Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 17 - Chapter 3

3. Is the King Who Does Not Sleep Unable to Sleep?

Who left this here? Or, if not who, then what?

How long had that mountain stood alone in the middle of the endless flat wasteland that was the Quickwind Plains?

People had a name for it.

Mount Grief.

There were a number of theories on its origin. This was the generally accepted one:

The largely broken form of the old castle at the summit was visible even at a distance during the day. Though it might have seemed like an ordinary castle, it was not. Long, long ago, it was a temple to the old gods. In ancient times, one king had the audacity to build a castle atop the ruins of that temple. Then, when the king died, the castle remained as his grave marker. The fearless king was revered for his great acts, and as a show of their sadness, people sang songs of lamentation as they faced his grave.

Even as countless stars shone overhead, the darkness of night on the Quickwind Plains felt suffocatingly thick. If a person looked up to the sky to resist being crushed by the oppressive gloom, the brilliant lights atop Mount Grief would be impossible to miss.

The scouts sent by the Volunteer Soldier Corps reported that there was currently construction underway to restore the old castle. In particular, the towering walls just past the steep slope near the summit had seen considerable repairs done to them.

With the exception of the narrow road to the gate, there were abatis-style barricades placed all around the castle. If they approached using the road, they would be picked apart by archers, crossbowmen, and slingers. If they took another route, they would have to remove the barricades. That would take time during which, obviously, they would be targeted by the same ranged weapons they would have faced on the road. The Volunteer Soldier Corps could have their mages lead a frontal assault and rapidly push past these obstacles, but they would have to be prepared to take no small number of casualties.

That’s why they were going for the back door.

Now, it wasn’t the case that there was a front gate and a back gate to this castle on top of a mountain.

The information about a “back door” came from Shinohara. His clan, Orion, had for a time investigated Mount Grief because it had become a den of undead. They had even infiltrated the castle many times.

That said, Orion’s focus hadn’t been the old castle.

The castle had been built atop the ruins of an old temple. The king who built it was also buried there, if the stories were true. However, search as they might, Shinohara and his people had been unable to find anywhere that an individual of such high status might have been laid to rest.

Was it possible the king’s grave was elsewhere? Orion continued their search, and, at long last, they found it.

It was underground.

Beneath the castle, there was a secret graveyard.

Well, to be precise, it was a space that they theorized was a graveyard, but that’s getting too nitpicky, so for now we’ll continue to call it the Graveyard.

Orion spent years investigating and finally succeeded in finding two ways into the Graveyard. One entrance in the old castle, another in the foothills of Mount Grief, each sealed behind a stone door.

Orion managed to enter the Graveyard through both. It was, unmistakably, a graveyard. Shinohara and Kimura were more or less certain the king had been buried beneath the castle. They claimed to have found enough proof to convince them of it.

Shinohara called the room where the king lay sleeping the burial chamber. Incredibly, Orion had managed to set foot in there. However, every time they entered the burial chamber, people died. Because of that, Shinohara was forced to order a retreat.

The reason all of this was relevant to the operation to take Mount Grief lay in the fact that the Graveyard could be entered through both the foothills and the castle.

We’ll call the entrance in the foothills the foothill entrance, and the entrance in the castle the castle entrance. Both led to the burial chamber. Incidentally, the castle entrance was far closer to the burial chamber.

In short, it was possible to enter through the foothill entrance, pass through the Graveyard, break through the burial chamber, and then enter the castle.

The assault on Mount Grief was a joint operation between the Frontier Army and the Volunteer Soldier Corps.

Commander Jin Mogis of the Frontier Army had sent a hundred of his best men under the command of General Thomas Margo. In addition to this, Haruhiro, Kuzaku, Ranta, Yume, Merry, Setora, and twenty-three members of Orion led by Shinohara were also participating.

The Volunteer Soldier Corps had sent Team Renji, the Tokkis, the Wild Angels, Iron Knuckle, and the Berserkers for a total of seventy people.

From this, a detached force of twenty-six members—ten from Orion, including Shinohara and Kimura; Haruhiro’s party; Team Renji; and the Tokkis—would attempt to breach the castle by traversing the Graveyard.

That left the main force. Their role was to posture as if they were going to take Mount Grief in a frontal assault, forcing the enemy to maintain a combat-ready footing while they awaited a signal from the detached force.

It was no exaggeration to say that the success or failure of this operation would hinge on the detached force.

In fact, the main force wouldn’t attack at all until the detached force made it into the castle and sent the signal. If they couldn’t get results, the operation wouldn’t even begin.

