**Chapter 29**
—
From the very beginning, there had never been any intention to negotiate.
This was, and had always been, a trap—set with the express purpose of ensnaring the Count’s firstborn, Philip.
A stratagem designed to expose the Count’s family and the inner workings of the Order of Saint Magdalena, to read them like the palm of one’s hand and sow chaos among their chain of command.
“Please, Lord Philip! Don’t listen to his words—just withdraw at once!”
“You look like a dog trying to leash its master.”
Even as his adjutant, Sir Milbas, pleaded in near desperation, Dale of Saxen responded only with a cool, cutting sneer—one that spoke of sheer amusement, as if the entire farce were beneath him.
“──Sir Vale.”
“Yes, my lord Dale!”
After that derisive remark, Dale addressed the adjutant knight standing faithfully at his side.
“Step back for a moment.”
The words were deliberate, calculated to display both authority and absolute trust in his subordinates.
“As you command!”
At Dale’s brief order, Sir Vale withdrew from the table without hesitation.
Not even the faintest delay.
Perfect obedience to command.
“Now then, shall we speak privately?”
Once his men had all stepped back, Dale spoke again—quietly, but with unmistakable weight.
“Just between the two of us who bear responsibility for this battle… as the highest commanding officers.”
He said it without specifying names, wearing only a faint, meaningful smile.
“……Fine!”
“L-Lord Philip!”
At those words, Philip’s face flushed red with anger and pride, his voice rising in indignation—as though Dale’s reference to *two commanders* had placed him on the same level.
──In truth, while the Holy Sword Master had unofficially entrusted command of the battle to his adjutant, Sir Milbas, that fact was known only to a handful of the Order’s highest-ranking officers.
To the outside world, it was Philip, the Holy Sword Master’s son and infamous libertine, who led the Order’s forces.
Even if he was, in reality, nothing but a figurehead—a puppet commander paraded before others—Philip’s *pride* would never allow him to accept that fact quietly.
“Stand down, Sir Milbas!”
“B-but, Lord Philip…!”
“Did you not hear your commander’s order?!”
Philip shouted, his voice cracking with fury.
“It is *my duty* to deal with the Saxen whelp!”
For all his bluster, Count Brandenburg’s notorious son was, *officially*, the commander-in-chief of this campaign.
And if that commander chose to act like a child throwing a tantrum before his men, there was little Sir Milbas could do.
To argue further would only worsen the situation.
“……I will obey your command.”
With barely concealed frustration, Sir Milbas bowed his head.
He had no choice.
“As I said earlier, I only requested this meeting for the sake of negotiation.”
Once the two of them were alone at the table, Dale spoke first.
“Hmph. And what terms could you possibly offer that would persuade me?”
Philip’s voice was brittle, his forced composure stretched thin.
“There is one,” Dale replied calmly.
“Then let’s hear it.”
“If the Order of Saint Magdalena withdraws from this battle and pulls back its troops,” Dale said evenly,
“the Duchy of Saxen will personally provide all provisions required for your safe return to the Count’s lands.”
“What…?”
In other words—‘take your men and go home, and we’ll even feed you on the way.’
It was so outrageous that Philip could only give a hollow laugh.
“And you *dare* call that an offer of negotiation?”
“I do.”
Dale’s reply came with unshakable seriousness.
“If my earlier jest offended you, I offer my apology,” he continued—bowing his head slightly, his tone sincere, almost gentle, as if the venom from before had never existed.
“But I must ask that you withdraw your troops.”
Withdraw.
It was, in essence, the same as admitting defeat before a single sword had even been drawn.
“At the very least, before your forces are shattered, your proud knights—hundreds strong—slain or captured…”
Despite the grim words, Dale’s voice held no mockery, no arrogance.
It was the calm warning of one who merely states a fact.
“Before the name of the Order of Saint Magdalena is dragged through the mud…”
His tone did not waver in the slightest.
“And before even your worth as a puppet commander is lost beyond redemption…”
That was the part Philip could not endure.
“My proposal,” Dale said softly, “is the only way you might still call this defeat a ‘clean one.’”
The pity in the ten-year-old boy’s eyes.
The way he looked at Philip—as though from a great height, with quiet, dismissive sympathy—was unbearable.
“……Sir Milbas was right,” Philip hissed.
It was humiliation—raw, searing, and total.
“You came here only to mock me! To disgrace me!”
He shot to his feet, knocking his chair backward.
Conversation, he had decided, was meaningless.
“How unfortunate,” Dale murmured with a faint, chilling smile.
“You’ve just refused your final chance.”
“What…?”
“Your last chance.”
“Are you not afraid?” Dale asked quietly.
“When you lose this battle, the one forced to bear the blame won’t be ‘Commander Milbas’…”
His eyes were empty, his voice devoid of any feeling.
“It will be the useless, incompetent firstborn of the Count’s family.”
‘A worm not even worth a ten-year-old’s heel.’
