Ch.974The Tough Work Should Be Passed Down to Subordinates

“They say burning pain is the greatest agony a human can experience. From my own experiences, that seems about right.

And apparently, it’s the same for fairies.

“AAAAARGH!”

“GYEEEEEK!”

“TSUEEEEEK!”

The pointy-eared kindling writhed as they let out desperate screams.

“They burn well.”

I inhaled my cigarette smoke like incense while appreciating their passionate symphony of screams. The genre would be something like death metal, I suppose.

“In my opinion, you should be reclassified. You seem more like plants than animals to me.”

“AAAAAAAAAGH!”

The main vocalist threw back his head and let out a fiery scream. His shouting was quite powerful, though he couldn’t sustain it for long—perhaps due to poor lung capacity.

“Living unnaturally long, burning so well… perhaps you’re actually some mutant carnivorous or parasitic plant? What do you think?”

“……”

My ambitious and bold theory about redefining the origin of fairies unfortunately received no response.

“Ah, perhaps you can’t hear me anymore?”

Well, with faces burned black to the skull, hearing and speaking would be impossible.

“Thanks for all your photosynthesis. Now just become fertilizer.”

I looked down at the fairy corpses turning to scattered ash with mocking eyes and offered them my finished cigarette butt as tribute.

“…What nonsense are you spouting?”

A voice from behind me. Perneisia approached on her bipedal mechanical war machine, accompanied by clanking metal sounds.

Perhaps it was the euphoria of killing fairies? Despite not having had a single drop of alcohol since the real fighting began, her face was flushed and her eyes hazy.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been thinking of me as some carnivorous plant all this time?”

“What are you talking about? You’re obviously an exception.”

You’re not a carnivorous ‘plant’… you’re just carnivorous, period.

Honestly, if we converted the number of bottles she’d emptied into fairy lives, she would have driven the entire fairy race to extinction long ago.

I only tolerated her because she’d been useful a few times. Otherwise, I would have given her a straw, locked her in a barrel of alcohol, and welded the entrance shut.

“With this, the southwestern area is almost cleared. As expected, Lord Haschal, your speed is remarkable.”

Nigel casually flicked fairy heads off the tip of his spear and shamelessly flattered me to my face.

“It’s nothing special. These creatures are just weak.”

In truth, there was no reason to be modest. Nigel’s words weren’t flattery but simple acknowledgment of the truth.

It had been just one day since my airship landed in the southwestern region. In that time, I had recaptured the southwestern territory that the Holy State had lost.

And I’d done it without our core forces—Demian, Millia, and the fire dragon Kudsedra.

Well, I suppose Kudsedra did help in a way.

Though not directly participating in battle, she did charge Jahan’s Flame Blade with dragon’s breath.

The runic flames quickly incinerated the forests covering the captured territory, and the clouds that had gathered to pour down rain evaporated and dispersed in the face of the lava-like flames from the Flame Blade.

The battle that followed was more of a one-sided massacre.

Normally, with eight Guardians and about a hundred Patrollers defending, it wouldn’t have been so easy to overwhelm them, but by the time we attacked, the enemy numbers had already been reduced by more than half.

The reason was simple. I had deliberately engineered it that way—by openly sending Kudsedra toward the main force on the central front.

When the fire dragon, the core strength of this front, left for the north, the fairies had no choice but to redistribute their forces accordingly.

Of course, they could have tried to take advantage of the dragon’s absence by deploying all eight Guardians to clear this front…

But that would have been a fine outcome too.

Eight Guardians and one hundred twenty Patrollers would have been difficult to handle with just our original forces minus the dragon, but we had more than twice that strength gathered here now.

To be frank, even if they had attacked that way, we might have struggled a bit but would have wiped them out.

If they hadn’t used “Flood” and had fled out of the forest, we would have annihilated them without any trouble.

But the fairies did as I predicted and sent half their Guardians and Patrollers north, so I burned the weakened southwestern front to the ground.

Two Guardians died by my hand. One Guardian’s head exploded from the combined attack of Perneisia and Ophelia.

There were still about eighty Patrollers left… though there were differences in skill among them. The strong ones were at Master level, but the weak ones were just at Knight level.

