Ishura - Volume 2 - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Gumana Trading Post

The southern area of Aureatia. The terrain there, intricate ravines all intersecting with one another, was not formed from nature.

The topography was carved up so the pioneers of ages past could pass through the precipitous ravine, creating a large-scale transportation route connecting the Kingdoms with the cities of the southern region.

Given these circumstances, this tract of land, with many marketplaces and lodgings set up to serve as a hub for the coming and going caravans, was not strictly considered a city. It was called the Gumana Trading Post.

However, now, no matter what time of day, there were no traces of merchants coming and going to be seen. Packing the ravine full was a garrison of the Aureatia army, tasked with surveying and handling the impending natural disaster attack.

“So, this whole Particle Storm thing… I’ve actually heard about it, too.”

Among them all, the sight of a boy, barely sixteen years of age, dressed in general’s garb was a peculiar one to behold.

Looking down over the view of the ravine from the makeshift operational headquarters, he had one elbow thrust onto the tactician’s table.

The youngest man among Aureatia’s Twenty-Nine Officials. Twenty-Second General, Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade.

“It’s basically like typhoon or drought, right? It’s just weather. Honestly, there’s pretty much no reason to bring troops with us at all, really. Just having numbers isn’t gonna do much to stop it.”

“If all the theories up until now are true, then yes, that would be true.”

The man replying had only one arm. Twenty-Fifth General, Kayon the Thundering. He was reputed to be a man of great caliber who more than made up for the abilities of Mizial, exceptionally immature for a top-level government official.

“But, well, just the fact that a weather pattern supposed to be unique to the Yamaga Barrens moved this far, and is approaching Aureatia, makes it all abnormal. It makes more sense to consider things like Jelki said.”

“You mean, about how if it’s true form isn’t any weather, it can be stopped?”

“I wonder. If that information’s correct, it could be even worse than a simple storm.”

Mizial’s apprehensions were justifiable. If the Yamaga Barrens’ Particle Storm itself was indeed descending upon them, there wasn’t a single thing the Aureatia soldiers could do. With even steel armor proving worthless against the furious particles of dust, they would simply have their skin shaven off and die.

“But if we kept waiting without doing anything, everyone would start to wonder what the hell the army was thinking. At the bare minimum, leading the evacuation, providing material transport support, and then reconstruction aid. There’re mountains of stuff to handle on top of surveying the Particle Storm. We have barely any time until it arrives.”

“And we’re still getting stuck with grunt work, huh? The Okahu and Old Kingdoms’ fronts are already in bad enough shape. Can we really be mobilizing this many troops? I get that it’s that much of an emergency and all, but still.”

Mizial the Iron-Piercing Plumeshade was a military officer who showed more acumen with offensives on the front lines than giving strategic commands from the rear. Although there were a limited number of the Twenty-Nine Officials who could immediately respond to handle this situation, he was slightly dissatisfied with his latest post.

“’Sides, in reality, you’re the one giving practically all the instructions. Me, I’m here as a decoration and nothing more. I really wanted to go over to the Old Kingdoms’ front. They look more likely to start a war than Okahu, anyway.”

“Listen here. Take this seriously. When I’ve got my hands full, the responsibility’s in your hands, got it?”

“Fine then, lemme ask you something.”

Mizial laid his cheek down on the table with a smack.

“…I still get the feeling that there’s a ton of soldiers involved with this operation, you know? And those merchant guys all getting driven outta here—that totally wasn’t just about evacuation, was it?”

“That’s true.”

Kayon answered matter-of-factly. Part of the aim behind investing this many personnel in the garrison at the Gumana Trading Post was to emphasize the seriousness of the emergency and entice residents to leave. By requisitioning the food supplies and water such a large force required from the local area, and having Aureatia compensate them for the losses, the garrisoning could go smoothly. The goal had been for the Aureatia army to wholly occupy the spot for themselves, without a single resident being left behind.

“No matter how unlikely, it’d be real bad if anyone saw our trump card, right? Since at the very least, the Old Kingdoms’ side also knows that we need to handle the Particle Storm somehow.”

“Yeah, I guess, when you put it like that. Wouldn’t be too unusual for a traveling peddler to actually be a secret agent employed by one power or another. So, basically, until the Old Kingdoms’ issue is cleaned up, we gotta act carefully.”

The circumstances around dealing with the Particle Storm were different from regular one-off disasters. It was a military operation—requiring judgments based on information from varied viewpoints, collected together, and given perspective.

“Per Jelki’s forecast, right after the Particle Storm crosses Gumana, it’ll veer east. It’ll pass through the Sine Riverstead, skirt the mountain range…and then arrive in Aureatia.”

“If Aureatia’s in trouble, then a country town like Sine Riverstead’s gonna get wiped off the map, huh.”

“Come on now, don’t jinx it.”

No matter how many soldiers were mobilized, with less than two days left until its predicted arrival, there was a physical limit to how many residents they could evacuate in time. The only buffer zone they could make to prevent damages was here at the Gumana Trading Post. It was smaller than a full city, and it was where a majority of the people passing through possessed their own mode of transportation.

For all the cities it would pass through from Gumana onward, residential casualties were inevitable.

“Give this everything you’ve got, Mizial. I’ll have you know, saving people and being thanked for it is pretty good work, too.”

“…I mean, I do it. But I don’t need any gratitude. Sounds like a pain in the ass.”

In the corner of the encampment, someone was seated as though they had assimilated themselves with the nearby shadows.

