19 6

Adachi shouldn’t have said those things to her. He shouldn’t have made her apologize to him. But even if Adachi hadn’t lied to her, would it have changed anything? Either way, she’d have died in the nihaloy nest. Just the same. They’d have lost her no matter what he did, so he didn’t need to regret it that badly. And yet, regret it he did. Deeply. Why? He had a theory. He regretted it because of what it meant for him.
He should have opened up to her. She’d seen right through him. There’d been no point in him denying it. So, why not come out and say it?
Yeah, I do.
That’s right. Can you blame me? I’ve tried to tell myself I was imagining it. Denied it, saying, “No, I can’t feel that way” countless times. But it’s no use. The feelings won’t go away. They’re the one thing I can’t get rid of. Yeah, you’re right. I do like him. I like him more than I know how to handle. Am I weird? Go ahead, laugh at me. I don’t mind. I want to laugh at myself too. The reason I want to be with him, with Renji, isn’t because he’s an important comrade of mine. No, it must be because I love him.
She wouldn’t have laughed. He was sure she’d have said, You’re not weird. There’s nothing weird about it.
Maybe they would have found they had a lot in common. Renji was fastidious to a fault. If he was going to fall in love with someone, it wouldn’t be one of his traveling companions. He was the type who liked to compartmentalize things, say this was this, and that was that. Adachi had never expected Renji to love him back, obviously, and neither had Sassa.
If Adachi hadn’t been lying to himself, maybe he could have opened up to her. They might have been able to have a genuine heart-toheart about it. They might have become something more than comrades—true friends.
No, that’s not it. That’s not the problem.
Adachi had wanted to share the emotions that he’d been hiding all this time with someone. She would have heard him out, but he’d lacked the courage. How pathetic. Adachi had thrown away the perfect opportunity. That was all he was regretting. These feelings weren’t for her sake. Adachi didn’t even have the right to pretend to mourn her passing.
“Well, let’s be off, then. Are you all ready to go, my darlings?” Britney’s voice echoed through the stairs of the second tower. Adachi couldn’t see him. Going from the bottom up, the groups were ordered: Iron Knuckle, Britney, Jin Mogis, the Berserkers, the Wild Angels, Team Renji, the Tokkis, and then the three unaffiliated soldiers. Adachi could only see down as far as the back half of the Berserkers.
“Any time you’re ready!”
“We ready, yeah!”
“Aww right!”
“I’m bored! Let’s do this already!”
“Heh!”
“Yayyyy.”
Hearing the Tokkis energetic responses from behind them, Ron shouted, “Yeahhhh!” like the idiot he was, and the other clans started hyping themselves up in their own ways too.
“We! Are! Iron! Knuckle!”
“Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Smash ’em good, Berserkers!” “Rahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Don’t any more of you die, my angels! Got it?!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“We love you, Kajiko!”
“The Wild Angels sure are fired up!” Ron was excited too, for some reason. That reason being that he tended to overextend himself when members of the opposite sex were nearby. He wasn’t popular with the ladies, but he liked them too much to control himself. He’d even gone after thorny-skinned and furry women on the Red Continent, only to be rejected there too. It wasn’t so much that they disliked him as that they looked down on him. He was a macho guy with a buzz-cut and a pretty scary face, but something must have given away the fact that, deep down inside, he was just way too desperate for it. More so than should have been humanly possible. Or, worse yet, it was blatantly obvious.
Renji was silent, though one could have read that as him quietly simmering with enthusiasm. He was relaxed. As if he weren’t thinking anything at all. Almost vegetative, in a way.
“Renji.” Adachi called his name.
“Yeah,” Renji replied in a deep voice, turning his eyes to the mage. “I’ll leave analyzing the situation to you. You give the orders.”
“Got it.” Adachi kept his response as curt as possible. It irked him that being trusted with a task like this made his heart race.
He’d just do what he needed to, like always.
Sassa.
She had been the same way.
