The train from Saint Matilene crossed the eastern plains and came to a halt three days later.

“We apologize!! Train service has been suspended!”

Railway staff went from carriage to carriage, their shouts ringing throughout the train. Unfortunately, it was nothing as entertaining as a raid by mounted bandits.

Ivan frowned inwardly. Despite the trouble he had taken to sharpen his axe, the line had been closed for a sensible reason.

“They closed the line because the dragon is still alive?”

“Mm.”

Grumbling, Isabelle collected her luggage and got off. On the platform, the party stretched their bodies after the long hours spent sitting on the train.

The railway staff’s explanation was simple. A dragon was rampaging through the nearby domains, so they had suspended train service for the people’s safety.

A reasonably sound justification. A train that could be stopped by mere mounted bandits stood no chance against a dragon attack.

Dragons were sadistic, inquisitive creatures by nature. If one spotted a train racing across the grasslands, it was likely to attack.

“Is it nearby? Where the dragon appeared?”

“No. We would have needed another day by train to reach the Bernina Mountains.”

“Uh... by ‘train’?”

“About four days on foot.”

“This is driving me crazy.”

Isabelle clutched her head and groaned.

Knowing this man, he wasn’t going to be kind enough to choose a route through villages. If they took the shortest route in a straight line, sleeping outdoors was guaranteed.

She had camped in the wilderness before, but this time was different. It would inevitably expose sides of her that, as a woman, she absolutely could not let him see. At the very least, she wouldn’t be showing him a freshly washed face in full makeup.

As Isabelle scowled, Esidisi tilted her head.

“If it’s four days on foot, couldn’t we do it in about two on horseback if we pushed a little?”

“If we pushed hard enough, we could do it in one.”

“Then why don’t we ride?”

“... Hmm.”

Ivan regarded Esidisi with renewed interest. She knew how to ride?

Most fiction tended to ignore this, but horsemanship was a highly advanced skill. Equestrian events weren’t in the Olympics for nothing.

It encompassed everything from steering a horse where you wanted it to go and controlling its speed to keeping your balance and maintaining a firm seat.

Horses were extremely sensitive, finicky, intelligent animals. They might refuse to obey someone they had just met, and each had its own temperament and habits. A horse you had never ridden before wasn’t suitable for a long journey.

Some sort of familiarization had to come first. It was no exaggeration to call the ability to skip that process and immediately take control of a horse a specialist skill.

“I’ve never ridden a horse!”

“I-I only know a little of the basics...”

Isabelle and Elpihera grumbled quietly. Students only just entering their twenties, and city dwellers at that, were bound to find riding unfamiliar.

Oscar had been trained by Gilles Vert and had belonged to the Eastern Order, so the prospect of riding seemed to concern him little.

As for Esidisi, her familiarity made sense given that she came from Droan. The land there was simply too rough and vast to travel without horses.

Ivan stroked his chin, then nodded.

“I’ll procure the horses. This is a good opportunity to learn a useful skill.”

It was, considering what lay ahead.

Most places the Hero’s Party would need to go lay deep in enemy territory. They would have to mount expeditions through mountains and fields without proper roads, never mind trains or carriages.

Infiltration teams in this era did not launch high-altitude assaults from airships.

Horsemanship, then, would come in handy. The distances they could cover with horses were incomparable to what they could manage on foot.

Faced with the prospect of “instruction,” the party’s faces twisted into scowls.

* * *

The journey on horseback went more smoothly than expected. Much of Thilles consisted of almost perfectly level plains, and the roads in this area were well maintained.

Moreover, no bandit would linger in a land where a dragon rampaged and the Lord Protector had mobilized an army. Only one thing stood in their way: the pain of riding itself.

But even that would eventually become valuable experience ingrained in their bodies, so it was all for the better. Ivan tuned out his companions’ complaints of pain.

Instead, he began focusing on more important matters.

'They closed the railway for fear of a dragon attack...'

Ivan sat deep in thought on horseback. By this point, the others looked half dead and were barely clinging to their mounts.

'They closed the line even though the Lord Protector marched out with part of the capital’s army corps and the entire Eastern Order...'

It was strange. This railway did more than carry civilian passengers.

Thilles was a transportation hub. It was a strategic stronghold holding the Eastern Front in the northeast, but also a trading nation where every sort of freight converged: along the long shipping route to the Kallion archipelago in the west, and along the trade routes to the western allied nations.

Even if this was only one line, the volume of supplies it carried each day was hardly negligible.

Ivan quietly leafed through his mental notebook, lost in thought.

'They’ve cut off the supplies.'

Accepting the disruption to trade, they had severed both the retreat routes and supply lines. Those of the troops stationed on the Eastern Front and of the Eastern Order under Gilles Vert, all at once.

Viewed that way, it made a certain amount of sense. Even if there was no immediate danger of running out of military supplies, it would inevitably become a devastating blow if the campaign dragged on.

