Chapter Four: Gifted Barbaros
Thirty years ago, Quartierlatin mansion.
In the Quartierlatin mansion’s garden, a young married couple was sitting around a white table underneath a large tree, drinking tea and chatting.
“Oh, so you plan to take him on your next trip to Dryfe?”
“Yes. While I’m at it, I will also introduce him to the Barbaros family.”
The wife was Countess Zermina Quartierlatin, the only child of the previous count.
The husband was Mark Quartierlatin, an Altarian diplomat who’d married into the family.
The two had married out of love, which was a rarity for nobles, and had been blessed with their first child just a year ago.
Their son’s name was Emilio. Bathed in the sunlight leaking through the tree, he was lying asleep in a carriage next to their table.
They had a garden because of the husband’s fondness of them, and the time the three of them spent here was nothing but bliss.
“He’s only a year old,” Zermina said, expressing her worry. “Are you sure he should go on such a long trip?”
“We’re taking a dragon carriage, so we will be safe,” he said soothingly. “The mission will have a Bishop from the state church, as well as many escorts, including the one and only Mr. Faldreed.”
“Oh, my. The Sacred Blazer?”
“Yes. He said he also has business with the Barbaros family. Apparently, he and The Ram... Ronaldo Barbaros... are going to have a duel.”
“Mark... you care more about the duel than your work, don’t you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Ah... N-No, no, certainly not!” he overreacted, making it clear that she’d hit the nail on the head.
“Ugh...” she sighed. “Don’t forget your work, at least.”
“I would never. Far too much depends on how these discussions go.”
The diplomatic mission he was entrusted with would greatly affect the futures of both Dryfe and Altar, as they would discuss the potential of a marriage between the kingdom’s royalty and the imperium’s bloodline.
If that happened, it would greatly strengthen their alliance and perhaps even lead to a union of the two countries.
However, all of the king’s children — including the firstborn, Eldor Zeo Altar — were male. Though the imperium had a princess, her family on her mother’s side was too lacking in status to marry into the kingdom.
So Mark expected the discussions to be about the potential marriage in the later generations of kings, imperators, and princesses.
The mission had a number of other goals planned, but the focus was on that subject — the talks of future decades.
As a count, he cared a lot about the future of Altar, but as a father, he was obviously concerned about the well-being of his son.
“If you’re to take Emilio, maybe I should go, as well?” asked Zermina.
“Mina, you don’t like using dragon carriages, do you?” he said. “Not to mention that there’s count work to be done.”
“That’s true, but... I’ll ask again. It is safe, right?”
“Of course. We will come back in less than a month. I imagine I’ll be missing your cookies dearly at that point.” The count picked up one of the cookies from a plate on the table and took a bite. They were handmade by his wife, and he always enjoyed their gentle taste.
“Ahh! Ooh...” Emilio suddenly became noisy. He was awake now and staring at the cookie with his heterochromic eyes. Those were a trait he’d inherited from his mother.
“You want a cookie?” his father asked.
You could tell that was what he wanted by the way he reached for it.
“You can’t,” scolded Zermina. “You’re too young for cookies. You don’t even have a full set of teeth yet.”
“Nnh...” The boy became sulky as though he actually understood her words.
“Ha ha ha! Emilio, just wait a few months and you will have the teeth for them. Or maybe you’ll be able to eat them by the time we come back from Dryfe. Who knows?”
“Oh, then I’ll have to work hard and welcome you with my best cookies yet,” Zermina giggled.
Her husband chuckled, and it soon spread to little Emilio.
It was peaceful quality time with the family.
A week later, the count took Emilio on his trip to Dryfe.
The lady saw them off with a smile on her face, completely unaware that this would be the last time they ever saw each other.
The entire scene was drowned in flames.
The road, the trees — everything was burning to a crisp.
There were countless limbs littered in the fire, and it was easy to see that they had come from humanoid marionettes. In fact, there were no human limbs anywhere in the blaze.
Those were outside of it.
The human limbs had been torn off by the marionettes, and were now burning and collapsing. They easily surpassed one hundred in number. They’d belonged to at least fifty people.
