My Beloved Princess ~The Boy Called Incompetent Rises with Only a Sword and the Princess's Devotion~ - Chapter 99.1: Interlude: On the Outskirts of Argant

It was just past noon when the report reached Rozef, captain of the Argant border garrison.

“What did you say!? A monster broke through the border?”

He had been seated on a bench in the guard station, carefully tending to his beloved sword, when the report came in. At his subordinate’s words, he shot to his feet, snorting harshly through his nose.

“Details. Now.”

“Well, that is…”

“What is it? Speak clearly.”

When Rozef raised his voice at the subordinate’s hesitation, the young soldier let out a frightened little “Hii!” and snapped to attention before answering.

“It is believed to be End Grade!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. End Grade!?”

Rozef, a former mercenary infamous for his terrifying face, rarely showed agitation. But an End Grade monster was enough of a threat to topple a nation single-handedly, so it would have been stranger if he hadn’t been shaken. His cheek twitched, but the judgment sharpened by long experience in real combat came swiftly.

“We can’t sit around here! Request assistance from the Adventurers Guild. There should’ve been several Platinum Grade adventurers in Argant too.”

The moment he gave the order, the adjutant waiting beside him hurried off to dispatch a carrier pigeon.

Adventurers were, for the most part, people who made their living by subjugating monsters. Like mercenaries, if the pay was high enough, they would take almost any job—including dirty ones.

There were six grades of adventurer.

White Grade for fledglings, Blue Grade for those surviving on gathering jobs, Bronze Grade for beginners’ quests, Silver Grade for intermediate work, Gold Grade for advanced missions, and Platinum Grade for national-level missions.

The subjugation of an End Grade monster was a national-level mission.

In other words, it was exactly the sort of case meant for Platinum Grade adventurers.

That said, even among End Grade monsters, there were vast differences in threat level. Since any monster exceeding a certain standard was simply categorized as End Grade, some variance was unavoidable. To address that problem, the End Grade had recently been divided into five further ranks.

For example, there was an End Grade monster known as the Storm Turtle, but that one sat at the very bottom of the category. It was classified as the weakest End rank: Yaksha.

(Even then, if left unchecked, it could flatten a city. Dangerous, yes, but…)

If its initial spin was somehow sealed, the Storm Turtle was nothing more than a slow-moving turtle and could be dealt with comparatively easily. That was why it occupied the lowest rung among End Grade monsters.

“So what End rank is it? An estimate is enough. Answer me.”

“It is believed to be Tenpa!”

End—Tenpa. That was the third highest of the five divisions within the highest End Grade.

Its power was said to be like breaking the heavens. Even the Storm Turtle, which was only Yaksha rank at the bottom of the scale, could wipe out a city in a single night. If this was Tenpa rank—two whole tiers above that—

“This is bad. Even Platinum Grade adventurers might not be enough. If that happens, Argant is finished.”

The young soldier went speechless. As the two stared at each other with pale faces, Rozef muttered bitterly,

“Either way, we have no choice but to fight. It’s our job.”

◇◇◇◇◇

It was extremely rare for an End Grade monster to appear naturally.

Which meant the next question was where it had come from, and apparently it had broken through the border castle wall as though being driven out of the neighboring dragonkin nation before invading Argant territory.

That kind of reckless behavior—driving an End-Tenpa straight across the border—was exactly the sort of thing one might expect from a race bred for battle. Still, every man in the garrison must have been thinking the same thing: if the dragonkin had gone that far, they could at least have finished it off properly.

On the other hand, looked at from a different angle, one could just as easily interpret it to mean the monster had been so monstrous that even the dragonkin had failed to kill it. Either way, it did not make things any less troublesome. Rozef clicked his tongue, deciding he would have felt slightly better if he had never learned that much.

The breach in the wall had also caused enormous damage. It had not been limited to buildings, either—there had been human casualties as well. In other words, many were already dead.

Rozef rushed to the collapsed section of the castle wall, confirmed the extent of the damage, then set out with his men in pursuit.

A huge trail stretched out to the horizon, as though something immense had been dragged along the ground. Waiting at the end of that path was the human city of Argant. If the monster reached it, hundreds of thousands of people would die.

“How’s the coordination with the adventurers?”

