“Yeaaaaaaaah!!” The troops around him roared a thunderous war cry.
The vibrations from thousands of people stomping their feet seemed to flow up through the wheels into his body, resonating to the core of his being. It felt as if the land itself were shaking.
From the carriage of a chariot, Yuuto continued to observe the battlefield.
Large quantities of corpses were tragically scattered about the dust storm-ridden wastelands. The majority of them were the corpses of enemies, but the number of felled allies was not insignificant.
Their now-masterless weapons, bathed in the rays of the sun, shimmered a golden color.
Between that sight and the scent of blood wafting across the battlefield on a dry wind, Yuuto could not suppress an overwhelming feeling of nausea. Even now, he still wasn’t used to the atmosphere of the battlefield.
The major improvement compared to his first campaign was that at least he hadn’t thrown up yet.
“It seems the battle has mostly been decided. I shouldn’t be surprised, Big Brother, but your command was truly spectacular.” Felicia, the girl standing next to Yuuto as his attendant, offered her compliment in a lively tone. “Against an enemy with superior numbers, and yet claiming a victory so easily... It is hard to see you as anything other than a reincarnated god of war.”
She was an impressive beauty with a shimmering, mature smile. Long, golden hair that fell past her waist trailed gently behind her in the wind. The thin, white garments she wore, exposing a great deal of skin, felt very out of place here on the battlefield.
“It’s no big deal.” With neither pride nor modesty, Yuuto responded with disinterest. Indeed, for him, this was nothing to brag about.
He had simply known the relevant information.
“The amazing ones are Alexander the Great and Oda Nobunaga,” he said. “I didn’t come up with those ideas.”
“Huh? Alex...?”
Yuuto met Felicia’s quizzical head tilt with an attempt at a wry smile.
The tactic Yuuto had employed was thousands of years old in his world: the phalanx battle formation of the citizen soldiers of Hoplite, who had struck with unbelievable spears three-to-four times their height. In one-on-one combat, this ridiculously long weapon would be ineffective due to the inability to make tight movements, rendering it nothing more than a big, useless stick. Therefore, no one in this world had taken the time to properly consider it. But in large group battles, it readily became a brutal weapon.
The longspears could be used to pierce enemies from within tight-knit, seamless formations, so that opponents could not get close to you without adding their bodies to the pile. There was a similar concept in Japanese history called the “wall of spears.”
The sarissa of Alexander the Great. The longspear of Oda Nobunaga. In the world of the future, these were seen as tactics that had assured victory to supreme rulers and heroes in long-gone time periods.
“I’m nothing more than a cheater... urk!” Yuuto ended up gulping back his words and averting his gaze from Felicia. The carriage swayed as if a wheel had hit a stone, and her large breasts were bouncing up and down before him.
“Oh, my! Hee hee!” Felicia flashed a mischievous smile. Perhaps she had noticed what had gotten him worked up.
Yuuto suddenly realized that his face had flushed a bright red. He found himself extremely embarrassed.
Still, this was the battlefield. They didn’t have a moment to spare on such frivolity. Flustered, Yuuto shook off any carnal thoughts and turned his mind back to the battle.
“All right, clearly we’ve shaken the enemy. This is where we finish this. Raise your banners high, and all troops... charge!!”
With a mighty motion of his hand, Yuuto took up the mantle and gave his order...
Bwooooo! Bwoooooo! The soldiers guarding the perimeter around him blew the trumpet shells in unison. At the same time, an ear-piercing battle cry swelled around him.
Yuuto screwed up his face at the loud burst of noise, and then, suddenly, his eyes found their way to a corpse on the ground. It was a face he recognized. It wasn’t someone he could say he’d been close with, but he could remember talking with that soldier a few times.
His death had been the result of Yuuto’s orders, and nothing else. Something bitter spread through Yuuto’s heart, and he felt a heaviness, as if his back were being weighed down.
“Why am I even doing any of this?” He wasn’t saying it to anyone in particular, just muttering to himself.
About two years had passed since he had come here, to the world of Yggdrasil.
The people here fought endlessly over limited land and resources. Sword or spear in hand, they mercilessly stole each other’s lives as horse-drawn chariots raced across the bloody battlefield.
The strong seized everything while the weak were trampled and oppressed.
Though he had been tossed all alone into this uncivilized world where he didn’t even speak the language, he had overcome the ups and downs and, through a bunch of strange circumstances, he’d ascended the ranks to spearhead this clan, the Wolf Clan, as its patriarch.
He was in a position to command another man’s destiny with just one word.
“Big Brother, you know, you have a bad habit of taking everything upon yourself?” Suddenly, someone embraced him tightly from behind.
It was Felicia. That warmth brought Yuuto indescribable comfort and reassurance. She could be shameless and cheeky at times, but Felicia was a girl who was sensitive to the subtleties of the human heart. Naturally, she had quickly picked up on his concerns.
Like a whisper, a lovely melody tickled his earlobe. Mysteriously, upon just hearing that melody alone, it felt as if the anxiety that had eclipsed Yuuto’s heart was fading.
It was a galldr. A secret art that combined magic with music and, depending on the incantation, could have any one of a variety of effects on the listener.
“This is all I can do for you,” Felicia said.
“This is more than enough. Thank you.” Expressing his heartfelt gratitude, Yuuto gently freed himself from her arms. The beating of her heart, her warmth, and her softness against him all combined with the effects of the galldr to calm him, with the exception of the one part they could not subdue.
Specifically, his lower half.
“Oh, Big Brother, you’re so cruel ♡,” she giggled.
“The battle isn’t over. “Don’t let your guard—”
Fwoosh!
Suddenly, an arrow flew right at Yuuto. It stopped within ten centimeters of his forehead.
“Indeed, it would not do to let our guard down.” When Felicia opened her hand, the arrow she had yanked from the air toppled to the floor of the carriage.
She had grabbed the arrow that had come flying at Yuuto at high speed and protected him, before he could even try to dodge it. She had tremendous dynamic vision and reflexes.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Without a moment’s pause, numerous arrows continued to rain down directly toward Yuuto.
“Oh, my!” Felicia swiftly took up the rope wrapped around her waist and, with a snap of her wrist, put it to use. She swirled the rope through the air like a rhythmic gymnastics ribbon, knocking the arrows to the ground one after the other as they came.
The rope was a coarse type used to bind captured enemies, and was considerably heavier than a ribbon, but Felicia flung it around without a hint of discomfort. Her arms were slimmer than Yuuto’s, but she possessed fierce strength.
“Thanks, Felicia,” he said. “Your rope technique was as effortless as ever. You’re like a warrior queen.”
“Hee hee. But you would be considered the king, correct? So does that mean you’re trying to propose?” Felicia shrugged her shoulders playfully.
There wasn’t a hint of fear or nervousness in her. As one might guess from the preceding spectacle, Yuuto, being from modern-day Japan, would be no match for her as a warrior. Not only was she accomplished in rope technique, she was a proficient wielder of blades and spears, and was hailed as one of the Wolf Clan’s foremost soldiers.
On top of that, Yuuto realized that from the beginning she hadn’t let her guard down once. Instead she’d made a show of playing around earlier to try and keep him from worrying too much.