Wow. That’s a new one.
“…”
“What, no rebuttal?” he sneered. “Seems like that submissive peasant spirit’s sunk right down to your bones. A dog like you imagining it has any right to speak in a war council? Don’t make me laugh! It’s a hundred years too soon for that.”
Ah, so that’s how it is. He wasn’t just looking down on me; he was picking a fight. And I was ready to buy in.
I was just about to stand, fists tightening with anticipation, when Cordelia raised a hand, palm open in a calm, commanding gesture. “It’s fine,” she said, her voice steady. “I asked for him to be here.”
Her words stopped me cold. I held still for a breath, then sank back into my chair, easing into the seat like I hadn’t nearly leapt to my feet to throw hands a second ago.
She turned her sharp gaze across the room, sweeping over the gathered officers and lords like a general surveying her troops. “As I’ve already stated,” she continued, “he was one of the key players in defending the western fortress.”
That earned a snort of disbelief. “That’s difficult to believe,” one of the knights muttered.
Cordelia’s reply was swift and cold. “I’m vouching for his strength. Are you saying my word means nothing?”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then another knight, this one trying to sound composed but clearly grasping for an excuse, spoke up with calculated diplomacy. “But, Lady Cordelia, isn’t it true that you’ve earned another title as well? ‘The Berserker,’ was it?”
That did it.
Her face paled for a beat, then flushed crimson as if her blood had decided to boil. A pulsing vein rose on her temple, and her shoulders trembled ever so slightly, like a volcano trying to contain itself. Yeah, she’d been through this before. Goblins. Amanta. Every time something unexplainable happened, they blamed her. Said she lost control. That it was her magic running rampant. Nobody believed what really happened. That it was me.
And now they were dragging her through the mud again.
Then came the lord of Sashimimasu, leaning forward from his ornate chair with a disapproving scowl. “Yes, I’ve heard the tales. Strong, certainly, but prone to exaggeration. Not a Hero of the North, but the Berserker of the North. The one who lets power speak louder than truth.”
Cordelia’s expression shifted into something barely restrained. Her fists clenched beneath the table, knuckles paling, jaw tight as iron. Her entire body trembled with the effort of not exploding.
She was about to blow. I knew that look. And honestly? If she did, I’d be right behind her. Hell, I’d already started leaning forward. And if I moved, Lilith would too, no question about it.
But then, like the crack of thunder, Cordelia slammed her palm down on the table.
“We’re not here to trade insults,” she declared. Her voice wasn’t just loud; it was absolute. “What we should be doing is preparing for a siege.”
The room fell silent.
Huh. So she could keep her cool after all. Maybe I was the kid in this room, not her.
Cordelia didn’t wait for the silence to settle. She pressed on, eyes burning with conviction. “No. Let me correct that. We’re not just preparing to hole up. We’re going to open the gates.”
That drew a wave of confusion. The Knight Commander leaned in, brow furrowed, voice edged with disbelief.
“Open the gates?” the knight commander asked, disbelief echoing in his voice. “Weren’t we supposed to take a defensive stance?”
The meeting room fell silent. This was no ordinary city. It was a fortress built within monster territory. Massive stone walls ringed the town, ten meters high and more than a meter thick. Four heavily guarded gates—east, west, south, and north—connected it to the world outside via the highways.
“Throughout history, sieges only work if reinforcements arrive,” Cordelia said quietly. “That’s the whole point.”
“Indeed,” the chief instructor agreed.
Cordelia continued, steely-eyed: “We’ve already sent envoys to nearby nations and the Adventurer’s Guild several days ago. We’ve heard nothing. No replies. Either our messengers were intercepted by ogres or something else, or we’ve been abandoned.”
Nobody spoke. The grim possibility hung heavy in the air, and every pair of eyes in the room seemed to fall on the silence that followed.
Cordelia slammed both palms onto the table. “If that’s true, our priority changes. It’s no longer about buying time.”
The knight commander leaned forward. His face was ashen. “Then, what do you propose?”
She didn’t hesitate. “We’re not sieging. We’re mounting a defense, an active one. We’ll open all four gates and concentrate our forces at selected locations. That’s the only way to shield civilians from mass slaughter.”
