Editing/Standardisation: Medicine Melancholy
Original Translation: Medicine Melancholy
Iris
“Enemies, coming.”
Three hours had passed since Gantz-san contacted us this morning with such a simple message.
Everyone frantically finished the combat preparations, and before long, we were standing at the western gate, staring at the direction of the tunnels where the enemies nested with bated breath.
There was no sign of people behind us, as all the townspeople had evacuated, and everyone who could fight had gathered here and was waiting at their posts.
Most of our forces were divided into two groups.
The vanguard group consisted of the mercenaries and Shadow Regiment members who excelled at close-quarter combat, along with all of the town’s guards. They were stationed outside the gate.
Among them, Captain Walter and the mercenary siblings would lead a hit-and-run unit, while Ashley-san, who was the supreme commander of the entire operation, would be in charge of the remaining knights and soldiers defending the gate.
And now, standing on top of the walls where I was, were Milly-san, Lenny-san, Diaz-san, and half of the knights, who specialized in magic, along with Weiss-san and the other archers, made up the rear guard.
Nii-sama and Reiji-san remained behind as my bodyguards, the former also assumed command of this group.
In addition, beyond the barricade inside the gate, a team of civil servants and volunteers with medical knowledge was assigned to the former mayor’s mansion. Aini-san was there as well.
We numbered over one hundred in total.
Back in the game, the maximum number of members in a party was eight. Three parties, or twenty-four players, were the norms when fighting a raid boss… and in the case of a legion raid, that number was quadrupled to ninety-six.
But this time, the number of combatants exceeded even that, and my knees trembled with the thought of participating in a battle I’d never experienced before. Nii-sama probably felt the same as I did… actually, he was looking like he’s going to be crushed under the pressure of the situation. That makes sense, considering he had to command the entire rear guard.
Seeing us like this, Reiji-san tried to lighten up the mood by saying “If anything happens, I’ll cover both of you”. He was resting his back on a nearby wall and staring at the direction the enemies would appear.
“Enemies spotted! Hey, what the…”
Weiss-san, who had the best eyesight, frowned as he peered through his telescope into the distance. The other telescope operators also made the same face.
“Don’t try it, kid, it’s not something safe for children to look at.”
“I’m sorry, but I have to do it.”
Sensing what I was about to do, Weiss-san attempted to stop me, but I shook him off and activated Eagle Eye…
Spread out before my eyes was a scene ripped straight out from a horror game.
I saw goblins with unnaturally huge lumps on their arms, and claws the length of a child’s height.
I saw goblins with an additional pair of arms growing out of their shoulder blades. Some of them were carrying pickaxes or shovels as weapons, perhaps having procured them along the way.
I saw goblins with chunks of crystal formed inside their bodies and pierced their way out of the skin. I saw goblins with abnormally long fangs that drooled uncontrollably as they walked. I saw…
I had to try my hardest to not scream on the spot.
“You okay there? You don’t have to speak if you don’t feel like it.”
“It’s… alright…”
I felt a hand patting on my back.
I’m sure my face is pale as a sheet right now, but I can’t let myself succumb to the pressure, there’s something I must do here.
I took a deep breath to calm myself… Yeah, I can do it.
“…I’m going to cast my support spells. Please get ready.”
As I said so, I stepped onto the nearest magic circle… or “battery” as Milly-san called it.
“Pardon me, Your Highness… But are you sure you’ll be fine using just one? A battle of this scale will surely take a toll on you…”
“Yes, I’ll manage somehow… I hope.”
I smiled at one of the knights voicing his concerns to me, and stood in the center of the magic circle. When I saw the circle had begun to glow in response to me, I closed my eyes and weaved a chant, concentrating on my own two hands.
“O light that bestows wisdom, manifest yourself… Spell Extension!!”
With the completion of the chanting, a halo began to twirl in both my hands.
The previous battle with the goblins had taught me something. That the more allies I have, the more valuable my power would become… In other words, I’m well-suited to large scale battle like this.
“Strength Enhancement”
“Instantaneous Force”
“Accelerated Reflexes”
“Heroic Fortitude”
“Consecrated Weapon”
In addition to those spells I used during the previous battle with the goblins, I also used Reinforcement to enchant the armor of my allies with a barrier because many of them were equipped with it this time around.
And since enemy casters were expected in this battle, I cast Anti-Magic as well, though it’d be of little comfort against really powerful spells.
