Might as well go check out the battlefield since I'm already here.
I have no idea what the situation looks like right now, though.
It's entirely possible that by the time I arrive, everything's already wrapped up. After all, quite a few days have passed between when I disappeared and when I recovered.
I'm not sure how long it takes to get a war started, but in a fantasy world with magic and all that, it wouldn't be surprising if military operations moved faster than in the original world.
Well, if it's over, it's over. Either way, let's head to the scene.
Figuring out which direction to go was relatively straightforward. This town is connected to a fair number of roads, and one of them clearly showed signs of heavy traffic — countless fresh footprints and what looked like wagon wheel tracks.
That alone wouldn't be unusual, since other roads had the same, but this one had a higher volume. And some of the tracks didn't look human.
Are they taming Monsters and using them as labor?
I activated Concealment and headed down that highway.
Man, with my absurdly inflated Status, even a light jog produces ridiculous speed. It feels like riding a roller coaster without any safety restraints. Hahaha.
My base speed was already high, but after integrating with Mother, it went up even further. If you gradually trained up through leveling, it'd probably be fine, but jumping up all at once creates this gap between your mind and body that's hard to deal with.
Well, I do have my ridiculous cheat Skill — Thought Super Acceleration. No matter how fast my body accelerates, everything feels like it's in slow motion to me. If anything, the current speed is just right.
Full throttle, woohoo!
You know, I feel like if I ever drove a car, I'd be the type whose personality changes the moment I grip the steering wheel.
I arrived at speed.
This area appears to be near the border. Real combat doesn't seem to have started yet.
Two massive armies face each other across an enormous, flat plain.
Hold on — there are a lot of people here. Like, a lot.
According to Clarity-sama's Detection results, our side — meaning the Salierra Kingdom forces — numbers roughly forty-two thousand.
The opposing Outz Kingdom side has fifty-three thousand.
Wait. Wasn't Outz a small country?
Why are there so many?
And I mean, there are way more people than I expected. Seriously?
This is the war I'm being used as a pretext for?
The atmosphere feels less like a minor border dispute and more like an all-out total war, and that's honestly kind of terrifying.
Oh... I think my stomach hurts. Not that I even know if spiders have a stomach.
Ugh.
This is several times larger than what I imagined a battlefield would look like. I was picturing some quaint little skirmish, but what I found instead is... this.
And here I was half-planning to crash the party and go "woo-hoo!" If I did that now, it'd be the most tone-deaf thing ever.
What do I do?
Also, why does the small nation of Outz have more troops?
I scanned the Outz Kingdom forces.
Oh. I see. It's one of those coalition armies.
Alongside the soldiers that appear to belong to the Outz Kingdom itself, there are clearly troops from separate factions. Several of them, in fact.
The most eye-catching is an army uniformly dressed in white. They're the second-largest force after the Outz main body, and combined with their appearance, they really stand out.
The second most conspicuous force is arrayed on the opposite side from the white army. They look a lot like the knights I encountered in the Great Ello Dungeon.
Actually, they're probably soldiers from the same country. This group also fields roughly the same numbers as the white army.
Beyond those two, there are various other mixed forces. Aside from the white army and the so-called Knight Country, none of them are particularly large, but many a little makes a mickle.
The Outz main body alone, plus the white army and the Knight Country, already outnumbers the entire Salierra Kingdom army. Adding the other factions on top of that, the result is a massive coalition force that dwarfs Salierra by a wide margin.
From what I can see, both sides have simply lined up across the plain. The terrain is a featureless flatland with no geographical advantage to speak of.
Neither side has terrain advantages, and neither side has a superior formation. That means the outcome comes down to raw military strength and commander skill — but at this scale, differences in commander ability would fall within the margin of error.
In other words, the simple disparity in fighting strength translates directly into the outcome.
If things continue like this, the Salierra Kingdom's defeat is all but guaranteed.
Unless Salierra happens to have someone with warrior-class strength — someone who can take on a thousand alone. Then it'd be a different story.
The thing is, you can't entirely rule out the existence of such people in a fantasy world. Based on what I've seen so far of human strength, having a Status above a thousand puts you in a pretty solid tier. So someone around three thousand? That wouldn't be out of the question.
Then again, am I only thinking that because I've become inflated myself?
But realistically, it wouldn't be shocking for such people to exist. And it's not just about raw Status — someone who fights at that level by fully exploiting their Skills could hold their own too.
That applies to the Salierra Kingdom, sure, but also to the Outz coalition. If they have even one such outlier among their ranks, Salierra's chances drop to zero. They're already outnumbered as it is.
The key question is how the individual power levels compare.
In this world, human strength generally caps out around a Status of one thousand. The floor is single digits. That's a huge range.
The strongest human I've encountered so far was, regrettably, that mage I left behind in the dungeon. His magic-related Status alone was around fifteen hundred. His physical stats were only around three hundred, but even three hundred is quite high for a human.
Based on what I've observed, average soldiers sit around two hundred. Elite troops are around three hundred. The next tier up — the truly exceptional ones — probably around five hundred.
Which means anything over a thousand is seriously strong.
Huh? Wait a second — by that standard, that mage was elite in physical stats alone?
W-What? No way.
Whatever. Let's forget about that weirdo for now.
The real issue is the power gap between the soldiers of both armies. If one side averages two hundred and the other averages three hundred, they might be able to overcome the numerical disadvantage. But glancing at both armies, the difference doesn't seem that dramatic.
If anything, the Salierra Kingdom might be slightly outclassed even in individual soldier quality. The white army and the Knight Country forces look highly trained from a distance — their discipline is visibly superior.
Against the rest of the Outz forces, including the main body, Salierra would probably have the edge. But those two standout armies are in a league of their own.
Overall, Salierra has more, but the Outz coalition has the elite units.
This is tricky. Salierra is at a disadvantage no matter how you look at it.
And here I am thinking about things from Salierra's perspective.
Hmm.
What should I do?