Chapter 80

The kingdom was burning.

But the rampant pillaging across the entire island of Britannia was no longer the work of ‘a mere deserter’.

There had never been any deserters to begin with. It was merely a ruse by the Imperial Army to scatter the Kingdom’s forces.

Moreover, the fleet carrying 20,000 Imperial soldiers never crossed the Calais Strait to return to the continent.

While the Kingdom basked in peace, believing the Empire had retreated.

The fleet, having turned its bows, scattered along the outer reaches of the island of Britannia, seizing key landing sites across the region. Immediately thereafter, large-scale plundering of the entire island commenced by the imperial army’s main forces.

That is the nature of war.

Kill or be killed, take or be taken. Kill before you die, take before you are taken.

And around that time, torrential rain began to pour down across the entire Kingdom of Britannia.

It was raining.

“We die where we stand!”

Amid the pouring rain, the Black Armor Company shouted at the advancing cavalry.

On both flanks, Imperial longbowmen drove stakes into the ground to erect barricades, while Imperial cavalry forces were ordered to dismount en masse and fight alongside the Black Armor Company’s heavily armored infantry.

An absolutely unbreakable formation.

Amid the pouring rain, the Imperial Army’s units were deployed to hold the hilltop.

Between the two sides lay a deep muddy swamp, formed by days of relentless downpours.

Immediately after, the Britannian cavalry launched a simultaneous charge.

The Kingdom’s mobile strike force, tasked with halting Imperial raids and swiftly annihilating the enemy. In any case, as long as Imperial forces remain scattered across the land, conducting raids without gathering together, they cannot hope to match the Kingdom’s cavalry, which holds the advantage in troop types and mobility.

That’s how it should have been.

“Sweep away those imperial bastards!”

Immediately after, facing the charging cavalry, within the dense formation of the Black Armor Company.

The ‘Black Prince’s’ dark black coat began to flutter. Black magic凝聚ed along his fingertips.

“Black Barrel, 「Gatling-style」, 「5.56x45mm」.”

The writhing, living malice fired.

Deliberately adjusting its power.

Dale’s goal was not to annihilate the cavalry. There were several reasons for this.

The enemy cavalry was too numerous to be wiped out by Dale’s magic alone. And sometimes, ‘sparing them’ could yield a greater effect than killing them outright.

But above all, he needed a victory won by maneuvering his forces, not one claimed solely by his own exploits.

Death swept through. A hail of shadow bullets scattered. Armor pierced, skulls shattered, blood, brains, and guts splattered.

“What the hell is that thing…!”

“It’s him. That’s the magic of the ‘Black Prince’…”

“We’re going to die, we’re all going to die!”

Fear spread like a plague among the cavalry.

“Retreat! Retreat! Turn your horses around!”

The cavalry unit leading the first charge broke formation and collapsed entirely.

“Second wave cavalry, charge! Cover the retreating cavalry!”

Immediately after, the rear cavalry units launching successive charges became entangled with the retreating vanguard and sank into the mud.

For days, torrential rain had turned the ground into a sticky quagmire where retreating soldiers and advancing soldiers became entangled.

They collided in the sticky mud, shoving each other and falling.

Mud clung to the highly adhesive steel plates of their plate armor, pulling at their ankles like a swamp.

A swamp of death.

To escape that very swamp, knights reached out like water spirits to their comrades. Pulling each other, it was not uncommon for them to be crushed to death by the weight of their own armor. The enemy force, nearly several times larger, was self-destructing.

It was the same tactic that had once allowed the Holy Maiden to defeat a large imperial force nearly four times her size.

“……”

Dale watched the enemies’ self-destruction with indifference.

“What do you think?”

After watching, he spoke. To the ‘prisoner’ beside him who remained silent.

“Is this the ideal kingdom Lady Aurelia desired?”

“……”

The Swamp of Death. There, trapped within that very swamp, were the kingdom’s knights, flailing helplessly.

The Holy Maiden Aurelia was there too.

Helpless before that hell where the kingdom’s knights were being slaughtered one-sidedly, unable to lift a finger against the white mages’ binding magic. Helplessly biting her lip.

