Ishura - Volume 1 - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Thunderclap

The showers that had begun in late evening had intensified. A group appearing before the Mage City fortress housing the Aureatia Army had wrapped themselves firmly in overcoats to ward off the cold and rain.

“What do you want, old man? If you’re here to cause trouble, I’ll chase you right back to Aureatia.”

Inside his office, Hidow was clearly annoyed by the sudden appearance of his guest.

“An official dispatch for reinforcements. I’m also putting in a request to the assembly for a temporary sortie. I’ve followed all the protocols!”

“I told you, it’s unnecessary. Don’t you get it?”

“B-but… Gnnngh…”

The guest was another of Aureatia’s Twenty-Nine Officials, like Hidow—the Sixth General, an elderly military officer named Harghent the Still. This man, preoccupied with his own unworthy and incongruous position, was openly despised by Hidow.

He had returned a few days prior, his expedition to slay Vikeon the Smoldering ending in failure and with half his force of riflemen, trained from birth, slain. Further still, notice of his troops’ march had been delayed, making his encampment interfere with Hidow’s transportation operation, leading to unneeded conflict along the route.

The amount of troops Hidow had in tow was discernibly unreliable, and Hidow didn’t believe they’d add much fighting strength at all.

“You being here will just confuse the troops. I’m absolutely not leaving on-site command to you. If you still won’t back down, then leave your soldiers with me and return to Aureatia yourself.”

There existed no officially sanctioned hierarchies based on age or rank among Aureatia’s Twenty-Nine Officials, which made it possible for the Twentieth Minister Hidow to freely give his opinions to the Sixth General, old enough to be his father.

From the perspective of the soldiers on the ground, however, it was possible to have multiple chains of commands at once. No matter how inept of a general Harghent was, he understood enough to know that.

“That’s not true! You need someone specialized in fighting wyverns! You realize this isn’t an ordinary wyvern, don’t you?!”

“…Hold on. Are you playing me for a fool? You think I would try to go up against Taren’s wyvern army without a plan? That’s so pathetic, I could cry. Get out of my sight.”

“Taren?! No, she’s not the problem!”

Harghent slammed on the desk with his fist.

He didn’t care how it seemed to Hidow. For him, there was a much more urgent problem at hand.

“The Star Runner is coming!”

The Sixth General’s soldiers were few, but all of them were perfectly equipped to fight wyverns. Not to fight the wyvern soldiers from the New Principality of Lithia—their resources were for an even mightier threat.

“…Alus the Star Runner? Coming here?”

“The New Principality stole the Cold Star from the Great Nagan Labyrinth! Faster than the Star Runner himself! Do you expect him to overlook that?! Do you think he won’t look for it everywhere?! He might attack Mage City as well as the New Principality!”

“What if he does? What are you going to do?! If you’re going to take down the Star Runner with those weapons of yours, go right ahead! Please just be quiet and—”

Suddenly, a tremendous impact shook the entire fortress.

“…!”

“Whoaaa.”

Harghent awkwardly tumbled to the ground. The colossal war desk slid to the floor at the forceful impact.

A heavy sound began to reverberate, the flaking of something peeling off the outer walls.

“Wh-what…? What was that?!”

The elderly general crawled along the floor, hand gripping the edge of the war desk, and looked at the light leaking in through the outside windows.

It was a cloudy night.

“Wh-what’s that…light…?”

The strange sound continued, heavy, like air hissing out from somewhere. It came from the stone walls surrounding the Mage City fortress, boiling, bubbling like lava from the mouth of an active volcano, and bursting intermittently.

A beam of dazzling light, as if straight from the sun, continued to radiate.

The beam showed no signs of waning, maintaining a constant intensity as it pierced through the next layer of the wall.

The following shock waves destroyed the two men’s equilibrium. The fortress itself was directly hit.

“Dammit!” Hidow exclaimed, holding on to the desk to regain his composure. There was only one possible explanation behind the abnormal situation.

“The Cold Star.”

The Great Nagan Labyrinth’s decisive magic item, capable of direct salvos between cities. Hidow had known from the beginning that the distance between the New Principality of Lithia and Mage City put them within range. Be that as it may—

“They’re launching it at us now?! Has Taren lost her damn mind?!”

There hadn’t been any declaration of war. Despite the cold-war situation with Aureatia, currently, on paper, Mage City was on friendly terms with the New Principality. There was no moral righteousness on the New Principality’s side.

