FWEEEE—BOOM!

Another signal flare burst, staining the sky red. Eugene and Ivan scanned their surroundings as they raced through the forest.

The forest had become an enormous slaughterhouse.

"Aaaaaagh!"

"Stop it!! Stoooop it!!"

"Philip! Dear God!! Philip, breathe!!"

His keen hearing caught every sound. Screams, shouts, clashes, ruptures, death cries, the monstrous shrieks of dragons, the crackling of flames consuming the forest. And even the distinctive sound of people burning alive.

There was something almost familiar about that collection of sounds. The sounds of a battlefield. To add a little feeling to that description, these were the sounds of defeat.

"Boss!! Over there!!"

Eugene shouted. Ivan shifted his stance without even turning his head. He had already noticed. Their companions were up ahead.

Bewildered and alarmed, they were making their way through the mountains toward Gilles Vert's camp.

"Mister!! What... what's going on?!"

"There's no time to expl—"

PING!

Ivan reflexively wrapped his nerves in mana. In that state, where even Isabelle's mouth seemed to open in slow motion, he swiftly reached to his waist and drew his axe.

Line of Fire Detection flashed furiously. No, strictly speaking, this was not a line of fire.

He could tell because he had experienced it before. This was dragon's breath.

GRIND!

He sprang forward with every bit of mana he could muster in that instant. His body seemed to flow between his companions before shooting toward the forest on the other side.

ROOOOAR!

He grabbed Elpihera, who stood in its path, flung her aside, and swung his axe from that spot. Fortunately, he was in time. After striking the dragon's breath with the blade, he quickly hurled the axe to the ground.

The forged-steel axe had melted all the way down to its haft. Dragon's breath was a mixture of mana and physical force. He could deflect the ignited mana, but not the physical force.

He sprang backward to bleed off the remaining impact, then drew his pistol, eyes fixed ahead.

"Go on ahead."

"U-Uncle! We can—!"

"Do as I say."

Bright yellow eyes hung in the air in the direction the fireball had come from. The intense killing intent made the body feel as though it were freezing against its will.

That was the problem. All creatures modeled after dragons could, by nature, petrify lesser life-forms. It was not an ability grand enough to merit the term petrification, but it stimulated their instincts, slowing their movements.

They called it a dragon's presence. Even basilisks and wyverns could manage the trick. How much more so a dragon, their original model.

One could resist by wrapping oneself in mana, but that applied only to superhumans. Not everyone in this forest was superhuman. The Capital Defense Force's soldiers were exceptionally well trained, but fewer than five percent would be superhumans.

Hence, a slaughterhouse.

'More than thirty percent of the forces in the forest must have perished already.'

The claim that some three thousand trained soldiers could hunt a single dragon assumed they faced it head-on in a well-formed defensive formation.

At this very moment, the soldiers scattered through the forest were being ambushed in detachments of one hundred. With dragons conducting those ambushes, the Capital Defense Force could effectively be considered annihilated.

In classical military theory, annihilation of a corps meant the loss of more than twenty percent of its total strength. That was little different in modern or premodern times. When more than twenty percent vanished in an instant, the remaining troops lost the ability to continue fighting.

Gilles Vert and the Eastern Order would have to stop this alone.

And, as he had recalled, even the most generous estimate of the Eastern Order's strength under Gilles Vert allowed them to kill at most ten to fifteen dragons, 'with preparation,' and 'when facing them head-on.'

More than thirty signal flares had already risen into the sky.

"Come."

Armed with a dagger and pistol, Ivan murmured to the enormous creature hissing in the darkness of the forest.

Dragons were intelligent creatures. They understood human speech.

"Even your god failed to kill me."

Dragons could communicate with humans. Would it not be stranger if an intelligent creature capable of magic could not?

But dragons never spoke to humans. Just as no person conversed with their food, those arrogant creatures considered it beneath them.

And so Ivan spoke in a deep, hollow voice to the lizard that stared at him without answering.

"Try."

* * *

BWOOOOOO!

A horn sounded. Oscar jerked his head up and shouted.

"That's Father's call to rally!! He's not far!"

Now that they had been ambushed, the safest place was the line Gilles Vert defended in person. He was sounding his horn to regroup the surviving troops.

Since he himself was the dragons' target, he was effectively staking his life on it. Every dragon not already engaged in battle would obviously converge on him.

