Chapter 30.4 - Side Story 4

RATH Side Story 4

TL: Eevee

Side Story – A certain princess’s memories (4)

#8 Their story: The sword princess’s story

“Now, my soldiers, you will be divided into my and Ast’s troops and we will be conducting a war game!”

The tiny princess shouted in a loud authoritative voice that didn’t suit her small frame.

Her Highness’s personal mage corps.

Only Her Highness has this much power as her bodyguard forces among all the members of the imperial family.

That’s how important Her Highness is in the imperial palace.

But His Majesty didn’t give her a battlemage brigade for this!

Although more accurately it’s because of what I said!

I’m sorry, sir mages!

“Now then, Reia. Lead my army.”

“…Huh?”

“I can’t do it myself.”

“But, but still…”

“It’s alright. If it’s Reia I can trust you with them.”

“Your Highness…”

Her Highness was trusting me. Yes, Her Highness trusted me enough to lead her army in her stead…

“If Ast is right, this is a technique that will obliterate my base, if it’s Reia you can survive, right?”

“…Yes.”

Ah, so it was that kind of faith.

I held back the tears that were about to leak out.

Yes, Her Highness trusted me. As a good shield.

But I still spent five years with her, but she only trusts me that little!

“Very good. If Sir Reia’s the target, then it won’t matter if I fire everything without holding back.”

“Wait, Your Highness? Mister Ast said a target just now? Does that mean I’m the target?”

“Hm? Of course. What we were discussing earlier was Ast using his hidden mage corps to annihilate the enemy base with a magic bombardment while taking out all the enemy leaders with it. So of course the leader Reia would be the target.”

“Understood, Your Highness. Then mister Ast? What exactly do you mean by firing without holding back?”

“Exactly what I said. If it’s Her Highness then I need to scale back the firepower, but if it’s Sir Reia you can defend against any attack no matter how powerful, no? You’re the famous ‘Sword Princess’ after all.”

“Uwaaaaaah!”

It’s embarrassing. What Sword Princess! Who the heck came up with that name?

After mister Ast heard that name he teased me for a week, to think he’d still make fun of me for it even after a year!

“A princess in front of the imperial princess, how cool Reia.”

“Y, Your Highness…”

“As expected of a nickname I came up with. It suits her, right Ast?”

“Indeed. I can only applaud Your Highness’s naming sense!”

“Her Highness was the culprit!”

Kukoom! By body quivered at the feeling of betrayal by the princess that I’d believed in.

The culprit was Her Highness!

Well of course because of that I became the subject of admiration by all the female knights!

Aside from how older unnis come up to me with this gaze that really gives me the shivers asking me “can I call you unni?”(1) I was still somewhat acknowledged by my family! But it’s still embarrassing! The culprit was Her Highness!

“Just what am I to Your Highness?”

“My sole pleasure in life?”

“You, you thought of me like…”

“So you see her as a toy.”

“Mister Ast! Don’t destroy my feelings! The relationship between Her Highness and I is something that mister Ast would never…”

“Yep, my toy and the sole pleasure in my life.”

“Just how low is Your Highness going to drop my loyalty!”

Uuwuuu, Her Highness has been extremely mean to me lately.

Before she would just indirectly tease me a lot but lately she’s just been doing it directly.

It’s too much.

Is it all because of mister Ast? Or was Her Highness always like that.

“Why am I the target…”

“Well, Her Highness can’t do it herself…”

As I grumbled along holding back my tears, a mister soldier beside me answered.

Ah, I know that.

It just feels kinda unfair… just something like that.

“Even so, there’s zero possibility that this would work. It makes absolutely no sense. And in a state where we know a magic bombardment is coming, it can never succeed.”

The person who said this with confidence, was a Sergeant of this mage brigade. Considering he was a veteran of the war with the former Harken Kingdom, he should be trustworthy.

“Now, see, Sir Reia. No matter how much you hide the presence of your mana, since magic spells need to be fired off with magic power anyway, the mana reactions will be detected no matter what.”

“Indeed.”

I nodded as I saw the magic power detection device glowing red.

Wow. This is quite interesting. Even though I can’t see anything with my eyes, there’s a red light shining from it.

Her Highness was right!

Since Her Highness said she was going to scold mister Ast big-time for this, this is going to be a good show!

And I’ll secretly ask Her Highness to give him a big punishment as revenge for everything till now!

“Now, look. They’re probably going to fire off a spell while hidden in the clouds, but if we carefully raise a magic barrier then we can easily defend against it.”

Now to the point where we could see with our naked eyes, the mages began casting barrier spells to defend against the ice magic falling at high speeds.

That ice made with magic would never get through the barri…

Shatter!

“It can?”

Very easily, the first barrier was destroyed, and scores of barriers began to tear apart like paper afterwards.

Hm. What’s. That.

“Um, mister mage? What are we going to do when it’s falling like that?”

“…It’s an emergency! Bail!”

“Ehhht?!”

The mister mage whose face turned sheet white yelled to the mages nearby and as expected of a veteran mage, they quickly cast teleportation magic and escaped…

Wait a second!

“Wh, what about me?”

The target was definitely me.

Meaning that those things were all falling towards me, which meant…

“Hiiiik?!”

Hey, mister Ast?

Even so, I’m the target, you’ve totally listened to your conscience and attacked lightly, right? It won’t matter even if I get hit, right?

And as I thought that, Ast in my imagination laughed and said.

‘If Sir Reia’s the target, then it won’t matter if I fire everything without holding back.’

“Ah, this is dangerous…”

At the danger to my life that was getting nearer by the second, I had no choice but to draw my sword.”

***

“…It’s an emergency! Bail!

The mages under my command escaped from the area with long-practiced skill.

The falling silver rain.

The crimson sword aura that cut through that.

