Ishura - Volume 9 - Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2 - Fallen Wings

While it was the brightest light of civilization and the most developed nation across the land, not all of Aureatia consisted of busy city streets.

Districts that had purposefully preserved nature and the scenery of the Central Kingdom were scattered about its borders. The forested district where, during the chaotic coup, the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists fanned out their forces, was one such example.

This forest, that the citizens of Aureatia didn’t even pay a second thought to, was the basepoint for Obsidian Eyes.

It was a dark forest, like the depths of the ocean, the overgrown leaves in the canopy leaving no gaps for sunlight to filter through.

“Kiyazuna’s golems will be in charge of combat and reconnaissance.”

Caneeya the Fruit Trimming declared with a resounding voice.

The woman had a large physique, on par with a male dwarf. Her face seemed to always be filled with a profound smile.

“The enemy force is estimated to consist of a vampire parent unit and the corpses under their control, but…it’s very likely that their route of infection is completely different from anything we currently know of. Thus, we will keep our distance as we continue to enclose the target and use bows, guns, and golem attacks to kill each corpse we lure out one by one.”

In a position slightly removed from this group of Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists, Kaete the Round Table has just finished his final adjustments on a golem. For this work, he was covered from head to toe in light gray protective gear.

Though his harsh temperament often made him come off as a military officer, as the former Fourth Minister in charge of the Industrial Ministry, Kaete was well-versed in Craft Arts and mechanical engineering.

Utter fools.

That was all he thought of Caneeya and the rest of the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists.

More than half of the explanation about their operation went in one ear and out the other. There was no point in listening to it.

As if a rabble of pissants like yourselves can win with those hackneyed tactics.

If Obsidian Eyes only consisted of simple, well-trained soldiers, suppression by sheer force of numbers may have been possible. The golem troops that Kiyazuna shared with them had the capabilities for that.

However, when Kaete had previously crossed swords with Obsidian Eyes, he had witnessed the combat abilities of Yakrai the Tower for himself. He was a powerful fighter on the same level, or perhaps even stronger, than the military officers of the Twenty-Nine Officials. Did they have many others who possessed such skills, and what were their methods of attack? Obsidian Eyes’ overall fighting strength was impossible to estimate.

—Above all else though, Obsidian Eyes currently had Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge with them.

The entire reason behind Kaete and Kiyazuna’s deception—using false information to lead the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists into a clash against Obsidian Eyes—was to recapture Mestelexil.

No matter how many soldiers encircled their basepoint, if Mestelexil was mobilized, he alone would annihilate their entire force. Whether it was the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists or the Aureatian regular army with superior numbers and equipment, it wasn’t any different to Mestelexil.

Nevertheless, that didn’t mean the loyalists were entirely meaningless.

“We’re gonna drive the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists forward and lure Mestelexil out to the front lines. Got it?”

The old woman beside him, Kiyazuna the Axle, murmured. She was monitoring the locator tracking Mestelexil’s position, and just like Kaete, had her tiny frame covered in protective gear from head to toe.

“If things go south, you better put your life on the line, too.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that! We need to separate Mestelexil from the parent vampire before we can get anywhere, whether we’re trying to interfere with Mestelexil’s takeover or make those Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists dispose of the parent unit for us.”

While they had greatly weakened as an organization, the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists were a rebel army who traced their lineage back to the Central Kingdom Imperial Army. One of their advantages was that they weren’t a riotous mob but a regimented military force.

Even assuming the agents of Obsidian Eyes did possess extraordinary fighting strength, as long as they were taking on an armed military host, individual strength alone would not save them from any losses altogether. At some point, or potentially right from the get-go, Obsidian Eyes would need to bring Mestelexil to the front lines.

“Grams.”

The forest was deathly still. Not the slightest buzzing insect or chirping bird could be heard, and though it was still daytime, the area was as dark as in the evening.

“You think the enemy is watching us?”

Kaete muffled his voice and asked.

At this point in the game, it wasn’t about whether or not they were being watched.

Obsidian Eyes was a spy guild that had acted behind the scenes all through the warring upheaval of the True Demon King’s age. If their true identity was a vampiric military force, then it was also possible for them to infiltrate every single major power with corpsified grunts. It was hard to think that the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists’ assault strategy hadn’t been leaked to their foe.

“No clue. Ain’t change much either way, yeah?” Kiyazuna replied, showing very little interest in the topic.

“Both me and you kept our nerves on edge while we were prepping, right? They never barged in during all that, so either they were never looking, or they ran away. Only other possibility’s they got a trap set up that’ll be able to crush us good when we attack… That’s ’bout it.”

“Obsidian Eyes has absolutely nothing to benefit from taking the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists head-on. Assuming their goal’s to detect the attack beforehand and annihilate the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists before they make their move, then the trump card they left back at the manor’s got to be Mestelexil…”

“’N that case, it was worth egging on those Old Kingdom idiots, right? What’s important is that Mestelexil’s here. If Obsidian Eyes turned tail a long time ago, we don’t even need to do any separating, since Mestelexil will be there waiting for us.”

It was the sort of odd situation where a trap was actually more convenient for them.

Unfortunately, even when assuming that all other sources of fighting strength they possessed had left the scene, Mestelexil still posed a threat powerful enough to outstrip the army of an entire nation.

“Any chance of a missile attack?”

“Nah. If Mestelexil was planning that, they never woulda been any radar blip in the first place. Best way to attack us with missiles woulda been to fire on us from outta our range.”

“Obsidian Eyes must not want to get their basepoint involved in a struggle and cause any obvious damage, then… Hard to believe some vampire would have the strategic judgment to make that call, though.”

The methods of intercepting them with Mestelexil while also being able to quietly annihilate the whole force were limited.

“That’d explain this protective gear, then. Their trick of choice has to be an immediately effective nerve gas.”

Kiyazuna flashed a wicked smile underneath her resin covering.

“Sure is. Me, I’d go with a G-agent like sarin or soman. Got the power to clean up a whole slew of bastards at once, and in a natural environment like this, it’ll only take about two odd days to break down. Kill the enemy dead, and keep the basepoint safe… In these types of situations, chemical weapons are Mestelexil’s most efficient means of attack.”

“Hmph. So long and short of it is, these Old Kingdoms louts are our canaries in the coal mine.”

The protective gear they were draped in had been specially made with Kiyazuna’s Craft Arts. The Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists hadn’t gotten any explanation whatsoever. For Kaete and Kiyazuna, the attack on the manor being called off with the threat of chemical weapons would have been the most inconvenient development of all.

Should nerve gas get used, their deaths would serve as a forewarning.

Go ahead and launch your ignorant little attack, you cannon fodder.

Kiyazuna’s golems advanced through the forest without making a sound.

With a bottom half like an insect, their multiple legs gave them greater mobility and handling performance than even well-trained soldiers.

The four arms folded inside their upper bodies were fitted with a shield and a blade of rigid composite material.

Behind them, lining up with bows and guns, the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists’ fighting force closed in the circle surrounding the target, too.

“Dammit, Mestelexil’s stopped moving altogether.”

The instrument in Kiyazuna’s hand was a locator with a display, tracking Mestelexil’s position. The lit-up dot wasn’t moving.

“Grahak!”

It may have been a gut instinct cultivated from his combat experience that told Kaete this quiet exhale he heard was, in fact, a soldier’s dying gasps. He immediately turned his guard in that direction.

The dense foliage obstructed his view, and he couldn’t see from his position if anyone had collapsed.

There was no gunshot, or even an impact sound from the attack. Kaete figured that most of the soldiers hadn’t even noticed that one of their own had just fallen to the ground.

“The enemy’s—”

Another soldier, somewhere in the forest, died before he could finish his sentence.

Imbecile. At least shout out the enemy’s method of attack before you kick the bucket!

They were under attack.

With frightening silence, it had already begun.

“Get back, Grams.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do.”

It wasn’t Mestelexil. This was clearly Obsidian Eyes’ handiwork.

In which case, there must have been agents lying in ambush in this forest, just like Mestelexil. This implied that despite possessing an ultimate weapon in Mestelexil, there was something that necessitated defending the manor without relying on chemical weapons…

Kaete caught a silver flash of light through the air somewhere.

It swiftly traced an arc through the sky.

“……!”

He immediately pulled his head back and flew into the shade of the trees. He was too late.

The flying blade grazed the top of his shoulder as it flew by.

“Shit, my protective gear’s been cut into!”

“Don’t get yer panties in a bunch, Kaete, it’s pathetic! A chakram… It’s the same marksman that tried to off us before!”

Kaete and Kiyazuna may not had known his name, but they had fought against this chakram-wielding marksman—Wieze the Variation—once before, after losing the sixth match. At the time, they’d beat back Yakrai the Tower, acting as the vanguard, and narrowly managed to escape, but…

“Bastard doesn’t know when to quit!”

The chakram flittered, leaving nothing behind but the sound of leaf, branch, and flesh being sliced in its wake.

This marksman snuck into the gaps and blind spots in their formation and threw his chakrams.

Though it seemed almost presumptuous to call this a sniper attack, with the tactics running counter to the advances of the era, the chakrams and their curved trajectory would travel around any obstacles to reach their target. That made it extremely difficult to pin down the sniper’s position from their flight path.

“Urnk!”

Not another one!

The third dying gasp most likely hadn’t come from the third victim. There had to be even more casualties who died instantly without letting out a cry or dying groan.

Long-range attacks with a chakram, of course, didn’t produce any gunshots, either.

While he had identified the enemy’s method of attack, Kaete didn’t bother conveying it to the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist troops. The enemy was plainly prioritizing anyone who said a word.

Moreover, if Kaete did shout now, it would likely only have the opposite effect.

“Sniper! We’re under attack!”

“Two’ve been killed! Their throats and heads are cut open!”

Delayed cries rang out throughout the forest.

It was clear the regulated paces from before were in chaos, and voices crying out in confusion, anger, and fear at the already numerous casualties continued to spread.

This chakram marksman can pull something like this off? He couldn’t have created this situation without the skills to kill several far-away targets almost simultaneously while ensuring their foe never caught on.

After discovering victims cut down by multiple simultaneous attacks in several places, no single person was able to determine which reports were correct, or which were the most recent. The soldiers who shouted about the crisis moments ago were being slain, one after another.

There began to be soldiers who decided that, faced with this unknown attack, the best course of action was to hide.

Confronted with the fear of this silent sniper attack, the regulated troops fell into disarray.

“…The enemy’s moving through the treetops.”

Kaete lowered his voice, passing the information to Kiyazuna alone.

“It’s the only position that would allow them to get multiple targets in range across such a complex terrain. You have a way to shoot them down, right?”

“Obviously ain’t happening if we can’t even see the bastard. ’Sides, if we’re in a spot to fire at ’em from our position, that’ll mean we’re in their line of fire. You sayin’ yer confident enough to try to pick off a marksman that skilled without getting cut down first, eh?!”

“Dammit! Even still…”

Kaete had a terrible premonition. Peering through his monocular sight, he looked at the situation around the black manor far in the distance.

