Chapter 274
Chapter 274. Latent Heat (11)
The enemy planted a foot atop the high forest cliff with a thunderous boom. Then it revealed to the world a body even larger than the cliff it trampled.
A colossal frame, indistinguishable from a small mountain, stood there.
On the back of the multi-legged creature, which walked like a rhinoceros beetle, sat angular, unyielding armor plate, and three pairs of legs — thick and long as stone pillars — bore up that enormous body.
And every plate of armor bristled with spines, each one far larger than a human body and sharp as an awl.
Along the armored flanks of its belly ran countless holes, and from them, tentacles that moved as freely as serpents slid in and out.
By the look of it, those were the source of the freely-moving tentacles he had seen before.
The leader of the Experimental Magical Beasts — every part of it looked as if terror itself had been gathered and sculpted into form.
Unlike the Flying-Type beasts that had assaulted the Outsourcing District, this was the presence of a true Monarch Class, on an entirely different order — his very skin seemed to tremble.
Whether by misfortune or fortune, Anarchilon had not yet noticed them.
Looking back, he had glimpsed it from afar, and heard accounts from those who had faced it — but actually seeing it before his eyes like this was a first.
Its breath was hot; merely existing there, it radiated crushing pressure, and the ground convulsed with every step it took.
Enoch glared at it and gripped his axe.
If he didn't keep his mind firmly together, his thoughts threatened to simply stop. Even so — if they could just defeat this one creature......
"Sirocco, get ready."
"You got it."
Glancing at Sirocco, she opened the AP Bomb case in her hands, took the device itself in hand, and flung the empty case to the ground.
At the same moment, Anarchilon registered their existence — and without sparing so much as a glance at the battle unfolding in the forest, its dozens of pairs of green-lit eyes began to fix on them.
Perhaps Anarchilon, too, had recognized that Enoch and Sirocco were the Kings upon the chessboard.
A battle between Kings, arriving unsought.
Sprinting fast alongside Sirocco as they closed on the creature, they came out onto open plains without a single tree.
There, ordinary-class beasts prowled in numbers that filled the wasteland. Soon enough, sensing the approach, they snapped their heads around as one.
Soldiers guarding the beasts' leader, then.
Enoch ran on without stopping, lowering his stance as he went.
The other freelancers were fighting on with everything they had — but this couldn't be drawn out.
—Break through.
Kicking off the ground, spinning the axe, raising both arms — in that split second, he gazed at the enemies through the gap between his readied arms and weapon and drew a great breath.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG—!
The next moment, the jet-black polearm whirled like a propeller, scattering dizzying circular slashes to Enoch's left and right.
The circular trajectory grazed the enemies around Enoch as he sprinted across the dark earth, scoring cut-lines across them — and then cleaved every last one of them cleanly in two.
Then, at Enoch's flank, more beasts surged in.
They leapt high, targeting Enoch from above. But the next moment, Sirocco vaulted into the air above his head and roundhouse-kicked them away.
Shattered enemy carapace and severed limbs sprayed black around them — he paid it no mind and ran.
He could feel Sirocco keeping pace beside him.
Good. Just a little more. Just a little further like this and—
Enoch raised his head to fix his eyes on Anarchilon. If he could just close the distance and set the bomb—
But immediately after, Enoch's eyes flew wide.
Because he realized: Anarchilon's green gaze, towering atop the high cliff, was looking down at him — as if in mockery. A chill that threatened to freeze his spine raced through him.
What — what is—
The next moment, Anarchilon braced its two forelegs, reared its body up, and began bellowing a roar that shook the night sky.
— ————! ———, —————!!
As if in answer, from somewhere came a roar of beasts that seemed to overturn heaven and earth.
In the darkness — from somewhere in the forest at Anarchilon's back — howls and shrieks that gnawed at the world began to cackle and fill the night sky.
"Wait. Hold on."
Enoch suppressed the chill threatening to run down his spine, stopped in place, and took several steps back. Even Sirocco, beside him, pricked her ears straight up and cried out.
"Ha — you've got to be kidding......!"
In time with the creature's roar, another wave of beasts blotting out the sky and ordinary-class beasts sprinting across the ground surged up black from beyond the forest.
Like fighter craft escorting an aircraft carrier, the flying beasts skimmed through the air above Anarchilon's mountain-like carapace.
Even Enoch was inwardly staggered at their numbers.
It had genuinely felt like they had broken through the enemy's entire main force just now — and yet this many Experimental Beasts had still been lying in ambush?
Punching through numbers like this with just himself and Sirocco was out of the question.
