Chapter 273
Chapter 273. Latent Heat (10)
At those words, the air above the training ground froze. The water-haired girl, her face having gone pale, quietly opened her mouth.
"You're saying the enemy will wage all-out war?"
"That's right. Suleiman wages its war of conquest with a 1st Rank Mage at the fore. And our knight order — composed of the swordsmen closest to the Sword Saint's realm — will stand against them."
The water-haired girl quietly covered her mouth with her hand. There was no way she could fail to grasp what the Instructor's words implied.
"Then, that means......"
"There were omens, but in the end, it comes to this."
The red-haired knight sighed. Then she rose slowly upon the training ground and gripped the sword at her waist firmly with one hand.
"In the end, it will happen upon this island, young lady."
The knight quietly parted her lips.
"A war where the magic that will lead this world's future, and the sword that has guarded its past until now, cross blades."
"No......"
The girl murmured, then noticed the sky darkening and raised her head.
Storm clouds were gathering over the sky of Rhodes. Watching distant thunder rumble across the sky as it stained gray from end to end, the girl unconsciously clenched her hand.
A single raindrop fell, grazing the girl's cheek, ratcheting the taut tension even higher.
The red-haired knight gazed up at the sky for a long moment, then let out a short sigh.
"......Rain is coming."
She glanced back at the girl.
"Young lady. When this late-autumn rain falls, true winter follows close behind. Judging from the enemy's reported marching speed, the 0th Unit may use the freezing of Rhodes' lake to mount their assault."
"You mean that will be the day of the decisive battle?"
"That's right. Which means there's not much time left for you to reach the Sword Saint you dream of, either. Then for the time that remains — there's nothing for it but to train as if your life depends on it."
The girl quietly lowered her lashes.
"I know. Please — I'm in your hands."
"Good. Your attitude, at least, is always excellent."
The red-haired knight smiled slightly, strode over to the girl without another word, and seized the back of her cloak.
"Ah?"
"You've rested plenty. So let's begin right away, shall we? Young lady!"
And with that, she swept her arm out wide and hurled the girl she'd grabbed clean over her shoulder.
The next moment, swept up in the floating sensation of her body soaring through the air, the water-haired girl flew — eyes wide.
***
Swept up in the sudden floating sensation of his body lurching backward through the air, Enoch flew — eyes wide.
Someone had abruptly yanked the back of his clothes, hauling him back to reality. The shouts and the roar of the advance around him returned.
"Something's wrong with you! I knew it — you're not okay!"
A prim voice pierced his ears.
Turning, he saw Sirocco — slightly wavy red hair streaming, eyes wide — gripping the back of his jacket tight as she stared down at him urgently.
She seemed to have noticed him freezing up blankly for a moment just now, and was visibly anxious about it.
If not for Sirocco, he might never have come back to his senses. At that fact, Enoch let out an involuntary, bitter laugh at himself.
So the external stimulus of Sirocco's pull had interrupted the Inner World's inheritance.
The image of a broken machine with a faulty connection seemed to superimpose itself over him.
"I'm fine. No problem."
Enoch gave a short shake of his head and looked around.
With no time even to collect himself, he realized anew that the ground was pounding with tremors — something had closed to point-blank range.
Looking ahead, the reality of the situation stabbed sharply back into his mind. The thing that had been bearing down on him just before he was pulled into the Inner World—
RUMBLE—!
The rhinoceros-shaped enemy, charging with earth-shaking force.
His spine went cold in an instant at the beast closing in just a few hundred meters ahead, sweeping away every freelancer in its path. Too close.
Just then, the beast that had been pulverizing the ground as it charged, massive horn leveled, stumbled to a halt as if snagged on something.
Silver wire, scattering faint light, had been strung between the trees along the rhinoceros's path.
Lien approached Enoch's side, both arms spread wide, drawing a single strand of wire long and taut.
RUMBLE—!
At the same time, the rhinoceros reared its head high with a furious snort and ripped the two great trees the wire was anchored to clean out of the ground, roots and all.