“Grah...!” Kuzaku went for a big swing with his large katana and slashed through a humanoid pawn.

“Na ha ha...! I’ll show you how I deal with pawns!” The masked dread knight let out an ominous laugh, before springing at a pawn like he was some kind of monstrous bird. His katana flashed evilly as he shouted “Pawwwn!” and cut its head off. “That’s how!”

“Lame...” Kuzaku muttered, as he continued swinging his large katana around as easily as a stick. With each nimble swing of the blade, another pawn was cut down.

“Hoo-hah!” Yume, incredibly, was kicking them. She used a forward kick to push one of the pawns that approached her backwards and immediately hit it with a roundhouse kick to send it flying. It seemed like that would be that, but then she sprang into the air, hollering, “Cha-cha-cha-chai!” as she fired off three more kicks, each faster than his eyes could follow, and sent it flying again. Then, on top of all that—“Hah-nyah!”—she struck it with the palm of her hand, knocking it back through the air once more.

“What are you, some kinda kung-fu master?!” said the masked dread knight, who had been cutting down pawns left and right while shouting “pawn, pawn, pa-pawwn, pawn,” like it was some kind of sound effect.

Why was he having so much fun with this? Well, maybe it was because he was Ranta? That was just how Ranta was.

Merry and Setora stood back-to-back, using their battle staff and spear to fend off any pawns that approached them.

Haruhiro wasn’t sure what it was, but because Ranta and Yume moved around too much, he felt relaxed when he saw Merry and Setora holding one location. It wasn’t soothing, exactly. That’d be overstating the effect. This was still a battle, after all. Yeah. He didn’t have time to be soothed.

Haruhiro got behind a pawn that had been closing in on Merry and grabbed it. He held its head with his left hand, while using the dagger in his right to quickly tear its throat open.

The word “pawn” was apparently derived from a word for “foot soldier.” These pawns in the Graveyard had their entire bodies wrapped in something that resembled whitish bandages. For that reason, Orion also referred to them as mummy men or just mummies. But instead of being made of cloth or gauze, the bandages felt more earthy, somewhere between clay and earthenware. If you cut off or broke their heads, then they fell apart like the one Haruhiro had just killed. The pawns were apparently made of earth and bones.

“Thanks, Haru!” Merry shouted, which made Haruhiro feel a bit relieved, because recently she had been way too quiet. Now if only Setora would cheer up a bit too, he thought. He didn’t want the two of them to force themselves to act cheerful, though. He knew they would still do what was needed. He trusted them to. If there was any way they came up short, then it would be up to Haruhiro to cover for them. He was their leader, after all.

This part of the Graveyard was called the entrance hall, a large room immediately inside the foothill entrance. It was Orion that had named it that, of course. But was that really what it was? It seemed to be built more like a theater.

Soon after entering the entrance hall, the members of Orion had scattered more than a dozen rods that emitted a powerful light, so the room was just bright enough for them to see. The light didn’t reach the ceiling, though, and it wasn’t clear if the walls and floor were cobblestone or stone slabs. It was lower in the middle and higher out toward the edges, with the low center not looking entirely unlike a stage. Whatever the case, Haruhiro and the others were working their way toward that stage-like spot.

The pawns were weak, but they rushed in one after another. It was a real slog, trying to make any progress at all. It didn’t feel like the group was likely to take casualties, but if Haruhiro and his party were on their own, they might have been pushed out.

“Let’s take it slow and steady!” Shinohara used a shield with a dull silver luster to bash a pawn. His sword was short, but broad, with the end of the blade cut off diagonally. The shape was kind of unusual, but it was awfully sharp. It cut through the pawns like they were made out of paper.

Orion was a famous clan. Shinohara wasn’t the only skilled fighter among them. There was one guy called Matsuyagi, or something like that, who used a mace in each hand, fighting like a madman. It was a sight to behold. They also had two mages, a hunter, and a thief too. It was easy to see they were well balanced.

“Mwe heh!”

Though, that priest wearing glasses was doing a whole lot to throw off that sense of balance just by existing.

“Mwa hah!”

Kimura had to constantly be weird. Now, given Haruhiro was making Merry fight, he wasn’t in any position to say that Kimura should be staying out of the action. But still, Kimura didn’t need to be quite so proactive about moving up to the front line. Orion had plenty of other fighters, after all.

His fighting style was bizarre too. He protected himself with a small, buckler-style shield as he got up close and personal with the pawns, swinging his mace. For whatever reason, he refused to use the traditional sideways, diagonal, or downward swings that Haruhiro would have expected. He always swung from below. Every strike was an upward swing. His target was always the same.

