Even for someone who's only an initiate in spells, casting a spell that binds one person's feet is easy. Binding all four limbs outright isn't hard either. If she put it in terms of herself—Esther—she could make invisible chains, or she could just adapt a spell like Drmüller's Mantle.
To a mage's eye, there's no difference between a trained soldier and a farmer who's only ever tilled fields all his life.
Someone who sees a bow for the first time in their life can't react to it. Even when they see the bowstring being drawn, they just stand there gaping and watching.
Whether soldier or farmer, isn't seeing a bow for the first time the same?
In the same sense, those who don't know spells can't prepare against spells. All the more since spells, unlike bows, are not a kind of power or tool that you can plainly see with your eyes.
Therefore even if there are about ten soldiers or farmers, the situation is the same. It isn't all that hard to bind their feet.
Only when you get to about a hundred does the story change a little.
If you aren't someone who handles the spell-world skillfully, just the preparations will take three days. If you're a little more skillful, two days; if you're less so, it might take five.
And if you draw a magic circle on the ground like that and scatter reagents, those with keen senses will become wary, grow suspicious, and show a touchy, nervous reaction toward the unknown.
Even someone seeing a bow for the first time can feel just from the look and atmosphere of it that it's threatening.
Of course, if you are very skillful in handling the spell-world, you've got ample ability to harass a force on the scale of a hundred without any special preparations. You'll consume a considerable amount of resources, though.
'Then what about a thousand?'
From here, you have to separate the concepts of trained soldiers and ordinary people.
'Trained soldiers have something called a commander.'
They lead the troops under them. They shout at them not to panic and respond to minimize damage. Whether a group has a leader or not makes a big difference.
This is something you have to recognize even once you're at a hundred. Of course, it's something for the person stuck with the job of stopping them to factor in.
'Numbers and a commander.'
When those two factors combine, soldiers and farmers are distinguished. When soldiers who have experienced war form a mass and become a collective, you can't say they're the same as ordinary people.
They gain the knack to huddle up, endure, and overcome obstacles. Mages who could stand squarely and block a thousand people each charging with bits of iron were rare. Very rare.
All the more if that army has been tempered again and again like hammered iron.
From here the arithmetic gets complicated.
'At minimum, assume elite troops.'
Back when she hadn't cared, she hadn't known, but what were the Border Guard's units like when she had watched them up close? Were they at a level you could dismiss just because they didn't know spells?
'If it's a unit called elite, they won't just take it lying down.'
There will be more than a few soldiers who overcome suffering from hallucinations. Some of them might break through the interference and advance.
Just as the Border Guard's elite unit she had seen had done, the enemy could certainly do the same.
Stopping a thousand trained soldiers rather than a simple thousand common refugees was difficult. So difficult that an average mage wouldn't even try.
'You also have to keep the existence of a knight order in mind.'
Even if you wrapped yourself in protection and defense spells, their blades were too keen. Even a junior knight was a considerable threat. It wasn't as if she would just space out against them if they stood right in front of her, but the right path was to avoid them as much as possible.
What she had to do had been set from the beginning.
"Hold the army up as much as you can."
That was Kraiss's line. She had no such thing as a view of the battlefield. But she knew that this damn wide-eyed bastard who had dared to covet a leopard's claws and even groped with his hand saying he would "confirm her sex" was very clever.
"I will."
When was it that she had given that simple, straightforward answer?
Sweat from her brow ran down her cheeks.
Even before she cast, Esther had taken everything the enemy had into consideration. Like that, she took her position where she was out of the enemy's sight. Then she cast and bound the feet of three thousand soldiers and froze them in place.
Even though this was dozens of times harder than standing in front of the army and killing dozens of soldiers in one blow, on the surface she pulled it off as if it were nothing.
The result that would naturally follow in that process strode right up to her.
"Goddamn witch."
It was an arrow aimed at Esther. A human-made arrow.
Commander Barik moved the army efficiently. He took the practical threat blocking the army's front—the witch—and assigned five knights to that. Toward the mage, he sent seven junior knights.
This was the entirety of the Mud Order's strength. At the same time he ordered his forces to charge. Before the army could pierce the swamp and the mist, the seven junior knights broke straight through first and cut a path, reaching Esther's front.
"With a bit of caution, it's nothing."
It came with that shout. That alone would become hope and possibility to the army. They would move watching the junior knights' backs.