Or maybe she’d been holding out hope for something. Like, if she served Renji, working herself to the bone for the team, maybe he’d give her a chance one day. Though she had thought it was impossible, some part of her heart had wished it could happen. Prayed for it to. Well, even if that had been the case, he couldn’t mock her for it.
“I won’t let any of us die.” Even if it was just occasionally, Adachi sometimes had foolish dreams of his own. “Because if we lose even one of us, my own survival will be at risk.”
“Yeah, you’re pretty scrawny, after all!” Ron said, slapping Adachi on the back, nearly causing him to start coughing and sputtering.
“You, I’ll use as a sacrificial pawn if it comes down to it.”
“Go for it. If you think that’s what needs to be done, say the word. I’m more than ready.”
“Auhhh!” Chibi was getting mad at Ron—quite an unusual sight.
“R-Right...” he said, abashed, and lowered his head meekly. “Sorry. I mean, it’s just that we can’t rule it out...” “Wuuuh,” Chibi whined.
“S-Sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have said that. I’ll do my best so everyone can get out of here with room to spare.”
“Uuh...” Chibi shook her head. Ron scratched his buzz-cut.
“Huh? What?”
“She’s saying that no matter how hard you try, that’s clearly just not going to be possible,” Adachi explained on her behalf, causing Ron to turn red with anger.
“Whaaaa?!”
“Don’t snap at me. Chibi-san is the one who doesn’t think you’re up to the task.”
“Chibi’s free to think what she wants, but I don’t wanna hear it from you! Have a care for how others feel, four-eyes!”
“Four-eyes?”
One of the Tokkis hit the wall with his warhammer. It was Tada, the priest who didn’t act much like one.
“You say something to me, you pig-shit bastard?”
“I’m not talking to you! And ‘pig-shit bastard’?! You wanna fight?!”
“Gladly. I’m the one who’d win anyway.”
“No, I would! Obviously, I’d win!”
“Good to see you’re all so full of energy! Time for the operation to start!” Britney shouted. Ron and Tada instantly buried the hatchet. The column of troops started to move.
They’d already surveyed the situation below from the bridge. The fortress courtyard was practically full of strange black humanoids and crawling black things that hadn’t managed to take human form. The volunteer soldiers were going to push their way through those hostile black creatures to the broken main gate. Once they were out of Riverside Iron Fortress, the Lonesome Field Outpost was about ten kilometers to the northeast. In terms of places in the vicinity that they could flee to, the Wonder Hole—which was not far from there—was about all they had left.
It could hardly be called safe, but the Wonder Hole was so vast—or long and deep, rather—that no one even came close to knowing the full extent of it. It was said to reach all the way to the far north. The Wonder Hole connected to the surface in other places too, so they could use it to run far away. Or at least, it wouldn’t be impossible for them to do so.
On top of that, the Wonder Hole connected to multiple other worlds.
It was dangerous because the residents of those worlds sometimes wandered into this one too, but if the situation called for it, evacuating to another world might not be unthinkable.
There were also volunteer soldiers who hadn’t come back from exploring the Wonder Hole. If their group could join up with them, that would be especially reassuring.
Honestly, the volunteer soldiers were in a position where their only options were either fanciful optimism or utter despair. Some of them must have been depressed, or giving in to desperation. Even so, they had all managed to work together and were about to engage in what might be their final battle.
Despite being one himself, Adachi had never really liked volunteer soldiers much as a whole. Still, setting his personal preferences aside, every survivor here with them now was a comrade. If they didn’t amass all their strength, none of them were going to make it to the Wonder Hole. He was going to have to think of the volunteer soldiers, and former volunteer soldiers like Britney, as part of his team for now.
“We’re heading out!” shouted “One-on-One” Max of Iron Knuckle.
As Adachi followed Renji down the stairs, there was a certain man on his mind: Jin Mogis. The red-headed general who had brought reinforcements from the mainland of the Kingdom of Arabakia south of the Tenryu Mountains.
