After that, the battle seesawed back and forth.
Once the light of the greatshields vanished, the knights found themselves on the back foot. The First Defensive Line was nearly crushed under the sheer weight of numbers.
The knights on the flanks—those forming the Second Defensive Line—didn’t have the spare capacity to support the front at all; they could barely keep enemies from slipping past their sides. The front looked as if it would collapse completely, but it recovered when the Eighth through Tenth Lances—thrown in as replacements—plunged into the fray.
What held the line, in the end, was that blue light again.
One Lance—three men led by that large knight—hammered in flames larger than before. The color was a cold blue, yet the scene deserved to be called an inferno.
It was like three dragons rampaging.
The fire licked the earth, whirled into the air, and swept the black tide away.
Behind it, a new blue wall rose. The remaining two replacement Lances must have formed it.
Then, even as that happened, the left wing broke.
The beasts—apparently possessed of a certain cunning—seemed to have learned not to disperse their force; they swarmed a single knight.
They targeted the horse first. The mount was built like a heavy draft horse rather than a thoroughbred, thick and powerful, but outnumbered it couldn’t resist. With beasts clamped onto all four legs, the horse was dragged down by sheer mass.
A whinny and snarls crossed in the air.
The knight barely avoided being pinned beneath the huge body, but with his posture broken he was set upon, his left arm nearly torn away. His young face twisted in pain. Other knights tried to reach him, but the beasts pouring in one after another blocked them.
Panic opened cracks.
On the back of another knight on the left wing, a beast leapt. Distracted by the fallen knight, he was a heartbeat too slow.
The beast’s body was more muscular than a large dog’s.
The impact sent the knight tumbling to the ground. The shock knocked his helmet free, and fangs lunged for the exposed throat—only for the knight’s kick to beat them to it.
With a dull thud, the black body was flung into the air. In that same instant, the knight twisted and rose, rotating as he came up.
His dropped longsword lay far away.
The horse was beyond saving.
What now? From what Masumi could see, the young knight wasn’t someone who could fight with blue flame. Just as Kasumireaz had said—if they could, they would have done it long ago.
But his eyes didn’t hold despair. They blazed with fighting spirit.
He snatched up the shield he’d dropped when he fell. Surrounded on all sides, he swung it like a weapon. The shield’s corner gouged into beasts, smashing and toppling them. A heavy slab of metal had the attack power one would expect, and he kept scattering the pack.
So that was a way to fight, too.
Masumi had only imagined a knight politely cutting enemies down with a sword and blocking attacks with a shield. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sharpness of his movements.
But the valiant stand didn’t last.
With the horse gone—mobility lost—the left wing finally allowed a breakthrough.
Several massive black bodies sprinted straight for the city gate.
Which meant: straight for Masumi and Kasumireaz.
Faced with that hunger made flesh, Masumi’s body locked up.
Then strength flooded into the thick arm around her waist.
“Do not fear. I will not let even a single claw reach you.”
Still holding her with his left arm, Kasumireaz thrust out his right hand.
A small blue flame burst forth—like a phoenix, sharp enough to slice the air. It didn’t thrash and billow like the dragon-fire raging at the front, but its speed and keenness were leagues above.
The charging beasts turned to ash. The phoenix, its task complete, dissolved into the air.
The gulf in power was so wide it didn’t even allow a graze.
Even if the other knights could no longer produce blue flame, if Kasumireaz stepped onto the front line, couldn’t he flip the battle in an instant? Masumi didn’t truly know what “subjugation” entailed, but the impact alone was more than enough to make her think so.
And that led her to a question.
“Is the reason you won’t move from here… because I’m dead weight?”
After witnessing so much pain, she didn’t have the energy to scream it.
“I might be a spy, so you can’t take your eyes off me. But if that means you can’t fight, then hand me to someone else. I won’t run. If you can’t trust me, you can tie my hands and feet.”
When Masumi looked straight at him, Kasumireaz wore a face as if he’d been caught off guard.
He truly didn’t seem to understand what she was saying.
Their differences showed most clearly in basic places like this. Their distance was probably farther than she’d thought.
If you know someone will be hurt, can you really leave it?
If you know you can help, can you really do nothing?
The Japan where Masumi had lived for twenty-eight years was often mocked as “softened by peace.” In modern times, it wasn’t a country where you died if you didn’t strike first, where failing to fight meant losing everything. The news still carried death and crime, but the crime rate was low by global standards. Public safety was good enough for a woman to walk alone at night. Healthcare was among the best. Education was equal. People had freedom to choose their work.
Knowing the world she’d grown up in made her want to cry all the more.
Please—let no one hurt.
Maybe, to people who treated battle as a given, that wish itself was naïve. Weak-hearted. A flower garden for a brain. If someone snapped that at her, the conversation would end right there.
Even so, Masumi couldn’t stop herself from worrying for the knights being injured before her eyes.
She couldn’t simply nod along.
Even if she was told it was their job.
“What are you saying?”
“I can’t fight, but you can. If my being here shackles you, I don’t want to get in your way. A spy suspicion is nothing compared to a human life, right?”
In her sightline, the brawl sprawled on.
The flaming dragons were down to two. More horses lay toppled. Even without their mounts, the knights kept fighting—kept facing the endless tide.
Masumi’s urgency sharpened.
Even if they held the line now, their stamina wasn’t infinite. While they stood here arguing, knees could buckle.
