In truth, Pales had never kept particularly large reserves of magic stones, owing to the region’s circumstances. Unlike elsewhere, large monsters did not prowl around frequently enough to provide many hunting opportunities. Nor did the domain have much use for the stones it occasionally acquired.

Sherin had asked Count Pales to begin gathering a stockpile for her plans several years earlier, but even that was not enough to meet the recent explosion in demand.

“Honestly, I didn’t account for this. I never imagined the yield would fall so far when I left it to other mages.”

Sherin sighed, looking dismayed as she studied the documents, then slapped them down.

At present, hired mages rather than Sherin herself handled the division of magic stones and the production of magical devices. Overseeing the domain’s affairs, watching its internal workings through spiders, inventing new magical devices, and designing production processes already filled her days.

But the mages were less capable to begin with, and secrecy required them to work without understanding the underlying principles. As a result, efficiency had fallen even further than she had expected. With a little exaggeration, nearly half the magic stones put into production were being thrown away.

“Have you used the stone from the ogre we killed, too?”

“Strictly speaking, that isn’t mine. Besides, I can’t use something so precious to make odds and ends. I’m pouring my heart and soul into adjusting it, so hurry up and find yourself some good armor.”

Sherin’s eyes widened fiercely as she declared that she would not tolerate something meant for the strongest knight being damaged that way.

Shan did not entirely understand, but it seemed to be a matter of pride as a craftswoman.

“... Then should we go hunting in the Demonlands?”

“There’s no guarantee we’ll get many stones just by scouring the place. And it would take too long.”

Even if Shan tore apart every monster he encountered, he would have nothing to show for it unless he found large monsters that possessed magic stones. Hadn’t a single cockatrice stone been the sum total of his harvest from two expeditions wandering the Demonlands?

In short, however powerful they might be, there was a clear limit to what one person or one hunting party could accomplish. Sending a large force into the Demonlands would also leave Pales vulnerable.

“We’d be better off taking them from somewhere they’re already stockpiled.”

There was something chilling about Sherin’s voice. Shan and Roden instinctively understood what she meant.

Humans were the only creatures in the world that stockpiled magic stones in large quantities.

“Somehow... I don’t think you mean buying them.”

“With everything we’ve been doing lately, we’re short on both supplies and money. We already traded with Shedil’s domain before, so they probably don’t have many stones left either.”

That left only one option: obtaining magic stones through forced requisitions—or, to put it plainly, plunder. Naturally, the target would have to belong to the enemy camp.

“It was about time we knocked Conrad down a peg anyway. If the reports are true, Elvin is getting utterly crushed. We can hardly welcome that balance tipping.”

Crossing the river from Pales and traveling west for four or five days would bring them into territory that supported Conrad. Although the Old Faith’s magic-rejecting adherents predominated there, practical considerations meant that most places still embedded at least one magic stone in their gates.

With a nasty smile, Sherin explained that stripping all those stones out would replenish their supplies. Seizing other strategic resources as well would greatly weaken Conrad’s fighting strength.

“War, then...” Roden murmured with a slight frown.

He regretted that they would have to kill and be killed by fellow humans, rather than monsters, merely because they served different lords. Even so, he did not presume to lecture Sherin that she must not do such a thing.

If they did not attack first, Conrad would attack them anyway—once all his preparations were complete, with overwhelming numbers behind him.

“We must wage war for peace. It sounds ridiculous even as I say it, but that’s reality.”

The smile vanished from Sherin’s face.

* * *

Preparations for war proceeded at lightning speed, thanks to the administrative system Sherin had painstakingly fitted together like a precision machine. It was truly astonishing to watch every supply required for recruitment, organization, marching, battle, and even siege warfare arrive almost instantly.

The army that assembled was an imposing force: 188 well-armed Altoan mercenaries—their numbers had grown with the arrival of more refugees—and two hundred soldiers supplied by Count Pales. Adding the hundred or so soldiers provided by four barons brought their strength to roughly five hundred.

With Shan and another dozen or so knights sent by the count and his subordinate barons, they had more than enough strength to trample several ordinary rural domains.

That Pales could field a standing force of this size while leaving ample troops behind to defend the region against unforeseen trouble testified to its immense prosperity. Other domains, chronically short of people because of incessant monster attacks, could scarcely dream of such mobilization.

Of course, a direct confrontation with Conrad, backed as he was by dozens of lords, would see this army crushed outright. Fortunately, most of his forces were currently in the south fighting Elvin. All they needed to do was threaten or attack the hollowed-out domains of northwestern Pendia and plunder magic stones and every other kind of strategic resource.

“Still, don’t push too hard. You never know when the situation might change. Keep your scouts out at all times, and retreat immediately if anything seems wrong...”

Sherin repeated her cautions over and over, like the mother of a child going out alone for the first time. Knowing she spoke out of concern, Shan simply smiled and nodded rather than growing bored.

