Chapter 33: The Battle Without a Victor
The imperial court was in disarray.
For all its composure, all its rigid structure, the weight of this investigation was pressing down on them from every angle.
The problem wasn't just that the relic had caused a mana surge—it was where it had been placed and who had been affected.
Two heirs to the throne, including the Crown Prince himself, had nearly died.
The nobles who were caught in the mana collapse had been left shaken, and while most were too proud to show it, their families weren't.
The Emperor's focus was absolute.
How did a magic-canceling weapon—something that has never been recorded in the empire—end up so close to his son?
The speculation in the court had been ruthless.
Was it an assassination attempt?
Was it foreign sabotage?
Was it a remnant of something buried and forgotten?
And, more importantly—
Could it be replicated?
That was the core question. Not who had placed it, not why it was there—but whether they could make it theirs.
Some minor nobles had tried to throw out petty accusations, desperate to direct blame away from themselves.
At one point, Jessica Moran's name had been thrown into the discussion.
The suggestion had barely lasted five minutes.
No one serious actually believed it.
The Emperor had zero interest in making a noble girl a scapegoat.
Not when the real answer was still unknown.
Which was why—after exhausting every other reasonable avenue—they made the reluctant decision to contact the demon kingdom.
Alistair hated this.
The idea of asking the demons for clarification was an insult in itself.
But they had no choice.
If this relic was demonic, it meant the demon kingdom had placed a weapon within imperial borders. That would be an act of war.
But if it wasn't...
Then they were wasting time.
Seraphina had been the one to make the final call.
"We would rather confirm it's demonic before we escalate the situation rather than after."
And that was how a dark elf courier ended up standing in the imperial strategy hall, preparing to leave on a griffin.
Because no human envoy was stupid enough to walk into demon territory alone.
The entire situation was ridiculous.
Alistair clicked his tongue.
"How ironic," he muttered. "We can't even send our own people without risking it being seen as an attack."
Seraphina smirked.
"That's diplomacy for you."
___
Jessica leaned back in her seat, arms crossed, as the instructor gestured toward the battle map projected across the classroom.
"This was a battle of numbers, terrain, and attrition," the instructor said, his voice carrying over the murmuring students. "Your assignment is simple: Mitigate losses."
"You will be given this battle scenario with minimal historical context. The larger army outnumbers the smaller army 10 to 1. They have superior resources, better supply lines, and terrain advantages. On paper, they should win."
The instructor paused, tapping the map.
"But that's not the point of this exercise."
Jessica frowned slightly.
"You will work in groups," the instructor continued, "to develop strategies for both sides—how the larger army could have minimized casualties while securing victory, and how the smaller army could have stalled for time or created a net victory through disproportionate damage."
A few students murmured at that.
It was an odd phrasing—"net victory" instead of an outright win.
Jessica's fingers tapped absently against the table.
Something felt off.
The instructor smirked slightly, as if anticipating their confusion.
"You don't know which side is which," he said smoothly. "The smaller army might be the defenders, the larger army the invaders. Or perhaps it was the opposite. You are strategists, not historians. Your job is to determine the most effective way to limit losses and achieve long-term objectives."
He stepped back.
"You may begin."
___
Jessica listened to her group's discussion.
And immediately disagreed with all of it.
It wasn't that their logic was bad. It wasn't even that they were being careless.
It was that none of their strategies worked.
The more they spoke, the more she realized that they were talking about the weaker army's survival—none of them suggested decisive victory.
Something about that bothered her.
She looked at the map again, fingers trailing over the battlefield layout.
Something about it felt too structured.
Like the larger army had been goaded into this fight.
Jessica tapped the map, thinking.
If she was leading the smaller force, she wouldn't need to stall.
She'd just need the enemy to enter the valley.
Then...
She traced a path with her fingers.
A specific route.
A very specific path.
And her stomach dropped.
Jessica's mind started racing.
This battle had only ever had one outcome.
Not because the smaller army was stronger.
Not because they had better warriors.
But because the general of the smaller force had found the every path that guaranteed total victory in every possible situation.
The perfect storm.
Jessica stared.
The larger army would've had to notice every one of the natural faults in the mountain range to predict the cumulative destruction of the valley range.
If the larger army would've been cautious and fortified the valley instead of attacking, they would have been crushed by the enemy in two days in a similar trap.
But they were defeated the moment they entered the valley. Cementing that they completely fell into the general's trap.
Jessica exhaled.
She had the answer.
___
Jessica arrived early.
She had spent all night refining her strategy, mapping out every possible countermeasure the larger army could have taken.
Her final submission?
The larger army had only one true victory condition: retreat completely.
Every alternative resulted in catastrophic losses.
The smaller army only needed to bait them into the valley for two days.
The entire victory was based on a 16-point collapse of the cave system using a full squad of elemental mages that had to sacrifice their lives by using wind and fire ages to hyper concentrate with all their manner into a tight packed oxygen bomb ignited by all the fire elementals mana at very specific points to cause a cave system to completely collapse.
