Chapter 210: The Rules of War
Dawn fog settled heavily over the plains.
The cries of monsters that had filled the battlefield until the night before had grown quiet, and shattered shields along with corpses were still strewn about. Yet they were no longer being trampled. The scars of battle remained, but the presence of those who had fought had vanished.
Sentinels narrowed their eyes and peered out toward the front.
Something was wrong.
The enemy's numbers had not diminished, nor had they withdrawn to a distance. On the contrary, they had gathered in even greater numbers. Groups that had been scattered across the plains, forests, and mountains were now falling into formation at regular intervals, as though nothing had ever been amiss. The sight of it was far too orderly to be coincidence.
"……That, whatever it is, definitely isn't a retreat."
At the soldier's murmur, the comrade standing beside him nodded without a word. He kept his gaze fixed and gripped the spear in his hand more tightly.
Shortly after, scouts returned to camp one after another.
Left flank—no anomalies. Right flank—no contact. Front……enemy concentration confirmed.
The reports were brief, yet their echo lingered in an unsettling way. The smaller groups had vanished, replaced by enemies formed up in ranks, perfectly still. No retreat, no advance.
The Alliance Forces' command mapped every piece of intelligence onto a chart.
Red markers overlapped and converged into a single line. Dots that had been scattered in disorder were now arranged as though answering some summons.
"The speed of their assembly……is remarkable."
Sier Lagrin, dressed in priestly robes, spoke.
"No. It isn't that it's fast—it's already finished."
Helmut Barben, a knight of the Niboria Empire, corrected him.
"They are not moving now. This was planned from the beginning."
A cold wind blew from outside. As the fog thinned slightly, the silhouettes of the enemy lines grew sharper.
The heads of the monsters each faced different directions, but their center was one. Groups deployed at regular intervals from that single point. Not a single individual had broken out of formation.
Voices in the Alliance Forces' camp naturally fell away.
Even the newest recruits sensed it by instinct. Today was different from yesterday. Just standing still, they could feel it against their skin—the atmosphere had changed. Beyond mere tension, an unquantifiable weight pressed down on them.
The only ones who appeared at ease were the Mountain Rabbits. Volga stared at the front for a long moment, then reached for his helmet and muttered,
"Not a single one charging out of line anymore. Well, they were kind enough to keep us well-stocked with warm-up targets all this time."
But no one laughed.
And it was true. Among the monsters standing at the vanguard, not one individual rushed forward recklessly. Even The Corrupted, even those that might have been used as bait, were holding their positions.
The enemy was calculating its losses.
One of Latia's captains said in a low voice,
"It seems an order has been given."
No one added who had given that order. The silence that had settled over the entire front line was answer enough.
More than anything, the air had changed.
Dark mana coiled densely and blanketed the area. The sunlight turned pale and wan, and from beyond it rose an unknowable presence—a force that seemed to press down upon the hearts of the living.
Calix was watching the scene from afar.
Standing outside the battlefield, he peered into its deepest point. He calmly traced it all in his mind—the distance at which the enemy had formed up, the scale and depth of their forces, the likely collision points to come.
A great battle was approaching.
And in a form entirely unlike anything that had come before.
The Alliance commanders called it strange, but what Calix saw was something different. This wasn't strange at all—
‘This is the signal that preparations are complete.’
And that signal meant they had reached a point from which there was no turning back.
***
Reports came flooding in simultaneously from across the front lines.
"Left flank, enemy concentration confirmed. Enemy standing by in dispersed formation."
"Right flank, same. Maintaining distance."
"Central front…… No movement. Formation locked."
The reported information was pinned to the map. The red markers no longer shifted. Where before the movements had been difficult to predict, they now held a clear shape. The spacing between the left and right flanks, the depth of troop density between units—nearly identical ratios across the board.
Master Belmar murmured lowly,
"This makes it certain. This is no coincidence."
Until now, the battles had been closer to a melee. The monsters had surged forward on instinct. They took bait when it was thrown, and reacted reflexively when the front lines were jabbed. Cutting through and exploiting that chaos had been the Alliance Forces' strategy.
But now, it was different.
Even when struck by surprise, the enemy did not respond. Even when lure units were sent in close, not one followed. They looked but pretended not to see.
No—to put it more precisely, they were waiting for orders from the higher-ranked individuals.
"Any further feinting operations are prohibited. Maintain the current state until they show a meaningful response."
When Calix issued the order, a commander from the Niboria side hesitated briefly before speaking up.
"What about pressing forward at the outset? From what I can see, they seem to have no will to fight. Now would be the perfect moment for a surprise attack."
"That won't do. It's too reckless."
The one who cut him off was from the Mountain Rabbits' side. Marik looked around at the Alliance commanders in turn.
"It isn't that they have no will to fight—it's that something has appeared which suppresses even the monsters' instincts. Once full-scale battle begins, they'll come charging in as though none of this ever happened, with total disregard for their lives."
"……Even so, there's still a possibility of gaining the upper hand in the opening exchange."
"Yes, perhaps there is."
He answered with a composed expression.
"However, we are human. We cannot fight without emotion the way those creatures do. Sometimes we summon courage greater than anyone—but sometimes we are gripped by fear worse than any mouse. That is why the atmosphere matters."
The commanders' gazes turned toward Marik's face.
"……You're speaking of the flow of the battlefield. There is merit in that."
Mage Yelayen lent his voice to the argument.