Several of the magical devices invented in recent months were also being deployed on this expedition. Chief among them were lamps to provide light at night and refrigerators that kept their interiors cool to preserve food.

“With these, we really could carry fresh meat and bread for at least several days longer... That’s frightening.”

Roden marveled at the chests loaded onto the wagons. He knew from experience how difficult it was for an army to eat fresh food without actively pillaging.

Only a few had been made so far, enough to provide special meals for knights and senior soldiers. Once they entered widespread use, however, they would clearly allow armies to sustain combat far longer than before.

Before long, the army assembled on the plain before the count’s castle declared its departure in the presence of Sherin and Count Pales. Command went to Sherin’s own knight, Sir Shan Barendil, whom she had appointed personally.

“Be an army that brings no shame upon the names of the Goddess and the royal house.”

“I shall remember, my liege.”

“I wish you victory, my mightiest knight.”

Before the assembled onlookers, Shan went down on one knee and accepted the axe Sherin presented to him. Of course, he would use Guardian of the East in actual combat; this was largely symbolic.

“Be careful.”

The whisper was so faint that he could only make it out by watching her lips closely. Looking at Sherin’s worried face, Shan answered with a broad grin.

The army left the city of Pales and headed straight for the southern harbor, where they boarded the waiting ships. Their numbers were so great that even with every vessel in service, several trips were needed to transport all the men and supplies.

Shan crossed on the first ship and went straight outside the fortress. When Arwin snorted and stamped excitedly, he patted her neck.

“Yes, yes. Happy to be out after so long, aren’t you?”

He had spent the past month and a half absorbed in personal training as his body grew. Apparently, being unable to run freely outside had bored her.

While he was busy soothing Arwin, Roden disembarked behind him and came over.

“How is the armor, Sir Shan?”

“Not too bad. A little loose, though.”

About a month and a half had passed since his growth spurt began in earnest. In that brief time, Shan had grown nearly ten centimeters, gained considerable muscle, and changed in build. Naturally, his old plate armor no longer fit.

Having new armor made was an option, but the smiths in Pales were somewhat lacking in skill. That was inevitable when the comparison was with Hasra’s armorers, arguably the finest in Pendia.

In the end, he had been forced to wear Kamad’s armor, which he had stashed away for lack of a use. As befitted armor of the highest quality issued to a royal knight, careful adjustment of the straps made it reasonably wearable, if a little uncomfortable.

Still, to fight at his full strength, nothing would beat a new suit made to fit him exactly.

“I wish I’d hurry up and finish growing. Then we could just melt it down and hammer it into shape, couldn’t we? Modify it with the ogre stone while we’re at it.”

Since he was still growing, resizing the armor to fit his current body would accomplish nothing. Hadn’t Sherin said he would probably end up somewhere over 180 centimeters but under 190?

He was already growing at an absurd pace, but he wished he could finish quickly and settle into his final size.

Smiling at Shan’s grumbling, Roden turned his head. Two boys around Shan’s age sat on their horses nearby, looking tense. One was Altoan, the other a Westerner.

“Biko, Tavera. Check that no one was left behind during the crossing.”

“Yes!”

“Understood, Master Roden!”

The two boys were squires Shan had recently selected. With Roden serving as both lieutenant and adviser, they needed someone to provide combat assistance and handle miscellaneous tasks.

Biko was an Altoan with scales as hard as armor growing across parts of his body. Shan had chosen him personally as the most promising Altoan boy of a suitable age. By coincidence, he was the nephew of “Long Arms” Kov, who had once hunted a troll with Shan and still served as a senior soldier in the mercenary company.

Tavera, meanwhile, was a distant relative of Count Pales and Sir Aran’s younger second cousin. He had been chosen more for his connections than his talent, but he nevertheless had the grit to endure a knight’s training. As the son of a knightly house who had trained since childhood, he was currently a little more skilled than Biko.

“So? Are they any use?”

Once the two had ridden off to convey orders to the army, Roden asked quietly, reverting to a more familiar tone.

Shan tilted his head.

“What do you mean?”

“Those two.”

“If you mean their skills, they’ve got a long way to go. I’ve only taught them for a month or two.”

Unless one was an anomaly like Shan, combat skills took ordinary people years, if not decades, of painstaking work to instill in their bodies. They had some prior training as an apprentice mercenary and a scion of a knightly house respectively, but both had only recently begun proper service as squires. They still had much to learn.

“Not that. Their behavior, their character, that sort of thing.”

“Wouldn’t you be a better judge of that than me? They don’t seem bad, anyway.”

Both boys were either Shan’s age or a year or two older, but they were utterly deferential before him, not daring even a pretense of impudence. That was only natural when their lord was a genius knight who had already accomplished legendary feats while they were still sniveling boys practicing with feather swords.