Oscar gritted his teeth and led the group onward. The trees grew sparser. Exposed to such sudden, overwhelming heat, the forest charred and crumbled before it could properly burn.

Ash drifted through the air. Smoke spewed from the Bernina Mountains, blackening the sky. Beneath that dark sky, the moon obscured, soldiers fled with raised torches, gathering together.

Toward the mountaintop.

BWOOOOO!

Toward their lord.

BWOOOOOO!

Toward the Lord Protector, the Knight of the Iron Mountain, the shield of this country.

* * *

"How many survived?!"

"Eighty-one knight initiates in all!! The Capital Defense Corps can still maintain twenty-one detachments!"

Gilles Vert ground his molars in anguish. In a single instant, more than a thousand troops had failed to return.

"Fools..."

Had some fled down the mountain, he could at least have assumed there were more survivors. But the soldiers he had personally trained were gritting their teeth and gathering in his camp.

They were terrified, their defeat plain to see, yet not one had panicked and fled down the mountain. It was safe to assume that everyone who had failed to return was dead.

This was the burden of the Hero's Party. The burden of being a symbol of hope. The weight that someone who had become everyone's hope had to bear throughout their life.

Even as their comrades burned to death in an instant, these men chose to rally around him rather than flee in search of a chance to live.

"You must retreat, my liege... We shall clear a path."

"Where to?"

"... Pardon?"

"Where would I go? To the Eastern Front? Or to Saint Matilene?"

"Why, of course..."

"And what becomes of them?"

Gilles Vert gestured toward the soldiers with his chin.

"They are the strongest corps Thilles possesses. If I sacrifice them to survive, what future is there?"

"My liege, you are this country's only remaining hope!"

"This country's hope must not belong to any one individual!"

The Lord Protector protected the country. Not the king, not the capital, not the people. The 'state.'

He protected the state's systems. He had to preserve the very concept of the state. He had to preserve the administrative structure called a state, in which everyone could place their trust.

An individual's strength could not sustain a country. Fear could dominate, but it could not govern. A state was the sum of its people's faith. Faith that it would never fall.

Under that faith, people lived their lives, plowing fields, tending sheep, and selling wheat. Only when those small units meshed like gears could they be called a state.

And so the Lord Protector would never flee. That was the meaning of the office to which Gilles Vert had sworn himself.

"Those things are a trap prepared for me. If I leave, they'll follow. Wherever I go, that place is certain to burn."

"My liege...!"

"Even if they don't, even if they simply remain in these mountains, what difference would it make? The Eastern Front will be cut off and wither away. There are no friendly forces anywhere except the corps in the capital. Thilles will be split in two and perish!"

Losing the Bernina Mountains and every region within the dragons' flight range would mean losing every domain in the northeast, including countless pastures and fields.

That could not be allowed to happen. They had never suffered such losses even in the war against the Demon King's army.

Was there a future after losing half the country, half its capacity for growth, after throwing half its people into the jaws of dragons and demons?

No. Thilles would be finished. And so...

"I must stop them here."

Looking down at the gathering soldiers, Gilles Vert held out his hand. His adjutant handed him a helmet, face rigid. He pulled it firmly onto his head, then gestured again.

The banners billowed.

FLAP!

A sun burning a devil, dawn rising over the grasslands. The banners of the Eastern Order.

Antlers, a spear, and a shield crossed together. The banners of Etakrich.

The two kinds of banners rippled like a wall behind him. The Eastern Order stood at attention at his back, each knight gripping a banner and weapons.

"Father!!"

Seeing the youngsters approach, Gilles Vert let out a quiet sigh of relief. Thank goodness. They were alive.

"Father, I'll... we'll fight too!"

"Your Highness! We'll help!!"

"Ha."

He chuckled softly at the sight of the youngsters coming toward him. They looked so much like his own companions when they had first set out on their journey.

A little less experienced than we were, of course. Naturally. We had all been seasoned veterans by the time we set out. We were an assassination squad formed to go straight for the Demon King.

Yet these youngsters perhaps came closer to what a 'Hero's Party' should be.

Stepping forward with hope and a noble cause, ready to risk their lives even when it was not their own country or their own families at stake.

Young people ready to race toward greater heights.

Yes, if the United Kingdoms still had hope, was it not that young people like these remained?

As one who had come before them, he had something to say.

"This is the previous generation's burden."