Chapter 129 - The Kings of the Past

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"You want me to reconsider the invasion? Marquis Cato?"

In the Kingdom of Dolpins's administrative chamber.

An aging Marquis was offering counsel to the young king, a twenty-year-old whose face still retained traces of youth.

"Yes, King Span.

While applying for a therapeutic stay at the Medicinal Spring in the Kingdom of Sepans, I also took the opportunity to discreetly assess the state of the kingdom. Its defensive preparations are considerably more advanced than I anticipated.

Furthermore, we cannot afford to underestimate the strength of the soldiers who have been enhanced by the benefits of the Hot Spring Dungeon.

I witnessed it firsthand. Using a human-powered stone-throwing weapon, the women were casually hitting monsters dozens of meters away with rainbow ore."

"Hmph. Even so, our forces outnumber theirs by at least eight to one. What problem could there possibly be?"

"At present... I estimate the ratio to be closer to five to one."

"Preposterous! Just because a beneficial dungeon appeared, you expect their number of soldiers to increase that much in a mere few years?!"

"The hot springs can cure physical deformities and illnesses, allowing large numbers of soldiers to return to the front lines.

Moreover, it is not just the effects of the Hot Spring Dungeon. Thanks to the improved food supply provided by the No-Hunger Dungeon, even the poor are increasingly able to grow into soldiers capable of contributing to the kingdom's military strength. The rate at which this happens appears to be accelerating."

"B-But we're still five times stronger, aren't we?! And if your report is accurate, then the longer we wait, the more precarious that advantage will become. Surely that means now is the perfect time to attack!

Listen well! If the Kingdom of Dolpins is to become the dominant power on this continent, we must deal with the Kingdom of Claps and the Kingdom of Marponwear!

Only after we seize the Kingdom of Sepans's dungeons—which can strengthen and heal our soldiers and provide us with an inexhaustible supply of food—should we settle down and devote ourselves to expanding our military forces and developing our weapons!

Now is the time to attack, even if it means accepting some risks!"

"Your Majesty, Queen Yuzha of the opposing kingdom has experienced war on numerous occasions."

"She merely repelled a few invasions by small, starving nations that had been driven to desperation by a great famine and tried to seize the No-Hunger Dungeon. Anyone could do that!"

The Kingdom of Sepans was hardly a great power. Yet, even when faced with small, starving nations that threw everything they had into all-out wars to seize the dungeon, bringing not only their soldiers but their entire populations into the fight, it had calmly dealt with each invasion and repelled them with scarcely any losses.

That alone should have been enough to show that Queen Yuzha was a highly capable military strategist. But King Span, who had no experience of war, could see nothing beyond the numbers.

Fixated on the figures in front of him, he had jumped to the simplistic conclusion that victory would be easy because his kingdom outnumbered the enemy five to one.

Marquis Cato sighed.

The king who had ruled the Kingdom of Dolpins two generations earlier had been an extraordinary monarch.

He had used the products emerging from the newly discovered Thread Dungeon as convenient tools for commercial trade, at least on the surface, while secretly continuing to develop vast quantities of new weapons behind the scenes.

From fortresses perched high above the ground, he had launched arrows with ranges on an entirely different scale, thwarting invasions by great powers. He had absorbed neighboring small nations into his territory, amassed wealth through trade, and laid the foundations that established the Kingdom of Dolpins as a major power.

The former king, Filamet, who inherited this powerful kingdom, had been wholly devoted to trade with other nations and had an unwavering tendency to avoid war.

However, the former king had been neither particularly gentle nor a pacifist.

He simply lacked the courage to take the initiative in war and seemed to regard protecting and preserving his own luxurious lifestyle and vested interests as his highest priority.

Nevertheless, the luxurious fabrics and garments made from fibers supplied by the Thread Dungeon had fit perfectly with his trade-centered approach, and his rule had brought considerable wealth to the Kingdom of Dolpins.

King Span secretly despised his predecessor, Filamet, for refusing to expand the kingdom's territory through warfare, regarding him as a cowardly father.

Out of defiance toward his father, King Span had dreamed of expanding the kingdom's territory through war once he took control of the government, thereby setting the Kingdom of Dolpins on a path to continental supremacy.

It was also true that many formidable soldiers supported King Span and his ambitions.

The former king had fallen ill and been left with no choice but to relinquish the throne to King Span.

The Marquis suspected that the factions eager for war had orchestrated the situation, propping up the ambitious Span as their preferred candidate for the throne.

The former king's health had deteriorated rapidly, leading to his death just as the Medicinal Spring became available. The timing was simply too convenient.

King Filamet had not been a particularly capable monarch.

He had simply dumped all his responsibilities on competent subordinates and, so long as he caused no disputes, could spend his days indulging himself. He had functioned perfectly well as a figurehead king precisely because he stayed out of everyone's way.

He had been a convenient king for the moderates, but for the ambitious, no king could have been a greater obstacle. 