Even if he sometimes seemed rather absentminded in everyday life, they could hardly treat him casually. Having recently witnessed the tremendous intensity of his training while training alongside him only reinforced that.

“Well, that’s fine, then. Tell me if they get too cheeky. I’ll teach them a lesson.”

“You really do think I’m a little kid.”

In fact, the two boys were even more helpless before Roden than before Shan. It was inevitable, since he was Shan’s most trusted lieutenant and handled every matter in the company, great or small.

As they talked, Roden watched the boys moving around the camp and smiled wistfully.

“Those two will be knights someday. I envy them.”

For a half-fledged warrior who could not fight people, it was a step he could never ascend. The lament of a young man who had abandoned knighthood because of his fear of blades drifted across the plain.

Shan watched him for a moment, then stretched out a leg and kicked Roden’s shin.

“Ow! That hurt, you brat!”

“People will hear you.”

“Gah.”

Realizing he had unwittingly raised his voice, Roden hastily looked around. Fortunately, they were far enough away that no one had heard him—although a few people looked startled at the sight of Shan kicking his own squire.

“You’re still training even now. Why act like it’ll never happen?”

“... You saw?”

“Yes.”

One dark night, Shan had happened upon Roden staying behind to train alone. He had suspended a dagger from a cord, thrown it to one side, and practiced dodging it as it swung back.

Doing something ordinary people—no, even children—could have managed with ease had left Roden drenched in cold sweat. Even a blade flying toward him without anyone holding it frightened him that much.

Yet despite his terrible struggle, he had not given up.

“You’ll overcome it someday and become a knight too. I know you will.”

Shan truly believed it. Of all the people he had met, none could do quite literally anything the way Roden could. Even a seemingly impossible problem was something he would find a way to overcome.

At the confident encouragement from his lord and friend, Roden looked dazed for a moment, then abruptly turned away.

Shan smiled and teased him.

“You’re crying.”

“No, I’m not, you brat.”

“Liar.”

With his face turned away, Roden blew his nose loudly.

* * *

Before beginning its advance in earnest, Shan’s army first visited several domains bordering the river in turn. Their lords had originally been on friendly terms with Pales, but their relations had become rather ambiguous since Sherin took power. The lands she claimed as Duchess of Rainel included their own domains.

They feared that swearing fealty to her would infringe on their established privileges, yet also feared that open opposition would invite attack. Thus, they had been unable to take a clear position.

In fact, Sherin had intended precisely this reaction. Vassalage was not a one-sided relationship: in return for a vassal’s loyalty, a liege was obliged to provide protection.

Defending along the river was one thing, but she did not yet have the strength to protect the domains across it from Conrad. She had therefore deliberately made a show of encroaching on their privileges, creating an ambiguous relationship that spared her any obligation to defend them in a crisis.

Consequently, both sides had remained distant even when Pales’s forces crossed the river for patrols and practical training, or passed through on trading journeys.

That held true until today, when Shan broke the unspoken rule and personally visited each lord’s manor.

To rural lords ruling over only a handful of villages and small towns inhabited by hundreds or, at most, thousands, five hundred properly armed and trained soldiers posed an enormous threat. They sent messengers in alarm and, while grateful to learn that Pales did not intend to invade, were obliged to appear in person to negotiate.

An elderly baron who had come out before his castle to meet Shan groaned miserably.

“A promissory note...”

“Her Highness the Duchess has promised to repay you with goods equal to or greater in value than the magic stones.”

“By Her Highness the Duchess, you mean the princess, I take it?”

“Yes, of course. Are you perhaps denying that she is the Duchess of Rainel?”

The elderly baron shook his head in alarm, as though the boy before him might tear him apart on the spot if he answered otherwise.

Despite Shan’s slightly downturned eyes and gentle appearance, there was a sharp pressure to his steady gaze. Was it the feats he had accumulated, or some distinctive aura that came with strength?

“No, certainly not!”

“I’m glad to hear it. Otherwise, I would have to defend my liege’s honor.”

Applying pressure quite skillfully, just as Roden had coached him beforehand, Shan held out the prepared document. Its terms were simple: hand over every magic stone in his possession, and he would be repaid in three years.

In a sense, it was both a promissory note and a nonaggression pact. Attacking someone to whom one owed money without justification would be an obvious and dishonorable attempt to avoid repayment.

“... Give me a little time to think.”

The elderly baron immediately began conferring with the retainers who had accompanied him. The knights, naturally, protested vehemently.

“Absolutely not. If we surrender every magic stone in the domain, how are we to defend the castle?”

It was widely known that the cockatrice stone had played a major role in enabling Shedil to withstand the ogre horde lord’s attack during the recent monster offensive. More numerous and more powerful magic stones offered a substantial advantage in defending gates and walls.

