The damage caused by the collapse of the main tunnel at Refun Mine was by no means something that could be tolerated. The abundant iron resources produced by that mine had become a vital source of revenue for the war-ravaged Mayard territory. Even the Highserk Empire at the height of its brutal dominance had shown a certain degree of consideration toward Refun Mine, particularly toward the miners who lived in the mining town.

While many of them were simple laborers engaged in physical work, in truth they were a collective of highly advanced technicians. Even if someone seized control of the mine, if those miners were killed off, who would carry out the mining afterward? Their specialized knowledge alone was vast: surveying, tunnel excavation, smithing, and countless other skills. Replacing such community of craftsmen would not be easy to accomplish.

A request to dispatch a healing mage to the site was made the very same day, and Ayane responded to it. Alongside the guards who normally protected her, six mounted riders surrounded the carriage. Walm, whose treatment had been completed and whose affiliation and duties had become somewhat uncertain, also joined the convoy. According to brigade commander Justus, who had pushed for his inclusion in the escort, there was no better candidate. Just as back in Dandurg, the brigade commander was still as demanding in the way he used his men.

“Guardian Chief, once we pass that ridge, we’ll reach Refun Mine.”

“Finally.”

One of the guards from Highserk riding alongside him spoke up. Perhaps he was trying to be considerate toward a fellow countryman, but the underlying meaning of his words was concern. After all, since being conscripted as a light infantryman, Walm had never had any experience riding a horse. If anything, the closest he had come was sitting like cargo on the back of a wagon.

When Walm had been assigned a horse and admitted, “I’ve never ridden one before,” the group had fallen into an awkward, painful silence. To make matters worse, Justan, a native of the Kingdom of Felius who commanded the escort, had stared at him in disbelief and said, “You’re a knight, and you can’t ride a horse…?”

Being forced to attend a riding lesson in public like some spectacle was humiliating for a knight of the Empire. Walm’s pride had been thoroughly tormented. Somehow, by imitating what he saw others do, he managed to mount the horse and make the long journey all the way to Refun, but the price he paid was a dull, throbbing pain in his backside. Back when he had been a foot soldier, he had envied the cavalrymen with their horses. Now, however, he found himself longing for the distant ground beneath his feet.

“I see it. Refun… damn, that’s bad.”

The voice came from Justan, who was leading the way. As they crossed the peak of the mountain road, Walm grimaced at the sight before him.

In the past, the Reglia Battalion had used Refun as their playground. During their retreat to Sarajevo Fortress, they had carried out all kinds of harassment operations there, and Walm was familiar with the surrounding terrain. But now, compared to his memories, the landscape had changed drastically. The once-barren hills riddled with tunnels had collapsed in places, resembling a sand pile stomped flat by a child.

“We’ll head straight to the local clinic.”

No one objected to Justan’s proposal.

The ground, soaked through with rainwater and turned to mud, was carved with countless wagon ruts. The river running through the mountain valley had grown from the heavy rain, its current quickened as it roared along. In places, the riverbanks had been gouged out as if chewed away by a set of sharp jaws.

The bridge leading to the mining town had somehow avoided collapse, likely thanks to the craftsmanship of the mining engineers who had constructed it. Along parts of the well-trodden road, heaps of mud and debris remained where landslides had swept through, and the town’s residents had already begun the work of clearing it away.

The choking, raw smell of freshly turned earth hung over the town.

Set far from the center, in a district closer to the mines, stood a clinic that also served as a church. It had been built on the mine-facing side of the town so that the injured miners could be brought in quickly. There were also medical facilities within the large mountain fortress that housed numerous soldiers and kept watch over the surrounding area. However, that place was far from the collapsed tunnels.

The wheels splashed mud as the exhausted horses snorted and neighed, and the carriage finally came to a halt. Without waiting for anyone to greet them, two figures leapt down from the carriage. Needless to say, they were Ayane and Maya.

“Even if we ask you to wait, you won’t listen, will you? At least let us guide the way!”

Walm wasn’t the only one caught off guard. Justan, who was responsible for the escort, jumped down from his saddle in a hurry. Walm, unaccustomed to riding and still dealing with his aching backside, was slower to dismount. Watching the guards surround Ayane and escort her inside ahead of him, he felt both reassurance and a faint sense of loneliness.

There was no point dwelling on such trivial sentimentality. Sliding down from his horse almost like he was falling off, Walm handed the reins to one of the remaining Mayard cavalrymen and followed the others inside.

◆

“We’ll remove the instruments.”

“Alright. I’ll close it.”

Most of the injured brought in suffered bruises or broken bones. Among them, however, the most severely wounded suffered internal organ damage and internal bleeding from the crushing weight of the earth.

Maya incised the wounds and used water-attribute magic to cleanse contaminated areas while removing debris. Beside her, Ayane healed the treated injuries. There were other healing mages accompanying them, but none could match the speed of those two. More importantly, there was no room to interrupt the seamless coordination between them.

Walm moved outside to stand guard. There were many magic users who worked in the mines already, so there was no need for him to interfere with tasks like sterilizing instruments or cauterizing wounds.

The thick rainclouds that had caused the disaster were drifting away across the distant sky, as if their work was done. The number of people gathered around the building had begun to decrease. Now that Ayane and the others were treating the severely injured, healing resources could also be allocated to the lightly wounded who had been lying outside.

“Foreman Zidre, over here!”

“Hang in there a little longer. A healing mage came all the way from Selta.”