The judgment came instantly, and his teeth ground together.
The breakthrough's limit.
The very situation he had feared from the start had come to pass. At this rate, they would fail to overcome the enemy's numbers and be swept under.
But the moment that realization hit him on instinct, everything was already far, far too late.
— ————! —————!!
Anarchilon's second metallic shriek split the night sky.
In time with that roar, the enemy host — scattering overwhelming despair — began its advance across the wasteland.
Anarchilon's shield and its spear: enemy soldiers who crushed everything beneath sheer mass, bearing down in a flood of green light.
On ground that shuddered with the aftershock of the advance, Enoch slowly clenched his teeth.
"Sirocco, we pull back first and assess the—"
Because he was rattled — and because the erosion had dulled his senses — Enoch was a beat too slow to notice the massive humanoid beast that had appeared at his side.
"......?!"
The instant he saw the enemy raising a carapace lance shaped closer to a bludgeon, Enoch snapped into a defensive stance and brought up his axe.
With a ringing CLANG, sparks flew.
Unable to withstand the force of the enemy's carapace lance crashing against his axe handle, he was driven back, shoes carving long furrows.
Wait — from where?
Braking his slide with one knee dropped, Enoch glanced toward where the enemy had appeared — and was stunned.
At some point, enemies had begun pouring in from the forest side as well, one after another.
Most likely the ones the freelancers had failed to contain. The needle formation their allies had built had finally stopped advancing, and the enemy was flooding in around it.
It was the clearest possible proof that Operation Piercing Thrust was edging toward failure.
"Hey — I just have to get this bomb into that thing, right?"
Sirocco's voice came from beside him at that exact moment, and he answered a touch irritably.
"Yes. But it's impossible right now."
"Then do you have a next plan?"
"No. We'll have to find another way — but charging through head-on from here is a bad idea. We retreat first, while there's still a chance."
Saying that, he flicked his gaze around, checking the surroundings. He had already considered several routes on the way in.
Admitting the operation's failure stung bitterly — but if realistically the priority was escaping the heart of the enemy line, then the actions available were—
In that very moment, Sirocco's voice rang out, clear.
"—Hey. The wish ticket. You remember, right?"
"......What?"
He turned sharply at the non sequitur to find her looking straight up at him.
"The wish ticket! The one you promised me before!"
Only then did Enoch remember. When he had returned from the solo mission, he had indeed made that promise to placate Sirocco. He'd thought it was just a joke at the time.
"I did promise that. But why now?"
"I'm saying I'm using it. Right now!"
But making a mockery of his assumption that it had been a mere joke, Sirocco glanced back over her shoulder and shouted with a deadly serious expression.
"Listen up. This time, I'm helping you for real. You've been off ever since earlier — so I'll go."
"No. That's impossible—"
"We're surrounded either way! And you're in bad shape, so escaping won't be easy either. So — if I just take that thing down, I can save you!"
"Save me?"
Enoch moved to refuse on the spot.
No. It was a reckless plan so flawed he didn't even know where to begin correcting it. There was no winning that way.
He braced the axe to push himself up — but the wolf-eared girl's body moved faster than Enoch, his motions already dulled by the erosion's toll, could get a word out.
"Here I go!"
She kicked off the ground — stance low, tail streaming — and shot off like the wind toward Anarchilon.
"No — it's reckless! Sirocco!"
Enoch shouted through gritted teeth. There was no way Sirocco could set the AP Bomb on the enemy alone. Not as she was now.
Anarchilon would kill her. Without fail.
He had to stop her. But how?
The moment he raised his hand to his ear to key the communicator, he sensed a beast lunging from his flank and spun.
But before he could even swing the axe to respond, a sniper round tracing a pink arc punched clean through the enemy.
"Direct Lineage! Pull yourself together!"
At April's shout he looked back — and there stood the girl, sniper rifle trailing white smoke.
Rushing up from the rear, she had spotted the danger and laid down covering fire.
But the instant a sniper appeared in the middle of the enemy line, every enemy eye snapped toward her. Realizing her gunshot had drawn the rest of the beasts as well, April clicked her tongue.
"How are there — this many of them......!"
Teeth clenched, she hefted the rifle and tried to displace — but almost simultaneously, a flying beast hurtling in from the front slammed into April's shoulder.
"Agh!"
Knocked down and skidding long across the ground, she was driven back several meters until her back struck the base of a great tree.
April gasped in pain, her short hair in disarray.
Biting down hard against the agony, April narrowed her eyes and looked at Enoch.
"Direct...... Lineage......"
The beasts did not miss that opening — they charged.
