First things first — I needed to secure a warship.
The Batavia Republic… in other words, a nation essentially puppeteered by Paimon behind the scenes, boasted the most powerful navy in existence. Counting only the large galleys under direct government ownership, there were well over sixty vessels. It would not be an exaggeration to call it a monstrous maritime power.
Paimon spoke casually.
"Let's disguise it as plunder our Demon Lord's army secretly carried out."
During peacetime, large warships were frequently repurposed for trade. Ships venturing inland to conduct commerce were ambushed by underwater monsters of the Mountain Faction. Seven vessels were seized without breaking a sweat.
Of course, the ordinary merchants aboard them were mauled to death under the fangs of monsters.
I found the situation absurdly amusing and said:
"Those are ships owned by Batavia, aren't they? If you think about it, it's Paimon stealing from Paimon."
"Oh my. I don't consider the Republic my personal property, you know? Privatizing a state is the shortest road to tyranny."
Paimon flashed a bright smile. Tyranny was something akin to a dictatorship.
"I'm merely borrowing the citizens' property for a little while. Just a little while."
"While you were 'borrowing' them, the merchants on board were massacred in droves, you know…"
"Those people were from trade guilds that kept orchestrating monopolies and turning the market into chaos. I'd been wanting an opportunity to wipe them out for some time."
Paimon brought up this blood-curdling matter without so much as batting an eyelash.
"The government offered large ships at rock-bottom prices, and they took the bait hook, line, and sinker. Looks like their plan this time was to trigger monopolies in the smaller cities too… heh heh. Trash is meant to be cleaned up. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Hahaha…"
Moments like this drove home the fact that Paimon was a Demon Lord.
Paimon was an idealist and a republican to boot, yet felt absolutely no compunction about killing people. Declaring that trash must be disposed of, Paimon had hundreds of humans unceremently cast into a river to drown.
It was precisely because this kind of person was overseeing everything from the shadows that the Republic had not fallen to corruption. Despite being tiny — barely the size of a bean — it rivaled nations many times its size in power. Without a doubt, the number of humans Paimon had "cleaned" easily surpassed a thousand. Among them, there were surely those who had died unjustly…
Well, I suppose that's none of my concern.
I had the warships tightly bound together with chains and arranged in a single file line. After erecting sturdy bridges along both riverbanks, I simply positioned the warships in between — and sure enough, the bridge was assembled in the blink of an eye.
By the time the Heidelberg garrison forces went "Huh? Huh?" they were already surrounded.
Naturally, the garrison organized a special task force to try and destroy the bridge. If the waterway was blocked, our supply lines would be cut — and being surrounded with severed supply lines meant certain death.
And we had fully anticipated that the enemy would launch an attack.
"The enemy also knows just how perilous it is to engage the Demon Lord army in open field battle."
Laura, now appointed as Supreme Chief of Staff, spoke before us Demon Lords. Since it was widely known that she had become Barbatos's lover, even Paimon and Sitri treated her with considerable courtesy.
"They will undoubtedly use the Order of Knights as their main force while deploying elite squads. They'll assemble their most powerful units and execute a single-point breakthrough. That is the garrison's plan."
"That's troublesome..."
Paimon slowly flicked open her fan.
"The Order of Knights is formidable. We won't lose, but the casualties would be enormous."
"Yes. However, there is a way to annihilate the Order of Knights without suffering a single casualty."
"Oh my."
Sitri crossed her arms and looked at Laura with an amused expression.
"How? I'm no Demon Lord that anyone would scoff at either, but I'd rather not tangle with the Knights. Short of Agares, wiping out the Order without taking losses is impossible. Even Barbatos himself would struggle with that."
"If you'll forgive my saying so—"
Laura declared with confident conviction.
"Our forces have already identified exactly where the enemy will attack and which units they will deploy. We can safely consider ourselves halfway to victory already."
"Well done, Dantalion's strategist Yang. Now tell us about the operation."
"As you command."
Laura pointed at the military map.
"We'll deploy the mage corps to turn the entire area around the Nekaa River into mudflats. The knights will almost certainly launch a night raid to capitalize on the element of surprise. However fearsome their warhorses may be, the moment those legs sink into the mud, they'll be utterly useless."
"......"
"Since the battlefield is along the riverbank, the mages will also be free to use water magic to their heart's content."
Laura smiled faintly.
"The Nekaa River will become the knights' grave."
Her prediction proved terrifyingly accurate.
The knight order garrisoned in Heidelberg targeted the dead of night and moved toward the bridge.
Later counts revealed they had brought nearly six hundred knights — a full two-thirds of the fortress garrison's knight forces had been mobilized. On top of that, neighboring cities had sent reinforcements.
All told, a staggering fifteen hundred knights launched the night assault. Even calling them "knights," the majority were apprentice knights or Academia trainees, but even they were unmistakably elite cavalry. They planned to charge in swiftly, burn the bridge, and withdraw.
"Charge! For the honor of the Consul!"
"Long live the Republic! Long live the Consul!"
However, just as Laura had intended, the battlefield had been transformed into a sea of mud.
When the thundering warhorses were suddenly brought to a halt by the mudflats, the knights faltered. But they pressed forward bravely toward their objective — the bridge. In other words, they were about to prove that courage alone is no panacea in war.
"Focus the attacks on the horses."
Laura calmly ordered from the command post atop the bridge.
The moment the enemies entered the mudflats, our forces unleashed a hail of arrows and javelins as if they had been waiting for it. Orcs hurled javelins with all their might, and warhorses were skewered clean through, killed instantly.
The stakes, the wooden palisades we had set up in advance, and on top of that the mud itself. The knights fought with every ounce of strength to push forward, but warhorses kept falling one after another to the arrows and javelins raining down from our side. What could they do? Dismount and charge on foot.
