The Voice in the Gale

The distance was so great that I could barely tell the demon had a humanoid shape.

Even so, I felt our eyes lock.

Out of the countless people standing on the ramparts, that thing was looking precisely at me.

[What is this?]

A strange voice drifted in, tangled within the cutting winter wind.

The advancing demon came to a sudden halt.

I released the fully drawn string.

No, my grip slipped.

Fwoosh.

The arrow sliced loudly through the air and zipped right past the demon.

My aim had been thrown off the moment I lost my grip.

Kabooom!

The arrow struck the snowy plain and exploded.

[You really have changed, haven’t you?]

The sound of frozen earth shattering and scattered debris raining down was deafening.

Yet even amidst the chaos, the voice reaching my ears did not blend with the noise and remained crystal clear.

It was likely because the words were not spoken aloud.

“Changed?”

No answer came.

The demon staring at me turned around abruptly.

I watched its retreating figure as it walked back toward the monster horde it had brought along, then let my bow arm drop loosely to my side.

The demon disappeared just like that, crossing back over the fire barrier.

As my strength gave out and I stumbled, Sir Jager caught and supported me in a near embrace.

Leaning the back of my head against his shoulder, I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

I would have preferred to just spill a nosebleed or throw up blood.

However, this dragon power left my insides completely inverted after use.

Ugh.

Dry-heaving and checking what I had for lunch would undoubtedly look incredibly pathetic.

The grand image I had built up with the fire barrier would vanish in a single instant.

I stayed still to calm my churning stomach, but the nausea made my head spin so much that I squeezed my eyes shut.

Sir Jager leaned down as if to pick me up and carry me.

I waved my hand to dismiss him, but,

“It is fine, do not wheuugghh…”

Dry-heaving, I quickly clamped both hands over my mouth.

It seemed I was the only one who had heard the words about having changed.

The cheers of the soldiers erupted once more.

To them, it must have looked like I had driven the demon away with my arrow.

Changed?

What had?

The entity that could answer the question was already gone, and my tangled insides were a mess, leaving me no room to think.

I hurriedly pushed Sir Jager’s shoulder and bent forward.

Sir Jager used his own body to block the view and shield me.

He really was a remarkably good knight.

The fire barrier lasted much longer than expected.

I thought it would last a few minutes at most, but it protected the castle for a whopping half a day.

We had essentially bought half a day of time.

The atmosphere inside the castle, which had been rippling with anxiety, also settled down calmly.

Aside from the fact that I shot nineteen arrows and ended up bedridden, it was not a bad outcome.

“That part is actually the worst.”

Sigret grumbled.

I flashed a grin, my face flushed bright red from the fever.

Sigret looked at me with eyes that seemed to be observing a mischievous child, then began flipping through the documents in his hand with a sharp rustle.

One document, bearing the brunt of his irritation, folded and tore.

“Oops.”

“See, why are you being so cranky?”

Staring intently at the paper, Sigret placed the documents on the nightstand beside the bed.

“It is fine since everything is already in my head.”

“Aren’t you a genius.”

“Is that not why Your Highness keeps me around?”

I thought about telling him what I had been thinking when I first brought him to the Principality, but I decided against it.

Sigret had been picked up almost like an impulse buy, but he had become one of the greatest cards in my hand.

“True. I am glad you are here.”

Since this absolute trash situation was already dealing out plenty of whips, I intended to hand out a carrot.

Sigret stared at me blankly before subtly shifting his eyes to the side.

He probably had not expected me to agree so readily.

How cute.

I raised my completely limp hand and tapped his knee affectionately.

Sigret grabbed my hand and tucked it back beneath the blanket.

“Please stay still.”

“I cannot even do this?”

“Save that strength to get back on your feet. It is a complete mess outside right now.”

I firmly pressed my lips together, stopping the smile I had worn while teasing him.

The tightly closed window kept out the bitter winter wind, but it could not block all the noise from outside.

I could hear faint sounds that were hard to distinguish as cheers or screams, along with the sound of things exploding.

I shifted my gaze to the ceiling, then toward the window.

The battlefield was not visible, but I could see thick snowflakes whipping around in the fierce wind.

“How many died?”

“Orcs are at roughly two hundred… Goblins should be around two hundred as well. Oh, we also took the head of an Ogre. Commander Elindo stepped up personally.”

Sigret rambled on nonchalantly, despite knowing exactly what I was actually asking.

“Hurry up and recover so you can rain down those arrows from last time. Ogres are massive, so they will be easy for you to hit.”

“Sigret.”

“It is seventeen thousand.”

Sigret straightened the messy blanket.

“Not seven thousand, but seventeen thousand.”

“…”

“The barrier Your Highness created was magnificent, but with just that, it is half… No, what do I mean by half? We cannot even kill a tenth of them.”

“…”

“Even if you force your unrecovered body out there right now to shoot a few arrows, it will not mean much.”

My chest felt suffocated, forcing a long sigh from my lips.

Sigret pulled the blanket all the way up to my neck to cover me.

“In the first place, our strategy is not annihilation, but holding out until reinforcements arrive. Fortunately or unfortunately, those bastards are only testing the waters. That is why the casualties… have not been massive.”

“Sigh,” Sigret muttered as he stood up from his seat.

“Anyway, that is how things stand. Get some rest. I will head back out.”

He was telling me to fix my body instead of wasting time worrying about the death toll.