“Kehfwah!”

The crotch.

Kimura swung his mace upward into a pawn’s crotch.

“Swa hah!”

When he maced pawns in the crotch, they didn’t so much fall apart as burst. Kimura liked the feel of it.

“Nufoh! Tovahhh!”

Wow, those were some weird noises he was making.

It sounded almost like Kimura was receiving sexual gratification from smashing the pawns. What kind of priest acted like that? Then again, having lost his memories of his time as a volunteer soldier, perhaps Haruhiro’s vague conception of what a priest was supposed to be like was off the mark? He couldn’t deny the possibility.

“Now for my ultimate skill!”

Another man wearing the same priest uniform as Kimura ran to the front and did a forward flip.

“Somersault Bomb!”

Using the momentum as he swung down, holding his warhammer with two hands, he smashed a pawn, and the floor beneath it. Both were utterly pulverized.

“Oooorahhh...!”

He then twisted around, lifting his weapon and swinging it down again all in one quick motion. It was terrifyingly fast.

That was Tada. Tada-san. He was nuts. There was a roaring explosion every time Tada-san struck down a pawn. Seriously, what was with that noise? This went beyond questions of whether or not it was appropriate for a priest to be fighting like that or not. What was even going on there?

“Heeeere’s my attack!”

Next to Tada, Kikkawa was a lightweight. He zoomed around, knocking the heads off pawns. Kikkawa was loud and seemingly desperate for attention, but moved efficiently, without waste.

“Dance like a leopard!”

When it came to Tokimune, it was kind of hard to tell if he was moving efficiently or not. He was certainly light on his feet, but what was with the way he twirled his sword around every time he struck a pawn? It seemed pointless, but maybe he was doing that to keep a certain rhythm? Though, that raised the question of whether rhythm was necessary.

“And sting like a whale!”

Seeing the way he jumped into the middle of a group of pawns, slammed his shield into the ground to do a handstand on it, then spun around as he kicked the pawns away, maybe he did need to keep a certain rhythm going. Not that Haruhiro would know. Seriously. Haruhiro had no idea. But setting that aside, he was pretty sure the saying was supposed to be, “Dance like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

Anyway, the Tokkis were all crazy, but the craziest of them all wasn’t Tokimune or Tada.

No, it was her.

She was supposed to be a mage, but she used swords.

Yeah, that’s right, swords.

And she dual-wielded them too.

Okay, yes, she had been carrying them all this time. Two swords, hanging at her hips. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that she used them. But the fact of the matter was, when Haruhiro saw her fight, it was gobsmacking. Just an incredible sight to behold.

If anyone was dancing like anything here, it was her, not Tokimune.

Mimori’s skill with a sword was...what’s the word? Magnificent. Her strokes were in no way slow, but they seemed unhurried. She went for a big swing and cut a pawn in half. Once she finished swinging her right blade, she didn’t pull back. She kept going with a big swing of her left. You would think that a swing like that would throw her off balance, but Mimori had a strong core. Even if her whole body was at an angle or she swung around with considerable force, her core never shook. Mimori never stopped, never slowed down. She just constantly flowed from one swing to the next. There was nothing artificial about it. Like she just kept swinging, and this was how it turned out. It felt like she had reached a certain state of perfection. That might be exaggerating, but it really did feel like Mimori’s swordplay was operating on another level. It was truly sublime.

And yet despite all of that skill with her swords, Mimori was still a mage, and she fought as only a mage could.

As she mowed down pawns, she was drawing elemental sigils with the tips of her blades and chanting a spell.

“Delm, hel, en, balk, zel, arve!”

Haruhiro had hallucinated explosive noises when he saw Tada pulverize a pawn with his warhammer, but, no, those hadn’t been real. This ear-shattering noise that reverberated through his stomach, this was what an explosion sounded like.

That was because five, six meters in front of where Mimori was pointing her sword, there had been an actual explosion.

The Arve magic spell Blast probably only blew away three, four, maybe five pawns at most. But it had a far greater effect than that.

“You see that...!”

Anna-san was being carefully protected by Kikkawa and Tokimune. Nothing was going to be able to hurt her. Now, as for Anna-san herself, she wasn’t really doing anything. Well, no, it’s not like she was doing absolutely nothing. She was puffing up her chest.

“That show you what we can do, yeah! Take that! Bet you scared now, you worthless losers...!”

She sounded full of herself. Full of herself and more than happy to show it.

