“I was just going along with events as they happened,” I said. “At some point… without noticing it myself, I began to act as a system of the state which we call a ‘king.’…By telling myself it was part of my programming, I became able to always choose the ‘best’ option.”
“System? Programming? Hey, what are you even talking about?!” Carla shouted.
All I could do was give a self-deprecating laugh. “Carla, I may be a ‘fake.’”
“Wha?!”
“After all… If I can’t get into the role of king, I can’t send soldiers off to the battlefield,” I said.
I was a coward. I didn’t want to be hurt or killed myself. I didn’t want to see others hurt or killed, either.
For someone like me to go to war as a king, I had to fully embrace my role as a system of the state.
By telling myself this was what a king did, I had been able to suppress my own will and do what needed to be done. If I hadn’t… I felt like I’d have been crushed under the weight of all the lives that might be lost because of my decisions. When I saw how far I had taken that, I could only laugh scornfully at myself.
“Man… I can’t laugh at the former king now, huh,” I said. “If I had a viable replacement, I’d want to give up right now.”
“…What good can come from letting me hear you in a moment of weakness like this?” she asked incredulously.
“You’ve got it backwards,” I said. “Do you think I could let Liscia and the others hear me talk like this?”
For Liscia, who’d told me she wanted me to be king; for Aisha, who served me as king; and for Juna, Hakuya, Poncho, Tomoe, and all the rest, I could never let them hear me like this. Especially since Liscia, being the serious person she was, seemed to feel responsible for the fact that her father had pushed the throne onto me.
“Because you’ve fought against me, I’m able to let you hear,” I said.
“…That doesn’t make me happy at all.”
Then it happened. It happened as we were talking. I noticed there had been a change on the battlefield.
On that battlefield, where a pitched battle was still being fought, the principality’s army suddenly began to crumble.
Members of the force that had fought hard to resist the attacks of the numerically-superior army of the kingdom up until this point began to flee. The first to run were those who had been hurriedly pressed into service in the time between when the force had left Goldoa Valley and their arrival at the plains.
The Principality of Amidonia had mandatory military service for all men once they reached a certain age, so they were combat trained, but these were people who ordinarily lived as civilians. If they were suddenly sent into a disadvantageous battle, their morale wasn’t going to be great.
Eventually, soldiers started fleeing towards the southern side where the encirclement wasn’t yet complete.
The Amidonians cut down fleeing soldiers in an attempt to keep the others fighting, but there were close to 10,000 of these levied troops, so it was little help.
However, the more of them that tried to flee, the more their lines were thrown into disorder, and that ended up disturbing their ability to function as a unit. Elfrieden did not miss this chance to attack.
“Hal, it’s time, you know!” Kaede shouted.
“I’ve been waiting for this!” he called back. “Let go get ’em, you louts!”
“““Yeahhhhh!”””
In the left wing of the kingdom’s army, Halbert charged forward with his troops to complete their encirclement of the enemy. In this battle, Halbert was leading somewhere between ten to twenty men from the Army and fighting as a platoon commander under Kaede’s command. He rode no horse, spinning his two halberds around and knocking his confused enemies flying. The Amidonian general noticed what was happening and shouted from up on horseback. “Don’t let them encircle us! Use indirect fire to stop the enemy’s left wing!”
In the next moment, a hail of arrows and magic flew from the principality’s army towards Halbert and his unit.
“Earth Wall!” Kaede shouted.
This summoned a wall of earth that was nearly one hundred meters long and three meters high which narrowly saved Halbert’s unit.
That must have surprised the forces of the principality. There couldn’t have been more than five mages on the entire continent who could conjure such an impressive wall of earth in an instant. Kaede may have had a timid personality, but she was a genius when it came to her quick thinking and earth magic.
Halbert pressed his back up against the wall of earth for cover, then gave an order to his men who were doing the same. “We can’t let Kaede hog all the glory! We’re going for some payback!”
“““Yeah!”””
This time it was Halbert and his platoon firing arrows and magic over the earth wall at the principality’s army. Halbert threw one of the fire spears he had shown off in the battle near Randel against the Zemish mercenaries.
The principality’s forces were on an attack footing, so they were unable to prepare themselves in time. They were shot full of arrows or scorched, and their formation was thrown into chaos.
Seeing this chance, Halbert leapt out. “Now’s our chance, while they’re in disarray! Charge in!”
Meanwhile, in the disorderly chaos of the principality’s forces, their general was trying to restore calm. “Men, don’t fall into disarray! If we break ranks, we’ll give the enemy exactly what they want!”
He frantically tried to encourage his troops, but the chaos showed no signs of abating. Growing impatient, the general rode up to one of his panicking soldiers and suddenly lopped the man’s head off.
“Shut up! If you’ll not calm yourselves, I’ll behead you like I did this fool!” he bellowed.
“No, you shut up,” a voice said.
“What?!” the general shouted.
By the time the general noticed him, it was already too late. Halbert was in front of him with his arms crossed.
When Halbert uncrossed his arms, the blades of his two halberds acted like a pair of scissors, catching the general’s torso and cutting him into pieces.
The upper torso of the now ex-general thudded to the ground.
The sight of blood spurting from the still-standing, headless horse and the now torso-less rider in its saddle robbed the soldiers of their will to fight in an instant.
Halbert flicked the clotted blood away from his two halberds with a flash, and then he roared, “Forbidden Army Officer Halbert Magna has slain an enemy general! Now, which of you wants to die next?!”
With blood dripping from the halberds in each of his hands, he must have looked like some horrific monster.
Today, Halbert was fired up to compete with Souma and Kaede, who were both around the same age as him. Souma had assembled this massive army, while Kaede was supporting Ludwin with her strategic ingenuity.
I’m not gonna let them get any further ahead of me! That was the feeling that drove Halbert now.
When they saw Halbert with such intensity, the Amidonian soldiers reacted as if they’d run into an ogre in the darkness. They scrambled to retreat, thinking, There’s no way we can fight that thing!
One soldier of the principality, who saw Halbert at this time and narrowly survived the battle, later told the story like this:
“Back then, I was sure I would die. He was still a young man, but even fierce, veteran warriors didn’t want to face him. When I later heard that was ‘Hal the Red Ogre,’ it made a strange amount of sense. Honestly… I’m amazed I survived…”
It would be fair to say that for “Hal the Red Ogre,” who would in later years be used in stories as a representative of Souma’s followers, his legend began with this battle.