"That's right. This is not the time to chase short-term gains. To defeat the enemy called De Generitum, we must move with a long-term plan. Have we not already scouted the surrounding terrain in advance and arranged the composition of the battlefield accordingly?"
Calix simply watched in silence as Marik argued with passion. There was no need to add anything further. It was knights, above all, who had received the highest level of education.
"Hearing it laid out, the risk is not small. If the opening offensive were to fail, the small victories we've accumulated until now would lose their meaning."
"Soldiers' morale will collapse. In the long view, that is a far greater loss."
Royce added to this as well.
"More than anything else, the enemy's change is unmistakable. They fall back but do not flee. They mass but do not cluster too tightly, and even when approached, they do not permit contact."
"That means—"
"Yes. It's a pre-battle deployment."
A strange silence fell over the Alliance Forces' command center. Before anyone could speak, they had all arrived at the same conclusion.
That the battles until now had been a preparatory phase. Even the chaos that preceded it might, perhaps, have been an intentional process.
"……It seems the enemy's chain of command is functioning."
The brief remark defined the military situation with clarity.
The rules of war had changed.
Until now, the enemy had been small, fragmented groups—but they had become a single army. And within that organization, there was, without question, a center.
The Mountain Rabbits and the Alliance commanders simultaneously turned their gazes. Beyond the enemy lines, toward somewhere. Not yet visible, but felt against their skin.
Thud.
Just then, the ground shook.
***
Dark mana solidified and devoured the air. What revealed itself in the next moment was a silhouette like a mountain in motion.
"……What is that?"
Atop the watchtower, a sentinel murmured, dazed.
Beyond the fog, from the far side of the forest, a giant was walking. A massive body encased in enormous armor. Iron chains that stretched to its shoulders, and skeletal beast decorations that dragged along below its waist. With every step its enormous feet struck the ground, trees snapped and clods of earth flew upward.
"That's a Legion Commander. It's Gromchi—'The Great'."
Mage Yelayen said briefly, and that name spread across the entire front line in an instant. Thanks to its sheer size, this was a being known even among civilians. The only difference was that until now it had been the legend of a story—and now it had become reality.
Behind Gromchi, giants of similar size marched in procession. Relatively smaller, yet each one matched the height of a decent castle wall. They carried neither shield nor spear. As though their bulk and weight alone were sufficient, they advanced bare-handed toward the battlefield.
The problem was the path they were carving as they marched.
"……They don't even distinguish between their own side."
As Volga said, Gromchi paid no heed to what lay in its path. The groups of Corrupted standing at the rear of the front lines were kicked away and crushed. Pinned beneath the giant's feet, their limbs twisted and were driven into the earth.
One step. Then another. With each step the giants advanced, the pile of corpses grew.
"Wait, doesn't that actually work in our fav—"
Someone started to speak, then stopped.
The enemy's front line did not break.
It had clearly been trampled from the rear, yet no gap appeared. Something strange was occurring within the spaces between the fallen Corrupted.
What had been trampled was rising again.
Naturally, they were not unscathed. One shoulder had caved and collapsed. Leg bones bent grotesquely. Waists twisted at unnatural angles as they staggered, and several severed forearms rolled along the ground. Black blood soaked the earth.
And yet, they forced their bodies upright.
"Is everyone seeing this? It's not just my eyes, right?"
The soldier on the watchtower grabbed his comrade's arm and demanded,
"Just now, clearly—"
"It got stomped. It died. That's what should have happened, but……"
The monsters could not stand properly. Like puppets suspended from strings, they merely pressed their shoulders against the creatures beside them.
The wounds remained. The bodies were ruined. Their movements had visibly slowed. Even so, they ultimately held their place as one pillar of the line.
Niboria's Master, Sevi Belgrado, ground his teeth and spat,
"It resembles Kohtan's power. It looks as though time is being reversed."
"It isn't."
Mage Yelayen exhaled a small sigh and continued,
"What that is, is the denial of death itself. The link connecting flesh and soul is being forcibly held together."
"……Is such a thing possible?"
"If you twist the natural order, it is."
It was then.
The dark mana flickered subtly once more.
This time it was not the giants, but behind their procession. A position neither high nor low—ambiguous. Compared to the massive monsters, a single form of a size that would be easy to overlook was standing there.
"……Is that a person?"
Volga narrowed his eyes. The distance was too great to make out a face. Only an outline bled through beyond the fog. Whatever it was—black cloak or tentacles—trailed and whipped in the wind. That silhouette was astonishingly slender and upright.
Meanwhile, another group of Corrupted was swallowed up beneath Gromchi's feet. Bones were ground to dust and organs spattered.
A moment of silence.
Then, suddenly, the form raised its arm.
And what had been crushed moved once more. Monsters with necks twisted halfway around, with ribcages laid bare to the open air……forced themselves to stand on two legs.
The gaps were filled.
Yelayen let out a low murmur and spoke the name,
"Legion Commander Marcaron."
Stillness drifted through the camp. Just as the humans had gathered the wielders of swords—the Masters—the enemy was meeting them with Legion Commanders.
Calix closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. The balance of the battlefield was shifting. If what should die did not die, the battlefield would never close.
That was the rule Marcaron had set.
But now, Calix had his own.
Thud.
He lifted his scabbard and struck the ground with measured force. The Masters from each nation, the Mountain Rabbits, and the renowned knights all turned their gazes to Calix's face.
"We are no different. If that monster twists the natural order……"
If he had intended to step back here, he never would have made it this far to begin with.
A light of conviction settled into the young man's eyes.
"We will twist fate."
That was the answer Calix gave.