Defending a village is simple enough in theory, but in practice, it requires adequate facilities, personnel, and know-how.
The village is surrounded by a forest, a veritable home ground for Dark Elves. However, the village itself is little more than a crude wooden palisade, hardly a fort.
While there are guards patrolling the village perimeter, who have established the settlement in a location less prone to monster attacks, it’s undeniable that these defenses are insufficient if one considers them as a proper fortification, let alone a fortress.
Of course, equipping every town and village with defenses comparable to a fortress would incur immense costs, and the maintenance expenses would not be negligible either.
Furthermore, the usable land becomes limited if one considers locations suitable for building a fortress.
Therefore, it’s not the village that was attacked this time that was at fault.
They were simply unlucky to have been targeted.
“!”
The first to notice something amiss was the Tree King, Lunaria.
Startled, she slowly rose from her seat and stepped outside the tent.
“Tree King? Is something wrong?”
As Lunaria stepped out and gazed into the distance, falling silent, a nearby soldier asked if something had happened.
“…”
Having emerged from the tent, Lunaria was concentrating, trying to sense something and could not answer the question.
To avoid disturbing her concentration, one by one, the others fell silent, supporting her in what she was doing for a few seconds.
“Deploy the soldiers evenly in all four directions. Mobilize the resting soldiers as well, and request cooperation from the village guards. The enemy is coming.”
“Yes!”
Her demeanor instantly changed. The gentle aura she possessed began to be replaced by a piercing presence.
Sensing that this was no ordinary matter, the soldiers acted swiftly without question.
Only the messenger soldiers and Lunaria’s immediate attendants remained in the tent. Amidst the growing commotion, Lunaria moved.
“Tree King, where are you going?”
“I’m going to the front lines.”
“What?! Is the enemy so formidable that you must move yourself?”
Her attendant asked, but Lunaria answered concisely and did not halt her steps.
“Dispatch messengers. Adra to the western commander, Sert to the north, and Mars to the south. They should be able to minimize damage. I will handle the east. And tell them to hold their defensive positions until I arrive.”
“…”
She then signaled for messengers to relay her optimal personnel selections, leaving only her attendants.
“You, take a few people and order Himusumi and the others to return.”
“No! I am here to protect you. I will send a messenger to the two Dungeon Testers.”
When Lunaria tried to dismiss her attendant, the attendant objected to the order.
“Go. It is an order.”
However, facing Lunaria’s firm tone, urging haste, the attendant could not say another word.
There was only one thing he could do: finish the assigned task as quickly as possible and return to his master’s side.
The attendant bowed once, indicating his understanding, then dashed away.
“Well, I hope this maneuver provides us with some information about the enemy.”
Lunaria, who had distanced everyone and was now heading to the front lines, was acting as the highest-ranking official on site. If one were to assess her actions as a person in charge, she would be far beyond a failing grade.
If this were a strategy to undermine the current Demon Lord regime, it would be a fatal move.
While such actions are commonplace for the Oni King or the Dragon King, these two are exceptions. There is usually no need or reason for such actions unless absolutely necessary.
Despite this being common knowledge, Lunaria walked forward without hesitation.
She proceeded to the troops assembled on the eastern front.
Upon Lunaria’s appearance before the unit of about a hundred men, including her retinue, the soldiers murmured, but the captain’s sharp command silenced them.
“Tree King, why are you here?”
“I will be in command here.”
The captain, having restored order, stepped forward and questioned Lunaria’s presence, but she, unconcerned, responded curtly.
Ordinarily, the sudden appearance of the highest-ranking commander might cause confusion.
However.
“Understood!”
The captain, his voice echoing clearly, acknowledged Lunaria and snapped to attention. The soldiers behind him rustled and simultaneously straightened their postures.
“Very well, then.”
Nodding with satisfaction at their response, Lunaria did not hesitate but took the lead of the unit, having determined that the enemy would approach from this direction.
“Let’s make them realize who they aimed their arrows at.”
She unleashed the magic power within her.
Her magical capacity far surpassed that of most generals.
With a cool expression, Lunaria let her magic power waft. She opened her eyelids, which were normally closed.
Her eyes, revealed from beneath her closed lids, were golden.
