Chapter 269
Chapter 269. Latent Heat (6)
An ultra-long-range sniper shot that targeted the battery with pinpoint accuracy.
Immediately after the massive midair explosion, the transport aircraft, caught in the shockwave, lurched as if about to crash, veered off to the side, and fled.
The enormous aircraft's propellers faded into the distance with a gale-force wind, and then quiet stillness settled.
Almost simultaneously, the light from the midair-destroyed cargo faded, and in that instant, hope visibly drained from the faces of every freelancer around him.
Freelancers frantically deployed shields to avoid the battery fragments scattering in all directions, shouting in horror.
"What?! What the hell is this?!"
"It's Anarchilon! I've seen it before! That's its magic!"
"This is insane — from how far away did it fire that?!"
Enoch furrowed his brow. How was this even possible? No matter that it was a Magical Beast created by black magic, could it really see this far in total darkness?
No — the fact that it had precisely sniped the battery in the first place was strange. Could the beast actually know what it was?
But there was no time for further thought.
"Direct Lineage!! Are you okay-mka?!"
Confirming that Nano, looking up at him, was unharmed, he rose quickly and assessed the situation.
The enemy's sniper shot had caught every last battery in the explosion — total loss. The searchlights installed on the wall were now clearly nothing more than empty shells.
To make matters worse, the thunderous rumble of enemies approaching through the deep darkness was growing ever closer.
Looking at the ground far from the wall, the dark earth was covered with green-light-spilling creatures rapidly closing in.
The final battle was imminent.
Before he knew it, even the wind that had been howling moments ago had gone still. Only silence dwelled atop the Outsourcing District's wall.
As if there were no wind to blow for those who faced nothing but the fate of death, even the air held its breath over the battlefield. Only the pitch-black night sky stretched endlessly above them all.
Despair.
There was simply no other word for the atmosphere that now settled as an unmistakable pall of defeat across everyone's face. Enoch gripped his axe.
Was this how it would end — defeated, everything over?
Was there truly no way to change the fate that lay ahead?
"......"
Enoch quietly raised his head.
Even if that were truly the case, there was still only one thing to do. No matter how obvious defeat seemed, accepting it without even fighting was never an option.
Because that was not the way of someone who had relied on nothing but a single sword to fight across the Magic Empire.
The end was unknowable — and precisely because of that, he had to fight.
Enoch pressed a finger to the earset in his ear, steadied his gaze forward, and drew in a breath.
"All Interim members, issuing operational directives......"
Just then, Sirocco tugged hard on his sleeve.
"......Hey, look over there!"
"What?"
Enoch turned his head, but Sirocco didn't answer. She was pointing at a single spot in the sky behind them, staring blankly.
Suddenly feeling warm light at his back, an instinctive sense of something amiss made Enoch turn to follow Sirocco's gaze.
And then, shielding his eyes from the intense light with his hand — eyes so accustomed to the dark — he narrowed them.
And for the first time, he was struck speechless.
"......Ah."
The entire night sky above the Outsourcing District was blazing with light. He immediately recognized that the source was countless human-torso-sized hot-air lanterns floating in the air.
Beneath each rectangular lantern, combustible material burned and rose, and the heated air made each lantern sway gently side to side as it climbed.
Most astonishing of all was the sheer number.
Thousands, tens of thousands of lanterns — enough to fill the entire sky — twirled and drifted like dandelion seeds, bumping into one another as they ascended. Even as he watched, the light multiplied, doubling and tripling in brightness.
Beside him, Sirocco was staring at the otherworldly spectacle, mouth slightly agape, lost for words.
"The Lantern Festival...... it was today?"
A conversation with the Underground Guard Captain, who led the Outsourcing District's non-mages, suddenly resurfaced in his mind.
—The Lantern Festival is the only event we non-mages can participate in, which is why we prepare so enthusiastically.
—These lanterns are our hope and our prayer. The will to live, held by those who go unrecognized in a society like this.
But a question remained.