“Yes, sir! The Platinum Grade adventurers who departed from Argant will intercept from the front, while we attack from behind.”

Galloping forward as though slicing through the wind, Rozef exchanged those short words with the adjutant riding beside him.

The mounted formation stretched out in a line and thundered westward, kicking up plumes of dust.

Along the way, they passed the corpses of travelers and adventurers who had likely fallen prey to the monster. Judging by the state of them, they had probably died without ever understanding what had happened.

Rozef closed his eyes and offered a brief prayer for the dead, then gripped the reins harder and urged his horse faster.

◇◇◇◇◇

The members of the Platinum Grade adventurer party One Wing of Glory knew at a glance that they had no chance of defeating the monster before them.

Calling it a giant cobra might not sound like much—but what if its total length exceeded fifty meters?

The magical power it radiated into the air was overwhelming by an entire order of magnitude.

Thick, ominous black magic completely cloaked the enormous serpent as it writhed forward.

“Impossible. That amount of magic power… it’s beyond anything that should exist in the natural world.”

Kaito, leader of One Wing of Glory, said it as though scolding his own trembling legs. His armor rattled with an embarrassingly pathetic clang in time with the shaking.

The one who slapped him on the back, trying to encourage him, was the martial artist Liz.

“Don’t shake. Haven’t we taken down plenty of them before? This time it’s just… yeah, just a little tougher, that’s all.”

“B-But isn’t that thing special, or rather… isn’t it on a completely different level from the End Grades we’ve beaten before?”

The one objecting while trembling just as much as Kaito was the healer, Cecil. Beside her, Dag, their shield-bearing tank, nodded with his thick, log-like arms folded.

“What do we do, Leader? An attack from something like that—I can’t tank it.”

The total amount of magic power a monster possessed was directly proportional to its ability. The magic power pouring off the giant snake before them vastly surpassed that of any End Grade monster they had ever fought.

And yet Kaito could not bring himself to order a retreat.

This point, just outside Argant, was the final defensive line. If it fell, Argant would be helplessly doomed.

And arrayed along that line, in front of the city, stood the Argant border garrison—thirty thousand strong—alongside Kaito and the others, the Platinum Grade adventurers. If they ran now, then the title of highest-ranked adventurer would lose all honor and sink into the dirt.

“What do you mean, what do we do? We fight. If this line breaks, Argant—and we ourselves—are finished.”

His arms still trembling, he drew his sword.

It should have been a brave sight, but somehow it only looked hollow.

When their uncertain leader gave the order, the others readied their weapons as well.

Five high-output siege magic weapons had been deployed in the Argant formation. They were enormous cannon-like instruments capable of injuring even End Grade monsters with a direct hit. All five were aimed squarely at the head of the approaching monster.

Kaito had pinned considerable hopes on that opening strike. Even if it failed to kill the monster outright, if it at least slowed its movements, then a chance of victory would appear. After engaging it, the plan was to somehow buy time and follow up with more shots.

However, the moment it entered the very edge of that range, the giant serpent reared toward the heavens.

That wall of flesh rose more than twenty meters in an instant, and everyone gasped.

Then—

“Kishaaaaaaaaaa!”

The giant snake opened its savage, cruel maw and roared.

By the time Kaito realized that roar itself was an attack, he had already lost all control over his body. Like a doll whose strings had been cut, he collapsed face-first to the ground.

“Ga… guha… what…?”

Remaining sprawled there, he searched around with only his eyes.

His comrades and the soldiers of the garrison had all collapsed the same way. His gaze met Cecil’s, lying beside him.

“Are you all right, Cecil?”

“Kaito-san… are you all right too?”

“If you ask whether I’m alive, then yes. But my body won’t move. What the hell happened…?”

“Probably ultrasonic waves.”

“Ultrasonic waves? Enough to rob our bodies of movement…?”

“Yes. Special ultrasonic waves mixed with strong magical interference. I think it violently vibrated our bodies and disrupted the magic power inside them.”

—Vibrating the air and disrupting the magic power inside the body.

A chill ran down Kaito’s spine.

The giant snake was still more than a kilometer away. And yet from that distance, one roar had rendered them all unable to fight?

Digging his fingers into the soil, Kaito forced himself up onto his elbows. The additional height widened his field of view, and when he looked back, he saw the entire thirty-thousand-strong garrison laid out flat on the ground, completely collapsed.