“Don’t tell me—are you worried about them?”
“Why would that be ‘don’t tell me’? Of course I am!”
If she couldn’t help, then at least she didn’t want to hinder.
To Masumi, it was a perfectly ordinary feeling—yet Kasumireaz looked like a pigeon that had just been shot with a pea.
Without asking, she knew: he didn’t understand her intent at all.
The difference between them made her want to clutch her head.
But if, after all this, he still insisted on dithering, she would hit him. She swore it to herself as her eyes hardened—
—and at that very instant, it came.
From behind Kasumireaz, a pale-blue fireball streaked across the sky.
It was huge.
The sphere arced as if tracing the heavens, then dropped deep into the heart of the beast pack. A flash lit the sky. Immediately after, the swelling half-dome of light detonated, blasting away the surrounding beasts.
Masumi watched, breath caught.
Whether it was shockwave or blast wind, beasts caught in the explosion’s wake were hurled through the air, their bodies tearing apart and vanishing.
The knights had dropped to the ground, but still—some lost their balance with their horses, some were dragged several meters across the earth, all of them enduring with desperate strength.
Masumi tensed, but thankfully Kasumireaz’s defensive barrier repelled the impact. She was unhurt.
The power was overwhelming—so overwhelming that even without seeing him, she could clearly recognize the arrival of that presence.
No mistake.
The Supreme Commander had entered the field.
Ark appeared at ease atop his blue roan, narrowing his eyes at the sprawling chaos ahead.
And his very first words were—
“You’ve taken quite a while.”
There it was.
No matter how you looked at it, the one who was abnormal was this man. The knights fighting desperately had to be at their limit. It wasn’t just the scale of the flames; the very “rank” of the magic they used felt fundamentally different. The gap was painfully obvious.
Masumi nearly sighed, but Kasumireaz—who understood the circumstances—explained without missing a beat.
“We’ve cut down roughly half, so the results so far are reasonable. This escort was composed especially of younger men, so they’ve been fully occupied with defense.”
There had been almost no offense to speak of—that was Kasumireaz’s assessment.
In moments like this, his politeness was ideal middle-management. His scolding was brutal when they messed up, but he shielded his subordinates when it mattered—an uncommon kind of superior.
“Of the ten Lances, only three are truly capable combat power.”
He meant that large knight and his men. If even they—after producing three rampaging fire-dragons—didn’t qualify as “capable,” then what on earth counted?
Ark didn’t scold. He simply rested a finger at his chin.
“Well, against this kind of mass, it’s not much of a match.”
“As you imagine. We have been awaiting your arrival.”
“How’s it look as training?”
“They can hold a bit longer. We’re near the city, so I’ve had them deploy conservatively.”
“If I weren’t here—odds of victory?”
“I will step in. I have only allotted my strength to the final defensive line.”
“So they can’t finish it on their own, huh. I’d like to make them do it to the end, but—”
“No. Even if I do not step in, they do have the skill to completely clear them—though it will take time. However, I do not recommend it. More than half their magic is already depleted. If you push them further, losses will worsen. It will interfere with the tournament.”
“Ah… yeah. That would be bad. It was a rare chance for real combat training, but fine—let it go.”
If that was decided, then they’d wrap it up quickly.
Ark looked faintly regretful, yet backed down at once, cracking his fingers.
“But they’re weirdly persistent.”
Tilting his head, Ark stared at the renewed melee where beasts and knights were once again locked together—despite having endured shockwaves and gale-force winds.
Implicitly, he’d assumed that first blow would make the beasts retreat. Normally, faced with crushing power, they would.
“They’re a notorious pack that likes to prey on caravans,” Kasumireaz said.
“Man-eaters.”
Ark’s gaze sharpened.
“Then there’s no point scattering them. I’ll erase them in one go. Pull all riders back.”
His obsidian eyes flashed with a predatory light.
Kasumireaz moved at once, without arguing. At his chest, he pressed his thumb to his index and middle fingers, and in a normal voice issued a short command:
“All riders, withdraw.”
It wasn’t a loudspeaker. Perhaps some magic like a wireless link—because a moment later, the knights’ movements changed.
The first to dash into the safety of the city’s defensive barrier were the flank knights closest to the gate.
Next, the group that had formed the original First Defensive Line barely made it back.
The main force—the ones controlling the dragon-flames at the front—took longer to retreat. With fewer “prey” left in the open, the dispersed beasts concentrated on them.
But there was a reason they were trusted as “real combat power.” They cut down beasts steadily, without panic, and returned to the safe zone.
Recognizing Ark’s presence, every knight’s morale visibly surged.
Only a handful were uninjured; most bore wounds somewhere. The bright red told of the ferocity of the fight, yet they showed no fatigue as they raised their war cries.
Bathed in those voices, Ark didn’t flinch—he only wore a fearless, challenging smile.
“Good work on the cull.”
All the knights dropped to one knee in perfect unison.
“The rest is mine. You’ll be itching for more, but I expect you to pour that into your performance in the tournament.”
The kneeling knights, hands to their chests in submission, didn’t take their eyes off their commander.
A bond of absolute trust.
No one—Kasumireaz included—tried to stop Ark as he prepared to face the beast horde alone. They could do that only because they acknowledged and revered the power their Supreme Commander possessed.
The subjugation entrusted to Ark reached its conclusion before sunset.
Whether that was long or short, Masumi couldn’t tell.
