Ishura - Volume 8 - Chapter 13

Chapter 13- Catastrophe

The course of the battle on the royal palace grounds had been completely decided.

Kyaliga the Music Reed, general of the rebel army, had been crushed, with close to half of the squad he commanded being killed and driven back in a rout.

Yaniegiz the Chisel, Yuca the Halation Gaol, Dant the Heath Furrow. Already Aureatia’s greatest elite military officers were even utilizing enchanted swords and magic items to defend the palace. This wasn’t because their enemy was Kyaliga the Music Reed’s large battalion. Nor did it mean that if they could have defeated the enchanted swords or magic items, displaying their full power moments prior, Kyaliga’s battalion would have been able to win.

It simply meant one thing—no matter how much fighting power Kyaliga could have attacked with, even if they shelled and bombed them with the technology of the Beyond, their enemy had more than enough means at their disposal to outdo it all.

Bent down upon the ground, tears poured down Kyaliga’s cheeks.

“You should be ashamed…! Wicked traitors, turning your back on the Kingdom…!”

“Enough of your blithering,” Dant spat out, still thrusting his blade at Kyaliga.

Dant’s sword wasn’t an enchanted one. It was a completely ordinary longsword. Even then, he was fast enough with it to instantly decapitate Kyaliga if he made any suspicious movements.

“Aureatia was established in accord with King Aur’s dying wish. To ensure that without an heir of his own, the Central Kingdom wouldn’t come to an end after his passing, he adopted Queen Sephite from the United Western Kingdoms, and the new metropolis that was built to take the people of both Kingdoms equally is the Aureatia before you.”

“Wh-which one of us…is really blithering on here…sniff… The winner…always creates a convenient version of history…”

“You’ll get more than enough time to talk later.”

He felt it was inexcusable.

Dant the Heath Furrow was a palace guardian who had loyally served Queen Sephite, joining her in crossing from the United Western Kingdom to Aureatia.

Why couldn’t this man even imagine what Sephite might be feeling, having tasted the tragedy of the True Demon King while still young, and shouldered with the heavy responsibility of governing an unknown land as the last surviving member of the royal family? All without anyone close to her to confide in and while enduring occasional slander saying she was a usurper of the crown?

The greatest crime of the attacks on the royal palace, starting with Kyaliga the Music Reed himself, wasn’t the crime of rebelling against the royal family. Their crime was pointing their blades at a just barely eleven-year-old girl with no fighting strength of her own.

“I have to say, that was some real valorous work there, Lord Dant.”

A man with a wiry physique grinned ear to ear from afar. Aureatia’s Ninth General, Yaniegiz the Chisel.

“Though, I was planning on whittling them down here and there on my own you see, thinking that it wasn’t worth disturbing you over. They put up such a feisty fight, I wasn’t able to stop them.”

“Don’t talk like you mean that. You made sure to say ‘two from the Twenty-Nine Officials’ because you knew I was on my way to make it three.”

A man from a poor background and known as Rosclay’s right-hand man. Dant truly despised this man, but it certainly wasn’t because of Yaniegiz’s humble background.

Yaniegiz was part of the reformation faction helmed by Rosclay. A group who planned to hold the Sixways Exhibition and use the hero’s name to depose Queen Sephite. As part of the Queen’s faction, Dant had been burned by them many times.

One example was during the battle against the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists who had captured Toghie City, when in contrast to Dant, who was deployed on the front lines, Yaniegiz had holed up in Imag City at the rear, and never sent out reinforcements despite Dant’s repeated requests. Hiroto the Paradox analyzed it as an attempt to rout a part of the Queen’s faction, reducing their military presence and voice in the government, and Dant’s view on it had largely been the same.

Beyond just their politically poor relationship, the man personally irritated Dant, too, lacking character in his words and actions, and maliciously ridiculing his enemies. In any case, they didn’t get along.

Even regarding this latest strengthening of the royal palace’s defense structure, the proposal had come right before the day of the tenth match, by the reformation party. Yaniegiz must have done so in order to assert that it was the reformation party that protected the royal palace from attack.

In terms of their intent to rebel against the Queen, the reformation and this Kyaliga the Music Reed are essentially one in the same… Even worse, there’s a chance that I’m the same, too.

While it may have simply been how the battle in Toghie City had ultimately played out, he had still allowed Hiroto the Paradox and the Free City of Okafu into Aureatia’s borders and was giving them the opportunity to take over the kingdom.

Of course, if he hadn’t gotten assistance from the Gray-Haired Child, the Queen’s faction would have certainly lost and died out. It was likely that Dant, too, would have been removed from the playing field by some means before the second round. Be that as it may have been, warping his own convictions to win a political battle had brought him nothing but pain.

