Luagarne knew her age was not behind that of the fairy called Shinar. Because of that, she at some point forgot to keep counting her years.
She remembered only this: that this was her fourth life. She divided her lives into four, by the axis of what she pursued.
Her immediately previous, third life was spent guarding a captivating woman.
What is nothing special to one person is something another would sell their soul to do.
Because she did not weigh the gravity of that task, she devoted herself wholly to guarding the former queen of Naurillia.
Not every day was joyful, but it was a life interesting in its own way.
Before that, there was a time when she staked her life on exterminating cultists.
Of course—even allowing for her being a Frog—Luagarne was an unusual case. Ordinarily, one does not repeat life four times.
In any case, Luagarne knew she could not remember everything from past lives, and so she fixed only the major events in memory.
One of them was the appearance of the Salamander.
'Cultists.'
She did not know how the Salamander had actually been summoned, but she did know the cultists had offered up hundreds of believers as sacrifice.
Those memories were beginning to surface, vivid and fresh.
'Stinging.'
It was blistering sunlight that had sucked the moisture from the air. At some point the ambient temperature had shot up and all dampness vanished. The humidity was low, but the heat seemed to cinch and twist the flesh as if to char it.
It felt like being dropped into a heated iron cauldron.
As a Frog, she was most sensitive to such things.
"Isn't it rather hot today?"
Even among passing soldiers, such words were common. Sweat did not stream, but the sun was too fierce. In shade it should have eased a little, yet a hot wind was blowing from somewhere.
When Luagarne reached the Order's private drill yard, she saw a human she'd once glimpsed in passing standing there blankly.
Beside him stood one of the Rem Guard's lieutenants, and beside that, Finn, captain of the Pen–Hanil Rangers, was there as well.
"What was that?"
Rem, who had arrived ahead of her, picked his ear and asked, and his lieutenant answered.
"Some kind of fireball is walking around. So what do we do? Beat them all down?"
It was an answer worthy of a man from Rem's unit.
"No, wasn't it said the Salamander was waking deeper in?"
Then the man beside them spoke, and—
"Though not confirmed by eye, we did find signs that seem quite dangerous."
Finn finished.
"No, before that—what did you say?"
Rem asked again.
"...Sir Enkrid said to tell you he's going first."
Garett gave the answer.
Whether the part about the Salamander appearing reached him or not, Rem fixed only on the words Enkrid had left.
"Well, that's fun. I'm going first too. Get there on your own!"
And Rem bolted.
"Do you even know where you're going?"
A lieutenant followed on his heels.
"You can guide me."
"I don't know either."
"You'll figure it out on the way, unless you're too brain-dead to find a road."
Luagarne listened quietly to what was unfolding, and at a moment when one should normally be flustered, she accelerated her thinking.
'Has the Salamander emerged?'
Maybe so, maybe it was a mistake. Either way, they had to respond. And right now Rem had already turned his back, and Enkrid had already entered the Pen–Hanil range.
At the end of thoughts formed in an instant, Luagarne opened her mouth. It wasn't quite a frog's croak, but it was fairly loud.
"A countless number of flame monsters are going to be created nearby."
Rem glanced back. He sensed something like urgency in Luagarne's tone. Contrary to appearances, Rem had a good head.
He read her worry: if a flood of flame monsters poured out, who was going to hold them?
Like how if everyone leaves the countryside there's no one to tend the cattle, they needed an asymmetric force that would stay here and block the flame monsters.
"Don't worry about it. You think my boys are statues? They'll fight just fine."
Even to Luagarne, it wasn't wrong.
Rem then booted one of his men in the rear.
"Why aren't you running?"
It was the body language of a man who couldn't bear his commander being late to all the fun.
"Is this really right?"
Garett muttered to himself. Finn wasn't rattled. She had half-expected this.
'They don't call them the Mad Order of Knights for nothing.'
So she thought.
Luagarne briefly recalled what had happened in times when the monster lizard that breathed flame had been active.
The first problem was the followers. A faction split off from the Demon Sanctuary Church had banded together into a pack, and they did insane things.
They burned grain, burned cities, burned people. From newborns to the elderly, they spared none, offering all as sacrifice.
'Wasn't it that they said, Let us build a temple of flame?'
The Salamander was a god, they said, and the wrath of that god had come down upon this land now, therefore he must be served.
In truth, the majority of those followers were swept up and turned to ash by the very blaze the Salamander raised.
"O god! Release thy wra—"
In mid-speech, flame had covered the ground.
'Even so, followers remained.'
There are few now, but a fanatic group that worships the Salamander as god still exists. They are madmen with no qualms about burning people.
The second problem was the Salamander's power as a demon-class monster.
'It vomits living, moving beasts.'
In other words, it generates flame-formed monsters without limit. Even the forbidden spell "Walking Fire" was only an imitation of this monster's power.
These two problems multiplied the havoc the monster wrought. That was how the Salamander tragedy began.
And now was no different from then.
'Prodromal signs.'
Flame monsters and beastmen.
'Next comes the giant of flame.'
After that, all manner of fire-born abominations would come bursting out.
"Who's going where?"
While Luagarne sank into thought for a moment, Ragna arrived as well. He tied his blond hair up—likely Anne's handiwork—and asked, calm as you please,
"Inside, first. Sir Enkrid first, Sir Rem after."
Garett's briefing was short. Finn judged there was no longer any need to add more.
