At the Military Academy, the young mages from the six counties mostly had informal hometown associations. Mages from the same county were naturally more familiar with one another. After graduation, everyone would go their separate ways, return to the county where they had been born, and pledge their loyalty to the Duke of the Peninsula or to their respective Counts.
Because the young mages of Blackport County all studied locally and had two days of leave every month to go home, they had little experience of the loneliness of studying far from home. If anything, they were less united than the mages from the other counties.
In Leo's year, there were ten noble mages and twenty commoner mages. Although noble mages were fewer in number, the proportion of nobles who produced mages was extremely high, far exceeding that among commoners. No one had ever compiled precise statistics, but the children of mages really were more likely to awaken as mages.
After graduation, if those commoner mages were lucky, they too would eventually become noble mages. If they were unlucky, they would either die fighting for a Count, or become stuck at some critical threshold where they could no longer raise their status, spending the rest of their lives in obscurity.
Every time Leo found one of his commoner-mage classmates, he had that student continue searching for the others. Finding people was slow at first, but it became faster and faster. Before long, Leo had found every second- and third-year student living in the north of the city.
When they heard the order to go into battle, these fledglings felt more excitement than fear. Every noble was a mage, but not every mage was a noble. Every mage had to risk his life in exchange for a chance to rise in the world.
Who would not want to be like the famous Dukes, Marquises, and Counts of history and carve his family name onto some fief?
Soon, the mage cadets assembled in the square inside the West Gate. The gate saw constant traffic and was prone to congestion, so a fairly large dispersal square had been built there. Several equipment areas had now been set up across the square.
Warhorses, knight armor, chain mail, knight's lances... Major Willy was loudly announcing the precautions for battle, just as he did before every practical-training class.
Weapons, armor, and shields gleamed coldly in the torchlight, reminding every Cadet Officer that this was war, not an exercise.
At the West Gate, Major Willy's hundred-man company had assembled. One hundred Cadet Officers, who were also one hundred mages: seventy Cadet Officers from Blackport County and thirty from the other counties.
Of the seventy Cadet Officers from Blackport County, ten were Soul Mages. Soul Mages were mostly women, or men with exceptionally delicate minds. The male Priests of the Church of Radiant Prayer always displayed an unusual gentleness.
The physically weaker Soul Mages obviously could not take part in the fighting directly, because they lacked straightforward ways to injure the enemy. The ten young female Soul Mages therefore dressed in knee-length white robes and formed the hundred-man company's medical team.
The Soul Mages in the medical team all had to study a certain amount of emergency medicine. On the battlefield, they did not even need painkillers. They could use Soul Spell directly to relieve pain, induce anesthesia, and perform similar procedures. They could also quickly remove a soldier's fear and restore his courage.
Leo had another name for them, and Brad agreed with it: the beautiful white-robed battlefield morale team... Naturally, neither Leo nor Brad dared say that private nickname aloud.
Otherwise, the beautiful battlefield morale team would prove that they could not only reduce the sensation of pain, but also show people how to amplify it.
Ninety mage Cadet Officers stood before the piles of equipment. The stock brought out of the armory consisted of somewhat old reserve armor from the 3rd Corps' cavalry company, but the fact that Blackport County could rapidly equip an entire cavalry battalion was proof enough of its wealth.
A cavalryman's warhorse and complete equipment cost a full fifteen gold pounds. Even Leo, who had received a windfall, could not afford the full cost of outfitting a single cavalryman.
More than thirty mages awakened in Blackport County every year. They were the Count of Blackport's most precious assets, and the Count would not be stingy with these mage Cadet Officers.
With the help of a temporarily requisitioned laborer, Leo put on a full suit of knight armor. The gray iron armor was covered in dense sword marks, which had left silvery-white dents of varying depths. He could not tell whether they had been made during training or while suppressing bandits.
The armor did not fit. It was slightly too large, which made Leo uncomfortable. At seventeen, his frame was not yet large enough to fill armor designed for a fully grown, powerfully built man. There was so much empty space around his chest that his body did not even press against the armor, with considerable room left on both sides.
After putting on the helmet, Leo moved his joints. The full plate armor looked extremely cumbersome, but its joints allowed a surprising degree of flexibility. The knight armor was half a centimeter thick, and with the reinforcement of Cipher spell, it could provide fairly good protection.
Leo was given a long shield that had been deliberately prepared for him. It was four feet (1.2 meters) tall and two feet (0.6 meters) wide, made from an iron plate half a centimeter thick. This long shield could make excellent use of Leo's defensive strength as a Cipher Mage.
Major Willy had prepared the same kind of long shield for Catherine Cavendish. In Major Willy's words, Leo had an even more important duty in the coming battle: he was not to leave the noble Miss Catherine's side by even a step.
Leo looked around. Cavalry lances bristled all around him, and the Form Mages had all chosen tapered cavalry lances. These weapons were specifically prepared for Form Mages. Each tapered cavalry lance was narrow at the front and thick at the rear, with a grooved grip. Its tip was an iron spike, and the lance itself was five meters long.
A powerful soul brought powerful control over the body. Only a mage could use a lance of such absurd dimensions.
On the Audrian Continent, the mages seemed to have put points into a rather crooked skill tree. Despite possessing spellcasting abilities, most of them were much more enthusiastic about demonstrating their physical prowess and raw strength.
