ACT 4
The Steel Clan capital, Gimlé, was a bustling city full of energy and life. As the powerbase of Suoh-Yuuto, the great hero-king who led his nation from victory to victory and strength to strength, it was flourishing.
Traders frequented the city in pursuit of its glasswares, paper, and gritless bread, and there was no end to the people from neighboring territories flowing into the city in search of employment.
The region’s population was seeing explosive growth, and yet law and order remained securely in place. The law was applied to all equally, and violators were captured and punished with all due haste. Thanks to public safety being preserved in this way, the denizens of the city walked the streets with hopeful eyes and bright smiles.
However, on this day, a heavy atmosphere held sway over the streets. The cause of it was the crowd of ten thousand soldiers gathered in the plaza in front of the city’s second hörgr to the goddess Angrboða. With armor donned and spears in hand, they stood waiting, ready to depart at a moment’s notice.
It wasn’t just in Gimlé. In the Horn Clan capital of Fólkvangr, a separate invasion force of six thousand men was gathered and ready.
Sixteen thousand soldiers mobilized in total, with officially announced numbers claiming they were twenty-five thousand strong. That made this combined army even bigger than that of the Steel Clan’s utilizable forces during its campaign to subjugate the Panther Clan.
“Even with this, we’re still not mobilizing all of our possible forces,” Yuuto muttered to himself. “The Steel Clan sure has gotten big.” He looked down on his troops from where he stood atop the altar platform in front of the hörgr.
The campaign against the Panther Clan had sustained heavy financial costs for the Steel Clan, but it had also led to a huge gain in their ability to mobilize a greater number of soldiers.
With that difference in numbers, it should look like they were sending all of their troops to invade the Lightning Clan.
“Thanks to that, it looks like our bait’s gonna bag us a lot of fish.”
Yuuto had already gotten a message from Kristina: “Sword Clan moving to mobilize army.”
When the þjóðann Sigrdrífa had left the imperial capital and gone on her secret journey, the two Einherjar that had accompanied her had been from the Sword Clan.
Considering that connection, it was perfectly natural that the Sword Clan would be the first to respond to a subjugation order issued directly from the þjóðann herself.
Aside from them, there were suspicious movements in the Hoof Clan, Northern Panther Clan, Cloud Clan, and Fang Clan as well. It looked like things were progressing just as Yuuto had initially feared, and those clans had all been forming an alliance in secret first, before the subjugation order was issued.
“It is just as you predicted, Big Brother. You are as amazing as always.”
“I was hoping I’d turn out to be wrong, though,” Yuuto said, and let out a bitter chuckle.
He’d hoped that by deliberately choosing this early timing to move his troops, it would trigger suspicion in his enemies and make them less likely to work in tandem. It looked like his hopes hadn’t panned out, though.
This war was going to be a hard one.
Yuuto let out a long yawn. “Well... it certainly is boring having nothing to do now but sit around.”
He sat inside a pavilion tent set up within his temporary field headquarters.
The Steel Clan’s main force had crossed the Élivágar River and invaded Lightning Clan territory. They were currently positioned surrounding one of the enemy’s main defensive strongholds, Fort Dái.
The fortress had around two thousand soldiers manning it, and they’d immediately assumed a full defensive lockdown. It looked like they intended to resist capture with everything they had.
The offensive quickly settled into a stalemate that had lasted for three days now.
As far as siege warfare goes, three days was still very early into the game, but even so, having to sit around waiting that long still left a person with a considerable sense of boredom.
Of course, there was Yuuto’s secret weapon, the trebuchet. He could use that to create openings in the walls, then have his men force their way in and capture the place.
However, the trebuchet needed to be built on-site, which required first getting hold of the necessary materials, like heavy lumber. That would cost a lot of extra labor and time out here. Additionally, forcing a melee battle with the enemy in the fortress would, naturally, inflict a certain amount of casualties upon his troops.
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote, “Victory won through battle is an example of poor strategy. Victory won without need for battle is an example of good strategy.” There was a long, hard war still ahead for Yuuto’s armies, and he didn’t want to lose good men here.
And so, he’d gone with the standard in offensive siege warfare: encircling the enemy stronghold to cut them off, and calling for their surrender.
