“Are the mages...next?” the magical prodigy asked.
Our objectives for this siege were twofold: capture the city of Reydra, and destroy both layers of its walls. We also had the secondary goals of testing out our cannons and battle mages. Call it a trial run, of sorts. It was particularly important in the case of the mages. While Salomon had run them through their training, our grasp on their specific level of proficiency was still academic.
As the mages began to move out, I noticed that Salomon remained where he was. “Are you not taking command?” I asked.
Nadine had similarly remained nearby as her unit had carried out their role, but as Duke Warren’s daughter, her men saw her more as a charge that needed safeguarding anyway. Salomon, on the other hand, was a tried-and-true commander.
“We are operating under the assumption that this is a real combat scenario,” he explained.
Ah. That made sense. Our strategy for the real deal would have them scattered into several separate units.
The battle—pardon, live exercise—commenced. A unit of around ten or so started it off by loosing a series of spells that, collectively, began drenching the city’s walls in temporary rainfall.
“You’ve split them by their preferred element?” I asked.
This world wasn’t a video game, so there was no such thing as elemental affinities and whatnot. Well, there were, but they were considered antiquated philosophies. Nevertheless, it was just a fact of life that everyone had their strengths and weaknesses. For example, I was pretty poor at water magic.
In that sense, deciding to group the mages by their fortes seemed like a decent enough idea.
“By range too,” Salomon said.
Upon closer inspection, I saw that he was right. Using just the water magic casters to illustrate, the long-range units were creating rain, the medium-range units were launching water projectiles, and the short-range units were firing streams of water from their hands.
“Can you truly call those battle mages?” Péter Pál asked, speaking for the first time. He’d seemed rather apathetic about the cannons, but evidently spellcasting was more worthy of his interest.
“No, I would not say they qualify,” Salomon conceded. “They have, however, managed to reach the standard that His Majesty wished for.”
“We suppose you are right regarding their level of ability,” I said. “But you’ve taken what were previously ordinary citizens with little to no spellcasting experience and brought them this far. That alone is worthy of our gratitude.”
Strictly speaking, those whom this world considered battle mages were few in number and took a significant amount of time to train before they were combat-ready. Still, I’d take whatever we could get if it meant we didn’t have to take the enemy’s magical offensives lying down. In my opinion, it seemed safe to say our mages had successfully taken the first step toward that.
“What does Your Majesty think a battle mage needs most?” Salomon asked suddenly.
I considered the question for a moment. “The awareness to recognize when mana is due to run short?” I hazarded.
“That is also vital, yes. But what one needs the most is to never become overconfident in one’s own ability.”
Battle mages that became intoxicated by their own prowess and ventured beyond the protection of their allied infantry or cavalry would inevitably be hunted down like sitting ducks. In that sense, our mages were pretty safe, since this level of spellcasting was the best they could manage for now.
“Water, ice, and wind spells, as requested,” Salomon said. “Was that display sufficient, Your Majesty?”
“Yes, plenty.” There was a world of difference between them and Salomon’s Belvérian mage unit, but I hadn’t wanted them along for offensive purposes anyway, so that wasn’t an issue.
“Then, to finish, a salvo from the Belvérian mage unit,” Salomon said.
A salvo? Were they going to fire off a volley of flaming arrow spells or something?
When the elite mages began their incantation, I soon realized that I was mistaken. In the span of a few seconds, the ground began to swell. Fifty-odd instances of the exact same spell acted in unison, shifting the earth and sending an undulating wave toward the city’s walls. Then another, then another, the process repeating at constant intervals.
At first, it seemed as if it had no effect. Then, all of a sudden, there was an earsplitting roar as dust, earth, and rubble were thrown into the air. When it was clear enough to see again, there was a sizable depression in the ground and a gaping wound in the city’s walls—the outer and inner layers.
“So digs the mole...” Péter Pál murmured with interest.
Since time immemorial, tunnel warfare had been utilized as a siege breaking strategy. It involved digging an underground passage beneath the enemy’s walls, propping up said passage with lumber pillars as you went. Then, by setting all the lumber ablaze at once, you collapsed the tunnel, thereby creating a sinkhole underneath the walls. The strategy was also called mole warfare in Japanese, and it seemed like it had the same nickname here.