At those words, Philip suddenly recalled the cold, contemptuous gaze of his father—the look that saw him as nothing but a worthless failure.
And with it, he remembered what his father had said about Dale of Saxen:
> “That monstrous child is something you, dullard, could never match even if you had a hundred years.”
“……Don’t make me laugh,” Philip muttered under his breath, forcing down the crushing weight of that memory.
“The days when a brat like you can act so high and mighty… won’t last long.”
What was it, exactly, that made this insufferable boy so different from him?
“I’ll prove it—before everyone! That *I*, Philip of Brandenburg, am the superior!”
He would lead the battle himself, defeat Dale with his own hands—not through Sir Milbas—and thus silence every whisper that doubted him.
He would earn undeniable military glory by vanquishing the Empire’s so-called prodigy.
He would show his father—show the entire Empire—that Philip was no failure.
“Well then,” Dale said with a bright, almost cheerful smile,
“I’ll be looking forward to that.”
That was where the conversation ended.
—
—
Not long after the collapse of negotiations—
**The Barony of Greenbelt.**
“The Order of Saint Magdalena and Baron Perker’s forces have begun to move.”
Inside the manor’s war room, one of Dale’s strategists pushed several chess pieces across the large wooden table.
“With five hundred knights and three thousand warhorses to feed, they must be feeling the strain on supplies by now.”
Indeed, no army that large could possibly maintain a long-distance campaign without logistical breakdowns.
“Should we hold our defensive position until they’re desperate enough to make the first move?”
The strategist asked, but Dale—the supreme commander—shook his head.
“If the enemy is committing their full strength…”
He paused, his tone calm but firm.
“…then we must show a corresponding degree of sincerity.”
—
—
Across enemy lines, their vigilance was no less keen.
“The Saxen knights are beginning to mobilize.”
While Philip lay drunk in the company of Baron Perker’s courtesans, within the Baron’s own manor—
“I expected the Saxen to exploit our supply issues and drag us into a prolonged war,” one knight remarked.
“Greenbelt isn’t a territory suited for siege warfare,” another replied. “The Saxen surely know that.”
“Hmm…”
It was a fair point.
Yet something about it left Sir Milbas uneasy.
He turned his gaze away, recalling the young lord of Saxen who had smiled so coldly across the negotiation table.
He is not a boy to be underestimated.
> “Never let your guard down against the young heir of Saxen.”
The Holy Sword Master’s warning echoed in his mind.
Dale was a monster—one that an idiot like Philip could never catch up to, not even in a hundred years.
And Sir Milbas knew, with certainty born from what he had personally witnessed, that the threat that child posed to the Empire would one day be immeasurable.
He remembered that chilling sneer—the depthless malice in that boy’s eyes.
No, *not* a child’s cruelty, not even close.
It was the cold, calculated gaze of something inhuman.
The blood of darkness itself—the heir of the Black Duke.
“……There’s no turning back now.”
If nothing else, this was an opportunity.
The Duke of Saxen and his son would one day grow into a threat to both his lord and the Empire.
And before that seed of evil could blossom into its full, monstrous potential—while it was still confined to the body of a ten-year-old boy—
> *I must cut it down myself.*
Even if the act brought political repercussions, Sir Milbas had already resolved to bear them.
For his lord, for the Empire.
──Never realizing that in doing so, he was the one treating Dale as a mere child.
“Once the reorganization is complete, prepare the troops for full deployment.”
Resolute, the High Knight Sir Milbas nodded—while behind him, the distant laughter of Philip and the baron’s courtesans rang out like a mockery.
—
—
The Black Duke.
The Holy Sword Master.
The Crimson Duke.
The Hero from Another World.
Even in a realm of swords and sorcery, few individuals could truly alter the course of war by their strength alone.
Not even the archmages—the so-called “strategic weapons” of the continent—were exceptions.
Whenever mages took part in large-scale warfare, both sides would activate *Magical Defense Systems* (MDS) at high altitude to intercept enemy spells.
A mage’s true worth, therefore, lay not in solitary destruction, but as a cog in the grand machinery of combined-arms warfare.
And a battle fought without mages—one governed by “honor and tactics”—was even more bound to the rules of armies.
Thus, even if Dale one day attained overwhelming personal power, to stand against the Empire that ruled the continent, he would still need an army.
“Lord Dale! The enemy’s main forces have begun advancing north!”
At that report, Dale looked up.
The scout unit, having returned from the front, saluted smartly.
“Well done.”
Dale nodded calmly, as though everything were unfolding just as he had expected.
Beneath the great banner of Saxen—the sigil of the black raven—he mounted his warhorse, encased in seamless black armor.
He donned a custom-forged breastplate and a sable surcoat that fluttered like a shadow in the wind.
“Knights of Saxen,” he called out, voice echoing across the camp.
“The time has come.”
And so he led forth the five hundred Black Raven Knights—
the cavalry feared across the Empire as **the Destroyers of Battlefields.**