Hidow had a hard time believing the Taren the Punished he knew lacked the power to provide some justification for starting an outright conflict. If she was to choose the path of war to secure her authority and there was no morality or justice on her side, then she would be unable to preserve a rightful leadership.

In other words…this means it’s just as I expected. This is her answer.

What if the most powerful and wisest self-proclaimed Demon King was able to cast even her righteousness aside? What if the leaders of Aureatia had misread just how low Taren the Punished would stoop?

“Lord Hidow! We’ve received a report!”

“Ngggh… What?! You talking about that salvo just now?!”

Hidow could tell the messenger had urgent information, rushing into the room without a single knock.

“No, sir… The patrol unit hasn’t returned! According to the scouts sent to check up on them…everyone was killed by some kind of poison…and that th-there were no survivors…”

“Dammit! Why didn’t you inform me earlier?! A little sooner, before the attack, and we could’ve…”

That wasn’t true. Hidow knew it, too. The enemy had exterminated them all to ensure no one got the message out or alerted Mage City that something unusual was happening. Not only that, but the dead patrol weren’t easily replaceable Mage City soldiers, either. They had been Aureatia regular troops. It took time to confirm the safety of personnel with whom they’d lost contact. It took time to redeploy troops to account for a large number of field casualties.

Then, after buying all that time, they had initiated a surprise attack. All the strategic movements had been thoroughly woven together.

“…Entirely wiped out. Everyone…?! Even Soujirou the Willow-Sword?!”

“Y-yes, sir… No one has returned. We couldn’t identify any survivors…”

“Hidow! Hidow the Clamp! Do you have a plan?!”

Harghent was in utter disarray, anxiously looking toward the window. He seemed terrified of the next attack. Hidow cradled his head in his hands in insurmountable frustration.

“Soujirou wasn’t the only piece in the assassination plot. There’s still another… Kuze the Passing Disaster should be in play by now. Now that the New Principality has made their attack, he should be on the move. That’s what we arranged.”

“Fool! The time for assassination ploys is long gone! We need to send troops!”

“Like hell I’m sending anyone outside the fortress! The wyvern soldiers have to be on their way to claim the city!”

“……!”

Harghent wasn’t looking out the window from fear of the next beam of light. The abhorrent ultimate magic item, the Cold Star, only bombarded the city to herald the true threat to come.

The New Principality’s wyvern army would flock there for their main assault, charging through the opening provided by the destruction of the city’s defenses and the chaos in the chain of command. No matter how much the Aureatia Army may have prided themselves on their skill, as part of minia-kind’s greatest nation, when attacked in the dark of night by a large host in the sky, it was clear to see they would easily collapse.

“I-in that case…I’ll take responsibility for sending the troops out. There shouldn’t be any issues that way…”

Sixth General Harghent whimpered, still prostrate on the desk.

“Suppressing wyverns is my job.”

“Enough of your nonsense, old man!”

Hidow could no longer hide his annoyance, slamming the wall with his fist. It was impossible for him to understand the logical route that had led Harghent to his proposal. They weren’t dealing with ordinary wyverns. Harghent himself had just said as much.

“You think you’re ready to launch antiair defenses out of the crater they left behind?! The moment you go outside, they’ll hunt you like cattle! If you open the gates to let a battalion in, that flock will slip right through and slaughter everyone! Shut all the windows and hold out! All we can do is defend the fortress!”

“Still, Hidow, with that, winning will be—”

“Not impossible! This may be sooner than expected, but I knew long ago this fortress would be attacked! In a position outside the city, I have a detached force on standby! We can use them to draw the attention of those flying lizards!”

“…B-but still. Even then!”

Harghent balled his hands tight and looked out the window again. As long as they were being targeted from the skies, as long as they didn’t know when the next attack from the Cold Star could come, standing at the window was sheer lunacy and needlessly exposed him to danger.

“What will happen to the Mage City soldiers down below?! While they die defending the lives of their citizens…y-you want the Twenty-Nine Officials of Aureatia and the monarch authority to curl inward like a turtle and watch everyone perish?!”

The warning bell continued to peal from a tower, lurched by the impact and ready to crumble. The Mage City guards seemed to have moved into action. Their bows and armor were clearly inferior in quality. Naturally, their proficiency and dexterity were far below the level of Aureatia regular soldiers, too.

“I’ll go. I…I have never backed down from a wyvern threat. If I don’t go out to fight them now, then everything’s lost! I won’t let those bastards devour anyone!”