“Thank the heavens… thank you…”

Even so, many were still buried alive. A group of mud-covered miners carried over a patient whose arm and leg had been fixed with splints. They handled the injured with surprising skill, placing him on a makeshift stretcher fashioned from clothing and wooden poles.

Dry white mud mixed with damp clumps of dirt covered their bodies, showing how tirelessly they had worked in the rescue efforts. Even in a world where ordinary people were surprisingly resilient, a considerable amount of time had already passed since the landslide. How many more would be brought in still breathing?
“Skipping work, Sir knight?”

The one who called out to the gloomy Walm was Justan, the former soldier of the Kingdom of Felius. Apparently, he had stationed his subordinates inside for security and had come outside to oversee the outer perimeter.

“Being serious is about the only thing I’m good at.”

“Seems like it.”

Like Walm, Justan kept his eyes moving restlessly, observing their surroundings. The two soldiers spoke without even looking at each other. To an outsider, it might have seemed like a rather strange scene.

“Not that I mean it as an insult, but you seem more like a seasoned infantryman than a knight.”

It was a remark that struck the core of the matter. Walm had come to be called a knight through a twist of fate, but he had been born into a farmer’s family that had never even known war. His original role had been to till the land. He knew neither how to ride a horse nor how to conduct himself as a knight. It was only natural that he seemed mismatched.

“In Highserk, even infantry can become knights.”

“Infantry, huh. You say that like it’s easy… well, after killing that many people, I suppose it’s possible.”

The implication in his words made Walm furrow his brow. This escort had the unmistakable air of someone who had come straight from the battlefield. And for soldiers of Felius, there was no greater enemy than the Highserk Empire.

“…Did we meet on the battlefield?”

“Not directly. You just burned the camp inside the ramparts where we were stationed.”

When Walm had crawled out from the ramparts that had become a mass grave at Sarajevo, he had gone on to set fire to the encampments of the Four-Nation Alliance while they slept. Among them had been the forces of the Kingdom of Felius. It wouldn’t be strange if some survivors from that night existed. Walm narrowed his eyes and studied Justan carefully, trying to grasp his intent.

“That’s quite a frightening look you’ve got there. At first, I wondered if you were really the same man from back then… but yeah, it’s definitely you.”

Their eyes met. Whether it was the aura he carried or the gaze in his eyes, Justan seemed convinced that the knight who had burned the camps near Sarajevo and the man standing before him were one and the same.

“Planning to take revenge?”

“Now? If you were still an enemy maybe, but right now you’re an ally. Two years too late for that.”

“And yet you still came over to talk to me.”

A person’s desire for revenge didn’t fade so easily. There were people who could hide underground for a century waiting for their chance. Walm had learned that lesson from the turmoil in Gundor.

He pressed the question silently with his gaze.

…Think of it as venting. You burned my backside with blue flames, am I not even allowed to grumble a little, Highserk knight?”

“If you put it like that, I suppose I have to listen.”

Whether he liked it or not, Walm was a knight of the empire. Even if it was nothing more than an honorary title without real authority.

“…Sigh. If you were a refreshingly rotten bastard, I’d gladly slit your throat in your sleep. But that’s not going to happen. It would cause trouble for Lady Ayane.”

In the end, all that came out was a sigh. Walm had braced himself for a torrent of bitter complaints, but the reaction left him somewhat deflated.

“You’re a troublesome man.”

“Don’t want to hear that from you… Hey, you guarded Lady Ayane before, right?”

“Thanks to that, I’ve barely managed to keep the rank of Guardian Chief.”

“Then as fellow guards, indulge me in some old stories. I used to be in the royal guard of the kingdom of Felius. At Sarajevo, we were dispatched from the capital to the front lines, hoping to save a nation that was already losing the war. But, well… you know how that turned out. I crawled my way back to the capital, and what happened to the country was— no, what the country itself caused, was that Great Rampage. King Winston of Felius had lost his younger brother and his sanity. Even so, as one of the royal guards, I meant to remain the king’s sword and shield.”

From his demeanor, Walm had already suspected that the man in front of him wasn’t some ordinary foot soldier. If he had been a member of the highly trained and educated royal guard of Felius, that explained everything.

“But when the capital was about to fall, what did I do? I ran. I gathered up my subordinates and their families and fled. Once I realized the country was finished, my resolve crumbled. Cheap resolve, right? Not even worth laughing at.”

Despite his words, he wore a shallow smile, but his eyes were not smiling.

“In the end, I even lost the ship along with my men just before reaching Selta. We literally drifted onto the shores of the peninsula. After that, I was nothing but an empty shell. No matter what I tried to do, I couldn’t bring myself to care. When my wounds had nearly rotted away, that’s when I met Lady Ayane. She healed everyone, enemy or ally, it didn’t matter. At first, I thought it was nothing but hypocrisy. But as I went on living, I eventually realized something. I was just a man who couldn’t save anyone, envying someone who could. After that, I became her guard. I figured I could at least stake my life one more time. She intends to remain in Mayard as a kind of bargaining chip. It’s not as light a burden as she makes it sound, but… I want to protect that.”

“…You’re quite the romantic,” Walm said. “I envy you.”

“Envy, huh? I’m not expecting anything in return, but when Lady Ayane heard that an imperial knight was returning, all she talked about were stories of you from the past. So… I guess I feel a bit better now.”

It was said with a wry smile. For the first time, Walm found himself laughing together with a soldier of Felius.

Translator – Lyxxna