Incredibly, he’d managed to retake Alterna after it had fallen to the Southern Expedition. But what had really shocked the volunteer soldiers was the sudden turnaround of him then signing a nonaggression pact with the goblins of Damuro after he’d just chased them off.
Adachi had been a little surprised too, but he’d also thought, I never realized that was an option.
Most of the volunteer soldiers had experience massacring goblins in the Old City of Damuro, so they tended to have a prejudiced view of them. They started out with the assumption that goblins were lesser, brutish creatures, so they couldn’t possibly talk to them.
But from what he’d since heard, this wasn’t the first time there had been a deal between humans and goblins.
It had been nearly 140 years ago, in the year 521 of the kingdom’s calendar. The Alliance of Kings led by the No-Life King had taken the Kingdom of Arabakia’s southernmost city, Damuro.
It had been the last refuge of humanity, and with that final lifeline cut, they’d had nowhere left where they could hold out. They had been forced to retreat completely beyond the Tenryu Mountains, and so Damuro had become the property of the goblins. Out of bitterness, the people of Arabakia had come to call the lands north of the Tenryus the frontier, and the lands south of that the mainland.
However, thirty-some years later, in the year 555, the Kingdom of Arabakia had returned to the frontier.
At the time, the frontier had been reduced to chaos due to events like the death of the No-Life King, but even if you took that into consideration, the bridgehead the kingdom had built was still too close to Damuro. They were only four kilometers apart. It was practically a stone’s throw away. That was the fort that had developed into Alterna.
The goblins must have been bought off by the Kingdom of Arabakia. If not, they wouldn’t have overlooked the construction of Alterna.
The way Adachi saw it, for a mainlander like Jin Mogis, making peace with the goblins wasn’t such an off-the-wall idea. However, it was easier said than done. The man had the ability to make decisions and put them into effect. He was also a capable commander, and ambitious too.
Jin Mogis had appeared as the leader of the Kingdom of Arabakia’s expeditionary force. But he wasn’t a general of the kingdom anymore. He’d taken his forces and separated from the Kingdom of Arabakia. Adachi had heard that after reorganizing his men into a new independent force, he had renamed them the Frontier Army and taken on the title of commander for himself. He might have only refrained from calling himself king because in reality he was more like the mayor of Alterna and the head of its defense force. Even so, he was the master of a nation, small as it was. Or, he had been.
He’d cast his castle and his men away, fleeing all by himself. He had apparently been on horseback at first, but was on foot by the time he’d reached Riverside Iron Fortress. You would expect a man fleeing in disgrace to look more crestfallen, but not him. He had ordered the volunteer soldiers around as if he felt no guilt at all for what had happened, and despite their contempt for him, he wasn’t ignored and hadn’t been driven out. They’d sort of accepted him.
Jin Mogis was by no means a comrade. The man would throw anyone and anything away to save his own skin. He wasn’t so much a Machiavellian operator as a straight-up psychopath.
What was his plan here?
Sacrificial pawns.
They say a captain goes down with his ship, but this man had been the first to flee his own city, Alterna. He’d left his men to die. Worse yet, he might have even used them as bait for the enemy. Sacrificing them to save himself.
Were the volunteer soldiers to be his new pawns, then? How was he going to pull that off, exactly?
Adachi didn’t know, but he was wary. That man was definitely going to try to pull something. It was best to assume as much.
Renji and Ron were almost all the way down the stairs, about to head out of the second tower.
“Let’s go!” Ron shouted as he charged outside. Renji didn’t even appear to be running. He strode out the door, carrying the sword of Ish Dogran as if it were light.
Adachi and Chibi stepped into the courtyard as well. He hardly felt the chill of the after-midnight air. The volunteer soldiers were already violently struggling with the enemy. Dark. Inside the tower, there had been lots of lanterns, but the courtyard had only had watch fires lit here and there, and those must have been knocked over by the black invaders, because there wasn’t a single one left to be seen. Light from the watch fires atop the towers and the fortress barely reached the courtyard.