“You’ve got to be kidding… Are you saying it wiped out the entire army with one roar?”

A dry laugh escaped him.

“Everyone’s unconscious. It seems only we’ve managed to stay awake.”

Dag and Liz were down as well, twitching no more than corpses. Since Kaito and Cecil both had higher resistance to magical interference than most, they had apparently just barely escaped losing consciousness. But it meant nothing if they still could not move.

The ground trembled with a heavy rumbling.

The giant snake was approaching.

At the very least, Kaito thought, it might have been easier not to be conscious at all—if only not to feel the fear of being devoured alive without being able to do anything.

“Shit. Getting eaten alive doesn’t sound funny.”

“It’s still too early to give up, Kaito-san.”

“What? You have some kind of plan?”

“Just look at it. The way it walks so leisurely—it’s exactly the dignity of a king. It doesn’t even recognize us as enemies. In that case, I think there’s a way out of this.”

“Even if that’s true, if we can’t move, there’s no way to deal with it.”

“I’m a healer, so my magic resistance is high. If I get a little more time, my body should recover enough to move. Then I can use healing magic to wake everyone up.”

The giant snake’s pace was slow. At that speed, it might really take a little while before it reached them. If so, they might just make it in time for Cecil’s recovery.

But that hope burst like a bubble the moment the giant snake launched its next attack.

At a height of more than twenty meters, its great jaws opened wide, and dense magical power gathered rapidly inside them. The next instant, compressed magical force was discharged downward from on high.

It happened in a flash.

Aurora-like light gouged through the earth and burned through the left wing of the Argant line. Kaito could not see the full extent of the damage, but the heat that reached him told him enough. A great many people had just died.

“Impossible… it’s on a completely different level.”

Even if they recovered their movement, what could they possibly do against a monster like that?

Then, before Kaito’s despairing eyes, a single shadow stepped into view.

“Oh my, oh my. If you fall asleep in a place like this, you’ll catch a cold, you know.”

A neat, clean beauty with gentle manners.

At a glance, she might have been mistaken for an ordinary village woman. Kaito wanted to tell her to run, but his fear-frozen throat would not let out a sound.

The woman tilted her head as she stared at Kaito’s soundless moving mouth.

“Is something wrong? Is this an emergency?”

Behind her, a calamity capable of destroying the city was still unfolding.

Kaito was not the only one to feel the powerful mismatch between her gentle tone and the reality at hand.

“It’s dangerous here. Please run away. Can’t you see what’s behind you?”

At Cecil’s words, the woman turned around.

Then, still in that same gentle tone, she said something utterly bizarre.

“Oh my, there’s so much. I wonder if I’ll be able to finish eating it all.”

Did she mean to turn it into dinner? Certainly there looked to be plenty of edible meat, but still—

“Ah, I see. Your [Ki] has been disturbed, so you can’t move, right?”

The woman bent her knees and lowered herself, then lightly tapped Kaito on the forehead with one finger.

That was all.

The paralysis throughout his body vanished so easily it was almost insulting.

“Eh? I can move. What is this?”

“I straightened out your disturbed [Ki].”

She said it so casually, as if it were nothing, and then she did the same for Cecil.

Cecil rose to her feet, eyes wide in disbelief.

“Could you be… a high-ranking priestess?”

The woman shook her head.

“No.”

Then she looked around at the field.

“But if I had to treat everyone one by one, that would be backbreaking work, wouldn’t it?”

“More importantly! You saw what’s behind us, didn’t you? Just run!”

“That’s true. Then perhaps I should dispose of it first.”

She turned away again, still with that same mild tone. Her back was small and looked terribly unreliable.

And then, at that moment, the giant snake opened its great mouth and roared again.

That same roar that had incapacitated the entire thirty-thousand-strong garrison in an instant. Harmful ultrasonic waves that wreaked havoc on the human body hurtled forward at the speed of sound and tore through Kaito’s body.

—It’s over.

All the trouble she had gone to treating him had been for nothing. He would simply collapse to the ground again. And this slightly odd, gentle woman would meet the same fate.

Kaito squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the shockwave to pass.

But when he opened them after what should have been long enough, the woman’s small back was still there, unchanged.

And Kaito himself was still standing.

