Ishura - Volume 1 - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Outbreak

Moments prior to the initial Cold Star salvo. Having arrived at the New Principality under duress by Higuare the Pelagic, Yuno was being kept in one of the city’s spires, within a ground-level prison. The pale light filtering in from the gaps in the lattice served only to remind her that none of the people going about their lives outside was aware what was locked up inside.

“This place isn’t really for keeping prisoners. They’re just holding cells for violent drunks and such. So feel free to try escaping if you’d like.”

The man who had taken her to the prison was a minia, with black hair and piercing eyes. On the way, she had been asked a number of formal questions, but it seemed her civilian status, divorced from any military secrets, and Aureatia’s progressing assassination plot had both been found out a long time prior.

She was nothing more than the rider who had delivered Higuare back to the New Principality.

“Sorry for bringing you here so soon after you arrived, but see, I just caught myself an even more important guest. I can’t really spend too much time on you. Ah well, just take it easy, okay?”

“……You, that sword you have…”

Yuno had heard about the man’s appearance from Hidow the Clamp. Her mortal foe, the one she needed to find at all costs.

“Swordsman…! You’re Dakai the Magpie, aren’t you…?!”

“Well, well, well, looks like I’ve finally got some fangirls of my own, eh? I keep telling people I’m not a swordsman, but no one ever believes me…”

Dakai smiled. A beaming smile, unexpected from a man who had witnessed an entire city collapse into ruin.

“But it seems like my face is starting to get recognized a bit. Guess I won’t be able to steal in Aureatia much anymore.”

“I…I’m Yuno the Distant Talon! Yuno of Nagan Labyrinth City! The city you…”

“Oh. Nagan, huh…?”

A meaningless disaster. The nightmare that destroyed her entire world. She wanted to believe someone had caused it all, to believe there was at least one responsible. A sole culprit behind the entire tragedy, like the True Demon King of times past.

“It’s all because you solved the Nagan Labyrinth! That’s why everything happened! All of us, because of you—”

“Hold on now—there’s something off about those remarks of yours.”

The Visitor cut off the girl’s hateful shouts with a coldly serious look.

“Sure, the incident back in Nagan might’ve started because I cleared the Great Labyrinth and stole the Cold Star. But all you Nagan scholars and adventurers were trying to unravel the labyrinth’s secrets to begin with. Am I wrong?”

“What…?”

“Yet none of you could’ve predicted that the Dungeon Golem would’ve started up when someone reached the labyrinth’s deepest section, right?”

Not a single person had known anything about it—about how deep the Great Labyrinth, left behind by the self-proclaimed Demon King Kiyazuna, stretched downward, nor how much malice was packed within the calamitous puzzle box.

“…Th-then what am I supposed to do?! Are you saying…you people could shrug it off if your town was destroyed and you lost your friends?! Your family?! Is that why you’re so set on going to war?!”

“You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t want to go to war one bit.”

“W-well then… Don’t you think there are others who feel the same way?! I never wanted any of it…”

“Doesn’t matter to me. Like war or hate it, everyone’s free to decide for themselves.”

“That’s not…that’s not the issue!”

Yuno at last felt like she understood the truth behind the shapeless rancor that boiled inside her.

What she truly despised was the apathy of the powerful.

—Everyone was the same. Dakai, Soujirou, Hidow. The ignorant citizens of the New Principality. The arrogance that you’ll always be on the side of the plunderer, never the plundered, and the apathy that prioritizes one’s objective over the woeful state of those trampled in the process—these were what incited the horrors of war.

They were different from Yuno. Different from Lucelles. They could determine their own fate for themselves; they were strong.

“But, well, I guess that part about being unconcerned if my friends or family died was true. I never got to have luxuries like that, see.”

“……!”

“Ha-ha. You can steal all the treasure you want, but you can’t steal family.”

“I…I promise I will take my revenge on you! I’ll never forgive you… I don’t care if it’s selfish or wrong—I’ll force you to know the agony you put me through!”

“Sure, I guess, but…are you planning on going in order? Getting vengeance on me for solving it, anyone else who was there, the people who made it, and those involved with the whole thing? I get that you don’t want to hear this from a guy you hate so much, but it sounds like you’ll never be free.”

“Who gives a damn about any of that?!”

“Phew, boy… Okay, Yuno. If you feel that strongly about it…”

Dakai crouched down and patted Yuno on the head. He fixed her with a cheerful smile.

“Kill me now.”

“……”

“You have arrowheads up your sleeve you’re gonna shoot me with, yes? Go ahead and give it a shot. See if you’re faster than my fingers.”

Without so much as touching her, he knew Yuno’s weapons and her planned method of attack. Her weapons hadn’t been taken from her when she was captured because, for him, it wasn’t even necessary.

He had already decided her escaping wouldn’t cause problems. The patrol had been ambushed. If the flames of war were already lit, there was nothing a single, powerless girl could do on her own in enemy territory.

“Nnnggghhh…gaaaaaah…”

“There, there. That’s all there is to vengeance, really. Feels silly to spend your life on that level of feelings, right? You just have to find yourself a new homeland, with a new family, right?”