“Light ’em up!” someone shouted.
Was it Max of Iron Knuckle? Instantly, four or five luminous rods were being chucked around. These were rods that if you pushed one of their ends in and removed the sheath that covered them, they would burn for around two minutes, providing light. They were made by the gnomes who lived under the Tenryu Mountains, and had been carried by merchants in Alterna who specialized in such goods. They had been expensive before, despite being one-use, but now you couldn’t buy them for any price. They were that valuable.
The luminous rods improved visibility a little. Iron Knuckle and the Berserkers formed up into one mass, and it looked like they were managing to push toward the main gate. Max and Ducky were leading the way, with Britney right there next to them, swinging his sword as if he were dancing, his hair streaming behind him. Kajiko and the Wild Angels were following them too.
“We’re taking the left!” Tokimune declared as he ran past Adachi. He probably meant that the Tokkis were going to support the left flank of the leading group, so he wanted Team Renji to handle the right.
“Renji, go right!” Adachi called out, but Renji and Ron were already heading in that direction. Chibi was sticking close to Adachi, but he soon took off after Renji and Ron, who were finding themselves stymied by the enemy and unable to make progress the way they wanted to.
“Ugh, damn it! These guys are such a goddamn pain!”
Ron was using a greatsword that looked like a butcher’s knife blown up to five or six times the usual size. It could cut through most things, but not the hostile black creatures. He couldn’t slash through them, try as he might, so Ron had given up and taken to mowing them down or sending them flying instead.
No matter how many they knocked aside, the hostile black creatures kept rushing toward them one after another. No amount of swinging his sword put a dent in their numbers. That had to be tiring, and frustrating. The stress was intense. Still, he had no choice but to continue. He had to keep at it or he wouldn’t be able to take a single step forward.
But it looked like Renji was having a harder time of things.
Renji favored using the single-edged greatsword that had once belonged to an orc named Ish Dogran. It was a masterwork, several times sharper than Ron’s weapon. Yet all that wondrous sharpness meant nothing here. Against the hostile black creatures, even a sword as extraordinary as that one was not significantly different from an iron club.
Also, unlike Ron, who tried to overpower his opponents with pure strength, Renji was much more skillful. If you were to convert their physical strength into numerical values, Ron’s would be higher than Renji’s. Ron might not have been the taller of the two, but he had an abnormal amount of muscle on him. And yet, if they got into a contest of strength, Renji would come out the victor. Ron used one hundred percent of what he had. Renji, meanwhile, used more like ninety, but used finesse to turn it into one hundred and ten. However, now even Renji was being forced to handle the hostile black creatures the same way as Ron.
No, was there more to it?
From what Adachi could see, the hostile black creatures seemed to be rushing Renji harder than Ron. Renji simply had more enemies—a higher volume of them—to deal with than Ron did.
It was starting to seem less like Ron was batting away creatures that were coming at him and more like he was fending off part of the swarm that was after Renji. Ron was helping Renji.
“Are they targeting Renji?!”
Adachi adjusted his glasses with the middle finger of his right hand. Team Renji had gotten bogged down maybe five or six meters outside the second tower. Iron Knuckle, the Berserkers, the Wild Angels, and the Tokkis were leaving them behind. They were swamped with enemies. Hostile black creatures rushed them from all sides. Yet, despite that, Adachi didn’t sense much danger to himself. Was it because Chibi was protecting him? Yes, Chibi was certainly swinging her combat staff at the creatures and knocking them back. But was she driving off enemies that were coming at them? No, she was taking shots at creatures that were trying to get past her, wasn’t she?
So, in effect, she wasn’t really protecting Adachi. She too was driving off a few more of the black creatures that were aiming for Renji.
In short, Chibi was helping Renji too.
“Why...?”