In the middle of all the soldiers running around tirelessly, he alone appeared idle, but in truth, he was more focused than anyone else. He was also expending a considerable amount of energy. His name was Kuuro the Cautious.

There’s no gap for anyone peculiar to sneak in…for now, anyway.

Now, with every single thing in the Gumana Trading Post, both people and goods, being swapped around, he was paying attention to everything around him, looking out to see if anyone suspicious infiltrated the camp.

The Old Kingdoms’ loyalists should be well aware that Aureatia was slow to get their hands on information detailing when the Particle Storm would pass through the market. In which case, he needed to act under the premise that both the fact that Aureatia would be trying to take countermeasures against it and that they would most likely choose the Gumana Trading Post as their first line of defense had been picked up by the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists.

“Nothing but Aureatia soldiers around here. No one suspicious at all.”

The young girl with two wings for arms fluttered atop Kuuro’s head. Her exceedingly tiny body looked like that of a small songbird from far away. Cuneigh the Wanderer was a homunculus, created to have such an aberrant form from birth.

“You should rest, Kuuro. You were told to rest before the operation. Right?”

“…Can never be too careful, now. My eyes can only see what I can see, after all.”

Now with his clairvoyance weakened, the exhaustion he felt from the information stimuli was greater, if anything, than when the sense had been at its sharpest.

Previously, even with his eyes closed, he could see the scenery around him, clear as day. Kuuro had never understood the sense of “having one’s eyes closed” like the average person did.

With his gifts lost, he now understood exactly what that sensation felt like.

How utterly terrifying the world was, when he needed to make an effort to see things. A world where he couldn’t perceive everything happening between closing his eyelids and opening them again. A world where sleep meant completely cutting off all of one’s senses.

For Kuuro, it seemed like the very moment of death itself, relentlessly visiting him over and over again.

“When you think about everything that happened the moment you blink, don’t you get scared?”

“You’re way too serious, Kuuro. I want you to…”

“Want me to what?”

“…Never mind.”

You need to be more relaxed. You can run away if you want to. She was probably looking to give him these kinds of comforting words. Cuneigh herself also understood that to Kuuro, these were the most meaningless words of all.

It’s impossible. I can’t relax unless I can see anything and everything.

Everything he couldn’t see with his eyes changed without reason.

His unreasonable gift was withering away without any reason, and the era of unreasonable war and chaos ended with as much reason as it began. Cuneigh the Wanderer, too, trusted in Kuuro without a single reason to do so.

A lack of reason, to Kuuro the Cautious, was terror.

“Cuneigh. Our operation is to survey the Particle Storm.”

Kuuro murmured to Cuneigh, inside the breast of his clothes.

“Aureatia is planning on erasing the Particle Storm. To these guys…the ‘legendary clairvoyance’ is their observational trump card, and you’re not needed for that. There’s no reason for you to have to come with me.”

Like Lana and Zizima, and most others from the Obsidian Eyes, Kuuro the Cautious was always living on a battlefield. The contradiction of needing to put his own life on the line in order to survive another day.

He had a hunch that it was all going to come to nothing. It was clear that the Particle Storm was the very disaster Kuuro had sensed coming. He constantly doubted whether it was okay to let Cuneigh become wrapped up in such a calamity.

I’m scared of dying. I’m scared of killing. It should be the same for anyone.

That day, when he watched the swordsman instantly cleave a wurm in two. So wholly on a different level, and different from Kuuro. Aureatia now possessed such power. At the end of a long escape, from Obsidian Eyes and then, to ensure his survival, everything else, an even more inescapable power got hold of him.

…That should be the same for anyone, and yet, I wasn’t allowed to run away?

“W-We’re, we’re going together, Kuuro.”

“But you can still escape.”

Cuneigh was naïve and didn’t know just how hard that privilege was to obtain.

“…Um, well. If you die, Kuuro, I don’t think I’ll be able to go on living, either. So no matter what, I’ll always be here to help you out. Let’s stick together. Okay? It’ll be okay, Kuuro!”

“Spare me the flimsy reasoning. What the heck are you going to do to save me?”

In spite of this, he smiled gloomily at her words.

He had the feeling he hadn’t been able to smile in a very long time.

“I’m continuing the contract. What do you want for your reward, Cuneigh?”

“Later is fine. Okay? It’s not something I want right now.”

“……”

He knew for certain it would be the same trifling something it always was.

Though Kuuro never intended to be frugal with her reward, cheap glass beads and everyday fruits were the things that made her happy.

The fact he knew this and took advantage of her foolishness made him disgusted with himself. Ultimately, he was living while stealing from Cuneigh.

If he didn’t take advantage of Cuneigh the Wanderer, he wouldn’t be able to escape from the darkness of the world. The legendary man with the power of clairvoyance had to rely on a simple homunculus girl, possessing neither gifts nor any malice.

But now was different.

My opponent is the Particle Storm.

A dry wind blew. Right now, it was a relatively weak breeze.

In the middle of the calamitous storm that left nothing behind, he couldn’t rely on Cuneigh. This was an enemy he had to fight with his own eyes.

Kuuro looked up to the sky. The impassive sun was glowing yellow.

Combat wherever you go. Nothing but fighting… You’re a lot happier being completely incompetent, Cuneigh.

Even when it came to his sole gift, he had only been able to use it to steal. Had he been able to see all the possibilities spread out before him, Kuuro would always end up choosing his plunderous path.

His wish was to live. He wanted to live without having to steal.

Because stealing meant he would always need to rely on someone else to go on living.