The enemy leveled its horn again and resumed its charge.
Lien walked over unhurried and stood shoulder to shoulder with Sirocco. The girls of Enoch's squad exchanged a look, nodded, and took up battle stances.
Part of him wanted to watch how that fight would unfold, but he forced his gaze back to the front.
Because from behind, the war cry of yet another monster was already sounding.
One more beast of the same type was bearing down on him.
And it wasn't alone. At its side, a horde of small hound-shaped beasts came flooding in from all directions, blackening the ground.
They meant to envelop them from front and rear.
He glared at the enemy, teeth grinding. There was no way to deal with that many small beasts one by one. If Sirocco and Lien were covering the rear—
"Yeah, I'll give covering fire."
A voice suddenly brushed his ear. The familiar tone of Isabel, the Outsourcing District freelancer, lifted his spirits.
Enoch ground his shoe soles into the mud and halted, drew breath, and gathered his energy at his core. Gripping the double-bladed axe offset in his right hand toward the charging enemy, he lowered his stance and readied his technique.
Beside him, Isabel flipped her selector to full auto, and flame spat in bursts from her rifle's muzzle.
BRRRRRRRRT—!
Precise 5.56mm armor-piercing rounds swept away every last one of the small hound-shaped enemies, scattering jet-black powder across the ground.
The enemy's charging route was scoured clean, like a swarm of ants washed away — leaving only the rhinoceros-type beast, charging on while soaking up the bullets head-on.
Enoch stamped the ground like lightning toward the charging beast, loading the power of his technique into the axe.
The rhinoceros stormed in, shaking the earth. The force of that charge, with all its weight behind it, was nothing short of a bulldozer.
Sword Saint of the Waves - Foundation Form——
[Reverse Flow]
The deflection, unleashed through the polearm, detonated head-on against the charging rhinoceros's horn.
Pushed back by the enemy's momentum, shoe soles skidding, Enoch poured every ounce of that force into one full rotation of the axe and hoisted it high toward the sky.
The mightiest counter stance — unleashed after turning the enemy's own power against it — blazed with light in midair.
Sword Saint of the Waves - Swordsmanship Form 3, [Dragon Pool]
The slash that wrapped up the enemy's charging force and returned it in full crashed into the beast's head — and with the recoil, Enoch skidded backward, shoe soles dragging long furrows, in full retreat.
The beast, with charging power to match a heavy tank, had its horn snapped and the slash detonate across the bridge of its snout — its face rupturing as if shattered to pieces.
The rhinoceros's body, deflected off in a wild direction, seemed for a moment not even to realize its own head had been pulverized.
The massive headless body suddenly buckled at the legs and collapsed, sliding more than ten meters through the mud before finally coming to rest.
"Go. Direct Lineage!"
Before Isabel even finished, he was sprinting again.
But as he cut past a great tree, by the time he registered the presence of the beast lying in ambush behind it, it was already too late.
A crustacean beast with enormous pincers swung down its grotesquely swollen, mace-like arm. A huge shadow engulfed the air above Enoch's head.
In the instant he was nearly crushed flat — with the whoosh of a bullet breaking the sound barrier, wind brushed his cheek and his hair danced.
The pincer froze dead in midair.
Only after the fact did Enoch clearly register the pink streak of light that had punched past his cheek and struck the enemy.
"April!"
The round that had grazed past Enoch was spreading frost across the carapace at the point of impact, pinning the enemy in place.
Glancing back, there was April — breathing hard, racking the charging handle of her sniper rifle.
"Direct Lineage, I'm charging extra for that one — call it a bonus!"
The enemy, realizing its arm had frozen solid, panicked and staggered, stamping its feet. The sheer mass of the staggering beast made the entire ground shudder until it was hard to stay standing.
Sirocco immediately dashed under the crab-shaped beast's torso, burrowing in and kicking out the six legs supporting its body one after another.
As the body toppled and swayed, she stamped down hard and delivered a rising kick straight up into it.
