11. Greetings, Sir Allen.

The mission assigned to us was neither simple nor easy.

It was a fairly large-scale mission, with more than ten knights, including Ascal and me, and Asilie deployed as well.

"Our objective is here. Beyond the Great Wall, near the forest where the magical beasts are arrayed."

Inside the commander's tent, I was listening to a knight's report.

Beyond the Great Wall, huh.

That was quite welcome as far as I was concerned. I'd been thinking that it would be nice to cross beyond the Great Wall at least once, anyway.

"A few days ago, we discovered a strange phenomenon among the magical beasts in this area."

"Have you finished investigating that phenomenon?"

At my question, the knight shook his head, his gaze lowered and somber.

"All we know is that there is something over there."

"Why is that?"

"……All the soldiers who went out on reconnaissance died. We sent more than ten of them, but the same thing happened to all of them."

Hmm.

At the knight's words, I slowly exhaled and stroked my chin.

It wasn't reconnaissance near a cluster of magical beasts, nor was it a route where they would encounter the beasts directly.

The fact that more than ten soldiers had all died meant one of two things.

There was either a trap there that had snatched and devoured the scouts in an instant, before they could even react,

or something important enough for the magical beasts to guard it heavily.

Either way, with the soldiers' losses already so severe, we had a duty to find out what was there.

But the reason we were committing so many troops to this...

was probably that the commander had made the unilateral judgment that the situation was unusual.

I rested my chin in my hand and looked at Asilie, seated beside the knight who was slowly giving his report.

It was a situation in which I could have objected quite reasonably,

but as I'd said before, soldiers were not supposed to question orders.

And...

'We might be able to use this mission as an opportunity.'

People, after all,

could only truly grow when faced with adversity.

Of course...

'We mustn't suffer troop losses in the process.'

Still, as ridiculous as it was,

I had to overcome difficult tasks like this again and again to prevent the world's destruction.

@

We set out beyond the Great Wall early in the morning.

If you were dealing with people,

or, more specifically, trying to avoid people's eyes, moving late at night might have been the right choice,

but magical beasts not only saw better at night, they were also more active then,

so moving in the morning was better for avoiding their eyes.

"Greetings, Sir Allen."

"……"

While touching the sword at my waist, I calmly went over the supplies I needed once more in my head, then turned toward the voice.

Pale violet hair and pale violet eyes.

The pretty boy, slight of build and delicate even for a man, gave me a small bow.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know your name."

The pretty boy laughed softly and shrugged at the question, which went against etiquette and propriety.

"Of course you don't. We've never introduced ourselves. I'm Rowen of House Rascal."

"A pleasure to meet you, Young Master Rascal."

I clasped the hand he offered and returned his greeting while studying his appearance closely.

What the...?

This is obviously a woman disguised as a man.

This is such a blatant cliché. Delicate, pretty, and 'small for a man,' and so on.

Even my mongrel instincts told me she was clearly a woman in disguise, but I soon shook off the thought.

Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter.

Even if she really is a woman disguised as a man, it's none of my business.

"I look forward to working with you on this mission."

"Yes, likewise."

As long as we completed the mission properly, that was all that mattered.

And it would be even better if this mission won me a place in Asilie and the northern knights' good graces.

As I stretched my stiff body and looked around, I frowned at Ascal waddling toward us.

"Are you going on a trip or something? Why do you have so much luggage?"

"……We don't know what might happen beyond the Great Wall, do we? There's no harm in preparing ahead of time—Aagh!!"

WHACK!!

I smacked Ascal on the back of the head and shook my head.

"Do you think you'll be able to move properly in battle if you bring all that?"

"……I can just take it off if a battle breaks out."

I let out a small sigh at Ascal's grumbling as he rubbed the back of his head where I'd hit him.

"You know that's nonsense, right? Especially for someone with such poor stamina."

"……Got it, sir."

I had even been considering raising my fist if he still refused to listen after all that.

Perhaps he had come to understand me to some extent, because he put down the backpack he had been carrying without a word of complaint.

