Danmachi: The Multiverse Portal

Let's keep pushing.

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Snowfield Police Department

"How did the investigation go?"

Inside his office, Orlando Reeve held a phone to his ear. The man on the other end was his Servant, Alexandre Dumas.

Caster was the only Servant Orlando could safely send near the factory. Ordinary magi couldn't get close. As soon as they entered the area, a trespasser-repelling field forced them to turn back before they even knew what was happening.

Dumas, at least, could probe the place through Snowfield's computer network.

"Come on, brother. You really think I can do everything?" Dumas complained from inside his workshop. "I'm not going anywhere near that place."

As an author, he possessed an excellent instinct for stories, danger, and the people behind them. He managed to find fragments of strange data online, but every time he tried to dig deeper, the people on the other side caught him and sent a warning.

"You're afraid?" Orlando asked. He hadn't expected his usually fearless Caster to back down.

"This isn't about courage. That place is wrong." Dumas's tone lost its usual teasing edge.

"Every time I try to access their network, they catch me right away. They already know who I am, what I am, and where I'm working from. They're nothing like Faldeus—the government dog you're working with—or that old lunatic Francesca."

Orlando might have been willing to test the warning, but Dumas wasn't that foolish.

Whoever occupied the factory had identified a Servant through a modern network and chosen not to retaliate. That restraint made them more dangerous, not less.

"Still, I think I know what they are."

Orlando straightened in his chair. "What?"

"AN ARMY." The answer came without hesitation.

Dumas had been summoned with a general understanding of the current era, and the pattern was clear. The factory became a sealed compound in just one day. Every probe was found, traced, and warned off, but no one tried a reckless counterattack.

That wasn't the behavior of a magus protecting a workshop.

It was military discipline.

"If that isn't an army, I'll write my name backward for the rest of my life," Dumas added.

Orlando fell silent.

'An army?'

'Whose army could it possibly be?'

The soldiers around Snowfield were supposed to be under Faldeus's control. No other large group could enter the city without leaving records, attracting satellite attention, or alerting half the country's intelligence agencies.

It didn't make sense.

But Orlando trusted his Servant's judgment.

"I understand. I'll make the necessary arrangements."

He ended the call, though the question remained.

Could an army of ten thousand people truly be hiding beneath Snowfield?

A small private unit wouldn't worry him. What concerned Orlando was the possibility that this force didn't belong to the United States at all.

His secretary, Vera Levitt, approached and placed a cup of coffee on his desk.

"An army?" she asked.

"Vera, do you believe that's possible?"

An organized military force showing up out of nowhere would be a disaster. The United States was the leading power at this time. An unknown army inside its borders would make every government department panic.

Vera sorted through the documents on the side of his desk.

"I think it's very possible, but it might not be a national army."

She pulled out a report.

"The CIA has found no evidence of large-scale troop movements from any foreign country. There's no missing formation, no unusual mobilization, and no logistical trail leading into Nevada."

"In other words, a conventional army couldn't have reached Snowfield unnoticed." Her finger settled on a name in the file. "My current theory is that one of the Holy Grail War's participants brought a private force—perhaps one that has remained hidden inside the United States for generations."

"Someone like the Chelc family..."

The report concerned Tiné Chelc. Her family commanded an organized force drawn from its own people, one capable of moving and fighting without relying on any recognized state.

Orlando considered the possibility.

"That would explain it."

With no solid evidence, a private army seemed like the most likely answer. The United States had no outside enemy who could secretly land ten thousand soldiers here.

If such a force existed, it was probably created by someone inside the country.

Orlando relaxed slightly.

A foreign army would be a national crisis.

Someone's private soldiers were just another problem in the Holy Grail War.

"They'll reveal themselves eventually," he said. "For now, focus on the other participants."

He dropped the investigation and left the problem for Faldeus. If an unknown military force had shown up in the country, it was up to the federal agents involved in the ritual to handle it.

—•——•——•——•——•——•—

Colesman Special Correctional Center

Faldeus Dioland was dealing with the same problem.

"What did we find?"

