The army marched south.
They said the numbers reached thirty thousand, but truthfully, no one knew exactly how many there were.
The march was slow.
First, there were simply too many. Though that wasn't the only reason.
The roads were poor. Imperial roads were always like that, but they got worse the further south we went.
Wheels got stuck in ruts, horses stumbled in the mud.
Still, we didn't stop.
News of Father's recovery had gradually spread to the vicinity of the capital.
Meanwhile, rumors about me were also circulating in their own way.
With a bit of exaggeration.
I handed over the report.
"When Walther Von Krstein fell to Dragonsbane Poison, his young son Adrian Von Krustein marched south alone. He broke through multiple battles to rescue his father and even obtained medicine to cure the Dragonsbane Poison. Afterward, with an outstanding charge, he annihilated Duke Clara's army and personally took her head."
I read to the last line and closed the report.
"That's quite exaggerated."
A mutter escaped me.
It wasn't wrong. It was roughly accurate.
But when context is removed, even facts become myths.
It was true I marched south. It was true I broke through battles.
However, this report spoke as if I were some mythical hero.
But that's how rumors work.
Simple hero tales spread faster than complex truths.
The story of a young child rescuing his father and beheading an enemy would have been perfect drinking table fodder, regardless of its veracity.
Exaggerated rumors weren't entirely bad.
But... someone objected.
"What's exaggerated? Nothing's exaggerated at all."
It was Celine.
"You overestimate me because I saved your life."
"Ah, here we go again."
"What do you mean 'here we go again'?"
"Older brother, you underestimate yourself way too much, both then and now. Lise was completely right."
Both then and now.
Lise was completely right.
Those two phrases caught my attention.
Did I do this back then too?
Did I act like this even before I lost my memory? Even in front of her?
"When did she say that?"
"Often. She talked about you a lot, you know."
That again...
"For example?"
"Well. She said you were way smarter than her. That she just did what you told her to do."
Really?
She said it as if it were obvious, but it wasn't obvious to me.
I opened the military treatise again.
The handwriting in the annotations. The confident tone. The structure designed with calculations that even accounted for a future self who would lose his memory.
<Let's be honest, you're the strongest.>
A person who could write such a sentence underestimated himself?
With what mouth, exactly.
"That's quite the exaggeration."
A soliloquy escaped me without realizing it.
Words directed at my past self.
"Right, older brother exaggerates a lot."
As we munched on tangerines and nuts, having trivial conversation inside the carriage, it happened.
"Oh!"
Something changed at the edge of my senses.
Far away. Southwest. Small-scale mana response.
The numbers were few. Between ten and fifteen.
Scout unit size.
It was almost touching our vanguard's mana response. Distance just before contact.
It would still take time for a report to reach the main force.
But I had already read it.
Numbers. Deployment. Retreat route.
I could see it all. No, I could feel it.
The enemy scouts were dispersed behind the hills, and our vanguard was advancing straight ahead, unaware.
Not a large-scale battle.
A skirmish between scout units.
Not worth moving the main force.
Going myself would be faster.
I rested my arm on the carriage window frame and looked outside.
The wind was dry. Smell of dust. Smell of horses. Smell of iron.
The smell of battlefields was similar everywhere.
Of course, rather than actually smelling something far away... it was just my imagination. That's what it must be.
"Celine."
"Yeah?"
"It's not that big a deal."
"Uh-huh."
"There are enemies nearby. Well, it's just warm-up level. Want to come?"
I didn't need to wait for an answer.
She was already stretching from her seated position.
"Sure!"
One word, done. She didn't even ask why.
If older brother says go, we go. That girl's behavioral principle was that simple.
I got out of the carriage.
I gestured to the escort knight.
"Pick twenty."
The escort knight nodded and immediately selected personnel.
This would be more than enough.
Celine muttered while loosening her arms beside me.
"You said it was just warm-up?"
"Yeah."
"But you're taking twenty people?"
"It's insurance."
"You're quite timid."
"I'm not timid, I'm cautious."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
No rebuttal came to mind, so I just mounted my horse.
I heard Celine giggling behind me.
**
I spurred the horse.
It seemed they had spotted our vanguard and started retreating.
The problem was the retreat route.
Between hills. One narrow path. That was all.
If the terrain was on our side, there was no need to overthink it.
"Secure the narrow pass ahead. Quickly."
"Yes, sir!"
