Fun Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord (Novel) - Chapter 107 - Behind the Scenes
Chapter 107 – Behind the Scenes
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Translated by Sylph
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Arte.
“Lady!
This is bad!
A huge army is heading this way!”
“I-I understand!
The wyverns are gone now, right!?”
“That last one was the last of them!
The enemy’s coming to crush us first!?”
“Even with all this, fighting knights head-on is still at a disadvantage, right?”
As I listened to the adventurers’ reports and raised voices, I pressed a hand to my chest as if to hold down my heart, which was beating like an alarm bell.
When I lifted my face, the entire field of vision was filled with the approaching soldiers of the Yerinetta army, along with roaring shouts and the rumble of their charge that made me want to cover my ears.
“We will intercept the Yerinetta army!
The core of our attack will be the ballistas and the mechanical bows, so everyone else, raise your shields and devote yourselves to defense!”
“Yessir!”
At my order, a coarse roar answered me.
I was truly grateful that everyone would obey the words of someone like me and act on them.
“Lady Arte.
Shall I use magic to hold them in place?”
Plurier-san checked with me.
I nodded and looked at the enemy army rushing toward us.
“Can you freeze the ground under their feet? If we can make them unable to move in place…”
“The area I can affect is limited, but if it’s only this front directly before us, I can do it. Still, if they hit us in that many numbers, we’ll be crushed in no time.”
“Please. If we can hold them back even a little…!”
When I bowed my head and pleaded, Plurier-san nodded with a troubled face.
“Van-sama is the same, but lately nobles just keep changing my impression of them.”
After muttering something softly, Plurier-san turned back to Orto-san and the others.
“Everyone, move with everything you’ve got toward holding them in place. No matter how you look at it, if we let them get close, we lose.”
“The range at which our arrows reach is also the range at which theirs will! Even holding them up has its limits!”
“…If only we’d brought Lord Espada with us.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Perhaps from anxiety, the adventurers all made a great commotion as they prepared.
I really couldn’t match Van-sama. I lacked knowledge of battle, and I couldn’t even stop my trembling legs.
Then at the very least, I had to do everything I could do.
“Orto-san! Please take command!”
“I-I can do that, sure, but what are you planning?”
“I will go to the front line!”
“What!?”
Turning away from the shocked voice of Orto-san, I looked up at the wagon in the center. On its driver’s seat sat a man from Van-sama’s mechanical bow unit.
“Please, the puppets!”
“Understood! Which ones will you use?”
With a smile, the man opened the wagon’s side panel and turned toward the inside.
At the back were the mithril puppets, but those would consume too much mana. There was no way I could sustain a long battle with them.
The Wood Block Dolls next to them, clad in iron or mithril armor, could be moved for a long time. My control would become rough, perhaps, but if I did my best I should be able to move two at once.
“I will use these two puppets! For their weapons, give them the longest blades possible!”
“Two? Then the longest we have are these longswords…”
“Thank you very much!”
I thanked the startled man in a hurry and invoked my magic.
The two puppets that stirred to life moved a little more stiffly than usual, but somehow managed to grasp their swords, stand, and step down from the wagon.
“Please take care of me.”
When I spoke to the puppets, the two raised their swords before them like knights and gave a bow.
From the driver’s seat, the man who had returned there was staring at the scene in blank astonishment.
How embarrassing. He’d seen me talking to the puppets I myself controlled. I could feel my face turning red.
“I’m going!”
I quickly turned on my heel and ran with the puppets in tow.
In one burst I reached the very front and took up a position where the battlefield could be seen clearly.
“Lady Arte!”
Orto-san came running up to my side at once. His gaze immediately shifted to the puppets standing behind me.
“I see! So these are the ones going to the front!”
“Yes!”
I answered and set the puppets in motion. With swords at the ready, the two ran out and split left and right before vanishing into the enemy army.
“Scatter the enemy, Pair of Silver Knights, Aventador!”
The infantry advancing behind great shields had assumed the enemy to be a corps of magicians and were trembling with extreme tension.
The clash of infantry against infantry is terrifying, but being struck from afar by high-level magic is even more terrifying. Infantry, archers, cavalry, if they don’t relax and if fortune favors them, they may survive.
But magic is different. If a high-level fire spell comes flying directly at you, you will unquestionably burn to death.
Whether one could even reach the enemy’s throat would truly be left to fortune.
That was why, as they advanced to attack the enemy reinforcements on the hill, the infantry were shaking with extreme tension. They had just seen the wyverns brought down in a single blow, after all.
And yet one of those infantrymen suddenly raised a voice of shock at the sight before him.
“…They’re coming at us alone!”
“What, one person on foot without even a horse!?”
“A decoy!?”
Though confused, the soldiers all raised their shields and spears at once. One of the commanders also doubted his own eyes, but quickly raised one hand and barked out orders.
“To challenge us alone is foolish! Front line, spear them to death! Rear ranks, be wary of arrows and magic! This is a ploy to pin us down!”
At that command, the soldiers moved in haste. Certainly, if one didn’t know the situation, the two silver-armored knights would seem to be no more than decoys.
Two highly conspicuous figures charge in with abnormal recklessness, cause confusion and freeze the enemy’s movement, and then magic would slash their numbers apart.
That would have been the normal expectation.
And yet what actually happened was even more unexpected.
The ones who were blown away miserably the instant of collision with the wall of spear-bearing infantry were the infantrymen themselves, the ones carrying the heavy shields.
It was as though a battering ram or some other siege engine had crashed into them at high speed, with violent impact and thunderous sound, and armored soldiers were sent flying like a bad joke.
That incredible spectacle, occurring almost simultaneously on both flanks of the Yerinetta army, brought the enemy advance completely to a halt.
“S-stop them!”
“Where are the magicians!?”
The commanders desperately tried to stop the silver knights who were splitting open their ranks, but for the soldiers directly facing them, it was hopeless.
They braced themselves and thrust with their spears, but even when the spear clearly struck, the shaft simply snapped in two midway up. They tried to catch the greatsword of the silver knights with their shields and stop it, only to be cut clean through shield and all.
“M-monsters!”
“Damn it! It’s coming this way!?”
“M-move! How the hell are we supposed to stop that!?”
In a battlefield filled with screams that sounded absurd for a war, one of the commanders ground his teeth while cold sweat ran down him.
“…This isn’t war. It’s just a field of slaughter. And by only two people…”
The instant those words left his mouth, there came the slicing of wind and a violent sound almost like an earthquake, and a hole opened in the commander’s chest. Armor made no difference at all. Like paper pierced by a needle, the man’s body was opened up and he died.
When the soldiers saw the body fall limply from its horse, their will to fight vanished in an instant.
“Damn it! I’m running!”
“Idiot, stop pushing!”
“Get out of my way, bastard!”
By the time curses and shouts had begun mixing into the screams and shrieks, the Yerinetta army was no longer functioning as an army at all.
Seeing that, the group led by Arte switched the magic, mechanical bows, and ballistas they had been using to hold the enemy in place over to pure attack.
With the silver knights cutting down enemy soldiers while racing freely through their ranks, and ranged attacks added on top of that, the Yerinetta army collapsed completely.
And then, as the Yerinetta army fled in all directions, an enormous cheer rang out from the hilltop.