"—Why"
That murmur.
Became the final words of a certain soldier who had been fighting on the battlefield.
As last words, it was a woefully ordinary thing to say.
But those few words—and there was no helping it—spoke for every last person on that battlefield.
They had been winning.
They had launched a surprise attack on the enemy base, borrowing the power of Bloodline Magic users to cut down Monsters as they pushed forward. Just like always, they would keep driving the Monsters back and annihilate them. Just as they had done several times before—
the Great Flood
—the same approach would handle this without a hitch. That was what they thought, the instant—
their
feet were engulfed in an explosion
.
Later, it came to light that the bombs were actually a Monster's unique magic, sealed inside the tough-shelled corpses of other Monsters. By altering the nature of the spell, they had been calibrated so the magic would trigger whenever something above a certain weight passed over them while buried underground.
The Monsters had been feigning retreat from the sudden surprise assault—luring them toward the spots where the bombs were buried while herding them that way. That was the trick.
……Once you heard the full picture, it was easy enough to understand.
It wasn't exactly a groundbreaking strategy. To put it bluntly, it was just "setting up traps that give your own
base
an advantage"—and that was all. Something anyone would do as a matter of course in fights between humans.
Therefore, their miscalculation boiled down to one thing: despite the irregular situation, they had tried to fight along the same lines as "the same Monster countermeasures as always."
To put it bluntly—
the fact that—
Monsters
would
set
traps
was something
no one
had ever
imagined.
They had misjudged.
All this time, ever since the Kingdom of Yustia was founded, Monsters had been something they slaughtered as a matter of course—something they would go on slaughtering forever. At the same time, they had convinced themselves that Monsters were incapable of anything beyond primitive killing intent. In a way, the Monsters were the most familiar neighbors on their doorstep.
But when one of them gained a truly sharp-minded commander, the leap in threat level was staggering. Because there was absolutely no precedent for it in the past, no one could possibly have predicted it.
The soldiers' feet ground to a halt. There was no guarantee that more of those bombs weren't planted up ahead—in fact, it was only natural to assume they were plentifully scattered throughout. There was no way they could keep charging forward as before.
And then—perfectly timing it to that exact moment, the Monsters launched their counterattack.
Up to this point, they could still have managed.
Perhaps they could have reformed their formation and merely brought the fight back to even terms from where they had been pushing.
But.
The Monsters—and Kalma, commanding them—had incorporated an unprecedented play here as well.
In a single phrase—"not killing humans" as an option.
The same principle applied to the bombs planted at their feet earlier. In battle, Kalma had his Monsters deliberately suppress their lethal capacity, stripping away combat ability instead—thoroughly drilling into his subordinates the doctrine of intentionally leaving enemies alive but incapacitated.
Soldiers who were knocked down were not killed. Instead, they were maimed at most—perhaps their legs severed—and left right where they fell. Then the Monsters would temporarily withdraw, feigning the end of the skirmish, only to lie in wait. When other soldiers arrived to rescue the wounded, the Monsters would spring the trap and annihilate them all.
Kalma had been wielding these tactics to their fullest effect—tactics that became viable precisely because of the choice to leave behind burdens deliberately.
"Your weakness as humans—you never abandon your own. Even the trashiest runts you should obviously cut loose, you just can't help but try to save them."
The nature of humans that Kalma had previously identified. And beyond that—
Monsters
that could
kill humans
not killing
them—
impossible—
The soldiers had fallen for it spectacularly at the start, blindsided by the gap between that sheer impossibility and their preconceived impressions. After that, they grew cautious, but it was already too late. By this point, the tide of battle had decisively tilted in the Monsters' favor.
And so, once the Monsters gained breathing room, they timed it perfectly and began a new "use" for humans.
This time, they started killing the soldiers—while tormenting them.
"Hh—ah, someone—help—!!"
"No—just kill me quiiiiick—aaaaahhhh!!"
The screams of their comrades, and the sight of their comrades battered and broken—these produced one devastating effect.
It crushed morale.
Even on the battlefield, the element of emotion can never be ignored.
The soldiers' hearts, knowing their comrades were being slaughtered in the most brutal fashion and that they were powerless to do anything about it, moved in two broad directions.
Whether it was the terror of suffering the same fate themselves, or the fury at watching their comrades' dignity be defiled.
If the former, they would crumble in fear and be utterly unable to fight. If the latter, all it took was to strike them down the moment they charged in recklessly. And even without humans quite that foolish, once their composure was shattered, they ceased to be threats.
And so it ensnared its enemies in traps, expanded every advantage, and used the surroundings, the situation, even the enemy itself with supreme efficiency—keeping the battle decisively in its favor from start to finish.
It had exploited to perfection the weakness of Yustia's soldiers: their near-total lack of experience fighting without mages, and how poorly they handled irregular situations.
And the finishing blow—
Was that all of this flow, all of this strategy—
With—
No prior knowledge—
At all—
In a situation where—
,
Karma—
From scratch—
Intuitively—
Created it all—
Is what it meant.
Killing humans efficiently. Following that Monster's instinct, yet with supreme rationality.
From beginning to end, they had been made to dance perfectly to its tune.
Kekeke. Kikiki. The Monsters raised eerie cackling laughter as they toyed with the corpses of their comrades, sneering that it was your turn next.
A scene straight from hell—and by the time they beheld it, every last one of them had already arrived at the same, terrible truth.
I never meant to underestimate them as mere Monsters.
But these Monsters had already surpassed humans beyond anything they could have imagined — excelling in the very fields where humans were supposed to be superior.
In other words — these things were already,
better
than
us
at war.
That was the grim truth.
The moment they grasped it — the moment they realized that in this battle, there wasn't a single area where humans held the advantage — all hope of victory had already vanished.
The fearsome Monster army began its advance of devastation, marching to join their Boss.
I'm sorry for the consecutive intense developments...!
The next chapter is scheduled for update on 11/12 (Saturday). The story really starts moving from here, so I hope you'll keep reading!