Though the ranged unit taking up the rear had fallen into disarray, the golem force charging forward on the front lines should have already broken into the manor itself by now. If the enemy only came at them with this sniper attack, it shouldn’t have affected the golem’s advance whatsoever—the golems wouldn’t be fearful of such an attack, and their armor wouldn’t easily been harmed by the chakram projectiles.

However, Kaete couldn’t see any signs that the manor was currently under attack.

The golems were being kept in check by some other unknown means.

“We’re in trouble.”

The words weren’t regarding the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist army’s continued destruction.

Their main target, Mestelexil, had yet to appear.

As the panic spread, the commander of the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists, Caneeya the Fruit Trimming, issued the most levelheaded decision.

She turned not toward the forest, with its more abundant cover, but to the small hilltop that gave the best sightlines of the manor and the surrounding trees.

“Shield troops, circle up!”

Nine shield troops, along with the golems accompanying them, encircled the area and created a safe zone.

The composite plated shields created from Kiyazuna’s Craft Arts were equipped with rigid defenses against head-on attacks, while also being light enough to be handled with ease.

“All troops, halt the advance and reorganize into formation! The marksman is moving through the treetops! Do your utmost to shield your head from above and keep a sharp eye on the surroundings!”

The voice from Caneeya’s massive body reverberated well through the dense forest.

The very act of exposing herself as the commanding officer on open terrain was bait to focus the marksman’s attention on herself. Still keeping a part of her mind cool and levelheaded, she prepared for the assault.

…Figured our foe wasn’t naïve enough to get lured out by this. Would’ve been perfect if they panicked and tried to snipe at us before we could solidify our defenses.

She had purposefully created an opening in the shield-troop formation.

To entice the marksman, given their confidence in their long-ranged skills, using that gap to target the commanding officer. If she could just pinpoint their location, then Caneeya could use her herculean strength to swing her thick hatchet and knock the projectiles out of the air.

After the defensive formation was complete and free of any openings, Caneeya twirled her axe and put it away on her hip.

Taking out the radzio she carried with her, she called out.

“Kiyazuna the Axle. I ask you to call the golems on the front lines back to support the rear guards.”

<Bah! What’s backin’ off the offensive gonna do for us? One or two of ya get shot down and now you’re pissing in yer pants, huh?>

“That’s not it. You must not be able to see it from your position. Charging heedlessly forward will—”

A shrill explosion rocked the forest trees.

Caneeya could tell it was the result of one soldier charging forward in a panic.

“—end with massive losses. There are threads stretched out in a web between the trees. We’ve sighted several pieces of water-resistant fabric that are likely wrapped around explosives. Use the golems to dispose of them.”

<Hmph, must be those “booby traps” they talk about in the Beyond. Sure are a band of has-been vermin, but guess it’s still the Obsidian Eyes’ basepoint. ’Course the bastards would pull something like that.>

“There is one other factor I would like to verify by mobilizing the golems. The golems in the vanguard may have stopped moving entirely. While it may not be an explosion, it could be something to tangle up their limbs and—”

Something soft gently caressed Caneeya’s shoulder.

A terrifying chill shot through her nerves. Ducking her head was almost entirely a reflexive reaction from her spine.

There was a loud crack that resounded directly above her head.

Caneeya’s right ear, and everything above the neck of the soldier standing on guard in front of her, was cut off.

From where?

The question came to her first, along with a sense of danger.

They were standing on high ground, with every direction defended by shields. No matter what type of high-angle firing might’ve been used, they were being attacked in a space that was impossible to reach via thrown projectile.

Faster than the decapitated soldier could collapse to the earth, she felt another thing touch the top of her head. A light, invisible…thread.

“……!”

Caneeya pulled in the soldier’s corpse in front of her and protected herself by crawling beneath him.

Another violent slicing attack ripped through the air and a stalwart soldier’s body was ripped into six pieces like they were just a sack of blood and guts.

Together with some number of the other soldiers still able to move, Caneeya went prone on the ground, sliding down the hill to escape. Grass and bits of earth slipped into her mouth. She didn’t think it was unsightly at all.

“Now, now, now, Caneeya the Fruit Trimming, that will simply not do!”

The voice sounded pleased and terribly out of place on the gruesome battlefield.

The woman laughed with cheer.

“Ahyah-hyah-hyah-hyah! If you are so eager to invade with your soldiers from the Old Kingdom, you’ll find the royal palace is that way. Getting yourself lost will ruin this whole little excursion of yours!”

“Zeljirga the Abyss Web…!”

It was a zmeu in a vibrant orange harlequin outfit, with a thin body like that of a gecko.

Any and all news or information on her had ceased altogether ever since she claimed victory over Mestelexil in the sixth match. Zeljirga the Abyss Web, despite still being counted among the hero candidates, hadn’t shown herself anywhere and didn’t make any moves at all. She no longer performed her craft in front of the citizenry, and even the raid by Alus the Star Runner came and went without her acting at all.

Her sponsor, Enu the Distant Mirror, had gone missing as well. In which case, was there actually anyone on the Twenty-Nine Officials who was capable of keeping precise track of Zeljirga’s recent activity?

So she never broke away from Obsidian Eyes, after all.

The thread sensation Caneeya felt had come from the tarantula cutting threads that Zeljirga manipulated.

The warp threads of tarantula nests boasted a tenacity that no ogre nor any degree of herculean strength could cut, and their weft threads had a keen profile capable of slicing through wyverns, bones and all.

No matter how strong their target’s defenses, she could cast them from above…or weave them through any gaps, instantly pulling them tight to cleave through her opponent. She utilized such a unique form of attack, all while never giving her presence away to her foe until this very moment, despite her blindly conspicuous clown getup.

“…You damn monster.”

They weren’t only losing soldiers, but their golem numbers as well. It was impossible to return to the top of the hill to confirm the situation, but the slicing attack right now must have either dissected them entirely or restrained them. It was clear that Zeljirga’s threads were the entire reason why the golems had stopped their advance forward, too.

Caneeya immediately made her decision in order to clear an escape route for them all.

She sent one of the multilegged golems accompanying her flying straight ahead into the forest.

It got entwined in the threads laid out between the trees, tumbled, and activated the bomb trap.

“Onward!”

Giving a brief command to the soldiers, she ran, dashing through the blast wave.

Through the cloud of dust and smoke blocking her line of sight, something passed right next to Caneeya. A chakram.

“Augh!”

A soldier’s arm had been sliced off.

The shield—

In a moment’s judgment, she grabbed the shield out of midair, the soldier’s severed arm still gripping it tightly.

Right as she readied it, she felt an impact through the cloud of dust. A second thrown chakram dug halfway into the composite-plated shield.

The golem that remained behind her was moving to intercept Zeljirga. Cutting threads flew past each other. A supersonic explosive cracked in the air, and a sturdy golem limb was sent flying.

One of the threads touched Caneeya’s flank and cut right through her armor, rending skin and fat.

Drawing on all her physical fitness, she jumped between a gap in the complicated rock crag. Curling herself up, she readied her shield.

Everything had happened in the span of an instant following their encounter, but it was clear that several miracles had occurred through it all.

It was a hellish clash.

“Obsidian Eyes… A mere two of them can wield this much fighting power?!”

The shield soldiers accompanying her had dwindled down to just three.

Caneeya had no grasp of who had died or at what point. If she spared a single second to ponder such things, Caneeya herself would’ve died with them.

“Commander Caneeya, what do we do?!”

One of the shield soldiers hiding in the same rock shadow asked, holding back his scream.

“We hold out.”

Even now, Caneeya the Fruit Trimming’s expression was unchanged. She always had a big smile stretched across her face.

No matter how inwardly perturbed she may have been, this natural face of hers never changed.

While the truth behind it was torment, given she was the commander of her troops, it was better this way.

“Our enemy’s numbers are few. That’s why they’re attacking us with just two people. Not only that, but their offensive is meant to terrify us, targeting myself as the commanding officer and trying to instill chaos… However, I can say the current situation is leaning in our favor. We’ve managed to draw out two of our enemy’s elite fighters all on our own.”

Stalling measures that utilized traps and fear, for a military force like this, were little more than a temporary stopgap.

It had to be physically impossible for them to hold back the entire unit slowly circling in on the manor from all directions. Furthermore, the Old Kingdoms’ forces included golems created by Kiyazuna the Axle.

Their current predicament may have been extremely dangerous, but it was also a perfect opportunity for the troops on the opposite side of the encirclement to raid the manor.

We won’t retreat.

Of course, that was never an option to begin with.

At present, with Aureatia gaining complete control after the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists’ repeated defeats, Caneeya had reached the point where rebuilding her group’s morale would be impossible. The return of the Central Kingdom would also never be fulfilled.

Obsidian Eyes was a fearsome fighting force, but compared to Aureatia’s regular forces—decked out in the best equipment with overwhelmingly superior numbers and regulation—Caneeya’s forces still had a chance of beating them.

Obsidian Eyes were nothing but covert agents. They weren’t monstrosities that would crush them head-on, but instead excelled the most at pretending to be a greater threat than they really were through their supernatural skills and dirty tricks.

More than anything is the fact that Obsidian Eyes is defending this base of theirs. If they knew about our assault and prepared so heavily for it, it then means there is something worth defending in that manor. While I doubt that everything Kaete the Round Table said was the truth…

According to him, Aureatia was performing an experiment with a vampire, intending to use the vampire infection to dispose of hero candidates. Even if this chain of events was just something Kaete thought up on the spot, now that they had been informed of the large-scale coup via the Gray-Haired Child and their final opportunity for them to act, Caneeya had no way to stop a group like hers that longed to take action.

While she had prepared for their moves to end with a fruitless struggle, if there was still any chance for results, then there was value in fighting.

“Kiyazuna the Axle.”

Caneeya called through the radzio.

“Right now, we’re luring two of the enemy’s fighting force, Zeljirga and the chakram marksman, to the southeast. I’d like you to confirm the density of immobilized golems and find which direction has a hole to slip through.”

<Sure… Southeast? So you’re to the southeast and not to the west, yeah?>

“The west…?”

A shield solder who tried to peek out from the rock shadow to gauge the situation let out a shriek. A chakram on a roundabout path cut deep into his wrist. The marksman was still closely observing their position.

“Is there some problem there—”

A roar split through the air and cut off Caneeya.

A torrent of fire, as bright as lightning, rained down west of the manor.

<Ain’t nothing to worry about. Guess it’s yer lucky day, Caneeya the Fruit Trimming.>

A light came swooping in from the manor like a falling star.

The light braked in midair, then causally swept the ground below in a hail of Gatling gun–fire.

A direct hit from the 12.7×99mm bullets packed enough power to blast a passenger car from the Beyond to bits. The kinetic energy of a grazing blow was still enough to make a person’s body burst.

These bullets poured down uninterrupted, firing in fast enough succession to trace rays of light through the sky.

The soldiers in the west didn’t even have time to scream before their very flesh and blood disappeared amid the giant cloud of kicked-up dust and smoke.

Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge landed together with a flareback and trampled over the remains, a mixture of flesh, vegetation, and dirt.

“Ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha!”

An ominous single red eye flashed from within the smoke cloaking the dense woodland.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Kuuro the Cautious perceived the scene in its entirety.

Despite being in the complete opposite direction and on the other side of the manor, he sensed it all, down to a single burning leaf or the single nail of a blown apart Old Kingdoms’ soldier, more accurately than a machine. This was Kuuro’s supernatural gift, Clairvoyance.

Kuuro the Cautious was acting under a different objective, and with a different force, from the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists and Kiyazuna the Axle.

His goal was to retaliate against Obsidian Eyes for incinerating Kuuro and the entire clinic with him, and for forcing Mizial and Cuneigh into their dire predicament.

The undeserved assault had stripped Kuuro of the chance to stop his friend, Toroa the Awful.

He needed to give them their just retribution.

With the burns on his face haphazardly concealed under bandages, the leprechaun’s appearance would have stood out against the forest backdrop, but Kuuro the Cautious had utilized his omnipotent Clairvoyance to became Obsidian Eyes’ strongest assassin. Continuing toward his target while weaving through blind spots and dead angles was all too easy.

“…Be careful. The enemy’s sent out Mestelexil,” he whispered, connecting to the radzio in his hand for only a single second.

The radzio linked back to Enu the Distant Mirror, who was waiting standby beyond the battlefield.

Enu was formerly Aureatia’s Thirteenth Minister. Using the large-scale coup, he simultaneously broke away from Obsidian Eyes and the National Defense Research Institute and possessed an inscrutable—even with Kuuro’s Clairvoyance—purpose of his own.

Kuuro and Enu were temporarily cooperating with each other for this assault, at the very least.

Enu’s goal was to kidnap the mutated vampire strain, Linaris the Obsidian. Their interests coincided.

“Hmm. I’ll be extra sure not to approach closer, then. Does it seem like you’ll be able to grab Linaris?”

I wonder.

Kuuro wasn’t listening to Enu’s response via his radzio.

His extraordinary hearing was able to process any and all noise and sound accurately and at once. Even as the soldiers’ shrieks and bellows resounded around him, through the explosive Gatling gun noise, he could pick out a mere voice being spoken two kilometers away.

Kuuro connected the radzio again.

“Maybe if it was just me, but…”

His connecting and severing of the radzio call over and over was to counterattack any wiretapping. Kuuro’s understanding was that radzios, indiscriminately spilling out information in the form of electric waves, were a tool that necessitated extra care in their usage from the start.

“It’ll be impossible to drag Linaris through all the blind spots while Mestelexil is running rampant. Even if it were, Linaris’s body wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

Moving while always slipping through the blind spots of everyone on the battlefield was a feat only capable thanks to Kuuro’s precise movements, reflex speed, and a leprechaun’s characteristically diminutive stature.

While it was a different story for a homunculus like Cuneigh the Wanderer—just big enough to fit inside his breast pocket—it would require a considerable amount of luck to lead a human, and a hostage at that, through the surrounding forces closing in. Given Linaris’s critical condition and already weak constitution, the burden from the artillery aftershocks and evasive action brought with them enough danger.

Obsidian Eyes is desperate enough to mobilize Mestelexil to defend this place because Linaris can’t easily be moved elsewhere right now… My prediction was spot on, then. On top of that, these Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists seemed to time their interference here with the chaos of the coup.

“Kuuro. If Mestelexil’s presence will be a problem for the transport, I’ll prepare some methods on my end. I just ask you to take care of any others who get in the way and bring her back to me.”

Some methods, huh…

Intermittent gunfire echoed from the west. Mestelexil was disposing of what little survivors remained one by one. Kuuro couldn’t move carelessly.

He reopened the radzio line.

“Kiyazuna the Axle is acting together with the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists. You knew that from the beginning, eh, Enu?”

<That’s right. If there was anyone who was capable of disposing of Mestelexil, it’d have to be his creator, Kiyazuna the Axle.>

Kuuro sensed Enu’s reaction with his Clairvoyance. Heartbeats, breathing, mannerisms. During any negotiations with Kuuro, Enu the Distant Mirror always replied honestly—since the man understood that no lie would work on Kuuro.

“That was the plan you worked out to get through Mestelexil. In which case…”

Given that Kuuro could determine the veracity of something regardless of the answers he got, the act of asking questions itself also served as a way to obtain further information. This behavior of Kuuro the Cautious was in some ways similar to a bat, grasping the layout of a terrain from the reverberations of his own cries.

“You fully knew not only that the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists would attack Obsidian Eyes today, but that Kiyazuna the Axle would be acting with them. Which would mean that there was someone who would indirectly contact people like you…and like Kaete the Round Table, the ones who’ve broken away from the Twenty-Nine Officials, and passed you the same information. Wouldn’t it be Aureatia, or Iriolde…the Gray-Haired Child, then?”

<……>

Enu understood the lack of any immediate reply in and of itself signaled agreement. Even assuming the contact had been indirect, someone with Enu’s level of analytical skills must have already arrived at the truth at the core.

Enu the Distant Mirror had a secret objective that opposed Aureatia. In order to achieve this personal goal, he had directly made contact first with Obsidian Eyes, and then the National Defense Research Institute, crossing between camps.

While Kuuro wasn’t fully acquainted with the Gray-Haired Child, the hearsay he had heard was enough for him to make a few estimations regarding how the man operated—he made use of other people with a strong desire of their own and maneuvered the playing field in order to realize all of those desires.

Zigita Zogi the Thousandth. Ozonezma the Capricious. Dant the Heath Furrow. Yukiharu the Twilight Diver. Kuze the Passing Disaster. Morio the Sentinel. Most of the people who belonged to the man’s camp, including the names totally unknown to Kuuro, gathered in order to achieve their own aspirations.

However, what about the Gray-Haired Child himself? Hard to say this is a very logical maxim to act under.

This was different from the time when Zigita Zogi and Linaris were secretly warring with each other. Currently, the brain of Obsidian Eyes was neutralized and impossible to serve as any threat to Hiroto’s camp. Conversely, storming their base involved running into a tremendously powerful obstacle in Mestelexil.

Normally, consuming precious pawns like Enu and Kiyazuna to attack them would’ve been worth it.

The Gray-Haired Child is trying to get revenge.

Just like him, ripped away from Cuneigh and Mizial, and losing Toroa…the Gray-Hair Child had lost a great deal at the hands of Obsidian Eyes as well.

<Kuuro. Your speculation…is correct. To go one step further, with the help of a connection of mine, it might be possible…to prolong the life of Cuneigh the Wanderer.>

“Wha—?”

Kuuro wanted to ask more of him, but his intuition moved his finger and he cut the radzio line.

Getting down and clinging to the terrain, he covered his body in his dark brown coat.

He could recognize even through his coat that a light only visible to Kuuro’s eyes was passing through the air.

Short wavelength electrical wave.

The intuition of his Clairvoyance, on par with actual future sight, showed him the correct action to take.

While the knowledge was totally unknown to Kuuro, the electrical waves were in fact the microwave radar of the Beyond.

Mestelexil, with the extermination of the western front over, was performing a wide-range search for his foes.

<What happened?>

“Recon. Bad news. Can’t reveal myself carelessly now…”

With bows or muskets, Kuuro was able to predict the attack movement and evade.

However, even when utilizing his Clairvoyance’s powers of future sight, the collection of Beyond weaponry that Mestelexil battled with were wholly unlike the attacks that Kuuro was able to evade. Kuuro the Cautious’s means of surmounting Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge was, from the very beginning, to simply maneuver around him without making his presence known.

“…?! What is she doing…?!”

In addition, there was an omen of an even more outrageous situation.

Kuuro’s involuntary shout came not from any danger to himself of the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist, but instead out of shock to the danger his enemy was in.

The manor and its surroundings, serving as Obsidian Eyes’ base of operations, was a quiet forest, dark even during the day.

A small shift had begun happening to the environment.

An uncanny stir, like the sound of a ripple and nothing like the remaining echoes of Mestelexil’s Gatling gun, surrounded the forest, radiating out like a wave.

The thin sunbeams peeking through the trees clouded, and a darkness like true night itself began to poke through.

“Even in your state, you’re sending out an attack, are you? Linaris…”

Kuuro’s Clairvoyance perceived everything about the situation occurring around him.

On a bed, in one of the manor’s rooms, Linaris the Obsidian had regained consciousness. She lifted up her slender body…and made use of her supernatural vampire abilities.

The thin rays of light, fluttering in through the gaps in the curtains, traced an outline of the bed and wardrobe. Golden pupils, opened ever so slightly, seemed to give off a light of their own amid the scant sunlight.

Atop the bed, Linaris had sat up. Her thin nightgown clung tightly to her body.

Her consciousness was hazy, as if on the edge between dream and reality. Only the sound of the clock hand ticking echoed in the quiet room.

She had awoken due to the sounds of Mestelexil’s gunfire, shattering the still and reverberating into the manor itself. Considering Linaris’s critical condition, it was a miracle it had woken her up at all.

Just now, what…?

She attempted to think through her fogged mind.

The days when she was ignorant of everything. The days she had been betrayed by someone. The day she let her father die.

They had all been terrible dreams, appearing to be an extension of her waking consciousness.

The one certain reality was the sound of Gatling guns. She could still feel the reverberations in her far-off bedchambers.

Something had happened to cause such a sound. It meant that right now, with Linaris unable to leave the manor, they were being pressed into mobilizing Mestelexil to mount a defense. Not an individual that could Obsidian Eyes could manage, but a group. Furthermore, a foe with a clear and defined intent to attack Obsidian Eyes.

“Ahhh…”

She let out a frail, dejected sigh.

Linaris didn’t have the stamina to cry out in despair.

The force carrying out the attack on the manor had to either be mercenaries from the Free City of Okafu or the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists—whatever the case, she merely understood that her appeal to the Gray-Haired Child had been rejected.

“…We must not mobilize Master Mestelexil.”

She murmured in the completely silent room, as if unoccupied.

The average person wouldn’t have sensed any trace of her, however Linaris trusted that whenever she laid sick in bed, Frey the Waking was always hovering at her side.

“My lady. Please, you must rest.”

The old woman’s voice replied just like always, from the darkness.

It was the only thing that brought Linaris any feeling of relief.

“The enemy are remnants of the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists. Entrusting Mestelexil to the task will keep both Wieze and Zeljirga safe from harm, and won’t cause any trouble for you, my lady. Right now, Aureatia’s eyes must be turned toward Iriolde’s coup, and the cancellation of the tenth match. Everything shall be handled quickly and in perfect secrecy.”

“No…”

This was a foe that, were Linaris in perfect form, never would have been allowed to carry out such an attack.

However, while their parent unit Linaris laid unconscious, the method Obsidian Eyes excelled at the most—using the corpses infiltrating each major power for information manipulation—was unable to be used. They had been left with no choice but to drastically cull the corpses themselves to sidestep Aureatia’s thorough infection tracking and prevention measures.

The next best plan was to annihilate all the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists who had reached their main stronghold. Among the cards Obsidian Eyes could currently play, deploying Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge was the only one capable of doing so.