“With such a huge difference in the size of our forces, I’d have thought they would’ve surrendered by now,” Yuuto muttered, shaking his head in disappointment.
The enemy’s morale was still high. It looked like it would take quite some time to push them into considering surrender.
“Indeed, they are quite resilient. It is surprising, considering that they cannot count on any reinforcements.” Next to Yuuto, Felicia tilted her head quizzically.
According to Kristina’s reports, after Steinþórr was killed in battle near Fort Waganea, his second-in-command Röskva had taken up the mantle as the next patriarch of the Lightning Clan. Röskva had declared that the Lightning Clan was now fighting a war of revenge, in honor of their slain patriarch, and that had raised morale quite a bit—but not enough to overcome their military disadvantage.
The Flame Clan had already pushed their way right up to the area just outside the Lightning Clan capital, Bilskírnir, and the Lightning Clan was putting everything they had into holding the line there. They were in no shape to send soldiers out here to the eastern end of their territory.
Traditionally, locking up completely during a siege defense was a strategy predicated on the assumption that allied reinforcements would be coming to break the siege. Felicia must have found it puzzling that the fortress soldiers here would choose resistance when they could not expect any such assistance.
“It means they are counting on reinforcements,” Yuuto said. “Just an assumption, but this could be proof the Lightning Clan already established their secret alliance with the other clans, and the Steel Clan Encirclement is already fully underway.”
“I see. Then, they believe that if they can hold out for long enough, we will eventually be forced to pull our forces back home.”
“Yeah.” With a bitter grimace, Yuuto nodded.
This was a pretty frustrating situation. He couldn’t afford to be wasting time here.
“And it’s not like I could break them by singing songs, either.”
“Erm... By singing songs?” Felicia repeated Yuuto’s words, unsure of their meaning.
Yuuto let out a wry chuckle. “Oh, it’s a story from history back in my world. There’s an incident where an army had surrounded an enemy that was holding out defensively, and in order to bewilder them, started singing the songs of the enemy’s homeland.”
“Why would they choose to sing the songs of the enemy homeland?” Felicia asked. “Would that not increase enemy morale instead?”
“Not at all, as it happens. The enemy soldiers were cut off and losing the war, you see. They were fooled into suspecting that their nation might have already fallen, such that even soldiers from their homeland were being added to the ranks of the troops surrounding them. In that case, there was no hope of rescue ever coming. It crushed their will to fight.”
“Aha! I see now!” Felicia nodded several times, impressed.
It was an anecdote from records of the Battle of Gaixia, Xiang Yu’s final stand against Liu Bang, and it was the origin of the Chinese idiom “surrounded by Chu songs.” This phrase became a popular literary metaphor in Chinese and Japanese for the state of being hopelessly cut off and surrounded by enemies, with no prospect of help from allies.
“We, on the other hand, only just advanced into Lightning Clan territory. I can’t imagine that these guys are going to be fooled into thinking we’ve already conquered other parts of their country, right?”
“That is true. Still, we cannot simply leave this stalemate as it is, can we? Shall I send out orders to begin construction of trebuchets?”
“Switching to that strategy now feels like admitting we lost with this one, though. Plus, it’s like, if we were going to use those, then we should have been using them from the start. The three days we’ve already used up would’ve been for nothing.” Yuuto frowned, crossing his arms.
Yuuto was of course half-joking with this argument. He knew full well that it was wrong to let military decisions be influenced by such personal feelings.
He also knew, however, that he didn’t want to waste even more time here if he could avoid it.
“In that case, I have an idea—a rather good one, at that.”
The voice that suddenly entered their conversation came from the former patriarch of the Panther Clan, the man who was currently the commander of the Steel Clan’s Independent Cavalry Regiment—Hveðrungr.
In order to make maximum use of their superior mobility, the basic plan for the Independent Cavalry Regiment was to have them based in the Gimlé area, from which they could quickly move to assist other regions that were in danger. However, this particular operation was an exception, in which they were accompanying Yuuto and the Steel Clan’s regular army. It was partially because it was their first time being deployed into real combat, and also because this would serve the purpose of displaying larger numbers to the enemy.
“Oh, you do?” Yuuto’s eyes narrowed with interest.
This was, after all, the man who had developed one successful counter-strategy after another against the Wagon Wall, a military tactic Yuuto had taken from three thousand years in the future.