“Hey!”

Incensed, Hidow grabbed the elderly general by the collar.

“If that splendid attitude was enough to get it done, then great! But do you know what everyone says about you, old man?! Listen, you fool! You’re not sending out a single damn soldier! That goes for your own troops, too! You could be some distinguished Aureatia soldier, and it’d be the same story! I’m not going to join you as you die a dog’s death, drunk on your own opinion of yourself!”

“…F-fine… Fine, then! In that case, I don’t need any soldiers!”

Even while the menace of the young man, more than a decade his junior, sent a cold sweat pouring down his brow, Harghent proclaimed his resolve. Evil was betraying yourself.

“I’ll go out by myself!”

Even as a member of the twenty-nine individuals sitting at the summit of Aureatia’s authority, the man was nevertheless still the type to make such foolish decisions.

“…Dammit!”

Hidow cursed, now left alone.

In certain aspects, Harghent’s judgment was correct. In the face of the New Principality’s unprovoked and preemptive attack, should Aureatia appear to back down from the fight, it could transform into a point of criticism from the citizenry.

…That’s only if we can win, though.

After watching the shrinking figure of the Sixth General flying out of the strategic stronghold alone and without any of his crack, personally trained soldiers, Hidow wondered—what were the enemy’s intentions? What were they looking to achieve from this attack?

They targeted this small city, even launching a preemptive strike without any declaration of war and forfeiting their position of moral superiority. But why haven’t we seen any ground troops deployed to occupy the city or any movements against the city itself? The object of the attack wasn’t occupation…it’s nothing but a one-sided massacre. Damn that Taren… Is she planning on turning the whole place into a nest for her wyvern pets…?

His thoughts remained nothing more than vague conjecture. For the moment, he wasn’t able to get a read on Taren’s strategy.

Being unable to understand them was terrifying. The violence and destruction were horrible. Almost like—almost like the Demon King Army.

Taren is trying to turn herself into a new locus of terror. So she’s planning on making Mage City an example. Not a self-proclaimed Demon King but the next Demon King herself… Is that her angle here?

Remaining inside the fortress, Hidow issued instructions to a staff officer during a strategy meeting.

“…Protect the city’s troops and that old coot Harghent while you’re at it. Connect me to the seventh emergency channel on the radzio.”

“The seventh emergency channel…?! Just who are you contacting, sir?!”

“Don’t worry about it and get to work.”

Hidow spoke into the radzio provided by the staff officer.

“Are you awake?”

<Tee-hee.>

A young girl’s giggle echoed from the radzio. A sweet voice, incongruous with the current wartime tragedy.

She was Nihilo the Vortical Stampede. The revenant girl, escorted by Kuze the Passing Disaster, was currently with a detached force of the Aureatia Army, deployed in case of emergency.

“Time to sortie, Vortical Stampede. Get out ahead of the enemy blocking the Sixth General’s troops and annihilate them. Shoot and bring down every last one of the New Principality’s wyverns. Until you’re given orders, do your utmost to avoid harming any minia soldiers.”

<Tee-hee. Are you sure? You were all so reluctant to rely on me, weren’t you?>

“The situation’s changed. Soujirou the Willow-Sword’s been killed, and we can no longer guarantee the assassination’s success. We’re sending our troops into action, too. If by any chance Kuze’s mission ends in failure…”

Taren wasn’t the only side equipped with a weapon like the Cold Star, capable of vast swaths of destruction. The Vortical Stampede was Hidow’s true trump card, hidden away in preparation for such an attack.

“…then you’re to eradicate the New Principality.”

As long as he held no fear of citizen sacrifices and the lost moral position such sacrifices would entail, total annihilation was an option. The Twentieth Minister Hidow from the very start had faced this upcoming battle with all paths to victory prepared.

<Sure. That’s easy enough for me. If you win this war, you’ll grant my wish, won’t you?>

“Guaranteed rights, same as a minia, and official Aureatia citizenship. I’ll get them approved without any fuss. Live however you’d like.”

<My school enrollment, too.>

“If the operation’s a success.”

The tactical instructions set to alter the course of the conflict finished with terrible brevity. Hidow the Clamp appeared calm and composed. The staff officer looked terrified, speaking up to try to gauge Hidow’s state of mind.

“A-are you sure it’s a good idea…for us to use a monster like her?”

“…She’s a weapon, after all. It’s just like our little transaction there suggested, though.”

