That was why strong monsters didn’t spawn around the capital while the area around the Demon Lord’s castle was full of tough ones. It was a personification—or in this case, demonification—of a land whose environment was too harsh to support human life. At least, that’s what I had begun to think. It was possible that the reason monsters were so weak at the beginning of the game wasn’t because the Demon Lord underestimated Mazel, but because it was just how things naturally had to be.
Thinking back on it, the field around the Demon Lord’s castle in the game was full of untraversable mountains, and in this world, the area around the Demon Lord’s castle was full of volcanoes. Even if there weren’t any monsters, I wouldn’t want to live in a maze like that.
I decided to put aside the issue of the Demon Lord’s castle for the time being. Going back to whether monsters were comparable to natural disasters, in polytheistic societies like Japan, natural disasters were the domain of the gods. Fūjin and Raijin, the gods of wind and thunder, were symbols of weather, and while I didn’t know how catfish became a symbol for earthquakes, they still similarly represented natural disasters.
My hypothesis was that the “energy” behind natural disasters had been influenced by the Demon Lord and materialized, but at the same time was influenced by animals, which served as their models. In the case of natural disasters, it didn’t make sense for the environment to completely change just by crossing a river, but the logic would stand if natural disasters had been demonified into living beings with thoughts and feelings and were influenced by the concept of animal territory.
In this world, I had never even seen the words “natural disaster,” and given that the religion here was monotheistic, they lacked even the concept of personifying nature. In my old world, there was a culture that believed that lunar eclipses were caused by a magical wolf eating the moon, but this world had no such legends. Basically, if I tried to explain these things, it’d just distract from my point. I only needed them to understand me, so I decided to just use animal territory as an example.
But thinking like that meant that the Demon Commanders or Four Fiends were just demonifications of large-scale natural disasters with many victims. I shouldn’t think too hard about that, though. Taking out the Demon Commander would have to come first.
“What I’m really afraid of,” I went on, “is our enemies doing to us what I’m trying to do. Basically, if they attack other domains in small numbers back-to-back.”
Werewolves and other similarly powerful monsters could wipe out our villages, even in small numbers. If attacks like that happened in succession, the number of victims would be far beyond acceptable limits. However, they hadn’t tried that. They probably thought we were easy targets they could take out at any time.
Rather, what I really feared was the possibility of demons once again infiltrating the capital. That’s why I had the capital use almost all the Monster Repel we had.
No word had come from Hubertus and the others, so I’d just have to trust they had things in hand. I thought one or two monsters might try to sneak their way into Anheim, but honestly, without Mazel here, they wouldn’t go so far out of their way for me, considering I wasn’t even the kingdom’s main force. If they fought us head-on, it was objective truth that the demons would come out on top. Wait, were Werewolves more like animals or people? I guess it didn’t matter.
“Any leader has to consider their standing. The same goes for a Demon Commander.”
“Really?” Sir Holzdeppe asked.
“For the Demon army, strength is everything. It would be embarrassing for weak humans to encroach on their territory,” I explained. The lizard magicians who wanted to make a deal with me back in Arlea had left a strong impression, at least in regard to how little they thought of humans and how willing they were to make childish bargains. I had concluded that we’d be able to bait them.
“First, we invade their land in order to humiliate the Demon Commander. We do that, we can get under his skin.”
Honestly, the Demon army was strong. Their combatants surpassed Anheim’s in both quality and numbers. I wasn’t so optimistic as to think we’d be able to win in a frontal attack. Mazel and his party were the only ones who could ever defeat a Demon Commander surrounded by his army.
Thus, I announced that I had no intention of engaging in any field battles in Triot and instead wanted to use the town walls to our advantage in a battle. But if that’s all we did, we’d be ruined.
“First, we send a single squad into Triot in order to intimidate our enemies. Next, we lure them into Anheim, and finally, we wage a defensive battle while using the walls to protect us. So, first.” I pointed to the map, and their eyes followed. I placed a copper coin on the river a short way away from Anheim. “We build a fortress here. Typically, this would serve as an occasional command post, but we’ll use it as headquarters for our mobile force. That’s so we can bait them into attacking it.”
“You’re going to make them attack the fort?” Neurath asked.
“Like I said, we need to bait the Demon Commander. But if he went straight for Anheim, we’d have to attack around our southern gate. So we build a fortress on the river basin.”
On a surface level, it would be like the defensive setups found in feudal Japan, where a castle’s primary keep would be defended by secondary buildings. In this case, the fort would draw the enemy’s focus to it, while being able to defend against them from the sides and rear. The main battlefield—or really, just the first of a few battlefields—would be used to lure our enemies to this secondary keep.
“What do you mean by headquarters?” Schünzel said.
“I’ll be staying there. I won’t be returning to Anheim.” Everyone stared at me in shock. I mean, who else would the Demon Commander come after besides me? Mazel wasn’t here.
“U-um, Lord Werner?” Sir Behnke started, but I cut him short.
“Right. I don’t plan to hold the line at that slapdash fortress forever.” I took out a silver coin and a gold coin and placed them on the map. If you traced a semicircle from the copper one to the gold one, you would get from the river basin to Anheim’s northern wall. The silver coin was over the fortress Lord Eickstedt and his men had built on that hill in the center of the plains. Ever since I had Lily draw up that map in the capital, it’d been a place I wanted to use in my plans.
“We’ll build forts in these three locations. If we can get our enemies to attack them in order, we’ll be able to lure them to Anheim’s northern wall.”
“Will it really be that easy?”
“I’m confident we’ll succeed as long as we can get them to attack where the copper coin is.”