Ishura - Volume 1 - Chapter 17

Chapter 17:Nightfire

Dusky streets, torched by the Cold Star, were under siege by innumerable sets of wings. The wings did not belong to any birds. They were fixed to creatures with the intelligence to comprehend Word Arts and easily able to rend soldiers, horse and all, with their claws—a flock of wyverns.

“Keep your horses moving! Draw them as far from the city as you—”

“Look out!”

“…What—? Nnngggaaack!”

The soldier sending his horse into a gallop collapsed with a dull sound, and the one looking back at his comrade’s cry had his skull ruptured. They were part of a suicide corps, acting as bait to draw the flock away from the city.

The New Principality wyverns were merely circling up in the sky.

“Dammit… There it is again! Another of those attacks…!”

“The wyverns haven’t even dropped down from the sky! Dammit…!”

If the soldiers peeked out from their cover, that same second, their bones would break, and they would perish on the spot with their skulls split in two. While the soldiers thought it might be a sniper, they were having too much difficulty ascertaining the true origin of the attacks in the pitch-black night.

“Wait… The flames are spreading. Over near the granary. That blaze didn’t come from that light attack.”

“…The wyverns?! They’re launching fire at us?!”

Although plainly lacking the skill of Aureatia’s soldiers, the Mage City troops had dealt with numerous wyvern attacks in the course of protecting their city. However, the New Principality wyverns were unlike anything they had ever seen before. They possessed both high intelligence and strong leadership. The soldiers could believe the outrageous possibility the wyverns were launching fire at them.

Even if that was the case, though, they had no recourse. In this world, those not on the side of the powerful had no say in the choices before them.

“That’s exactly right. The bastards are throwing fire!”

The man rushed over, without even a horse, from the collapsed doorway.

This soldier was much older than any of them, but judging from his first-class equipment, the others recognized him as a general of the Aureatia Army.

“Defenders of Mage City! I am Harghent, Sixth General of Aureatia! Harghent the Still!”

“The Wing Clipper?!”

“The Sixth General is here?!”

Harghent took out a bloodstained piece of rubble and showed it to the Mage City soldiers.

“This is the truth of their attacks. Throwing stones…or maybe dropping stones, to be more precise. There are wyverns that live in areas near the sea that do this sort of thing. They take shells and shelled creatures, drop them from high up in the air, and cause destruction that way. These aren’t sniper attacks; they’re throwing stones!”

“…R-rocks…?!”

“Everyone was killed…by some damn rocks?”

In an age with the popularization of muskets, throwing rocks was still tactically effective in actual warfare. The Mage City soldiers, too, were well aware of this but hadn’t considered the possibility.

Their misconception wasn’t solely due to the darkness limiting their vision—they were all operating under the assumption that the only beings capable of using weapons to fight on the battlefield were limited to the minia and monstrous races.

“Listen. This means the enemy has the smarts to utilize these things for air-raid tactics! Numerous wyverns are bombing small ground targets with a large number of rocks… They aren’t one-shot attacks; they’re attacking in waves, with another similar battalion waiting in reserve! They’re throwing fire at the city so that they can see us down here when we can’t see them!”

It was the first time the experienced and long-active wyvern hunter Harghent had seen wyverns attack with such a tactical approach. Normally, wyvern methods involved their sharp and powerful claws, as well as dive-bombs from above to utilize their mobility.

“In that case, that means the spreading flames—”

“A planned attack. They’re dropping pots of fuel, feeding the blaze, to try to smoke us out from our hiding spots. Expose yourself carelessly in fear of the fire, and you’ll be brought down on the spot!”

Even seeing through the enemy’s tricks, Harghent had managed to reach the soldiers only thanks to some blessed good luck. Just as Hidow had warned him in the fortress, a force large enough to be seen from the skies mobilized would be wiped out on the spot, unable to defend itself.

“General Harghent! Is that the New Principality’s wyvern army up there?! Why?! What reason is there to attack us like this?!”

“I don’t know! Nevertheless, that salvo just now was a one-sided strike, without any declaration of war! The New Principality of Lithia has broken the treaty! We can avoid conflict no longer!”

“Has the Aureatia Army abandoned us?! How much longer must we hold out?!”

“Ummm…A-Aureatia had a patrol unit eradicated by a Lithia ambush! Therefore, it will take time to re-form, and…r-reinforcements are being called for! We need to start with what we can do! I’ll think up our strategy!” Harghent proclaimed with an agonized look on his face. Aureatia wouldn’t save them. Nevertheless, faced with an opposing commander with such high tactical abilities and advanced troop operations, Harghent wasn’t sure what his presence could add to the situation.

“Consider the source and take countermeasures! Countermeasures! For now, focus on defense and think!”