However, King Span, the son of such a man, who resented his father's refusal to fight and harbored ambitions of following a path of conquest...

...was unfortunately not particularly exceptional himself, and he had absolutely no experience of war.

In Marquis Cato's assessment, Span was a king of mediocre ability who had been raised on the praise of ambitious, hawkish nobles and knights, all of whom had hailed him as the next great conqueror. His royal pride and ambition had flourished splendidly, but his actual abilities had not kept pace.

The Marquis could easily imagine their invasion stalling at the first fortress along the Kingdom of Sepans's border, further souring relations between the two kingdoms.

He could only dread the prospect of noblewomen, deprived of the beauty-enhancing benefits of the Hot Spring Dungeon, launching a furious backlash against the king.

"Your Majesty, the border fortress we must capture in the Kingdom of Sepans is a formidable stronghold built high above the ground.

It is not the sort of fortress that can be taken simply by developing a somewhat more powerful bow."

"Heh heh heh. Calling a bow made from the new material 'somewhat more powerful' hardly does it justice. It is a terrifying weapon that can now overwhelm the enemy with impunity.

Come, perhaps I should show you the weapon firsthand and put your overly cautious mind at ease."

When they arrived at the weapons development facility, they found something that resembled a gigantic slingshot fixed to the ground rather than a bow. It had been made by bundling elastic threads, a new material obtained from the Thread Dungeon.

A large boulder was placed in a woven basket resembling a hammock. Five burly soldiers strained together to pull it back, then released it, sending the boulder flying.

It struck a distant target modeled after a fortress wall, punching a hole straight through it.

There was no rubber slingshot on Earth capable of unleashing such devastating force.

This was a feat that could only be accomplished with rubber threads imbued with mysterious levels of tension and strength through dungeon magic by the Thread Dungeon Master, who didn't really understand the true nature of rubber in the first place.

"How about that, Marquis? We can launch stones powerful enough to destroy the enemy's fortress from a distance more than three times the range of conventional bows, all while attacking them unilaterally!

Of course, that's not all.

Once they realize all they can do is watch helplessly as their fortress is continuously demolished,

they'll naturally charge out in a desperate attempt to destroy this catapult, even if it means sacrificing their lives. And that's where this comes in."

The next weapon he brought out resembled a crossbow, shaped like an extraordinarily long rifle.

Its bowstring was made from that same new material. It was so strong and could be stretched so far that no human could draw it by hand alone, so two people had to pull it back and secure it in place with a locking mechanism.

Once an arrow was fitted to the secured string, they pulled a lever-like trigger to release the lock and fire. The arrow shot out with tremendous force, traveling roughly three times as far as one fired from a conventional bow.

This weapon, together with the rain of arrows from the regular army of the Kingdom of Dolpins, will protect the area around our new siege weapon.

Even if a handful of soldiers valiantly manage to break through that barrage of arrows raining down like a storm…

…they'll ultimately be stopped by the strongest unit of all, led by Captain Nylon, who is conquering the deepest levels of the Thread Dungeon.

The people of the Kingdom of Sepans have no way to escape a future in which their fortress is relentlessly destroyed while they can do nothing about it."

"Now, can you still imagine us losing?"

Span asked, looking at the marquis with a smug grin. Yet the marquis showed no surprise whatsoever.

He had expected the Marquis to react with something along the lines of, "S-Splendid! With a weapon like this and such thorough defensive measures in place, we have nothing to fear from the enemy!"

But seeing the Marquis's expression, as though he were calmly running through a simulation of a war against the Kingdom of Sepans, Span suddenly began to feel uneasy.

"Erm, Your Majesty. Just how many of these new weapons have we managed to prepare?"

"W-Well... we have about twenty...

Ideally, we would have prepared several hundred, demolished the fortress the moment the battle began, and forced the demoralized Sepans army to surrender…

Well, we have fewer than anticipated, but they still have enough power to pulverize the fortress if we keep at it! This should be more than sufficient to force them to surrender."

Marquis Cato mentally simulated how a battle would unfold with these weapons at their disposal.

The new weapons certainly possessed enough destructive power to justify some confidence.

Even accounting for the Kingdom of Sepans's advantage in occupying a fortress and firing arrows from higher ground, these weapons still appeared to have sufficient range to attack the enemy without retaliation.

Captain Touji probably couldn't launch projectiles with her own physical strength over distances comparable to the range of these new catapults and bows. Surely even she wasn't that powerful.

However, the difference in rate of fire and mobility was simply too great.

Those women could scatter in every direction and hurl those absurdly powerful stones at the enemy, whereas this catapult appeared unusable unless it was first anchored to the ground.

Even the new bow required two people to draw the string back and secure it with a locking mechanism. Only after fitting an arrow, taking aim, and pulling the lever could they finally fire.

...The entire process of firing each shot was far too slow.

Frankly, as far as this weapon was concerned, it offered little more than a false sense of security. He even felt that conventional bows were superior when judged by their overall effectiveness.