Frider, Jahan, and Leonore took down twenty Patrollers, about thirty-five died in my attacks.

The remaining twenty-five became Ophelia’s materials.

Since she couldn’t bring her lab forces while traveling by airship, she planned to create homunculi on the spot using fairy corpses.

“You can make them, but do it where the kids can’t see.”

“That goes without saying.”

I shook my head but gave permission anyway.

Since there were no clergy on this front except for the rear medical unit, as long as she didn’t openly use necromancy, she wouldn’t get caught.

The fairies’ souls would have been collected by the World Tree, so they couldn’t be used.

Using fairy corpses as assembly materials for homunculi was something I could tolerate by my standards.

—-

Anyway, after temporarily recapturing the southwestern region, I returned to the command tent where Demian and Millia were waiting.

“…You’re back.”

“Oh, Haschal. Finished already?”

In just one day, Demian’s face had grown somewhat haggard, while in contrast, Millia’s skin was glowing. It was almost shining with luster.

Her lips were curled up in a loose smile, as if she had relieved all the stress that had been building up during the days of battle away from Demian.

Is that act really so enjoyable?

In my previous life, I was like Demian—the one whose energy was drained—and in this life, I’ve had no connection to such acts at all, so I couldn’t empathize with the feeling.

“It’s done. Nothing special, they all cleared out as expected.”

“That’s good. Um… I’m sorry I couldn’t help this time.”

Perhaps feeling somewhat guilty about spending happy time together while everyone else was fighting, Millia slightly bowed her head in apology.

“No, don’t apologize for that. I was the one who told you to stay here.”

There was no need for an apology. I told her to do so.

To boost Millia’s morale, who looked visibly exhausted. And to keep Demian, a valuable asset, hidden from the enemy.

By now, the fact that I had arrived at the Holy State front would have reached Alvheim. Rumors that the First Sword Saint with the Halo had openly appeared at the main camp would have spread faster than horses.

But Demian had been confined to the airship, so there was no way rumors of his arrival could have spread.

While the Holy State’s key figures already knew about this as they were central to the attack operation, they wouldn’t have leaked that information unless they were insane.

So the fairies wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know that Demian had arrived here.

Just like how I deliberately showed Kudsedra moving to the central front, it was a simple, minor, but somewhat useful trick.

“Still…”

“You got to rest well, right? That’s enough. Before the fairies redeploy their forces here, let’s prepare for the next operation.”

I patted Millia’s shoulder to stop her words, then gave instructions about what we needed to do next.

Namely, the tunnel operation. Or more elegantly put, the underground passage infiltration operation.

That was why I had immediately swept away the forest upon arriving here.

The entrance to the underground passage was located in the already occupied southwestern territory of the Holy State, making infiltration difficult without reclaiming that land.

And a little while later…

“It’s intact, at least the entrance is.”

Perneisia, who had gone scouting with Ophelia to check the condition of the underground passage, returned to the command tent and reported that there was nothing wrong with the tunnel.

Though it had been abandoned for nearly twenty years and could hardly be called clean even as a white lie, it seemed there would be no problem with infiltration itself.

To truly confirm there were no issues, we’d need to go deep into Alvheim territory, but at least the area near the entrance appeared to be in good condition.

“Good. Everyone get ready. Pack everything you need.”

I looked around at my companions, made a final check of the operation details, and then announced the start of the next operation.

Shortly after, I boarded the airship to see off the infiltration team heading toward the passage.

Huh? Wasn’t I infiltrating too?

Of course not. I never had the slightest intention of crawling through a tunnel to get near the World Tree.

The fact that I had appeared on this battlefield was already widely known, so if I suddenly disappeared, wouldn’t they suspect I was up to something?

The personnel infiltrating Alvheim through the underground passage totaled just three: Demian, Ophelia, and Perneisia, who would serve as their guide.

As for the rest…

“Now, let’s return to where Agnes is.”

Inside the bridge of the airship, I sat in the captain’s seat, spreading cigarette smoke as I announced our next destination to the navigation mages and the rest of my companions.

“Let’s make as much noise as possible there. We need all the fairies’ attention focused on us.”

A confident smile spread across my face as I rested my chin on my interlocked fingers—five pairs of white, clean fingers.