If someone like him was saying he had a good idea, it was something worth hearing about.
“Heh, it’s going to look like we’re doing nothing more than cruelly taking out our frustrations on them, though,” Hveðrungr said, with a self-deprecating chuckle. However, when he proceeded to describe his plan, Yuuto slapped a hand on his knee and grinned.
“I knew you’d deliver! I can’t think of anyone better than you when it comes to conjuring up such nasty schemes.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“It’s full-throated praise, Brother.”
Indeed, Yuuto had been hoping for exactly this sort of thing out of Hveðrungr. It was why he’d brought him back into the fold as his subordinate.
“Taaamayaaa!”
Yuuto shouted a word unfamiliar to the people around him, stretching out the syllables, and immediately afterward there was a huge KABOOM! that shook the dark night air, as powerful as the crack of thunder from a lightning strike at close range.
He was making use of the tetsuhau, the explosive weapon that he’d previously used during the Steel Clan’s campaign against the Panther Clan.
The tetsuhau bombs were useful at creating panic in enemy soldiers, so he’d brought a reasonable supply of them along with his army this time, too. Right now, he was launching them into the enemy’s fortress—using a smaller version of the trebuchet.
While it certainly didn’t have the capacity to launch 100-kilogram rocks like the larger model, it could launch light bombs about the size of a person’s head. Most importantly, it could be constructed using fewer materials, and took only about half a day to assemble.
“Kaaagiyaaa!”
Another shout from Yuuto, and another explosion. The bright flash of light was reminiscent of the fireworks back home in Japan. Indeed, though the others would not recognize it, Yuuto was shouting out the traditional calls made during a Japanese fireworks show.
Yuuto had researched and developed the bombs as a strategy to counter the horses of the Panther Clan’s cavalry, but—and this was something Yuuto himself didn’t know yet—they also had been used in Chinese history as an effective siege weapon, where they were known as “thunder crash bombs.”
There were passages describing their use in the Xu Zizhi Tongjian, the Chinese text compiling the works of several historians on the history of the Song, Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties. One such passage read: “The sounds of their thunderous roar carry for a hundred li. They burn to ash the land across half a mǔ. Their force pierces through even iron plating.”
The li and mǔ were ancient Chinese forms of measurement for length and area, respectively. One li was just about 500 meters, and one mǔ was about 667 square meters.
If one were to interpret this account just as it was written, then it would mean huge explosions that could be heard from fifty kilometers away in all directions, capable of incinerating patches of land three hundred square meters in size.
In such Chinese documents there was a tendency to exaggerate descriptive numbers for effect, so one couldn’t simply assume they were accurate as-is, yet even numbers a tenth of these would be indicative of significant destructive power.
In Yuuto’s case, he was in his command tent quite a distance away from the blast zone, but even there he could feel the shockwave from each explosion physically hitting his body.
It would surely be unbearable for the people being hit with that sound and force at such close range.
“Heh heh, it seems the lot manning the fortress have worked themselves into a fine turmoil,” Hveðrungr observed, his face alight with a wicked smile.
And it was exactly as he said: They could hear the sounds of soldiers screaming and crying beginning to well up from within the walls of the fortress.
They would have likely heard rumors about the novel weapon that had enabled the Steel Clan to defeat the Panther Clan riders, but that was incomparable to experiencing the effects of such a weapon firsthand. It would be, both figuratively and literally, a shock to their system.
Someone native to the 21st century would likely have the benefit of exposure to fireworks, but these soldiers were dealing with something they’d never experienced before in their lives. And what’s more, these bombs were designed to be much louder than any fireworks, and when they exploded, they threw out bits of iron and glass shrapnel.
And those terrible weapons were being suddenly unleashed in their midst in the darkness of night, in a situation where they’d spent days surrounded and isolated by the enemy army.
The Lightning Clan soldiers soon fell into a state of total panic and terror.
“Big Brother, now is the time.”
“Yeah, I know. ...It’s kind of weird having you address me as your big brother too, you know.”
“Heh, frankly speaking, it feels repulsive to me—even more so than I expected. Still, this is the way things work in our world; I’ve no choice but to resign myself to that.”
