WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
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◈ The Pushover Young Lord in a Romance Fantasy Won't Take It Anymore ◈
Chapter 59: Once Again
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Splat!
Mud exploded in every direction. Slippery blue hands burst from the ground and seized the soldiers by the ankles.
"Uaaagh!"
"It's an ambush!"
"Underground! They're coming out from underground!"
They were surrounded by a dark forest.
A magical beast could have leaped out from anywhere at any time. That was why the soldiers had kept watch in every direction.
But none of them had expected the creatures to emerge from beneath their feet.
Splat!
Grotesque figures rose through the mud like ravenous demons.
Blue scales, hideous claws jutting from their backs, strange gills opening and closing with every breath.
"M-Mermen?!"
"This is crazy! Why are they crawling out of the ground when we're nowhere near water?!"
The soldiers' faces turned pale. Everything they thought they knew had just been shattered.
Mermen were monsters found only in rivers or the sea.
Even if the rain had turned the ground into a muddy mess, they were not creatures that should have been able to break through the earth.
"All troops, attention!"
At Astin's thunderous shout, the soldiers turned toward him.
"Block the ground with shields and stab down with your spears! Don't let them come out!"
The commanders screamed out orders as well.
"Lower the shields! Cover the ground!"
Clang!
The vanguard gathered their iron shields and covered the ground.
"Supply unit!"
Astin's shout rang across the battlefield once more.
"Roll out every piece of lumber we've stored! All of it!"
"Y-Yes!"
The supply captain flinched as they answered.
There was still plenty of lumber left over from the palisades they had not built. That had been Astin's order.
Had he foreseen something like this?
'No, this isn't the time.'
The supply captain snapped back to attention and shouted.
"Didn't you hear the commander?! Roll it onto the ground, now!"
Rumble, crash!
The piled lumber rolled down with a deafening noise.
It hindered the mermen that were about to emerge, but it could not stop them completely.
'These aren't ordinary mermen. They're mermen from the Ashen Forest.'
The mermen dormant underground begin moving when it rains. That was the ecology of Ashen Forest mermen.
Astin had known that much, but the timing had caught him off guard.
He recalled the contents of the journal.
During Lucia's expedition in the first timeline, the subterranean magical beasts had only appeared after they passed the entrance.
That was bad news in the long run.
If the mermen had settled near the entrance, it meant they had been pushed out of the food chain long ago.
'Does that mean magical beasts worse than those from that time are teeming all over this place?'
Screech!
"Ghk! They're pushing up!"
A chilling scraping sound came from beneath the shields.
The mermen pushed their heads through gaps and around the edges of the shields, crawling upward. Even their brute strength overwhelmed the soldiers.
At first, there had only been around fifteen of them.
Before long, their numbers had grown to dozens, then hundreds.
"Fuck!"
"There are already so many of them...!"
The biggest problem was where they had appeared.
If they had attacked from the outskirts, the soldiers could have simply driven them back with their defensive line.
Instead, they kept emerging from inside the camp, right at its center.
Their formation was on the verge of collapsing from within.
"Keek!"
The mermen standing in the mud flared their gills and launched themselves forward.
"Fuck..."
A hideous maw and sharp clawed hands rushed toward a mercenary.
They squeezed their eyes shut in terror.
Slash!
But the pain never came.
Drip, drip.
Warm blood splattered across their face.
The mercenary cautiously opened their eyes and saw the headless corpse of a merman collapse before them.
"What are you standing around like an idiot for?! Pick up your weapon!"
"C-Commander!"
A reddish-gold sword aura resonated along Astin's blade.
⸻!
He flashed across the battlefield like lightning, cutting through the mermen's necks.
Even in the slick mud, he did not slow for even an instant.
As Astin bought time for the line to recover, another flash swept through the battlefield on the opposite side.
Clang! Slash!
Elegant swordsmanship cut down monster after monster.
It was Selena, the female knight swinging her sword as her silver hair flew behind her.
She moved quickly through the area, slaughtering mermen.
Even so, Selena's silver eyes kept following Astin's movements.
"Bellutak! My brother! Our time has come!"
"Hahaha! At last, my blood is boiling!"
"Those damned barbarians..."
The barbarian brothers and Jenkinson joined the battle.
Black Knight Bagot was already plugging the gaps in the formation that had been pushed onto the defensive.
"All troops! Fight from the wooden platforms!"
"Get on the platforms! Don't step into the mud!"
Following Astin's shout, Bagot's eyes flashed as he called out.
The soldiers leaped onto the wooden platforms tied together with rope.
Once they escaped the mud and gained firm footing, the formation that had been helplessly overwhelmed began to recover.
The soldiers' spear thrusts gradually gained strength, but the mermen's scales deflected them like armor.
"Their lateral lines are highly developed, so they're sensitive to vibrations! Strike the shields and overwhelm their senses with noise!"
Astin's shout tore across the battlefield.
Clang! Clang! Bang!
Hundreds of spear shafts and sword blades began striking the iron shields at once.
The piercing metallic roar drowned out the sound of rain.