How should I put it? I felt like he was starting to test the limits.

Still, it wasn't a problem as long as he continued to listen this well.

"If you're ready, let's go!"

As I heard Asilie's voice, I looked up at the blue sky.

Hmm.

"……Is something wrong?"

At Rowen's question, I shrugged and shook my head.

"The weather is nice."

The weather in the North was usually quite poor.

The sky was often overcast, and blizzards were hardly uncommon.

That was only natural, given how high the snow could pile up, but in any case, days clear enough for the sky to look this blue were rare.

To leave the Great Wall and avoid the magical beasts' eyes to some extent, overcast weather might actually have been better.

In that sense,

"It's the perfect weather for something to go wrong."

It might not be a particularly good situation for us.

"How can you say something so ominous before we've even left?"

"Be quiet."

@

Inside the Great Wall, there were so many people,

and the snow was cleared away whenever it fell, so there weren't many places where it had piled up.

It was only after we moved a reasonable distance from the Great Wall's perimeter that patches of snow deep enough to slow our steps began appearing.

But outside the Great Wall, things were different.

There was no one to clear the snow, and humans wouldn't be in a place inhabited by magical beasts in the first place; naturally, the beasts themselves weren't going to clear it.

Thus, except in places the magical beasts passed through—in other words, places that became battlefields—the snow was inevitably piled high.

Stepping through snow that swallowed our feet, we began moving forward.

"Ugh, my feet are soaked."

"Stop complaining. You can't always fight in ideal conditions."

"Yeeah."

After delivering a sharp rebuke to Ascal, who had been complaining nonstop, I leisurely surveyed our surroundings from roughly the middle of the group.

Pure white snow covered the land,

and bare yet densely packed trees blocked our view.

'A perfect place for an ambush.'

Even if we were suddenly ambushed, the snow would hold our feet back,

and the bare yet densely packed trees would block our vision.

Once we began leaving the Great Wall, where the land lay wide open in every direction and enemy attacks were easy to spot,

we entered a battlefield that was this disadvantageous to humans.

This was one of the reasons we had no choice but to remain trapped inside the Great Wall even with so many knights.

And put another way,

it meant this was ultimately something we had to break through and overcome.

"Keep your eyes on the path ahead. Otherwise, even if someone hits you from the side, you'll still be assigned fault."

"……What are you talking about all of a sudden?"

"Don't mind him. He's like that sometimes."

Hmm, but I was serious.

It was a little hurtful that they didn't believe me.

It was such a serious matter that, in my world, there were even YouTubers who would pass judgment when someone was assigned fault for something like that.

Come to think of it,

I was more amazed that Ascal was chatting so casually with Rowen.

Didn't that guy find anything strange? Even at a glance, Rowen was far too delicate to be called a man.

Then again,

there must be plenty of women like her in the world, for her to keep living as a man without being found out.

I intended to pretend not to know her secret, too.

"In any case, it means you need to keep a close eye on your surroundings. When your vision is obstructed, an attack can come from anywhere."

"……Oh, come on. We're near the Great Wall, aren't we?"

Even as Ascal replied that way, he looked around with eyes full of tension.

I let out a hollow laugh at the sight and quickened my pace.

Yes, it was reasonable to feel safe up to this point.

But you never knew when that sense of safety might turn into carelessness. That's why it was important to hone your senses in advance.

And...

'The moment we cross the Great Wall, we'll be entering enemy territory.'

As long as the Great Wall remained within sight, most people couldn't help but let down their guard.

After all, this was a landscape they saw every day.

But there was one thing they didn't know: beyond the Great Wall lay the territory of magical beasts that humanity had never conquered.

Why our ancestors had been unable to conquer this land...

It would be faster to experience it firsthand than to explain it in words.

There were some things people simply couldn't understand no matter how much you explained them.

With one hand resting on my sword's hilt so I could draw it at any moment, we continued onward.

Away from the Great Wall.

Deeper into enemy territory.