Chapter 71
A small squad of soldiers, only a few dozen at most.
They were desperately fending off the orcs pressing in from all sides.
There were fewer orcs than humans.
But each orc was stronger than a human.
In skill, in build, even in equipment.
Their formation looked like it could collapse at any moment.
At the center was a single knight in armor, mounted on horseback.
He was probably the commander.
Then, parting the orc horde, an especially huge orc appeared.
The orc chieftain, wielding two axes.
“Kwoooo!”
The orc chieftain roared and swung his axes.
The axe blade came plunging straight down.
The knight twisted his body and barely managed to catch the blow with his sword.
Kaang-!
Screams and the clang of metal rang out.
Unable to withstand the impact, the knight was knocked off his horse and rolled.
He got back up at once, but by then a second attack was already closing in.
A life-or-death crisis anyone could see.
I whispered softly to the ring coiled around my finger.
“Sand Worm.”
At my call, the ring loosened and fell to the ground.
A tiny sand worm burrowed into the earth.
Right after that.
Kugugugugung-!
The ground began to shake.
Both orcs and humans staggered, unable to keep their balance, startled by the sudden quake.
That was the moment.
The ground exploded upward beside the orcs.
A hill rose up amid a massive cloud of dust.
What showed through the split earth was a giant mouth torn into several pieces.
A gaping abyss lined with countless teeth.
The Sand Worm swept straight across the battlefield.
Like a train plowing through everything in its path.
A single thick line was carved across the ground.
Inside it was filled with the corpses and fragments of orcs, shredded before they could even scream.
“Kh... kwoo...?”
The surviving orcs turned around in confusion.
And they were horrified to see the terrain where dozens of their comrades had vanished in an instant.
Pure terror surfaced in their eyes.
In that silence, I snapped my fingers.
Dozens of sand bullets formed in the air.
The bullets were heavy, silver-gray, and carried tungsten particles within them.
I precisely aimed at the heads of the panicking orcs.
Ppuh-bang! Ppuh-buh-buh-bang!
Sounds like watermelons bursting rang out one after another. The heads of the orcs struck by the bullets exploded one after another.
“K, kwooo!”
Seeing their comrades’ heads bursting right before their eyes, the orcs completely lost their will to fight.
The orcs threw down their weapons and began scattering while screaming.
In just a few seconds, dozens of orcs had vanished without a trace.
“….“
On the now-silent battlefield, only the human soldiers remained.
They stared blankly at the spot where the orcs they’d been fighting just moments ago had disappeared.
The soldiers’ gazes soon turned to me.
I recalled the information about the floors in the 30s.
From this floor onward, NPCs would sometimes appear, and it was said you could even work with them to progress through quests.
‘The knight in the middle is probably the named one.’
Named NPC, Knight Seymour.
If I remembered right, he was a notorious NPC known for being arrogant and nasty.
Apparently he was always picking fights or brushing people off.
I walked up to the soldiers.
Still, surely they wouldn’t pick a fight after I’d just saved them from the brink of death, would they?
“… Hey, stop! Don’t come any closer!”
One of the surviving soldiers shouted at me, pointing a spear in my direction.
The soldier’s voice and the spear tip were both trembling faintly.
“Hm?”
Just as I frowned slightly at the unexpected reaction,
“Stop!”
Knight Seymour shouted at the top of his lungs.
However, the target of that shout was not me.
“How dare you block the way of the Great Sage! Lower that spear at once!”
At the knight’s rebuke, the soldier flinched and lowered his spear.
He glared at the soldiers once, then walked toward me.
Then, without hesitation, he knelt on one knee in front of me.
“Please forgive my subordinate’s rudeness. My men couldn’t withstand the miracle before their eyes and committed a grave offense.”
Head bowed deeply, he spoke in a voice full of reverence.
“My name is Seymour. May I ask the great one’s honored name?”
I looked down at him with a puzzled expression.
It was a completely different attitude from what I’d heard.
Wasn’t he supposed to be arrogant and rude?
Seymour was being excessively polite and respectful.
After thinking for a moment, I opened my mouth.