Ignoring such statistics, they were the corpses of the Altarian mission to Dryfe.
On the road from the Quartierlatin County to Barbaros County, on the border between the countries, the party had suddenly been swarmed by a horde of marionettes.
Not even understanding what was happening, the guards assigned to the mission had still fought hard to protect it.
Alas, they were quickly outnumbered, and as their numbers dwindled, the marionettes finally reached the carriage they were tasked to protect.
The marionettes were unarmed, but they were strong enough to cling to people and tear off their limbs.
A user of search magic discovered that they were being controlled by a UBM called “Unguided Horde, Edelvalsa,” with a rank of Mythical.
It was no doubt an emergency, and those who could use communication magic called for reinforcements from both Dryfe and Altar.
Unfortunately, no one came, no matter how long they waited.
After all — they were right at the border between the countries.
It wasn’t easy to send an army to such a politically-important location, especially if it had to be large enough to battle a Mythical.
Then again, an army wouldn’t have made it even if they’d moved out the moment they’d learned of this attack, as the mission was almost completely wiped out in less than two hours.
There was only one person left.
It was a young man somewhere in his twenties.
He was clad in armor as red as a blaze, and wore long, navy blue gloves.
In his hands, he held a sword with a wave-like blade — a flamberge.
Fifty-odd marionettes were charging at him. Communicating in a language unintelligible to mankind, they approached him to tear him limb from limb, but...
“Blazing Circle.”
...the man swung his sword in an arc.
A flame extended from the blade, splitting all the fifty marionettes in two, then creating explosions on the cut.
They fell to the ground and began blazing, mixing with the countless other marionette remains spread out on the ground.
Counting the remains would easily give you a number surpassing one thousand, and many of them were too indistinct to count properly.
Almost all of those marionettes had been destroyed by the man.
He was the Sacred Blazer, Aslan Faldreed.
He was considered to be the strongest man in Altar currently. Anyone who witnessed this display of a would understand why — he was a one-man army.
But despite crushing his opponents so easily, he showed not a hint of joy.
After all... he’d already lost.
Even if he himself was unharmed, none of what he was supposed to protect had survived. A thousand destroyed marionettes meant nothing compared to that.
There was only one possible outcome to a fight where a solo battle type defended against a wide-scale suppression type — the solo battle type survived, while the wide-scale suppression type destroyed all that was supposed to be protected.
He didn’t have the power to repel the swarming horde.
“I’m so sorry...” he muttered, but there was no one who could hear him. He was by far the strongest creature on the battlefield, but he felt nothing but powerlessness.
The marionettes had been destroyed. The only things moving now were the flames.
Aslan stood in place, listening to the fire consume the marionettes, when suddenly, he heard something different.
Not wasting a moment, he ran to the source of the sound — the collapsed dragon carriage.
He rose it up, opened it, and lost his words.
The interior was in a terrible state. A marionette had gone in and slaughtered everyone.
The officials had all died, their bodies ruthlessly torn apart, but then the marionette had been destroyed, too. Count Mark Quartierlatin, the main diplomat, had pierced the marionette’s head with his blade.
The count was dead, but he had been protecting something behind him — a piece of cloth that was still moving.
Aslan gently took it in hand and unwrapped it a bit to expose the face of the count’s only son... Emilio.
Aslan closed his eyes tightly and prayed.
This wasn’t a miracle from God, but the mere result of a father protecting his child. Thus, he prayed for Mark to find peace.
Still holding Emilio, Aslan left the dragon carriage and heard a new sound.
Countless footsteps were marching from somewhere in the distance. They were human-like, but inhuman — akin to the uncanny valley of human footsteps. The marionette reinforcements had come, this time numbering to ten thousand.
“Marionettes...” the man muttered as he shielded the child in his left arm and opened his eyes wide. “Come, if you’re willing. For the sake of this child, and for the kingdom... I will burn you all.”
Gripping his blade in his right hand, he stood alone and faced the encroaching horde.