Adachi thought about it. It was all he could do at the moment. These hostile black creatures weren’t just immune to being cut, they also seemed impervious to magic. Even if the side effects—for example, a blast wave from a magical explosion—could send them flying, he risked injuring his own allies in the process. As a mage, he was practically dead weight. So he needed to at least think. His head. He had to use his head.
Why were the black creatures targeting Renji?
What were they after?
It didn’t seem like there were any clues to work with.
Now isn’t the time to give up. Keep thinking, he told himself. Answers aren’t easy to come by. You have to keep thinking until you find them. Look at it from a variety of angles. They’re targeting Renji. Is it only Renji they’re focusing on? The enemy. Those hostile black creatures. What even are they to begin with?
Those things hadn’t attacked Riverside Iron Fortress until after Jin Mogis had fled here. From what he had told the volunteer soldiers, the mysterious enemies had appeared outside Alterna this morning, before dawn. The Frontier Army had defended the city while
Shinohara had led Orion out through the south gate, then vanished. Eventually, Alterna was encircled, and the enemy had gradually started getting inside the walls. With no other choice, the Frontier Army had attempted to evacuate the city but had lost many men in the process. Ultimately, only Jin Mogis had made it to Riverside Iron Fortress. Then, right after he did, the enemy had swarmed the fortress too.
From the sound of things, the enemy was chasing Jin Mogis. The Wild Angels, who were on gate duty at the time, had let him in and then immediately closed the gates, holding the enemy off. That was what Adachi had been told, and it was the reason many volunteer soldiers believed Jin Mogis had brought the enemy to them.
In other words, the enemy had been targeting Jin Mogis too.
Where was he now?
There. In the middle of the leading group. He wasn’t at the front. That man had put himself right in the middle.
Enemies were swarming them as well.
But it wasn’t that the enemy was targeting the leading group. It was that the enemy’s target, Jin Mogis, was in the center of the leading group. That was why they were getting swarmed.
So, he was forcing the leading group to defend him, then, wasn’t he?
Why was the enemy after Jin Mogis and Renji?
“Renji! What now?!” Ron shouted as he launched a black creature into the air.
Aragarfald. Renji’s trump card. He could use his relic’s power to break out of this situation. But Renji didn’t answer Ron. He just kept swinging the sword of Ish Dogran in silence. He didn’t rule out using the armor, but he must have been torn on what to do.
“Renji and his team are falling behind!” That was Britney’s voice. It sounded distant. There were more than ten meters between the vanguard and Team Renji now. Possibly closer to twenty.
The leading group was trying to fight its way into a space between two towers. They were almost at the main gate.
Jin Mogis. Adachi couldn’t help but focus on that man. It might not have been the time, but he found himself unable to look anywhere else.
Was he being irrational? If so, Adachi ought to reconsider what he was doing. Stop obsessing over that man. Just focus on Team Renji. He needed to forget Jin Mogis for the moment.
“Nostarem sangui sacrifici.”
That was when Jin Mogis made his move. What language was that? The words were unfamiliar, but they sounded kind of like Latin to Adachi.
What was Latin?
He didn’t know. Was it some kind of spell? Or maybe a keyword? Whatever it was, it triggered something.
Iron Knuckle, the Berserkers, the Wild Angels, the Tokkis, Britney, and all the rest collapsed at the same time.
No, that was just how it seemed. It wasn’t that the entire leading group hit the ground simultaneously. Some fell down, others dropped on their backsides, while many managed to stay on their feet, but unsteadily. Had they been struck by something? Was it magic of some sort? You’d have expected a scream or two if that were the case, but not one of them had cried out like that. All Adachi heard were small grunts and groans like “Agh...” and “Urkh...” Had they suddenly been overcome by dizziness? Or had their legs given out? Had their strength been sapped somehow? What had happened? Whatever it was, something had been done to them.
That man was the sole exception.
Just one man, the redhead in the black cape, Jin Mogis, was standing upright.
The volunteer soldiers in the leading group—now sitting, lying on the ground, or hunching over, barely able to stay on their feet—seemed to be wrapped in a faint mist, or perhaps a heat haze.
