WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression

Chapter 57

"Why do you think this is an opportunity?" asked Ethan.

"Why do you think the war began in the first place?" Osmal Saikal responded.

"Because the Emperor wanted it?"

"The war couldn’t have started without the Emperor’s approval. Right now, though, the pretext for war is the Undying King’s reclamation of his territory. Yes, the Undying King’s pardon was brought about by complicated political dynamics within the Empire, but none of that matters now. The Undying King has come back to life, and as long as the Emperor acknowledges him as a king, the nation of Ysoren has effectively been revived."

Ethan understood what he meant. The Undying King’s troops bore white-and-blue patchwork shields with a clenched left fist painted on them—the coat of arms of the old Ysoren Kingdom. Strictly speaking, they should have been using the current Ysoren fief’s crest.

Ethan asked Boen, "Then what becomes of Margrave Yumuran? The Undying King will surely covet the lands currently under Margrave Yumuran’s control. Will he have to cede that territory to the Undying King?"

"Imperial margrave is an appointed position. It can’t be inherited," Boen responded. "Margrave Yumuran will receive compensation from the Emperor, or perhaps the Undying King promised him a fief of his own? Who knows."

"Instead of dividing up Ysoren’s vast land and handing it out to various lords or formally annexing it into the Empire and having imperial governors rule it, they left it as it was,” Osmal Saikal said, “presumably for a time like this."

"You think they’ve been planning this for 160 years?"

"That’s how I see it. If that territory had been ruled by the nobility, the very identity of Ysoren would have been erased. If governors had administered it, then it would simply have become another province of the Empire. But under the margrave’s oversight, the people of Ysoren grew up hearing tales of the Undying King."

"So the soldiers going to war aren’t just conscripted farmers," Ethan noted.

"Exactly. In Cario’s Heroic Chronicles, the Undying King’s chapter ends with an ominous hint that he can return from death at any time. Within the work itself, that serves as a foreboding prophecy of Hero Cario’s tragic fate, but…"

"For the people of Ysoren, it must have inspired hope for the grand ambitions once tied to the Undying King."

Throughout all the regions of Damarth Yumaha, the Heroic Chronicles wielded absolute influence. Countless children learned about justice, love, and friendship from the traveling minstrels who sang the Chronicles in their villages. Of course, what specific Heroic Chronicle was sung and how it was interpreted varied greatly from one minstrel to another, but it was so broadly popular that, naturally, each region heard it in the manner it loved best.

"Which means,” Osmal Saikal continued, “that if we kill the Undying King, their morale will break."

It was natural that killing the enemy commander would cause the chain of command to collapse, but this was more than that. Because the Empire wasn’t a feudal system, if the commanding officer died but they still wanted to keep fighting, they could simply replace that officer. Here, though, it was different.

Of course, things didn’t go exactly the way Osmal Saikal hoped.

∞

By midday, the Undying King had rallied seven thousand troops who had been waiting in the camp, then added five thousand skeletal soldiers he had brought and advanced on Dilloso.

While Osmal Saikal let his troops rest, he did not neglect to rotate them for wall repairs. The way he saw it, although the addition of five thousand—literally undying—skeletal soldiers was a problem, they were relatively slow compared to regular troops, and once broken, they would take about thirty minutes to revive, giving them limited tactical value. Indeed, when Cora had been attacked, the Undying King hadn’t been able to subdue it with just five thousand skeletal soldiers. Only after receiving thirty thousand troops from the Emperor had he managed to capture Cora.

Moreover, even with two thousand more soldiers than yesterday, there were still only so many who could directly march up to the walls. No matter how skilled the Undying King might be as a commander, the command staff believed there wasn’t much more he could do besides conduct a battle of attrition.

The command staff figured that if things went well, they could hold out at the first wall, and if things went badly, they could retreat to the second wall. The Undying King, as if in mockery of such conventional thinking, displayed a new strategy.

He advanced with skeletal soldiers at the fore. In warfare, skeletal soldiers were known for resisting arrows fairly well. Unless their skulls were pierced precisely, it was difficult to bring them down from a distance. As general infantry, they usually bore shields, so if they covered their heads while approaching, it was hard to stop them from getting close. However, because they were slightly delayed in every movement and lacked a bit of strength, simply pushing away their ladders was enough to topple them if they tried to climb the walls with siege equipment.

When the soldiers saw the skeletal soldiers toppling off their ladders, they got fired up. They felt that the situation was more manageable than they’d expected. Osmal Saikal ordered that soldiers should not tire themselves out beyond preventing the skeletal soldiers from scaling the walls.

After about thirty minutes, the skeletal soldiers changed tactics. Those who had fallen at the foot of the castle walls knelt in the moat and placed their hands against the wall, then raised their shields above their arms to form a platform. The next group of skeletal soldiers climbed atop that first layer to create a second platform. Next, more skeletons ascended those first two layers to form a third, and then yet another group formed a fourth. When the field commander’s report reached Osmal Saikal, he urgently ordered them to pour oil on the skeletal soldiers and set them ablaze.

The Undying King’s human soldiers advanced, firing arrows. In some spots, fire spread, causing parts of the skeletal tower to collapse, but only in a few areas. Osmal Saikal could do nothing to stop the ladder of skeletal soldiers from being formed.

