Chapter 126 - Fage Territory - Nalgarn Battle (Side: Euris)
Chapter 126 - Fage Territory - Nalgarn Battle (Side: Euris)
“We can no longer count on outside help! We have been abandoned by our country! If we continue to stagnate, the dissatisfaction of our people will only grow! We must defeat the three-headed dragon at all costs!”
Delivering the speech in front of more than a hundred soldiers was Euris, the general commander of the Fage territory’s three-headed dragon subjugation force.
Although Euris was a woman, she was better with a sword than anyone else in the Fage territory, and she was also more charismatic.
She was originally a drifter and adventurer, but when she visited the Fage territory, she was suddenly blocked from returning home by the three-headed dragon.
It had been two years now.
The Fage territory was a series of steep mountain ranges in the western part of the territory, and there were many dangerous magic beasts in the area.
And the three-headed dragon appeared in the east.
The Fage territory was completely cut off from the world.
An estimated A-class upper-level danger, the Three-headed Dragon Nalgarn.
It is the largest class of large dragons, and its three colorful heads, blue, yellow, and red, are said to have different specialties.
The blue one is good at healing magic, the yellow one has a wide range of flame breath, and the red one can’t use magic and the like, but are ferocious and should not be approached, according to an old book. (Magic beasts and demons are often referred to as magic rather than sorcery, since they don’t require a magic circle or spell.)
“Listen, if we don’t accomplish anything in this fight, prepare to spend the rest of your lives here! We are the combined forces of the Fage Territories! We can’t afford to waste our manpower on a halfway house fight! Hit it with everything you’ve got!”
The three-headed dragon subjugation force was divided into close quarters squad, archery squad and sorcery squad.
The close quarters and archery squad were further divided into smaller units, with heads to attract, heads to attack, and so on.
This was decided in detail by Icarus, the captain and chief of staff of the sorcery squad and usually the head of the alchemy division of the Fage territory.
During the break-in moving to the three-headed dragon, Euris approached Icarus.
“…… Icarus-dono, may I ask you about the intent of this revised plan of operation?”
Icarus narrowed his eyes in annoyance as he was approached by Euris.
“It’s just as I gave you the revised draft of the plan through my men. What, you think there’s a problem? Didn’t Euris-dono read it out loud to us earlier, too?”
At the time of his speech earlier, the final draft of the operation was to be formally disseminated and reaffirmed to the entire group.
Just before that reconfirmation, Icarus delivered the revised draft of the operation plan to Euris.
This is so as not to give her time to criticize the revised plan.
“It seems to me that you’ve been running your sorcery squad too low. I have no idea what the rules are when it comes to fighting large dragons. If the intelligent Icarus-dono thinks this is the right thing to do, then perhaps it is, but……”
The number of people in the sorcery squad is too few.
Compared to the fifty people in the close quarter squad and forty people in the archery squad, there are only twenty people in the sorcery squad.
It is understandable that when dealing with large magic beasts, they want to put the magicians who can shoot decisive blows in the safest position possible.
If the number of sorcerers was reduced, it would be as if the attack on the Three-Headed Dragon Nalgarn was done deal at that point.
But even so, Icarus’s plan of attack was not too good.
“Then what have you come to say? You’re not complaining, are you?”
“It’s easy to sacrifice your close-quarters squad compared to the previous plan…… Especially when it comes to guiding the close-quarters squad to the deployment of the sorcerers, it doesn’t seem to be going very well. I’d like you to explain to me why the previous plan’s formation was not working. I also want to make sure that there are no misunderstandings like this in order to boost the morale of the close-quarters squad, that’s all I’m saying……”
Icarus’ eyes widened and he swung his staff and struck the ground.
The surrounding three-headed dragon subjugators widened their eyes to see what was going on.
“Do you think I! Rearranged the plan! To protect myself! is that what you’re thinking! Looks like I’ve been made fun of!”
“N-, no, not really. Lark-sama has also told me to follow Lord Icarus’ wishes. I just……”
“Hoh, he knows more about tactics and magic beasts than I do! Is that what you’re suggesting, Euris-dono? Hmm? I see, Is that so!”