Screeeech!
An astonishing sight followed.
As the metallic noise echoed all around them, the mermen convulsed and rolled about in the mud.
"Now! Drive your blades into their gills!"
Killing intent flashed in the eyes of the soldiers who had been gripped by fear.
"Die, you monsters!"
"The commander was right! It's working!"
Screech!
The soldiers roared and began thrusting their spearheads into the mermen's gills.
Astin shouted again.
"Adjutant! Can you heat the mud with fire magic?"
"Hey! Fire magic doesn't work well on mermen! Wouldn't it be better to fry them with lightning magic?!"
"That would harm our allies too! I didn't order you to burn them! Bake the mud hard like pottery!"
"Ah...!"
Lucia's eyes widened as she finally understood.
He intended to evaporate the moisture in the ground at once with intense heat, hardening it solid.
Lucia was stunned by his split-second judgment.
Whether it would work or not, they would only know by trying.
"All right! Vanguard, protect me!"
Lucia quickly gathered mana. The vanguard formed an ironclad perimeter around her.
Hum.
A red glow began to swirl around Lucia.
At the same time, Astin grabbed the magical communication stone.
"All units, listen! Use magic scrolls to harden the ground! Ring knights, listen carefully! Drive your swords into the ground and heat the mud!"
It was entirely possible, even in this awful weather with rain still falling.
The problem was the danger to their allies. The ring knights were resistant to extreme heat.
Most of the others were not.
"Anyone without a Sun Ring, get onto the wooden platforms! If you keep your feet on the ground, you'll be steamed alive!"
The commanders of each unit answered one after another through the communication stone.
Astin immediately gripped his sword in reverse.
Fwoosh!
Three rings blazed brilliantly up the blade.
Raindrops evaporated with a hiss before they could even touch it.
Thud!
He drove the sword, filled with reddish-gold sunlight, into the ground.
Fwoooosh!
Intense heat burst from the sword tip and spread through the earth in every direction. Combined with the flames Lucia unleashed, the temperature soared in an instant.
Sizzle!
Steam began rising all around them.
Screeeech!
As the moisture rapidly dried up, the mermen shrieked.
Those that had just begun emerging were trapped with only their upper bodies above ground.
Even the wounded creatures trying to retreat underground could not move.
Clang!
Selena watched the whole process from a short distance away. A pronounced, unusual gleam filled her eyes.
'This is absurd.'
It was an unexpectedly early engagement at the worst possible time.
And an underground ambush at the center of their formation, the hardest place to respond to.
Even an exceptional veteran commander would have panicked at first, allowing allied casualties to mount.
And yet that greenhorn Astin, said to have no field experience at all...
"...."
He had assessed the terrain and the enemy's traits, then used them to his advantage.
Though he was the commander, he had also been drenched in more blood than the soldiers themselves.
Selena gritted her teeth. Looking at him, her competitive spirit flared once again.
"Are we really going to cower now?!"
Astin, Lucia, and Selena raced through the vanguard without sparing themselves.
Fighting spirit ignited in the eyes of the soldiers who had been paralyzed by fear.
"You shitty mermen! We'll bury you underground!"
"Die, you monster bastards!"
"Slice them into sashimi!"
The soldiers standing steady on the platforms thrust their spears.
Thud! Thud!
Spearheads stabbed down from above, piercing the mermen's bodies like chunks of meat.
Screech!
Screeech!
As their numbers visibly dwindled, the mermen hurriedly tried to burrow back underground.
Crunch!
"Keek?"
The ground had hardened completely. The muddy earth had already been baked dry.
The soldiers instinctively realized they had gained the upper hand.
The battle became a one-sided extermination.
Unable to advance or retreat, the mermen desperately lunged at them.
But they could no longer withstand the expedition force, whose momentum had risen.
Thud! Slash!
Every time a weapon struck, another beastlike scream fell silent.
Shhhk!
Astin's sword drew a reddish-gold semicircle through the air.
The last merman's head flew upward.
Thud, plop.
The wet head rolled across the hardened ground.
Thump.
With the sound of its headless body falling, the noise of battle that had filled the camp came to an end.
Only the rain quietly soaked the battlefield.
"Whew..."
Astin caught his breath and looked around. No more mermen emerged from anywhere.
He flicked the blood from his sword and picked up the communication stone at his waist.
"All units. Report your status."
The commanders quickly responded.
Reports that the situation had been contained poured in.
"Report casualties."
"Scout unit, all clear. Quite a few have minor injuries, but no one is dead."
"Skirmish unit and main force reporting. All clear. Quite a few have minor injuries, but no deaths."
"Guard unit reporting! We have many scrapes and minor injuries, and thirty-two confirmed dead!"
"Shield unit. No deaths."
Ariel, Hendrickson, Julian, and then the Holy Sword Keeper, who had approached at some point, reported in turn.
As expected, there seemed to have been fewer mermen around the outer edge of the formation.
The guard unit, which had suffered heavy losses, had been positioned near the center like the vanguard and supply unit.
Astin looked around.