Hidow’s reasoning for releasing Nihilo was entirely because he judged there was room for negotiations with the Vortical Stampede, a dreaded and hideous weapon of war. No one else had even considered such an option.

“She wants to go back to being a minia.”

“Inconceivable.”

Previously, she had been the monster who had eradicated an entire battlefront of the Aureatia Army all by herself. Most of the soldiers weren’t even aware that Aureatia had captured her alive. She wildly outstripped the other races of constructs, let alone compared to minia races.

“Do you believe her, Lord Hidow?”

“You’ll see real quick whether I made the right decision or not. No matter how it ends.”

A field encampment, inside a basin a short distance away from Mage City. Making use of the political status and artfully set up out of the range of the wyvern soldiers’ patrols, this staging ground had also been prepared to import Nihilo the Vortical Stampede.

The young revenant girl, one eye covered under her bangs, ran her hand along the heavy carriage. The contents, due to the misgivings of several transport forces, had been carried all the way here using a specialized pully system and gigant military engineers.

“Vortical Stampede! You’ve received orders for dispatch from Lord Hidow?”

“Yeah. He just told me. Can you open the lock?”

The young soldier assigned to guard the heavy carriage winced while undoing the lock.

“…Are we really bringing this thing out…?”

“Tee-hee-hee. You think I’m going to betray everyone, too?”

“……”

“I’m not a minia, so you don’t trust me?”

Aureatia was a nation for the minia races. Entirely unlike the New Principality, which utilized wyverns as well as beastfolk and constructs, irrespective of race. Examining it from another perspective, this minia kingdom had such powerful unity among its people, it was able to dominate the world, and thus, throughout history, the non-minia races were shouldered with a destiny of defeat and subjugation.

The heavy carriage opened with a loud, grating creak. The giant silhouette contained within was not minia in nature.

The parts folded and fit snugly inside contained eight massive arthropod legs. The monster, encased in metallic jet-black armor, had the appearance of a spider but enlarged to abnormal size.

A mighty arachnid abomination, capable of comprehending Word Arts, known as the tarantula.

Normally, it was a beastfolk that solely inhabited the most remote hinterlands, away from minia settlements, and was one of the most terrifying creatures in the region, second only to dragons. The warp threads of a tarantula’s webs boasted such durability, an ogre’s Herculean strength wasn’t enough to pull them apart, while the weft threads possessed a sharp edge that could easily slice through a wyvern, bones and all.

Nevertheless, the armor shielding the abomination was clearly the product of minia hands. This creature was, just like Nihilo the Vortical Stampede, a construct that had been remodeled at the hands of another, as an extension of the girl’s body.

Within the gaping hole in the tarantula’s chest, there was set an open space just big enough for a single minia to fit inside.

“…We get to fight again.”

It had been given the name Helneten the Burial. Nihilo had a loving attachment to it, despite it being a revenant incapable of comprehending Word Arts, robbed of its original tarantula will. It was as if it were a part of her own body.

“But that’s just who we are—isn’t that right, Helneten?”

Nihilo undid her shirt buttons one by one, removing her belt and exposing her white bare skin to the nighttime air.

“…W-wait a sec!”

“Hee-hee. What’s wrong?”

The young construct girl simply gave the unnerved soldier an alluring smile.

She began slipping her naked limbs inside Helneten. The nerve feelers extending from Nihilo’s spine were, from the very beginning, connector organs expressly for controlling the organic battle tank. Though separate in body and name, with their shared nerves and five senses, the two had no boundaries between them, the thin fabric barrier of clothes a mere hindrance to their connection.

Controlled from within, the metallic body closed. The organic battle tank Helneten could be opened and closed only through direct neural connection with its would-be pilot, Nihilo.

Wrapped up within the jet-black armored carrion, the young girl’s whisper escaped like a sigh of relief.

“Aaah, it’s been so long since I’ve had my body.”

The eight eyes of the tarantula sparkled to life, and the sinister red light sent an ominous glow through the forest encampment.

The box housing Helneten the Burial was demolished with the tank’s first movements. The heavy steel carriage, too, was little more than soft butter when faced with a display of the dreadful tank’s true strength.

The gigantic figure then scuttled off and disappeared, leaving a straight line cut into the earth beneath it.

“Tee-hee-hee! My body…feels so light!”

With no one around to give her orders, Nihilo giggled with a delight none could hear as she piloted the racing jet-black machine, mowing down trees in its wake.

“Free, we’re free… Ahhh, what a wonderful feeling!”