It was not a restraint as obvious as handcuffs or chains. Yet the Aurelia of that moment was nothing more than a ‘helpless maiden’.

The daughter of a mere serf, forced to watch her homeland’s destruction.

“The time has come.”

Seeing the enemy cavalry reduced to chaos in the muddy field, Dale spoke.

“Kill them all.”

It was as if he were flaunting the cruelty and infamy of the ‘Black Prince’ himself.

“The commander’s order!”

“Kill them all!”

The Black Armor Company, forming a dense formation, finally began to move. Five hundred heavily armored cavalrymen existing solely for Dale.

Immediately afterward, Dale issued orders to the remaining Imperial forces.

“Mount the knights in the first line back onto their warhorses and launch the charge.”

“Prepare for a rear guard ambush by the enemy detachment.”

“Archers, hold your positions behind the barricades, but cease fire.”

Commands delivered precisely where needed.

The dismounted knights of the Imperial Army, who had halted the enemy cavalry charge alongside Black Armor Company, mounted the battle steeds waiting in the rear. To begin the encircling maneuver, as per Dale’s command.

“Charge!”

It was not a victory won by overcoming overwhelming odds.

Even if the enemy outnumbered us by several times, it made no difference. They were growing impatient, while we had the luxury of leveraging our geographical advantage.

It was a battle we had to win.

Winning a battle you must win is easy.

Yet at the same time, nothing is more crucial than winning a battle you must win.

Take the Empire, for instance, which squandered a force nearly four times larger against the Virgin Fortress’s independence army. Or the fool who gave away the impregnable fortress ‘Bell Fort’ for free and lost half his troops.

That was war, and Dale understood that fact more keenly than anyone. After all, defeat in war usually begins with failing to win the battles that must be won.

“Lady Aurelia should have considered that.”

Dale spoke flatly, as if this scene were the inevitable conclusion brought about by her blindness.

“……”

In the pouring rain, the castle maiden Aurelia bit her lip softly.

Following the orders of the Imperial Commander-in-Chief, the ‘Black Prince’, the Imperial Army was slaughtering the kingdom’s knights as they floundered in the mud.

Twenty thousand Imperial soldiers scattered across the island of Britannia, committing acts of plunder.

Each time, the cavalry units sent in pursuit to repel the Imperial forces were defeated, and the entire Kingdom was engulfed in flames of plunder.

It was ‘unavoidable’.

Soldiers need to eat to fight. But the war dragged on longer than necessary, and the Imperial Army’s supplies were also running dry.

The massive amount of military supplies offered to free Philip was also fatal.

Therefore, the only easy solution to the supply problem in war was one thing.

Stealing from others’ bowls. Plunder.

Around that time, an Imperial messenger arrived in Reims, the capital of the Kingdom of Britannia.

It was intended to deliver a letter from Dale, the supreme commander of the Imperial Army, to King Charles.

And that letter contained but a single sentence.

── Si vis pacem, para bellum.

(If you desire peace, prepare for war.)

Around that time.

The Imperial Army also ceased its indiscriminate plundering across the entire Kingdom’s territory and began concentrating at a single point to end the war.

The capital of the Kingdom of Britannia, which the Holy Maiden Aurelia had taken without bloodshed from the Black Prince.

It was Reims.

Some time later. Burgundy, an Imperial territory within the island of Britannia.

The Holy Maiden Aurelia was in one of the rooms of that very castle.

Although the White Mage’s binding magic suppressed her abilities, she was treated with courtesy exceeding that accorded to a captured high noble.

“The Imperial Army will soon launch a siege to recapture the royal capital, Langse.”

Right then, Dale spoke up.

“We have no need for petty mercy.”

In response to Dale’s words, the Sacred Maiden Aurelia answered.

That day, she witnessed the Holy Knight revealing his vile desires toward her.

The Pig King.

To spend her life as a pig’s stud, or to take her own life before that. That was the fate the Holy Maiden should have met.

“…Why do you protect me?”

It was the ‘Black Prince’ who prevented that outcome, and so the Virgin Queen asked in return.