The Lantern Festival was supposed to have been scaled down to a modest event because of the large-scale Magical Beast invasion linked to the Black Mages. Yet this was clearly a spectacle that could only belong to a full-scale festival.
For this to be possible, an enormous workforce would have had to be concentrated, public sentiment in the troubled Outsourcing District would have had to be rallied, and a unifying figure would have been needed to restore the event to its original scale......
Who on earth could have organized something this grand?
Just then, a soft electronic tone signaling an incoming transmission chimed in Enoch's earset.
[Direct Lineage. This is Amelia. Can you hear me?]
Enoch flinched and pressed his finger to the earset.
"Saintess...... This is......"
The Saintess spoke, accompanied by the sound of her Tin Staff tapping the ground.
[I led the organization of the Lantern Festival from here. Lord Enoch, each and every one of those lanterns is the hope and prayer of the Outsourcing District's citizens. Their will to live. I wish to entrust the future of this 19th Outsourcing District to you.]
From the Underground — the stronghold of the non-mages — Sky Lanterns that had never held light and were slated for disposal were now rising into the night sky.
Glancing to the side, April's eyes sparkled as she gazed up at the sky, bathed in the light of the lanterns burning their hope as they ascended.
[Please, just as you did for me not long ago, this time become the hope for everyone here.]
Instead of answering, Enoch closed his eyes and slowly opened them.
"......I have no intention of becoming hope."
But he gazed straight ahead — toward his own unchanged goal, toward the path he would continue to walk — and spoke in a low voice.
"But the fate this place faces — I will change it. Without fail."
He ended the transmission and turned around.
Together with Nano, April, and Sirocco right beside him, he looked up at the world of light from atop the wall.
Warm light poured from the lanterns like hand-held lanterns, and clusters of orange radiance drifted toward one another, caressing each other, sometimes colliding, ascending slowly as they filled the night sky on an enormous scale.
Sirocco, in particular, was frozen in the exact posture she had been in — clutching his sleeve — since moments ago.
Glancing to the side, she was gazing up at the sky in a daze, captivated by the beauty of the sight.
The resolve the Sword Saint of the Waves had once made flickered through his mind. In order to truly protect what she wished to protect, she had said she wanted to become a Sword Saint.
White cheeks, slightly wavy red hair fluttering across them. That prim gaze, a girl honest to a fault. Looking at the first squad member and Follower Family he had ever gained, he finally understood the Sword Saint's feelings.
Enoch watched her quietly and spoke.
"Sirocco. The non-mages here, the citizens of the Outsourcing District — all of them. They may be people whose fate will never be accepted upon this land of the Magic Empire."
"Yeah......"
"The same goes for me. And freelancers like April, residents of the Outsourcing District like Nano. And the Beast-kin, like your people."
Enoch knelt on one knee.
And brought himself to Sirocco's eye level.
"Just as you didn't want a future where you lost me, I want to change the fate that lies ahead too. And to do that, we have to fight and win."
Before his eyes, Sirocco's ruby-like irises gleamed, reflecting the light of the lanterns carrying hope.
"......So, I'm giving my Follower Family an order."
Enoch fixed his gaze on Sirocco and added coldly.
"Go wild on this battlefield."
Sirocco glanced at him with her prim gaze, then folded her arms, nodded, and let a confident smile spread.
"Hmm~ph, fine. I like that order."
Enoch nodded back and once again looked down at the battlefield swarming with enemies, searing the objective into his eyes.
He could feel it — the entire squad's hearts had become one. A sense of unity beyond words.
Enoch noticed that in himself and smiled faintly. Strange. The situation hadn't improved. If anything, it was overwhelmingly hopeless.
And yet, what was this emotion surging in his chest? Why did he feel so calm right now?
Was this the Sword Saint's erosion? Or his own emotion?
He didn't know. But that was enough.
Just moments ago, the anxiety over whether they could really win had been crushing — and now it had vanished entirely.
No — they could win. There was no way they would lose.
Enoch glanced behind him at the battlefield.
And stopped in his tracks, stunned.
He could see. He could see everything, clear as day.
