3
The windows had been smashed to pieces. And then the wall behind Iska had caved in with a muffled creaking sound.
“Eep?!”
“They’re here! Did they ram into us?!”
Everyone was far from calm.
After all, the train windows had been smashed to smithereens and the rexes’ savage claws were flickering in and out of view in the dark of night. They were surrounded.
“The hunters! Where are the hunters?!”
“Farther back! Let’s run to that train car!”
The passengers began to scramble to save themselves. They all evacuated into the next car, not even stopping to collect their luggage. By the time he came to his senses, Iska realized he’d been left alone in the train car.
“…Rexes?” Iska murmured, and at the same time, he heard the deafening sounds of gunshots ring out.
That had to be the hunters’ machine guns. Beyond the shattered glass, he saw the sparks of light from the gunfire. However, the large beasts stood stark against the night, towering at five meters tall. It hadn’t worked. In fact, the barrage of gunfire and subsequent pain from their wounds seemed to have made them angrier.
“That’s not gonna work…!”
It was only a matter of time until they invaded the train cars.
As Iska shuddered at the thought, his mind turned not to the hunters, but the Empire’s strongest swordsman, who should have been on the train.
“Master, what are you doing right now…?!”
His teacher hadn’t appeared even with this commotion. Or perhaps he was already fighting against the rexes? The only thing Iska knew for certain was that the swordsman was not here with him now. He was on his own.
“You should hypothesize what would happen if the most unfortunate and inconvenient situations were to occur.”
“At least a few of them will actually occur. Whether or not you are on the battlefield.”
“Agh! He only gets it right at times like these!”
Iska opened his travel bag.
He unwrapped several layers of cloth from a sword made for self-defense. He doubted he could stand up against a rex with this, but it was the only thing he had on him that could be deemed a weapon.
“…I need to keep it together.”
He gripped the sword as he looked around.
This wasn’t the type of scenario he could go into without a plan.
He needed to protect himself while saving the passengers and driving away the rexes. In order to do all of that, Iska needed to put himself in a position where he’d be at an advantage.
“Where can I go…?”
Creak.
The wall of the train car was dented in the shape of sharp claws. The rexes had likely sunk their teeth into the train cars and were holding on with their claws. As he pictured it…
“That’s right. From the rooftop…!” Iska shouted and leaped out of the train car with the force of a whirlwind.
He headed to the couplings that joined them together. After climbing up a ladder, he jumped onto the roof.
“Guh…”
The evening winds whipped past him. He was on top of the speeding train—a dangerous position where if he slipped, he’d end up falling to the ground, but this was the ideal spot.
“There!”
He ran straight across the roof to the edge of the train car and swung his sword.
“Hgh!”
He heard a rex roar. As he ran, Iska had sliced through another rex’s claws. They’d been embedded in the train’s walls, and by cutting them off, the rex had lost its grip and tumbled off.
One down.
“…This could work!”
Rexes were large predators. Because of that, they pounced on the train like it was their prey by instinct. All Iska had to do was cut off their claws and they’d fall right down.
“C’mon! I can even deal with four of you!”
As the wind rushed past him, he shouted so loudly, his throat went hoarse. He was doing that to encourage himself—he was scared. Because he’d practiced with his master, he was used to fighting humans more than he liked. He hadn’t fought a gigantic predator before. As a child at eleven years old, a bloodthirsty rex was a monster much too big for him.
“Huh!” The strong wind carried the sound of a high-pitched scream, and Iska turned around. “…That car over there!”
As he was buffeted by the wind, he ran across the roof and jumped onto the next train car.
There it was.
A rex was attempting to clamber onto the roof. When the beast saw Iska, it roared intimidatingly, but he rushed at it, pushing off from the floor to go even faster. He couldn’t be frightened. He had to protect the train. If the beasts successfully climbed on, they could get to the engine car and stop the train completely. If that happened, all the passengers would become prey to the beasts.
“No way. I will not let you make it up here!”
He devoted himself to brandishing his sword. He cut the beast’s claws with a single swing and the second rex fell.
“…Tsk…haah…”
He’d only been fighting for a few minutes, but he was panting unbelievably hard. It wasn’t simple fatigue either. The pressure from this life-or-death situation was making it difficult to breathe.