He also couldn’t help but feel disgusted that he slowly began to see Hiroto the Paradox and Zigita Zogi the Thousandth as some kind of comrades-in-arms.

Dant, still with a look of iron, silently stopped the bleeding from Kyaliga the Music Reed’s cut, and finished restraining him.

Kyaliga had moaned and groaned about royal lineage and the justice in this rebellion, but Dant ignored it all.

“Seems like the fighting has died down a bit, doesn’t it?”

Yaniegiz squinted his eyes and gazed far off into the city.

The all-out war between two large factions competing for hegemony appeared to come to an unsatisfying end, like a flame withering out right as it began to burn.

It meant that the reformation faction had won.

Their power had grown stronger still. From here on out, the Sixways Exhibition would function entirely under the control of a single faction, too. Dant’s small consolation was the fact that his battle to swing the pendulum had finished without spilling the blood of the people, and with the Queen safe.

“…Lord Dant. You must’ve realized it by now, right?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about if Queen Sephite can govern Aureatia…and if she will be able to stay safe until she finally becomes able to. With this, all of her political opponents have completely vanished. That said…don’t you think that someday, the terror of the True Demon King that’s been carved into the people’s hearts is bound to lead to the Queen’s ruin, too?”

“…”

Those who knew of eras prior might have called the present age abnormal.

An age where perfectly normal citizens felt scared of something deep down in their hearts, avoiding conflict, oppressing the Order who preached morality, and going wild for these public slaughters done under the name of “true duels.”

The fear toward those with power was out of control. The True Northern Kingdom had perished through an uprising of the people, deemed a revolution. Lithia, plunging into the depths of war and strife, as well as Mage City, retaliating against Lithia, and even Alimo Row, their oppression of the Order ending in a massacre, all displayed a fate guided by the terror of the masses.

“And you’re saying you control this fear? Real conceited lot, aren’t you?”

“Rosclay is doing that.”

The city fire was dying down.

“Those who know how Rosclay fights may think that he’s the only one among all the hero candidates without some special power of his own, but they’re wrong. Rosclay alone has the power. To bring the people’s hearts together and quell their fear. It’s what’s Rosclay’s been doing this whole time.”

“Influence over the people’s hearts is a combination of things stemming from a balance of many factors. I think it is impossible to want the reason why to come solely from Rosclay’s existence. Abolishing the monarch is bound to destroy the current equilibrium.”

“We will be able to keep the Queen alive and make her step down from the throne. The forces likely to prop up the Queen and defy the government have been all cleaned up now… The throne’s surely a heavy burden at Queen Sephite’s age. You must agree, Lord Dant, that it would be better to go with her back to her Western Kingdom homeland and live a peaceful life.”

This is just an excuse. I cannot go along with a pretext that’s telling me to simply betray her. No matter how one tries to explain it away, betrayal is still betrayal… I alone need to be the Queen’s ally until the end.

If he switched over to the reformation party, then everything might take a turn for the better. However, that choice would mean he was betraying Queen Sephite, Hiroto the Paradox, and himself, having supported them both up until now.

Dant opened his mouth to give his refusal.

“Is Sephite out somewhere?”

A young girl was next to him.

“—?!”

“…What…?!”

Green clothes and blond hair tied into pigtails high on her head. An elf.

This young girl had broken through to the interior of the royal palace, with its impenetrably strong defenses, and was questioning two of Aureatia’s Twenty-Nine Officials like she was making idle small talk.

“You two work in the royal palace? What happened here?”

Dant noticed a strange phenomenon.

Yuca the Halation Gaol’s forces, battling in the rear, had gone unnaturally quiet.

How had military officers like Dant and Yaniegiz failed to notice that?

Or perhaps, had it happened in a split second, without giving either of them the chance to?

“You…”

Yaniegiz’s eyes opened wide.

He wasn’t readying his deadly magic tool, Mote Nerve Arrow. Dant could tell that this wasn’t because he had been late to react, but because his combat experience was stopping him.

It was telling him that if he showed this foe any intention to fight, it was highly likely he would immediately have the tables turned against him.

“Kia… The young girl from the fourth match…”

“World Word,” the girl replied in annoyance. “Kia the World Word. I’m not some kid without a second name, so you’d better be sure to use it.”

The unidentified Word Arts caster who had nearly disabled Rosclay the Absolute for life in the fourth match.

Able to produce any and all phenomena with a single word, and rendering any and all attacks against her, including surprise attacks she wasn’t even conscious of, ineffective. Dant didn’t understand how she possessed such a power, nor how Elea the Red Tag had managed to discover an exceptional creature like her.

“Why’re you asking about the Queen’s whereabouts?”