I nodded, feeling some sense of relief. It made sense. The walls alone, while imposing, couldn’t be patched fast enough if breached. Ogres could break through anywhere, through any fragment of wall left undefended. If the gates stayed closed and the walls were damaged, the city would fall piece by piece, with innocent lives caught in the chaos.
Sure, I thought, I could make fifty decoys at once. But no, doing that here and now would draw too much attention. We need strategy, not spectacle.
The knight commander seemed to agree, leaning over the map laid on the table. “So we gather at each gate and reassess our force allocation?”
He paused, weighing the approach before him. Then, finally, the chief instructor, who had stayed silent until now, cleared his throat and spoke.
“We’re only here as part of a field training exercise,” the chief instructor said, his tone smooth but unmistakably evasive. “It was never our intention to be placed on the frontlines of an actual military engagement.”
“What are you saying?” the knight commander asked, his expression twisting into disbelief.
The instructor smiled thinly, his words calm but cutting. “That said, we’re not refusing to fight. Nor can we promise to defend the city outright. Still, we’ve been assigned to hold the eastern gate. Our forces will consist of Lady Cordelia, several instructors, and a few of the scholarship students. As for the bottom-tier class we rescued at the western fortress, they won’t be counted as combatants. Do with them as you see fit.”
So that was it. They were stripping away most of the city’s strength: Cordelia, Lilith, the top students, and the instructors themselves. It wasn’t hard to see what they were planning. The noble heirs had to be protected at all costs. From the way he spoke, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were already plotting to abandon the city and flee the moment things turned sour.
“Chief Instructor?” Cordelia cut in sharply.
“Yes, Student Cordelia? Or should I say, Lady Cordelia, given the setting?”
“Don’t bother,” she snapped. “I’m not going east. I’ll take the north.”
That was it. One sentence, and the bulk of the eastern gate’s firepower had just walked away. The instructor’s face drained of color so fast it was almost impressive.
Panicked, he swept his gaze around the room, eyes pleading as they landed on Lilith. “Student Lilith, perhaps you—?”
“I’ll be taking the south,” she said flatly, not even glancing in his direction.
Now he looked on the verge of tears. Couldn’t say I felt too bad for the guy.
The knight commander spoke up before the silence could thicken. “Very well. The eastern gate will be entrusted to the instructors from Altena Magic Academy. The northern gate will be defended by Lady Cordelia, and we’ll reassign the mercenaries who fled and reform them into a temporary unit.”
“That’s fine,” Cordelia replied. “And what of the west and south?”
“The Knights’ Order will handle those.”
With the city’s defensive plan finally starting to take shape, the white-haired lord leaned back in his chair and murmured toward the ceiling, his voice bitter with resignation. “The report didn’t mention just Ogre Kings. There was talk of an Ogre Emperor. What are we supposed to do against that? There’s no winning this. Like tossing a cup of water on a wildfire… We’re all going to die…”
Until that moment, no one had dared speak the name aloud.
The Ogre Emperor, classified as an Over-A threat, S-rank in terms of danger, was less a monster and more a natural disaster. Some even categorized it as a phantasmal beast, a being of legend rather than something of this world.
And yet, it was here. And it wasn’t alone.
Three of the four key fortresses—east, west, and north—had already fallen like dry leaves in a storm. Even without the Emperor, their odds of victory had been slim from the start. Everyone in that room knew it. They had known it before the meeting even began.
That was why the chief instructor had angled so aggressively for an exit strategy. He’d known full well they were outmatched.
The room fell into a silence too heavy for words, and in that wordless despair, the meeting dissolved. One by one, the noble delegates and military brass trickled out, leaving behind only three: me, Cordelia, and Lilith.
Cordelia stood, ready to take her leave.
“Hey, Cordelia. Hold up,” I called out, still seated.
She turned, puzzled. “Wait? Why? The meeting’s over.”
“Just sit down. And Lilith, go get Koharu.”
“Already done,” Lilith replied coolly, walking to the door and pulling it open. “Koharu, come in.”
A nervous little voice replied, “W-Why was I summoned here?”
Koharu stepped into the room, dressed in her traditional shrine maiden robes, eyes wide like a startled rabbit. She moved hesitantly, but I gestured toward a chair to put her at ease.