“I put up a protective membrane of [Ki]. It was all right, yes?”

Kaito noticed then that the air around them was visibly distorted. A faint popping sound crackled in the atmosphere.

“Did you… protect us?”

Sounds like gathering charge crackled around her.

Turning toward Kaito, still frozen in confusion, she gave him a bright smile.

“Of course I would help. The people of Argant are family to me, after all.”

For some reason, the back that had seemed so small and unreliable only moments before now looked huge.

Then she leaned forward, kicked off the ground with force, and began running at once.

She closed the distance with reckless speed, charging in a straight line toward the giant snake.

Fast.

That sprint brought her to the serpent in no time at all.

The giant snake, meeting her charge, opened its maw and began compressing magical power to extreme density. The moment that dazzling aurora burst from its jaws, she kicked off the ground and vaulted high into the air.

A leap as if openly declaring, Your target is up here.

She soared far above the giant snake’s head. Drawn by that motion, the aurora fired diagonally upward into the sky. Kaito had already seen the power of that attack once. If it hit directly, not even ashes would remain.

Against that, the woman took a simple straight-punch stance in midair.

The snake’s jaws flashed.

The aurora shot upward, meant to wash her tiny silhouette from existence. A torrent of dense magical power tore through the heavens, and the sky glowed with auroral light.

At the exact same moment, the giant snake’s head exploded.

Its massive body, now headless, crashed to the ground in a thunder of dust and impact. Before Kaito’s eyes, the monstrous thing lay still, without a single twitch.

And the woman who should have slain it had vanished as though she had never been there at all.

◇◇◇◇◇

By the time Rozef, captain of the Argant border garrison, arrived at the scene, it was already over.

Black smoke hung over the battlefield. The thirty-thousand-strong garrison was in confusion.

And—

“One corpse of a giant snake over fifty meters long, huh.”

The number of Argant soldiers who had died in the line of duty was seventy-eight in total. Most of them had belonged to the forces stationed at the breached border. In addition, several more had died after being trampled along the way without ever understanding what was happening. Adventurers and civilians had also suffered casualties, and the number of dead was estimated to exceed one hundred.

And yet, astonishingly, not a single death had occurred here at what was supposed to be the final defensive line.

All thirty thousand members of the Argant garrison had survived intact.

Toward the place where the formation had been deployed, there remained something like the scorched track of a laser gouging through the earth—but the line abruptly vanished partway through.

“Did someone… cancel the attack?”

Rozef frowned and tilted his head.

When he imagined what would have happened if an attack like that high-output beam had reached the Argant formation directly, he shuddered.

This had originally been an enemy terrible enough to force them to steel themselves for total annihilation. Seen in that light, the fact that they had escaped total devastation really did qualify as nothing short of a miracle.

That was exactly why there were things Rozef could not understand.

How in the world had they managed to defeat an End-Tenpa?

The one who answered Rozef’s question was Kaito, leader of the Platinum Grade adventurer party One Wing of Glory.

According to him:

“A very beautiful village woman happened to pass by and killed it in one blow.”

It was too clumsy a story to even qualify as a proper lie.

Hearing something that absurd, Rozef felt the old migraine in his skull worsening.

His adjutant, however, had a different opinion.

“There’s a guardian deity in Argant, you see. It’s a legend passed down among the gatekeepers.”

Apparently so.

Fairy tales, all of them.

And yet, when the giant snake had been killed, the entire thirty-thousand-strong Argant force had been unconscious. No one had actually seen how the monster was defeated.

The only witnesses were Kaito and his comrade Cecil.

And the two of them were telling exactly the same story.

“What, then? Do I really have no choice but to believe this nonsense?”

The giant snake’s corpse was headless.

The cut surface had been scorched black, and there was almost no blood. From that alone, one could guess it had been burned away by some kind of high-density energy.

And then there was one more thing.

A portion—only a portion—of the flesh around its belly had been neatly skinned and cut away, several kilograms’ worth.

“For what exactly?”

At Rozef’s baffled mutter, Kaito replied with a bitter smile,

“Mm… maybe she was taking it home for dinner?”

In what kind of world did a village woman prey on an End-Tenpa?

Even for a fairy tale, it needed a little more internal consistency.

What was he supposed to tell the lord in his report?

Rozef had no choice but to let out a deep sigh.