205: They say the tide of battle turns on betrayal, huh.

Nobuna felt the massive concentration of magic gathering on the battlefield.

"Something insane is coming!"

Her brother Kanetsugu also sensed the overwhelming magic, looking up at the sky.

"N-n-n-no way... something huge's about to hit us!"

"Absolutely. Kanetsugu! Summon the spirit guardians specialized in defense!"

"R-right, right, got it!"

Nobuna and Kanetsugu sent orders to their subordinates. Kanetsugu was shy and hesitant, but surprisingly good at commanding troops.

"“““I call upon thee. Come forth from the underworld! The One-legged Umbrella Child!!””"

The summoned spirits appeared as umbrella-shaped beings with one leg. A swarm of One-legged Umbrella Children floated above the Mizuho warriors, enveloping them.

The moment the familiars unfurled above the warriors’ heads, the enemy’s magic activated. It was a curse so vile it recalled the ancient days when magic was called sorcery.

Scorching red rain—like boiling mercury—poured down in a torrent. A forbidden spell beyond human endurance, turning everything it touched into ash.

Back when Nobuna and the others were defending Mizuho, they wouldn’t have survived it. But they weren’t the same as they had been.

What Nobuna had seen by chance through Goldendawn was the training of the Kendal siblings.

After all, training daily with adventurers, getting badly injured every single day—no wonder they were shocked.

Kids don’t go to the battlefield, sure. But the kids wouldn’t stop wanting to train, and the adventurers found it useful too. So they kept doing it.

Nobuna zeroed in on the training method. The front line used Healing Potions like water, slashing each other with real swords—something you’d never do in normal training. It wasn’t just swordplay. It was training in using potions too.

But what caught Nobuna’s eye most? The back line—those using magic. They pushed themselves to the brink, casting spells until their magic ran dry. Then they’d gulp down Mana Potions, force it back, and keep going until they collapsed.

Seeing their magic grow stronger every day, their mana levels rising—no way they could just stand by.

Nobuna immediately begged her grandfather Shingen, wrested the mana potion budget from him, and then spent every day pushing Kanetsugu’s unit to the brink of collapse, training like they were dying.

She was no longer the same person she’d been during the Mizuho Defense.

That was why she’d barely managed to suppress the powerful magic, reminiscent of the ancient magical civilization.

Of course, she didn’t come out unscathed. The familiar spirit, drained to its limit, had weakened the scorching rain’s power significantly—but in the end, it burned itself to ash.

She’d survived only by chance. The match between the familiar’s abilities and the enemy’s attack method probably helped, too.

The weakened scorching rain still struck Mizuho’s soldiers.

“Full stop! Immediate healing! Lucky for us, the surrounding monsters were caught in the magic blast—none nearby!”

Shingen raised his voice. Just as he said, the monsters surrounding them had been caught in the magic blast—clear space opened up around their position.

After using the potions, Mizuho’s soldiers withdrew flawlessly to the fortress, not a single one left behind.

Thus ended the first battle between the Durbatten Empire and the MauGalia Kingdom—another overwhelming victory for the Kingdom.

◆

For a while, the situation remained deadlocked.

The monsters surrounded the fortress, while the Empire attacked from a distance using trebuchets and magic, which the Kingdom repelled with spirit summons and spells.

The number of monsters had halved, but even so, tens of thousands still remained. The Kingdom couldn’t afford to go on the offensive.

Then, the Empire made a move to break the stalemate. From beyond the outer wall following the riverbank, they launched a sudden assault along the shallow riverbed.

But...

"Been waiting for you, Empire troops! Take this!"

It was Julara, the lizardman warrior and village chief, shouting.

He’d hidden in the water, lured the enemy in, then burst out into the shallow stream all at once.

"Got to earn Craft’s approval and become a proper guard, I tell ya!"

"Shurruu! Watch your tongue!"

Among the lizardmen who leapt out at the same time, there was also Shurru, a lizardman shaped more like a human.

Lizardmen were naturally far better at underwater movement than humans, and now they had water-breathing potions too. On the riverbank, there was no one who could match them.

The Empire had thrown in monsters capable of fighting both on land and in water, but most were hydras. To experienced lizardmen, they were just easy prey.

Sure, we’d’ve had a hell of a time without the underwater breathing potions.

The imperial army was a mess.

Every time they tried to push through the shallow waters, lizardmen would suddenly rise from the deep, scatter the ranks, counterattack, then vanish back into the depths before the empire could even react. No choice but to stand there and bleed as wave after wave of lizardmen attacked.

Thanks to Alphard secretly smuggling the monster-bait kit and underwater breathing potions to Craft, the lizardmen handled the defense of Don Keep like pros.

And someone else really stepped up. Jitarou, of all people.

He’d signed up as a volunteer, crewing a steamship as an archer.

When the imperial forces hit the shallows, he positioned the steamship behind the lizardmen’s lines and kept them covered.

Fighting in the shallows was mostly chaos. The steamship’s role was rescue and treatment of the wounded. But archers with skill—those volunteer adventurers good at long-range attacks, including Jitarou—ended up providing covering fire.

“Here we go!”

Jitarou was a hunter. He didn’t hesitate to take lives. Especially not from a creature that dared to attack his beloved Golden Dune.

Still, the real threat in the shallows came from monsters like hydras, able to move freely between land and water. So most of his arrows were aimed at those.

Anyway, Jitarou ended up being a real asset.

“…Huh? That’s it? That’s all I get to do?”

◆

The tide of battle shifted sometime around half a month later.

Suddenly, a massive swarm of eels surged from upstream of the Dōn River and latched onto one of the bridge supports.

It happened far beyond sight from the fortress—too distant to see.

Oddly, only that bridge support had dozens of ropes tied to it. The raft soldiers grabbed them and started linking them together. From their vantage point, the fortress was just a haze in the distance. No movement. No one noticed. The soldiers breathed easy.

But it wasn’t just the ropes on the bridge support that were strange. Dozens of ropes hung down from the bridge itself.

The soldiers climbed up the ropes, just like they’d been trained. But before they could even start, the bee man shot through the air—whizzing straight to the bridge.

A small group of Mizuho soldiers waited up there.

“Hey. Looks like you kept your promise?”

“Mizuho samurai don’t break promises. That said—”

"Hey, don't go saying that to everyone."

"..."

The Mizuho samurai had been about to speak, but stopped mid-sentence at the bee man’s quiet warning.

"Ah, well done. I’ll keep my promise. Trouble, but I’ll keep it."

"..."

"Still… damn, what a massive bridge. Brings back memories, y’know."

The bee man muttered something vague, but the samurai said nothing, just listened.

"Anyway. How many troops are on the bridge?"

"The defense of the bridge is under my command. Right now, most of them are gathered at the Doom Fort side."

"So no enemies on the bridge itself? Not even a single one between here and that town—Goldendoon?"

"Yep. We’ve been playing our part."

"Good, good! Then everyone up the bridge—move out!"

And so, the bulk of the Imperial army, which had hardly lost a single soul up to this point, now formed up on the Doom Bridge.

The final one of the Three Great Houses, Masamune Saintclair, had finally betrayed us.