“I’m sure…that their goal…was to lure out Master Mestelexil.”

Pausing to take long breaths in between, her frail voice squeezed the words out.

It was as if time had flown right by while she laid collapsed in bed. The eighth match had ended, and the circumstances dramatically begun to shift. She had entrusted their direction from here to Yuno and Lendelt, and after that… she wondered what exactly was happening in Aureatia at that moment.

All she could do was piece together the fragments, missing several pieces of information, through conjecture.

“Koff…The fact Master Mestelexil used his weapons here in and of itself…means that even if this assault is a failure, our enemy can then have Aureatia attack us next.”

Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge was one of the hero candidates Aureatia had let slip away, as well as the one they prioritized disposing of the most.

If the plot in Rosclay’s camp that Linaris and Yuno had exposed were to come to fruition on the day of the tenth match, then afterward, a fully prepared Aureatia army would march to storm the manor.

While Mestelexil may have been a different story, she didn’t think that herself, nor the others in Obsidian Eyes, would be able to hold out against them.

“My Lady.”

Frey’s voice was ever gentle and always tried to calm Linaris down.

“Is the Gray-Haired Child the one pulling the strings here?”

When Linaris thought about how she was unable to do anything in return for Frey’s devotion, her tears threatened to pour forth.

“No, he’s not.”

In exchange for Linaris’s life, the Gray-Haired Child would promise to bring Obsidian Eyes under his umbrella.

She hadn’t told any of the other members about her secret bargain with the Gray-Haired Child that Lendelt the Immaculate had been entrusted with on her behalf.

Should the negotiations break down and the Gray-Haired Child turn completely hostile to them, Linaris didn’t wish for Obsidian Eyes to pursue any sacrificial revenge.

In fact, if Linaris had correctly discerned the Gray-Haired Child’s temperament, there was even the chance that the negotiations had gone well. If Obsidian Eyes were to pull the trigger on an all-out annihilation at this stage, that could easily become a reason for withdrawing a previously agreed-upon deal.

Linaris would always understand where all their choices would lead them in the future. Most of the paths available to Obsidian Eyes sent them to their destruction, and in order to pick the few paths of survival available, Linaris wasn’t always able to choose the victory immediately presenting itself.

“It will be okay… Even without mobilizing Master Mestelexil…we can…render them helpless…”

There was one more thing she could do, now that she was awake.

Something the spontaneous mutated strain of vampire Linaris could do simply by manipulating her will, even as she lacked the strength to lift her body out of bed.

Outside the dark window letting in thin rays of a light, there was a stirring noise different from the sound of the swaying trees.

Yuno felt like she had been walking for a whole day since separating from Hiroto.

Even after entering the dense forest, it wasn’t a straightforward road to the manor. Just how long had she been walking?

The feeling in her legs seemed to have progressed past pain a long time ago.

The Gray-Haired Child was going to kill Linaris. Yuno the Distant Talon was returning to the manor to inform Linaris of the Gray-Haired Child’s plans.

Even if Linaris was nothing more than an evil force that the minian races were meant to kill, Yuno needed to head to her rescue to save her own heart.

Practically ascending farther up the treetops as she moved, Yuno’s feet stopped with a feeling of tension.

There are even string traps here, too?!

In between the branches, thin threads sparkled, reflecting the light.

The discovery came right after she had avoided a stretch of the path she’d sensed was dangerous.

If I came back without knowing about these, I might’ve died. These traps are set up to anticipate the thinking of anyone trying to outfox them.

She was able to surmise what sort of trap setup had caused the explosion she’d heard far off in the distance, since Yuno had temporarily acted in consort with Obsidian Eyes.

“I have to get closer. What should I do…?”

In some senses, it may have been good fortune that the attack by the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists was already underway. If Yuno had arrived first, she might not have been able to sense the traps at all. Or, if she had been attacked together with a military force that arrived after her, she would’ve died a meaningless death.

The truth was she had needed some chance of success ahead of time to ensure that didn’t happen. Even if a young girl like Yuno ran headlong into the situation, she didn’t have any power to change what was happening.

Nevertheless, there was one thing she knew.

Most likely, Yuno hadn’t actually arrived too late.

I saw several soldiers with the Central Kingdom’s crest on them… The Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists have to be the ones attacking the manor. Except, that’s not their true goal. If a minian military squad was enough to take on Obsidian Eyes, then Hiroto would’ve sent in a mercenary force from the Free City of Okafu from the start. So…there has to be something. The real threat, using this force as a smoke screen.

Right in the midst of the Aureatia army and Iriolde’s army openly battling in the city streets, the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists, a force hiding on the outskirts, was wielded at Hiroto’s beck and call to attack the target he was aiming for on the exact date he wanted. Yuno couldn’t even imagine how one had to maneuver to make such a feat possible. Hiroto the Paradox’s network of acquaintances was a monstrous, nigh inevitable, strength of its own.

What Yuno understood was simply that the Gray-Haired Child was serious about his plans.

…Calm yourself, Yuno. The first thing I need to get across to Linaris isn’t his plot to attack her. Linaris and Obsidian Eyes are more than capable of figuring that out without a nobody like me telling them. Where in this whole assault of the manor are Hiroto’s true hostile intents hiding—I need to see through that to be any help.

The Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists’ advance had stopped, disturbed by marksman attacks and traps.

Yuno had one advantage over them in that she was all by herself. With the need to move as a grouped unit, their route of infiltration would be naturally restricted, but for Yuno, all by herself and capable of casting a fair amount of Power Arts, she possessed a wider range of choices.

“Uno io shyipi.” (From Yuno to Fipiq arrowhead.)

Yuno murmured in the treetops, looking down on the battlefield and sitting on a thick branch.

“Un2 lino. Corro enuha, 8dihine, viradna!” (Axel is second finger. Lattice star, bursting spark, rotate.)

Sharp arrowheads flew out from inside her sleeves. They stuck into the trunk of the thick tree growing above the slope.

The only combat-capable Word Arts Yuno used were Power Arts that fired these arrowheads. She was uneasy about how many she had left, too.

Still, she attached a simple rope ladder to them and sent them flying.

“Great. That should be stable…”

Yuno pulled on the rope to check.

She also twisted the arrowheads when they hit the trunk. She had modified several of her sharpened arrowheads to have barbs, ensuring they weren’t easily pulled out of the trunk.

The attached rope ladder provided a footing for her with its uniformly spaced knots. She had procured it in the Aureatian streets as she rushed here.

She had never thought she would make use of Force Arts like this back when she lived in Nagan Labyrinth City. Still, it might have been purely because this forest was densely covered in trees that she was able to move three-dimensionally, avoiding any traps or brushes with Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists.

Gripping the rope tightly, she placed her feet on the knots.

Yuno’s sights began to sway back and forth, sitting about three stories in the air.

There aren’t any soldiers left keeping close watch on this area… But, the senses of an ordinary person like me can’t guarantee anything. There’s even a chance someone’d pick me off from the ground if they spotted me.

She relied on her grip strength instead of her legs, too numbed from all the walking. In the middle of a battlefield, she continued across the swaying rope ladder, her stuck arrowheads the only point of support. The work required far more courage than it did stamina.

Her exhaustion grew along with her altitude each time she crossed from one tree to another.

She still couldn’t let herself get close to the manor she was heading toward.

“…”

Her goal was to have a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield.

There was an explosion from the other side of the manor. It meant that the thread traps were still functioning.

It did assist her in estimating just how close the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists front lines had encroached. Considering how far she still was from the manor, she didn’t appear to have much time to spare.

There were very few units moving across open terrain. They must have been on guard against any marksman fire.

Among them all, there was a unit of troops fighting out in the open on a small hill.

From how far away and high up Yuno was, the ghastly battlefield resembled a toy shop display.

There was a large woman who appeared to be the commander and Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist soldiers with their shields raised. Along with—

“…! Golems…!”

Yuno fought back the reflexive bile rising in her throat.

Yuno was on top of a fifteen-meter-tall tree. She needed to maintain a cool head. Letting her thoughts be painted over in red would be fatal.

Nevertheless, in what was an acquired instinctual response, hatred and fear bubbled up inside her.

The Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists are using golems…! The chance of victory Hiroto gave them…was to provide them with golem soldiers?! He could’ve easily traded in precision parts as a secret agenda to his business dealings… He was manufacturing golems and hiding them from Aureatia?! No…

Biting down hard on her thumb, she attempted to cool her feverish thoughts.

“Calm down, just stay calm…!”

Hiroto the Paradox was definitely a terrifying monster, and golems were Yuno’s hated foe.

However, Yuno needed to distinguish these two facts from each other as she thought.

Hiroto… He was under strict surveillance by Aureatia. Mass producing golems under those circumstances would’ve been impossible. It’s more logical to believe that those golems weren’t provided to them by Hiroto. Which means that there was someone among the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists who created them… A self-proclaimed demon king capable of creating golems, and with a reason to join an anti-Aureatia force—

At that moment, an eardrum-splitting noise severed Yuno’s line of thinking.

Wholly unnatural, the gunfire sounded like metal being scraped and torn apart.

“Eek!”

The shriek had come from the physical reflex produced by her lungs. It took another beat for her to become cognizant of the roar echoing through the air.

She looked west of the manor.

What she could only describe as rays of fire rained down from the sky.

A one-eyed golem was mowing down the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists.

“…!”

It was not terror at the sound of carnage reverberating around her that made her breath catch in her throat.

It was because she knew the identity of this one-eyed golem.

“M-M…Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge!”

She thought back over what Hiroto the Paradox had told her.

—There was a chance that Obsidian Eyes took control of Mestelexil during the sixth match.

A flood of questions flashed in the back of Yuno’s head.

What was Kiyazuna the Axle’s goal? How much of the current state of affairs was Linaris aware of?

Above all, if Kiyazuna and Mestelexil were both here in the same place, that meant…

Finally…! Finally, I can…

Yuno’s homeland, Nagan Labyrinth City, was in ruins.

The city itself had actually been a colossal golem created by self-proclaimed demon king Kiyazuna.

“Calm down, stay calm!”

She bit down not on her thumb, but her wrist.

The people living in Nagan had perished without the slightest explanation, trampled underfoot by a tremendous power. Lucelles, the friend she cherished more than any other, had died as well, her entire body torn apart.

Finally, I have it… This is my chance to get my revenge, isn’t it?!

Kiyazuna the Axle had to be somewhere on the same battlefield as Yuno at that moment.

She was supposed to return to help Linaris, having suppressed her passions that seemed to reduce everything to ash, and yet, time and time again, the flames of that day tried to control Yuno.

She needed to win out against her heart. She needed to control herself.

A faint taste of blood welled inside her mouth as she bit her wrist.

I want to redeem my regrets. I need to save Linaris. For that, I need to investigate the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists. Assuming their trump card is Kiyazuna the Axle, and Hiroto knew everything from the start… Mestelexil is allied with Obsidian Eyes. Linaris could’ve joined forces with Kiyazuna the Axle. I was being deceived by someone. Kiyazuna wasn’t my only enemy from the start. It was my fault Lucelles died. This will be my only chance to kill Kiyazuna. I want to redeem my regrets. I need to save Linaris.