As Leo saw it, the mages here understood spellcraft only in terms of direct applications: converting magic into kinetic energy and then using a weapon to deal with the enemy. But energy had many other forms as well—thermal energy, light, electricity, and so on.
Leo even had a vague feeling that if he could develop other applications of magic, perhaps he could become a great mage who founded an entire school, like Holy Archmage Hilquins... Those strange thoughts were of no help to him now, however, so Leo still chose a war hammer weighing twelve pounds (5.5 kilograms).
Ever since he had figured out the abilities of his Cipher Mage school, Leo had believed that only a war hammer counted as a real man's weapon.
Its shaft and head were entirely metal, and the weapon was twenty-two inches (55 centimeters) long. The T-shaped head had a pick on one side and a four-sided hammer face on the other.
It felt like twelve pounds in his hand, but under the reinforcement of a D-grade Cipher spell, it was equivalent to a forty-eight-pound (22-kilogram) hammer slamming hard into someone's head.
A real man's weapon was excellent in every respect except one: it was far too heavy to carry around in ordinary life.
The Count's 3rd Corps consisted of one infantry brigade and one cavalry company. The infantry brigade currently had three infantry companies, each numbering more than three hundred soldiers, for a total of one thousand. The cavalry company, meanwhile, had three hundred heavy cavalry.
One battalion consisted of three companies, each with one hundred men. One company consisted of three platoons, each with thirty men. One platoon consisted of three squads, each with ten men.
Every cavalryman in the cavalry company was a mage. That was Blackport County's true trump card.
Old Duke Blois had once said that if he were given ten thousand cavalry, he could sweep through every Fallen Mage empire. Unfortunately, even someone as wealthy as Old Duke Blois possessed no more than two thousand cavalry.
Of the more than thirty mages who graduated each year in Blackport County, a small portion entered the infantry brigade as command officers, but the overwhelming majority joined the cavalry company. This was especially true of Form Mages. The Unicorn Legion had a particular fondness for Form Mages.
For a lord, mages were the absolute main force in war. On this night, the Count of Blackport had effectively expanded the cavalry company by one temporary hundred-man company.
With the help of the requisitioned laborer, Leo mounted his warhorse. Every cavalryman had several retainers. Whether it was helping him put on armor or caring for his horse, retainers were indispensable to a cavalryman.
Six retainers bustled around Catherine Cavendish, all serving Catherine alone. Leo, by contrast, had only one temporarily requisitioned laborer. Once in the saddle, Leo cautiously began familiarizing himself with his warhorse.
As a commoner mage, Leo had never had any opportunity to come into contact with horses while growing up. He had practiced riding rather hastily for two years at the Military Academy, and thanks to a mage's control over his own body, his horsemanship was at least passable.
Brad Baker had already finished preparing and was standing beside Leo. He said, “Leo, I love horses so much. When I was little, I once saw someone ride a horse to my family's shop to buy bread. I've been fascinated by horses ever since.”
Leo could not really relate to that kind of affection. Looking at Brad's slightly trembling hands, he said, “Brad, I hope you survive. Only if you stay alive can you buy the best horse.
“I'll have to stay with Miss Catherine once we move out. Brad, be careful on your own.”
Brad was still immersed in his own world. He had always been slow to react like this and still could not imagine what a battlefield would truly look like.
These Cadet Officers, armed to the teeth, were about to step onto a battlefield for the first time. Many of them were trembling slightly just like Brad, though it was impossible to tell whether they were shaking from excitement or fear.
The mounted formation assembled. The warhorses snorted, and some pawed uneasily at the ground. The heavy knight armor multiplied the pressure everyone felt.
Major Willy deliberately said nothing, letting silence arm this newly formed hundred-man company.
Only a silent soldier was a good soldier.
Cavalry lances rose in a forest, pointing high into the night sky. The noble Miss Catherine stood at the very front of the formation, with Leo close beside her.
When Catherine saw Leo's long shield, she understood what role he had been given. It had to be Major Willy's arrangement.
A humming groan came from the gate hinges, breaking the silence. Soldiers of the city defense company slowly opened the enormous city gate, revealing the night sky outside to the hundred-man company.
Major Willy's hundred-man company—ninety heavy cavalry in all—slowly picked up speed and rode out of the city.
Looking at the dark passage through the city gate, Leo felt uneasy. He could not help tightening his grip on his long shield and war hammer. Not only did he have to take part in the battle, he also had to protect Catherine Cavendish during the fighting. What a troublesome assignment.
One question bothered Leo. Their force consisted of mages, and mage cavalry were far more powerful than ordinary men, but were they really supposed to charge enemies of the West Empire armed with matchlocks?
The legendary “line up and get shot” routine?
Leo had no idea how far the West Empire had advanced along its technology tree, or whether matchlocks could already be issued on a large scale.
When matchlocks had first appeared, they had not immediately transformed the nature of warfare. All Leo could do was hope their rate of fire and power were still mediocre, not yet enough to let firearms utterly dominate traditional weapons the way they had in his previous life.
If Leo had anything he could rely on, it was his strength as a D-Grade Cipher Mage. Among a crowd of E-Grade Mages, even if they really did have to line up and get shot, he ought to be the last one to get shot... right?
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