The countless lights illuminating the entire Outsourcing District had replaced the searchlights, banishing the night sky and exposing the army that had been marching through the darkness in broad daylight.
Without a single product of the modern Magic Empire's engineering or any brilliant spell — only the light of lanterns shone in place of the stars in the night sky.
Anarchilon was easy to spot. Rear center.
Beside him, April — seated with her sniper rifle mounted on its tripod — peered through her scope and began her briefing in a clear voice.
"Anarchilon visually confirmed. Distance approximately four kilometers, currently approaching. All snipers standing by at designated positions!"
"Enemy vanguard?"
"Enemy remnant aerial units approaching the wall! Vanguard composed primarily of ordinary-class — numerous!"
Following April's report and looking at the sky, Flying-Type Magical Beasts, silhouetted against Anarchilon's fifty-meter-tall frame, were closing in like a black cloud.
"Hmph, I see them too!"
Sirocco stamped the ground, and her ruby-like eyes blazed scarlet.
Enoch swept his right arm out to the side, extending the jet-black long-hafted axe gripped in his hand.
What he held aloft in the darkness was still a Magic Gear, not a sword. But it didn't matter.
Until just recently, the axe had been a Mage's artifact. One blade had been shattered in the fierce battle. Yet the cracked and fissured edge still gleamed with a frost-like light.
Damastes. As if to settle the grudge of its original owner — who had remained a freelancer to the very end before all those freelancers — the half-destroyed metal polearm hummed faintly.
Enoch, gazing ahead without expression, pressed his hand to the earset and drew in a deep breath.
"Commencing Operation Piercing Thrust. I repeat — commencing Operation Piercing Thrust. Now, April!"
"Roger! I've been waiting to hear that!"
More fired up than anything she had shown before, April let her pink hair stream as her eyes blazed.
"We even got the luxury of SIEG Industry support this time, so there's no way we can let the client down any further! All units, open fire!"
The reply came simultaneously — an explosion of sound so immense it made him involuntarily duck.
Dozens of positions across the rooftop of the wall encircling the Outsourcing District erupted. No — it felt as if they had erupted.
7.62mm light machine guns, 127mm cannons, 40mm revolver-type grenade launchers boasting overwhelming firepower — SIEG Industry-manufactured weapons all opened fire at once from their wall-mounted positions.
The cacophony and vibration, no different from a volcanic eruption, left Enoch feeling as though he would go deaf.
All timed to Enoch's prior instructions, April had coordinated with the other firearms-type Magic Gear freelancers to unleash every ounce of firepower in unison.
SIEG-manufactured large-caliber Magic Gear and artifacts — with firepower specs far surpassing the freelancers' personal weapons — tore through the darkness and poured out an endless barrage.
The bullet trajectories hurtled toward Anarchilon's aerial forces, and the next instant, dozens of mana flashes burst to life.
Pillars of ice erupted in midair to shatter enemies, and above them blade-like storms swept through. One after another, spinning rings of fire formed and incinerated every airborne enemy.
Paying no heed to the shockwaves of heat and cold rolling over the battlefield, Enoch walked forward, uniform billowing.
A prolonged inferno of purgatorial flame materialized in the air, blanketing his entire field of vision.
The Flying-Type Experimental Beasts lost their wings, their carapace feathers burned away, their heads blown off as they began plummeting one after another.
A truly overwhelming, annihilating salvo — as if the entire Outsourcing District wall had been transformed into a firing platform.
Modern firearms combined with enchanted rounds reached the enemy formation's vitals, detonating the precisely inscribed magic at maximum efficiency to devastate the enemy swarm.
Watching it unfold, Enoch glanced at Sirocco beside him.
"Let's go."
"Yeah!"
Sirocco nodded, stomped hard on the ground to kick the AP Bomb case off the table beside her, snatched it from the air, and turned to face him.
Enoch sensed instinctively that no more words were needed between them, and smiled faintly.
And in that same moment, he understood.
This was where it began.
The final battlefield that would stake the fate of the 19th Outsourcing District — and could upend the future that flowed toward the original story.