WeTried Translations

Translator: Nemui

Editor: Nemui

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◈ Friedrich's Battlefield

Chapter 147: Decisive Battle (7)

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Friedrich watched the scene from within the forest.

"...Just as planned. It worked almost amusingly well."

Still smiling, he murmured that.

The mechanism that made the devil masks spit fire was simple. Behind each mask, there was a pilot flame and a device made by modifying a bellows. A foothold had also been built to connect the sled runners attached beneath the mask.

When the soldier standing on that foothold pushed the bellows-shaped device, the distilled liquor inside was sprayed through the pilot flame and out of the mask's mouth. The ignited liquor became flame as it was, creating the sight of a devil breathing fire from its mouth.

That was all. A simple contraption. Three modified carriages to stage it, and the flags of House Hosenfeld.

This was the reversal Friedrich had prepared.

From the beginning, he had known that King Childebert Arelia would appear in this decisive battle. The hegemon king had always personally led the final battle to conquer a neighboring country. There was no chance that Childebert would stay away from an unprecedentedly large battle meant to unify the western continent.

As for the deployment on the battlefield, Count Cecilia Fargiere, the wise general, would likely hold an important say. She had long been valued by Childebert and had achieved great results until now. She would surely decide the outline of the formation as Childebert's strategist.

That made the enemy formation easier for Friedrich to read. Considering how strangely often the schemes they devised had overlapped until now, Friedrich and Count Fargiere probably had similar ways of thinking. If he thought about what he would do, the enemy formation naturally came into view. Since Edelstein would deploy first by using the advantage of terrain, and the enemy would then deploy in response to it, the reading became even easier.

The Kingdom of Edelstein's plan had been built on that premise. It decided how to fight on the assumption that the hegemon king Childebert would personally take the field, and that the wise general Count Fargiere would think about the formation in much the same way as Friedrich.

Friedrich's prediction was correct. Childebert came to the battlefield. The enemy also formed their army broadly as expected.

On this battlefield, there was no stronghold that could only be taken by indirect means, nor any place to hide ambushers without the Kingdom of Edelstein, which deployed first, noticing. On top of that, the enemy held an overwhelming numerical advantage. Precisely because of that, the most effective plan was to attack with brute force all at once and deny the opponent room for tricks. Considering what came afterward, it was best to first throw replaceable conscripts at the enemy to exhaust them, then commit the regular soldiers, whose losses they wanted to limit, as the finishing force.

Friedrich had stood in the enemy's position and devised that plan. The enemy, probably under Count Fargiere's judgment, had attacked with the same plan.

That was what set Edelstein's plan in motion.

First, the infantry of the vanguard received the enemy's forceful attack. The archer units of the rear supported them. No matter how high the army's morale was, it would be difficult to keep receiving the enemy's fierce assault while maintaining that morale forever. That was precisely why Queen Claudia went forward and encouraged everyone. Claudia, who had won everyone's support through her legendary coronation, exposed herself to the very front of the battlefield as queen, maintaining the morale of knights and soldiers and preventing the army from collapsing.

If the vanguard kept its morale and the archer units in the rear, including the reinforcements from the Empire, supported them with all their strength, the formation would be maintained for a long time. Far beyond the enemy's expectations, Edelstein's army would hold.

If that happened, the hegemon king Childebert would also commit the regular soldiers in his rear at some point to break the situation. With Claudia at the very front of the battlefield, and with that also being a perfect chance to take her head, he would likely decide to commit regular units, and elite ones at that, at an early stage. To put it in deliberately ugly terms, they could use the queen as bait to draw out the enemy's elite units, their trump card.

Depending on the situation, Childebert might even burn with rivalry toward Claudia, insist on his pride, and come forward himself.

If that happened, Edelstein would move the plan to its next stage. The Ferdinand Regiment hidden in the forest on the north side of the battlefield would bring out the modified carriages fitted with devil masks, along with the flags of House Hosenfeld.

Considering the burden of transporting troops, it was inevitable that many of the enemy conscripts would be gathered from the Loire region, especially its east. Those people deeply feared the Hosenfeld name. They also rumored that Friedrich was the Yudit devil, and feared him as well. Using that, during winter, Friedrich had used royal spies to create several sightings of the Yudit devil in the Loire region.