“Who cares why! I should ask you what’s up with you guys. There’s people dead in front of the bridge! All that blood…fingers and ears scattered about all over…”

“My name is Dant the Heath Furrow, Aureatia’s Twenty-Fourth General. I’m part of the Palace Guard.”

Dant walked two steps.

“…Give me a real answer.”

“I do intend on answering your question.”

After he walked, Dant stood with his sword in a low stance. In contrast to Yaniegiz who remained still, wary of instant death, Dant purposefully took an offensive stance.

Even assuming I fail to kill her, I can show Yaniegiz what Kia’s method of attack is. If I can just give him an opening to get a hit in with the Mote Nerve Arrow…

“Dant.” Yaniegiz murmured behind him. A restraining tone. “Yuca’s entire squad has been defeated.”

“Well, I put them all to sleep.” Kia was plainly irritated.

Despite the sword held at the ready right in front of her—or perhaps because she hadn’t registered it as being trained on her to begin with, Kia boldly took her eyes off Dant, and turned around.

“They were all fighting in front of the royal palace, so I put them to sleep. Making all those people fight for no good reason, it’s so stupid… Does Aureatia really like war that much?”

An immature child. Dant couldn’t pick up any behavior or air that was indictive of the strong and mighty.

His senses of danger weren’t working. Dant couldn’t help thinking that if he simply raised his sword up, without waiting for Kia to make her move, it would end everything.

However, the fact that she had made it this far…

“That can’t be it.”

Yaniegiz picked up on it one beat ahead of Dant.

In front of the royal palace… The battle in the central city had concluded silently, far faster than anticipated.

“D-did…did you do the same thing all the way here?”

“So what?”

Kia the World Word was in a bad mood.

It was because she continued to see scenes of fighting and slaughter while she headed for the royal palace.

The monster feared bloodshed and took precautions.

“I…I came all this way because I’ve got something I wanna ask Sephite! If she’s the one who ordered you to do all this, then—”

“S-Sephite…is a demon king!”

Someone screamed at their feet. Kyaliga the Music Reed.

His continued vigorous struggling inside his restraints had made his gag slip off.

“H-huh…? What’s with him?”

“Hic… The chaos of war continues even after the demon king’s death! The Sixways Exhibition, and this rebellion…! That’s because Sephite, sniff, a bloodthirsty self-proclaimed demon king, reigns, so—”

The rambling words spoken with a scream suddenly stopped.

Dant slashed Kyaliga’s back as he crouched down without a moment’s hesitation.

The blood throughout his body was startingly cold.

“Shut up.”

“Dant! What’re you…”

It all happened in a second. Dant heard Yaniegiz’s reproachful reply. It wasn’t a problem. Dant wanted to say it was the right thing to do.

He couldn’t let Kyaliga say anything more in front of Kia.

Kia herself tried to rush over to Kyaliga, his spine deeply torn up.

Dant lined up his breathing, and slashed Kia’s lower leg.

“Hey—”

Right as Kia said those words, the longsword should have passed right through her leg.

He missed his mark. Right before he made contact, a clearly unnatural force field turned it aside.

“Heal.”

“……!”

When she put a hand on Kyaliga, his back and the wound on his arm regenerated instantly.

Unbelievably fast and precise, to the point it was questionable if it was actually Life Arts or not.

“Sniff…hic, ahhhh, King Aur…”

“Stop.”

Far before he could make his next move, Kia halted Dant’s movements with a single word.

From his neck down, his legs, and his arms, none of them budged, as if his body wasn’t his own anymore.

“…Repel. You—you tried to slash me, didn’t you?”

Then, once everything was over, Kia recited her Word Arts from two moves earlier.

I have no way to win.

She violated and transgressed any and all of the laws that built their world.

Yaniegiz was right. I shouldn’t have tried to fight.

If Rosclay the Absolute wasn’t able to win, then no one could. Yaniegiz had understood that, and thus, hadn’t moved.

Dant’s loyalty consequently made him react incorrectly. And now, he was going to die.

“So you were trying to kill me, were you? Why did those soldiers die?! If Sephite had a proper handle on things, that wouldn’t have been necessary, right?!”

“King Aur… My life…just through your words…”

Kia interrogated Dant, and Kyaliga was groaning.

It may have been his instincts as a soldier that made him notice that something was off as Dant stood there, prepared for death.

Kyaliga the Music Reed still remained crouched on the ground. Why would he need to do that if his wounds were already healed?

“Yaniegiz! Kia the World Word!” Dant shouted, still prohibited from making any movement.

Iriolde’s army possessed weapons of the Beyond.

“Get down!”

“Huh? What now…”

“…To your loyal retainers…”

—Kyaliga sent out a Bomb Golem ahead of him and charged toward the royal palace.

And if he had planned on joining in on this suicide attack from the very start…?

Dant’s world was plastered white in explosive flames and a flash of light.