“Where next?! The front?!”
He had to rely on his ears rather than his eyes in the darkness. He started running in the direction he thought the rexes would be.
“There!”
He swung his sword at the faintly illuminated carnivore. However…
“Ouch?!”
Iska was the one to cry out. A dull pain ran through him like electricity as his wrist to his elbow went numb and stopped working.
His sword had been sent flying. The rex had sensed Iska coming and kicked up its front leg at its prey—in other words, Iska. He had barely managed to defend himself with his sword.
“Guh…”
But now his right arm refused to move.
“…Just fall!”
He grabbed his sword with his left hand and once again sliced at the rex holding on to the train.
That made three.
Behind Iska, he heard the sweeping fire of a machine gun.
“…There’s more at the last car!”
He didn’t even have time to catch his breath as he leaped across the extremely unsteady train cars, heading farther down.
Iska had yet to notice in the darkness that a small crack had formed in his sword.
“It’s gotten through the window and is in the train!”
“The tenth car is a lost cause! We need to disconnect it! Evacuate to the ninth car right now!”
Bzzt…
Lights violently flickered in the train car as the rexes that had caught up to the caboose snapped through the cables one after another.
Alice hadn’t seen the disaster herself, but she knew exactly how dire the situation was based on the strained cries of the hunters.
“…”
She cowered in her seat. Just as the hunters had ordered, Alice and the other passengers nearby were sitting and keeping silent as they waited. The hunters had said that would be the safest.
…………
…But is it really?
Alice didn’t understand the adults’ plan.
As she stayed perfectly still, she began to wonder whether she was doing the right thing. Emotions began to bubble up from within her.
After all, Alice had a power that could save them from this situation—she had immense astral power. Her single worry was whether she would lose control of it since she knew the power was dangerous and even her mother had forbidden her from using it. But if she could control it, she’d be able to save the passengers.
“…Lenlen! Um, Lenlen.”
The moment she tried to talk to the guard next to her, she heard the crunch of metal. The windowpanes broke, and shards flew at them as a rex arm as thick as a log swung into the car.
The predator outside was groping for the humans in the train car.
“Huh!”
Alice felt a chill run down her spine. Her astral power had activated half unconsciously as the enemy closed in on her in front of her eyes.
“You mustn’t, Lady Alice!”
As she stood up, Lenlen gripped her arm, trying to tell her not to use her power. Alice could see in Lenlen’s eyes exactly what the guard wanted to say, even if it wasn’t put into words. She understood, but the screams from the passengers only continued to grow louder.
“N-noooo?!”
“Get back! Damn it! Are they trying to get into this car, too?!”
Alice heard a mother with her kids scream from close by. The hunters who had come running over showered the rexes that were clinging to the walls with a barrage of bullets.
“Lady Alice,” Lenlen was murmuring, though her voice was drowned out by the din of the gunfire. “Lady Alice, your intentions are noble, and I am painfully aware of exactly what you wish to do.”
“…”
“But please not right now. I do not mean to be insolent, but your astral powers have the potential to bring about more casualties than the rexes.”
“……I know.”
And how frustrating it was to the princess—to the astral mage. Even though she had the power to solve the problem they were in, because she was so inexperienced at controlling it, she was powerless to do anything.
No, she wasn’t entirely powerless. She was frustrated because she had been told not to act and had no argument to justify helping.
“Leave it up to the hunters.”
“…But!”
Alice pointed at the crushed window frame and didn’t hold back her howl. They were at their limit—the passengers, the hunters, and the train itself.
“The window is broken! And there are more and more rexes leaping onto the train. They’re on the roof and are closing in… Wait…”
She doubted her eyes. Beyond the window that Alice pointed to, a rex had fallen from the roof. Had it simply lost balance? But then another fell in front of Alice in the same way as she pondered over what was happening.
Was it the hunters? No, the hunters already had their hands full protecting them inside of the train. They couldn’t have been outside.
“…Is there someone on the roof?”
She slowly approached the window. She placed a hand on the unbroken window glass and looked up outside the car.
“Lady Alice! You must get away from the window!”