April planted her rifle against the ground first and forced herself up. Blood running from her forehead and the corner of her mouth, she struggled upright and screamed.
"Direct Lineage! Run! Go — now!"
Enoch froze.
The vanguard Sirocco's reckless solo charge. The sniper April's position exposed. And on top of it all — encirclement. An utterly hopeless situation.
Is this the end, then. Of everything.
His heart gave a hard thud.
No. No.
Don't get agitated. Don't lose yourself any further. Stay cold no matter the situation — or the erosion takes you.
The Follower Family were only ever swords. Power and collaborators to overcome hardship. Nothing beyond that — no emotion, no sentiment. He was certain he had believed that.
Deep breath — no. He couldn't hold it.
His emotions surged, and whether from the erosion's influence, his consciousness clouded. Gripping the axe handle hard enough to cut off blood flow, clawing at his own chest — the next moment.
His vision flickered, once.
***
It didn't take long to realize his sight had inverted into the Inner World.
What met his eyes was winter — the surface of Rhodes' lake.
At some point, Enoch had become the eyes of the girl who had lived that past life.
She was kneeling in the middle of the frozen lake.
A streak of cold winter wind brushed the girl's cheek. White snow-powder piled on the lake swirled up.
What she was staring at was the lake's surface, frozen over in blue ice and white frost.
Looking around, fresh blood lay splashed everywhere in stark contrast to the white ice. And there, visible upon that white ice, was—
The red-haired Instructor, dying.
The Instructor lay collapsed, cradled in the girl's arms.
The crescent-shaped blade driven through her, shredding her armor like paper, looked like some kind of cruel joke. Watching the knight bleed out red as her own hair, the girl had lost all words.
"In, Instructor."
The girl's water-colored hair slid hollowly across her downturned eyes as she stared, dazed.
The Instructor's eyelids fluttered, and her eyes opened halfway. Then she shook her head weakly at the girl looking down at her.
"We're at war right now. Pull yourself together, young lady."
Around the Instructor, more than several dozen of Suleiman's warriors lay strewn, every one of them cut down.
Their white hoods — the kind that bared only the eyes — had been slashed open by her sword, exposing the jet-black carapace-sheathed forms within.
Enoch saw it and his eyes flew wide for an instant.
Magical Beasts — almost identical in appearance to the beasts he had been fighting in reality, in the Victoria Domain, until moments ago. So mages truly had created similar beasts even in the past, before the Empire.
The Instructor, cradled in the girl's arms, glanced at those beasts too and let out a hollow, incredulous breath.
"Mutating people into living weapons. They've earned the name Magical Beast, I'll give them that. Mages may toy with the order of the world — but I never imagined they'd be the kind to mock life itself like this."
"P-please don't speak any more......!"
"Young lady, remember this moment. And never forget it."
Cradled in the arms of the girl kneeling on the ice, the Instructor looked up at her through half-closed eyes.
"In the end, they used the winter freeze to cross — Suleiman's army came over the ice. Earlier than projected. And now that it's come to this, we're the ones who have to hold them, whatever it takes. Right?"
"I know that — but the battle right now is......!"
"Against us. So much so that we don't even know what's become of the Commander, who rode out to intercept them. But that changes nothing about our duty. And I — I fulfilled mine."
The Instructor whispered gently, her eyes hazy.
"Aah. Still — this part might be a little sad. I fulfill my duty — but I so wanted to watch you reach your ideal."
"Instructor!"
Unable to bear hearing it, the girl shook her head and cried out — but the red-haired knight quietly reached her arm up toward her.
"May you achieve your purpose this time. My ever-diligent young lady. No—"
Her eyes widened. When she came back to herself, the red-haired knight was smiling.
"—Guardian Knight of Rhodes."
Unable even to move, the girl simply held the knight who had drawn her last breath in her arms.
Transparent tears welled at the corners of her eyes and fell.
The girl slowly shook her head side to side in silence, her expression anguished — but soon that expression turned to despair.
The chill of the lake's frozen surface seemed to wrap around her collapsed body.
"No. That can't be true."
Suddenly, the Instructor's earlier words flickered through her mind.
Overcoming fear, and desiring with all one's being — hadn't she said that was the foundation of the path toward the Sword Saint?
She glared at the lake of Rhodes with fury in her eyes. Right now, she simply hated this lake. She had lost two precious people here. Overcome this? As if that could be the path to the Sword Saint — and yet......
Just then, an enemy soldier approached.
A warrior of Suleiman — a mutated enemy whose entire body had been swallowed by obsidian-like carapace — held a sharp, crescent-shaped blade in its hand.