The enemy conscripts were forced to charge as expendable pieces on a harsh battlefield, pushed into negative tension during a death struggle whose end they could not see, their hearts made overly sensitive. If they were shown the flag of House Hosenfeld and a terrifying sight that made them think of the Yudit devil, those two fears would combine and attack them. If some of them panicked and made a commotion, fear and confusion would spread on their own from there. When the emotions of ordinary people ran high, a single trigger could send them all flowing in one direction at once.

If tens of thousands of conscripts fell into panic together, the chaos would be tremendous. The several thousand regular soldiers who had advanced from the rear would be caught up in that confusion as well and would be unable to move as they wished. Once that happened, organized fighting would no longer be possible. The vanguard, which had until now been forced to fight desperately to receive the attack from the front, would find it much easier to maintain its formation.

Once the enemy's panic had spread enough, the battle would enter its climax. The Ferdinand Regiment would strike out from the forest with all its forces and drive straight toward the enemy's vital point, just as in the great battle twenty-two years ago, when Edelstein's living hero had been born.

They would aim at the flank of the enemy headquarters, whose defense had thinned because the elites in the rear had gone forward. Or, if Childebert had been provoked by Claudia and moved forward himself, they would aim at Childebert himself, trapped in the vortex of confusion at the vanguard. They would strike from the flank.

In this case, it had become the latter.

"..."

Friedrich watched the confusion spread through the enemy vanguard with terrifying speed. He wore a mask of composure for the sake of his subordinates, but strength naturally gathered in his clenched hand, and a line of sweat ran down his forehead.

He was deeply relieved that it had succeeded.

Of course, there had been no certainty that such an unusual scheme would work. But schemes used on the battlefield always carried an element of gambling. It had always been that way. Ever since the day he told a grand lie to rouse the people in Volga, it had always been so.

By combining the authority of the Hosenfeld name he had inherited from his father with the title of devil bestowed on him by the people of an enemy country, Friedrich had obtained a weapon that could break the hearts of enemy conscripts. With that weapon, he had entered the gamble.

And he had won.

Most common people moved not by reason, but by emotion. Even at moments that decided their own fates, if they were ruled by fear, they averted their eyes from battle and fled from reality. Much less would they possess the mental strength to keep fighting through panic that attacked the heart in an invasive war that was not truly theirs to begin with.

Friedrich knew that.

Raised among common people, and having once witnessed their fragility with his own eyes, Friedrich knew it well.

......

"Honestly, what kind of absurd war is this..."

While leading the elite troops of the old Kingdom of Loire army, the force she trusted most, Cecilia murmured without hiding her exasperation.

The enemy queen, Claudia Edelstein, had done something wildly reckless. She had gone all the way to the very front of the battlefield herself, encouraged her vanguard, and maintained the battle line by sheer force. The enemy army, which should long since have collapsed, continued fighting while wrapped in a strange excitement.

In response, their own commander in chief, Childebert, had sent the elites in the rear forward in order to take the queen's head. Worse still, he had advanced himself while leading the Armor of the King. Probably from rivalry toward Claudia and pride as the hegemon king.

As a result, in a great battle where armies numbering in the tens of thousands collided, the sovereigns who served as the supreme commanders of both countries had come close enough to catch sight of each other's faces.

This way of fighting was absurd.

Neither side was sane.

Even so, since Cecilia had been given the duty of guarding the left flank of her sovereign, the side facing the forest, if Childebert went forward, she had no choice but to go forward as well. Pushing through the obstructive crowd of conscripts, Cecilia struggled to advance her horse.

Because she was mounted, her line of sight was high, but Childebert, who was ahead to her right, was surrounded by the Armor of the King and difficult to see. While keeping watch in that direction, Cecilia prayed that the hegemon king who protected her position would not be struck by a stray arrow.

Then she noticed something strange.

"...Hey, what is this confusion?"

Before her, the conscripts of the vanguard had suddenly fallen into panic and begun making noise. The panic spread rapidly from the left of the vanguard to the right. The conscripts running around at her feet were becoming more and more of a hindrance.

"Your Excellency! Look there!"