Once that collapse happened, water majors would create an avalanche, earth majors would create a rock slide. The accumulation would cause mud to just completely pour in to the hole that the army just now fell into, causing disarray and burying the enemy army alive and hitting the strongest forces and splitting their command structure.
The final point that wasn't even mentioned or even acknowledged by anyone was the possibility that the smaller army was filled with small level internal aura users instead of common foot soldiers. While they're significantly weaker than elemental magicians or knights, they are much more talented than common foot soldiers and become stronger when they have confidence in victory—even if they can't use external aura.
Jessica wasn't confident—she was certain.
Her group stared at her like she was insane.
The instructor paused mid-lecture.
Jessica's answer was so specific, so absurdly detailed, that the classroom went completely silent.
"...How did you come up with that?" the instructor asked, voice unreadable.
Jessica blinked.
"I just... followed the logic?"
The instructor stared at her.
For 2,000 years, no scholar, no general, no strategist had been able to fully reconstruct how this battle had been won.
And yet, Jessica had done it overnight.
The instructor leaned forward slightly.
"This wasn't just tactically brilliant," he said, voice slow. "It was legendary."
A quiet murmur ran through the class.
Even the military families—those trained from birth in tactical warfare—looked at her in stunned silence.
Jessica shifted.
She didn't like this.
She had just seen the obvious solution.
So why did it feel like no one else could?
The instructor studied her for a long moment.
Then, finally, he asked:
"...How did you even fathom that?"
Jessica had no answer.
She just sat back in her chair, fingers tapping against the desk.
Something wasn't right.
And for the first time, she realized—
Maybe the problem wasn't the battle.
Maybe it was her.
___
The classroom was silent.
Not the heavy, contemplative silence the instructor had been expecting—the kind of silence where students sat back, humbled by the realization that no matter how skilled they were, someone before them had been better.
No.
This was an entirely different kind of silence.
Jessica Moran had just done something that wasn't supposed to be possible.
And the class knew it.
Someone sucked in a sharp breath.
Another muttered, almost instinctively—
"The Abyssal Valley Annihilation."
Jessica's brow furrowed.
A few students stiffened.
The instructor said nothing. He was still staring at her report.
Jessica tilted her head slightly. "What?"
The high-ranking noble students—the ones from military families, the ones who had grown up hearing war stories over dinner—looked at her like she had just unearthed a cursed tomb.
One of them—**Armand von Riefenstahl, Edgar's cousin and a son of a war general—**spoke carefully.
"...That's the name of the battle."
Jessica blinked.
"The battle?"
"The battle," he repeated. "The one they tell us about to make sure we never get complacent."
Jessica frowned. "They tell you about it?"
"They tell us that a brilliant human general went into a battle with 100,000 troops against a mere 10,000 demon warriors."
His fingers curled.
"They tell us not to be the general who loses that fight."
Jessica slowly exhaled.
Ah.
So it was one of those stories.
A warning. A cautionary tale.
"Except," Armand said quietly, "they never told us how the humans lost."
Jessica narrowed her eyes. "Why not?"
"Because no one ever figured it out."
The class was dead silent.
Jessica glanced at the instructor, waiting for confirmation.
He still hadn't spoken.
His hands were tight on the edges of her report, his knuckles pale.
Jessica turned back to the class.
She looked at the map again, her solution laid out in precise, calculated detail.
Sixteen detonation sites.
Thirty-two sacrificial elemental demons.
A complete and total collapse of the valley.
Jessica exhaled.
So she had just solved a 2,000-year-old mystery.
Neat.
___
His posture was measured. Controlled.
As he left the classroom, he moved with the same composed stride he always had.
To the students watching, there was nothing unusual about him.
But his mind—
What the hell.
What the hell.
What the actual hell.
He kept walking.
One foot in front of the other.
His expression unreadable.
His grip tightening on the papers.
This isn't real.
For 2,000 years, the greatest minds—**scholars, generals, tacticians—**had tried to answer this question.
They knew the cave had collapsed.
They knew the larger army had been wiped out.
But they had never figured out how.
Not with this level of clarity.
Not with this level of precision.
Jessica Moran hadn't just guessed.
She had detailed the exact points of collapse. The angles of the chokepoints. The distribution of elemental teams. The placement of the explosions.
Sixteen precise detonation sites.
Thirty-two sacrificial elemental demons.
She had laid it all out like she had been there.
Like she had walked the battlefield herself.
Like she had been the one who ordered the attack.
His fingers twitched.
He kept walking.
Past the students. Past the instructors.
His posture was still perfect.
Still composed.
But his heartbeat was too loud.
Jessica Moran.
A backwater Baron's daughter.
A magic cripple.
A girl with documented episodes of instability.
She wasn't supposed to be like this.
She was supposed to be a footnote in the academy's history.
Not a historical anomaly.
His pulse quickened.
He needed to get this to the headmaster. Now.
The moment he stepped out of the public halls—
He broke into a sprint.
Not a hurried walk.
Not a brisk pace.
A full sprint.
His boots slammed against the polished stone as he rushed toward the headmaster's office, his breath sharp, his thoughts spiraling.
Jessica Moran had just done something impossible.
And the world was about to notice.