I slid one arm out from under the blanket and dragged over the documents left on the nightstand.

Sigret left the room with a sigh.

I raised myself up into a sitting position.

Because the situation was what it was, the notes were written briefly, making it easy to find the numbers I wanted.

Five knights and seventy-two soldiers.

I stared at the unfamiliar numbers several times to memorize them before reading them aloud.

Five, seventy-two.

Five, seventy-two, five, seventy-two.

[We will depart in one week.]

Kallios’s letter was brief, but the feelings of the person reading it were anything but.

Even though the number of monsters heading that way was supposedly smaller compared to our side, it was not an issue simple enough to be resolved in a single week.

He had to be pushing himself considerably, or rather, to an extreme degree.

Yet the reason my mind was in turmoil was not because Kallios was overexerting himself to rescue Visconti.

A week to clean things up, and another week to arrive here…

Could we really endure for two weeks starting from now?

In just four days, the death toll had reached five hundred.

The morale that had been forcibly dragged up by the fire barrier and the Knight Commander’s exploits had completely fizzled out.

There were no deserters, but that was not out of loyalty or hope; it was simply because stepping outside the walls meant death.

The monster horde encamped before the castle gates swarmed in around dusk and receded like an ebbing tide at dawn.

Monsters were supposedly low in intelligence and driven purely by desire, mostly appetite, but the creatures attacking Visconti showed absolutely none of those traits.

Their advance and retreat were far too clean.

Even well-trained soldiers would not be able to execute maneuvers like that.

My head throbbed.

Pressing my temples firmly, I folded Kallios’s letter and placed it on the table.

“Your Highness.”

Lamierre called out to me cautiously.

“Yeah?”

“Please give the order to supplement the magic circle.”

“How long will it take?”

“A week, no… five days will be enough.”

“How many people can be moved?”

Lamierre did not answer and simply watched my reaction.

Since I had never expected to move everyone in the castle from the start, I waited for Lamierre’s words with a calm mind.

Squeezing his eyes shut before opening them, Lamierre answered.

“We can move five people at a time, for a total of three times.”

“Is that all?”

“The thing is, the magic stones…”

He was someone who had come to help me and was working day and night, so seeing him bow his head like a criminal did not sit well with me.

“Do it.”

“Pardon?”

“Do you not want to?”

Lamierre’s face brightened up instantly.

“Of course not! I will get right to it!”

Lamierre rushed out of the meeting room in a flurry.

Leaning back obliquely in my chair, I surveyed the room.

Just when we were looking at Kallios’s letter together, every single face gathered around the table had been dark with despair, but the moment I ordered the enhancement of the teleportation magic circle, a few faces brightened up.

I could understand the change in Sigret and Sir Jager, who had supported the installation of the teleportation circle from the beginning.

But.

Why on earth was Viscount Visconti smiling?

“Viscount.”

“Yes?”

“You ought to bury your bones in your own territory.”

“Pardon?”

“Don’t tell me… you were planning to run away?”

Viscount Visconti, who had a bewildered look as if he could not understand my words right away, turned pale, then red, before finally turning blue with fright.

I enjoyed watching his expressions fluctuate before saying, “Next.”

Coincidentally, the next report was Viscount Visconti’s turn.

He stuttered through the castle’s food situation before lowering his head deeply.

Right then, the meeting room door burst open.

“Huh?”

An armored soldier rushed in and collapsed onto the floor.

I frowned as I looked at him.

The soldier’s leather armor was drenched not in the green blood of monsters, but in the red blood of humans.

The blood soaking him completely had left his body not long ago, as it dripped down and stained the floor of the council chamber.

“Your Highness, Your Majesty, Dragon God!”

The soldier muttered the impious titles while pounding his head against the floor.

He slammed it down so hard that it made me ache just watching him.

“What happened?”

“Ah, ah, save us, save us…”

The knight guarding the council room door, who had followed him inside late, grabbed the soldier’s arms.

The soldier flailed his caught arms and crawled toward me.

“I asked what happened.”

“The demons, the demons…”

Commander Elindo stood up from his seat.

I simply nodded.

Commander Elindo offered a polite bow and left the council chamber.

Straightening my slouched posture, I commanded the soldier.

“Speak clearly.”

The soldier raised his head and looked at me.

His face was completely drenched in tears.

He stared blankly into my eyes before speaking in a trembling voice.

“They said they want to see the priest of the Red Dragon.”

“What?”

“They climbed atop the ramparts and tore twenty-five rangers to death.”

What kind of nonsense was this now.

After rubbing my face roughly with my hands, I looked out the window.

The sun was high in the sky.

When I was in the Empire, I would have been drinking tea after lunch, basking in the sunlight that was just about that high.

Stepping out of my silly thoughts, I stood up from my seat.

Before I could even take a few steps, Sir Jager moved as fast as lightning to block my path.

“Where are you going?”

I gestured with my chin toward the prostrate soldier.

After frowning and thinking for a brief moment, Sir Jager spoke.

“I will accompany you.”

It was not like I was heading straight to the ramparts this very second.

Well, it was not as if the ramparts appeared the moment the council room door opened anyway, so we could just talk while walking.

I nodded to give my permission.

Sir Jager turned around crisply and led the way.

I walked while looking at Sir Jager’s back, before glancing back at the soldier who was sobbing while curled up into a ball.

Something… felt suspicious, but it was not a situation where I could afford to cling to a vague feeling, so I brushed it aside for now.