“That was a rather theatrical piece of spellwork,” I remarked.
Looking around, there were mounds of upturned earth everywhere. Dug up from the undulations, I assumed. I was only guessing, but I suspected the Belvérian mages had also cast a spell that solidified the layer of earth directly beneath the walls. Then, after they’d dug the tunnel, they’d released the spell, causing the layer to collapse under the weight of the walls above.
Several weeks of tunnel warfare, achieved in a single moment. So this was what proper battle mages could do.
“Mana expenditure is but another factor of war strategy,” Salomon explained.
Yeah, I’d kind of figured as much. When battle mages fought, they weren’t just slinging spells at one another, but trying to use up each other’s available mana too. Oh—so that was why the strategy involved releasing the solidifying spell last. They could maintain the tunneling magic for as long as it took to completely drain the area of mana, and then physics would take care of the rest. Simple, yet ingenious. Was this how all veteran battle mages fought? I thought I’d been valuing them quite highly, yet evidently I’d still been underestimating them.
“I feel as if I’ve been used as a measuring stick,” Nadine grumbled sulkily.
“The strategy only works on walls without a sturdy foundation,” Salomon said placatingly. “It would have little effect on those of larger cities.”
“One cannot compare battle mages, who cannot cast when there is no more mana, and cannons, which can maintain continuous fire,” I added. “Please, continue your efforts until the barrels are damaged.”
“Very well,” Nadine said, after a moment of peevish silence.
I hadn’t been lying just to soothe Nadine’s ego; once an area was mana-burnt, battle mages really did become no better than scarecrows standing in a field. Well, unless they were like Salomon’s elites, who I was pretty sure were well trained in martial combat too.
“Still, we must think toward the future,” Salomon mused aloud, as he watched his unit withdraw.
“The future?” I asked.
“Yes. Using the mana-sealing wards as mana storage devices,” he explained. “It will revolutionize warfare if we can get it to a practical stage of use. Rather than potency, it will become more important to focus on quick and efficient spells to make the best use of the stored mana before it dissipates. My unit is trained in a degree of antipersonnel combat, in addition to our usual anti-army strategies, but it seems we’ll have to reevaluate the potency and range of our spells.”
“Right,” I said. I was about to say “that makes sense,” when I came to a sudden realization. I finally understood what it was that had bothered me during my conversation with Vera-Sylvie.
Was efficiency the difference between modern magic and that of the long-lost, ruined magical civilization?
In the current era, the most common magic in usage was unoptimized. There was no reason to optimize it. However, in the underground facility that the representative of Ein’s Storytellers had shown me before my coronation, I’d seen what was clearly optimized magic—layers and matrices of countless spells that reminded me of the workings of electronic devices, amalgamated with what I suspected was zero waste.
In other words, could it be that advancements in magical efficiency had been what had led to the demise of that ancient magical civilization?
Ein, who had come to this world at God’s request, had considered it his mission to destroy any remains of that civilization that he could find. And if that was God’s will, did that mean the very act of attempting to optimize magic was contrary to what God wanted?
No, maybe I was making a few too many leaps in logic, there. But if that was the case...no, wait, surely it would have been forbidden in the First Faith’s Prime Tenets, then? Did the fact that it wasn’t mean that it was okay?
Either way, I didn’t want any all-powerful metaphysical beings on my case because of this. Maybe it’d be smart to be proactive about finding and destroying any remains to show that I had no intentions of rebelling.
“Your Majesty?” Salomon asked. “Is something the matter?”
“No. It’s nothing.”
Man. I had enough things on my plate already; I didn’t need to add “don’t cross the line that’ll piss off God” to the list. I didn’t even know where the line was. In fact, if I did ever meet the Creator, I had a thing or two of my own to say about this whole transmigration situation I’d found myself in.
If only I could’ve received a divine revelation out of the blue about what was and wasn’t okay. That would have made things so much easier.