Her confusion and doubts halted her train of thought.

As such, when she came back to her senses, it had already happened.

“Huh…?”

The pain felt like the flesh in her side had been gouged out.

It hadn’t been a sniper attack. When had there been any sort of attack that could reach her up here in the treetops?

Her body staggered and lurched. Even though it was her own body, it almost didn’t feel real.

As she was pulled down by gravity and began to fall, she could see something.

Commotion and darkness.

Her flesh hadn’t been gouged out but pecked at by something hard. Beaks and feathers.

Yuno saw the true form of the darkness spreading over the battlefield.

“Birds…”

The forest where the Obsidian Eyes manor sat had been a quiet one, with no sounds of any birds or insects.

As if a curtain of even stiller silence was being draped over the forest—a flock of black birds had begun to blanket the sky.

It was as dark as if night had fallen upon them.

And just like the night, there was nowhere to run.

The din from wings beating the air.

The sound of several thousand wings echoing throughout the dark forest were in perfect, uncanny sync.

The enormous, harshly cold sound diluted the noise of blood and screams that erupted amid the darkness.

“Auuuuuuuugh!”

“Stop it! Let go, you damn bird…! What the hell’s with these things?!”

“Birds! The birds! H-hel—”

The black flock, thick as a locust swarm, swooped down on the soldiers nonstop.

It was impossible to run from them or break free from their grip. Counterattacks with guns and swords were similarly meaningless. Their tiny bodies easily wove past any defenses and slipped into any place of shelter. Their beaks and talons tore at the flesh of the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists.

Each injury itself likely wouldn’t prove fatal. However, the nightmarish flock of birds was enough to plunge the soldiers into a panicked fear. No matter how excellent a warrior any of them may have been, no one could maintain their will to fight while being pecked incessantly by an innumerable host of birds.

An impossibly unnatural phenomenon was unfolding.

“Over her, Grams! There’s a shallow cave in this stretch of rock!”

Kiyazuna and Kaete were also coping with the sudden chaos raining down on them.

As he ran, he stepped on black feathers, shed in enough numbers to cover the whole earth. Similarly, Kaete’s cry itself was almost completely drowned out by the sounds of wings, shaking the very air itself.

“Best to limit the number of directions we need to defend and hold out!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know! Gotta roast these bastards first!”

Bright flames shot out like liquid from the pipe Kiyazuna held in her hands.

The pipe was connected to a golem, or more precisely, the storage canister that was installed inside the golem’s body.

The flamethrower from the Beyond was one of the few weapons they were able to recover from Mestelexil’s bequest. To prevent the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists from mishandling the equipment from the Beyond, it had been disassembled and built into several of the golems assigned to guard Kiyazuna.

“There we go, drove those buggers off! Outta the way, Kaete! I’m hiding in there!”

“Stop it, Grams! Squish yourself in!”

Once Kiyazuna entered the narrow cave, they ended up with both of their bodies scrunched up together.

The golems they had taken with them were deployed to protect the cave and steeled for the following waves of attack.

The flamethrower’s fuel was limited. Their protective gear was only useful to combat poison, and conversely, there was a high risk of setting themselves on fire. Even fully aware of how risky it may have been, it was essentially their only means of repelling the swarm of small birds.

“Dammit! Didn’t waste any time showing their trump card…! The hell’s with these jackdaw bastards, anyway?!”

“Ain’t revenants, by the looks of ’em,” Kiyazuna murmured as she pulled the breechblock of a small handgun. “They seem to be attacking under some sorta commanding will, but they still got an instinctual fear of fire in ’em—these birds are flesh and blood.”

“…Impossible.”

Kaete shook his head. He immediately picked up on what that fact suggested.

The ability to make another obey a singular directive without robbing them of their thoughts and instincts as a living animal—there was one race present on this battlefield who could satisfy those requirements.

However, it was an existence that should not be.

“This vampire pathogen…is able to infect birds?! Infecting a homunculus like Mestelexil was abnormal enough, and now it’s not just minians but beasts, too?!”

Linaris the Obsidian was capable of annihilating the minian world.

Among those beings who had reached the realm of the shura, many possessed hidden aces up their sleeves that defied all imagination.

Much more, the figure who—more than any other—wielded information and secrecy as her weapon was always going to be prepared for a direct attack against her. The virus Linaris produced hadn’t proliferated entirely because she consciously limited its range of infection. Originally, however, this virus was a calamity that spread its infection limitlessly, using not only minian races but small animals as well, as carriers.

From the very beginning, for Linaris, eliminating her foes without paying any heed to concealing information or the sustentation of her control—even when accounting for some number of individuals possessing immunity via antiserum—had never posed a problem.

“Shit, some Old Kingdom idiots are making their way back!” Kiyazuna mumbled bitterly.

Beyond their golem protectors in front of them, and deeper within the swarm of birds that almost completely blanketed their vision past the cave, they could see the figures of soldiers tottering like they were on their last legs.

Using the flamethrower to drive off the birds had turned them into a suitable landmark.

“If they’re still all in one piece even after getting attacked by the swarm, that’s gotta mean…”

“Don’t tell me they’ve all be corpsified.”

Their plan to use the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists offensive for their own attack had completely backfired on them.

The swarming crows hadn’t been sent out to peck the enemy to death at all.

The goal had been to cause an explosive outbreak, using the grazing wounds to turn the armed force into corpses.

A proper vampire could never manage this… No… I should’ve already known that from the moment it stole Mestelexil’s control from us in the sixth match! Our enemy’s infection abilities defy all common knowledge of vampires! They never needed a long period of contact at all! They’re able to corpsify anyone from just the slightest cut!

How were they going to handle this? Kaete’s thoughts spun in his head.

The golems defending the cave would have been fitted with guns from the Beyond. If the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist soldiers were going to attack them, they could mow them down all at once.

While they may have temporarily shared a cause, neither Kaete nor Kiyazuna had the slightest qualms about intercepting them now that they posed a threat.

However, at that moment, the true problem laid elsewhere—

“Grams! The birds’re getting in!”

“Kiyazna io Woletzhigen. Sai delsa xa. Nolain ielin shaldekain! Tarfsips!” (Kiyazuna to Wolehshigen cloth. Condensation melody. Glimmer surface crystal. Permeating color of unsightly chromium! Entangle!)

Kaete could tell that he had been stabbed several times by the birds’ beaks, but there were no signs that the protective gear had been penetrated at all.

Kiyazuna the Axle’s Craft Arts denatured the material of the protective gear covering them both. Her decision-making, having passed through numerous bloodbaths as a self-proclaimed demon king, was faster than seemed possible for someone so old.

“Quit yer blubbering, Kaete! You’ve had the damn antiserum anyway, ain’t ya?!”

“I was worrying about you, Grams so—argh, those Old Kingdom idiots are here!”

The golem soldiers under Kiyazuna’s command opened up their collapsible arms for just a second.

The precision fire from the guns installed in them shot through the knees of an approaching soldier. The soldier screamed.

They could still hold out for a little longer. As long as it was that and nothing more.

“How stab-resistant is this protective gear?!”

“It ain’t no armor! Get hit enough in the same place and it’ll tear open!”

“What about the flamethrower fuel?!”

“That just used up half of it!”

Just holding out was possible. They couldn’t manage a single thing beyond that.

“We’re on the backfoot! Completely and utterly on the backfoot!”

Kaete and Kiyazuna’s fight was what amounted to hopeless trench warfare.

Not only that, their enemies weren’t even minian but instead an inexhaustible swarm of birds.

Kaete devoted himself to supporting Kiyazuna. If her protective gear was damaged, he needed to restore it with Craft Arts immediately. They needed to face the situation under the assumption that if a bird slipped in through a gap in her gear, and she suffered any scratch, she would immediately be infected and turned into a corpse.

“Baaah! Why the hell’s this vampire hiding out here on the city outskirts if the smallest damn prick’s enough to infect someone, huh?! If they got serious about attacking Aureatia, they’d be able to take it down ’fore sunset!” Kiyazuna shouted as she swept her flamethrower across the coursing swarm.

She’s absolutely right. If this foe felt like it, they could easily become the ruler of all minian civilization.

Kaete wasn’t firmly convinced a vampire like this existed, even after seeing an actual example when Mestelexil was taken over, because common sense dictated that this foe’s actions were extremely illogical.

If Kaete’s camp had this power at their disposal, they would’ve claimed victory on the spot. Mestelexil may have been capable of bringing ruin to all of Aureatia, but the parent unit of Obsidian Eyes was even more terrifying for accomplishing the same feat without any of the destruction. They could simply spread the infection systematically through the nation’s leading figures, faster than anyone could catch on, and gain control of the political core. They could easily crush any resistant forces that slipped through the first stages head-on, as well.

“I finally get it… This enemy is unrivaled, but cowardly. They don’t want complete control, but to keep hiding. They’re fighting like a coward who doesn’t believe they can perform the monstrous feats they’re capable of.”

“Hah! Look at ya, talkin’ like you figured the whole damn scheme out! ’Cept, I agree with ya there! They’re keeping an ultimate weapon like Mestelexil in this dreary forest like he’s some kinda knickknack—that gives some idea about how serious they are, all right.”

Someone trying to hide and control the situation from the shadows won’t be able to endure blunt hostility straight on. All they can think is that if they fight, they’ll eventually lose and might die along with it…

For Kaete the Round Table, this was the loathsome thinking pattern of the uninformed masses.

Normally, this enemy would’ve had the intelligence to easily outwit Kaete’s camp and drive them into this corner.

Kaete couldn’t understand it whatsoever. Was there really someone out there who was born with the gifts, both a supernatural ability and the skill for subterfuge, meant to control everything, yet still didn’t desire control themselves?

“Grams! How the fuel?!”

Kiyazuna’s flamethrower spit fire and scattered yet another wave of crows.

“It’s ’bout to run out! I’m making all the surviving golems gather up over here!”

Kiyazuna tossed aside a small, radzio-like handheld device.

It resembled a tiny, warped metal box, but Kaete could see that it was equipment for sending out some sort of signal.

“A gather-up order. You stuck that function in those things?! Golems you just made with whatever was on hand?!”

“Soul or not, they’re still my babies! Like I’m letting the Old Kingdom dumbasses use them however they like!”

It signaled that Kiyazuna, from the very start, intended on using the golems she provided to support the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists for herself. Kiyazuna the Axle was a brutal villain who wasn’t going to be used by anybody.

“’Cept these golem soldiers aren’t gonna have a chance against a swarm like this! We need poison or fire!”

“Better than nothing!”

In truth, the golems defending the cave opening were intercepting the swooping birds as well, but they weren’t at all up for the job.

The golem soldiers’ general methods of attack were punches and slashes. The firearms from the Beyond they secretly had installed unbeknownst to the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists had a limited number of bullets as well. While it probably wasn’t impossible for Kiyazuna to create rifle bullets on the battlefield, she didn’t have the spare energy to utilize complex Craft Arts while undergoing an incessant enemy attack.

