A large commotion had broken the quiet of the night. Ajax hadn’t expected anything to be happening since one side was offering rest days while the other should have been building a fort. He quickly threw on his gear and grabbed his sword. Kate and Tom both looked just as surprised by the commotion.

“Either of you have any idea what is going on?” he asked.

“None” Kate responded while Tom just shook his head while yawning.

The guards were quick to respond to the wake up call, thankfully the commotion was only a round up before an emergency deployment and not an attack on their camp. As they marched towards the main camp Tom took the opportunity to approach the commander and try to find out anything about what was going on.

Ajax had joined the line at the front of the formation before the commander’s aide came to pull him back. Apparently even the commander didn’t know exactly what was going on but it seemed like he had a pretty strong guess.

“What is going on?” Ajax asked.

“The archduke’s daughter and her friend really disliked the passive way the future barons were choosing to play out this war but there was simply no good reason to forcefully go against their tactics.” he responded while leading Ajax towards the back. “The decision to give two days off to the troops was the final straw.”

“The two of them took direct command of one of the other two guard units. She sent off their hunters and a few of the higher leveled personnel to cause some more damage to the enemy supply depots in the main camp. The attack was planned for right after dusk.”

“According to the information we had they had split their supplies into five different storage tents but the spies only managed to set two of them ablaze. It seemed that this had the desired effect however as quite a few of the forces pulled back from the front lines to trap the saboteurs.”

“Soon after they left the partially built fort the two nobles, their bodyguard and the remainder of the guard unit launched a sneak attack. Their plan was to use as many of their mages to level the skeleton of the fort. The commander even agreed with their plan as apparently letting the fort actually get built would have been all but a nail in the coffin for us.”

That made sense, Ajax had also doubted the plan to just let the fort get set up uncontested but didn’t think it was all that important since they wouldn’t be able to get any wards so a few well timed spells from the two nobles girls should have been enough to make it a non issue.

“Why go to all this risk? Couldn’t they just lob spells at it in night raids?” he asked. After all, if they brought it down with magic, harassing it continually might be a better answer.

“Once the fort was built it would have counted as a completed camp. Due to the regulations to prevent mass casualties from magic, destructive spells can only be used on the environment. A half built fort qualifies but a fully established one would be protected.”

Hearing this, Ajax almost stopped rooted on the spot. What the hell were the two future barons thinking even considering letting the fort be established. It would have all but assured the open plain would be controlled by the enemy making any plan their side had at victory take longer than a year of shallow skirmishes.Though he could see the appeal from the two of them at this approach, it practically guaranteed them a long time in the presence of the important nobles while the girls were still young, both around seventeen or eighteen.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Ok, but then why pull me away from the front lines?” it made no sense that the commander would ask for him specifically.

“One of the enemy noble families specializes in illusion magic. They have a habit of sending their men after healers in these mock battles whenever rushed engagements like this one happen.” the aide said.

“That still doesn’t answer my question.” Ajax said.

“The commander has made me aware of your situation.” he whispered while lightly mimicking a casting motion with his hands. “You usually wouldn’t be relied upon but the circumstances right now are a bit special.”

Ajax was only slightly surprised to see that the man knew he could castmagic. He honestly had expected it after the commander found out. It was a lot easier to keep a lid on things if the aide knew, otherwise the commander personally interacting with him would have brought a lot more scrutiny and the man already knew about his abnormal level and age combination.

“Since the strike force also took most of the images with them in order to take down the fort we are left with few mana users to keep the assassins in check. [Detect Mana] is known to be unreliable when dealing with illusion magic whereas [Sense Mana] isn’t so you will be part of the healer guards for this battle.” He whispered this second part so as to not let others eavesdrop.

As a hunter Ajax quickly got to work setting up detection traps all around the tent before building himself a small raised chair resembling a lifeguard’s at the beach to keep an eye on the surrounding as well as the battle.

Ajax was glad to see two people wearing robes were also stationed to guard the tent along with a squad of guards. He then finally climbed up on his chair and looked towards the imminent battle.

From up there he could see the group retreating towards their force and being chased by a large army. The retreating force was a lot bigger than he had expected, it seems like the guard unit only had a quarter of their numbers lost on this mission. He had expected them to lose at least half, after all despite it being an ambush the small group did need to take quite some time to dismantle even the bare bones of the fort that had been set up. This gave him a good impression of the two noble girls as leaders of the army, they had realized the need to take out the fort and took the matter into their own hands when they saw the future barons would not budge not only that but they completed the mission with surprisingly few losses.

As he watched he also saw three imposing figures in close pursuit almost reaching the stragglers from the retreating force. Of them he only recognised two of them as the commanders of the guard units they had routed during the first engagement of this skirmish, the third one was presumably a third commander and they were about to catch up.

He knew that their force would take substantial losses when that happened as the commanders seemed to be above level fifty. Not quite to the level of their own commander but only a few levels off, and there were three of them.

That’s when he saw someone turn to meet them head on. He thought the idea was good, sacrificing a few to buy time for the many to get away. The execution was bad though as a single person wouldn’t be able to buy enough time.

He was shocked to find out how wrong he was. The person who turned around was quick, so quick in fact he had trouble keeping his eyes locked on him. The man charged and used some sort of fire spell to obscure his movements, effectively slowing the three commanders to a crawl all by himself.

Ajax thought he recognised the man after watching him for a minute. Though he had only seen him once he suspected him to be the bodyguard that was following the two noble girls. He ballparked his level close to fifty-five and that was only considering his physical stats and the little magic he had shown. He was probably a lot stronger than that as most humans who had access to mana would prioritize mental stats over physical ones. It was in fact likely the man was over level one hundred but had his strength limited when affecting the skirmish directly. He was afterall the only guard an archduke sent to guard his only teenage heir.

He didn’t get a chance to examine the interesting fight any longer despite wanting to see how someone would mix both physical and magical aspects in a fight. One of the traps had been triggered despite him seeing nobody close to where he had placed it.

Even more suspicious was that the trigger was under a pile of leaves that looked untouched and he couldn’t sense any mana in that direction. He still trusted his instincts and traps and threw a dagger towards the location. His sudden movement put the rest of the guards on edge instantly. Their gazes were in the process of forming glares as the heard the sound of metal striking metal and a man wearing chainmail suddenly appeared from nowhere with a dagger fallen at his feet.