The crustacean's armor shattered, and the enormous beast's body was launched several meters into the sky before slamming into the ground, spewing jet-black powder from its mouth as it perished.
The impact shook the ground so hard that April dropped to one knee — and the moment he glanced at her, he saw the beasts, drawn by her gunshots, all twisting their upper bodies around as one.
The jet-black horde of darkness began converging on the freelancer girl — the sniper whose position had been thoroughly exposed in her rush to help Enoch.
He sprinted toward April — and in that instant, the pink-haired sniper spun her head toward him and leveled her rifle.
BLAM—!
Before the impossible shot could even send a chill down his spine, a pink-stained round streaked toward Enoch, carving a razor-sharp afterimage.
With the dry smack of impact, Enoch's shoulder twitched.
As he stood wide-eyed, uncomprehending, something crashed to the ground behind him with a heavy thud.
Turning, he saw that the round fired past his cheek had blown the head off a humanoid beast behind him — and the next moment, black powder erupted skyward like a geyser.
Black powder spattered across April's white cheek.
It took him a considerable moment to realize: she had just saved his life.
April rose and swept her hand horizontally.
"Go! This isn't the time for you to be worrying about me, is it, Direct Lineage?"
Enoch gave a small nod and sprinted again.
Allied losses were already substantial.
No small number of the charging freelancers had fallen out of the fight, and the tip of the needle formation splitting the enemy lines was beginning to dull.
Even amid all that, the skill of the squad Enoch led was in a class of its own.
Sirocco was knocked flying into the air by an enemy attack — but waiting there was Lien, who had strung threads between several trees like a safety net.
Sirocco kicked off one vertical strand of the wire net and landed, and Lien instantly hauled on the wires she'd rigged, releasing the net.
Timing it perfectly, Sirocco snatched one strand of the just-unraveling thread from the air and leapt skyward in a great soaring arc.
The next moment, she spun her body around and around, adding acceleration, and came rocketing straight down.
Her landing point: right beside April.
The countless enemies that had just been swarming toward April were caught in the shockwave of Sirocco's falling strike and bowled over as one.
Simultaneously, a surprise shot from April in the rear punched through the skull of a beast creeping up behind Enoch and Sirocco, killing it instantly.
Even as he ran on without stopping, Enoch felt something hot welling up in his chest.
His squadmates were swapping pairs in turn, unleashing relentless wave-upon-wave attacks that eliminated every blind spot.
At last, as if buckling under the squad's onslaught, the beasts faltered — and a gap opened in the enemy line.
He signaled with his fingers to Sirocco, who had come up beside him, running in stride. Sirocco nodded vigorously.
The ground groaned and split — and the next moment, Sirocco's battle cry rang out.
"Haaaah!"
She kicked off the earth. With Enoch running in the wake of the hyper-accelerating Sirocco, the two became a single bullet and charged — punching through the enemy line and breaking free of the dense enemy formation.
Clearing the forest, his field of view opened wide.
But the reckless posture cost him the landing — he tumbled violently across the sodden ground, over and over.
Finally stopping, he braced both hands, pushed his upper body up, and spat out the mud ground between his teeth.
By the look of it, they had come out onto the plains — the same flatland from the operation to take down Indiviltal. Glancing to the side, Sirocco stood rooted in place, staring blankly up a slope.
Rising, Enoch followed the line of Sirocco's gaze — and his body went rigid.
"This is......"
Enoch's head was locked at a forty-five-degree upward angle, fixed on the monster towering in the darkness.
Atop a forest cliff barely two kilometers away.
There, 'it' was revealing itself.
"Anarchilon......"
The avatar of the black-carapaced Experimental Magical Beasts, moving with a colossal body that blotted out the sky.
A body resembling a giant rhinoceros beetle, with a long, curved horn that seemed to stretch to the heavens. Dozens of pairs of eyes set in rows beneath its helm, scattering green light as their glare bored into him — right before his eyes.
In name and in truth: the objective of this operation, and the final boss.