If I’d known this would happen, I’d have made up an English name ahead of time.
One Star? That’s not a person’s name.
“Just call me whatever’s easiest.”
“Understood. Great Sage.”
Seymour still couldn’t lift his head, even while kneeling.
With me right in front of him, Seymour still didn’t say a word.
A brief silence passed.
“….“
“….“
In the end, unable to bear the frustration, I spoke first.
At this rate, nothing was going to happen.
“Don’t you have something you want to say?”
“Huh?”
At my words, Seymour flinched and looked up.
I sighed and asked again.
“Don’t you want to ask me for something? Like, could you wipe out all the orcs, or something....”
For a moment, Seymour’s body went rigid.
But Seymour quickly came to and hurriedly answered.
“Then could you accompany us to our encampment, Great Sage? I would like to make a formal request of you. Perhaps while you rest for a bit.”
I nodded.
This was probably the main quest, so of course I intended to cooperate.
“Sure.”
At my brief answer, color returned to Seymour’s face.
He hurriedly stood up and brought his horse over.
“Please ride this horse. I can’t have my benefactor walking.”
I looked at the horse and saddle.
‘It’s kind of high...?’
The horse’s belly was about level with my head.
Even the saddle was higher than my waist.
I sighed and planted my staff on the ground.
In an instant, a foothold appeared.
“A, a miracle...”
I could hear the soldiers whispering around me.
What, have they never seen a mage before?
Feeling oddly proud, I stepped onto the foothold and hooked one leg over the saddle.
And just as I pulled myself up onto the horse in one swift motion,
“Damn it, my legs are way too short...”
I had successfully gotten onto the horse, but both legs dangled in the air.
Besides, riding a horse for the first time was more unstable than I’d expected.
It felt like my fear of heights was acting up again.
I could feel my face flush bright red.
“…I’ll just walk.”
I got down from the horse again.
Seymour, still holding the reins, approached me with a flustered expression.
“S-sorry! I didn’t think it through!”
“…It’s fine, so just hurry up and go.”
“No! I’ll carry you on my back!”
“Just. Go. Already.”
I said through tightly clenched lips.
Seymour looked flustered for a moment, then led the horse forward.
The soldiers also quickly formed up and followed after him.
I walked at the very back, trailing behind them.
***
How long had we been walking?
I began to see shabby barracks beyond the hill in the distance.
Seymour led me to the largest, cleanest-looking tent.
“It’s humble, but please rest comfortably.”
Seymour prepared a chair for me with a blanket laid over it, and the other soldiers hurried about bringing water and food.
Of course, all they brought out was hard jerky, but it was easy to see that it was the best they had.
That alone made it obvious the situation at this encampment was far from good.
I watched them silently.
The treatment wasn’t bad.
No, honestly, I was pretty satisfied.
It was while I was swallowing a few pieces of jerky that Seymour knelt in front of me again.
“Great Sage. I have a shameless favor to ask of you.”
I looked at him without a word.
So this was finally where the real business began.
“We... had our unit’s battle standard taken by the enemy.”
Seymour’s voice trembled with shame and anger.
“A battle standard is our honor itself. We can’t return without it.”
Seymour bowed even deeper. His forehead was almost touching the ground.
Before he could say anything else, I replied.
It wasn’t that big a deal anyway.
“You want me to get the battle standard back, right? Got it. Where is it?”
At my easy acceptance, Seymour’s face brightened.
“Thank you! The enemy has set up camp beyond that hill. If I lead the way...”
But before Seymour could even finish speaking,
a frantic cry came from outside.
“Enemy attack! The orcs are coming!”
The area outside the tent instantly erupted into chaos.
Seymour jumped to his feet in shock.
I stood up too and went outside.
Far off in the distance, an orc unit numbering over a hundred was charging in, kicking up dust.
At their head, one orc was carrying a huge flag.
Where the original emblem should have been, a crude drawing painted in red blood had been slapped over it.
“That flag...!”
Seymour muttered in a voice full of despair.
“To turn our battle standard into such a monstrosity...!”
