Fun Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord (Novel) - Chapter 105 - Arte's Battle
Chapter 105 – Arte’s Battle
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Translated by Sylph
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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It seemed the Kingdom of Yerinetta’s invasion had been even more fierce than expected.
According to what we had learned, the villages and small towns near the border had been overrun in the blink of an eye, and the enemy was now advancing by the shortest route toward the largest city, the castle town.
I suppressed my impatience and continued toward the castle town.
At last, if we just crossed that hill, the castle town would be there.
My heart, tangled together with anxiety, hope, and fear, was on the verge of making my body run before I knew it.
Then, into my ears came the sounds of people screaming and things crashing against one another.
“…Mother!”
I couldn’t endure it.
On the verge of tears, I jumped down from the wagon and ran through the adventurers toward the front.
“Ah, little miss!”
Someone tried to call me back, but their voice didn’t reach me.
I sprinted straight ahead and ran up the hill.
And what I saw upon reaching the top was the castle town utterly transformed.
Pitch-black smoke rose from all over, and part of the walls had been completely destroyed.
Around that area there seemed to be nearly ten thousand soldiers, and five wyverns flew in the sky.
Something was being dropped from above, and pillars of flame rose as if to burn the castle town to the ground.
“…Arte-jou!
The wall only just came down not long ago!
If we go now, we can still make it in time!”
Gasping and shedding tears, I almost collapsed where I stood, but Orto-san grabbed my shoulder and stopped me.
“Listen, Arte-jou! There isn’t any time! Hand command of this group over to me! Right now, we might still manage something!”
At Orto-san’s desperate voice and desperate words, my heart regained a little of its calm.
I grabbed both his arms with my own hands and raised my face.
“No. If the Kingdom of Yerinetta is to be driven back, then it must be done by someone of House Ferdinand… everyone! Prepare the ballistas! This has become an ambush from an extremely conspicuous position, but please lend me your strength! Please save my hometown!”
I shouted desperately. I cried shamelessly and turned my exploding emotions directly into a plea. As a noblewoman’s daughter, my words and manner might have been the very worst possible, but the adventurers all raised their arms and answered me with voices like battle cries.
“Leave it to us!”
“If it’s for Arte-jou, then we’ve got no choice!”
“Hell yeah! Let’s show those Yerinetta knights what adventurers can do!”
At those words, tears spilled from me again.
“…Please!”
Meanwhile, in the count’s house.
A report from a fast rider had arrived.
The neighboring town had been attacked. The knights stationed there had found it difficult to contend with the enemy, and after evacuating the citizens they had retreated here to this city.
The enemy was Yerinetta. This was not one of the usual skirmishes or exercises. According to the report, they committed only the bare minimum of looting, then after resting in the villages and towns they seized, they had headed straight here.
The speed of that advance made their strategy clear.
“…So Scudetto, the key point on the border, was merely a decoy…”
Muttering that, I moved my gaze from the lord’s chamber to the view outside. Black smoke rose into the air, and people’s screams could be heard even from here. From the corridor came the clatter of soldiers running about in armor, so much so that I could almost mistake it for the inside of the castle already being a battlefield.
It had been more than twenty years since I married Bariat, the current head of the house. More than once I had imagined a situation like this.
As the daughter of a viscount house, I had believed long ago that my resolve as a noble had already been firmly set. But once it truly stood before me, anxiety and terror took hold of me.
I was simply, helplessly afraid.
How would I die in the end?
My sons had gone with my husband. Of my daughters, all but the youngest two had already married out. It would be fair to say I had fulfilled my role as a noblewoman’s daughter. But that did not mean I was ready to think it would be fine to die.
“M-mother…”
Perhaps my fear had spread to her, because my twelve-year-old daughter clutched the hem of my clothes and spoke in a trembling voice.
I gripped her shoulders and looked down at her almost as if glaring.
“You are not to cry! At the final moment, I will kill you in such a way that it appears self-inflicted! People will know that you ended your life properly, nobly, and with dignity. So be at ease.”
When I told her that, she made a pitiful face, but quickly lowered her chin and gave a small nod.
“At times like this, I almost think it would have been better to marry you off quickly instead of merely betrothing you.”
When I muttered that, my daughter let tears spill. I had meant to keep teaching her until she was fifteen and send her off in a state befitting a noblewoman, but never had I imagined something like this would happen.
Even so, there was no point in complaining.
That was right. At the end, I had to die in a way that brought no shame to a noble. My final duty was to die with dignity, in a way that would not disgrace House Ferdinand or the house I was born into.
The words I had meant as a stern rebuke to my daughter echoed back into myself as well.
Outside the window, wyverns flew above the city.
It felt as though the screams and tumult were drawing nearer and nearer.
“…As a noble, as the wife of a count, I have always disciplined myself. I am not wrong. I am not wrong.”
As if telling myself so, I muttered it under my breath.
“M-mother…?”
At the anxious face of my daughter looking up at me, I saw the face of the youngest daughter I had decided did not exist layered over her.
“…Arte.”
I murmured the name and closed my eyes.
I had lived at the cost of my life, in order to avoid disgrace and to be spoken of as a proper countess. When raising my eldest and second sons, I had educated them with every nerve in me held taut. The same was true when the fiancés of my eldest and second daughters were decided.
It was at such a time that I learned of Arte’s magical aptitude.
It was as though the thread I had kept pulled tight for twenty years suddenly snapped, and I completely lost myself. I began to think that everything I had lived and risked my life for as a countess would be destroyed by this one daughter.
And so, I decided that my youngest daughter did not exist.
But now, standing here at the moment when I knew I would die, I could only think what a foolish choice I had made while remaining trapped by the laws of nobility.
Concerned only with noble appearances, I had shut Arte away in a room and would not even go to see her.
What a terrible mother I had been.
She must hate me terribly, and yet I still found myself wishing she was living well.
The place I had sent her to was a tiny frontier village too insignificant to be worth conquering. It surely offered far better odds of survival than we had here.
“…Hypocrisy. Such hypocrisy that even making such a wish is unforgivable for me.”
After saying that, I shook my head from side to side.
And then, at that very moment, I heard the sound of a soldier running into the lord’s chamber.
The door was thrown open violently, and an older soldier looked at me and spoke.
“R-reinforcements! A small force, but powerful reinforcements have appeared!”
At those shouted words, I reflexively looked out the window.
A wyvern flying before my eyes took some kind of attack, lost its balance, folded its wings in front of itself as if shrinking its body, and then dropped helplessly to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“A wind magician!? To bring down a wyvern in one blow, how many reinforcements could that require…!”
The sight before my eyes made me cry out without thinking. When I turned back, the soldier was looking at me with a complicated expression.
“I-I don’t know, but a flag bearing the crest of House Ferdinand has been confirmed! However, they are clearly not a knight order that belongs to the count house!”
“W-what do you mean!? Surely you don’t mean… not my husband, then!?”
I asked that back in confusion, but there was no one who could give me an answer.
Who could have foreseen this crisis for House Ferdinand and come to its aid?
Caught in a whirl of shock and confusion, I pressed my hands together before my chest and prayed.