The vanguard and supply unit stationed at the center were bound to have suffered serious losses as well.
"Vanguard, report."
At Astin's words, the centurions ran toward him.
"First squad! Forty-three confirmed injured! Five dead!"
"Second squad has thirty-one injured! Six dead!"
The reports from the third, fourth, and fifth squads followed.
In the end, the vanguard had lost a little over twenty people. Including the guard unit, the total neared fifty.
Considering it had been a chaotic battle in the worst possible conditions, it was an extremely low number.
They had suffered an unpredictable underground ambush at the entrance of the Ashen Forest.
It would not have been strange for dozens or hundreds to have been killed or injured.
"Only that many died?"
One mercenary, sitting on the ground and breathing heavily, muttered blankly.
That murmur spread through the camp, carrying profound relief.
"Only fifty people died? In a hellhole like this?"
"If it hadn't been for the commander... We would have suffered far more casualties."
The fingers of the warriors holding their weapons trembled faintly.
They had just witnessed the terrifying ecology of the Ashen Forest with their own eyes.
Grief for the dead mixed with relief at having survived.
Amid the rain falling over the battlefield, the soldiers looked up at Astin.
He had moved faster than anyone else to subdue the magical beasts while giving orders without pause.
He had fulfilled the roles of vanguard commander and field commander perfectly.
Trust and awe for Astin boiled up in the soldiers' eyes.
"Don't lower your guard. Those fifty could have been you."
Astin restored their fading vigilance.
Boosting morale was fine, but what they needed now was vigilance.
"This is only the entrance to the forest. We were lucky enough to catch the scraps that had been pushed out in a territorial dispute."
Tension returned among the soldiers.
That only strengthened their trust in Astin.
'How can he be this reassuring even while saying something that kills the mood?'
'He's different from those nobles who only bark orders at us. His judgment is sharper than generals who have spent their whole lives on the battlefield.'
'A commander who leads from the front and cuts down magical beasts himself. I've never seen anyone like that in my life.'
As they dealt with the aftermath, the soldiers kept glancing toward Astin.
He looked like nothing more than a green young lord.
Yet his performance resembled that of a battle-hardened veteran who had experienced more campaigns than anyone.
"...."
Selena was just as shaken.
Her gaze remained fixed on Astin.
Astin himself was focused on his work.
"Supply unit. Recover the bodies of the dead first."
"Yes!"
"Be careful not to let ash cover the bodies. They could rise like undead and become one with the forest."
The supply unit began moving quickly, while the dismantling team started processing the mermen's corpses.
The vanguard also gathered their weapons and reorganized their ranks.
Astin looked thoughtfully at the pile of merman corpses.
'This will be harder than Lucia's expedition in the first timeline.'
The mermen had been pushed to the outskirts by food competition.
Since they had entered too early, unforeseen problems were bound to arise.
'Had the lifespans of the apex magical beasts run out by then?'
Astin changed his mind. If he trusted the journal too blindly, it would only bind him hand and foot.
Leaving the soldiers behind, Astin turned his gaze.
A short distance away, his eyes met Selena's. She stood with her bloodstained sword hanging at her side.
There was no usual contempt or indifference in her silver eyes.
Her gaze held a tangled mix of complicated emotions.
The corner of Astin's mouth lifted slightly.
Selena gave him a long, meaningful look before turning her head away.
She was probably just bad at expressing herself. Astin did not approach her unnecessarily.
Poke.
He felt something at his side.
When Astin turned, Lucia stopped poking him with her elbow.
"You really were amazing. If it hadn't been for you, Commander, there would have been even more..."
Lucia continued showering him with praise, smiling brightly.
Before the battle, Lucia had tied her hair back.
Astin looked at her with wide eyes.
...Commander.
Astin rolled the word around in his mouth.
"If I die, you become the commander. And if you die first? That won't happen. You know my instincts. I'll die before you do."
That was what had happened in the end.
Only now did Astin understand the sincerity in those words.
"It's all thanks to you, Adjutant."
Astin opened and closed his mouth as he looked at Lucia, barely managing to force the words out.
"If you hadn't been here, the casualties would have been at least twice as high."
"...I think that's a bit much."
"No. I'm serious."
It was the truth without any exaggeration.
Without Lucia's mana, it would have been difficult to harden the ground.
Sweaty strands of hair clung to Lucia's cheeks.
Lucia tucked them behind her ear and looked away as though pretending not to care.
Clank.
Golden armor suddenly blocked their view.
Astin narrowed his eyes at the Holy Sword Keeper. Lucia stared at her with wide eyes.
Without caring in the slightest, the Holy Sword Keeper unfastened the Holy Sword from her back.
The golden hilt exposed between the bandages was thrust before Astin's eyes.
"Hold it once again."
Reading between the lines, it was the Holy Sword Keeper's highest praise.
Someone like you surely deserves to wield the Holy Sword.
Even though he understood, Astin frowned deeply.
'Is she seriously a crazy bitch?'
Author's Note
I'm posting an extra chapter today to keep the story moving quickly. Another chapter will be uploaded at noon.
Footnotes:
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