Yuno’s legs went limp, and she slumped to the floor. Following her mortal foe, his back turned in the other direction, was too much for her.

“Ngggghhh…!”

“Don’t worry. Once things settle down outside, I’ll let you go. Out of respect for that spunk of yours.”

She was isolated. In this world that accepted all deviants brought over from the Beyond, there was still a limitless number of truths and threats, more than anyone could hope to fully uncover. More than a young girl like Yuno could ever hope to reach, like she was nothing more than a worm in the ground. Yuno couldn’t inflict a single wound, mental or physical, on anybody.

“Lucelles… I—I can’t…”

Yuno had long accepted her punishment for her misguided hatred.

This powerlessness made her despair far more than being banished to darkness inside enemy territory.

The bleached-white mercenary, wrapped in his tattered cloak, returned to the office inside Lithia’s central stronghold—Shalk the Sound Slicer.

Through the window, he gazed down with his black eye sockets at the packed soldiers.

“Lotsa guys down there. A festival starting up?”

“Hmph. I suppose that’s what it feels like to someone like you.”

The unparalleled elite soldiers of the New Principality of Lithia were gathered in the office together with Taren—Dakai the Magpie. Regnejee the Wings of Sunset. Higuare the Pelagic.

“You were slow to return, Master Shalk.”

“I guess so. Just glad to see you got back safely, Higuare.”

The undead skeletons were normally a race that did not feel fatigue, but Shalk’s current state suggested the exact opposite. His fatigue stemmed from his long period of extreme mental focus wearing on his nerves.

“That swordsman really had it in him. Dakai, I think he might be a Visitor like you.”

“Really? Were you able to kill him?”

“I pegged him down and bought a lot of time. More work than this level of a reward warranted. If I was going to actually kill him…I’d be risking my life, too.”

“That’s plenty, Shalk the Sound Slicer. I’ll work out a plan to stop his arrival. Just take a rest for now.”

“Appreciate it. I don’t mean to boast, but I’m quite skilled at taking it easy.”

Shalk languidly slumped into a chair. When he sat motionless, he truly resembled an actual sun-bleached skeleton.

Taren traced the outline of her favorite sword’s scabbard.

“…Outstanding individual strength, then? They plan on assassinating me.”

“It seems likely. Now that I’ve scurried home, you’re in a better position to run away, too, right?”

“Ha-ha. Don’t be absurd. If I’m to become a ruler of fear, then I need to put that terror on display,” Taren declared to all those gathered, unsheathing her sword.

“…If only I could have ruled the world with honesty and benevolence.”

At that point, her words were little more than self-deprecation.

With the bombardment from the Cold Star, the sparks of war were lit. The Demon King couldn’t turn back now.

“However, to us, living now, we have no such pity to spare. There are none in this world who have unyielding faith in logic and justice. The True Demon King stole all that away from us. No matter what smooth twittering one may employ, fear is the only power that will engrave itself in the hearts of the people.”

The world yearned for the strength to defeat the True Demon King. While the fallen monarch was no more, the strength left behind that empty throne still squirmed beneath the surface. Just like the Nagan Dungeon Golem had been left behind. And like now, where those once lauded as champions would inevitably end up the same way in an age of peace.

Hundreds of demons and fiends, the Shura, able to be subjugated by normal means no longer.

Looking at the state of the sole remaining royalty in Aureatia, these Shura would surely make their move, again guiding the world toward ruin. Taren sought the power to make sure these Shura didn’t rise up again. She wanted fear.

“I will open up hostilities. With the light of the Cold Star, I will carve out my will and trample all those who stand before me. As long as the world hinders this will of might, I will fight. You lot should do the same. You all wanted this, didn’t you? This world of Shura, able to wield those weapons and talents of yours as you please.”

“Assassins, eh…? Could be trouble. Heh, they seem strong.”

The minia bandit. Dakai the Magpie.

“I am simply protecting my new master.”

The mandrake gladiator. Higuare the Pelagic.

“I’m ready whenever. The fools have but one fate ahead of them.”

The wyvern commander. Regnejee the Wings of Sunset.

“Regnejee. Remove the barriers and topple Mage City. Destroy their supply lines and isolate them. We first need them to see the terror of your wyverns.”

“Grak, grak, grak. Then you’ve agreed, Taren. All the minia races of Mage City are now prey for my swarm.”

The wyvern let out a shrill, laughter-like cawing.

“But…before that, there’s another fool we need to take care of.”

An unending string of reports rang out from the radzio transmitter hanging from Regnejee’s neck. Raising his head, he stretched out his wings. His defensive network had already sensed something appearing on the far side of the clouds.

“Are they Aureatia reinforcements, Regnejee?”

“We expected this,” the wyvern unwaveringly declared. Having cast his own freedom aside, he had long looked forward to settling the score with this opponent.

“I’ll take care of him before anything else.”

High in the sky.

The wyvern descended through a break in the evening clouds, looking down over the lights of the city. The new arrival, associated with neither Aureatia nor Lithia, sharply opened up his wings and took in the wind.

There were three arms on the wyvern’s body.