Alderamin on the Sky

Ikta is a brilliant, but lazy boy. His childhood friend offers him an easy position at a library if he can help her get the top score on an exam. But their lives take a sudden turn when the boat they're on runs aground and Ikta rescues a mysterious girl.

Ikta succeeds in a daring plan to cross the Kioka border and return the princess home. Now he finds himself dragged into a war he hates, serving a government that doesn't want to win, and despising the princess he rescued.

Ikta has been appointed an Imperial Knight, and his new life at the High-Level Officer's School begins. The easily-bored Ikta has difficulty fitting in, and its not long before he's picking fights and making enemies among the upper ranks.

Ikta leads his troops to victory over the forces led by the higher ranking officers. But what was supposed to be a simple training exercise turns serious when men kidnap the princess. Can Ikta lead his troops to defeat a squad of experienced soldiers?

"Welcome to the world of science!" When Yatori was 9 years old, she was sent to study with the general Bada Sankrein, and met a young boy her age, Ikta. The world he shows her is new and exciting, like nothing she's ever seen.

Ikta and crew are assigned to a garrison in the far northern region of the empire. The staff are petty and don't like it when Ikta defies orders. But when they try to put him in the garrison prison, he comes across a secret that they want to keep hidden.

War breaks out as the Empire's oppression of the mountain people results in a terrifying backlash. With the one competent leader in the Northern Garrison dead, the ignorant garrison commander flings the troops into a highly defended, mountainous position.

Ikta and his soldiers are sent to deliver supplies to the struggling imperial armies as the war continues. Unused to fighting in the high mountains, and led by incompetent leaders the imperial soldiers suffer heavy casualties.

The war against the mountain people continues, and the imperial forces are about to make one last march to their final staging ground. The incompetent imperial commanders pick a route that leaves their flanks exposed to an attack..

The Sinack have been subdued, but the Imperial Army finds that it's been caught in a trap! A huge army from the Aldera nation has crossed the supposedly-impassable northern mountains, and threatens to overwhelm the exhausted Imperial forces.

The Imperial Army is pushed back, and Ikta is forced to use every trick at his disposal to keep his numerically inferior force from being overwhelmed. The Alderamin army has 12,000 troops, and his unit has only a little over 600.

The Imperial army is continuing its retreat from the numerically superior Aldera forces at the base of the Alafatra mountain range. They've set fire to the forest to buy themselves more time, but after a few days the fire is beginning to burn out.

Ikta suffers a serious setback at the hands of the unsleeping, shining officer from the Kioka republic. His lines have been broken and the retreat is in disarray.