WeTried Translations x Flame Comics
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 139: Duty, And.
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* * *
-Fweeeeeeeng!! Baaang!!
Another signal flare burst. The sky blazed red. Eugene and Ivan raced through the forest, scanning their surroundings.
The forest had become a vast slaughterhouse.
-Aaaaagh!!
-Stop them! Stop them, aaaaagh!!
-Philip! Lord above! Philip, breathe!!
Ivan’s sharp hearing caught every kind of noise. Screams, shouts, clashes, explosions, dying cries, the monstrous roars of dragons, flames crackling as they consumed the forest, and...
The distinctive sound of living people burning to death.
It was a collection of sounds that felt almost familiar. The sounds of a battlefield. And if he had to add a little feeling to it, they were the sounds of defeat.
“Brother! Over there!”
Eugene shouted. Ivan shifted his stance without even turning his head. He had already noticed. A group was ahead of them.
The panicked group was climbing the mountain, headed for Gilles Ver’s camp.
“Sir! What... what is happening?!”
“There’s no time to explain...”
-Fweeng.
Ivan instinctively wrapped mana around his nerves. In a state where even the time it took Isabelle to open her mouth seemed to slow, he swiftly reached for his waist and drew his axe.
Line-of-fire detection flashed furiously. No, strictly speaking, this was not a line of fire.
He could tell because he had experienced it before.
This was dragon breath.
-Crunch!!
He launched himself with every bit of mana he could draw upon. Ivan’s body flowed between the group, shooting toward the forest on the other side.
-Kwaaaaaaah!!
He grabbed Elphihara, who stood in its path, and hurled her aside before swinging his axe.
Fortunately, he made it in time. Ivan struck aside the dragon breath with the axe blade, then immediately threw the axe to the ground.
The steel-forged axe had melted all the way to its haft. Dragon breath was a mixture of mana and physical force. He could deflect the mana blast, but not the physical force behind it.
After springing backward to bleed off the remaining force, Ivan faced forward and drew his pistol.
“Go.”
“U-Uncle! We’ll help too...!”
“Do as I say.”
Bright yellow pupils floated in the direction the fireball had come from. The intense killing intent made his body feel as if it had frozen of its own accord.
That was the problem.
All dragon-like creatures naturally petrified lesser life forms. It was not an ability impressive enough to truly deserve the name petrification. It merely stirred primal instinct and slowed the body’s movements.
It was called dragon presence. Even basilisks and wyverns could use it. If those creatures could, then a true dragon, the origin of them all...
One could resist it by wrapping oneself in mana, but that only applied to superhumans. Not everyone in this forest was a superhuman. The Capital Defense Force was exceptionally well trained, but superhumans likely made up less than five percent of its ranks.
That was why this was a slaughterhouse.
‘More than thirty percent of the forest’s forces must have been reduced to ash.’
The claim that around three thousand trained soldiers could hunt a single dragon only held true when they faced it head-on in a well-organized shield formation.
At this very moment, the soldiers scattered throughout the forest were being ambushed in units of a hundred. Since the attackers were dragons, it was fair to say the Capital Defense Force had effectively been wiped out.
In classical military theory, the annihilation of a legion meant the loss of more than twenty percent of its total strength. That had not changed much, whether in the modern era or before it. Once more than twenty percent vanished in an instant, the remaining troops lost the ability to keep fighting.
The Eastern Knights and Gilles Ver had to stop this crisis on their own.
And as Ivan had recalled, even at its maximum, the Eastern Knights led by Gilles Ver could kill perhaps fifteen dragons, and only when prepared and facing them head-on.
There were at least thirty signal flares shooting up into the sky right now.
“Come.”
Armed with his dagger and pistol, Ivan muttered to the enormous creature hissing in the forest’s darkness.
Dragons were intelligent creatures, so they could understand human speech.
“Not even your god could kill me.”
Dragons could communicate with humans. After all, would it not be stranger if intelligent life forms capable of using magic could not?
But dragons never spoke to humans, just as no one conversed with their food. Those arrogant creatures considered it beneath their dignity.
So Ivan spoke in a low voice to the lizard watching him in silence.
“Give it a try.”
* * *
-Bwoooooo!!
A horn sounded. Oscar jerked his head up and shouted.
“It’s Father’s summons! He’s nearby!”
Once they had been ambushed, the safest place was the front Gilles Ver defended personally. Gilles Ver was sounding the horn to gather the surviving troops.