Three horses shot forward, raising dust.
The remaining knights and Celine followed me around the flank.
While climbing the hillside, Celine came into view.
Her smaller body bounced on the horse. Her legs were too short for the saddle. One hand gripped the reins, the other clutched the mane.
An unstable posture.
But her eyes were completely different. Her pupils had narrowed vertically. Like a cat chasing prey.
"Older brother, three are trying to escape on the left."
Faster than my sensing.
I checked. Behind the left hill, three mana responses breaking away from the main group. Direction: southwest. The texture of their mana was different from the cavalry. Not rough and blunt.
"You're fast."
"Just average."
Feline Tribe senses. Not reading mana, but catching the movement itself—a separate radar.
Useful. No, more than just useful.
"Changing route. To the left."
I turned the reins.
Coming around the hill, the battlefield came into full view.
Though it was embarrassingly small to call a battlefield.
Three knights stood like a wall at the narrow pass.
The moment the enemy cavalry realized their retreat was blocked and turned their horses, we appeared from the flank.
Blocked in front, attacked from the side.
One of them raised a spear.
More desperation than attack.
An allied knight swung his sword once.
Thunk.
The spear shaft was cut in the middle. The severed wooden piece tumbled through the air and fell, and the impact traveled up his arm, causing the cavalryman's upper body to jerk backward.
He lost balance. He slid off the saddle and fell.
Thud.
A fall with the weight of armor added.
If he'd been a proper soldier, he would have read the difference in skill and never attacked in the first place.
Because he couldn't read the difference in skill, he attacked, and because he attacked, he ended up like this.
The one in front tried to raise his spear but stopped.
The guy next to him had lowered his spear first. The sound of metal hitting dirt.
When one drops it, it spreads.
The strength left the hands that were trying to lift. The spear shaft slid down.
Second. Third. The sound of metal hitting dirt continued in succession.
There was no real resistance.
Three tried to flee—two were caught by the knights, and the remaining one—
"Got him!"
The little one who descended the hillside like a cat grabbed the nape of an adult man on horseback.
It was Celine.
Small build?
The difference between an ordinary Sword User and an Expert.
Her small build wasn't a problem at all.
There was no hesitation in the motion of pulling him down. Even with the armor's weight, he must have weighed four times her body weight, yet she didn't even flinch.
Thud.
The man was slammed into the dirt. A groan from inside the armor leaked out, then stopped at some point.
He's dead...
Celine stood over him, pressing down on his nape, tilting her head.
She looked puzzled, as if wondering why the mouse she caught wasn't moving.
"Why are they so weak?"
"You've gotten too strong since the mana thickened. Even more than when you were bigger."
"But shouldn't he have gotten stronger too?"
"A Sword User and a Sword Expert aren't the same."
"Hmm, so Sword Users die more easily than I thought..."
Quite a brutal conversation for young children.
The cavalry who had dropped their weapons were staring blankly at what had just happened.
Well, I understand. An eight-year-old girl's body had subdued a fully armed cavalryman with one hand.
But even our knights just staring at that was too much.
"What are you looking at? Tie them up quickly."
When Celine snapped curtly, the knights scrambled into action.
"Yes, Young Lady!"
From contact to suppression. In an instant.
No casualties on our side. Enemy deaths: one guy whose neck broke while fleeing.
A flawlessly clean victory.
There were no additional forces.
Instead, something else caught my attention.
Mana patterns.
Most of the prisoners were similar.
Including the dead one, exactly cavalry-level mana. Solid, rough, blunt type.
Like nails forged from iron. Clear purpose, nothing complicated.
Three were different.
Among the kneeling prisoners in a row, there were three wearing robes instead of armor.
I'd felt it when pulling them off their horses earlier, but their posture in the saddle had been clumsy.
Not cavalry, more like they'd been given a ride.
Mages.
That alone made them stand out, but what was truly interesting was the quality of their mana.
Combat mages' mana is sharp like a blade. Flow specialized for attack. High density, clear direction, rough.
Theirs wasn't like that.
Slow, precise, delicate. A texture like weaving thread strand by strand.
More scholars than mages.
Research personnel patterns.
It's natural for combat mages to be mixed into scout units. But scholars?
What reason would there be to attach three scholars to a unit doing reconnaissance?
Three of them, no less.
To research what?
Where?
"Interrogate these ones separately."
The knight nodded and pulled the three aside.