WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Inept Mage’s Infinite Regression

Chapter 60

A checkerboard of dark and light squares, sixteen across and sixteen down, was placed between Ethan and Boen.

Boen, who had been in his dorm room waiting for winter vacation, looked at Ethan with a puzzled expression.

"Why a Rocaf board all of a sudden?"

Rocaf was a game in which each player placed pieces on the board, moved them according to certain rules, and captured the opponent’s pieces and removed them from the board. The victory condition was to capture the opposing King.

Each person was given 32 points. Soldiers and the King cost 1 point, Knights cost 2 points, Princes 3 points, and Mages 4 points, and so forth. Within that total point limit, you could choose whatever pieces you wanted. Because there were so many possible combinations, including extreme ones, people who liked Rocaf and had their own favorite combination of pieces might well carry them around.

Boen looked at Ethan and asked, "Do you even know how to play?"

"What do you take me for?"

Because Rocaf required a board and pieces as well as a plethora of exceptional rules, it was often considered an aristocratic hobby. However, it was an ancient game, and because Rocaf pieces could be improvised by roughly carving wooden blocks, many commoners also enjoyed it.

"Have you heard that saying?" asked Ethan.

"What saying?"

" 'He who dominates Rocaf dominates the battlefield.' "

"You’re talking about Grand General Riod. He’s worthy of admiration, but I’m skeptical about any cause-and-effect between Rocaf skill and actual command ability. To begin with, the complexity is entirely different. Of course, if someone’s good at Rocaf, they have decent calculation skills, so in warfare they might be able to calculate outcomes more quickly than the enemy commander. There might be some correlation, but that’s all."

"I’ll verify that for you," Ethan said.

When Ethan spoke so confidently, Boen opened a drawer and pulled something out: a Rocaf set carved from black stone. Ethan immediately recognized it as valuable.

"Where’d you get that?"

"Bain liked Rocaf. He was also pretty good at it. I had to be his opponent, but he hated looking at an opponent’s shabby pieces, so he got me a matching set. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to use this."

Ethan silently nodded in agreement. Ethan had a wooden board and wooden pieces he’d found in a corner of the Combat Magic Society’s workshop. It wasn’t as high-end as Boen’s, but it wasn’t cheap junk either.

Boen asked, "What combination are we using?"

"Let’s go with the standard. No, wait, this game has you decide who goes first, then that person declares their combination, and the other side matches it accordingly, right?"

"I don’t want to beat you by too big a margin. If you use the standard combination, I’ll use the standard combination too."

"How do you know my skill anyway?"

Boen shrugged. "You’ve never once shown any interest in Rocaf."

He wasn’t wrong. Ethan had played Rocaf a few times at home, but it didn’t suit his temperament to sit quietly for a game, so he’d never enjoyed it. Still, he did know the rules in detail.

"All right. Anyway, I’m going first, right?"

"Yes."

Ethan chose twelve Soldiers, two Knights, one Mage, one Mage Hunter, a King, and a Prince. That was a total of 24 points, leaving six points unused. Those six points were converted into tokens, which could be spent when the Mage piece declared magic or when the Prince was promoted to King.

He placed the pieces within the two rows in front of him. The arrangement was also important, and Ethan set up in the best-known formation by separating the King and Prince, covering them with Soldiers, and opening up lanes for the other high-value pieces. Boen arranged his own pieces similarly, and Ethan took that as confirmation that he wasn’t making a mistake.

"All right, let’s do this."

Ethan made the first move. In the opening, he thought he was trading pieces evenly, but before he realized it, his King was caught in checkmate. Ethan hadn’t even felt like he was losing, so it was a crushing defeat.

Boen, who rarely laughed, grinned as he looked down at the board. "I hate to say this, but I don’t think there are many people in this school who can beat me at Rocaf. Even the professors, though they are intelligent, don’t really spend their time playing Rocaf. I’ve got enough talent at it that Bain was astonished."

Ethan imagined loading and reloading until he eventually secured victory. Quite seriously, he said, "If I used dark magic, I’d probably win."

"But what would be the point of that?" Boen pointed out. "It’s just a game."

He had a point.

"I don’t really believe in Riod’s words," Ethan said, "but I’m planning to play some Rocaf for a while."

"What about your training?"

"I’ll do it, but it feels like I’m in a slump. I think it’s fine to take a breather and refresh myself a bit. You’ll play with me, right?"

"Sure, sounds good." Boen, nodding his head, felt something was off and asked, "Are you actually going to command a war or something?"

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Whenever Ethan had some spare time, he would go alone to the field on a hill and accept Broker Quests from Zir in Limbo and gather red-spotted mushrooms. At night, he would enter Limbo and play Rocaf against Zir. The merchant would only shake his head—and Demi said Ethan wasn’t at her level yet. Zir was better than Ethan, but not as good as Boen. Then, once he returned from Limbo, he did what needed to be done.

Strictly speaking, Ethan really was commanding a war. It was just that none of the soldiers taking his orders realized their commander was Ethan.

Commander Ethan never gave rousing speeches to the troops, nor did he huddle up with a staff of officers to hold debates. Instead, Ethan intercepted carrier birds traveling between birdhouses and various forts and strongholds, confiscated their letters, then forged new ones, which he stamped with the appropriate seals before sending the birds on their way again. Demi mentioned “hacking,” but Ethan didn’t fully understand what that meant.