Magic power was sucked up from the magic circle beneath my feet, and our encampment was enveloped in a seven-colored brilliance. The light spread and permeated every soldier present, unleashing their potential.
After confirming that everyone had been under the effect of my support magic, the magic circle expired, having all its power used up.
“*pant* This isn’t nearly as much power as I’d hoped… but it’s helpful nonetheless.”
Although I was feeling slightly fatigued because I had to supplement the lacking magic power with my own, this was still a much lesser burden than before.
Just to be sure, I took out a small magic potion and drank it.
“Wow… My body feels so light. Did she just do that to all these people at once?”
A knight beside me muttered in amazement. In fact, I could hear more and more murmurs coming from below the walls.
…I didn’t overdo my buffing too much without any prior explanation, did I?
But for the sake of everyone’s survival, I simply couldn’t afford to cut corners here.
“Hahaha, that’s our Princess for you!”
“What?! Her Highness couldn’t possibly belong to you hired mercs…!”
“Everyone, no infighting please!”
Apparently, the knights were arguing with a group of mercenaries.
When I leaned over the walls to tell them off, everyone immediately ceased the argument and happily gave a thumb-up to me… Eh?
“Did everyone get a good look of her beautiful visage?!”
“Of course! I’ll never forget her exalted personage for the rest of my life!”
“We shall give it our all to never let sadness cloud your face, Your Highness!”
Loud, enthusiastic cheers erupted from the crowd of soldiers below. Some of them even crossed shoulders with each other. Since when did they become such close-knit comrades?
“I’m sorry, miss, but those people really wanted to worship your face one more time…”
“Excuse me, brother, but aren’t YOU the one who proposed that idea in the first place? ‘It’s a wonderful idea, let’s do it right away!’, you said.”
“Dammit Philias, why do you have to say that in front of the old man-”
“Oh… We’re going to have a long discussion about this later, boy.”
Ashley-san’s voice was thick with killing intents, but for once, I didn’t feel particularly bad about it.
“Um… Sorry about that, okay?!”
Philias-san apologized to me, and the commotion finally subsided.
It was at that moment, everything came together in my head.
…Did they just set me up for this?!
As everyone’s warm gazes were focused on me, I felt a rush of shame.
“I-If you don’t come back safely… I-I’ll never forgive you!”
I made it very clear that I’m angry about what happened, then turned on my heel and returned to my post.
There, all the members of the sorcerer group were already in their respective positions and preparing for the first attack.
“Ahahaha… Another saintly performance from you.”
“Could you not put it like that?”
“…Well, it certainly lifted everyone’s spirit, including you, though. You should thank them for thinking this far.”
Nii-sama was right. Yes, my knees had stopped shaking and my nervousness was gone, but…!
“…Do you really think so?”
“Perhaps.”
Nii-sama replied with a wry smile to my sulking and pouting face.
If that allowed everyone to show their full potential in the battle ahead, I’m sure I could take a bit of embarrassment… Actually, is there even any other way to do this without making a fool of me?
“Let’s ready ourselves, shall we?”
“…Yes!”
The battle would begin at any moment.
The enemies’ march was incredibly slow… or perhaps the extreme tension made the passage of time seem slower.
…But the time had come. The enemy’s frontline had entered the range of our magic, which was marked by stakes driven into the ground beforehand.
“…Sorcerer group, open fire!”
At Nii-sama’s command, the sorcerer group fired off a volley of fireballs in a way that they could synchronize the timings of their attacks. The fireballs I’d seen once before, the Lava Bomb spell, went on a slow but precise trajectory toward the enemy frontline.
“Disastrous Beast’s Annihilating Roar! Here comes my Lightning Detonyator!!”
A few moments later, Milly-san fired a thunderbolt so huge that it dyed the surroundings white to the same spot as the fireballs.
Explosions ravaged the earth and left a burning hellscape, while the bolt of purple lightning ran through one enemy to another like a rampaging serpent.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
The flame gathered as if absorbed into the thunderbolt in an unnatural movement that would be impossible if it were a flame of natural causes, and compressed into itself… The next instant, more explosions occurred in various places, causing further devastation and generating so much heat that even I could feel it from this distance.
That was a phenomenon called “Mana Burst”.