“…”
Lenlen’s shout never reached Alice’s ears. She was fully preoccupied by the scene outside the car she was witnessing playing out in front of her.
From the top of the roof…
…a boy with black hair and a small sword was striking down rexes one after another as Alice watched.
“It’s the boy from before!”
She was absolutely stunned. It was the same boy she had passed by in the afternoon. In the intense cold night, he was singlehandedly fighting off the pack of rexes attempting to scale the train.
“…But that’s so dangerous!”
It was entirely different from attempting to shoot them from afar. On the unsteady roof, the boy used a small sword to attack the rexes directly. Just imagining the feat sent a shiver through Alice. She was so scared; she could never do that. Even the adult hunters would have likely been paralyzed from fear. How could a boy like him put up such a fight on his own?
No, it wasn’t a matter of how the boy could do it—the issue was why she wasn’t doing anything. That was what was central to her internal conflict—because she knew she should be able to do something. As a princess of astral mages, hadn’t this power been given to her for exactly a time like this?
“…Huh!”
When Alice saw the boy bend back slightly, she was instantly brought back to the present.
His sword had broken.
The blade had snapped in half when he failed to dodge a rampaging rex, and the boy fell over as his weapon was knocked out of his hands.
And the rex that had clambered onto the roof was closing in on him, ready to attack…
“No!”
“Lady Alice?!”
Alice jumped out of the train without thinking.
She had pushed away Lenlen’s arm and passed by the gun-toting hunters, weaving through the other passengers.
She headed to the couplings that held the train cars together.
Alice, out of breath, reached outside and looked up right as two rexes hurled themselves at the boy who had lost his sword.
She realized there was no time to hesitate. If she did, he would be dead.
And so…
“Please, astral power!”
She was fully absorbed in commanding the astral power that dwelled within her. What she had pictured was an ice shield. She couldn’t allow her power to go out of control. She prayed that the boy wouldn’t be hurt by the cold.
She begged the astral power.
“Protect him!”
As the chill spread, it glittered a bright blue.
A wall of ice, clear as crystal had formed out of nowhere, suddenly towering over the rexes and deflecting their attack. It was like a shield of ice.
“……Huh?”
Iska’s vision grew blurry from the blood weeping from his forehead, but he blinked in surprise.
What in the world had happened?
The sword he had gotten from his master had broken, and Iska himself had been injured by the rexes’ attacks. But just as he’d been cornered, this ice wall had appeared out of nowhere.
“Get down!”
“Huh!”
A delicate voice that the wind nearly carried away shouted. Iska had no idea who the speaker was, but he knelt over as cold objects whizzed by him overhead one after another.
They were bits of hail.
As the pebbles hit the rexes almost like bullets, the beasts fell down.
“Was that astral power?!”
The roof of the train was deathly silent.
By the time Iska turned around in a panic, the person had already disappeared from behind him. There was no way hail could have suddenly fallen from the sky right in that moment. He knew it must have been astral power. It seemed a rather powerful witch had happened to be on the same train as him.
And that person had driven away the rexes.
“…Was I saved…?”
No longer driven by a desperate need to survive, Iska collapsed on the spot.
He hadn’t simply broken his sword. He had used up all his stamina and his ability to pay attention to anything around him. He was in a dangerous state.
“……It couldn’t be…”
He couldn’t believe he’d been saved.
But more importantly…
He couldn’t believe a witch would protect an Imperial like him.
It was a coincidence.
The witch probably never would have imagined that a boy so far from home could be an Imperial.
“…But.”
Regardless, the fact still remained that he had been saved by a witch.
The witches the Empire had taught him about were wicked and cruel—and he never would have believed one would use her powers to save the passengers or himself.
“So, this is just as true as all the stories told in the Empire. Everything you’re taking in with your eyes right now is real.”
“You’ll do well to keep both sides in mind.”
“Master…is this…?”
Iska turned around.
He no longer heard the hunters’ guns and all signs of the rexes had disappeared as though they’d never been there.
“Oh……”
He saw the dark horizon. Iska finally realized the dim light ahead was the light of a city. They had arrived.
They were at the Graf city ruins.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login