The priests were there to act when something happened to their comrades. So, in a way, Anna-san might have been doing the right thing. The Tokkis had their own way of handling things. They didn’t seem to have lost anyone, so Haruhiro had to assume it was working for them. He even found Anna-san’s attitude almost refreshing. Because she was a priest, she was standing by until she was needed. But just because she had to stay on the sidelines, that didn’t mean she had to be apologetic about it. It was okay for her to be loud and proud.

The real surprise, though, was Team Renji.

The fighter with a buzz-cut who had a lantern hanging from his belt, Ron, and the teeny tiny priest, Chibi-chan, were defending the mage with black-rimmed glasses, Adachi, as they steadily took down pawns. Renji, meanwhile, was going all-out, and looked like he might take down all of the enemies himself, though realistically that wasn’t possible. The way that he kept a constant distance from his comrades and nonchalantly slashed any pawn that got too close to them seemed so easy, it was like he was taking a break.

No, he was fighting hard, and achieving more than most people, but didn’t it look like he was practically sleepwalking? That was how trivial he was able to make it look. That might have been the most amazing thing about him. It kind of threw Haruhiro off kilter.

“Huh...?!”

Suddenly, Haruhiro sensed something. What was that something? In the moment, he could only describe it as “something,” but he soon found out what it was.

It came flying in. Toward the stage from the left—no, ahead and to the left, huh?

“Kuzaku!” Setora shouted a warning before Haruhiro could.

“Whuh?!” Reacting instantly, Kuzaku hit the incoming object with his large katana, changing its course. It was pretty big. It managed to throw him off balance, even if only a little, so it must have been pretty heavy. What the hell was that?

“There’s more incoming!” Haruhiro shouted.

Were those balls? No, they were bullets. Fist-sized ones, huh? Talk about huge.

“Evade!” Shinohara shouted as he protected himself with his shield.

“Meow!” Yume bent over backwards, and the bullet she’d avoided slammed into and demolished a pawn. “They’re firin’ at blinds!”

“You mean firing blind! Gwah!” Ranta used some mysterious move to woosh left and right, avoiding two or three bullets. The shots that had missed him destroyed a pawn.

“Haunts!” Shinohara shouted, indicating in the direction the bullets had come from with his sword. “Prioritize taking them down first...!”

He had told them about haunts in advance. Unlike the pawns, the haunts were only humanoid from the waist up. They would stay in one place with both arms touching the ground, and they launched bullets out of their faces. Haunts were like fixed turrets.

With Kuzaku, Yume, Ranta, Merry, and Setora all present, the party could function perfectly well without him. Haruhiro ran off in the direction he expected the haunts to be in.

“You idiot!” Ranta overtook him and left him behind. “Leave this to me!”

He was exasperatingly fast. It was too late to try and get him to come back now. Haruhiro came to a stop. Let Ranta handle the haunts. He wouldn’t be the only one going after them, but at that speed, he’d surely be the first to get there.

Nope.

“Whuh...?!” Ranta cried out in surprise.

Haruhiro looked to see a figure racing ahead of Ranta.

“Renji!” Haruhiro was dumbfounded.

When had he gotten there?

Renji had left his team and gone to hunt down the haunts on his own.

“Murgh...!” Kimura’s glasses flashed.

In front of Ranta, Renji came to a sudden stop.

“What the...?!”

Were those mosquitoes? No, probably not. It just looked like a swarm of mosquitoes. A massive swarm, descending on Renji.

“Guheh...! To think a phantom would welcome us in the entrance hall!” Kimura couldn’t hide his excitement. Or was he just not trying to? Maybe not. This was Kimura, after all.

“Tch...!” Renji swung his greatsword, trying to drive away the swarm-like phantom. The force of the blade was able to scatter them, but it was like pushing your arm through a curtain. The phantom was made up of many, many miniscule insect-like things, making it difficult to cut them all with a sword. Even if the force of the blade could blow them away, they came back in no time.

“It won’t wooork...!”

Okay, Kimura. You’re allowed to be excited, but you shouldn’t sound so happy.

“Phantoms areeee! Practicallly immuuune! To physical damaaage! You haaaave! To use magiiic! Or... Whah?!”

“Oof...?!” Ranta sputtered. He had slowed down because even if he caught up with Renji, he wasn’t sure what to do about the phantom, but then someone shoved him out of the way. Someone tiny. That was...

“Light...!”

Chibi-chan... Team Renji’s priest. What was she doing?

“Lumiaris...!”

Doing a forward roll as she said something short, Chibi-chan got out in front of Renji, turning her palms toward the phantom.