To put it bluntly, an ordinary wooden gate could be smashed apart by a single blow from a troll.

But an official on the other side shook his head and countered their argument.

“Let us hand them over. Keeping them will only invite a needless fight.”

“Coward!”

“Cowardly or not, we must survive. Does possessing magic stones give us the strength to fight that army?”

“If we hold out in the castle...”

“The wheat harvest is nearly upon us. All they need to do is burn the fields, and we’ll all starve. Even if they don’t, what will we have left if every village is destroyed? Large monsters that require magic stones to defend against only appear once every few years, if that. What good is dying now to guard against a threat that may never come?”

Unlike the lord’s castle with its stone walls, the villages and fields were protected by little more than palisades and fences. Naturally, such defenses meant very little against an army of this size.

After listening to his retainers’ arguments and deliberating at length, the baron finally made his decision. He approached Shan, squeezed his eyes shut, signed, and put away the document.

“I shall prepare the magic stones.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

Repeating this process several more times on their rounds yielded a few reasonably usable magic stones. Every one was a poor-quality specimen from a middling monster, but considering their intended use, even these were too scarce to pass up.

As they departed, Shan looked back and spoke quietly.

“They all look rather grief-stricken.”

“Well, we call it a trade, but they were effectively forced to surrender their property.”

“We really do intend to repay them with interest, though.”

In all honesty, turning these stones into a few magical devices and giving them back would be as good as handing those lords a fortune. Any decent Altoan relic was worth far more than low-grade stones like these.

They might harbor some ill feeling now, but within a few years, once Sherin had the strength to expand beyond her borders, compensating them with such goods would be enough to bring them into her service.

Having acquired those few magic stones, Shan led his army steadily southwest. They crossed broad plains, passed through secluded woods and valleys, and forded several streams, sleeping outdoors for three nights and spending two more in two villages where they replenished their provisions.

The villagers feared abuse from the army that had appeared so suddenly, but Shan’s troops did not run wild slaughtering people or plundering their belongings. They merely paid a reasonable sum and “requisitioned” the supplies they needed.

“Remember, all of you: these people are fellow inhabitants of Pendia. Anyone who harms civilians will be severely punished.”

Shan delivered this warning whenever they entered a village. It was at Sherin’s request.

Like the domains they had visited earlier, these lands were part of the Pendia she would one day rule as queen. Besides avoiding a reputation as a wicked ruler, she needed to preserve its towns and villages as intact as possible if she hoped to collect more taxes.

Of course, people did not necessarily obey just because they were told. On one occasion, a thoughtless soldier went too far in harassing a woman, quarreled with her husband, and gave him a savage beating.

Shan had the soldier tied up in the village square and concluded his punishment with a single lash across the back.

“Urrgh...”

“Take him down.”

At Shan’s order, the terrified soldiers lowered their comrade from the tree to which he had been tied. Though he had been whipped only once, none of the villagers dared complain that the punishment was too lenient.

It had done far more than bruise him. The flesh of his back had been split as though by a blade, leaving a gouge deep enough to expose bone. Anyone could see that he would soon die without a priest’s healing.

Holding the blood-dripping whip, Shan looked at the assembled soldiers and warned them quietly.

“Remember. Unless you are attacked first, inflicting needless harm on civilians is strictly forbidden.”

To the soldiers, that single quiet warning was more chilling than any superior’s shouted reprimand. They could sense that he was a man quite capable of killing them the moment they disobeyed.

* * *

A day after Shan had imposed that stern discipline, their destination finally appeared in the distance: the city of Zerkan, ruled by a noble who supported Conrad.

“We’re finally here...”

Zerkan stood with a towering cliff at its back. From what Shan had heard, a sizable iron vein below it supplied abundant metal resources.

Apparently spotting Shan’s army, the city rang its bells in alarm. People working in facilities outside the walls rushed through the gates.

Watching the gates slam shut, Shan first sent a messenger. They had made some preparations for a siege, but obtaining what they needed without resistance would be preferable.

“Promise that if they surrender, we will touch nothing except strategic supplies and magic stones.”

“Understood.”

Yurk, Baron Rugen, volunteered to serve as messenger himself. His obedient bow at Shan’s command made his former arrogance seem a distant memory and clearly demonstrated their respective places in the hierarchy.

Carrying a white flag, Yurk approached the gates with a few guards and shouted for their surrender. Before long, someone appeared atop the wall.

‘That’s...’

The apparent captain of the garrison above the gates was a woman built much like Roden. Perhaps she was in her thirties or forties. She wore sturdy mail, and the axe resting on her shoulder was large enough to sever a horse’s neck in a single stroke.

Yet her most striking feature was the pair of rabbit ears rising from her head.

At the sight of those rabbit ears, one of them half severed, an Altoan mercenary cried out in astonishment.

“... Don’t tell me that’s the Slaughter Rabbit?”