“Hey, you don’t have to go that far,” Yuuto said, and with a sardonic grin, he turned to hand out his next set of orders.
If he kept this up, continuing to launch bombs at the enemy periodically, it would prevent them from getting any sleep, break their spirits, and rob them of their will to fight. It would likely bring them to the point of surrender in due time.
However, there was another stage to Hveðrungr’s plan.
“Damn them! They always have to spring some outlandish surprise on us!”
Berthold, the Lightning Clan general in charge of Fort Dái, spat the words out bitterly.
He was one of the higher-ranking officers of the Lightning Clan, stationed there with the important mission of safeguarding this border fortress.
He was a man of forty-two years, and there was no concealing the fact that he wasn’t as physically spry as he used to be, but he’d been in active service since the days of the patriarch before Steinþórr, and he had an abundance of experience from the many battles he’d seen over the years.
And yet, in his long life, he’d never seen anything like this.
“Pull it together, men! Get control of yourselves, already!” Berthold shouted at the top of his lungs. “Sure, the sound may be terrible, but these things can’t actually hurt you as long as they don’t hit too close to you!”
He’d kept himself from panicking, and in only the short span of time since the start of the attack, he’d calmly analyzed the nature of the tetsuhau bombs. Such a feat showed this general was indeed worthy of the task of commanding Fort Dái, the Lightning Clan’s front line of defense against the Steel Clan.
However, his shouts were drowned out by the even louder explosions of the bombs, and so his message wasn’t getting through to his troops.
They really were infuriating weapons.
And what’s more, while the surprise and impact of their terrible noise was temporarily panicking his soldiers now, that wasn’t even really the whole problem. Berthold’s experience was why he realized the true threat they posed.
“If they can hit us with these every day and night, my men won’t last. They’ll crack before long...”
Holding a fortress against a siege was a lengthy contest of endurance, one that could last months.
The key to victory in such a protracted standoff was in how well one could maintain the morale of one’s soldiers. Or, put another way, in how effectively one could keep them fed and rested.
In spite of other factors, a person’s mind could still remain surprisingly resilient as long as he or she was adequately fed and rested.
Of course, Berthold’s enemies had so far put in the usual effort to try and prevent his troops from resting: assaults on the gate at irregular intervals, sounding loud war gongs, and the like.
This, however, was something on a completely different level. These loud explosions would force a person out of even the deepest sleep.
If they were defending a large, walled city like Bilskírnir, then holing up in buildings in the center of the city might be enough to shield his men from the noise, but there was no escaping from it in a fortress of this size.
If this kept up for even three more days and nights, the lack of sleep would rob them of their spirit and their ability to focus on anything. They’d be totally spent in both body and mind.
“What should I do? Should I surrender? No, that’s...”
A soldier suddenly rushed into the room. “S-Sir, I have a report!”
“...” Berthold paused, letting out a long breath, before inquiring, “What is it?”
On the battlefield, one must maintain a calm mind at all times. Berthold knew that was the secret to survival in war, and so whenever he received a report, he always made sure to take a deep breath and steady himself before listening to it.
And yet, he was still so surprised by the next words out of the soldier’s mouth, he was forced to question if he’d heard them correctly.
“Th-The main gate has been breached, and the enemy has taken control of the entrance!”
“Wha...?!” Berthold found himself shocked speechless... but only for an instant. “Tch! So those damn thunder-makers were a diversion!”
He’d immediately grasped the crux of the situation, proof of just how excellent a commander he was.
While the Lightning Clan soldiers were busy running around panicked thanks to this new weapon they’d never dealt with before, the Steel Clan soldiers had used a battering ram to break open the fortress gate.
Ordinarily, the loud sound and vibrations from the impact of the battering ram would have immediately alerted his men to the enemy’s attempted break-in, and they would have been able to pelt them with a hail of arrows and drive them off. However, the loud explosions had made it so they didn’t realize it was happening, and they’d let the enemy finish their assault.
“So the Steel Clan’s little brat has pulled one over on us yet again...” Berthold sighed, his shoulders drooping.
In actuality, the one who had come up with the plan was not Yuuto, but the Lightning Clan’s erstwhile sworn ally Hveðrungr, though Berthold would of course have no way of knowing that.
“The Steel Clan has also delivered us a message calling for our surrender, sir.”