“Ceite io kaster. Mi mea deo. Nax treeyu. Sahares—Zii!” (From Kaete to Kaster ivy. Fluttering star, puppet, iron dregs—Bind!)

The iron wire stretched across the cave mouth was restored and knitted into a barbed shape.

While Kaete, a former pupil of Kiyazuna, took pride in his ability to use Craft Arts at a higher level than the average person, the only things he could successfully use them for on unfamiliar soil were shape changes to mend the barbed wire he brought with him and their protective gear.

The end result was a brief peace of mind. Just like with the protective gear, he was simply repairing the wiring whenever it was broken. Once Kiyazuna was out of fuel for her flamethrower, their fate would be sealed.

Their foe wasn’t even sending the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists under their control at them anymore.

The initial approach of the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists had purely been to see what exactly their methods of attack were. This enemy had decided that they wouldn’t send any more Obsidian Eyes agents at them either, and instead would painstakingly dispose of them all with the flock of birds Kaete and Kiyazuna had no means of counteracting.

“We ain’t gonna survive, Kaeteeee!”

“Get back, Grams! We’ll keep holding on until the golem troops are all gone!”

“…?! Something ain’t right, the number of golems I gathered together—”

Right as Kaete went to pull out his sword and move forward, the scene in front of his eyes was blown away.

It was like an iron meteor strike.

The golems on guard were squashed by the speed and mass and scattered in smithereens.

The only thing that stopped Kaete from instant death was that a different golem soldier was hit by the scattered fragments in his stead.

An indigo silhouette lifted its body up from among the thick dust and fire.

It was then that Kaete thought, We had no chance of victory here.

Both Kaete and Kiyazuna were no different from the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists. Those who had suffered such a wide-scaled defeat never even had the option to choose how to fight.

Any chance of victory was a luxury. Whether they liked it or not, betting everything on this operation had been their only option.

Luring out Mestelexil by using the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists as bait—it was safe to say that just now, they had achieved their goal. The rest of the plan afterward had been, as far as Kaete’s mind could imagine, impossible from the beginning.

Even if they had been able to take advantage of the chaos caused by the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists attack…

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

They couldn’t have beaten Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge with proper methods.

Kaete had stopped hearing the sounds of Mestelexil’s gunfire ever since the bird assault began, and they hadn’t any time to spend on searching out where he was. Mestelexil had most likely disposed of any enemies that couldn’t be handled by the bird attacks—in other words, the golem soldiers.

Even still…

The Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists had been annihilated and couldn’t distract him.

The golem soldiers’ numbers had already been drastically reduced.

On top of it all, the bird force still swooped down upon them incessantly, and in this situation, they were now confronting Mestelexil head-on.

“I-I will defeat you… for the n-nice lady! Destroy the weapons!”

Even still, we just have to get it down.

When she opened up her eyes, she saw sunlight filtering through the trees directly in front of her.

More than her body, forcefully struck from the fall, there was a stabbing pain in her left shoulder.

It was possible that it might’ve been dislocated.

Just how stupid can I get…?

Yuno regained consciousness and felt frustrated.

She figured that the only reason she had survived the fall from the fifteen-meter-high tree was because the highly dense branches lessened her momentum mid-fall, and that the ground where she landed was soft.

The instant she felt herself falling, Yuno shot an arrowhead into the trunk to slow her fall—it was attached to her left arm with a string, readied in case she missed her footing on the rope ladder or any other emergency. However, as a result, her left shoulder had momentarily borne her full body weight and suffered a lot of damage. She certainly couldn’t claim her quick thinking had let her survive.

If Yuno hadn’t gotten so worked up in the first place, she never would’ve lost her balance just from being pecked by a bird.

Birds taking off en masse isn’t even some unexpected phenomenon… Just forget it. Instead of my own problems…I need to see Linaris. I have to tell her danger is on the way, and ask about Mestelexil…

The normal stillness had returned to the forest.

Had that massive flock of birds already made its way through the forest? Even then, she found it eerie that she could no longer hear the sounds of battle, or even the voices of the soldiers.

Was Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge still lurking somewhere in this forest?

Never mind… Trying to keep up my guard in case Mestelexil shows up is meaningless anyway.

Whether she found herself face-to-face with Mestelexil, or one of the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist soldiers, Yuno was as good as dead either way. With her sense of balance still haywire, she rose to her feet with a struggle.

She had several faint scratches, but her feet looked unharmed.

“Oh, and what’s this?! We have quite the unexpected guest!”

A high-pitched voice came from deeper in the forest.

When Yuno reflexively looked in that direction, all that greeted her was the impenetrable arboreal darkness.

The owner of the voice appeared to have a clear sight of her, though, approaching as they continued to talk.

“Yuno the Distant Talon! What brings you back this way? Though perhaps…if you stay here too long, even an obscure and remote forest like this may start to feel like home! Ahyah-hyah-hyah-hyah!”

“Aren’t you…?”

There was snap of a string, and a slender body came twirling out of the darkness.

It was a zmeu harlequin dressed in a vibrant orange costume. Yuno found it strange that her outfit stood out so garishly amid the dark forest, yet she hadn’t been able to see it at all until that moment.

The zmeu lined up her feet, stood in front of Yuno, and waved her right arm out in front of her to give an overexaggerated bow.

“I do believe we have yet to properly meet, Miss Yuno the Distant Talon. I am Zeljirga the Abyss Web. I am Lady Linaris’s ever loyal clown. I do wish I had the chance to perform some of my tricks for you while you were still at the manor! Ahyah-hyah-hyah-hyah-hyah!”

“Zeljirga the hero candidate…! Wait, so that story about separating from Obsidian Eyes…”

“Uh-oh! Please, if you would kindly spare me from any further inquiry. After all, how am I supposed to keep up my buffoonery in business if the audience knows all my secrets? Ahyah-hyah-hyah! Though, being as intelligent as you are, Yuno, allow me to tell you one more thing! I know your name and that you previously left the manor once only to return.”

Zeljirga made a show of bringing her pointer finger up to her lips.

“Perhaps, if I may be so bold, it would be best to respond with care. Lady Linaris gave you permission to leave in order to summon help for her… So why then have you returned? I assure you, if you returned with a skilled physician in tow, I always have a gust of confetti revelry saved for just an occasion!”

She’s…

Yuno felt as if all the extraneous thoughts that, up until that moment, threatened to tear her brain apart, were all scraped away.

Similarly to Yuno, Zeljirga was an ally of Linaris’s. From the very beginning, she had never defected from Obsidian Eyes and had snuck herself into the Sixways Exhibition as a hero candidate for Obsidian Eyes.

Nevertheless, this did not mean that she was Yuno’s ally.

…Interrogating me. This latest assault…and why their hideout’s location had been pinned down. Zeljirga believes that it was all because I leaked information to an outside party. Lendelt accompanied me in order to keep me quiet, too, and he isn’t with me, so I’m even more suspicious… She’s planning on disposing of me, depending on how I answer.

“Ahyah-hyah-hyah! What’s the matter? Oh, mayhaps you don’t wish to reveal your secrets, either? How about if I share one of my own in exchange? Given this our first chance to chat with one another, I do hope to make it an enjoyable one!”

“I-I’ve come…to warn her about danger! The negotiations with the Gray-Haired Child were successful, and I managed to get his promise that he will have a doctor see Linaris! Still, there is someone after Linaris…”

“Ah-ha! You wouldn’t be referring to that little group just now, would you…? If so then, who do you think…was the one to invite them here?”

Zeljirga’s eyes narrowed.

Think. You have to think.

If this woman was powerful enough to be a hero candidate, then she could likely vivisect Yuno into pieces before she could finish exhaling. Conversely, Yuno couldn’t hope to escape even a single Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist soldier in her current state.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Nor do I, I’m afraid. Shall we back up a bit, then? What would be this danger that you are in such a rush to tell Lady Linaris about? More specifically?”

That’s right…Who brought the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists here? The soldiers reached the manor before I did. I wasn’t being tailed by them, and neither I nor Lendelt gave Hiroto any information on its location. Even if the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists are connected to Hiroto, the location of the manor undoubtedly came from a different information source entirely. The means to locate this hideout… The true method of killing Linaris that Hiroto mixed into the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist assault has to be somewhere in how the manor was located.

Yuno the Distant Talon was not powerful. She was just a young girl. It seemed essentially impossible for her to hypothesize what sort of information sources the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists had at their disposal when she had never interacted with them before.

“That would be…”

While the period of silence had been very short, it felt like an absurdly long stretch of time.

In the moment, a second from death, fragments of her life unrelated to the present situation passed through her mind.

The day Nagan was destroyed. Her travels with Soujirou. What Haade had told her. The things she had talked about with Hiroto—

“…Kiyazuna the Axle.”

It was her most intense memory.

Floating into the back of her mind, she thought that itself was her answer.

“Hm?”

“Kiyazuna the Axle is joined up with the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists. Isn’t that right? I saw golems fighting together with the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists from above the treetops! Right now, the only Craft Arts caster in Aureatia who is capable of mass-producing a fresh golem force is Kiyazuna the Axle!”

“I see, I see…”

Zeljirga put her hand to her chin, pretending to be pondering Yuno’s answer.

She had assuredly judged for herself if Yuno was pointing her finger at the right person.

“Kiyazuna, joined up with the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists, and came to steal Mestelexil back…! The Gray-Haired Child has a connection with the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists and already had information on the attack ahead of time. He told me all of this, and that’s why I came back first!”

She wove lies into the explanation, since the one driving this assault was none other than the Gray-Haired Child himself.

At the same time, everything she said was truth. Regardless of who was behind everything, the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists and the Gray-Haired Child were indeed connected to one another. Furthermore, it was in fact Hiroto the Paradox himself who told Yuno that there was going to be an attack.

Zeljirga was with Obsidian Eyes from the start and fought against Mestelexil… So Mestelexil really did get stolen by Obsidian Eyes, then. In which case, regaining control of Mestelexil would have to be the only possible motive for Kiyazuna to attack them like this.

“If that is the case, it is quite strange for the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist fellows to know about the location of our manor here, yes? I certainly doubt that they happened to stumble upon it while out for a leisurely stroll, however—”

“This is just a theory, but…” She took a deep breath after interrupting Zeljirga. However, the unrelated fragments of her life pieced together into one, and from it she gained a certain degree of conviction.

“I might know how. I traveled together with Soujirou the Willow-Sword and talked with him a great deal. About the languages they use in the Beyond, as well as all the weapons Soujirou defeated there, too. In the Beyond, their military forces and weaponry are set up to share information with each other on their location at all times, in order to allow them to adapt their tactics on the fly. Though, Soujirou was terrible at explaining it all to me…”

“Hmm, well, isn’t that interesting? So, as an example, like that bird flock just now?”

“On a theoretical level, it is possible to transmit location information using these invisible waves, like how radzio calls work. Mestelexil is fitted with technology from the Beyond, right? Since Kiyazuna the Axle made him…it wouldn’t be strange for her to be capable of tracking him down, right?”

