Ishura - Volume 8 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10- Royal Palace Grounds

Yukis the Ground Colony wasn’t the only one who acted outside the purposes of his camp in the midst of the melee.

There was a thin man named Kyaliga the Music Reed. He was a general in command of the fourth battalion of Iriolde’s Army, united in the anti-Aureatia cause.

However, Kyaliga’s own perception was slightly different. Kyaliga was now, just as he always had been, a general of the Central Kingdom, and he was only working with his benefactor Iriolde temporarily in order to reclaim the true Kingdom. As such, he was planning on taking advantage of the grand coup to carry out an attack on the royal palace.

Standing in front of his soldiers as they lined up around the moat encircling the royal palace grounds, Kyaliga wept.

“Hic, mrr…sniff—Everyone… Thank all of you…for serving under a man like me—hic—this far… From here, we will…recapture the palace.”

He wasn’t crying because he was overcome with emotion. Kyaliga was almost always crying no matter the occasion. It may have been some sort of illness, but there was a far more apparent ailment affecting Kyaliga.

Kyaliga the Music Reed professed to be a general who had had continued to defend the Kingdom from the age of the Central Kingdom. There were no actual records of this. A man of poor birth, ever since Kyaliga received words of appreciation for his work from King Aur during an inspection visit to the slums, he had started to believe he was a vassal of the monarch himself.

In the age of the Central Kingdom, Kyaliga the Music Reed had been an odd sort. Even the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists, aiming to reinstate the Central Kingdom, hadn’t accepted his delusional claims. Ironically, it was by becoming part of a rebel army hostile to the Kingdom that Kyaliga’s talents as a general shouldering the name of the Central Kingdom had blossomed.

Kyaliga’s weapon was a large naginata nearly twice his height. At his feet there were several people’s bodies cut up and scattered about, and the large bridge across the moat had been lowered.

Charging ahead alone before the bridge was down, he had wiped out all the Palace Guards protecting the moat.

As he swung his great naginata, deadly enough to kill a minia with the slightest grazing cut, he was able to fly right into the middle of the enemy force with his mad charge. Kyaliga was also a natural-born fighter.

“Th-there is nothing to fear. Sephite is a demon king. Claiming the title of Queen, hic, she brought crooks and scoundrels with her…a-and is nothing but a, unnnnh, self-proclaimed demon king who, sniff, captured the Kingdom temporarily with fear!”

The other rebel army who obeyed Haade’s operational maneuvers had been encircled by traps artfully set up before the fighting began. However, the Aureatia army’s superiority didn’t work against Kyaliga, ignoring the operation and acting on his own. In fact, it had been possible to use the other battles as bait and invade far further than normal, reaching the doorstep of the royal palace.

Kyaliga’s battalion, flying the flag of the Central Kingdom’s restoration, was filled with regular soldiers from the era of the Central Kingdom and with experienced combat veterans who had switched sides from the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists. They were equipped with rifles from the Beyond, and to carry out a suicide bombing attempt, they were given Bomb Golems that would fly at high speeds.

They possessed more than enough fighting power. It was safe to say that there hadn’t been any armed group in Aureatia’s history that had managed to advance all the way to the royal palace with such quality and quantity of arms.

However, Kyaliga felt loathing as he shed his tears.

I knew I couldn’t trust Iriolde after all. He was also nothing more than a politician. He isn’t able to share my idea of righteousness…

This line of thinking didn’t take into account the fact that he had mobilized the fourth battalion he was entrusted with on his own judgment, and disobeyed Iriolde’s Army.

If we had the same weapons from the Beyond…if he gave us the heavy weaponry that could directly shell the royal palace, then we could have taken down the palace from right here… The truth is, he and his cronies never planned on taking back the Kingdom at all!

Obviously, the possibility of Kyaliga assaulting the royal palace was an extreme inconvenience to Iriolde’s army. The pretext of their plan to overthrow Aureatia was to eliminate Rosclay’s reformation faction for the sake of the people of Aureatia and Queen Sephite, and an assault on the royal palace would make them lose this moral cause.

The fourth battalion hadn’t been supplied Iriolde’s army’s heavy machine guns and recoilless guns capable of destroying key positions because they were aiming to prevent the battalion from going out of control before it could happen, but this meant that Kyaliga the Music Reed had pushed ahead even beyond the expectations the leaders of the camp had for them.

It wasn’t possible to predict with accuracy how the surging morale of battle would come into play. Much more, Iriolde’s camp, which had swelled up from countless incorporated anti-Aureatian forces, possessed a structural weakness from being unable to unify all the ideologies within the camp. Some things actually grew weaker from growing fatter and increasing in number.

“Everyone, please fight with me! For justice!”

Instead of a banner, Kyaliga lifted his great naginata up high, and the roar from the soldiers followed after.

The powerful fortune to take advantage of the melee to then break through the Aureatia army’s defensive battles one by one, and the excitement of having victory right before their eyes… The sound of hooves galloped like a thunderstorm, crossing over the great bridge and entering into the royal palace grounds.

On top of that were three Bomb Golems. The golems, with their massive round frames, were weapons meant to lead the way at speeds surpassing the calvary’s mobility, to blow up the gate, and create an opening to storm the royal palace.

Since Aureatia needed to cope with the battles breaking out all across its borders, they only anticipated a counterattack from the Palace Guard Bureau. While the royal palace may have been the central seat of power, protected by the world’s most powerful military force, as long as they aimed for the exact second when their defenses couldn’t react, it was possible to cut off the head of power with a single short sword—

“Recapturing the Central Kingdom? Give me a break.”