But right as the strongest warrior clashed with the ten thousand marionettes...
“Distortion Pile!”
...a shockwave cut through the center of the horde.
Holes larger than the marionettes’ torsos opened up in their bodies and made them fall apart.
Second and third shockwaves followed, not giving the horde a chance to do anything about it.
“Prominence Wave!”
Aslan joined the onslaught and swung his blade, creating what could only be described as a tsunami of flame.
The ten-thousand strong marionette horde lost a tenth of their numbers in just a few attacks.
The humans, however, had doubled in power.
“Yo, Aslan. I’m here to give ya a hand.” said the man now standing next to him. “Looks like I’m late, though.”
He was wearing mechanical armor, equipped with a gigantic pile bunker in its right hand.
The face cover on his helmet opened up, and he looked at the state of the mission with grief in his eyes. Though his armor looked clunky, his expression was truly refined.
He was none other than the Barbaros County’s heir apparent, and Dryfe’s strongest warrior — The Ram, Ronaldo Barbaros.
“You aren’t late. I thought I wouldn’t get reinforcements for a while still,” said Aslan.
“I know what you mean. I just went out ’cause I’d had enough of listening to the old farts in Vandelheim wasting time. Sorry, but we won’t get any real reinforcements for a while.”
“It’s fine. I don’t mind” Aslan stood back-to-back to Ronaldo. They faced the nine thousand marionettes surrounding them. “I’ve already gotten the best reinforcements I could’ve asked for.”
“Heh. Guess I’ll have to live up to that, huh? Let’s do this!”
Placing their lives in the hands of each other, the two men, who trusted one another more than anyone else, clashed with the marionettes.
“Blaze Edge!”
“Distortion Pile!”
Altar’s and Dryfe’s strongest pulverized a hundred marionettes with just a single hit.
Unbeatable, two-man army, unmatched, peerless — there were many terms to describe them.
After meeting up, the two went on to destroy over ten thousand marionettes.
Even so, the battle wasn’t over, for there were still thousands more, and they only kept increasing.
This was the power of the Mythical UBM known as “Unguided Horde, Edelvalsa.”
It had a skill called “Marionette Brigade Creation,” and the name said everything you needed to know — it was a menacing power that created a marionette army as vast as a brigade.
It needed wood or stone for the material, but the border between Altar and Dryfe was a woodland, so there was no problem on that front.
Individual marionettes were weak — equal to just single low-rank jobs. To experienced Superior Jobs, such as Sacred Blazer and The Ram, they were like paper.
However, there were just too many of them.
The battle had been going on for dozens of hours now, draining them of their energy and making it harder to evade attacks.
“Feels like we haven’t done shit to their numbers,” said Ronaldo as he opened his face cover and wiped the sweat off his face. “The main unit’s gotta be hidin’ somewhere. I can just imagine its shit-eating grin.”
He suddenly aimed his pile bunker behind him and fired it, piercing a marionette.
“What a goddamn monster, though. We’ve taken out a whole bunch of UBMs, but this one’s worse than all of ’em combined,” he added as he eyed his pile bunker and machine armor — both Legendary special rewards.
“Let me correct you.” Aslan made a serious face. “You say you imagine the main unit grinning, but according to our search magic, it’s a doll, too. Its expression doesn’t change.”
“Man, you never change, do ya? You said something like that when we downed that sphinx, too.”
“That takes me back...” Aslan said as he looked at his long gloves — the remains of the UBM he and Ronaldo had defeated. They were an Ancient Legendary special reward, and though they gave him a great advantage against magic and its users, they were useless to him in this battle.
“You think the other marionettes’re far?” asked Ronaldo. “Wanna try escapin’ through where there’re less of ’em?”
“A foolish question,” Aslan declared. “Running away means leaving this UBM until the army comes to take care of it — who knows when that will happen — or until it starts invading Altar and Dryfe. At the rate it’s making its marionettes, it could create an army of over a hundred thousand in just a few days. That would be a disaster.”
“Guess we got no choice, then.”
“Yes... We have to beat it here and now.”
They both looked around.
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