He could reasonably predict that most railways leading east were now closed. Surely they wouldn’t have stopped only Ivan’s train by chance.

“My butt... hurts so much...!!”

“I’m getting sick. Motion sickness. I-I think I’m going to throw up...”

“Then go ahead.”

“I can’t do it here!! That would be the end of me!”

“Would you like me to sing something?”

“... What?”

“Sing! I’m a music student, remember?”

Ignoring the buzzing in his ears, Ivan sank deeper into troubled thought.

The more he considered it, the more intricately the pieces of the plan fit together. There was a very strong chance that the dragon’s appearance itself had been a means of drawing Gilles Vert away.

The objective would have been to get the Lord Protector and his retainers out of the capital. Then... if Ivan were one of the “great counts” plotting treason, what else would he have arranged?

A complete military map of Thilles lay within Ivan’s mind. He slowly unfolded it.

Mountains and rivers spread out within Thilles’s borders. From the mountain ranges clustered in the east to the central plains and the vast forests stretching north.

Red lines traced themselves across the terrain one after another: the routes along which people and military supplies traveled.

Countless railways, marching routes, supply routes, encampments of army corps and their subordinate units, fortified castles, and the strongholds of landed nobles intertwined in a complex web.

As points and lines filled the map with color, all the shapes that had been busily shifting and weaving together came to a stop.

The entire northeastern plain freezes solid. Supplies stop moving. A dragon rampages.

Gilles Vert leaves to stop it. But that is not enough. One dragon is insufficient against someone of Gilles Vert’s abilities.

And so the “demons” that must be appearing on the Eastern Front cannot easily threaten the border. Their positions lie too close to Gilles Vert’s line of march...

'Every conceivable plan... rests on the assumption that they can kill Gilles Vert.'

His presence alone could forestall every threat to the nation. Whenever he changed destinations, the armies of the various factions would be forced to retreat.

With him at its head, the Eastern Order was the strongest military faction in Thilles.

How in the world did they intend to kill such a man?

* * *

“Banners!!”

Elpihera, who had been sprawled drooling over her horse’s back, bolted upright and shouted.

Military banners fluttered across the broad fields at the foot of the mountains.

In an instant, she wove mana and formed a hand sign. Blue sparks crackled from her fingers as she curled her hand into a circle and held it to one eye.

“Banners! They are! Over there!!”

“I know.”

“We’re here! Oh, heavens... oh, heavens... Never, never again am I riding a horse... R-riding livestock is barbaric. Do you know that? Civilized people in modern society should use magical engineering devices.”

“I see.”

“Aerial battleships! Or sky transports!”

Paying little attention to the elf privy councilor’s daughter announcing her intention to appropriate military assets for personal use, Ivan turned his horse toward the camp.

After another half hour of riding, they passed through the rolling hills, and the camp gradually came into clearer view.

“Wow...”

Eugene stared in wonder. He had lived only in cities since his possession, so this was his first sight of a full-fledged military encampment.

The Eastern Order’s banner of Saint Francesco. Depicting a sun rising over a field and burning a devil, the banners fluttered throughout the camp.

Countless horses and attendants moved about the grounds. Knights in gleaming armor stood among soldiers passing to and fro.

A guard noticed their approach and waved a hand, signaling them to halt.

“Halt!! This is a military operations zone! Identify yourselves! Where have you come from?”

“Saint Matilene.”

The guard’s face crumpled into a scowl at Ivan’s answer.

“Damn it. Is this what our noble masters call reinforcements? Or did they send them to keep an eye on us?”

It was only a quiet mutter from some distance away, but Ivan heard it clearly. So the royal house and the House of Nobles had lost every shred of goodwill here.

That was only natural. They had assigned these men a mission and sent them out, then cut their supply lines. Of course the mood in camp would be ugly.

There was no need to correct the mistaken impression that they were officials sent by the royal house. Their time had better uses.

As the soldier opened his mouth to shout something, Ivan raised a hand to stop him and spoke curtly.

“Tell Gilles Vert de Etakrich that Ivan Petrovich is here.”

“How dare you...!! You speak as though His Highness the Duke were your friend! And here, in the Eastern Order’s encampment?!”

“Friend.”

It wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t a particularly pleasant word either.

Ivan’s lips twisted as he replied.

“That is not for you to judge. If I’ve come all the way here from Saint Matilene, then whoever I am, this is beyond you. Go and give your master this exact message: Ivan Petrovich is here.”

“... Martin! Don’t let them escape! Archers! Shoot if they move!”

His face red with rage, the guard disappeared into the camp.

Oscar approached Ivan and whispered.

“Wouldn’t it have been simpler to say I was here to see my father?”

“... Mm.”

“... Pardon?”

“Yes.”

Ivan turned his head away. Wondering whether he had some other intention, Oscar tilted his head for a moment, then stepped back.

Eugene sidled up beside him.

“Hehe. Oscar, Boss is feeling embarrassed right now. And a little excited, too!”