When high-density magical power of the appropriate attributes and concentration is condensed in one spot, a chain reaction will occur. This particular Mana Burst is called “Overload”, caused by fire and lightning attributes.
In order to cause as much destruction as possible, it requires a certain number of sorcerers, who then have to synchronize their attacks with precise timings… Under normal circumstances, it took twice of our current number to be able to achieve this level of fire power, but with the aid of the supporting magic circles and Milly-san’s highest-tier spell, we were able to forcibly cause such a powerful Mana Burst.
“…Did we get them?”
The knight next to me asked.
“I don’t think so… Those monsters won’t go down that easily.”
Denying his words, I leaned forward and looked at the site of the magical strike.
When the flame and dust had settled, there was nothing left of the landscape… But unfortunately, our enemies were still standing.
“… Not all of them, but quite a few were able to resist the heat.”
My hand gripping the handrail tightened. We dealt much less damage to the enemies than expected.
I took a closer look at the enemies and found a thin membrane covering their bodies. Resistance magic?
It seemed that only the ones within ground zero of the explosion and some others were taken down.
I soon found what might be the cause of this. There were several goblins with crystals growing on their shoulders and heads doing some kind of magic… They were probably the ones casting resistance magic on their allies.
“They’re developing resistance to the magic we used, nya! Fire and lightning aren’t effective anymore, switch to other attributes, nya!”
Milly-san, who like me was leaning out from the outer wall to check the situation at the point of impact, immediately grasped the situation, turned around, and shouted so in rapid succession.
Suddenly, I saw an ominous glow at the back of the enemy formation, signaling an enemy magical attack… I felt a chill down my spine upon seeing it.
…That was no normal attack! They were firing curses!
“Enemy counterattack, Nii-sama!”
“Coming, Iris!”
My right hand grasped Nii-sama’s left, allowing him to use the effect of Spell Extension.
“Aegis!”
“Sacred Field!”
We both gritted our teeth and endured the feeling of our magic power diminishing rapidly.
At the same time, after completing the chanting, an enhanced wide-area protection magic was released from our hands and deployed in front of everyone as a duplex barrier.
“Kuh…?!”
“Ugh..?!”
The next moment, countless black fireballs landed on the barrier. The impact almost made me fall back, but Nii-sama supported me, and I managed to hold on.
Nii-sama’s Aegis made up the outer barrier, upon which the horrifying fireballs crashed. The sparks that flickered my eyes were red and black in color, that meant the enemy attacks combined fire and darkness attribute.
Resistance magic usually deals with one attribute at a time, so the general strategy with it is to read the attributes of enemy attacks ahead of time, or bringing multiple users so that they could deal with everything at once.
However, Nii-sama’s Aegis, which was the unique skill of his Knight Lord class, let him do just that all by himself.
And as I had a bad premonition, the penetrating miasma of the curses descended on everyone’s heads, but it was all erased by the second barrier I deployed, Sacred Field, which shut out abnormal conditions such as poison and curses.
The storm of flames and curses went on for some time before eventually clearing up.
“Anyone wounded?!”
As soon as it’s over, I frantically looked around… It seemed that a few of the guards stumbled in surprise at the explosion and flash of light in front of them, but that’s all.
No one seemed to be injured, thank goodness. I let out a sigh of relief.
“Alright, here’s the plan! The two of us will take care of any counterattack, so feel free to fire your magic as much as you like! We have to reduce their number as much as possible before they come into contact!”
“Got it, nya! Everyone, beware of the attribute you’re using, nya!”
At Nii-sama’s instruction, everyone resumed chanting new magic.
Like Milly-san warned just now, two attributes with poor compatibility with each other might cancel each other out, reducing their effectiveness greatly.
Without saying anything else, Diaz-san and Lenny-san, who were mercenaries with long history of fighting, as well as the knights who were fighting on the frontline for the first time, all switched to wind magic.
As for Milly-san, who was using different magic from everyone else, opted for something that wouldn’t cause reactions in the first place, just pure magical energy. She swung a huge magic circle from overhead to the front and shouted.
“First, let’s blow their resistance to smithereens, nya! Photon Blaster!”
The abnormal goblins casting resistance magic were engulfed in a gigantic laser beam and perished.
This battle, later known as the Defense of Diamant Valley, which officially confirmed that the “Wound of the World” can be erased and signaled humanity’s counterattack…
…had only just begun.
APM - Translation 