“Surely there is something else you wish to gain through me.”

“……”

“Do you intend to bring me before the Inquisition to deny my revelation?”

“If I had intended to deny your holiness, Holy Maiden.”

Dale answered.

“There’d be no surer way than handing Lady Aurelia over to that pig to impregnate her.”

He was right.

“Then what do you expect from me?”

“I simply…”

Dale replied.

“I wish for Lady Aurelia to witness the end of this war.”

The end of this war.

“The fate of one who claimed to be heaven’s puppet.”

“……”

“And please consider it the will of Lady Aurelia.”

“What do you mean?”

To Aurelia’s question, Dale answered.

“About the true ‘path to saving the Kingdom of Britannia.’”

At that moment, in a chamber of the Burgundy Fortress.

“That damned Saxon brat…!”

Count Brandenburg, the Holy Knight, raised his voice in unspeakable fury.

He was not unaware that his avatar was the embodiment of unspeakable ugliness.

However, it was undeniably the very ideology of the Holy Knight, and in a sense, the pig-headed beast could be said to be his true form.

That is why he sought to possess the ‘Holy Virgin’ even at the cost of enduring that shame. Yet he failed to possess her.

Thanks to the oath of bondage engraved upon his own heart.

That very day, the Saxon youth had sworn a geas, pledging his heart and responsibility for defeat.

‘One: In all future battles and operations, you shall obey my orders absolutely.’

‘Second, the treatment of all prisoners captured in this battle shall be left entirely to my discretion.’

Could it be that he knew this would happen from the very beginning? Was even the world-renowned self merely a chess piece dancing on the palm of the ‘Black Prince’?

An unbearable humiliation squeezed his heart.

Moreover, it went without saying that his lifelong complex had been laid bare before everyone.

Never mind that there wasn’t a single Knight of Saint Magdalene who didn’t know that secret.

“Absolutely, absolutely, I cannot let this pass…”

Gazing at the hilt of the sacred sword Durandal, the knight clenched his teeth.

Dong, dong, dong.

The sound of war drums echoed through the air. It signaled the opening of the Battle of Reims.

Twenty thousand Imperial soldiers besieged the capital of the Kingdom of Britannia.

The ‘Black Prince’ of the House of Saxony was also there.

As the commander-in-chief leading the Imperial army’s main force, he kept the captured maiden by his side.

“Let us give the people of Reims a chance.”

Dale spoke.

“A chance…?”

“Lady Aurelia, persuade them personally and urge their surrender.”

“……”

“I swear by the name of Saxony.”

Dale continued.

“If they surrender peacefully and abandon Reims, there will be no further slaughter or plunder by the imperial army.”

“Are you asking us to believe your word?”

“You needn’t believe my words.”

Dale answered indifferently.

“I only hope Lady Aurelia will consider this of her own free will.”

“…….”

Silence fell.

“Give me the chance to persuade them.”

After the silence, Aurelia nodded and began walking, escorted by imperial soldiers. Toward the capital of her homeland.

It was at that very moment.

“──She’s the empire’s whore!”

“A witch! The traitorous witch has appeared!”

“Get lost, you whore of the empire!”

The taunts reached her ears.

It wasn’t the mockery of the imperial army. It was the voices of the people of the Britannian Kingdom, whom she was sworn to protect.

“Why…?”

At first, she couldn’t grasp the meaning of those words.

“When the Maid of Orleans was captured in Orléans.”

It was precisely then.

“I leaked false information.”

From behind me, the voice spoke again.

“That the Maid of Orleans, to save her own life, betrayed the kingdom and colluded with the empire.”

“……”

“It took them barely weeks to deny everything the Holy Maiden had built.”

It was only a few weeks.

“To them now, the Holy Maiden is nothing but a traitor who sold her homeland to the Empire.”

Until the entire Kingdom of Britannia turned its back on the banner of national salvation.

“Was it worth it?”

Dale asked in return.

“To become a puppet of Heaven, to fight for the kingdom, giving everything you had.”

“……”

“──Was that truly ‘worth it’?”

Dale asked again. Aurelia could not answer.