They didn’t have any experience in large-scale battles against other civilizations, but their warriors’ swords cut down the Mirg shield-nation’s soldiers with ease, and their knights’ shields crushed the flesh and bone of the Mirg shield-nation’s knights, along with their thin spears.

Best of all, there were numerous heroes in Talosheim.

The【Sword King】Borkus, who could defeat any monster, no matter how powerful, with a single sword.

The【Saint of Healing】Jeena, the young leader of the Church of Vida who excelled in the use of life-attribute magic.

Ogbahn, the【Hungry Wolf】who preferred solitude and had solo-cleared every single Dungeon in Talosheim.

Barigen, the【Dual-Halberd】who held a halberd in each hand and swept through his enemies like a windstorm.

Zandia, the young Second Princess who possessed an affinity for every attribute of magic in spite of the Titan race’s general inaptitude with magic, the one renowned as the【Tiny Genius.】

『Do all of their names contain dakuten because Titans are a race created by Vida, just like Ghouls?』

TLN: Dakuten are the dash-things in hiragana and katakana that I’ve already mentioned. Like the Ghouls’ names, all of these Titan heroes’ names contain at least one pair of dakuten.
So Vandalieu thought, but reading the serious mood, he didn’t mention it out loud.

Because of these heroes, Talosheim was able to push back the Mirg shield-nation’s advancing army, but the enemy had a hero as well.

The hero that participated in the war to reinforce the Mirg shield-nation’s forces, the A-rank adventurer who was a candidate for the next ascendancy to S-rank – the【Divine Spear of Ice】, Mikhail. With him joining the fray, the scales tipped in the Mirg shield-nation’s favor once more.

「The legendary magic spear of ice that was one of the Mirg shield-nation’s national treasures,【Ice Age】, was a legendary-class Magic Item said to have been created as a weapon for heroes by an ice god who served Peria, the goddess of water and knowledge. With this weapon in the hands of Mikhail, the Titan warriors fighting alongside the heroes fell, one by one. The fortress walls were finally broken and the savages of the Mirg shield-nation poured into the city.」(Nuaza)

The only thing the people of Talosheim could do was to have the women and children who couldn’t fight escape through the trade tunnel to the Orbaume Kingdom with their First Princess and her bodyguards.

「Though I was but an apprentice, I fought until the very end as a member of the Church of Vida. However, without being able to send a single arrow flying into the detestable Mikhail or defend Jeena-sama or Zandia-sama, I died.」(Nuaza)

And the Mirg shield-nation didn’t stop their destruction and pillaging after Nuaza died. Mikhail attempted to destroy the treasure of the goddess Vida that had been hidden deep beneath Talosheim’s royal castle.

But the goddess had personally stationed a Dragon Golem underground to protect the treasure. Even Mikhail, whose ascendancy to S-rank had been all but confirmed, could not destroy the treasure.

In fact, the Dragon Golem’s right arm and wings were destroyed, half of its tail was cut off and its head was crushed, but at the cost of all of Mikhail’s companions being slaughtered. Mikhail himself sustained a serious wound; all he was able to do was to throw his magic spear at the still-moving Golem to imprison it briefly, and then use that opportunity to escape with his life.

Though the Mirg shield-nation was victorious, they were exhausted due to the fierce resistance of the Titans and the hero that led them was on the verge of death. Unable to maintain their occupation of Talosheim, they decided to make a retreat.

Even if they slaughtered every last Titan in Talosheim, there would be no end to the monsters attracted from the nearby Devil’s Nests to the city by the smell of blood.

Nuaza didn’t know what became of the victorious Mirg shield-nation and Amid Empire after that, but it wasn’t a victory that they could have celebrated.

The desperate medical treatment of Mikhail was unsuccessful; he died several days after his return to the Mirg shield-nation. Many of the Mirg shield-nation’s other elite individuals had also perished in the battle, and many had become unable to continue serving as soldiers.

On top of that, since Talosheim’s First Princess had escaped with the truly valuable treasures and all of the city’s funds, the amount of money and goods that the Mirg shield-nation gained were lower than the estimate that they had made before the war. It didn’t even compare to the enormous cost that they had paid for their victory.

And since the First Princess had made it to the Orbaume Kingdom, the Kingdom learned of the invasion of Talosheim and dispatched soldiers against the Mirg shield-nation and the Amid Empire as divine punishment for the immoral, unjustified attack on the nation of Titans that it had been allied with.

During the battle of Talosheim, the Mirg shield-nation had sent reinforcements from border due to the unexpected difficulty of the battle. The border’s defenses were easily broken through because of the lack of soldiers; many of Mirg’s fortresses fell and its cities were occupied.

The Amid Empire was forced to hastily dispatch soldiers in order to protect the country that was supposed to be its shield.

The Amid Empire had been steadily invading the Orbaume Kingdom and expanding its territory, but with this defeat, all of the land that it had conquered was taken back in one movement. Most of the wars that had occurred in the last two hundred years were apparently the Amid Empire’s efforts to recapture that land once more; it had finally gained some new territory in the most recent one.

The population of monsters in the Boundary Mountain Range had been controlled by the adventurers of Talosheim, but with Talosheim’s destruction, their numbers suddenly multiplied and monsters overflowed from the Dungeons now that there was nobody to clear them.

As a result, the Devil’s Nests expanded and it became difficult for the Mirg shield-nation to even go near the Boundary Mountain Range, let alone find a safe route back to Talosheim to take back the national treasure lost there.

In summary, the invasion of Talosheim was a historical failure for the Amid Empire and the Mirg shield-nation in particular.

When Nuaza learned this, despite having the face of a mummy, he broke into a smile that covered his whole face –

「Serves them r–!」(Nuaza)