The surveillance signals around the factory had been changed, redirected, or erased. Even the local wireless traffic was now under someone else's control.

This wasn't the work of a lone magus.

It was a professional operation.

"We couldn't identify the occupants, Director Faldeus," his secretary reported. "Our people weren't the only ones who attempted reconnaissance."

"Several unaffiliated magi approached the property. The Snowfield Police Department also sent observers, along with operatives belonging to domestic organizations."

"None succeeded."

Every scout encountered the same phenomenon. Once they came within roughly five hundred meters of the factory, they were turned around and sent back without understanding what had happened.

By the time their thoughts cleared, they were already standing far from the property.

No memories.

No usable observations.

Nothing that could be analyzed beyond the effect itself.

"I see."

The method felt familiar to Faldeus.

'Military personnel?'

'So someone involved in the government slipped an armed force into Snowfield.'

He could picture how it happened. The country's leaders were full of ambitious people looking for achievements, promotions, and ways to get ahead of their rivals. One of them might have seen the Holy Grail War as the perfect chance to send in a private unit and grab any rewards.

"End the investigation."

Faldeus wasn't about to upset an influential family just to find out whose soldiers were hiding in the factory. If the force belonged to a powerful official or one of the government's private backers, pushing the issue would only hurt his own standing.

"Yes, sir."

His secretary had come to the same conclusion. If these were private soldiers, arresting them without knowing who was behind them would cause more problems than just leaving them alone.

Once she stepped away, Faldeus leaned back and recalled the other presence connected to the group.

A Servant had appeared among them.

He hadn't seen the figure properly, but someone had clearly performed an unauthorized summoning outside the ritual's expected framework.

"Notify the technical division," he ordered. "I want the bounded fields surrounding that location analyzed from a distance."

"The unknown Servant may be an illegally summoned participant—or perhaps a newly manifested Caster."

If that was true, the number of active Servants had already reached seven.

The factory was no longer only the workshop of a careful magus. The people inside had soldiers, advanced surveillance, strong defensive Magecraft, and at least one possible Servant whose identity was still unknown.

Faldeus would investigate, but only with instruments and formulas, not by sending more people into a trap.

"Yes, Director."

The two official groups working for the United States had come to different conclusions.

Orlando chose to wait for the army to expose itself.

Faldeus chose to study its defenses while keeping his distance.

Neither of them really knew what was under the factory.

—•——•——•——•——•——•—

In a house near the factory, the Zealot stood alone.

After learning that Jester Karture, the Dead Apostle she hated, was still her Master, her anger nearly overwhelmed her.

She wanted to find him, tear him out of hiding, and kill him with her own hands.

But Jester had vanished so completely that even she couldn't locate him.

Worse, another problem had taken his place.

"The people inside that compound aren't human." She remembered the soldiers she had encountered the previous night.

One look was enough. Their presence was as strong as Heroic Spirits, but nothing about them seemed like magi or Servants.

Then came their weapons... One bullet had torn through one of Jester's lives. The following shots destroyed several more before he managed to escape.

The guns looked like normal human technology, but they worked far better than any weapons from this era.

The Zealot needed to know what kind of beings wielded them.

She approached the factory again, only to discover that its defenses had changed since their first encounter.

Foreign divinity now permeated the ground.

This wasn't Hestia's power.

The underground base had been expanded and sealed behind a bounded field made by Space Ereshkigal. The ground itself now carried the idea of the Underworld, hiding everything below from anyone outside.

The Zealot stopped at the perimeter.

Death lingered everywhere.

Crossing that line without permission meant entering the territory of a Goddess who ruled over the dead. Even as an Assassin-class Servant, she couldn't guess what would happen to her Saint Graph if she went inside.

The barrier seemed to plunge without end. As the Zealot studied it, a disturbance rippled beneath Snowfield.

Mana surged through the city's Leylines.

She spun toward its source.

Someone was drawing spiritual energy from the land, gathering enough power to fuel a summoning ritual.

"A magus has made their move." There could be no other explanation. Another participant was preparing to summon a Servant.

The factory would have to wait.

The Zealot left her observation post and raced toward the disturbance.

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