The seven junior knights pierced through with the intention of ignoring all the mist that forced hallucinations, and for the ground that had turned to swamp they took off their boots and advanced, scraping the soles of their feet over the ground one by one to check it.
Thanks to that, blood beaded on the soles of all seven. It was because of scrapes from rocks and sand. Even a junior knight, it was said, possessed strength incomparably beyond an ordinary soldier.
On top of that, they had armed themselves with self-discipline and heightened spirit, suppressed the impulses the hallucinations brought, pushed out fear, and reached this place.
If the process had been that grueling, how could the figure of the witch standing ramrod-straight on a small rise look good to them?
"Shoot."
The instant they identified the target, one of the junior knights spoke. The comrade right next to him set an arrow to the string and loosed. The time needed to perform all those motions was no more than a single exhale.
Thwum!
The string quivered and sent the arrow flying. The stick with a point set at the end looked like it would pierce the witch's skull any moment—but it didn't.
Thwum!
Right in front of her, a flesh golem with skin crudely patch-stitched together knocked the arrow away. It stood before the witch, covering the top half of its body with a square shield. Arrows are weak to shields. As long as the arrow wasn't loaded with Will, a shield alone was enough to block.
And Bonhead's capability had increased too. It had gone through repeated improvements. It had blocked an arrow shot by a junior knight, but it did not get easily overpowered in strength.
"You even kept a bodyguard."
"That crazy bitch."
"Half and half. Let's not kill her right away."
"Fun comes later. If this drags, the commander will chew you up."
All seven junior knights recalled the memory of having seen Barik lose his reason and chew a few monsters to death. Half of the seven broke out in gooseflesh. The commander was frightening. The fear he had given them was carved into their bones.
"Work first."
They all agreed. The seven junior knights stepped forward. Even if arrows didn't work, blades would do. There were no swamps, no phantoms, no hallucinations—if they just cleared out that lump of flesh, the golem, they'd be done.
Watching over that place while she held three thousand soldiers, Esther sensed the limit.
When the soldiers tied each other with ropes and dragged those who had fallen into the swamp out, those caught in the phantasm let out beastly screams and came back to their senses.
'As expected, it isn't easy.'
If it was an excuse, it was an excuse, but large-scale area spells like this weren't her specialty. In fact, it was her very weakest part.
It wasn't even a visible place—no, she had never learned in the first place how to make an invisible place into part of her own domain and manifest the spell-world.
She had explored alone, and because it was necessary, she had found a path by instinct and inspiration and worked out a method and done it—that was all.
If the three enemy mages who had already croaked had faced Esther and learned this fact, one of the three might have gotten so worked up he died on the spot.
Of course, rather than dying, they would have tried to suck Esther's blood or plunder her spell-world.
And at the same time, they would have repeatedly shown astonishment and been unable to suppress their shock. It was talent on that level. If she had taken up a sword—if her gift had been not for magic but for the sword—then by now Enkrid would have been trotting along in Esther's wake.
That would have been fun in its own way, too.
She swept in and shook out the intruding idle thought. Instead, she took in with her eyes the seven bristling with killing intent standing before her.
"If you behave, I'll let you live."
One of them stuck out a tongue as he spoke. It was a tongue as long as a Frog's. Its shape was more repulsive to look at than a Frog's. It didn't even look nimble, and long strands of spit ran down along the tongue. It was a tongue like his mother had mated with a snake.
"Hideous. I'll cut your tongue before your eyeballs."
Esther spoke. As she spoke, she snapped her fingers.
Click!
'Drmüller's Hammer.'
She chanted inwardly. It was a feat possible because she had reached Mugin, the Tacitus stage.
She saw with her eyes the wind clump together and drop straight down.
Boom!
Wind clumped and the striking force smashed two heads. One was blown sideways by the wind, and the other endured. That split their fates. Even though it was a spell she implemented while maintaining the spell that held three thousand soldiers, one of the junior knights' heads burst.
Seven—or rather now the six—junior knights were startled.
It was a spell of a track different from anything they had experienced so far.
If she was going to do it, Esther meant to do it right. So the spell she had just implemented unfolded with a speed and pressure that even a knight could not dodge.
It was a technique forged training against the Mad Order of Knights.
'Spells are technique too.'
