Evade The Hero and Flee!

Chapter 266

Side Story – Memories of a Princess (41)

*53 Their Circumstances: A Certain Soldier’s Circumstances

“Ahhh….”

I blankly stared at the silver stars falling from the sky. 

It was impossible to escape.

I could only leave everything up to the gods and await my fate.

“Why did this have to happen?”

Desperate screams could be heard from all around.  

The mages used all their power to cast magic barriers, but they could not stop the ice boulders glinting in the moonlight.

“What are these mages doing!”

“We can’t stop them!”

“Scatter! We need to minimize the damage!”

Officers everywhere tried to disperse their troops, but was it easy to follow orders in such chaotic situations?

Absolutely not.  

Morale had already been extremely low in this unit to begin with.

It was good that we killed General Pelstein, the Empire’s great commander.  

But most of our own troops died to take his one life.

Ahh… To suffer such heavy losses just to kill a single imperial general.  

No matter how strong our kingdom might be, can we really oppose the Empire like this?

Such thoughts were deeply rooted in our minds, when we were suddenly attacked all along the front lines.

The damage was small. At most a few carriages burned or some injuries.

Other than two deaths from horses rearing back, we didn’t suffer much damage.

But the problem was that this attack caused all commanding officers to lose their composure.

Being so sensitive to attacks occurring tens of times per day will do that to a person!

It was only natural.

What is most important to a human being?

The acts of eating, sleeping, and fighting. Food, shelter, and clothing were the most vital things.  

No matter the battlefield, these three activities were protected to a degree that showed how essential eating, sleeping, and excreting were to human life.  

There’s a saying to not bother a dog while it’s eating!  

But the Empire wasn’t a dog, it was human, so of course they bothered us.

We were attacked while eating meals.  

No lives were lost, but tables caught fire and the food we were eating rolled around on the ground.

These vicious enemies wouldn’t even let us relieve ourselves in the bathroom.

No, there were several instances of the bathrooms themselves being bombed.  

On multiple occasions I saw soldiers who, in order to stay alive, had to hastily run out before finishing up, with tears running down their cheeks.

Sleeping was no exception.  

Regardless of how ineffective the attacks might be, once it happens you can’t just go to sleep.

Frequently making weak attacks to get us accustomed to them, then hitting hard for profit, was one basic tactic.  

What if some radically stronger magical bombardment than normal hit us while we slept?  

Everyone had that anxiety, so to stay alive we had no choice but to jump out from our bedding.

Like that, after a day, two days, five days, ten days, and then a whole month passed, not only the soldiers but even the commanders were bound to become mentally deranged. 

Fights kept breaking out between soldiers over trivial matters.  

No matter the battlefield, being unable to fulfill one’s basic human needs made everyone oversensitive in their reactions to everything.

The commanders unleashed all kinds of abuse towards our allied mages and sorcerers.  

While it was their job to pursue and shoot down enemy mages, they hadn’t captured even one.

More than anyone, the commanders knew well that it was impossible.

The enemy didn’t care at all about attack power or precision, sniping from an extremely long distance.  

Even if we detected the magic and started a pursuit immediately after it was fired, there was no chance of catching them. 

Should we have waited in line and ambushed them instead?  But that’s not so easy.  

Mages aren’t average soldiers.  

They are highly trained specialists.  

Not only could they not keep watch on the sky all day long with their limited magic, having them all on standby in the air not knowing when they might need to act was impractical.

Yet the commanders had nowhere else to direct their frustration besides the mages and sorcerers, and soon enough one of the generals made an extreme decision.

“All troops, move in a dense formation at high speed!”  

He was not a brilliant tactician, but he had been a cautious general.  

Yet now even that general had lost his reason.   

Rumor had it that the reason for launching an attack was that the general had taken the enemy’s bait, but could such a dense formation really have been the right move?

No doubt being packed closely together made it easy to block the enemy mages’ attacks.   

However, if the enemy mages unleashed a large-scale magical bombardment, it would be an extremely dangerous formation.

Warnings rang out from various places, but the general pushed ahead anyway, and at first it looked to succeed. 

The enemy attacks were easily blocked by the magic barriers conjured by our mages, and we could at last regain proper eating and sleeping.  

We realized how a mere comfortable rest could make a person this happy!

“Ahhh….”  

But that was all a story of the past.

While on sentry duty tonight, none of us recognized what the silver objects falling from the sky were when first spotted.

A meteor shower?  

Some of us observing the silver objects plunging from the sky even made wishes on them.

It gave the impression of falling straight down rather than a curved trajectory, but no one paid it any mind.   

The mages weren’t reacting after all.  

If it had been an enemy attack, there was no way we wouldn’t have received warning before they drew this close.

As we kept watching the sky, someone among us muttered softly.  

“Hrm? Isn’t that too close?”

Realizing something was amiss, but it was already too late.

Boom!  

The thing that had fallen quickly smashed one of the nearby tents to pieces.  

“What was that sound!”

“What’s happening now!”

Squelch!

An officer who had rushed out due to the sudden disturbance transformed right then and there into a bloody lump.  

That was how it started.