“Ahyah-hyah-hyah-hyah! I see, I see, what an intriguing explanation! But, of course, a Nagan scholar like yourself would be far more educated than I could ever hope to be! My lady absolutely loves hearing about such things, too!”

“I know. I’ve talked a lot with Linaris.”

“Oh, silly me, I clearly must work on my manners! Here I am peppering my lady’s dearest friend with all manner of rude questions. I imagine you will likely be saying all of this in front of her yourself no less. Now I’ve gone and stolen that delight from her ahead of time!”

Yuno had already been infected and turned into a corpse.

She would only be able to answer any questions from Linaris with the absolute unvarnished truth.

Right. I’m just buying time here. Obsidian Eyes possessed the most surefire method right from the start.

At the very least, she had managed to avoid being disposed of here.

She couldn’t rest. She needed to head to Linaris’s side.

“Zeljirga. Please tell Linaris what I’ve told you. I’ll be…”

“Heading to the manor, yes?”

“That’s right.”

Yuno had just fulfilled her mission of informing Linaris about the danger, but even then she still felt the urge to go back.

She didn’t want to relive the regret and despair of abandoning a friend.

“As you see, we have packed seats for today’s performance. It seems that I will need to meet with another guest in a little while. You should follow this game trail here to the manor. It will be a bit of a roundabout path, but…I have gone ahead and cleared away some of my tricks for you.”

“You did all of that before you even came over to me?”

“Ahyah-hyah-hyah! I may have forgotten to clear away some of them, or I may be accidently sending you down the wrong path entirely! Can you trust me?”

“I trust you. There’s nothing untrue about my desire to help Linaris.” Yuno smiled slightly. “You certainly would have already seen through that, Zeljirga. Am I wrong?”

On top of the bed, Linaris exhaled painfully.

She put a hand on her chest, over her thin white nightgown. Was this cold sensation because her body temperature had indeed cooled?

At the very least, she knew her coughing and difficulty breathing were from a pulmonary edema inducing heart failure.

She wouldn’t be able to maintain consciousness for long.

The Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists…should be mostly neutralized by now…

Even then, this was enough time for Linaris to suppress the armed force.

It was far easier to erase any trace of the bird flock that moved and hide themselves on their own, than it was for Mestelexil’s bullets and cartridges, clearly a product of technology from the Beyond.

That’s why I had Mestelexil clean up and dismantle the golems without letting him get in any fights with his firearms… The golem soldiers’ remains could just as easily be a pretext for the Aureatia army to make their way here.

For this assault, neither victory nor retreat were the best courses of action.

A victory meant the scars of the battle would bring Aureatia to their heels, and fleeing meant their enemy would just come at them again.

Since the Gray-Haired Child sent the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists out to attack, despite having the mercenaries of the Free City of Okafu at his disposal, he still had the leeway to deny his direct involvement.

The rest of Obsidian Eyes, save for Linaris, needed to unknowingly form cooperative relationships with the Gray-Haired Child.

So the best plan is to pretend that it never happened at all. We never crossed swords with the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists.

The Gray-Haired Child was, without any doubt, an unfathomable monster, but he was a politician.

If they created an even more favorable situation for themselves, then there still remained a chance for harmony. It didn’t appear that Yuno and Lendelt failed, or that negotiations had broken down, either.

In exchange for what little remaining life Linaris had, they wouldn’t fight. If they did end up doing so, Obsidian Eyes would be seen as a threat and be eliminated as an enemy of all, just like the True Demon King.

After Linaris died, no one in Obsidian Eyes would survive. Her submission to the Gray-Haired Child had been the one choice that still preserved the smallest chance of Obsidian Eyes’ survival.

“My lady.”

There was a knocking sound from the hall.

“It’s Wieze the Variation. I have captured the enemy’s ringleader.”

Linaris tried to answer herself, but her suffocated breathing left her unable.

Glancing over at Frey by her bedside, she told her to let him in.

“Wieze. Our lady is telling you to come in.”

Frey replied in Linaris’s stead.

Wieze was accompanied by a woman with a massive physique, larger than the average dwarf’s. She had her eyes blindfolded, and her hands were bound behind her back.

Linaris already knew a few things about Caneeya the Fruit Trimming.

“Good day, Miss Caneeya the Fruit Trimming. My name is…Linaris. Please…forgive our harsh treatment.”

She apologized in a voice so feeble, it may not have even reached Caneeya standing in front of her.

“What a lovely voice you have. I would have never guessed such a person to be the Obsidian.”

“…No.”

While she tried to remember not to let her reaction to such comments show on her face, she figured she once again had a troubled look.

“I am not Obsidian.”

The name was only appropriate for her father.

Until Linaris fulfilled her father’s earnest wish, she couldn’t even serve as his substitute.

“I see. A meaningless comment on my part. I understand what is going to happen here.”

“…Miss Caneeya, there are some questions I wish to ask you.”

Those defeated by a vampire would have all their information extracted out of them.

Corpses could not rise against a vampire’s nervous system manipulation. Especially when facing the technique of the Obsidian, which unraveled nerve safeguards like solving a woodcraft puzzle to interfere with even deeper portions of the consciousness.

“Why did you attack this manor?”

She gave her question as though she was permeating Caneeya’s brain with pure water.

Caneeya couldn’t put up any resistance to the penetration.

“There were suspicions…that Aureatia was using a vampire as a weapon to destroy the hero candidates. We assaulted the manor in order to verify this and to use the evidence to strike against Aureatia…”

“…”

A groundless assumption.

During the True Demon King’s era and among the peoples’ conflicts, Obsidian Eyes had stained their hands with many dirty deeds.

Shouldering the destructive infamy and intrigue was also included in their work. Nevertheless, she could only view this excuse as little more than a pretext to entice the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists into attacking Obsidian Eyes.

If Linaris had awoken sooner and gotten information from her corpses inside the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalist ranks, she may have been able to change where their blades were guided. While Linaris, the parent unit, was unconscious, the corpses only managed to continue leaking information according to the commands previously instilled in them.

“How did you find this place? Who…told you all of this?”

She deliberately began to ask this question.

At the same time, Linaris manipulated Caneeya’s psyche. This fact was imperceptible to both Frey and Wieze looking on at her side. Only the bare minimum manipulation needed—even if it was the Gray-Haired Child who actually incited the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists to make their move, she wasn’t going to let her say so.

“Kaete the Round Table. Aureatia’s former Fourth Minister… He said that he had arrived at this conspiracy to turn the hero candidates into corpses and the position of this hideout, from surveys done during his time in the Industrial Ministry… The fact that Obsidian Eyes was, in fact, based here corroborated his explanation.”

“That is…koff, koff.”

Coughing, she took time to steady her breathing.

…Terrifying. Even with how confident I am, I could easily slip into believing that the Gray-Haired Child was completely uninvolved. Although he incited an attack like this, Master Hiroto made it happen without interjecting almost any of his own demands, and as if the perpetrators wished to do it themselves… Master Zigita Zogi had, from the very beginning, arranged the playing field to ensure Master Hiroto could accomplish such a feat.

The reason Linaris was so firmly convinced that this was an attack from the Gray-Haired Child was because she knew that her envoy, Yuno the Distant Talon, had passed on the information regarding Rosclay and Haade’s connection to the Gray-Haired Child.

Linaris trusted Yuno to use this fact as a bargaining chip in their negotiations, and in her secret orders to Lendelt, she had also instructed him to not silence Yuno for making said information known.

Even if use my vampire power to make her identify the “who” and the “how,” I won’t arrive at the answer. The real problem with this attack…is the “when.” Why today, when the grand coup was guaranteed to happen…? Did he know he would be able to deceive Aureatia, even if he mobilized all these troops at once?

Zigita Zogi, having traced a course to inevitable victory with minute planning and daring action, had been the strongest strategist of all, as far as Linaris knew. If he had remained on the playfield, the Gray-Haired Child’s victory would have been assured.

However, even after losing this strategist, Hiroto the Paradox was a terrifying foe. While he had not drawn the path for himself, he was connected to an unfathomable network of acquaintances. The supernatural power to make people’s individual wills lock together like gears and mold them into a singular colossal monster.

“…Thank you kindly, Miss Caneeya the Fruit Trimming… I will have you…forget everything that happened in this room, but…I promise that both you, and your followers…koff…are not harmed any further.”

Linaris felt mortified that these intermitted and disconnected words were all she could respond with.

Caneeya remained silent as Wieze led her out of the room.

“My lady, you must be exhausted.”

“Thank you…for your concern…Miss Frey…”

When she laid her body back down, it only made her breathing even harder. Frey folded up blankets and stacked them between Linaris and the bed for her to lean against. This elderly house maiden was always the one looking after Linaris and cared for her like a mother.

Just how much could Linaris accomplish right now, while she was awake, for Obsidian Eyes until she was gone? If she went back to sleep now, there was a chance she would never awaken again.

Ever since her father had died, she hadn’t managed to carry out even half of the mission she needed to finish.

While she thought Frey was certainly someone she could entrust it all to, she felt guilty to do so.

Before she closed her eyes, she gazed vacantly out at the room.

Her consciousness was hazy. She needed to finish everything while she could still wield distinct control.

She sent out her commands all at once to the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists, excluding Obsidian Eyes—from the targets they needed to attack, excluding golems and corpses, to the memory erasure following the attack and shift to go on standby.

Kiyazuna and Kaete would be dealt with before long.

The evidence of any battle, including bodies and traces of gunfire, would be thoroughly destroyed by Mestelexil. When considering the worst-case scenario, was she then supposed to make him avoid any encounter with Kiyazuna?

After that, she hoped that Yuno would at least be alive and okay…

“I’m not sure how many years it’s been since I left, but…”

The voice made Linaris’s breath catch in her throat.

It was this voice that first informed the only two who were supposed to be in the room that there was another man inside. Not only that, but he had been lurking inside since before Wieze the Variation brought Caneeya inside.

Neither Frey the Waking, a battle-hardened veteran agent, nor Linaris herself, with her tight security net of numerous bird eyes watching the area, had sensed his approach at all.

“You’ve changed, my lady.”

The voice’s owner was leaning motionless up against the windowsill.

Once she noticed, it was plainly evident he was standing there, and yet no one had picked up on him at all.

There was only one person capable of slipping unseen through the security network of the greatest spy guild of all and reaching Linaris’s private bedchambers.

“Master…Kuuro.”

“Call anyone else here, and I’ll kill you. Included whoever shows up.”

It was a leprechaun wrapped in a brown coat. While he was even shorter in stature than a small young girl like Linaris, he was truly the most fearsome assassin in the entire land.

Kuuro’s face was covered in harrowing burn scars. His bandages were wrapped haphazardly around his face less to heal them and simply to keep them hidden instead.

“You’ve come after all, Kuuro the Cautious…”

Frey the Waking had accepted his arrival.

It was in complete contrast to Linaris, who was fearful, her mind racing.

“Yeah. You know already, right? With my Clairvoyance, it’s not hard to evade radar or an avian surveillance network. I can see my lady’s…the vampire’s pheromones, too. Try to give a new order, and I’ll kill you instantly.”