The one who shouted was her adjutant, Knight Celestan. Cecilia looked where he pointed, to the left front, and saw something emerging from the forest.

The crude spears equipped by the conscripts swayed in countless numbers and blocked her view, irritating her as she narrowed her eyes toward the forest.

There stood the flags of House Hosenfeld.

Beneath them were several enormous devil masks.

"...!"

Within moments of recognizing them, Cecilia grasped the scheme of the current Count Hosenfeld, who was surely somewhere beneath or behind those flags on the enemy side.

She had heard that Friedrich, the current Count Hosenfeld, was rumored among the people of Loire to be "the Yudit devil who came down from the mountains." Had he used that rumor, awakening the fear of the conscripts with devil masks and the flags of House Hosenfeld, then driven them into panic?

He had done it.

Cecilia had strong confidence in matters of strategy and tactics. The same was true of this battle. By attacking with overwhelming force, enough that they would not collapse even if they received a small flanking surprise, she had taken away the enemy's room for tricks.

What was this, then?

It was not even a physical attack or obstruction. Instead of aiming at the army or its formation, he had aimed at the hearts of the most numerous conscripts in this manner. A strange plan among strange plans. To think there was someone who surpassed her at heresy.

To begin with, how simple, foolish, and unreliable were mobilized commoners, if they could be so easily thrown into confusion by such a child's trick? Were uneducated commoners truly this undependable?

Would the great army assembled with the Kingdom of Arelia's full strength collapse in such a way? Cecilia had stacked victories even through dangerous gambles and created this favorable decisive battlefield. She had seized the right to win through the orthodox path, without relying on tricks. Was that going to be overturned by this?

Cecilia stared at the openly raised flags of House Hosenfeld and the Nouzenharen design drawn on them.

Her face twisted with hatred.

"How far will you go to obstruct me!? I killed you, ghost of the hero!"

No matter how irritated she became or how much she shouted, the situation would not improve, so she had always maintained her composure. It was an attitude she had kept since childhood, when she lost her family.

Even that was cast aside as she shouted with her emotions laid bare.

With her expression twisted, but with a cold part of her heart still looking over the surroundings, Cecilia took in the situation. The confused conscripts were already a mob. Caught in their panic, the elites who had advanced from the rear could not move. Even the Armor of the King, the sovereign's direct guard, was not in a state where it could immediately shift formation around Childebert.

Predicting the enemy's next move, she looked back at her adjutant.

"Celestan! The Ferdinand Regiment will use this chance to launch a flank attack! We will defend His Majesty's left flank with all our strength! Hurry the whole unit forward! Remove any conscripts who get in the way!"

"...As you command! All units, hurry forward!"

Celestan, seeing the general who had until now maintained an eerie calm expose anger and hatred, answered with something close to delight. The elites Cecilia trusted responded vigorously to the transmitted order and moved forward with still greater momentum.

Cecilia did not notice the excitement rising among her subordinates at the sight of their commander's fury. Her eyes had already returned to the flags of House Hosenfeld.

"I will not let you, Count Hosenfeld! I will not let you do the same thing as your adoptive father!"

Cecilia had known that the forest on the north side of the battlefield would become the greatest uncertain factor in this decisive battle. It was only natural to predict that the enemy would place ambushers there. In fact, scouts sent ahead beforehand had already revealed that a small force was hidden there, though its unit name and exact size were unknown.

Cecilia had predicted that it was probably the Ferdinand Regiment led by the current Count Hosenfeld, Friedrich.

That was precisely why she had already made preparations. She had prepared a further surprise attack against the Ferdinand Regiment, which would likely try to use some trick from the flank. So the enemy would not detect it, she had waited until the battle began, hidden the movement amid the battlefield's noise, and sent a small separate detachment into the forest on her side as well.

That detachment should be reaching the enemy's rear by now. She had not anticipated that such a strange scheme would be used, and unfortunately she had failed to stop it before it happened. But she would not allow them to use this great confusion and launch a flank attack as they pleased.

She would not let Friedrich Hosenfeld have his way. She would not let the Ferdinand Regiment break into their heart.

She would not allow the tale of the hero's birth from twenty-two years ago to be reenacted.

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