What, was that meant to be?

The history of the Karuan Empire now stretched for a thousand years. And during those thousand years there were thousands of small skirmishes, and in those skirmishes heroes appeared, and vanished.

And more than the number of heroes, there were countless more soldiers whose names were never recorded in the history books.

Countless deaths.

The basic strategies that were formed as a result of those deaths. But those basic strategies are always changing.

They say that some of them developed an unblockable attack method that changed the history of warfare, while others developed ways to counter against attacks and changed the history of warfare.

And the defense strategies against the modern-day magic bombardments were refined to perfection.

They had been. Until now.

“It actually broke through?”

“I told you it would work.”

As he watched the silver rain fall, Ast made the smile of a victor.

Yes, it’s my loss.

Although the last time I made a bet with someone else was far back enough I couldn’t even remember it, but is this not my first loss in my life?

Well, still, if it’s for this sort of technique, I think it’ll be alright to lose.

“Sir Reia. She really is strong.”

Ast said as he looked on at Reia.

“Haa. Of course. She’s my only personal bodyguard.”

Although I’ve watched over Reia from a very young age myself, but Reia is someone who changes so dramatically when she holds a sword that even I have a hard time keeping up with her.

I didn’t give her the nickname Sword Princess for nothing, and there’s a reason that no one in the palace dares to refute a name as over-the-top as that.

“Reia’s the youngest swordsmaster in the history of the Empire.”

Officially, the empire’s youngest-ever swordsmaster, someone who shaved off the previous Sword Star’s record by two years, someone that could be called the future Sword Star.

Perhaps after I die, she might even go into the imperial knight order as a Captain of the knight order.

As I watched Reia slice through the last shot and glare at Ast with eyes filled with rage, I had an amusing thought.

“Ah, that reminds me. I lost this time. Sorry I didn’t believe you. So, I’ll give you a suitable reward.”

Since I lost I should give him a suitable reward in compensation.

In addition, the tactic that he showed me just now is a bombardment strategy that could change the face of modern warfare.

If I told His fight-loving Majesty this, he would undoubtedly be pleased. So pleased that he could go out and attack a neighbouring country right away.

In that case, I think he could get an even greater reward than whatever I could give him personally.

Me leading an army with the weirdly unique Ast, with Reia as the vanguard. That’s quite an amusing line up.

Although it might be hard for me to ever see it happen.

#9 Their story: a certain villain’s story

“It actually broke through?”

“I told you it would work.”

As I watched the magic barriers break apart like a couque d’asse(2) I smiled victoriously.

There are many different kinds of magic with many uses and power that if you thought of it in modern terms, they would range between smoke grenades to nuclear missiles.

And thanks to that the methods of magical defense was a long-standing area of research for the people in this world.

And because of that counters against magic bombardments made them all but irrelevant.

But why is magic called magic!

It’s because they use magic power.

Because of this, most magic was compromised of mana, and if you created a magic barrier with more mana than the attack then the spell would naturally dissipate against it.

Namely, magic bombardments are basically meaningless against overwhelming force.

Of course unless an individual had like a dragon’s worth of mana or something.

But what was falling now was not lumps of mana, but pure ice made by the condensation and freezing of water vapour in the clouds.

Of course magic was added to that. A higher velocity increases the destructive force of matter.

And the accelerated ice keeps getting faster and faster even as the support spells casted on it faded away, the only way to stop that was either blowing it apart with magic, or simple physical brute force.

But if it’s at that speed you’d need at least a thick wall of steel to block it, and the tents made of fabric and cloth in war would be very, very easily destroyed.

But…

“Sir Reia. She really is strong.”

“Haa. Of course. She’s my only personal bodyguard.”

And she’s blocking it all by herself.

Seriously, once you were abandoned by the mages beside you should have gapped it instantly. Why she was swinging her sword over there I would never understand, but if it’s that skill then she really could just stand there and block it all like that.

“Reia’s the youngest swordsmaster in the history of the Empire.”

“It looks like her nickname of Sword Princess wasn’t just for show.”

Really, even when I called her Sword Princess(lol) I thought it was just a joke. Even more once I found out the person who came up with it was Her Highness.

But as she was right now, she more than deserved that name of Sword Princess.

Just how many swordsmen existed that could slice those scores and scores of ice chunks at least 4-5 metres wide, some as big as 10 metres, all falling on top of you at once, with just a sword?

And, just how many beings exist that have that extravagant crimson sword aura, as well as the mana needed to maintain that?

The crimson sword aura so naturally, elegantly, swelled up to slice the blocks of ice many times her own height, and that appearance even looked very beautiful, living up to her nickname as the Sword Princess.

“Reia is already, probably the Areista family’s strongest swordsman.”

When Reia cut through the last block of ice, and glared at me resentfully and ran towards me, for a second I felt a cold sweat break out down my back.

Mm. scary. Even that simpleton’s a monster. As expected of the imperial palace!

I need to run away as soon as possible! My life is in danger!

“Ah, that reminds me. I lost this time. Sorry I didn’t believe you. So, I’ll give you a suitable reward.”

But, Her Imperial Highness that laughed like that, had a letter from the knight order sent to me three days later.

-As His Majesty was also deeply moved by this official’s(3) stratagems, the First Imperial Princess Atia nel Karuan’s personal butler Ast will be bestowed an honorary knighthood as well as the surname Lilac.

Ho ho, to my departed parents.

I’ve finally become a noble! Hurrah! I’m a noble! Hurrah!

Iyaaah, I’m so happy! Even His eminent Imperial Majesty was deeply moved! God damn it all! Now it’s even harder for me to get fired!

-The organization is very pleased with your current operative successes.

Hoho, now even the organization’s happy as well? Just when can I go back to the organization? Can I even go back?!