“Mistress Frey.”

“Please, my Lady, you do not need to worry.”

Now that he had gotten this close to them, there wasn’t the slightest hope of victory.

Linaris’s control via airborne infection wouldn’t have any effect, either. Kuuro had worked during the Particle Storm battle as a spotter for Aureatia and had been inoculated with the antiserum at the time. The only means they had to escape Obsidian Eyes’ natural enemy was to maneuver in a way that avoided crossing paths with him.

The way to counteract Clairvoyance was to launch a wide-area saturation attack at a speed that vastly outpaced Kuuro the Cautious’s reaction speed. The only one capable of that kind of attack anywhere nearby had to be Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge.

As long as Linaris was lying sick in bed, Obsidian Eyes was unable to move their base of operations.

Furthermore, if Mestelexil performed such a large-scale attack, they would be unable to keep their hideout’s location concealed from Aureatia. Spraying a chemical weapon would leave no traces behind; nevertheless neither Linaris herself nor the Obsidian Eyes agents protecting her would get through it unharmed. Linaris also needed to avoid Mestelexil coming into direct contact with his creator, Kiyazuna the Axle—the option of letting Mestelexil fight at full strength posed too great of a risk to the future lying ahead.

Linaris’s objective wasn’t to wipe out her enemies or take over a nation. It was just to prolong Obsidian Eyes’ life.

From the very beginning the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists were here to restrict our options around mobilizing Mestelexil… I’m sure that even if we had noticed Master Kuuro’s approach, my heart couldn’t have made that decision.

That wasn’t all of it. There was one other reason why she wasn’t able to predict Kuuro’s appearance.

Why had he come here?

“Why…?”

“It’s because you stopped Mestelexil’s attack. From the very beginning, the Old Kingdoms’ Loyalists were here to make you hesitate about attacking with Mestelexil. I’d guess the one who set up this whole situation never expected you’d be able to so easily suppress the situation yourself, my lady, but—”

“That’s not what I mean! I don’t mean why me, but…why do you have those scars, Master Kuuro…?!”

Her bewilderment and shock were greater than any fear for her life. Kuuro shouldn’t have been involved in the Sixways Exhibition or a concern of Obsidian Eyes’ operations at all.

Mobilizing Mestelexil to dispose of Kuuro the Cautious was a decision she never would have made. For starters, the idea of Kuuro attacking Obsidian Eyes itself was wholly unexpected to Linaris. She had ordered that he was the one person they needed to avoid fighting with, given his potential to become Obsidian Eyes’ greatest enemy.

Why had he been reduced to such a wretched state? What exactly happened while she had been straddling the line between life and death, from the eighth match up until now?

“…Ah, these burns? Didn’t think I’d be getting any sympathy there.”

Kuuro’s smile looked almost nihilistic.

“I was hit with a bombing attack from Mestelexil. Within Obsidian Eyes…is a traitor who acted on their own to try eliminating me. Frey the Waking… It’s you.”

“Mistress Frey…”

“Yes, yes.”

Frey’s voice was just as gentle and mild as ever.

“You’re absolutely right.”

Linaris coughed. She was pained, and frightened.

She couldn’t comprehend why Frey had done it. She had thought Frey the Waking was the most loyal operative of all, serving Obsidian Eyes since before Linaris was even born. To Linaris, she was like a mother figure.

Did she really not understand Frey the whole time? Had Frey never really trusted her? It was a terrifying, bone-chilling idea.

“You must have revealed yourself to ask me that, yes? You’re correct. Completely independent of my lady…or anyone else, I ordered Mestelexil to attack you.”

“Figured. You’re not lying,” the bearer of Clairvoyance declared.

Her body and mind were wasting away to nothing, and yet Linaris’s brain alone tried to meaninglessly search for an answer. Nevertheless, if she was going to think, it needed to come before this situation worsened.

She never imagined that Frey would betray her. Did this mean that she was supposed to have used the techniques of Obsidian Eyes on Frey, like she did with all the corpse agents outside the organization, and dismantle her psyche until she was fully subordinate? Turn the woman who showed Linaris more parental care and affection than anyone else into a puppet lacking free will?

“We’re in front of the Mistress. Give us the reason… I’ll give you just enough time to spit it out.”

“Heeh-heeh-heeh, oh, how very kind of you.”

Frey’s cane-staff technique was fast enough to cleave a body, armor and all, in two, but this too was meaningless.

Opposite Frey, her staff in hand, Kuuro didn’t even have a weapon at the ready, but Frey must have known that at this distance, there was none who could overtake him.

“Though, perhaps…you’re being quite merciless instead.”

Frey put down her cane and walked closer to the bedside.

Though Linaris didn’t have the stamina to raise herself up from the bed, she felt so terribly saddened that she quivered in fear at Frey’s approach and drew her body back.

A wrinkle-laden hand gently patted Linaris’s head.

“Nothing would make us safer than having you dead. In our battle against Zigita Zogi…in the worst-case scenario, were Zigita Zogi or Aureatia to employ you again, my lady’s fate would be sealed. No matter how unlikely that case may be, it was something I couldn’t overlook. Since, for my lady, even if she had been aware of this possibility…killing Kuuro the Cautious would surely be impossible.”

“I had no intention on joining up with Aureatia, the Gray-Haired Child, or Obsidian Eyes. You sent Lena the Obscured my way to check for yourselves. Assuming you rendered me unable to fight during your operation in the eighth match, did you think you could kill me for good? Frey… You know what I was in the old days. Why didn’t you realize that your own actions put your lady’s life in the most danger of all?”

“…Heeh-heeh-heeh. I see your omnipotent Clairvoyance isn’t able to see through everything after all, then. When you survived and resolved to get vengeance on Obsidian Eyes, your Clairvoyance understood perfectly what had happened no matter what, yes? You see, since the one who ordered Mestelexil…the one you’re meant to kill isn’t our lady, but myself instead.”

“…”

Linaris listened to the conversation, feeling as if she was suffocating.

The cold terror beating in her heart wasn’t because she couldn’t understand Frey, but because she was beginning to comprehend what Frey had been thinking, and why she betrayed her.

“Nhg…Nhah!…Hn, koff, koff.”

“It’s okay, my lady… Yes, there is no need to fear. None at all…”

Frey was thinking of Linaris.

However, this was the one thing Linaris didn’t want taken from her. She didn’t desire anything else.

“Kuuro. Even these old eyes of mine would never misjudge a former compatriot. I know your style very well. My death alone will serve as retribution for the attack. As long as we claimed victory in our battle with Zigita Zogi, losing an old bag of bones like me wasn’t going to change the outcome of the greater picture.”

“…Even if you lost like you have now.”

Kuuro murmured. His tone was horribly bitter and loathsome.

“No, even if you did win…you’d be able to give the Mistress freedom, no longer tied down by Obsidian Eyes. That was your thinking, then… What a selfish idea. Do you have any idea how much the Mistress cared about you…?”

Frey simply smiled and shook her head.

Miss Frey.

Linaris’s golden eyes still remained open, yet the unconsciously pooled tears began to stream down her cheeks. It was exactly as Kuuro said, a very selfish and cruel thing.

Did she really think that my suffering was all for the sake of Obsidian Eyes? Is there really any other happiness out there for me beyond the family I’ve shared joy and hardship with my whole life? Up until now, I’ve never stopped trying to ensure I wouldn’t lose anyone else…

Her thoughts bubbled up one after another, but she hadn’t the courage to put them into words.

She was supposed to save Frey, yet if Frey herself didn’t wish for happiness, then what exactly had Linaris been trying to accomplish, and what was the meaning of all the sacrifices that had been made along the way?

“My lady… My lady Linaris. These are to be my last words. I ask that you listen well.”

Frey rubbed Linaris’s back like a parent soothing a child.

A warm hand. The same voice Frey always had.

“We of Obsidian Eyes…are so very fortune to be able to cherish and show consideration to one another. It is a blessing we could have never even hoped for during your father Rehart’s time. However…that happiness can only be maintained by devouring the happiness of others and continuously sucking on their blood.”

“No… That’s not true, that’s not true…!”

“You are intelligent and beautiful. You could have had true happiness. Instead of traveling along with those who should have died together with the end of war, you could’ve made friends like Miss Yuno, used your talents properly…and chosen a path free of sin, interacting with a variety of people. Even knowing all of this…your humble servant Frey possessed neither the courage to choose death for myself, nor to leave your side.”

“It’s far too late to make yourself sound so high-minded. If you truly wished in your heart for the Mistress to be free from everything, you should’ve done all of this before she stained her hands… You’re too late.”

“Heh-heh-heh. Yes. Of course. That is quite right. However…even your omnipotent Clairvoyance is unable to comprehend what I hold in my heart, it seems.”

Frey the Waking smiled.

“Neither the happiness I felt, unable to have a family of mine…to love and be loved like a parent and child—”

However, she didn’t show this final smile to Linaris.

A black, wicked smile.

Kuuro was the only one looking at Frey’s true face.

“Nor the wicked urge…to hoard that happiness for myself for all eternity.”

“…You admit it in front of the Mistress, then.”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

“I’m following the way Obsidian Eyes does it. I decided that before I killed you, I wanted you to taste the greatest amount of agony I could.”

Frey left Linaris’s side on her own.

Kuuro pointed a submachine gun at Frey.

With her sickly body, Linaris couldn’t even reach out her hands to pull Frey back.

“—and now, I’ve done just that.”

His Clairvoyance eye, glimmering blue, looked as merciless as the eyes of a hawk.

“M-Master Kuuro… Please, forgive her. I, I will atone for what happened however you wish. So, please, I-I beg you… Please forgive Miss Frey…”

“Bringing appropriate reprisal to the appropriate person—that’s the Obsidian Eyes way. The one responsible for leading an organization needs to be given a suitable punishment for their organization’s actions. I showed myself here and revealed the whole story to you to deliver exactly that.”

“No!”

Linaris let out a shriek like the dying gasps of a rent throat.

The windows all broke apart, and black birds surged into the room.

Mestelexil’s long-range gunshot rushed through walls and terrain at the leprechaun.

Kuuro merely moved two steps to the side.

None of them hit Kuuro the Cautious, as if the outcome had been settled from the beginning.

“Watch and suffer.”

Then, he pulled the submachine gun trigger.

Together with the sound of bursting gunpowder, Frey’s small body danced helter-skelter.

Her arm and her legs wriggled violently, and what were once fingertips, eyeballs, were reduced to simple flesh before scattering. She grew distorted. Torn apart. Everything was shaved away, rendered into something that could never be once more.

The same person who had been lovingly hugging Linaris moments prior was gone.

Lost in her despair, Linaris didn’t remember what sort of scream she let out.

Everything around her descended into darkness and began to disappear.

Battles against Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge were not always without survivors.

During the sixth match of the Sixways Exhibition, Zeljirga the Abyss Web, matched against Mestelexil, used her superb dexterity and several breaches of the rules to buy herself time and pierced through a gap in the invincible machinery.