Ragna heard it, left a single line, and took off.
"Rem isn't 'Sir.' You tack 'bastard' on him."
The official designation wasn't Sir Rem but Rem Bastard. Ragna believed that sincerely.
Garett was at a loss for words.
What the hell is this lunatic saying.
He knew, in principle, that the Mad Order of Knights weren't normal, but seeing them up close, he couldn't adapt so easily.
Watching Ragna, Finn naturally moved to his side. Finn knew Ragna. He was someone you must never send off alone. If you let him go here, he might end up a great man who emerges from the South later.
"I'll guide you."
Finn said. Ragna cocked his head.
"Needlessly?"
"Yes, needfully."
Finn followed, and flicked a glance to Garett. Meaning: keep doing what you were doing.
Garett did not bother to ask what his job was. It was obvious.
Tell the arriving people what had happened. Be a runner. Even if he'd served as a battalion commander and retired.
A messenger—he could do that a hundred, a thousand times over. Such things mattered little anyway.
What mattered was this: why did these bastards have no sense of crisis?
"So this really is the right thing?"
Garett muttered.
The Salamander was a threat greater than your average demon domain. It was a monster that had sucked in knights by the dozen and seared to death more than a few righteous mages.
It was no different from a natural disaster. There were even claims that the number of knights on the continent had dwindled compared to prior eras because of such events.
Some scholars believed that had these large-scale disasters not occurred, there would be twice as many knights as now.
Whatever it was, this was the emergence of a calamity.
'Is it right for them to be the ones heading out to face that?'
Garett's mind grew all the more tangled.
His state of repeatedly asking himself under his breath was a mirror of his feelings.
This side was also an order of knights at the level of the kingdom's main force, so it seemed right—and yet, was it right to charge in unprepared? Such was the twofold mind of it.
"It isn't right."
The female-formed Frog named Luagarne approached and said so. Garett decided this Frog was the only one here a man could talk to.
Right? It isn't right, is it?
He sent it with his eyes as he spoke—the words he'd wanted to say all along.
"We must prepare countermeasures. Dispatch a courier to the kingdom at once and call in the Red Cloak Order as well."
Garett had been a battalion commander too. He knew how an army moved. In his common sense, the Salamander was like a meteor falling from the sky. Equal to a natural disaster or a catastrophe. Even knowing, you could not avoid it.
Calling knights a disaster was metaphor—no more than a figure of speech.
This one was a real disaster. When a star spent its life and fell, no one could live in that region. The Salamander was a star whose life was spent.
"But if they can't stop it, no one can."
Luagarne knew the hell that the surrounding flame abominations had created when the Salamander appeared. She also knew the current level of training and state of armament of the Border Guard's standing force.
Rem had been right. The standing force wasn't an army in name only. The Border Guard standing army was a body made by a krona-monster named Kraiss who never wasted a single copper coin and poured gold into armaments.
"Uh? Uh, mm, that does sound right too, I suppose."
Garett, mind in knots, said.
And then—
"Who came and what happened now?"
By then Jaxon had arrived and asked. The drill yard was right in front of the quarters. It was practically the nest where the Mad Order of Knights stayed. When the time came, they drifted back one by one, passing through this place.
"Deeper in, the Salamander..."
Garett's explanation this time was even clearer. Jaxon patted his shoulder, treating him like an older, long-serving soldier.
"Good work."
Jaxon treated his enlisted under him better than one might think. If a man worked hard to get here and deliver a report, it was right to acknowledge it.
"W-well, I did work, but..."
While Garett muttered, Jaxon had already moved and vanished.
No one had to say it: he knew something was happening inside. Jaxon's instincts were already sounding warnings.
Even without a guide, it wasn't hard to head for the objective.
"Where is my fiancé going?"
Next, a fairy came out and asked, and Garett gave an even more to-the-point summary than before.
"Suspected Salamander emergence inside the range. With Sir Enkrid at the head, part of the Order has entered the mountains."
A habit from army days returned as he lived as a minstrel. Not from when he was a battalion commander, but from when he first took the field and commanded a small unit.
"Then why are you standing around here?"
Shinar knew Garett's face. She remembered that once they'd been in the same unit.
So she asked, but—
"Ah, that's..."
Garett started to answer and shut his mouth. What words could there be when the fairy who'd asked showed zero interest and whipped away?
Before he knew it, the green eyes aimed at him were gone, replaced by the back of a blond head. The small head dwindled quickly.
Her footwork, flicking away, was light and fast. In a blink she was out of the yard and running in a straight line for the mountains.
"...Still, I was once a battalion commander, you know."
Garett muttered, but those who came after didn't treat him any differently.
"Brother Messenger, thank you for your work."
An Apostle of the War God who resembled a bear beastman passed by.
"Lady Lua, you said you knew something?"
Next came a knight named Lawford. Once he finished sizing up the situation, he set about finding his task.
Running inside and lending a hand to the fight was one thing, but—
"Some of the monsters will come down and sprinkle fire around."
As Luagarne had said, this wasn't something you could just sit and watch.
And all of this reached Kraiss and Abnaier in no time, and Kraiss gave orders without the slightest hesitation.
"Sound the standing force's emergency, form a front line, and don't tell the city. If we evacuate now, people will trample each other to death running away."
Kraiss was resolute. And he believed.
The roots of his faith—that the value of the gold he'd sown would not be wasted—ran very deep and very thick.