“Plea-, please calm down. I need you to listen to me! I……”
“I’ll make the plan, you’ll lead it. That’s what my lord told you! Why can’t the commander of the entire squad, Lord Euris, understand something so easy that doing something like doubting the operation will affect the morale of the entire operation!”
Icarus shouted loudly, drawing the attention of those around him.
“Ahhh, this is why I was so against making a woman the overall commander! I wish I could have that little idea thrown away when I’m faced with a three-headed dragon!”
Icarus spat grimly and kicked the ground with the soles of his feet crudely.
With the eyes of those around him, even Euris, couldn’t do anything anymore.
If she was in a long struggle with Icarus in his position, Icarus was right, the entire morale would be affected.
“…… Lark-sama, in this one crisis in the territory, isn’t that man a mistake in choosing the right person?”
Euris said out in a small voice, being careful not to let anyone hear her.
Icarus Izaida.
He has served the previous lord of the Fage Territory, and he is highly trusted.
His magic skills are also high, and he is not the kind of magician who would normally serve a nobleman in such a country estate.
The lord was quite favorable to Icarus due to his drawback. That was making Icarus think up.
” ” “Gishaaaaaa!” ” “
Finally, the soldiers of the Fage territory confronted the three-headed dragon Nalgarn.
An overwhelming physique that looked like a castle, and a three-colored neck with venomous and flamboyant colors that extended from it.
As per Icarus’s strategy, the close quarter squad came to the front.
Euryis took the lead and headed towards Nalgarn, hoping to atone for at least the sin of not being able to feed off of Icarus.
A total of fifty close-quarter squad caught Nalgarn’s attention, and from the rear of the troops, the bow troops fired their bows at Nalgarn’s head.
The troops aimed and fired their bows at Nalgarn’s head.
“Nice! First, drop the blue head! That thing deals in healing magic! Unless we drop it, it will be a one-sided war of attrition for us! Don’t get too close! There’s no way out of it if you’re trampled underfoot!”
Nalgarn’s red head quickly reached out and head-butted the cavalrymen of the close-quarter squad.
“Ah!”
“Gah!”
Without a chance to avoid it, the squad members were blown away and the few who got a decent hit rolled on the ground.
“Hi, hiii!”
“As I thought, It’s impossible! There’s no way we can win that thing!”
Even the soldiers who had somehow escaped the damage, their stance collapsed from the shock of the people right beside them being scattered, and their formation was disrupted. Aiming at that point, the yellow head spat out flames and burned them away.
In the blink of an eye, the area turned into a hellscape.
The red head tilted its head to look up at the sky.
It swallowed whole the horse that the cavalryman was riding.
Only the horse’s head, bitten off by the fangs, was dropped to the ground in a blur. Blood flowed incessantly from between the fangs.
The original plan had been for the sorcery squad to attack Nalgarn’s three heads with magic to check Nargarn’s movements.
However, due to a sudden change by Icarus, this was hastily changed to a warfare method of guiding Nalgarn into the range of the sorcery squad and attacking it.
With swords and arrows alone, Nalgarn cannot be dealt with very well.
Euris realized that to the point of getting sick of it.
It should have been stopped even if the squad was split up.
If you want, you could have had it partitioned at a later date.
No matter how low morale was, it was still somewhat better that way.
“Split up! Split up on the left and the right! Go around to the other side! Don’t go near the red head!”
Euris pushed down her feelings of fear and screamed frantically.
“Gishaaaaa!”
The blue head, the priority attack target, descends in front of Euris.
Euris grits her teeth and raises her sword.
“Clad it in flame!”
Flames enveloped the blade of the sword as Euris cast the spell.
She also has a certain amount of knowledge of magic.
Euris’s sword is special with a magic circle planted in it.
It had a function similar to a wand, supporting the ability to quickly activate magic in battle.
“Here, take this!”
The blue head’s jaw was slashed by a bright red burning sword.
“Gishaaaaaa!”
The blue head screamed, eyes closed, and turned wide.
No blood came out as the wound was burned out.
“Looks good! One more shot……”
When Euris regained her stance, the blue head opened its eyes.
