86 - Volume 12 - Chapter Pr

The second advantage of introducing the Artificial Fairies to the battlefield is as follows:

They do not act outside the scope of their orders. There is no cowardice, no desertion, no impurities that will impede operational activity in the form of their individual will.

In other words, their introduction enables us to lift one of the layers of fog that hangs over the battlefield.

—VIKTOR IDINAROHK, ARTIFICIAL FAIRY OUTLINE

PROLOGUE

THE HOLY LAND OF MARY BLUE

Mele lived in the special municipality of Marylazulia in the north of the Giadian Empire. He spent every day playing from dawn to dusk with children roughly his age who lived in the same block. There was his best friend, Otto, who lived on the same floor as he did. Milha and Yono, from the floor beneath his. Rilé and Hisno from the building next door, as well as Kiahi, who was like a big brother to them all. Each block had either its own park, or a small forest area built over dried rivers in the outskirts.

Marylazulia was in the production territory of Shemno, on the border of the Wolfsland. Compared with other such production territories, which were typical agricultural communities that hadn’t changed in appearance over the last century, the city of Marylazulia must have looked like a whole different world. Paved, clean roads without a speck of dust to be seen. Each block of buildings was constructed and colored in a uniform manner, standing side by side to form modern, concrete apartment complexes. Their large stores were always stocked with goods and sundries.

Mele, Otto, and the children of this town had never gone barefoot. They had shoes, fine bread, fresh meat, and pretty clothes. The wealth afforded to the territories was actively and preferentially apportioned to their city. Thanks to the authority of House Mialona, their governors; and the efforts of House Rohi, the city protectors, their wonderful homeland was transformed from a common agricultural community to a wealthy town that provided an abundance of cutting-edge energy.

The large power plant on the outskirts enriched the special municipality and the territory. This plant, the Rashi Power Plant, was the only remnant of the town’s old name after it was rechristened as Mary the Blue-Mantled (Mary Lazulia), after the governor’s wife from two generations ago, who devoted her life to researching and planning the construction of the power plant. It was she who lifted Mele and his friends’ grandparents and great-grandparents from a life of plowing fields and tending to pigs. It was she who established this facility, which would go on to promise these children food, hygiene, and employment.

A girl waved from the entrance to the park, her hair a smoky shade of chocolate unique to the Cairns, the noble race of the Ferruginea people who governed this land. The brown strands were tied into two tails, each adorned with a large, fancy, hand-knitted lace ribbon.

“Mele, everyone, so this is where you were.”

“Ah, Princess!”

“It’s the princess!”

“Princess Noele!”

Mele and his friends cheered and hurried over to the girl. This was Noele, daughter to the head of the Rohi family.

“Princess Niam from House Mialona loaned me a movie. Let’s go watch it together.”

“Movie! I wanna watch the movie!”

“Yay!”

Mele and the others excitedly followed Noele. Noele was pretty and smart and the city’s collective princess, and to Mele and the others, she was also a dependable leader. Everyone in the village listened to whatever she said.

“Princess, what’s the movie about?”

“It’s about the leviathans—sea monsters that plague our neighbors in the Fleet Countries. They’re very big and can easily sink their ships!”

“I’ve heard about them!” Otto raised his hand enthusiastically. “Back when the Roginia River was still around, the leviathans would swim up its stream!”

“What?! That’s so scary!” Yono, one of the smaller girls, shrank in fear.

Noele, however, puffed up confidently.

“Don’t you worry. If one shows up, Father and Lord Mialona, and the young master and Princess Niam will drive it away! And I’ll fight, too, of course, as a proud member of the Imperial nobility!”

The children all looked at her with shining eyes.

“Wow! That’s awesome!”

“Princess, I want to fight, too!” Mele leaned forward excitedly, and Noele nodded. Her beautiful eyes were the color of sweet chocolate— she was his personal little queen.

“Of course, Mele. So long as you follow me, we can do anything!”

Such was the peaceful atmosphere of the Empire’s twilight—six months before the revolution.

On the continent’s north, off the shore of the Regicide Fleet Countries, ice floes drifted in from the open sea beginning in early autumn until the end of winter. The black, sandy, wave-beaten shores were closed off by walls of large ice blocks. White fields spanned as far as the eye could see, with the ice sticking out like the dorsal fins of a sea dragon.

And somewhere along those shores, a shadow crept, looking around like it had lost its way. It shone the color of frozen snow, like moonlight gleaming through a frosty glass window. Its shape was slim and delicate, trailing like a bride’s veil and the train of her dress. It was as beautiful as a mermaid princess gliding through a banquet hall formed by the ice floes.

But it stood higher than any princess—or even the greatest, sturdiest warrior—at over three meters tall. In the shadow of its veil were three eyeballs in its chest, their irises diamond-shaped and their metallic luster glistening in peafowl colors.

The Open Sea clans called it a Leuca—a subspecies of the leviathans that governed the open seas. Its veil and dress were a half-transparent overcoat membrane that protected its armored scales. The part that looked like its head was a converging organ unique to this species of leviathan. It produced sonic waves that enabled it to function as an active sonar.

When an adult specimen emitted their ultrasonic waves at maximum output, they could produce a bubble pulse capable of breaking through a combat ship’s bilge armor—and so the Leuca were nicknamed the man-eating sirens of the open seas.

But the Leuca creeping over the ice now was a far cry from such a terrifying creature. It was a small, young specimen. It’d been carried off along with the ice, separated from the seas to the north, and ended up drifting ashore.

The young Leuca turned its eyes to this unknown world, to the domain of humankind. And like a small brambling, the lost siren raised its voice in a pitiful call.