Since the dragons’ target was Gilles Ver himself, it was practically an act of risking his life. Every dragon not already in battle was bound to converge on him.
Oscar clenched his teeth and led the group onward. The forest gradually grew thinner. Exposed to such overwhelming firepower, the trees had carbonized and crumbled before they could even burn away.
Ash drifted through the air. Smoke spewed from the Vernina Mountains had blackened the sky. Beneath the dark sky that hid the moon, soldiers carrying torches fled and gathered together.
Toward the mountain’s summit.
-Bwoooooo!!
Toward their lord.
-Bwoooooo!!
Toward the Defender Duke, the Knight of Iron Mountain, the shield of this nation.
* * *
“How many survived?!”
“Eighty-one Initiate Knights in total! The surviving units of the Capital Defense Force can maintain twenty-one formations!”
Gilles Ver ground his teeth and lamented. More than a thousand troops had failed to return in an instant.
“Fools...”
If some troops had fled down the mountain, he could at least assume more survivors remained. But the soldiers he had personally trained had gritted their teeth and assembled beneath his camp.
They were terrified, and defeat was plain on their faces, yet no one panicked and ran down the mountain. It was safe to assume all those who had not returned were dead.
This was the burden of the Hero Party. The burden carried by symbols of hope. The weight one had to bear for a lifetime after becoming everyone’s hope.
Even as their comrades burned to death in an instant, instead of fleeing in search of a chance to live, they chose to gather around him.
“You must retreat, my lord.... We will clear a path for you.”
“To where?”
“...Pardon?”
“Where would I go? The Eastern Front? Or Saint Matilene?”
“Well, of course...”
“Then what will happen to them?”
Gilles Ver gestured toward the soldiers.
“They are the strongest legion Tilles possesses. If I sacrifice them to survive, will there be anything left afterward?”
“My lord is this nation’s last hope!”
“This nation’s hope cannot belong to one person alone!”
The Defender Duke protected the nation. Not the king, not the capital, not the people. He protected the state.
He protected the systems of the state. He had to protect the very concept of a state, a trusted administrative system everyone could rely on.
One person’s strength could not sustain a country. Fear could only rule; it could not govern. A nation was a collection of faith, faith that it would never collapse.
Under that faith, people plowed fields, raised sheep, and sold wheat. When every one of those small units came together like gears, it could be called a nation.
That was why the Defender Duke would never flee. That was the meaning of the office Gilles Ver had sworn to uphold.
“Those things are a trap prepared for me. If I escape, they will follow me. Wherever I go, that place will burn.”
“My lord...!”
“Even if they do not, what changes if they simply remain stationed in these mountains? The Eastern Front will be isolated and wither away. Other than the capital corps, we have no friendly forces anywhere. Tilles will split in two and perish!”
If they lost every region within the dragons’ flight range, including the Vernina Mountains, they would lose every northeastern territory, along with countless pastures and farmlands.
That could not be allowed to happen. They had never suffered such losses, not even during the war against the Demon King’s army.
Was there any future after losing half the country, half its potential for growth, after throwing half its people into the jaws of dragons and demonfolk?
No. Tilles would be finished. Therefore...
“I will stop them here.”
Gilles Ver looked down at the gathering soldiers and held out his hand. His adjutant handed him a helmet with a grim expression. Gilles Ver accepted it, pulled it firmly over his head, then waved his hand again.
The standards fluttered.
-Flap!
The sun that burned demons, the dawn rising over the plains. The banner of the Eastern Knights.
The standard of Etakrikh, bearing crossed antlers, a spear, and a shield.
Two kinds of standards billowed behind him like a wall. The Eastern Knights stood at attention behind him, each gripping their standard and weapon.
“Father!”
Gilles Ver let out a private sigh of relief as he saw the children approaching. Thank goodness. They were alive.
“Father, I... We’ll fight too!”
“Your Highness! Let us help too!”
“Ha.”
He let out a low laugh at the sight of the children before him. They looked exactly like the Hero Party had when they first set out on their journey.
They were a little less seasoned than his party had been. Naturally. Each of them had already been fully mature when they set out, since they had been an assassination squad formed from the start to kill the Demon King.
But these children perhaps looked even more like a true Hero Party.
Young people carrying hope and a righteous cause, prepared to risk their lives for a country and families that were not even their own.
Young people ready to strive toward greater heights.
Yes. If there was hope for the Allied Kingdoms, it was that young people like them still remained.
As someone who had come before them, he had one thing to say.
“This is the burden of the previous generation.”
Footnotes:
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