It jumped at Euris faster than before.
“Euris-dono!”
A young man’s voice came from behind him, and the next moment, three arrows pierced the blue head’s nose.
The blue head meditated on its newly opened eyes.
I can do it, I thought, and almost at the same time, Euris’ body was thrown into the air.
She was defeated by the blue head’s, forceful attack.
Even though the blue head is not an attack specialist, it is a large dragon.
It’s not a kind magical beast that would collide head-on with a human opponent and cause them to fall behind.
The impatience to inflict as much damage on the blue head as possible caused me to misjudge the decision.
He stopped with his sword on the ground and somehow avoided hitting his head.
“Jus-, just this……”
She tried to get up, but she felt a sharp pain in her lower back.
The blue head blow had cracked the bones in her legs and feet.
Euris lost her balance and fell to her knees.
“Gishaaaaaa!”
The blue head opens its large mouth and attacks Euris, who is lying face down.
“…… so this is it.”
Euris closes her eyes.
” “Earth, bind” “
Two voices could be heard overlapping.
The soil deformed into a rope, binding the blue head’s neck.
“Wind, form, blade.”
A blade of wind slashes the blue head that has stopped moving.
“Gishaaaaaa!”
A blade of wind rips the blue head’s eyelids open and gouges out one eye.
The blue head let out a yell.
“I told you not to move without my permission! How many times do I have to tell you that it’s a problem if you move without permission!”
I could hear Icarus shouting from far behind.
He was angry because the people from the sorcerer squad he had on standby had moved to help the other squad on their own.
Icarus was going to stay away from Nalgarn at all costs.
Euris turned her head towards the direction of the voice.
One of the several members of the sorcerer squad that had come to help him was sticking his tongue out, hiding his face to Icarus.
“Gishaaaaaa!”
The blue head shook its head and flailed about. The earthen rope’s shock-absorbing mechanism worked, glowing faintly and resisting, but it was only a small trick before Nalgarn.
In the blink of an eye, the magic ran out and shattered, returning to mere dirt.
But in the meantime, a horseman rushed to Euris.
“Euris-dono, hold on!”
The cavalryman carried Euris and leaves Nalgarn.
Facing his back, this time the yellow head stretches out its head.
He had been distracting the rest of the troops, but when he heard the blue head’s scream, he shifted his attention to Euris’ side.
The blue head retreats in place of the yellow head.
It probably wants to heal the wounds from the direct hit of the magic by the wind blade with its signature healing magic.
“Please step aside so that we can build a wall.”
A quartet of people, led by a short girl with braids, jumped out in front of Euris.
The braided girl, whose name is Rinoa, is the vice-captain of the sorcerer squad, even though she looks like this. The Noir race, a race that is originally common on other continents, spend their entire lives in the form of children.
“…… No, I’m sorry, but can you step forward? The red head, the biggest enemy, has been distracted by the other soldiers who have come around to the rear. If we use the ‘Teleportation Formation’ now, we should be able to strike the weakened blue head.”
The blue head can use healing magic.
If we don’t drop him, he’ll just continue to wear out one way or the other.
Until then, it won’t even be a proper match.
Seeing the yellow head come out, most of the forces on the Fage territory side had moved away from Nalgarn to escape the breath of fire.
However, the yellow head was only moving loudly, and it looked to Euris as if its purpose was to scare the troops away.
With that, the blue head seemed to be loosening up as an opportunity to safely focus on recovery.
Perhaps now is the greatest opportunity to crush the blue head.
Euris’ instincts, developed through her long adventuring career, told her so.
“Are you in your right mind? The four of us here can use the teleportation magic…… but only I can send it accurately for such a long distance from Nalgarn’s feet to his head, you know?”
Rinoa’s long ears twitch compared to Norcs.
“…… Then I’ll ask Rinoa-dono to transfer me. I can still do it with my current body, at least for a blow.”
There was no certainty that she would be able to transfer to Nargarn’s head and return.
Even so, if she missed the current opportunity and wasted her troops, she would not be able to defeat Nalgarn forever.
Euris’ decision was based on that judgment.
