The enemy soldiers frantically shut the gates to their city, and I couldn’t blame them. After all, to them, we suddenly appeared out of thin air, only about five hundred metres away from the gates to their royal capital. The reason they hadn’t been able to see us until now was thanks to those of the Hartley clan that Hans had gathered. They were skilled with cloaking jutsu, allowing all five hundred of our men to remain hidden and walk here undetected. They were only able to see us now that we lifted the jutsu.
There was a reason that I decided to reveal our forces here, just outside where their arrows and magic could reach, instead of immediately launching an attack. I wanted to give the townspeople in the royal capital time to take shelter. It’d be easier for us to advance if the streets were clear.
Of course, it would’ve been child’s play for us to use the Hartley clan’s cloaking jutsu to enter the royal palace without anyone noticing, but I decided against it. After all, I was trying to extend an invitation to the nobles here to join our country. First we needed to do some damage to demonstrate the strength of our weapons.
My squad’s job was hitting the royal capital, and I had seven other squads targeting other cities in the kingdom—each controlled by one of the seven noble families who’d aggressively pushed for this war. After infiltrating the country, we’d split up to mount our respective attacks, and each group had a member of the Hartley clan with them. Thanks to them, we’d been able to cross the border without any problems at all.
We’d divided a force of just under two thousand people eight ways; I had five hundred with me, and the smallest squads were about a hundred twenty. Though to our enemy, it might have not seemed like enough to topple an entire city, I was about to prove them wrong.
“Okay, I think it’s about time to get started,” I said.
I poured primordial mana into my ring. Usually, it had a magic circuit for time acceleration, but thanks to the large amount of money I was still making from the rejuvenation lotion, I was able to buy an even more expensive jewel stone, which I’d swapped in for my usual stone. I paid the equivalent of several greater noble estates to buy a stone with high functionality, into which I carved a new magic circuit.
As I activated it, ten golems appeared out of thin air. I’d put a golem-summoning magic circuit into the ring. I was now able to summon them from the expanded basement of my estate on the outskirts of the royal capital.
“Wh-What are those?!”
“A-Are those demons?!”
“Whoa! Demons!”
“Eek!”
The people trapped outside the gates and the scouts on the walls began to scream with panic. I’d summoned four centaurs, four arachnes, and two asuras. Centaurs had human torsos with the lower halves of horses, and arachnes were similar but with spider bodies. Asuras looked closer to humans but had six arms instead of two. All the golems were made of pitch-black metal that deflected physical and magic attacks. I couldn’t blame these people for thinking they were demons.
I’d originally started making golems to help me develop a treatment for Ana’s curse, and since then, I’d left my factory for them active just in case. At this point in time, I’d made a hundred and ninety-eight golems. I’d assigned a number of them to each squad, which was the main reason they were able to manage with so few people. Of course, since I was the only one who could summon them, I’d given them their golems before we split up.
Usually I’d keep spare golems at the factory just in case I needed to replace any here, but I had every last spare—all thirty-eight of them—assigned to protecting Ana. They could easily wipe out an army of twenty or thirty thousand people in less than three minutes. I was sure she would be safe. My only concern was that with how kind she was, she might have been trying to get them to protect everyone else instead. But that was why I’d given the authority to control them to Mary instead of Ana.
“Centaur 22, break through the gate. Arachne 45, protect the squad.”
“Affirmative,” both golems responded.
I’d equipped both of them with the ability to accept verbal commands, so when they heard my order, the two of them began moving. The centaur took his spear and charged toward the gate. The tip of his spear was fitted with a magic circuit that had mana so dense that it could be seen with the naked eye. The magic circuit activated in a flash, generating a magic charge that shot out as a controlled white beam. Its speed was carefully maintained so as not to cause a severe nuclear fusion while precisely releasing into the gate. Immediately after making contact, the surroundings brightened as if the sun had manifested near us.
The gate, which had instantly been turned to plasma, quickly began to evaporate, even heating the air around us. This caused violent winds and an incredibly loud noise. The arachne created a magic barrier to protect us.
These golems had been popular as security golems in my past life. They were strong enough that even formidable adults couldn’t take them down easily—and these particular ones didn’t have any limiters or safeguards that prevented them from doing real harm, so they were essentially a whole different breed. Even by the standards of my past life, they were fearsome weapons.
To a world like this where their technology wasn’t nearly as advanced, just one or two of these would be enough to topple an entire city. But even so, I made sure that each of the squads had about ten or so golems with them—though in this case, it was mainly to help keep order after they won. It was important to keep something in the towns to intimidate the people and nobles.
I commanded our forces to advance, and we passed through the now-evaporated gate. Though soldiers came to attack, they couldn’t break through the arachne’s barrier. The centaur outside the barrier, meanwhile, continued to eliminate enemy combatants one after another without taking any damage from their magic or arrows.
Seeing strange black knights silently defeat them in an overwhelming fashion made the enemy soldiers grow pale. I called repeatedly for them to surrender. For any that did, I had golems cast binding magic on them.
For our allied soldiers in the barrier, it was like they were taking a leisurely stroll. They marched straight toward the palace without having to stop once. When we reached it, there were more knights and a tightly closed gate, but these weren’t any deterrents to the golems. We easily broke through, and as we advanced inside, the golems began searching for the members of the royal family. I was confident they’d be found in no time since the golems had the ability to see through walls and even hear sounds that humans couldn’t.
Since our advance had been so quick, none of the royal family members had the time to run away and we ended up catching every last one of them. We also collected a number of nobles who worked in the palace, as well as some servants. Since there were so many, we split them up into rooms to confine them. The only ones in the throne room now were members of the royal family and the king’s cabinet members.
“You have your forces invading Sevensworth territory. Order a retreat. Now,” I said to the king, who was squirming on the floor in a magic binding that resembled a semitransparent tube. I purposefully spoke arrogantly to make the cabinet members feel the loss more strongly.
“Do you truly think I’ll just go along with your demands?”
“Well, you don’t have to. I’ll simply deliver your head to the front lines to inform them of their loss.”
In the next minute, the king began writing a retreat order, albeit very annoyedly and glaring at me all the while. He must’ve really been a courageous guy if he could still hold anger toward me like this. I couldn’t say the same for his cabinet members, though. They were extremely freaked out and some had even fainted.
In our country, when we deployed for battle, someone from the house that was waging war had to be on the field. However, this country didn’t have such a custom. They left war to their knights while they stayed at a safe distance. To the people in the royal palace, war was nothing more than words on a piece of paper. They’d never expected to be pulled themselves into the line of fire, even though they were the ones who’d started the war in the first place.