put out the fires that break out across the battlefield! Truly astonishing. I had guessed you were a man of many talents, but I never imagined you would be gifted in this direction as well! Truly impressive!”
“Is that so?”
Unlike the excited Rud, Danil was calm.
“That’s a relief. It’s my first time in the North, so I was worried, but it seems I’ll be able to earn my keep.”
“Isn’t your reaction a little too bland?”
“What reason is there to get excited? We merely confirmed the fact that I can also fill that ‘battlefield firefighter’ position.”
“Ha ha.”
Rud could only look at this mage—so unlike a mage, unaware of just how valuable he was—with a gaze mixed with admiration and helplessness.
But Danil was sincere.
‘I just checked what I can do if a fight breaks out. Is that really something to get this excited about?’
He was an indefinite-contract mage of the Magic Tower.
A troubleshooter who had roamed the entire Empire as part of the Foreign Legion, resolving all manner of battlefields, incidents, and accidents.
For someone who had experienced countless battles in dangerous remote regions, the topic of “positional aptitude” was, unfortunately, too weak in firepower to surprise him.
If they wanted to shock him, they would have to bring at least three times this much.
‘This fellow is far more substantial than I expected.’
Rud’s eyes gleamed as he watched Danil merely nod calmly despite the lavish praise.
“Good. Let us check the rest as well. It is only thirty of them, is it not? Summon more imps. Don’t keep me in suspense, my friend. Quickly. Quickly. Quickly!”
“Yes, yes. I get it, so calm down. I’m not going anywhere.”
Danil gestured.
A summoning circle flashed, and another group of imps was summoned in succession.
“The night is long. Let’s check everything one by one.”
“Let us do that!”
Rud cheerfully gave one instruction after another.
At Danil’s gestures, the Legion of Lesser Demons moved according to those instructions.
It was winter.
*
It had begun simply.
There was still a long time left in the evening before dawn, when Reiner usually came.
Having finished his meal and just arrived before the fortress wall, what Danil saw was Rud waiting for him.
With escort knights and officers in tow, Rud’s expression was quite serious.
“What is it?”
“Sir Danil. I came here because I have a favor to ask.”
Rud carefully opened his mouth.
“Could you show me your power?”
“My power? Do you mean my magic? That’s fine. What would you like me to show you?”
“My apologies. I was lacking in words. I want to see your full strength.”
“My full strength?”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“I am a commander. Before leading an army, I am in a position where I must understand what cards I have under my command.”
They were words that only a soldier who had spent a long time on the front lines could say.
Rud studied Danil’s reaction for a moment, then added,
“I am not doubting your abilities. Just from what you have shown so far, I can tell how capable you are. It is just…”
After pausing briefly, he met Danil’s eyes.
“What you have shown so far is not everything, is it?”
“Mm. Was it obvious?”
“If a black mage doesn’t use demons or black magic, that says it all.”
“No. That couldn’t be helped, could it?”
Danil objected.
“Most black magic consists of curses or attack magic. How am I supposed to use that inside the castle?”
Volunteer work inside the city? People would welcome it.
But if it was not volunteer work and instead playing with fire? The soldiers would come running to arrest him, asking what the hell this lunatic was doing.
That was why he had not used black magic while enjoying marshmallows until now.
“I know that too. You are not a mage without such judgment. That is why I came here like this.”
Rud continued.
“I will prepare a stage where you can freely display your full strength. So will you lend me that power?”
“For the sake of protecting Kkajan?”
“Correct. I beg you. If I am to formulate a perfect formation to defend Kkajan using you as a card, this is absolutely necessary.”
Rud bowed his head.
For someone who was the captain of the defense force to lower himself this much.
It was burdensome, but it also meant he was that sincere.
After thinking for a moment, Danil made his decision.
“Understood. I’ll help you. So please raise your head.”
‘It’d be awkward to refuse a request from someone who’s the captain of the defense force. And if I think about it, it’s not a bad proposal either, is it?’
From another perspective, this was an opportunity to eat the marshmallow known as black magic, which he had not been able to taste because he had had no chance to use it until now.
For Danil, who had already become a seriously addicted marshmallow addict(?), there was no reason to refuse this offer.
“Then shall we start with the imps?”
“Ugya-gya!”
Danil snapped his fingers.
The Legion of Lesser Demons, which could be called his signature, appeared.
*
“I want to see your full strength.”
They were words he had thrown out merely to create an opportunity.
‘If we are to become close, we first need to become able to talk easily.’
Rud liked Danil.
He wanted him to remain in Kkajan, like Reiner.
That was why he had met Danil like this today.
Share a common interest and converse.
It was the basics of building human relationships.
Danil’s interest was obvious without even looking.
Just as a swordsman went mad for swords, a mage went mad for magic.
So he threw out the topic of magic.
For the sake of getting closer.
At least, that had been the purpose at first.
But the more the conversation continued, the stranger the situation became.
‘What kind of mage is this?’
As they talked, he came to realize it.
The mage before him was more interested in using magic to carry out tasks efficiently than in magic itself.
Because of that, the subject of conversation naturally shifted from “confirming Danil’s magic” to listening to “what kinds of tasks Danil had handled with magic in the past.”
Up to this point, there was no problem.
The problem was the content.
‘Am I really talking to a black mage right now? Not a veteran mercenary captain who has rolled across every battlefield in the Empire?’
That was how Danil’s work experience stories were, how should he put it—
In a word, dense.
Dense enough that it made one wonder whether they were not the experiences of a mage, but a complete collection compiling the experiences of mercenaries from all across the Empire.