To be honest, Euris herself was not fully aware of how far she could go with her current body.
But she was determined to do it.
In the first place, no one would be able to continue with a discarded attack if she, the originator, didn’t come up with it.
“Who will go to Nalgarn’s head with me? FIve, I’d like three more people. There’s no need to force yourself to go, I just don’t want to waste the teleportation, after all. Only those who are confident in their skills should come.”
“Provocative, aren’t you, if say it like that I’ll have to go!”
“I’m coming with you! I’m not going to be bemoaning the stringiness under a fucking lark forever!”
I wasn’t blasting, I was genuinely stating my true feelings, but fortunately, it seemed to be effective, and I quickly cut back the way they came and headed to Nalgarn.
“…… With this flow, I, with Euris-dono in tow, seems like the quickest way to go, right?”
The man who had rescued Euris jokingly said and quickly followed them.
Following them, the quartet of sorcerer’ squad ran out as well.
As a diversion to get Nalgarn’s attention, the other soldiers who were trying to escape followed them.
Nalgarn seemed surprised by the soldiers who suddenly changed their course and approached them, but soon the yellow head opened his big mouth and showered the soldiers with a burning breath.
“Everyone, gather in one place!”
Rinoa shouted, and the soldiers gathered together following her voice.
” ” “Earth wall” ” “
The three sorcerers, except for Rinoa, chanted in unison.
A huge magic circle floats up, and the earth rises and floats in the air, becoming a large shield.
“My magic”
Rinoa follows suit and casts a spell.
Magic power coated the earthen shield, coating it and raising its strength.
A searing breath of heat assaulted the earthen shield.
The area not covered by the shield was dyed bright red.
Seeing the overwhelming appearance of it, Euris was reminded of how terrifying Nalgarn was.
It seems that the others were the same, and their morale was being demoralized from earlier.
Euris bit off the inside of her lip to inspire herself with pain.
Then she shouted loudly for those around him to hear.
“Rinoa-dono, send me now!”
“…… coordinates are in the blue neck section. Carry”
Rinoa points her wand at Euris and chants a spell.
An intense sense of floating sensation hits Euris’ body.
She struggles to shake the anxiety and fear from her head as it presses down on her.
She closes her eyes to avoid thinking about anything else.
If Rinoa’s sorcery could accurately send me away, there was no need for sight at the moment of teleportation.
I just have to exert the pattern that is ingrained in my body.
Eventually, I felt the area shake and I was thrown into the air.
“Clad it in flame!”
Euris swung her sword as he screamed.
She shook it off with a forceful push, almost stopping at the hard dragon’s flesh, and immediately fired a second blow.
As she continued to swing the third blow, she finally opened her eyes.
Although the other sorcerers said that the coordinates were not stable, the three of them also seemed to have miraculously managed to send them near the blue neck. They too were waving a fierce shot at the blue head.
Undoubtedly, the wind was directed at them.
“Gishaa! Gishaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
The blue head squealed loudly, as if it was indeed unbearable after receiving a concentrated attack from the four people on its neck.
Nevertheless, it was difficult for Nalgarn to cope with the neck clinging to it.
Nalgarn twisted his neck and moved his body wide.
Euris and the others continued to slash relentlessly, thrusting their swords into the flesh and desperately clawing at it, moving around the blind spot of the blue head, which had one eye crushed.
One of them was shaken off, but they had no time to look down.
They continued to swing their swords like madmen.
The flesh was scraped from the blue head and blood danced around them. A layer and a high-pitched blue head howls.
“Hahahahaha! Hey, more of that! If we don’t crush them, we won’t be able to get off!”
One of them shouted with laughter as his fear was paralyzed.
Following that, they continued to slash with more vigor.
“Gishaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
A tremendous angry yell resounded from behind Euris.
Immediately afterward, Nalgarn’s body itself shook greatly and Euris was blown away.
Finally, Euris threw her sword away with all her strength. The sword stabbed into its neck where the flesh of his blue head had been shaved off.
“Oops! Ni-, nice catch me!”
A female swordsman, a companion from the adventurer’s days, hugged Euris, who had just fallen.
Then she made a mad dash away from Nalgarn.