“...I see.”
The fortress gate had been breached, and the area around it was entirely under enemy control. With the difference in troop numbers between them, there was nothing Berthold could do to salvage the situation.
If he chose to keep fighting, it would only end in a one-sided slaughter of his men.
“All right. I’ll surrender. Tell them I don’t care what happens to me, but in exchange, I ask them to spare the lives of the soldiers in here...”
Naturally, when Yuuto learned of this resolute, honorable decision, he had nothing less than the utmost respect for it, and thus, Berthold’s life was spared.
Just like during the previous campaign against the Panther Clan, the tetsuhau proved an invaluable and effective weapon, and the Steel Clan’s invasion continued at a comfortable pace.
Riding the momentum from their capture of Fort Dái, the Steel Clan army had soon advanced as far as Fort Gashina, which they also captured with no bloodshed.
With that, the Steel Clan had, with little to no actual combat, recaptured all of the territory taken from them by the Lightning Clan in their previous war.
To most everyone in the Steel Clan, this was an occasion for triumph and joy. However, there was one exception...
“Rrgh, dammit! This is totally different from what I expected!”
In the main courtyard of the fortress, a girl named Hildegard yelled out in frustration, clearly not enjoying this situation.
She was a young girl with braided hair, and eyes filled with an impudent, brazen aggressiveness that left a strong impression on those who met her gaze.
Partially due to her young age, at first glance she looked like someone who didn’t belong on a battlefield, but she was in fact a fully-fledged member of the Múspell Special Forces, said to be the most elite unit of the Steel Clan army.
Of course, she had only just exchanged the Oath of the Chalice with the Múspell commander Sigrún the day before they went on the march, so she was its newest member.
Hildegard’s anger stemmed from one point in particular, which she shouted aloud:
“Just when am I going to get a chance to prove myself?!”
Ever since the invasion of the Lightning Clan began, she’d done nothing but wait on standby in the rear. She hadn’t gotten the chance to fire a single arrow yet.
In order to achieve her goal of receiving the Oath of the Chalice from the great Reginarch Yuuto, the man she most admired, she needed to put some achievements to her name and earn some glory during this campaign.
“Aaaugh! Damn it all—!”
All the girl could do about her pent-up anger at this moment was to throw it outwards, shouting at the moon shining in the night sky.
Thwack!
“Oww!” Hildegard let out a cry of pain as a fist hit her on the top of her head.
“Quit howling in the middle of the night, you’re making a racket!”
The owner of both this voice and the fist which preceded it was none other than her direct superior and new sworn parent, Sigrún.
Sigrún’s slender arms were by all appearances too pretty and fragile to swing a heavy sword without great difficulty, but the truth was quite the opposite: She was an Einherjar, and a punch from her carried incredible strength.
“Oww... I’m... I’m sorry...” Hildegard clutched her throbbing head as she apologized, tears forming in her eyes.
Back when she was still a trainee in the Sigrún Family, she had stirred up some pretty serious trouble, but she was totally obedient now.
Sigrún was overly protective when it came to Yuuto, but she didn’t show a whit of mercy when it came to her own sworn children.
The iron fist that Hildegard had taken to the head just now was a typical punishment for mistakes, and something she’d had to deal with every day. Actually, a whack to the head like this was, if anything, on the lighter side of things.
And this same demon-hearted commander had also told her, “You have great potential.” Over the long month of brutal training that followed, even a problem child like Hildegard had been whipped into shape in terms of attitude as well.
“I’ll show you! One day I’ll get you back...!”
And yet, she still often let slip declarations like these. It showed that, in her heart, she still did not truly submit herself to others.
She was an Einherjar herself, and terribly prideful in her strength. It all came together to create quite the personality.
“Did you say something?” Sigrún asked coolly.
“No, nothing!” Hildegard immediately snapped to attention and shook her head.
The speed of her reaction spoke to how well she’d been “trained.”
“Fine, then. Actually, I also found myself agitated and unable to sleep. Here, let’s go for a bit.” As she said this, Sigrún tossed Hildegard a wooden sword.
She was also holding one for herself. Apparently this had been her intention from the start.
“Agitated? You, Mother?” Hildegard’s eyes widened slightly as she caught the sword.