“... Pardon?”

“My Affinity went up, so I can see a little of his [Current Feelings]. Oh, wait. Ah... uh...”

It had just dropped three points.

“Can’t see it anymore,” Eugene said, once again laughing like a sycophant.

Oscar had failed to understand him, but saw no reason to ask again. Most of the people from Krasilof he had met were not normal in the first place.

And the “club trio” Ivan had gathered from somewhere were the pinnacle of that. They were lunatics notorious throughout the university. Privately, Oscar almost wondered whether collecting lunatics was Ivan’s hobby.

'Wait, then what does that make me...?'

Depending on how you looked at it, he was one of the students Ivan had collected, too...

At the end of that horrifying train of thought, Oscar shook his head to clear it. A normal person could never understand how a lunatic thought.

Before long, however, he had no choice but to snap out of his musings.

“Who!! Dares—!!!!”

A booming voice began shaking the entire camp.

Killing intent sharp enough to feel like a blade cutting flesh blanketed the camp and surged into the sky. The wind changed direction, whipping the banners violently.

The soldiers faltered, their faces stricken with terror.

“I-I’ve never seen His Highness this furious...”

“Should we get out of here...?”

“If those people escape, we’ll have to face His Highness instead. Stay put.”

The soldiers whispered fearfully among themselves. Ivan stood straight, gauging the killing intent erupting from within the camp.

'Has he... grown stronger?'

Insufferable bastard.

“How dare they!! Insult the dead!! Who is it?! Who dared tell you to bring me that name?!”

“Out of my way!! I’ll ask them myself! Where they heard that name, and who told them to bring it to me!!”

That was worse than Einar.

His temper had deteriorated considerably. Not that it had ever been good.

Ivan gave a faint chuckle and waited. Soon, the killing intent came pouring toward him.

The soldiers who had gathered in a thick crowd silently split apart. Between the ranks standing rigidly at attention, a blazing presence slowly approached.

A great banner bearing antlers, a shield, and crossed spears fluttered behind him. Etakrich: the emblem of the Lord Protector.

A group of stern-looking knights marched in step behind him. Knight initiates of the Eastern Order. And before them walked...

The Grand Master of the Eastern Order, Guardian of Saint Matilene, Lord Protector of the Kingdom of Thilles (Lord Protector of the Thilles Monarchy). The Knight of the Iron Mountain. The shield of the Hero’s Party.

A middle-aged man approached in gray armor, a purple cloak draped about him like a banner.

His footsteps were heavy, his green eyes blazing, his blond hair neatly swept back and tied. And he wore a mustache that did not suit him at all.

Really, truly, absolutely did not suit him.

Ivan was inwardly shocked. That distinctive comma-shaped mustache, reminiscent of Pring*es, had been neatly groomed and curled upward.

“... Ivan Petrovich...?”

While Ivan stood momentarily speechless with shock, Gilles Vert stared blankly at him.

He slowly extended a hand, holding it up to block his view of Ivan’s chin, and narrowed his eyes.

“You’re... you’re alive...? You were alive...? Then that funeral...? Y-you deceived me...? Again?!”

“Gilles Vert de Etakrich.”

“Ivan... Ivan, you bastard...!!”

“It’s Yeremov.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Ivan Petrovich Yeremov. I’m a noble now.”

“Hah... ha!!!”

Gilles Vert laughed in harsh, coughing bursts. After a long while spent pressing his forehead and groaning, he looked up with a much softer expression.

At last, Ivan could hold back no longer.

“What the hell is that facial hair?”

“What the hell is that facial hair?!”

The two began berating each other simultaneously. At precisely the same tempo, with precisely the same words.

“You’ve gotten stronger.”

“So you’ve gotten stronger!”

Superhumans could gauge an opponent’s ability from presence, breathing, posture, and gait alone. At their level, and having served in the same theaters of war for years, it was easier still.

Both superhumans scowled at the same instant.

“With talent like yours, you could at least have taken it easy on the training.”

Then, in one voice:

“Insufferable bastard.”

Smiling, they stepped toward each other and extended their arms.

It was not a handshake. It was a deeper form of salute: reaching farther to clasp each other’s forearms.

“Good to see you.”

“You too, you bastard!!”

To Ivan, Gilles Vert was the most insufferable bastard in the Hero’s Party.

Always putting on airs, loudly grumbling about proper noble conduct, constantly wanting to test himself against the Hero despite lacking the ability.

An insufferable noble knight, full of pride and self-respect, inferiority and inadequacy. All too human.

To Gilles Vert, Ivan was the most insufferable bastard in the Hero’s Party.

Always putting on airs, nagging about this and that because he was a trained agent. Show him anything and he would spout something like, “If I’ve seen it once, I can do it,” then immediately copy it.

A soldier full of pride and self-respect, inferiority and inadequacy. All too human, and all the more insufferable for it.

And so, at last, the two looked into each other’s faces and could not help but smile.