What he could do now was stop the Mage City soldiers from dying in vain and buy them time. Though a general, he was still aware that he was not a peerless hero but little more than the average man his age.

Harghent looked up at the sky. If there was a single mind behind this faceless mass of force, then—

There’s a wyvern circling the rear of the front line… If that’s the one using the radzio to relay orders, then…there’s got to be a commander wyvern somewhere. They have to be somewhere!

The swarm acted like a single organism, but at its core there needed to be a brain observing the situation and coordinating the flock.

As far as Harghent could tell, the commander was most likely not in Mage City. They were giving their orders somewhere in the skies between Mage City and Lithia. High up in the distant air. The wyverns’ orders were coming from a place his hands could never reach.

In the current battle scenario, being one-sidedly targeted and suppressed from the sky, was outmatching such an enemy even possible? No, that wasn’t the question Harghent needed to ask. Would he even be able to survive—?

A city guard looking at another corner of the sky spoke up.

“General Harghent. Over there.”

“What is it?”

“Something’s…flashing.”

A delayed thud rumbled across the sky.

The Mage City guard saw the preceding lightning split the night heavens.

“What…?”

Harghent saw several of the wyvern soldiers become enveloped in bright flames and plummet to the ground.

The flash of lightning was not natural. It swept sideways across the sky. A magic bullet of rumbling thunder—with a lethal area of effect the single-target minia arrows could never hope to match.

“A magic bullet…?”

Breaking through the clouds and appearing in the middle of the aerial siege was a thin pair of wings. A wyvern.

A number of wyverns in the vanguard tried to rend the intruder with their claws.

The glowing sword blade, cutting through the blackness of night, arced out and killed all the assailants before they could get within range of the newcomer.

“No…”

The wyvern army flock grew agitated and scattered.

The intruder, with incomprehensible speed, cut down those who broke rank, shooting through in the blink of an eye and fragmenting the once-regulated flock. The blinding enchanted sword burned four of the wyvern soldiers with one flash of its blade. Gunshots resounded through the night sky, and the dispersing wyverns dropped from above, one after another.

An enchanted sword. Magic bullets.

Of course, Harghent thought, he was always going to be there. Harghent had said it himself.

“Alus the Star Runner…!”

Harghent had never faced a greater humiliation in his life than relying on the power of a wyvern champion.

However, he had also never wanted more for salvation. On this battlefield, the Sixth General wasn’t responsible for only his own life but those of the Mage City soldiers.

The wyvern troops had returned from their brief retreat to swarm the intruder. A whip, rushing freely through the air, pierced and chopped them to pieces. This magic item hadn’t been shown to Harghent on that fateful day.

Light flashed, gunshots split the air, glittering blades danced, and the deceased wyverns dropped from the air like tree leaves and falling snow.

The fearsome New Principality wyvern army looked like mere fodder before the exceptional individual, far superior to the average wyvern. The world’s strongest rogue, trampling many legends across the land—that was Alus the Star Runner.

“We can do this,” Harghent mumbled to himself.

“General. What is that? How…how should we move?”

“General Harghent!”

“Sixth General!”

Harghent looked over the Mage City soldiers, bewildered.

“Hold on… F-first, everyone needs to calm down.”

As a general, his instinct would be to invade the New Principality together with the detachment that Hidow had sent into action. However, he questioned if it was truly the correct course of action to send these soldiers—he himself having no troops of his own—who were merely clinging to his status as the Sixth General straight into the jaws of death?

For them, stamped out without any resistance and pelted by ludicrous aerial attacks, even a general as scorned as the Wing Clipper Harghent was enough of a presence for them to lean on as a crutch.

“Mage City is our homeland! We need a plan; we beg you!”

“If this is the New Principality’s doing…then they must pay!”

“Let me avenge the family I lost in the salvo! Please!”

Harghent looked at the faces of the Mage City soldiers. Deep in their eyes, he could see another emotion along with their resentment-fueled fighting spirit—fear.

The terror of the True Demon King lingered. One shape it took was madness to drive the mind to destruction.

If I don’t persevere, the resolve of these soldiers will wither… But what of myself? Can I assure myself that I haven’t been swallowed up in the chaos of war…?

Peeking out, he constructed in his mind an escape route from the siege. Harghent knew both the wyverns’ strength and the range of their eyesight better than anyone. It would be next to impossible to lead such a number of soldiers through the raging battle, but the wyverns were currently concentrating primarily on the assault by Alus the Star Runner. These wyverns, the rulers of the sky, had judged the soldiers crawling on the ground to be powerless before them. Breaking through the siege wouldn’t be impossible. So long as Harghent’s friend was on their side.

