The Call to Arms

“Eleven.”

Marie’s voice was quiet, but it cut through the chaos on the balcony with the finality of a guillotine. The world was shaking, the sky was cracking, and the official assessment of our situation, on a scale of one to ten, was eleven. We were officially in the bonus round of being completely and utterly screwed.

My first instinct was to find a sturdy table to hide under until the shaking stopped. My second, more heroic instinct, was to find a comfortable chair from which to watch the apocalypse. Unfortunately, everyone else had a different idea.

“Sound the alarms!” King Edward screamed, his face a blotchy, terrified red. “Mobilize the Royal Knights! All of them! Send magical messengers to our allies in the Northern Duchies! Someone fetch me my ceremonial battle-robe! The one with the reinforced shoulders!”

The entire castle exploded into a state of organized panic. Ministers were shouting orders. Bells began to toll across the city, not with the panicked clang of a surprise attack, but with a deep, solemn peal that signaled a formal call to arms. The kingdom was preparing for war.

Look at them, I thought, as I was swept along in the tide of frantic officials heading for the throne room. Running around like a bunch of headless chickens. Don't they know that panicking is the least efficient way to deal with a world-ending crisis? The most efficient way is to find a comfortable spot and wait for the protagonist to handle it. Unfortunately, I am the protagonist. This is a fundamental design flaw in my new life.

As we passed through a grand courtyard, I saw the real-world consequence of the King’s orders. Hundreds of soldiers were mustering, the clatter of armor and the shouting of sergeants echoing off the stone walls. I saw a group of new recruits, their faces pale with terror, being hastily issued spears. One of them, a scrawny kid with brown hair and weirdly determined eyes, was getting an earful from a drill sergeant with a mustache that could intimidate a dragon.

“Rudeus Graveyard!” the sergeant bellowed, his voice hoarse. “Stop staring at the maids and pay attention to your impending doom! You are a soldier of Lysvalde now, so you will die with dignity, is that clear?!”

Rudeus… Graveyard? I thought, my brain grinding to a halt for a second. At this point, nothing surprises me anymore. You're even ripping off Mushoku Tensei. And with the least subtle name change possible. What’s next? Am I going to find a talking sword that calls me ‘Master’? This story’s copyright infringement is reaching critical mass.

I shook my head and continued on, leaving the poor, doomed background character to his fate.

We all gathered in the main war room. A massive, beautifully illustrated map of the continent was spread across a table large enough to land a small aircraft on. The kingdom’s highest-ranking generals, grizzled old men with more medals than chest space, were already pointing at it with long, wooden sticks.

“Our only option is a full mobilization,” one of them, General Marcus Grant, was saying. “We will send the First and Second Knight Divisions to establish a defensive perimeter around the base of the Great Jura Mountain. The Mage Corps will attempt to magically reinforce the seal’s anchor points, but with the energy Alistair is pumping into it, their effectiveness will be minimal. It’s a holding action, Your Majesty. We’ll be sending thousands of men to their deaths just to buy us a few weeks.”

“Our supply lines will be stretched to the breaking point before we even reach the mountains,” Eliza interjected, her voice cutting and precise. “And the magical energy radiating from the seal will interfere with all long-range communications. We’ll be sending them in blind.”

“Then we must strike at the head of the snake!” Justus argued, his hand on his sword. “A direct, holy assault on Alistair himself!”

“Suicide,” General Marcus Grant grunted. “He’s at the center of a magical vortex of his own creation, surrounded by his fanatical followers. No conventional force could get within a mile of him.”

The mood was grim. They were outlining a plan that they all knew was just a prelude to a catastrophic defeat. They were preparing to sacrifice an army for a sliver of a chance.

I had been quietly listening, trying to see if I could balance a sugar cube on my nose. The discussion was so boring, so filled with the same kind of doomed, pointless strategic nonsense as the budget meetings at my old company. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.

“Alright, that’s enough,” I said, my voice cutting through their arguments. My sugar cube fell over. “Your plan is terrible.”

Every head in the room swiveled to face me. General Marcus Grant’s face turned a dangerous shade of purple, like someone who was Reborn as a Fantasy General. “And what is your brilliant plan, ‘Hero’?” he growled.

“My plan,” I said, walking over to the map, “is to not be a complete idiot.” I looked around at their shocked faces. “You’re planning to throw an army at a problem that isn’t an army. Alistair is attacking a magical concept. A seal. You can’t stop that with swords and shields. It’s like trying to fight a hurricane with a handful of angry bees. You’re just sending all these people”—I swept my hand across the map—“to die for absolutely nothing.”

“He is right,” Marie said, her voice the only one that wasn't hostile. “So what do you suggest, Okina Sukebe?”

I leaned over the map, a slow grin spreading across my face. “You’re all focused on the big, slow, expensive, and work-intensive problem of getting an entire army to the Great Jura Mountain. You’re thinking about a siege. A battle. That’s a lot of marching.” I tapped the ominous, ink-drawn mountain right in the center of the map. “I have a shortcut.”

“A shortcut?” the King asked, intrigued.

“I’m the only one who can actually do anything about the seal or Alistair, right?” I said. “So, why are we sending anyone else? Forget the army. Forget the supply lines. Forget the call to arms. The five of us—the actual task force—are going to go there directly. Right now. And we’re going to fix it.”

General Marcus Grant was outraged. “That’s not a plan! That’s a suicide pact! Five people against Alistair and his entire cult, at the center of a world-ending cataclysm?!”

“How would you even get there in time?” Vince asked, ever the pragmatist.

“I can teleport us,” I said, as casually as if I were offering to call a cab.

The room fell silent again. The generals just stared at me, their minds struggling to compute the sheer, casual arrogance of it all.

“Five people…” the King mumbled, a greedy glint in his eye. “Think of the savings! The budget for a five-person mission is a fraction of a full army mobilization! I like it! It’s decisive! And cheap!”

And just like that, it was decided. The grand, kingdom-wide Call to Arms, the epic mobilization for a final, glorious war, was cancelled. Hijacked. Replaced by a small-scale, probably suicidal, special operations mission led by me.

There, I thought, a feeling of deep satisfaction washing over me. I just saved the kingdom from a costly, pointless war and replaced it with a quick, efficient, and deeply dangerous commando raid. All because marching is too much effort. They call it a ‘shortcut.’ I call it ‘maximum laziness applied to saving the world.’

I looked at the terrified faces of Edgar and the stunned faces of the generals.

Let’s just hope I don’t get us all killed.