The letters penned by Ethan were received by various commanders, who believed them to be orders from some higher-ranking noble or even from their king, and they directed their troops accordingly. The tactical directives were meticulous and filled with detailed intelligence about enemy forces.

The directives were so flawlessly thorough, in fact, that sometimes a commander would send a scout to verify, but a single check was enough to set aside any doubts. If suspicion did arise and the orders failed to be conveyed properly, Ethan would devote more effort to crafting even more refined documents—purchasing different paper or changing up his handwriting style. By capturing and releasing just a few birds, Ethan orchestrated the movements and divisions of armies from Yekatan to Kardien.

At first, everything proceeded according to Osmal’s plan: Yocamna’s forces alone would defend Dilloso, Osmal’s troops would hold off the Undying King, and in the meantime, Yekatan’s vanguard would head back to Toevi while Kardien’s main force struck Cora.

Of course, not every step went smoothly. Even if Ethan transcribed Osmal’s strategy perfectly, the final wording of the orders and the nuances of certain phrases sometimes proved ambiguous, so the instructions weren’t always carried out as intended. Ethan rewrote countless dispatches so each army’s commander could accept them without question. That was Ethan’s way of commanding.

Ethan would make a move, and then the Undying King would respond in kind. The Undying King devised ever more elaborate maneuvers, exploiting Ethan’s weak spots. If enemy forces pursued them, he would bury skeletal soldiers just beneath the surface of the ground as an ambush. He suspended skeletal soldiers beneath merchant ships to infiltrate fortresses, and loaded catapults with bones dug up from graveyards to trick enemy forces into mistaking them for skeletal soldiers. Sometimes, his troops played music throughout the night so enemy soldiers couldn’t sleep, leaving them exhausted.

In turn, Ethan would send letters to Osmal, Yocamna, and other defeated commanders, asking for their thoughts on how to avoid such losses, and he’d receive their replies. He even asked Boen for help. At Ethan’s request, Boen, traveling through Palmize to Tobira, met with Osmal and pretended to be a dark mage. Not all the proposed ideas were feasible or realistic at the time, and some were just absurd. Still, it was good enough for Ethan.

Then, Ethan would counter the Undying King’s moves. He would dig tunnels under the walls that needed defending, propping them up with wooden support beams, then intentionally abandon that wall. When the enemy occupied the structure, Ethan’s side would slip into the tunnels, set the beams on fire, collapse the wall, and recapture the fortress. By keeping track of which direction the wind blew, he had small teams of scouts set fires that spread and burned through the enemy’s positions. Knowing the exact location of enemy ambushes, he circumvented them and struck back, and hidden mages were always caught by the Mage Hunter.

In battle after battle, many commanders showed remarkable skill, but they remained humble since they were only following orders and tactical directives from someone they assumed was their superior. Through numerous victories, Ethan saved countless fortresses and soldiers’ lives. In doing so, he repeatedly received C-rank lottery coupons from his Quests, which he used whenever he got the chance.

Among the items he drew, the “printer” seemed useful but required a “smartphone” or “computer” to operate, neither of which he had access to. The Polaroid camera looked valuable, but he could also record things with the Gespenst V. The set of balls and gear for sports like soccer, volleyball, and baseball seemed worthless at first glance, but it turned out that the shoes—such as the soccer cleats—were quite handy. Comfortable, lightweight shoes were rare in Damarth Yumaha.

Among the new Skills he acquired, “Computer Proficiency” was useless and only frustrated him, though he thought it might help him someday understand the “hacking” that Demi had mentioned. He thought “Urban Sewer Maintenance” and “Outdoor Window Cleaning” might come in handy eventually. From the Archive, “Library Cataloging” was of no use. Mages had already developed categorization systems for books in Terra, making standard Terra cataloging methods largely irrelevant here.

On the other hand, “Ore Classification” could come in handy. Ethan felt it might someday synergize with his existing “Metallurgy (B).” The biggest shock, though, was “Modern and Contemporary History of Estonia.” He gained no benefit whatsoever from knowledge of that region’s recent history in Terra, and even worse, most of the specific details were incomprehensible to him in their current state. According to Demi, to fully explain Estonia’s modern history, Ethan would have to first unlock other items, skills, or archives. All he gleaned was that Estonia was apparently a nation in Terra that had been occupied by great empires before finally gaining independence. Plenty of countries in Damarth Yumaha had similar histories, so it didn’t seem significant to him.

Ethan sighed. “Not a single decent draw out of nine.” Still, he wasn’t disappointed.

When a carrier pigeon arrived bearing news that Osmal’s forces had won a battle, Ethan confirmed the casualties, the wounded, and the state of the supply lines. Using a D-rank lottery coupon, he had obtained a “ballpoint pen” and a “notepad,” and he was copying many different documents into it. He could now compare the total number of troops from Kardien and Yekatan against the Undying King’s forces.

“At first, Kardien and Yekatan had a combined total of 41,500 soldiers, versus 35,000 for the Undying King—a ratio of eight to seven…”

Ethan drew a line through those notes and rewrote them.

“Now, Kardien has 8,700 and Yekatan 5,900. That’s 14,600 against the Undying King’s 7,600. The gap has narrowed to two to one.”

By intercepting and releasing pigeons as though painting a map of war across the sky with his quill, Ethan was steadily gaining the upper hand against the Undying King.

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