A red aura spread from the flag, enveloping the orcs.
Foam dripped from the orcs’ mouths.
Anyone could tell it was far from normal.
It was obvious they were getting some sort of buff from the flag.
“Already this close...”
Despair settled on the soldiers’ faces.
But I thought it was actually great.
After all, it was like the thing I needed to retrieve had come looking for me on its own.
I stepped forward.
And reached out my hand toward the ground.
The ground around me had already turned to sand.
I snapped my fingers.
Dozens of sand bullets formed in the air.
Ppuh-buh-buh-buh-buk!
The heads of the orcs charging at the front burst without exception.
“Again.”
I snapped my fingers again.
And once more.
The orcs who had been charging headlong collapsed in place without even taking a few steps.
It felt like I was an entire line infantry unit all by myself.
With nothing more than standing in place and snapping my fingers a few times, an orc force of nearly a hundred was wiped out in an instant.
…….
The world fell quiet again.
All that remained where the orcs had charged from was a hill of corpses.
I slowly walked over and pulled out the flag.
A foul stench of blood stung my nose.
“Ugh, the smell...”
I went back to Seymour with the flag in hand.
Seymour and the soldiers stared at me with their mouths open, as if looking at a god.
“Aren’t you going to take it?”
I casually held the flag out to him.
After all, it was the thing I had promised to recover.
But Seymour didn’t take the flag.
Looking at the orc pattern painted over the flag, Seymour wore a sorrowful expression.
“…Our souls have already been defiled.”
Seymour was silent for a moment, then spoke as if he’d made up his mind.
“Great Sage. That flag... is no longer ours.”
His voice was heavy.
“We no longer have the right to raise it. It has already been defiled, so please take it as a trophy, Great Sage.”
“A trophy?”
I wondered what I was supposed to do with it.
What was I supposed to do with a bloodstained rag like this?
Just as I was about to refuse,
[Quest ‘Stolen Battle Standard’ completed.]
[Congratulations on clearing the Tower’s 31st Floor (EXTREME).]
[First Clear Bonus has been applied!]
[Rank 1 Bonus has been applied!]
[Bonus applied to reward item ‘Defiled Battle Standard’.]
At the same time the message disappeared, a blinding light began pouring from the flag in my hand.
“T-this is...!”
Seymour and the soldiers watched in shock.
Along with the light, the red blood smeared over the flag turned to smoke and disappeared. The worn, frayed cloth changed into pure white silk and
The flag was reborn in pure, dazzling white.
From its center, a strand of gold emerged and began embroidering an intricate pattern.
A pattern of a golden hourglass.
[Item ‘Defiled Battle Standard’ has evolved into ‘Flag of the Beginning’.]
Seymour and the soldiers watched the scene unfold before them in silence.
To them, who weren’t familiar with magic, it was like a miracle.
They thought they had become witnesses to a miracle.
“Ooh...“
Someone let out an exclamation.
That was the cue.
Starting with Seymour, all the soldiers knelt at once and bowed their heads.
“Hmmm...“
I quietly looked down at my white, glowing flag.
My own emblem.
I didn’t dislike the design.
At that very moment, a familiar sensation washed over my whole body.
The sensation of being expelled from the tower.
The surrounding scenery was engulfed in light and quickly receded into the distance.
When I opened my eyes again, I was on the private road in front of my house.
In my hand was still a pure white flag embroidered with a golden hourglass.
A system window appeared from the flag.
[Please enter the phrase and sound effect to use when declaring the domain]
[Current phrase: Auto]
[Current domain: 10m radius / 80 decibels]
What kind of tacky gimmick is this?
“I’ll turn this off for now...”
A feeling that if someone touched it carelessly, a major accident would happen.
Just as I was about to disable the option without hesitation,
“The rightful ruler of the Great Battle, the sand-eater, the faceless one, the one beyond causality, the orcs’ enemy, the one who killed the World Tree, the one who revived the World Tree, the savior of the elves, the calamity of the fallen elves, the utterly vicious slave lord...“
“What is this!”
A pure white light poured from the flag, and a huge shout began to ring out.