Sigrún was always so stone-faced, never seeming to show any emotional reaction. Some people even called her the “Frozen Flower.” Being too agitated to sleep was the sort of problem a rookie would complain about; coming from her mouth, it sounded like it had to be some kind of joke.
“I’ve got too many bad memories of this place,” Sigrún said, frowning bitterly.
Hildegard had spent every day with Sigrún for a whole month, and this was the first time she’d ever seen her wearing an expression like that.
But she had an idea as to its cause.
“Oh, right, here at Gashina is where the Wolf Clan suffered a miserable defeat, right?” she asked.
Back then, Yuuto had been commanding the Wolf Clan army, but he had suddenly vanished into thin air, having been forcibly transported back to his world beyond the heavens. Hildegard, of course, only knew the public story, which was that Yuuto had suffered injuries which left him unable to continue directing the army.
The Wolf Clan army had been thrown into disorder by this sudden event, and in that moment of weakness, they were defeated by the allied armies of the Panther Clan and Lightning Clan. The Wolf Clan lost their general and hero Olof, and afterwards, both the cities of Gimlé and Fólkvangr were surrounded and besieged by the enemy. All of that hardship had sprung from the battle at this hated place.
Indeed, that would naturally leave bitter memories. This cold-blooded warrior was still a human woman, after all. It was perhaps no wonder she’d been unable to keep calm tonight.
Sigrún nodded at Hildegard’s question. “That’s right. It was a full moon that night, too... And so, I’m here to relieve some of this frustration. You’ve got energy to spare tonight too, don’t you?”
Sigrún moved her wooden sword into form, ready to spar.
When she’d spotted Hildegard out here howling at the moon, she surely must have seen her as the perfect outlet for her pent-up stress.
“You really want to do this in the middle of the night?”
Futile though it likely was, Hildegard made an attempt at resistance.
“Tonight’s the full moon. You have the powers of the wolf within you—this is more than enough light for you, right?”
“...You know me well.”
Wolves were known for their exceptionally good night vision, and Hildegard’s rune was Úlfhéðinn, the Wolfskin. True to its name, it was a rune which gave its bearer the strength and abilities of a wolf.
She could fight no less easily now than in daylight.
“But, I always get so tired when I fight you, Mother.”
“You say that, even as you bring your sword to the ready. I like that about you.”
A menacing aura billowed up from Sigrún’s body, like bloodlust bleeding into the air. It sent a sharp chill down Hildegard’s spine.
Great, there it is right off the bat... the Múspell commander’s famous “Aura of Ice!”
The Múspell Special Forces, recognized both from within and without as the strongest, most elite military unit within the Steel Clan, were made up entirely of soldiers fully prepared for actual combat.
All of their training was designed to simulate real combat situations.
This powerful aura of killing intent that Sigrún pressured her soldiers with was meant to train them not to be overwhelmed by the atmosphere of an actual battle, so that they could make use of their full abilities without trouble. It was one more way she took care of them as their sworn mother.
As such, she of course was not truly fighting with an actual intent to kill. Even so, it was the sort of threatening presence befitting the strongest warrior in the clan, and far more overpowering than anything an average soldier could project.
Furthermore, it seemed even more dangerous than usual tonight. Perhaps that was because of the unpleasant memories she’d recalled.
It would be more than enough to paralyze a rookie soldier, and perhaps even an experienced one would find his legs locking in place.
It was such incredible pressure. But...
“Don’t insult me!”
Hildegard brushed it aside easily and sprang forward, stepped into range, and brought her wooden sword down in an overhead swing.
Sigrún blocked it easily.
Their swords clashed again and again. After more than ten exchanges, Sigrún spoke up again.
“Such spirit and grit, unlike anything I’d ever expect from a rookie. And that’s even though I’m putting twice as much killing intent behind my attacks as I usually do,” she said with a chuckle.
She continued to parry Hildegard’s attacks as she spoke, despite the fact that Hildegard was pouring all of her strength into each swing.
It was that composure of hers, that ease, which really grated on Hildegard’s nerves.
Not wanting to be outdone, she shouted back, “Twice as much? Do you hate me that much?!”
“I just said I liked you earlier, didn’t I? I’m actually quite fond of you.”
“It really doesn’t seem like that to me!”
“Really? Even though I dote on you every day? Just like this, for example.”