From that blade — there was no telling how many knights it had already cut down — drops of blood fell one by one.
The girl drew her sword in desperation.
But the arm holding it was trembling.
I can't win. How could I — someone who hasn't even grown into a proper knight — possibly win against a monster made by magic?
Suddenly, the Instructor's voice flickered through her mind.
[—Then face the thing you fear head-on. Stand before that fear, and find a way to make that fear your own power.]
Before an enemy she could not defeat, she thought.
—If only I had even one chance, right now, to at least try that teaching. If I could face the thing I truly fear, and try to overcome it.
But the enemy was closing in, second by second.
And of course, the situation at hand permitted no such luxury.
Is this the end, then. Of everything.
At that moment, from somewhere on the battlefield atop the lake, someone's cry of jubilation rang out.
"The Dragoons of Victoria!"
The girl turned her head — and her eyes flew wide.
"......!"
There, a dazzling silver charge was unfolding. Knights in black armor astride black horses were thundering across the ice, lances couched.
Across the frost-swept ice, the cutting wind snapped their crimson cloaks.
Paying no heed even to the ice cracking apart beneath them, the Dragoons of Victoria advanced — valiant, unstoppable.
Gripping their long lances, charging in a wedge-shaped formation like the point of an awl, the knights drove their charge home against the countless enemies.
And the knight at their vanguard shouted.
"The Dragoons of Victoria! With lance in hand, we join this battle!"
Between the hoofbeats and the roar of the advance, the cry of the lead knight stabbed into the girl's ears.
"—Glory be to Victoria!"
With that cry, the lead knight's lance collided with a warrior of Suleiman.
CRACK-BOOM—!
The thrust — loaded with horrifying acceleration and mass — detonated, punching clean through the body whole.
The vanguard knight of Victoria swung the sharp lance, enemy still impaled upon it, out to the side.
Flinging the skewered corpse off the lance tip and dashing it against the ground, the knight charged on toward the front without ever slowing.
Lance charge after lance charge followed in formation, sweeping away every enemy in their path.
Around the girl — staring blankly, head raised — the hoofbeats of salvation thundered past on every side, drumming the ground, ringing in her ears.
***
Enoch suddenly realized he could hear it — the distant, faint tremor of the ground reaching his ears.
— ————. ————! ———!!
At the same time, the enemy's low cry sounded. By that, he knew he had returned to reality.
In this situation, with the erosion mounting, the time squandered watching visions of the past — barely a single second.
In that interval, the advancing rumble filling his ears again — despair rose and he clenched his teeth. Had yet another enemy force appeared in that split second?
In the middle of a battlefield where not even hope could be found anymore, Enoch clenched his fist.
But right then, Enoch noticed April's stunned expression before him.
She stretched out her hand, pointing behind Enoch.
"Th-that......!"
Puzzled, he glanced back — and his eyes flew wide before he could stop himself.
There, a sight Enoch had never once predicted was unfolding.
Beneath the sky of light kindled by the Sky Lanterns,
the great banner of Victoria was streaming in the wind.
The one holding the banner couched in one hand was a girl in the full dress uniform of the honor guard. Aslin.
Alicia was at her side as well.
But they were not as he knew them.
Because both of them were mounted. And not merely mounted — on sleek, enormous mechanical horses of openwork steel-frame design, their inner workings plainly visible — and at that, Enoch lost his words.
And behind them, countless Dragoon troops sat their own mechanical mounts, arrayed in perfect order.
At the head of soldiers bearing the finest armament the modern Victoria Domain's Dragoons could muster, Alicia raised the lance in her hand high toward the sky.
"Alicia of Victoria! With Bombardment Lance in hand, I join this battle!"
In time with her declaration at the very front, Aslin swung her banner around in one great arc, unfurling it.
At the end of that beautiful motion, the unfurled banner snapped in the wind. Upon the red cloth of the flag, the white lion emblem of Victoria rippled.
Sweeping the banner — now revealed to the world — forward in a great arc, Aslin cried out.
"—Glory be to Victoria!"
With those words, Alicia and Aslin, lances couched, spurred their mechanical horses to full gallop.
Watching the Dragoons of Victoria thunder after her with a roar, Enoch finally understood.
The image of the Dragoons he had seen within the inherited memories of the past overlapped before his eyes.
It was unmistakably the same sight.
Centuries later, in the present — the reinforcements of the past were once again charging in, mighty lances leveled, to the aid of the one who had inherited the sword.
And at their head, ash-brown hair streaming, Alicia glared at the enemy with vividly blazing eyes.