The arrow storm blotting out the sky came crashing down in an instant like a tidal wave surging in reverse.

Beck stared with wide, vacant eyes as terror slowly welled up in them. His hands had not yet been stained with the blood of those Kingdom bastards, but he had still been through several battles by now. Even so, when had he ever seen a scale like this?

That heavy shadow looked as if it were about to drown the entire fortress. A tiny, ordinary soldier like him caught in the middle of it was no more than a grain of sand, liable to be crushed out of existence at any moment.

"You’ve got to be kidding..."

Beck’s limbs trembled. He forgot even to struggle, and could only dimly feel the whole world sinking into darkness...

"Fuck, get down and stay down!"

His body was suddenly dragged by force, and One-Eye’s furious roar snapped him awake from that paralyzing fear.

"Flatten yourself against the wall! Don’t panic. The fortress’s defensive barrier hasn’t even activated—that’s just ordinary arrows!"

Only then did Beck suddenly come to his senses. Following One-Eye’s order and the movements drilled into him during training, he tucked his entire body into the shadow cast by the battlement.

That corner, usually so disgusting to him, reeking of mildew and piss, now felt unbelievably safe. He watched the black rain fall. Around him, the other soldiers either ducked into cover like he had or skillfully locked their shields together.

The sound of the rain crashed down like thunder, and beyond that, the world fell silent. Even Baron Derik, usually so loudmouthed, wore a grim expression now, letting the arrows strike his solid frame as he stared fixedly below the wall.

But after the "rain" came no clear sky.

Shaking, Beck poked his head out from the shadows and found broken arrowheads everywhere. Fortunately, that volley had not caused them much damage... aside from a few unlucky bastards who had not gotten into cover in time and had been turned into porcupines.

Catching sight of those pitiful "porcupines" out of the corner of his eye, Beck shuddered again. If he had gone on standing there in a daze just now, he might have ended up the same way.

"Th-thanks," he said to One-Eye.

"Heh, didn’t I tell you I’d cover you? Now you know what a bargain you got."

Grinning, One-Eye slapped his sword, then casually yanked the half-broken stray arrow out of Beck’s helmet.

"That half piece of jerky was worth it."

"Y-yeah... yeah, tomorrow’s jerky, I’ll—"

"All men, back to your positions!"

Baron Derik’s roar seemed like it could tear their eardrums apart. One-Eye instantly turned serious again. Without bothering to hear Beck’s promise, he hauled Beck up out of the shadow against the wall, and the two of them pressed against the battlement and stared tensely at the battlefield.

The dust hanging over the battlefield gradually began to clear, and the vast army revealed its grim, murderous true face. A shocking killing intent poured off the iron ranks, enough to make fear rise from the depths of the soul itself.

The crows in the sky scattered in fright, not daring to circle above this place.

"That arrow storm wasn’t meant to kill us," One-Eye said.

"Huh? Then what was it for?"

"To pin us down and keep us from stopping their advance for a while. Look."

Beck craned his neck. As One-Eye spoke, several old men in white robes with golden patterns stepped out from the military formation. Then, in a display of dazzling color, large-scale magic was unleashed.

That magic did not strike the top of the wall. Instead, it slammed directly into the ground below it. Flames burned, earth churned, and the ditches and traps in front of the fortress were erased by magic in an instant.

"Ah! The traps I dug!"

Beck could not help crying out in dismay. He still remembered that he and a number of other equally inexperienced recruits had gone out at night and worked hard to dig quite a few of those ditches and pits. Even for him, a country boy who had grown up doing farm work, his hands had blistered all over when he was done.

"We worked so hard setting those traps, and they’re just gone like that?"

"Heh. If they made those high-and-mighty mages burn a little more magic, then we did our job, didn’t we?"

One-Eye slapped Beck again. "Quit whining and get moving!"

The two of them hurried over to the giant ballista on the wall. Baron Derik, with his usual dead-man’s-face expression, was already standing at a high point. Under his orders, the ballista’s string was gradually drawn back tighter and tighter, and even standing beside it, Beck could feel the skin on his body sting from the eerie glow coming off the arrowhead.

The man-high bolt was aimed at those precious mages and fired. But at that moment, the time gap created by the earlier suppressive volley made itself known. The ballista needed time to prepare. By the time the bolt shot out, the mages had already completed their task and withdrawn calmly back into formation.

They could not even be bothered to spend more magic to block it. Instead, several shield-bearing soldiers were sent sprawling beneath that enormous bolt, flesh and blood exploding everywhere.

"Woooo—"

The war horn sounded again, longer this time, more overwhelming.

Now that the path ahead had been cleared, the Kingdom’s vast battle line visibly began to accelerate. All manner of siege engines were pushed forward, charging straight toward the wall.

The fortress responded at once. The thirty-three magitech cannons at the top spat fire, their targets fixed on those huge machines.