“…… It’s Maya. You’re really lucky today.”
When Euris said this, the female swordsman taps her on the shoulder and indicates above her head with her fingers.
“Lucky? That’s right! Look, look at that!”
Euris raised her head and saw Nalgarn’s blue head hanging slack and powerless.
The tattered neck was stained with blood and flesh, and it seemed to have been broken in parts that had been shaved off by four people.
There was no light in the remaining one-eye either, and it was clear that it was doomed.
“You-, you did it! Nalgarn, the blue head!”
“The red head butts the blue neck in an attempt to drop Euris and then…… and then! It’s weakened neck just snapped!”
It seems that the big impact earlier was caused when the red head had hit the blue head with a head butt.
The troublesome healing head was removed.
With this, we would not be forced into one-sided exhaustion.
“Fu, fufu…… I, I see! But our men are so exhausted, we must retreat. We can’t let our guard down, next time we have to take down that yellow head and the rampaging red head. The battle will be even harder than this one.”
Even as she said that, Euris’ voice was bouncing.
“…… However, we must unify the internal consciousness of the Three-Headed Dragon Subjugation Team.”
Euris continues, saying quietly.
It is Icarus that I fear.
If only Icarus hadn’t gone off on a tangent, we could have gotten around better.
Miraculously, we managed to do something about it this time, but our luck is not going to last.
At this state, the Three-Headed Dragon Subjugation Team would not be able to drop Nalgarn’s yellow and red heads.
“Euris, is there something you’re worried about?”
“No, I’m just wondering what we should do to get those two heads down.”
Euris glared at the two heads of Nalgarn.
The soldiers of the Fage territory were in a completely buoyant mood.
After all, they were able to cut off one of Nalgarn’s heads.
It is natural to think that the day of the liberation of the Fage territory should be nearer if this is the case.
“…… Mm?”
The red head bit into the blue head’s neck and shredded it vigorously.
I thought it was to lighten the dead head by throwing it away, but something’s weird.
A great light covered a section of Nalgarn’s neck.
The light was disastrously intense and turned out to be a kind of curse.
The light took the form of magic formula and became a massive magic circle.
“A-, a demonic beast can’t possibly use a magic circle……”
Euris rubbed her eyes.
She wanted to deny the inexplicable phenomenon before her.
But in the next moment, she would see something more improbable.
The light took the shape of a neck and transformed it into a blue head.
The remnants of the blue head, which the red head had chewed up earlier, still remained at Nalgarn’s feet.
The newly sprouted head scanned the area and narrowed its eyes when it spotted Euris.
” ” “Gishaaaaah!” ” “
A three-headed dragon wore a wagon that came to town with a new blue head.
“No-…… No way, that’s impossible……”
The blue head that finally dropped in a desperate attempt.
Why is that thing growing out of Nalgarn without a care in the world?
It’s not in the dimension of healing magic or anything like that.
At best, healing magic can only hasten natural recovery.
Growing an arm, restoring a lost eyeball, and so on are all in the realm of high forbidden magic.
It’s not something a mere magical beast can use, and a single head is long overdue for such a level.
The sacrifice is not small.
And yet, the price of a single head that can be grown in any number of ways is just too much.
In the first place, it was clear to Euris that there was no point in fighting anymore, no matter how much more, and the others had all come to the same conclusion.
“Do-, don’t mess around, don’t mess around, that thing!”
“Up until now! What were we fighting against!”
The soldiers, who had been filled with joyful cheers just a moment ago, screamed at once and turned back, scattering without waiting for orders.
Some of them tried to flee out of the Fage territory in the confusion, but they were caught by the red head and killed without a trace.
Nalgarn seemed to be relentlessly targeting those that were going out to the other side of the Fage territory.
“Fo-, for what…… have I……”
“Eu-, Eulis! Hey! Hang on!”
Euris fainted from disappointment and sluggishly reclined on his old friend.
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[Next episode preview] Having driven away the Fage Army’s soldiers, Nalgarn is now facing an even more powerful enemy!
[Activity Report] Rough sketches and revision points for the book version of Reincarnation of the Curse Tribe!