Filimes I was at the front lines by myself.
Shun and Kathia were with the rear units.
Shun is too kind.
To put it bluntly, he's too soft.
He can slay Monsters, no question, but he can't bring himself to kill people.
That's why I had him assigned to the rear unit.
I left the persuasion to
He understood Shun's softness and accepted my proposal.
I'm grateful to Shun.
With my power alone, I never could have crossed the Great Ello Dungeon and made it back to the elf village.
But from here on out, it's the teacher's job.
I can't afford to borrow Shun's strength for this.
The barrier has fallen.
I'd been half-skeptical, but the barrier truly shattered.
Still, the shock the other elves felt was greater than mine.
A wall they said was absolute—one that had never been broken a single time since their birth—had been breached.
Combined with the threat of the Monsters lurking beyond the barrier, the loss of that spiritual anchor must have been immeasurable.
I'd anticipated this scenario, but they must have believed the barrier breaking was simply impossible.
"Everyone, please calm down!"
I called out to the panicking elves.
"The barrier has fallen. However, the device that generated it has not been destroyed. All we need to do is hold out until the barrier is restored."
I am the clan chief's daughter.
What's more, I'm a Reincarnator with high abilities, and within the elf community I carry considerable authority.
To the long-lived elves, I'm still a little girl even when counting my years from my past life, but regardless of what they think privately, they obey my words.
Right now, too, they were slowly regaining their composure at my direction.
"Furthermore, we are in the forest. It is our garden. No army of humans can defeat us here. Let us teach them just how foolish it is to challenge elves in the forest."
I deliberately spoke in strong words to stoke their fighting spirit.
In truth, the situation wasn't that favorable.
We had the terrain advantage of the forest, but the enemy's numbers far exceeded ours.
On top of that, they were the battle-hardened elite soldiers of the Lengzand Empire, veterans of long years fighting the Demon race.
A brutal fight was plainly in store.
The perceptive elves understood that well enough, but morale matters.
The elves nodded silently and with resolve, then began their advance.
Moving silently through the forest, we looked less like warriors and more like Assassins.
And that wasn't far from the truth.
Leaping from tree to tree, we finally spotted the enemy army marching through the forest.
The terrain, ill-suited for marching, had thrown their formations into disarray.
The front was bottlenecked, troops clustered together, and in trying to spread out they'd stretched themselves thin from side to side.
I declared the attack commencement through telepathic communication.
Magic and arrows rained down on the stalled army.
They had no answer to the assault from above and were being cut to pieces.
They were clearly a unit never designed for forest combat in the first place.
The knights holding shields in the front rank managed to hold their ground, but the ranged units in the rear and the assault troops in the middle had no way to counter our attacks and fell one after another.
Being packed so tightly they couldn't move freely was another fatal flaw.
Even those in positions that should have allowed movement found that the forest's natural obstacles granted them no freedom.
On open ground, the outcome would have been entirely different.
Our attacks would have been blocked by the front-line shield formation, our forces whittled down by the rear-line ranged units, and the middle-line assault troops would have closed in and cut us down.
But that was only if it were open ground.
The forest is our field.
Attacks from above, over terrain they were unaccustomed to navigating freely.
Their counterattacks couldn't reach us behind the cover of trees.
Some soldiers tried climbing the trees to reach us, but they were shot down before they could make it to the top.
Even the ones who did make it up had no chance—every elf warrior was capable of three-dimensional movement.
While very few elves possessed full spatial mobility, even standard three-dimensional movement was enough to roam freely through this forest.
On the unsteady footing of treetops, an elf would never lose to a human.
That said, the enemy were seasoned veterans.
They weren't going to stay on the defensive forever.
Abandoning formation maintenance, the shield bearers paired up with ranged attackers in two-man cells.
Firing from behind the cover of shields, they returned fire.
The other soldiers without shield cover dodged our attacks and headed for the trees.
We shot plenty of them down, but the sheer weight of numbers was pushing us back, forcing more and more of our fighters into treetop engagements.
I observed the battle's progress and ordered retreats from positions that had become unfavorable.
My personal objective was to take the head of my former student, but the elves' overall goal was simply to buy time until the barrier was restored.
Given the enemy's numbers and our terrain advantage, a gradual fighting retreat while wearing them down was, I believed, the best strategy.
But then, a report came from a separate unit—they were being pushed back by an outclass mage.
Some units had lost communication entirely at some point.
My own unit was performing well, and overall we held the advantage, but portions of the line were buckling.
Still, even I was stretched thin managing my own forces.
I decided to leave that front to
He may be my father, but that man is an enigma.
He surely has one or two trump cards tucked away.
Continuing to direct the battle, I finally spotted him.
Yugo van Lengzand.
The boy who had once been called Natsume Kengo—my former student.
The one who strayed from the path—or rather, the one I let stray from the path.
I have no right to say anything about Shun's behavior.
Even now, at this juncture, I still haven't steeled my resolve.
Probably because once I kill him, I'll have definitively failed as a teacher.
I may already be a failed teacher, but crossing that final line would make it absolute.
But I have to do it.
That is the last thing I can do for Natsume-kun as his teacher.
It may be selfish.
I won't ask for your forgiveness.
Even so—I will kill you.