“Wasn’t that chant a little shooort?!” Kimura shouted.

A chant. That was a chant? Light. Lumiaris. It usually goes, “O Light, may Lumiaris’s divine protection be upon you,” doesn’t it?

“Judgment!”

Seriously?

No exaggeration, Haruhiro thought he was going to go blind. His eyes slammed shut to hide from the danger. Even despite that, he could still see an intense white light through his eyelids, searing his retinas. Then there was the sound. Ear-piercing, like nothing he had ever experienced before. Chibi-chan had been a good distance from Haruhiro when she’d fired off the spell, but it still felt like there was a powerful wind blowing against him.

“The ultimaaaate! Light magiiiic....!” Kimura shouted excitedly.

You’re so annoying.

Haruhiro opened his eyes. It was still hard to see. But Chibi-chan’s ultimate spell, or whatever it was, had blown the phantom away.

“Hah...!” Renji swung at the haunt.

He must actually have been taking a break earlier. No joke. That was the only conclusion Haruhiro could draw.

This was different.

Not so much the speed as the quality of movement.

It was on another level.

Was Renji stepping in as he swung his greatsword? It seemed like something else entirely, didn’t it? The greatsword was single-edged with a thick blade, the back of which was all jagged. It was awfully long too, so it had to be heavy. No human should have been able to use it the way he did. It was like Renji had tied a chain to the hilt and was spinning it around using that chain. But you would have to add, like, two or three more of those chain greatswords on top of that, all spinning around at the same time, to have something close to whatever it was he was actually doing. Or maybe not? Yeah, no, that wasn’t it. No matter what it was that Renji was doing with that greatsword, Haruhiro wasn’t going to be able to figure it out anytime soon.

“Leave some for me!”

Ranta was saying something. But Renji wasn’t going to listen. It was hard to imagine anyone could stop him now.

“He’s really something, huh?”

By pure coincidence, Haruhiro happened to catch sight of Shinohara as the leader of Orion was whispering that. He had been taking every chance he could to observe Shinohara. Thanks to that, he was able to spot it.

Shinohara was expressionless.

That wasn’t the face of someone praising another person. When did a person lose all expression like that? Haruhiro couldn’t come up with an answer.

But it only lasted an instant. Soon, Shinohara was smiling again. His usual smile. That of the personable good guy. It seemed to say, I can tolerate anything.

“Hmph...” Tada shouldered his warhammer and looked around the area.

Tokimune gave his longsword a little twirl and cut down a pawn. “Have we more or less cleaned them out now?” he wondered aloud.

Renji had hunted down all the haunts. Ranta was stomping his feet in indignation.

“Ooookk!”

“What are you, a monkey?” Kuzaku muttered.

From the look of it, there were no pawns left, at least not in the area lit by the luminous rods.

“Duhuh...!” Kimura’s glasses flashed again. But, man, the way he laughed... Haruhiro just couldn’t get used to it. Every time he heard it, he got mad. It seemed to be different every time too. Because of that, it was always a fresh kind of infuriating. He didn’t need this kind of variety in his life.

“It looks like we’ve taken care of them for now. Gu fuh fuh...”

“Let’s hurry onward.” Shinohara sheathed his sword and headed deeper into the entrance hall. “More of them will turn up if we sit around.”

Was it just Haruhiro’s imagination? The remains of the pawns and haunts scattered around the entrance hall seemed to be stirring. From the look of it, the dirt wasn’t actually moving, so it must have been his imagination.

For now, at least.

Orion and the Tokkis started to move. Renji was already heading deeper and deeper into the entrance hall with Chibi-chan, Ron, and Adachi in tow.

Haruhiro signaled to Kuzaku, Yume, Merry and Setora with his eyes, then followed behind Team Renji.

Ranta adjusted his mask, then joined up with them.

“...This place gives me the creeps.”

Haruhiro agreed entirely, but it galled him to share an opinion with the masked dread knight, so he kept walking in silence.

In all the time they’d spent exploring the Graveyard, Orion had defeated a considerable number of enemies. And yet, more appeared every time they entered the Graveyard.

Shinohara and his people had even seen the remains of their enemies gathering together, forming into new enemies.

The Graveyard would never run out of enemies. There was no shortage of materials to make new ones with, and more would be created so long as the materials were there. That meant that no matter how many they defeated, there would always be more.

Obviously, this was no natural phenomenon.

There had to be some power at work here to keep churning them out. The bearer of that ability was somewhere in the Graveyard.

It seemed likely that, even now in death, the ancient king did not sleep.