In the end, their greatest hope lay in the formidable defensive line formed by the dungeon-exploring knights under Captain Nylon's command.

They were comparable in strength to Captain Touji's unit and vastly outnumbered them.

With archers providing support from the rear, it was difficult to imagine Captain Nylon's vastly superior numbers being defeated.

Since reaching the new siege catapults would be difficult in the first place, did the Kingdom of Sepans truly have no chance of victory?

Well, King Span and Captain Nylon's group were presumably so eager to invade the Kingdom of Sepans precisely because they had calculated that they could win with a considerable advantage.

But that calculation seemed to be based on the fact that they had never witnessed the extraordinary power boost Captain Touji and her companions had undergone.

At the very least, this would not be an overwhelming or easy victory. There was no doubt that they would suffer considerably greater losses than expected.

There was also a very real possibility that those women could hurl their abnormally powerful projectiles from a distance, send them sailing over Captain Nylon's unit, and destroy the siege weapons.

But destroying all twenty of them would surely be... Hmm.

The Marquis agonized over the possibilities.

"And it's not just the fortress! We can bombard them from the sea as well! We'll launch an attack from the harbor on the day of the invasion and hit them from both sides!"

"Oh? From the harbor as well..."

With the sea serving as a natural barrier for both sides, the decisive factor here was the range of their attacks.

Normally, the defending side had an overwhelming advantage because it could attack from prepared high ground. But if the attackers could strike from a range that negated that advantage, the situation would be entirely different.

In that case, the defenders would have no choice but to watch helplessly as their fortifications were demolished, their ships sunk, and enemy soldiers poured in through the harbor.

"Well? Even now, are you still going to tell me to reconsider the invasion?"

"We should win overwhelmingly at the harbor. As for capturing the fortress, we may suffer some unexpected setbacks, but we should ultimately prevail there as well.

...That is, if what I witnessed in that kingdom represents the full extent of the Kingdom of Sepans's capabilities."

Indeed, no ruler would be foolish enough to reveal the entirety of their nation's military strength to a high-ranking official from another kingdom, as if to say, "This is everything we have."

Captain Touji's extraordinary physical strength and stone-throwing ability were presumably just the extent of their military capabilities that they were willing to reveal.

And Marquis Cato had a specific reason for his lingering unease.

"What is it?! Is there still something troubling you?!"

"It was that mobile lodging facility built inside the dungeon... I don't understand what powered it."

The lodgings that commoner merchants had set up inside the dungeon had to be laboriously pushed along by ten people every morning.

However, the luxurious lodgings where nobles stayed were equipped with heavy machinery that no human could possibly move by hand. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the entire building occasionally moved.

Even with dozens of nobles and their knightly guards packed inside, the building moved slowly and powerfully, seemingly unaffected by the enormous weight, as though driven by some elaborate mechanism of gigantic waterwheels and gears.

My subordinates, who had been guarding the facility from outside, also testified that the building had moved on its own without anyone pushing it. This was certainly not a trick of the imagination.

"When I asked the knights of the Kingdom of Sepans what powered it, they evaded the question, saying, 'We aren't familiar with the mechanisms of such contraptions, so we couldn't tell you.'

If it is powered by some unknown source of energy beyond our understanding... and if that power could be adapted for use in weapons..."

"Enough! All you've done this entire time is stir up fear with baseless speculation!

You're no different from my cowardly father, after all! Stay safely within our borders and watch as I unify the continent under the Kingdom of Dolpins and become its supreme ruler!"

"...In that case, I shall remain in the kingdom and prepare for the possibility of a surprise attack from the rear by the Kingdom of Claps and the Kingdom of Marponware. I wish you good fortune in battle."

King Span snorted in displeasure and stormed away from the Marquis.

What was wrong with everyone? Even after seeing weapons of this caliber, they still wanted him to hesitate in the face of a kingdom far smaller than his own and let this opportunity for victory slip away?

Just how cowardly were all these people?

Or was there something else...? Did the Kingdom of Sepans truly possess some unknown power capable of overturning such an overwhelming disparity in military strength?

The moment the thought crossed King Span's mind, a sudden chill ran down his spine, and his fingertips began to tremble.

Would everything really be all right?

But no matter how anxious he became, there was no turning back now.

The moment he had agreed to the plan to administer poison to his father over a prolonged period—poison that would have no noticeable effect even if a food taster took a bite or two—so that his death could be passed off as a natural illness, he had already crossed the point of no return.

The emergence of the Medicinal Spring, a development capable of completely overturning their plans, had been entirely unexpected.

As a result, their preparations for war were still far from complete, forcing them to move up the invasion timetable.

...That's right. That was the only unexpected development, wasn't it?

There shouldn't be anything to worry about.

King Span repeated those words to himself, convincing himself that the trembling caused by his anxiety was merely the battle jitters one felt before one's first campaign. He had no choice but to believe it.

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