The more you use them, the more varied the methods of use become and the more skillful you get. It's different from simply pouring out mana. Esther was the one who by nature had the track record of having faced multiple mages with relatively little mana and a small set of spells. This was the specialty possessed by the Witch of Strife.
Wind clumped and crushed the opponent's head. Blood and brain matter splattered across the ground, and broken fragments of bone, dyed red, scattered in every direction. At the same time, a line of blood ran at the corner of Esther's mouth.
"Master."
"Captain."
"Goddess."
Some who had finished their devotions behind her spoke up. There were as many as twenty people. At the minimum, they possessed talent enough to open the spell-world, each and every one of them overflowing with individuality.
At the title one of them—one who often cracked jokes—used to call her, she almost laughed.
Goddess. Wasn't that truly a word that didn't suit her?
"You said you'd cut my tongue."
One of the opponents spoke. It was a foolish line. Of course it was a feint. She did exactly as she had learned from Enkrid.
If spells are technique too, isn't it right that they should be grounded in tactics?
"Your tongue is big."
On top of that, she threw out words that complicated the inside of their heads.
One of the enemy junior knights cocked his head. Just from his looks, he seemed like a guy with a brain of simple structure.
"No, that's a head."
Esther said what she had to say with perfect composure. It had nothing to do with anything, but depending on how you heard it, it sounded like a fitting answer.
"You petty things, where do you put your eyes? I'll pluck out all those eyeballs."
At least one of them was quick on the uptake. The quick one shouted.
"Goddamn it, don't get dragged in! It's nonsense!"
Esther regulated her breathing.
All right, shall I overdo it a bit?
Bonhead would handle at least one among them. Because she had taken one out by surprise, the vigilance of the remaining six had risen higher than ever.
'I should have killed three with the first spell.'
Because she was maintaining the swamp and the mist while holding three thousand feet, this was the limit. The mana she had stored up in the inner image—the place called the spell-world—showed the bottom. Thanks to that she was dizzy and her insides were nauseous. Her guts tingled and buzzed and blood was about to surge back up; it was only natural.
Even knowing she could just fall back here, no such thought occurred to Esther.
She simply recalled one man's back.
'What would you do?'
He was someone who found an exit even in a place where all sides were blocked.
He was someone who, even if trapped in a labyrinth seven floors dug underground, would in the end climb back up.
He was someone who did what he had to do even before the reaper.
He was—
'A truly beautiful person.'
She remembered the words her master had once said while telling her fortune.
"You do like the pretty, the beautiful, the proper—anyway, those kinds of things."
"Am I like that?"
"Yes, you are. You'd pick exactly that kind of man too."
Her master's wisdom always existed in a realm hard to understand. He was someone who, beyond handling spells, possessed such depth as to be rightly called a sage.
Even if she had to overdo it, Esther meant to manifest another spell. The six junior knights steeled themselves and opened distance.
Even if one or two died to a spell like the one from a moment before, they meant to close the distance and in the end swing the swords, spears, hammers they held.
'Do I have leeway to leave strength for a warding spell?'
No. In that case she would have to trust in the relics and spell objects she wore on her body as a rule.
She was someone who calculated and recalculated.
"My name is Graham. Once I lived as the castellan of Border Guard, and in my late years I gained enlightenment and found joy at the end of my life."
A white-haired swordsman came to stand by her.
As he said, his name was Graham—a man who had risen above the junior-knight level. Even if he fell short compared to others, what he had achieved was not diminished. He was someone who, even in old age, had swung the sword every day and shattered his limits.
If you set aside the Mad unit and those close to Enkrid, he was one of the very first to change after seeing Enkrid.
Even before, he had not hesitated to step forward for his city. For him, stepping forward at a moment like this was only natural.
"Dame Esther, I'll hold your side."
Everyone had gone out to fight and put on their armor. He had no thought of just spectating either. One of the ones coming in veered sideways. He meant to cut down Graham and merge in.
At a glance, the two felt the difference in skill between them. In stance, in bearing, in pressure—Graham was inferior in all. Even so, the old warrior smiled.
He had thought he had shattered his limits through tempering and training, but they were days when, day by day, his hands and feet stiffened with old age.
Between yesterday and tomorrow had always been his absolute prime. Therefore, once this passed and some days went by, at some point he would have to set down the sword.
Only, that day wasn't today.
"This should make up for the mistake I made in the past."
The voice that followed from the rear belonged to the man who should have been back there using his head—Kraiss was his name.