It took less than an hour and a half for this skeletal formation to breach the first wall. Because it fell so quickly, many of Osmal Saikal’s forces did not manage to retreat to the second wall, and so the second wall fell about two hours and twenty minutes after the battle began—with the Undying King again using makeshift “ladders” of skeletal soldiers.

The soldiers finally retreated to the citadel and prepared a siege defense, but the makeshift skeletal ladders seemed unstoppable. It would only be a matter of time before the citadel itself fell.

Ethan asked Osmal Saikal, "What should we have done in this situation?"

Osmal Saikal thought for a moment before answering, "We should have fully deployed our battle mages from the outset to repel the skeletal soldiers. Even if it would’ve exposed the battle mages to danger, it would’ve been better than letting the citadel fall."

"…I’ll pass that along, then."

"…To whom?"

Ethan used Heart Rupture, then Loaded.

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Deploying battle mages to drive back the skeletal soldiers proved effective. Perhaps to preserve his human troops, the Undying King only occasionally fired arrows, and the skeletal soldiers themselves had no real means to threaten the battle mages. Unimpeded, the battle mages ignited their foes with explosions, turning the walls into a sea of flames.

The skeletal soldiers retreated. Many of them had been destroyed so thoroughly that they could not revive at all; their losses totaled at least five hundred.

Three hours later, the Undying King employed a different tactic: catapults. Using catapults in a siege was common, but because of the manpower required to assemble and operate them, siege towers and battering rams generally took priority. Especially against a fortress like Dilloso, built with granite on high ground, a catapult bombardment wasn’t exactly cost effective. Since the Undying King was aiming for a quick victory, it hardly seemed practical.

…But the Undying King wasn’t throwing stones. He loaded skeletal soldiers into the catapults and hurled them at the walls, each volley casting anywhere from five to ten skeletal soldiers into various parts of Dilloso’s interior. Osmal Saikal urgently ordered all available soldiers and non-combat personnel on standby to douse them in oil and burn them, but after about thirty minutes, the original three catapults increased to four, and after another thirty minutes, they increased again to five. Each medium-sized catapult could fire roughly two shots a minute. If each shot hurled five skeletal soldiers, then one catapult could fling six hundred skeletal soldiers an hour. The skeletal soldiers might not survive the journey, but they would eventually get back up wherever they landed.

One hour after the first catapult began firing, roughly fifteen hundred skeletal soldiers were roaming inside the walls, killing people. Thirty minutes after that, all the reserve forces—and, once there were five catapults, even the soldiers who had been guarding the walls—were called back to defend the rear. At this moment, the Undying King’s human soldiers advanced from the front. Under assault from both sides, the first and second walls collapsed simultaneously.

"What could we possibly have done differently?" Ethan asked Osmal Saikal.

This time, Ethan fully expected despair to set in. From what he could see, there was no chance of victory. Osmal Saikal concurred that they were doomed, but there was one difference—he didn’t despair.

After pondering, Osmal Saikal said, "If you truly possessed the power to see that future in advance, then it would have been best not to station my forces here at all."

"What do you mean?"

"I’m saying that the defensive battle I fought here could have been handled by Baron Dilloso himself if he’d known precisely what to do. Even with just fifteen hundred soldiers, they might hold out, at least until the second wall. Suppose I’d taken advantage of that time to lie in ambush and strike at the Undying King?"

Before Ethan said, Let’s try that, he decided to ask Osmal Saikal one more thing: "My lord, do you truly believe you might have won that way? You don’t seem to fear losing."

Osmal Saikal laughed. "Look, Ethan. One month ago, I lost my entire domain, my wealth, my castle, my loyal retainers, and most of my beloved family. Victory is a distant prospect, and there’s no sign it’ll ever return to me. What’s left to fear? Death?" He gazed out the window. "No, nothing frightens me now. If anything, I feel this might all be a stroke of luck."

"Luck? You mean this defeat?"

Osmal Saikal prodded Ethan’s chest with his forefinger. "I mean meeting you and holding Dilloso for even a single night. For someone who’s lost everything, it was one more chance. A second shot at something I never even considered before this war began. And your dark magic was a great help. Truly."

Ethan smiled at him. "You’ll be even more grateful to me soon."

∞

Osmal Saikal successfully persuaded Baron Yocamna Dilloso, then delivered a tactical directive. The baron was startled by how specific it was, but Osmal Saikal discreetly hinted it involved dark magic and was the only way to stand against the Undying King. To many non-mage nobles, dark magic was seen as a means to level the playing field against pompous wizards.

True to Osmal’s directive, the Undying King’s forces attacked Dilloso, and the following day, news reached Osmal Saikal’s command that Dilloso had claimed victory, albeit with more than a thousand casualties—practically a slaughter. Even so, victory was victory.

Before daybreak, the Undying King and his skeletal army approached the site where Osmal Saikal’s troops lay in ambush.

Hidden behind the bushes, Osmal Saikal raised his sword and shouted, "Charge!"

With that cry, the soldiers who still remembered their bitter defeat at Cora surged in unison toward the Undying King’s army.

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