The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom: Part 1
CHAPTER 1
THE DEMON EMPEROR JALDABAOTH
Part 1
The Roble Holy Kingdom was a nation whose territory was the peninsula to the southwest of the Re-Estize Kingdom.
It was led by a Holy Queen who could use divine magic, and the leadership was closely tied to the temple factions. It was a very religious country, though not to the extent of the Slaine Theocracy.
In addition, there were two special features about the Roble Holy Kingdom’s geography.
The first was that its land was divided into northern and southern halves by the sea. Of course, the halves were not completely separated. Rather, there was a gigantic bay between them — forty kilometers long and two hundred kilometers wide — which made its geography look like a horizontal U.
Thus, some people called them the Northern and Southern Holy Kingdoms.
Then, there was another feature.
The entrance to the peninsula sported a great wall, over one hundred kilometers long from north to south.
It was built to withstand invasions from the many demihuman tribes which occupied the hills to the east of the Holy Kingdom, between them and the Theocracy.
This grand wall, built through the expenditure of a great deal of time and resources, was a silent testimony to how troubling the existence of the demihumans were to the Holy Kingdom.
There was a vast power gap between demihumans and humans.
Granted, it was true that there were certain demihumans who were weaker than humans, such as Goblins.
Be it in height, physical strength, knowledge, or the rate at which they produced magic casters, they were a race inferior to humans in every way.
Still, even Goblins like that possessed eyes which could see in the dark, and if they took advantage of the fact that their small bodies could be easily concealed — for instance, when launching a nighttime ambush in a forest — they would surely be troublesome foes for humans.
Needless to say, most demihumans had more powerful bodies than humans, and there were also many races who were naturally endowed with magical ability. If they let the demihumans invade as they pleased, they would have to pay an incalculable price in blood to fight them off.
Therefore, the Holy Kingdom chose to solidify its defense.
They did this to keep the demihumans from taking a single step onto their land.
They did this to let the world know that their land did not belong to the demihumans.
They did this so the demihumans would understand that any attempt to set foot on their land would be met by frenzied resistance.
Yet, the wall built for that purpose possessed a few problems.
In order to keep it operating at full capacity, they had to keep a great deal of manpower permanently on site. The Holy Kingdom’s leadership had once calculated how much fighting strength would be required to defeat an invading tribe of demihumans. The answer was that the country would collapse before the demihumans even attacked them.
While they did not have the luxury of raising troops which would go unused, there was a need to station an appropriate amount of manpower there.
In the Holy Kingdom’s history — after the construction of the wall — the gravest intrusion into their lands had come during an invasion which took place amidst the Long Rain.
It was a night attack, launched by a race called the Srush, who possessed sucker-cup hands, tongues envenomed with a paralytic toxin which could extend a long way, and advanced members of their species could even change their skin color as though using the 「Camouflage」 spell.
The Srush crossed the wall, and headed west.
Quite a number of villages had been lost to them, and such was the tragedy which had unfolded back then that to this day, there were still rumors about whether or not the Srush were still hiding within the borders of the Holy Kingdom.
They wanted to fully man the wall in order to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again, but stationing troops at every single point along its length would strain the nation. The compromise which the nation came up with was to build small forts at fixed intervals along the walls. These strongpoints would then be overseen by several gigantic fortresses.
They stationed a small number of troops in each of these strongpoints, their purpose being to fight extended battles down to the last man. If they encountered an enemy attack, they would immediately launch skyrockets to request reinforcements from the fortresses. In addition, there were companies of soldiers who would staff and patrol the fortresses, serving as reserve troops during emergencies, to be deployed flexibly as the situation required.
After putting these measures into practice, the demihumans had not managed to penetrate the wall again.
However, the diligent planning of the Holy Kingdom’s leadership back then had turned into a form of obsession. Even countermeasures like a defensive line of fortresses could not reassure them.
Indeed, it was an incredibly massive wall — to human beings. Yet, it was no threat whatsoever to races who were several times taller than humans or who possessed the ability of flight. For those reasons, even such a sturdy wall was by no means a guarantee of absolute safety when one considered the many special abilities of demihumans.
The Holy King at the time was a prudent man, and he had even prepared a stratagem for when the wall was breached. His solution was to mobilize the entire nation.
For that reason, the citizens of the Holy Kingdom were conscripted as a form of national service. All adult citizens, male and female, would spend a certain necessary amount of time undergoing military training, after which they would be assigned to sentry duty on the wall. The hope was that they would become the manpower with which to protect their land in case the demihumans crossed over the wall.
All residences above a certain size were also fortified. This gave the local villagers enough fighting power to hold out until the regular army could arrive, and allowed said villages to serve as military outposts. In the end, the villages of the Roble Kingdom were far better protected than those of other countries, and they could also function as military bases.
The Holy Kingdom’s fortress line was composed of three fortresses linked by the wall. Each of them protected one of only three fortified gates along the full length of the wall, which was in excess of one hundred kilometers long, and they also functioned as garrisons to dispatch troops to the surrounding strongholds. If the demihumans invaded and an overall mobilization order was given, they would become staging areas where the troops would gather in order to attack the enemy.
This was one of them, the central fortress.
As the sun slowly sank beneath the horizon, the red-tinted land was slowly soaked with the color of night.
A powerful-looking man stood with one foot on the battlements, looking out over the land — at the western foothills. After that, he put his foot down.
He was a man who bulged with muscle.
His neck was stout, and his chest muscles were impressive enough that one could sense them even through his thick armor. His powerful arms protruded from his rolled-up sleeves. There was no better way to describe him than “athletic,” regardless of which part of him one looked at.
His face was like a boulder, weathered by harsh conditions, and his thick brows and unkempt moustache spoke of a savage, wild nature. His mighty body and his stern appearance ought to have matched each other, yet his eyes broke that trend.