What was that?
And why was Jin Mogis completely fine?
Well, that part was obvious.
It was because he was the one responsible. What had he done? That wasn’t clear, but when he’d chanted “nostarem sangui sacrifici,” it had done something.
Jin Mogis sucked up the mist or haze in no time at all. It just vanished in an instant. Had it all gone inside him? Had the man absorbed it? If so, that meant...
What?
What did it all mean? What in the world was happening?
Adachi didn’t understand. It was a struggle just to put his thoughts in order. Jin Mogis had done something, and it had rendered the leading group unable to fight. Having been separated from the pack, Team Renji—including Adachi—were still fine. But the hostile black creatures hadn’t stopped moving. Their attack was unrelenting.
“One-on-One” Max and Aidan of Iron Knuckle had been at the very front with “Red Devil” Ducky of the Berserkers. Max and Ducky were the leaders of their respective clans, and they had taken it upon themselves to lead the charge, knocking the onrushing black enemies aside one after another. They’d fought harder in the vanguard than anyone, showing off their manly power, winning the respect of their comrades by protecting them, and thus holding their martiallyminded clans together. It was unthinkable that such men would be so easily felled. Naturally, victory and defeat were part and parcel of a warrior’s life. Even Max and Ducky, excellent as they were, could have found themselves defeated if their luck went sour. But even if that were to happen, they would have gone down in a heroic display of valor after an intense fight.
Yet Max and Ducky had simply hung their heads, falling to one knee.
Then the hostile black creatures had rushed over them in an instant.
They’d simply been engulfed. Unable to resist. Unable to run away.
Gone in a second.
It had been the same for Aidan and the other members of Iron Knuckle and the Berserkers on the forefront of the leading group. A number of the Wild Angels in the rear had been taken out too.
The Tokkis were slightly separated from the others, off on their left flank. Maybe that was why a number of them were still able to resist the black wave.
Regardless, Adachi had definitely seen Max, Ducky, and Aidan all swallowed up by the enemy. The two clan leaders had been the driving force for the leading group. Now they’d lost them both at the same time.
This is bad. We may be screwed.
Just as Adachi was thinking that, their enemies, that black wave, scattered in all directions.
“What...?!” Renji shouted as he forced the hostile black creatures away with the sword of Ish Dogran.
What was going on? Figure out the situation and report back. That was what Adachi needed to do, but he truly didn’t understand.
The hostile black creatures had swallowed up Max, Ducky, and many others, and were currently devouring the leading group.
They were bearing down on Britney now. But as Adachi watched, the creatures were knocked back.
What was that?
Had Britney kicked them away on his own?
No.
Probably not.
“Urgh!”
Britney tried to rise again, but fell on his backside once more. His body wasn’t following his orders. It was probably the same for the rest of the volunteer soldiers too. Jin Mogis had done something, and it had left them all enervated. Some had tried to brandish their weapons, but they were hunched over like they’d suddenly turned into feeble old men. They couldn’t put up a proper fight like that. And yet, the aggression of the hostile black creatures had clearly waned. Also, that man was gone. The key figure in all this, Jin Mogis, was nowhere to be seen.
“Wha...!” Adachi’s eyes widened as he looked around.
Something was moving. Fast. Incredibly fast.
It wasn’t small. It was quite big, actually. What was it doing? Jumping back and forth around the leading group? There was a constant clamor of whooshing sounds and hard impacts. He couldn’t see clearly what it was doing. It was much too fast for that. Or maybe they were too fast. It might have been multiple things, not just one.
It, or they, was scattering the hostile black creatures. A path to the main gate was forming. The space had been filled with black enemies just a moment ago, but now they were parting. The flow had changed.
The enemy was still targeting Renji, so Team Renji’s situation hadn’t changed all that much. Still, the pressure on them had let up a little, even if it wasn’t a massive shift.

Chapter end