“This isn’t ‘doting,’ this is hazing!”
Hildegard was somehow barely managing to fend off Sigrún’s attacks right now, but throughout her training so far she’d been struck by that wooden sword of hers too many times now to count.
Sigrún always held back just enough not to inflict any real injuries, but she still inflicted pain. A whole lot of pain.
If she had such a high level of skill that she could adjust her strength precisely to the point of inflicting pain without injury, then Hildegard wanted nothing more than to scream at her to stop her attacks before they hit at all.
In fact, she had screamed that at her once before.
Sigrún’s response? “People don’t really learn from their mistakes unless they experience pain.”
When she heard that, Hildegard had screamed, Don’t give me that crap!—deep down in her heart.
“Oh, that attack just now was pretty good,” Sigrún said. “It had more power behind it.”
“Of course it did!” Hildegard shouted back.
After all, she’d put a whole month’s worth of pent-up anger into it.
“Yes, it looks like you’ve gotten much better. It’s getting to the point where I’ll have difficulty going easy on you.”
“Hah, it won’t be long before I surpass you!”
“I’m looking forward to that.”
“Wha—?!” Hildegard cried out as she was suddenly thrown off balance. Just as she had been going for another overhead attack, an unexpected force had been added to the arc of her sword swing.
With her center of gravity off, she stumbled, and before she could recover, her unsteady feet were swept out from under her, and she fell flat on her rear.
“Ow!”
“It looks like it might be a while after all,” Sigrún mused, and pointed the tip of her sword right at Hildegard’s nose.
It was unquestionably Sigrún’s win.
“Ngh...!” Hildegard groaned.
“Come on then, another round. Get up.” Sigrún said.
“Yes, Mother!”
Hildegard stood back up immediately. It was a pretty submissive reaction on Hildegard’s part, but that was because she knew from training that a slow response would earn her a very physical reprimand.
“Now that I think of it, what about that power you used the first time we fought? You’re not going to use that?” Sigrún asked, tapping her wooden blade idly against her shoulder.
Hildegard grimaced upon recalling that occasion, then eventually sighed wearily.
“Right. You mean the Beast...”
Hildegard’s rune had one particular power that was different from other runes.
It unleashed the Beast that dwelled deep within her, and the Beast’s power was capable of increasing her physical strength and agility to incredible extremes, abnormal even by the standards of powerful Einherjar warriors.
“I’ve sealed that thing away...”
“Sealed away? That’s a waste. If you could learn to fully control it, it would make for a magnificent weapon for you.”
“I’d really rather not.” Hildegard’s face scrunched up even more.
It was true that unleashing the Beast would grant her incredible power, but it also robbed her of her conscious mind. It was a double-edged sword.
In her unconscious state, she’d attacked the reginarch, and even wet herself in front of him, a horrible experience that had made her want to crawl into a hole and die.
She never wanted to go through such a terrifying, humiliating experience again.
“Well, I suppose it’s true that if you can’t keep your mind about you, it’s too dangerous to use.”
“Exactly!”
“Then you just need to make yourself stronger. Now come on!”
“Yes, Mother!”
And their wooden blades clashed once more.
“Haah, haah... I lost again. Haah, haah... At least let me get one good hit on you!”
Lying on the ground flat on her back, her body splayed out wide, Hildegard complained in between her heaving pants.
Even after going through more than twenty rounds, Hildegard’s wooden blade hadn’t once even grazed Sigrún’s body.
“If you want it, then get better,” Sigrún replied, resting her wooden sword across her shoulders. “If you keep up this pace, then after another six months you should be able to win about one out of every ten.”
Sigrún wasn’t out of breath, but she was breathing a little more heavily than when they started, and there was sweat on her face.
Thinking back to a month ago, when she hadn’t been able to do anything to upset Sigrún’s cool, relaxed expression, Hildegard could see that she’d made some real progress. But even so...
“Another six months of brutal treatment, and that’s all I’ll be able to do...?” Hildegard muttered with a look of dismay.
It was as if an insurmountable wall was stretching out above her, impossibly high.
With all of her power, Hildegard still couldn’t put up a real fight against this silver-haired she-wolf... and yet, it had taken Sigrún herself all of her strength and skill just to put one little scratch on the Dólgþrasir. Just how strong had he been, then? She couldn’t begin to imagine it.