The knights were now faced with wading through the mud in full heavy armor.
Sitri watched the spectacle and burst into roaring laughter.
"What a masterpiece! Dantalion, look at that! They look just like little grubs!"
Hmm. If giggling at the sight of people being massacred was any indication, Sitri certainly possessed a demon lord's sensibility. Truly, the only normal person in the demon army was me.
The proper knights, undeterred by the mud, utilized their aura and charged in like grasshoppers. The problem was there were only a few of them.
As long as they didn't charge in formation, a handful of knights weren't that terrifying on a war scale, and they were hunted down by the monster unit Sitri led. Unless the sword-wielding masters charged as a group, there wasn't much they could do.
That night, the knights charged sixteen times.
While not quite on the level of the Kingdom of Bretagne's army, the Habsburg knights were also formidable. But unlike Bretagne's case, they had no tactical advantage whatsoever. They slowly died under the hail of arrows we poured down.
"Hmm. Looks like about four hundred got away. Should we chase them?"
Sitri tilted her head. She was drenched in the blood of the enemy, making her appear bright red.
"Yes. Even if they flee in heavy armor, their speed will be slow."
"You mean make sure they're properly killed off? Hehe, I really like you, even though you're human. I can see why Dantalion and Barbatos are fond of you."
Sitri slapped Laura's back enthusiastically. Naturally, Sitri's physical strength was no joke, and Laura let out a short cry, nearly face-planting onto the ground. Sitri grinned happily.
"You can call me big sis from now on."
"Y-You honor me too much... Lady Sitri."
"Oh, come on! Call me big sis!"
Laura replied with a slightly unnerved expression.
"...Yes. Big sister Sitri."
"There you go. Hehe."
Sitri cheered excitedly and climbed onto her wolf.
"I'm Barbatos's lover's big sister now! Barbatos's lover's big sister! Assarabia!"
She led the wolf cavalry and vanished into the darkness in the blink of an eye.
"......"
"......"
An awkward silence settled over Paimon, me, and Laura, who remained at the command post. After a long while, Paimon finally muttered with an embarrassed look.
"Um, Miss de Farnese? Sitri doesn't bear you any ill will. She really just wanted to become Barbatos's lover's sister, that's all. She feels indebted to Barbatos, you see."
Laura offered an ambiguous smile.
"The girl does not doubt that Lady Sitri speaks from the heart. However, I cannot help but wonder what kind of karma I must have accumulated in a past life to become the lover of Demon Lords and the sworn sister of one..."
Laura turned her wide, fish-like eyes toward me.
Me? What did I do?
"Isn't it a first for a human? Impressive. You have every right to feel proud, Laura."
"...Haa."
For some reason, Laura let out a sigh.
Sometimes this young lady behaves in ways I just can't figure out. Is that just how women are? The world is truly a strange place.
The battle ended in a complete rout of the Habsburg forces.
Of the fifteen hundred-strong knightly order, fewer than two hundred made it back alive. The word "annihilation" hardly did justice to how devastating it was. Laura de Farnese had perfectly proven her abilities.
The Heidelberg garrison had expended all of the knightly order's available combat power in this single battle. The remnants would be too busy just holding the fortress. Our encirclement had solidified in one stroke.
The only reinforcements the fortress could now hope for were troops dispatched directly from the capital, but unfortunately, the newly formed Habsburg Republic lacked the capacity to launch a full-scale war.
The forces currently threatening Consul Elizabeth's nation were not limited to the Mountain Faction alone. Barbatos's Plains Faction, Marbas's Neutral Faction, and Gamigin — three separate powers all shared a border with the Habsburg Republic. They were surrounded on all sides by enemies.
This being the state of affairs, Consul Elizabeth had fortified strongholds at every key position. She had chosen a defensive strategy, manning the fortresses to minimize war expenditures. Put another way, circumstances simply did not allow for anything beyond fortress defense.
"However, there is no way the enemy will simply ignore the fortress."
Several days after the battle concluded successfully, Laura spoke up once again at the meeting.
"The military of the Habsburg Republic is extremely competent. They'll undoubtedly devise a plan to save the city without spending a single coin on war expenditures."
"Hm? Is that even possible?"
Sitri asked as she helped herself to a piece of cake. For the record, Sitri was absolutely obsessed with cake. Wherever she got them from, she was always snacking on sweets—whether at meetings or on the battlefield—which was quite something.
"Yes. If the enemy has a wise advisor, he'll remind everyone that the crux of this siege comes down to whether or not they destroy the bridge. If they can take out the bridge, there's no need to deploy knights or armies at all."
"Hm-hm-hm... I don't really follow."
A question mark still hung on Sitri's face.
The air inside the tent grew warmer. One way or another, Sitri had a peculiar talent for filling those around her with a nameless sense of warmth.
"If I were the enemy's chief strategist, I'd prepare a large fleet of ships. I'd load each vessel with bundles of straw thoroughly soaked in oil. I'd send the fleet forward to ram the bridge, then burn the fleet and the bridge together. Since we have virtually no naval capability, it would be terribly difficult for us to fend them off..."
Laura smiled gently.
"If we hadn't anticipated the enemy's intentions in advance, that is."
============================ Author's Afterword ============================
The blue hydrangea is the emblem of the Farnese family. In days past, the Farnese family had launched a civil war in the Kingdom of Sardinia, but they were defeated and fell into ruin. As their downfall unfolded, Laura was sold off as a pleasure slave.
And for those who already know—every battle that appears in this dungeon defense story pays homage to actual historical battles. The war featured in this chapter is a blend of two battles—no, three.