The Order

"Oh, yeah! We should do it!" Kanji exclaimed.

As promised, we discussed it together. Precisely in Sherry Tavern.

Suzune didn't seem too excited about it. 

"—I mean, 150 golds, man. Golds!"

Chiaki had a dry smile. "That's meant primarily for the frontier soldiers. Britney's just baiting us. He made it pretty clear."

"—geh!" Kanji groaned. He couldn't deny it.

He had bought a new bow, an upgraded machete, and throwing knives. His body protection had also been switched to better lightweight leather armor.

Kanji had studied Contact Shot, Quick Eye, Star Piercer, and Diagonal Cross for the past twelve days. The first three of those skills were ranged attacks while the latter was a close combat skill.

Besides buying new equipment, Chiaki tried to practice the two-weapon style. Her teacher had forced the habit upon her for the past twelve days. Chiaki was now armed with a thick-bladed dagger in the right hand and a stiletto with a sharp blade in the left. She bought the same armor as Kanji, just enough to not interfere with her movements. 

Chiaki learned Backstab, Sneaking, Swat, and Shatter. The first two were more of her specialization in attacking from the shadows while the last two were both defensive and offensive techniques, or at least could be used as one.

Kikyou astonishingly learned 4 types of magic all the way. Those were Arve, Falz, Kanon, and Darsh. Or Fire, Lightning, Ice, and Shadow. More precisely, Kikyou learned Fireball, Lighting, Freezing Blood, and Shadow Beat. Nazuna and Honami had said that mastery of those types had varied requirements, and obviously required more perseverance to shorten their time compared to focusing only on one type of magic. Kikyou deliberately took the harder path.

And lastly, Ken. As one of the party's warriors, and not to mention a pillar, the other members were more than happy to give the rest of their funds (they're mine) to better equip Ken. Ken then bought a greatsword and a blazing red plate armor with a type of Galea helmet for over 3 golds. He'd use some more coins to learn War Cry, Steel Guard, and a set of Fast Thrust and Back Thrust.

"The Keeper of the Keep, Zoran Zesh, and Abael the Shaman, huh?" Yousuke muttered seriously. "Honestly, I want us to minimize the risk as much as possible."

"Well, that's only natural," Kei cringed. "I don't want to die taking on more than I can handle."

I glanced at Suzune. She was looking at me. "I trust you have a variety of information you've picked up while we've been slaving away at our training."

"Can you not say that as if I didn't put in hard work myself...?"

Suzune just "Hmph"-ed me. I sighed. "I was planning on telling you, anyway."

Just after the conversation with Manabu back then, I looked up more about the order in question. 

Manabu's team went to Post Lonesome Outfield near Quickwind Plains shortly after that. They needed to follow the same order. Honami's group was in charge of searching for traces of Masumi's party who had lost contact in Wonder Hole, and at the same time trying to find another way to Rhodekia.

In any case, regarding Operation Two-Headed Snake, which was a simultaneous attack on Deadhead Watching Keep and Riverside Iron Fortress 40 KM away, it 'sounds' like a sweet deal.

Applications to the Riverside Iron Fortress have been closed. Well, it's still not a place for us. The scale of the attack between Riverside and Deadhead was vastly different. Soma of Daybreaker, Shinohara of Orion, and Manabu of Spearhead are among the first-class volunteer soldiers. Their presence was already saying something.

That said, the registration to the Deadhead Watching Keep had a number of other prominent figures that were no less remarkable. I was informed by the clan members themselves that a female-only clan known as Wild Angels would be in attendance. And a party I had been curious about, which was only one batch prior to us, led by a man named Renji would be participating. He was in a batch together with Haruhiro's party and presumably Kikkawa.

"Speaking of which, don't we also have a new batch?" Chiaki cut in.

True, there was a new batch that only came in a few days ago. I've met a number of them at the volunteer army lodging house. Two parties, from their numbers.

"Back to the topic at hand," I steered the conversation. "The frontier army is the lead force here. The volunteer soldiers are auxiliaries. From what I've heard, Deadhead and Alterna have tried to attack each other relatively often, and Alterna's side has even captured Deadhead several times in the past. That's because the Deadhead Watching Keep is fundamentally responsible for only monitoring human movement. Anyway, they never lasted long holding on to it.

"The Riverside Iron Fortress, which was located on the Jet Riverside, was connected to the former kingdom of Nananka further away. The kingdom of orcs. They had a means of transportation called dragoons to send reinforcements to Deadhead by a little over an hour. The plan is to attack both fortresses at once to prevent that from occurring."

I thought back to the consequences the humans had tried to take.

They were once driven, and mercifully left on their own devices. What the humans did with that opportunity was try to re-establish a foothold on what they called the frontier. At first glance, their actions would seem ungrateful from either the enemy or the allied side. But perhaps it was only the humans' situation that forced them to act that way. Perhaps the conditions beyond Tenryu were just too harsh to live in, and they were seeking to break out of those living conditions by venturing across the frontier instead. Whatever the case, they'd be forced to deal with the current inhabitants of the frontier if they were to do so.

Arabakia almost certainly made a deal with the goblins of Damuro to build Alterna. The orcs probably realized the goblins' disloyalty, and that they couldn't be trusted, so Deadhead Watching Keep was built to monitor human movements. Riverside Iron Fortress was at the back to provide support. 

Now, what would happen when Alterna— which hadn't made any major moves in seemingly a century over— not only dropped the Deadhead Watching Keep but also the much larger Riverside Iron Fortress all of a sudden?

The orcs would at least be more apprehensive. That, or carry out their own retaliation with their supposedly much larger army.

'It had the potential to lead to a war. A big one.'