Naturally, the suspicion that he might be lying arose on its own.
But for lies, the contents were strangely specific.
Should he say there was a seasoned feel to them that only someone who had directly rolled around in the field could possess?
“Wow. Thinking back on it now, I have no idea how I endured there without insect-repelling magic. Those bloodsucking flies were seriously worse than mosquitoes. I was so shocked when I heard the White Wolf Knights working there coated their skin with mana to prevent themselves from getting bitten. I even seriously considered learning a mana cultivation method, you know?”
“What surprises me more than that is the fact that you have experience as an apprentice with the White Wolf Knights.”
“Come on. Apprentice, my foot. I was a substitute. A substitute. At the time, some subjugation operation was right around the corner, but apparently the contracted archer mercenary corps contacted them saying they might not arrive on time? So the knight order hurriedly looked for substitutes, and that happened to be the Magic Tower.”
“I remember. It was surely the Red Orc tribe subjugation operation two years ago, was it not?”
“Oh. You know about the Red Orc Operation? Then this will be quick. So six mages from the Foreign Legion, including me, went to support them, but in the end, I was the only one who worked until the end. All the others retired before even lasting a month. Tsk, tsk. That’s why I told them to train their stamina regularly. Thanks to that, I was the only one who suffered.”
“If I remember correctly, the subjugation operation went on for three months.”
“You know it well.”
“Then you followed the White Wolf Knights around for three months by yourself?”
“To be precise, four months? Aside from the Red Orcs, we also caught other monsters and did fortress restoration work.”
“…”
“Wow. Thinking back, those were memories… Were they memories?”
“…Was Vice-Captain Erio still the same?”
“Hm? When I went, he was the captain. You mean the one with red hair, short stature, and dual swords, right?”
“That is him. It seems he finally defeated the previous captain and took the captain’s seat.”
Rud was at a loss for words.
The White Wolf Knights.
One of the five great knight orders of the Empire.
The fierce warriors who protected the West from the monsters swarming throughout the Ula Mountains.
Since they selected members purely by skill, regardless of social status, it was no exaggeration to say that every member was a human weapon; in terms of simple military might, they were also a knight order that contended for first or second place within the Empire.
A mage had followed such a unit’s operation for four months and kept pace with them?
To call it a lie, he knew far too much about the details of the operation and even the behind-the-scenes circumstances not known to the public.
“Wow. After the subjugation operation completely ended, the final banquet was the last stretch of suffering. Do you know the captain’s drinking habit is to throw tantrums when he drinks? When he got completely drunk, grabbed onto my trouser leg, and howled at me to join his unit, saying if I didn’t, I’d have to step over his corpse to leave—do you know how awkward that was? When I stayed up all night rejecting him, wow. I’m really not that kind of person, but I wanted to hit the captain with lightning magic.”
“Wait. Wait just a moment. Captain Erio offered you a place in the order?”
“Yes.”
“That bastard, who was so mad for swords that he mocked magic as the black art of ink-slingers?”
“Oh. You know him well. Thanks to that, making an excuse to refuse was easy. Early in the dispatch, he gave me a lot of grief over that. I even received empty lunch boxes several times during meals. So when I said, ‘I am a useless fellow on the field who has received empty lunch boxes several times. What would I gain by staying any longer?’ he could not say anything.”
“…Then why did you refuse? It was none other than the White Wolf Knights.”
“Why would I enter a place where knights are treated like they’re in the heavens and mages are treated like they’re in the depths of the sea by the superior there?”
“…”
“Besides, why would I seriously listen to a drunk man spouting nonsense? It was obvious that once he sobered up and we talked, he’d treat me like a liar and ask when he ever said such a thing.”
“…I do not think it was nonsense.”
“Yes?”
“No. It is nothing.”
For the first time, Rud felt sympathy for Erio, captain of the White Wolf Knights.
A madman who had staked his entire life on the sword had offered a mage a place in his order?
If he had heard this from someone else’s mouth, he would have shouted at them not to lie.
But if that mage was Danil, the story changed.
Had he not seen and experienced it himself?
A man whose abilities were those of a mage, yet whose spirit was that of a knight!
Even if one were a knight mad for the sword, it was only natural to covet such a talent among talents.
‘And that is not all of this mage’s true worth.’
As they talked, Rud became certain.
This man was an army.
And not just any army—a veteran army rich in practical experience, having crossed countless battlefields while leading over a hundred magical soldiers called imps.
The work experience stories he told like idle chatter were textbooks themselves, deeply steeped in the scent of the battlefield.
On what battlefield, and how, had he used imps to solve problems?
Just by listening to this, answers continued to arise in Rud’s mind as to how best to operate imps in actual combat.
They could deliver supplies to units that had run out of arrows or potions.
They could swiftly fly to areas in need of support and launch covering attacks from the sky.
If commanded by Danil, who had extensive experience in restoration work, they could even be used as military engineers!
Over a hundred soldiers capable of flying through the sky had literally limitless applications.
‘At this level, are they not main forces rather than auxiliary forces?’
Seeing it now, he was a strategic asset who possessed not only the talent to erase defeat, but also the talent to solidify victory.
Rud’s body heated up.
His original purpose had been to become closer to Danil and create a foothold to make him an ally.
Now it was different.
The instincts of a commander leading an army, and of a tactician, whispered to him.
Uncover every last thing about the strategic asset before his eyes.
Danil, who did not dream of knowing Rud’s inner thoughts, calmly waited for the next instruction he would give.
The unconscious flirting of a mage unlike a mage had done its work once again today.