“I… Hunting wyverns is my mission. I will crush their commander without question. However, you all are entrusted with protecting Mage City. Nevertheless…those who insist on fighting shall march to the New Principality. I, Harghent the Still, to the best of my abilities…shall lead those men forward.”

High overhead, Harghent attempted to break the siege.

Alus the Star Runner, alone, was luring in the wyvern force stubbornly flocking around him and cruelly exterminating them.

“Kraaaw, kra-kraaaw.”

“Eradicate. Focus on…Alus the Star Runner…hnggg.”

Hillensingen the Luminous Blade cut down three wyverns all at once and vaporized their bodies. Alus puzzled over the peculiar ways the wyvern soldiers would single-mindedly swarm him, without any concern for their own lives.

…It’s strange.

Their maneuvers looked to be faithfully following the tactics of their leader, but the individual soldiers were clearly much less intelligent than wyverns in the wild. Although they had enacted a highly effective bombing strategy against those on the ground, they continued making the same meaningless attacks against him.

“Kraaa…krrrk. F-flee.”

“……”

One of them answered his assumption with an inarticulate gurgle.

“You fled, didn’t you, Alus the Star Runner.”

Immediately, this wyvern had his head pierced with a bullet and was sent hurtling to the ground. Alus’s wing sliced the air, and he turned his body around.

“Kio’s Hand.”

The whip extended from his hand with blinding speed, striking the wyvern soldiers around him as if it had a will of its own. One of them took such a severe hit that the shock tore him asunder, scattering his viscera. Alus opened up his other wing to stop his body from being blown back from the recoil. He took in the upward air currents from the burning Mage City beneath him.

“……What?”

As he continued his fight, an inexpressible and uncanny sensation fell over Alus.

“Looks like…you guys…know my name, huh…?”

“Kro-krooo!”

“Kr-kreekwaaaak!”

Alus wasn’t sure what the earlier wyvern had been trying to say to him. Amid his rapid shifts from defense to offense, when even a single blink of an opening could be fatal, he thought maybe this odd sense of discomfort was itself the goal.

“……”

Even so, Alus had no intention of trading conversation in the first place. Wyverns as a race considered members of their kind simply enemies so long as they proved a threat.

“Faaah. You. Fled.”

“…………”

“From the swarm.”

A new blade, sounding like a flute as it cut through the air, pierced the wyvern speaker in the flank. It was the second enchanted sword in Alus’s possession. It went by the name Trembling Bird.

Alus looked down on the descending wyvern. They were merely following the orders of their leader. These suicide tactics, as well as the words coming out of their mouths, were entirely of another’s will.

Why exactly were they so stubbornly charging at Alus, a simple intruder to their siege, and trying to exhaust him?

“…Really.”

Alus the Star Runner’s tone was always cheerless, and the wyvern didn’t smile.

However, if he had ever once felt emotions bordering on scorn and ridicule, it was in that moment.

“…You say some worthless things, don’t you…Regnejee?”

Alus loaded the next shot into his musket and aimed at a wyvern in the rear. He had long since determined where the operator was positioned, relaying commands from their leader through the radzio.

“…………!”

Right before he pulled the trigger, though, Alus suddenly launched his whip. Apprehending an assailant approaching from his flank, the recoil from pulling the wyvern in made him slow to a stop in midair.

Immediately before, he’d felt an invisible vibration of some kind.

The wyvern soldier directly above him was sliced apart lengthwise by something sharp, revealing the invisible attack Alus had barely managed to dodge.

…That wasn’t…a wyvern soldier…

He craned his neck toward the apparent origin of the attack below. On the ground, away from the burning Mage City, within the pitch-black night, twinkled an eerie red light. Alus’s eyes could see it. They were sinister, like the eyes of a monster, eight in total.

There was another vibration, like the sounds of a violin string.

Another group of wyverns was completely cut apart. The true nature of the volley was impossible to see.

“……”

When Alus returned his gaze to the wyvern radzio operator he had been devising a way to deal with, he found his target, too, was already dead. In the single moment Alus had averted his attention, the technician had been shot down.

The glowing red eyes on the ground far below disappeared somewhere off into the night. The crashing sounds of trees being mowed down faded into the distance.

Launched without a sound, the method of attack that so precisely felled the wildly soaring wyverns was unknown even to Alus, who had faced off against numerous legends and emerged victorious.

Ignoring the Mage City soldiers, the attacks had been aimed solely at the air where Alus and the other wyverns had been. In other words, the red-eyed enemy was not a weapon on the side of the young emergent nation but instead an investment from Aureatia’s side of the conflict.

The direction in which the mysterious presence was headed in was the same as where Alus needed to head to hunt down the wyvern commander.

“…………The New Principality, then.”