Then there was her wise and courageous reginarch, who had time and again easily fended off the Battle-Hungry Tiger, leading that monster around completely by the nose. And then the patriarch of the Flame Clan, who had apparently killed that same monster with no trouble at all. There were so many ridiculously strong people in this world.
When she’d awakened to her rune a month ago, Hildegard had been so sure she was unstoppable, that her strength would take her right to the top. Looking back on that now, she realized just how much her past self had been nothing more than a big fish in a small pond, ignorant of the people far stronger than her.
She was startled out of those thoughts by the sound of clapping. Still on the ground, she turned her head to look in the direction of the sound and saw...
“L-Lord Reginarch?!”
It was the head of her family and ruler of her nation, the person she viewed with all the reverence of the divine. She hurriedly jumped up to her feet, then dropped back to her knees and bowed her head low.
It felt like she always wound up looking weak and shameful in front of him. Once again, she felt like she wanted to crawl into the nearest available hole.
“Ah, no need for that,” said the reginarch. “We aren’t in public. You can be at ease.”
Hildegard lifted her head. There he was, right in front of her. There was no mistaking his appearance, no mistaking his voice. It was the young man she’d held unending feelings of longing admiration for since she’d first laid eyes on him one month ago, and whom she could normally only view from afar.
Hildegard was happy, but also frozen stiff from nerves.
“I was watching your fight. You’re that new recruit from back then, right? You’re something else to be able to fight like that against Rún.”
Hearing Yuuto speak of her in such impressed tones, Hildegard’s heart welled up with joy, and she could feel herself breaking into a smile.
But Sigrún shook her head and cut in. “No, she’s still too inexperienced.”
You didn’t have to say that! Hildegard thought to herself.
“Really? She’s the first person I’ve ever seen fight so well against you.”
At Yuuto’s statement, the girl standing behind him nodded. “Yes, I agree. Why, I think even I would have difficulty doing that well.”
Hildegard would be the first to admit that her sworn mother Sigrún was an exceedingly beautiful woman, but this other girl was no less a pinnacle of beauty in her own right.
“If even Felicia says so, then she’s strong for sure. All right, then. Rún, I want to borrow this girl and a few more capable members of the Múspell to serve as my bodyguards for a bit, is that all right?”
“...!” Hildegard felt her heart skip a beat.
Being Yuuto’s personal guard meant she’d be serving close by his side. If she made a good impression on him, it would definitely boost her chances of moving up the ranks. And more than anything, there was the possibility this could lead to her getting invited to his bedchamber.
Hildegard’s heart danced just considering all the potential outcomes swimming through her mind, but once again her superior’s voice cut in and threw cold water over everything.
“I have no issue with it, Father, but... must you take this one?” Sigrún asked, in a decidedly negative tone.
Of course, Hildegard was in no position to speak up and argue right now.
“Yes, there’s no doubt as to her strength,” Sigrún continued, “but I worry about allowing her to serve at your side when her behavior is still...”
“I will behave! I promise I will be quiet and behave to the best of my ability!” Hildegard shouted. With such a once-in-a-lifetime chance hanging on the line, she hadn’t been able to keep silent after all.
“It’s as you can see,” Sigrún stated flatly. Hildegard had only served to prove her right.
Certainly, butting into a conversation between two superiors was the height of inappropriate behavior. Hildegard inwardly screamed in anguish at how thoughtless she was.
“But bodyguards, Father? What for?” Sigrún asked quizzically.
With that question, Hildegard also realized something was off.
As the commander-in-chief, Yuuto was situated in the safest, most protected position in the army formations, and he already had strong, skilled fighters like Felicia close by to guard him.
In that sense, his request for even more bodyguards was quite troubling.
“Could it be that assassins have infiltrated our ranks?”
Sigrún’s guess was based on the fact that, in this situation, that was the only method left for the Lightning Clan to attempt to turn things around.
However, Yuuto waved his hand, dismissing the possibility. “Ah, no, nothing like that,” he said. “I actually just got a message from the Flame Clan patriarch asking to meet and speak with me in person. He said there was no need to get tangled up with a whole formal meeting ceremony; that since we were close by, we might as well see each other.”
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