Mages had put up defenses around the siege engines. Looking down, Beck could only see one ordinary soldier after another blasted flying by the aftermath of the magitech cannons, but their numbers were like a vast swarm of ants, packed so densely they blanketed everything before the wall, stretching beyond sight. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The lowly soldiers were like ants too. The ones in front were shot down, blasted apart, or smashed to pieces, and those behind immediately filled the gap. On a battlefield like this, they might not even count as cold numbers.

Higher up, the Empire’s and the Kingdom’s experts had begun to collide. The light there was dazzling, the colors brilliant, and terrifying waves of force came one after another. Just in terms of spectacle, it was far more stirring than the grim, monotonous slaughter below.

But for ordinary soldiers, that place was too high and too far away. All they could focus on was the enemy right in front of them.

Then the bloody close-quarters fighting began.

The Kingdom soldiers climbed the walls along the siege engines. Most of them fell before they could reach the top, knocked from the heights by rolling stones and scalding oil, shattering themselves on the ground below. Only a few managed to climb to the top through sheer luck, but what greeted them was not the fruit of victory—it was the chopping blades of Imperial soldiers, honed razor-sharp during these past days of rest.

Blade struck blade. Flesh and blood flew.

Beck was still a recruit, and at this point he could barely keep hold of his sword. Most of the time, he was just hauling stones and hot oil, knocking enemies off the ladders.

Beside him, One-Eye moved with sharp, decisive efficiency. He had already chopped down several men with his own hands. Now, taking advantage of a brief lull in the enemy’s assault, he turned back and flashed Beck a bloodstained grin.

"Well?"

"A-amazing."

"Hahaha, I’m telling you, I’ve never once lost to those Kingdom bastards in a fight. Back then one of the little shits got my eye with a sneak attack, and your old man here still chopped him down while laughing like crazy!"

One-Eye slapped Beck on the shoulder and kept bragging about his glorious exploits, which he had probably told a hundred times before. Usually Beck would listen with shining eyes, but this time he was clearly distracted.

"What’s wrong?"

"N-nothing..."

"You brat, can’t you just say things straight? You’re a grown man, so why are you so damn mush-mouthed?" One-Eye said irritably.

"I... I was just thinking..."

Beck shrank his neck a little and stammered,

"This time... can we really hold it?"

He looked at his hands. Constantly hauling stones had already rubbed them raw and bloody, and the hot oil that had splashed on him by accident had left his arms covered in red burns.

He felt as if every ounce of strength in his body had been wrung dry, and yet the Kingdom soldiers kept climbing the wall one after another, as if there would never be an end to them.

The sky had gradually begun to darken. Without noticing it, {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} he had already held out for half a day. But on this battlefield, the colors of blood and fire remained forever vivid, forever painful to look at.

"Of course we can hold it!"

One-Eye suddenly smacked him upside the head. "You idiot, what kind of bad-luck talk is that? You’re shrinking back already over this much? Turn around and look—the Empress herself has come up onto the wall!"

Hearing a burst of excited cheers, Beck turned his head. Sure enough, the Empress, who seemed like a god in his eyes, had personally come to the wall. Surrounded by a host of Royal Knights, she stood at the highest point, overlooking the entire battlefield.

Her arrival was undoubtedly a shot in the arm for the Empire’s soldiers. The small flickers of panic caused by the Kingdom’s full assault quickly subsided.

That’s right—even the Empress herself had come in person. She was willing to lower herself and stand here with lowly soldiers like them, and if even she was not afraid, what did they have to fear?

To fight alongside the ruler of the Empire—what an honor that was!

Beck felt his blood heat up too, but...

Beck suddenly tilted his head in confusion. He did not dare stare at the Empress for too long, since that would be deeply disrespectful, but when his gaze had swept over her just now, he had noticed that her expression looked... extremely grave?

Her eyes were fixed on the Kingdom army. Her fingers moved slightly, as though she were calculating something, or puzzled by something.

"Don’t worry. There’s no way these Kingdom bastards can break this place."

One-Eye had not noticed any of that. He just gave Beck another hard slap that nearly made him stumble.

"Get your head straight. Don’t forget we’ve got plenty of brothers in the rear resting up. There’s no way they’re going to let you drop dead from exhaustion here. Hold on. Just hold on a little longer and it’ll be time to rotate out. I heard wartime jerky rations are triple."

"T-triple?"

At the mention of triple jerky, Beck swallowed hard, and his attention was yanked right back into place. "R-really?"

"Why would I lie to you about something like that? Move your ass. Those bastards are climbing up again!"

"R-right!"

With the double boost of fighting alongside the Empress herself and triple jerky rations, Beck, who had already been exhausted to the brink, seemed to recover endless strength out of nowhere. Hugging a stone in his arms, he hurried back toward the edge of the wall, while One-Eye tossed aside his cracked longsword and borrowed another from a dead comrade nearby.

The two of them braced themselves and waited for the next wave of enemies.

"Whoosh—"

And just then, there came a faint, weak, nearly imperceptible sound of something cutting through the air, echoing amid the enemy’s howls and the thunder of the magitech cannons.