What’s more, they weren’t just ordinary eyes.
They were Spirit Eyes.
A special pair of eyes gifted by the chief of spirits to those deeply connected with them.
These eyes themselves were pseudo-mana cores and a testament to contracts with spirits.
The surrounding magic power was instantly replaced by a more potent atmosphere. Lunaria herself paid it no mind, but the beings manipulated by Dazzlo instinctively sensed danger. However, they revealed themselves according to their orders.
No.
“Spirits of the Earth, reveal the forms of my enemies.”
With just these words, whispered by Lunaria, an earthquake occurred, and something sprang from the earth, forcibly revealing itself.
“Astoldrake!?”
A snake-like dragon, over thirty meters long, with rough, file-like scales. It had huge, scissor-like fangs around its mouth and no limbs. Its slender body had evolved other senses like temperature perception and smell to compensate for its degenerated eyesight, enabling it to move underground. Known also as the “Hunters of the Underworld.” They are ferocious dragons that normally lie dormant in their territory until prey arrives, and then they attack from directly above. They are dangerous beings, rumored to have preyed on dragon species larger than themselves.
One of the soldiers called out the monster’s name, but that was not the only astonishing thing.
What first emerged was only an individual from a “shallow” location, expelled from the ground. The earthquake had not yet subsided.
One, two, three . . . they were continuously expelled from the ground.
Seeing their numbers, the soldiers’ shock was palpable.
“…Ten Astoldrakes.”
The sound of someone swallowing echoed, only to be drowned out by a high-pitched, non-draconian shriek, as if to intimidate the very ground from which they were expelled.
With this number, they could certainly wipe out regular soldiers and the village itself.
“Quite the…”
However, that would have been the case if Lunaria were not present.
“They’ve underestimated me.”
The soldiers’ inability to fall into a panic was solely due to her presence.
While the Demon Lord is the strongest in the Demon Lord’s Army, Lunaria, the Tree King, is among the top echelon of generals. Each general has various epithets, but Lunaria’s battlefield moniker is fixed.
“Do they truly believe they can handle ‘just’ ten of them by pitting them against nature?”
In terms of magical power alone, Lunaria vastly surpassed a single Astoldrake. However, her attire was hardly suited for the front lines. Provoked by her taunting words, the Astoldrakes became enraged. One of them opened its massive maw, its blade-like fangs poised, and lunged to cleave Lunaria in two.
“Wind.”
With that single word, its massive body was blown skyward. The Astoldrake struggled against the abnormal wind but could not escape. Successively, their supposedly hard scales were torn apart. And then.
“Sever.”
With the next word, its body was bisected vertically.
“First, one down.”
Lunaria, who fundamentally disliked combat, did not boast of her achievement. Nor did she display any aggressive emotions.
“Now, let’s deal with the rest.”
As if casually picking up pieces of trash from the roadside, she spoke, facing enemies that would normally warrant a military mobilization even if only one appeared. The earth split, the winds raged, water roared, trees thrashed, and lightning fell, as if nature itself had turned against the Astoldrakes.
“Lunaria of the Calamity.”
The Demon Lord’s Army’s foremost spirit user. Only she knows the exact number of spirits contracted to her. She is so powerful that it is said that becoming her enemy is equivalent to fighting nature itself. The Demon Lord himself once muttered in frustration that if she were hostile, she would be the first to be killed, possessing such power. Other generals also find fighting her to be the most troublesome. The result of this was the devastation.
“And that’s all of them.”
Within mere minutes, she had wrought the present devastation, including the additional monsters that had arrived. Confirming that there were no more monsters within her range of perception, Lunaria hid her golden eyes again beneath her eyelids. With that, the oppressive pressure subsided, and the tension in the soldiers’ shoulders eased slightly. The number of monster corpses was overwhelming, easily exceeding a hundred, though not reaching a thousand.
“Now then, I leave the examination and disposal of the corpses to you. I will head north and proceed to eliminate the remaining threats.”