In the direction of the three golems’ advance lingered a wiry man with a very sinister look on his face.

With both arms dangling downward, he stood against the golems.

“Sniff… It seems you’ve come here to die, Aureatia Ninth General, Yaniegiz the Chisel…!”

“Hee-hee. Kyaliga the Music Reed. Want me to fill you in? Tell you why idiots like you survived up until now?”

Before he finished talking, something flashed in Yaniegiz’s hands.

The green light, tracing an incomprehensible square arc through the air, struck the feet of the Bomb Golems one after another.

The three golems, lined up together as they charged, all tumbled on the spot.

“…!”

Kyaliga forcefully changed his horse’s direction.

Several of the cavalrymen on the front line had their advance obstructed by the golems and were thrown from their horses. Others were forced to stop altogether.

Yaniegiz laughed.

“We let you all live because you’re a bunch of worthless fools.”

The bomb golems exploded all at once.

The vanguards who had their advance stopped were blown apart with their horses and perished.

A moment later, the heat wave and aftershock hit Kyaliga. He gritted his teeth and withstood it. A Central Kingdom general couldn’t let himself be defeated by something like this. Right now, Kyaliga cried out of sheer anger.

“Light arrows… Mote Nerve Arrow…! How dare you use the Central Kingdom’s magic item…!”

“Hee-hee. What, you didn’t know the full details on its abilities? The thoughts its wielder has the moment it fires are forcefully carried out on the life-form it shoots… I may not be able to ‘self-destruct,’ but it looks like as long as it’s something the target can pull off, it’ll happen without a hitch, huh.”

Yaniegiz made an exaggerated show of his admiration.

Kyaliga wouldn’t stand for it. Both that the man was selfishly using a magic item of the Kingdom, nor that it was likely done specifically to rob Kyaliga of his composure. However, Kyaliga was always crying. He could say that reining in uncontrollably strong emotions was something he did constantly.

Him choosing to talk from this distance means that he doesn’t want to step inside spear range. Is he buying time for the Mote Nerve Arrow to reload…? By standing there unable to move—

Kyaliga’s scowl at Yaniegiz was to keep the man’s attention on him.

The rearguard calvary soldiers were equipped with guns from the Beyond.

You make for a good rifle target.

There were gunshots.

“Huh?”

Yaniegiz’s thin body lurched and abruptly toppled over.

“You…lose, Yaniegiz.”

There was another gunshot.

The bullets weren’t flying in his direction. That was when he noticed.

Kyaliga turned to the rear guard. The group behind him were crossing swords with an Aureatian squad. Kyaliga’s troops were the ones being hit with gunfire.

In the middle of the gunfire, a plump round man was fighting. Jumping through the gaps in the tight-knit formation with rabbit-like alacrity, he continuously struck with his sword, the tip mysteriously broken, using only minimal movements of his wrist.

“Y’know…I don’t really want to do this.”

Each time his blade connected, human and horse alike collapsed without a sound. They stopped moving as if their bodies were paralyzed.

The man murmured with artless simplicity as he single-handedly took down numerous soldiers.

“But you should stop trying to invade the royal palace. I’m gonna have to kill you otherwise.”

“Aureatia’s Tenth General…Yuca the Halation Gaol!”

Yaniegiz the Chisel was known as Rosclay the Absolute’s right-hand man, but he also served as the head of the Police Agency. Kyaliga should have anticipated that he would cooperated with Yuca, tasked with preserving national peace.

Then, that first shot at Yaniegiz—

Following his hunch, Kyaliga jumped from where he stood.

The flashing shot of green light that came flying in from the side hit his horse, and the rest missed. The horse screamed in intense pain and flailed about.

Kyaliga looked up as he rolled across the ground.

“Whoops… Well, ’pose an ant-brained fool can at least figure that much out.”

Yaniegiz lifted his body up. This man was never shot to begin with. He had simply pretended to collapse to the ground in sync with the gunshots. If Kyaliga had been a second late, he would’ve been hit by Mote Nerve Arrow’s attack, and ordered to feel intense pain or pass out.

“Two from the Twenty-Nine Officials, and two magic items. Do you understand the meaning behind Aureatia deploying this much fighting power?”

Yet another scream erupted from behind Kyaliga.

Yaniegiz grunted with scorn. “It means the grace period we gave you fools is over!”

Kyaliga dashed forward.

With his great naginata in his hands, he ferociously closed the distance to Yaniegiz. Its slash, making full use of the great naginata’s mass and length, carried speed and force that was impossible to guard against, capable of sending an opponent’s torso flying just by touching the tip up against the top of the shoulder.

I won’t even let him realize he’s dead.

In the middle of his charge, he bent his trunk, then shoulders, getting in position to mow Yaniegiz down.

A slash came rushing from two o’clock.

His fist, flexor severed and deprived of all grip strength, flung the great naginata in a different direction.

The pain signal arrived on a delay.

Forcing his way in was a man with a shaved head.

“Damn lunatic.”

Aureatia’s Twenty-Fourth General, Dant the Heath Furrow.

The leader of the Palace Guard Bureau. A loyal retainer of Queen Sephite since the era of the United Western Kingdoms.

“It’s a disgrace that mongrels like you were even allowed to step foot within the royal palace grounds.”

The course of the defensive battle for the royal palace, up against an unprecedentedly large fighting force, seemed to be completely decided…

However, not a single person had even imagined the reality.

Neither Dant, Yaniegiz, nor Yuca, not even Kyaliga, could have possibly known.

That an unimaginable, impossibly great fighting force was going to upset absolutely everything about the situation there.