The continuing hail of icy boulders and our troops changing to lumps of blood and flesh.  

Commanders trying somehow to calm the soldiers, and mages expending magic power to block the attacks.

Those escaping in order to survive, and those like me abandoning everything and resigned to our fate as we awaited the end.   

As I watched them and then raised my eyes skyward,

“Ah….”

I closed both eyes upon sight of the silver mass plunging toward my head.

Squelch!

#54 Their Circumstances: The Circumstances of a Certain Villain 

“It’s amazing Major.”

“Yes!”

“Is that so?”

I receive the mages’ report with an expressionless face. 

The mages are surprised once again by my expression that seems to have expected everything.

“You are amazing.”

Yeah. I think I’m amazing too. I didn’t think about it at all.

“Currently, most of the enemy has died. Although the number of remaining troops is quite large, there is no command so they can be easily defeated.”

I just nodded at the words of the mage who had just returned from reconnaissance.  

“I will report to Her Highness.”

“Yes. The remaining enemies can be handled by the main force.”

“The next order is….”

“Rest. You’ve worked hard so far.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to say this but please continue reconnaissance.”

Reconnaissance is an important principle, after all.

When playing the traditional strategy game, why send a worker to gather a little less minerals?

It was because seeing what the enemy was doing was important.

It was to find out with one worker whether the enemy was going all in with the remaining troops, secretly multi-tasking, or macroing.

“I understand.”

The mages who had come to report all bowed their heads and began to retreat from my tent.

It was a completely different appearance from when I first saw them.

Well, that can happen.

Back then, a guy they had never seen or heard of, had appeared in a parachute and taken over their chain of command.

“Haa….”

Long after the mages had left, the sigh I had been holding in came bursting out.

“Why so awesome?”

I couldn’t help but be surprised as I listened to the mage’s report.

The enemy was nearly annihilated!

“To think they even killed the enemy general….”

Up until last night, everything had gone according to my plan.  

I kept harassing the enemy, who had been maintaining consistent large forces, gathering them in one place.

And I bombarded them from above.

“It clearly all went according to my plan….”

When I succeeded in gathering the enemies in one place by continuously provoking them, I was preparing to retreat.

It was to prepare for the enemy to get angry from the bombardment and charge.

“Where did it go wrong?”

But my efforts were in vain.

No, I had to build even more tents for the main force troops to come afterwards.

“Ahhh….”

I let out a hopeless sigh, holding my aching head.

“I’m doomed….”

I set up the ball perfectly.

I’m a villain, a spy sent from an evil organization, but I set up the ball perfectly for the imperial family again.

“Damn it! At this rate I’ll get promoted….”

The battlefield is a very dangerous place. You never know when and where your life could become endangered.

Soldiers can be used up like consumables at any time, and commoners like me who became nobles could be killed by the schemes of jealous nobles. 

“Please just let it be wartime special treatment….”

War is a battle of attrition.  

It is the process of consuming money, time, and human lives to take something away from the enemy.

If you win, you can gain everything, and if you lose, you can lose everything.

“Will I get it?”

And I won.  

I gained the right to take something.

It was highly likely that it would be a title.

I already received a Barony for saving a high elf last time.

“No! I can’t become a high ranking noble!”

It was too high of a title for a member of an evil organization.

Being an honorary noble was beneficial in carrying out missions.

The organization was also happy with a Barony.

Yes, I can say a Barony is acceptable.

But a Count?

It’s a threat.

Think about it from the organization’s position.  

A subordinate member became a Count. And a Count of the Empire, one of the greatest powers on the continent and one that only had two in existence.

As a title raised from a commoner, his fame would surely spread, allowing him to enjoy wealth and honor.  

If I had such a subordinate, what would I think?

Would I wield him however I wanted using his identity as a member of an evil organization as a weakness? Or would I kill him since he could sell the secrets of the organization?

“Definitely the latter.”

In the former case, I could gain tremendous benefits if things went well.

But Howling was already said to be the best evil organization on the continent, no, in the empire, where only two existed.  

For such a large evil organization, they had to consider the damages rather than the benefits.

Due to the nature of evil organizations, there was a risk of losing everything just to gain small benefits.  

“I can’t.”

Look how hard I worked!

I worked hard to earn money, faked my death during a mission by chance, escaped with my savings to a remote village to live a peaceful life!

It wasn’t to get caught up in a power struggle after becoming a noble and get killed, or be assassinated by the organization for being a traitor!  

“Surely they won’t give titles so easily right? However great the wartime special treatment, he’s becoming a high ranking noble….”

They say the best place to earn titles is the battlefield, but I believed in the title of Imperial Court, the symbol of the Empire’s high nobles.  

And,

“Congratulations, Count Ast!”

“Your Highness?”

I was right at the brink of stepping on the axe I believed in.

#55 Their Circumstances: The Circumstances of a Certain ???  

“Annihilated?”

“Yes.”

One man frowned at the report.

“No matter how incompetent, to be annihilated….”

“I’m sorry.”

The frowning man looked at his bowing subordinate for a while before getting up from his seat.

“Alright, I’ll have to step in myself.”

It was the beginning of the fall of the Merdeah Kingdom.