Lunaria herself, who had caused this destruction, was untouched, not even a drop of blood on her. Moreover, despite unleashing multiple disasters akin to great magic, only the monsters suffered damage, and the forest returned to its original state. Among the soldiers Lunaria chose were many veterans, but there were also Dark Elves who had never witnessed Lunaria fight. That is precisely why they felt both reverence and fear at her ability to create phenomena like natural disasters without incantations, or with near-single-incantation spells, without even summoning spirits. As if accustomed to such emotions, Lunaria rode the wind towards the front lines where other beasts were attacking.
From there, it was a streamlined process. Annihilation in the north, annihilation in the west, annihilation in the south. The east was likely the main target. Compared to the east, the monsters in other directions did not include Astoldrakes, and their numbers were also less. While there were other large monsters, they were inferior to the Astoldrakes. Lunaria went to the most numerous direction and sequentially eliminated the monsters.
“This confirms my suspicion that this was an organized attack.”
After finishing the annihilation in the south and defeating the last monster, Lunaria reached her conclusion. While there was certainly a leader-like presence within the horde, if a monster leader capable of fighting so tactically existed, they would not engage in such wasteful combat. Their haphazard assault on the village could be seen as beast-like, but conversely, their inability to retreat even in the face of the overwhelmingly powerful Lunaria suggested a deeper purpose behind the attack itself.
“However, it doesn’t make sense.”
Considering the quantity and quality of the annihilated monsters, it was an extraordinary group as a single fighting force. She pondered why such power, capable of being manipulated, would be used in such a disposable manner. Suddenly, she had a realization.
“Was the objective to keep me pinned here?”
If one considered it within that strategic framework, it made sense. The village and Lunaria’s soldiers alone would have been unable to hold back the initial Astoldrakes and would have been overrun. If the other hordes were also distributed in a slightly superior manner to prevent the dispersed soldiers from containing them, thereby preventing Lunaria from leaving, and if the four-pronged attack was calculated to account for Lunaria’s travel time in order to buy even a little time, then.
“This is a blunder.”
Though it was merely speculation based on a series of “what ifs,” Lunaria became convinced. There was only one objective. Furrowing her brow, Lunaria took to the sky, carried by the wind, without any guards. Relying on the spirits to transport her to her destination, she descended upon the scene. What she witnessed indicated that she had not arrived in time.
“Lady Lunaria!!”
“Report.”
Her attendant, whom she had dispatched before the battle, hurried to her side.
“Yes, unfortunately, the investigation team appears to be almost entirely wiped out.”
“I see.”
Looking at the bodies of her subordinates scattered among the monster carcasses, Lunaria, who had already anticipated the outcome, listened to her attendant’s report with an emotionless expression.
“Are there any survivors?”
“One female Tester is barely alive. She is currently receiving treatment. It’s touch-and-go, but she should survive.”
“Understood.”
Then, through a gap in the three Dark Elves tending to her, Lunaria saw Kawasaki Midori herself.
“What about the other Tester, Himusumi Toru?”
“We are continuing to search the surrounding areas, but we have not found him. He has probably…”
As she inquired about the other’s whereabouts, the attendant’s response became grim. He had likely intended to say that between dying and being captured, death was the more probable outcome. Even after arriving at the scene, Lunaria, relying on the spirits, had been searching the surroundings, but there were no clues.
“What shall we do?”
Despite the situation, the attendant awaited her orders.
“Summon soldiers and have them search the surroundings. If he is not found after three days, we will report him as missing.”
“Understood.”
In response, Lunaria dispatched a messenger and stood there until the soldiers arrived. Then, she thought.
There is likely a mastermind behind this. An elusive entity, like fighting a cloud. An existence whose form she cannot predict, Lunaria felt a sense of crisis.
“This is an unpleasant development.”
She candidly expressed her feelings as the moon, the sole illumination of the Dark Continent, hung in the sky above her.
A word for today:
Concealing something intentionally can lead to significant trouble later on.
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*The first volume of the novel has been published by Hayakawa Bunko JA. It was released on October 18, 2018. The digital version was released on October 31 of the same year. Volume 2 was released on December 19. The third volume was released on February 20, 2019. The content has been revised and expanded from the version posted on Shosetsuka ni Narou, with the addition of unpublished interlude chapters. Please look forward to the new releases!
A manga adaptation is being serialized in Kodansha’s “Young Magazine The Third.” We hope you enjoy that as well.
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