Ishura - Volume 5 - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Quagmire

Half a day after the end of the sixth match.

There were quiet whispers being exchanged in an abandoned house on an overpass in the old town.

“Hey, Kaete. Don’t go nodding off, you idiot.”

“I’m not…! Don’t put it like that! Something happen?”

“We’ve got trouble.”

Aureatia’s former Fourth Minister, Kaete the Round Table. With him, self-proclaimed demon king Kiyazuna the Axle.

They were charged with serious foul play in the sixth match, and both had become wanted fugitives—with the even more pressing problem being the presence of their pursuers, who were aiming to kill them.

The spy organization that had framed the pair and spun conspiracy like ghosts behind the scenes of the Sixways Exhibition, Obsidian Eyes. A squad of unknown scale, with each individual member possessing fighting skills that could rival any champion.

Not only this, but Kaete’s and Kiyazuna’s once trump card, Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge, had his controlling authority seized by the same Obsidian Eyes.

“We’ve been spotted. They’re calling their little friends.”

“Radzio wiretapping?! That’s a clever move, all right!”

“Heh! That’s ’cause the people here don’t know anything about cell splitting or spread spectrum. The radzio ore’s too damn convenient, so there’s no way for tech to keep up… More importantly, though, these bastards are gonna surround us here soon. That happens, and we’re done for.”

“Launching ourselves out there’s all we got. I had planned to do that eventually anyway!”

“That’s what I like to hear. Let’s kill ’em, Kaete…”

When the old woman raised a fist in the air, wooden golems resembling praying mantises thronged out of every nook and cranny in the abandoned house. They were merely a makeshift fighting force, constructed while lacking both materials and time, and their only capability was to cut down anything deemed an enemy. On top of that, they were thoroughly silent, making less noise than a single ant’s footsteps.

Though they were isolated and holding out on their own, it was possible to produce a fighting force from the lumber taken from the floorboards and walls. Kiyazuna the Axle was the ultimate golem user, whom no one else across the land could best.

Kaete, too, having just lost his sword, had created a new one with his own Word Arts. Kaete’s duty was that of a civilian official, but he was a prodigy with distinguished abilities even when it came to swordplay or Word Arts.

“Only one enemy. Uses a straight sword.”

“Got it.”

The praying mantis–like Wood Golem army first surged like an avalanche and attacked—

“Hwah!”

The straight-sword wielder—Hyakrai the Tower—opened up plenty of space for himself.

As he leaped back and drew his sword, he swept aside the blades of the jumping golems and slipped through the surrounding horde.

Meanwhile, Kaete and Kiyazuna rushed off in the direction of the alleyway’s blind spot, which they’d driven their enemy into.

As he ran, Kaete grabbed the torso of golem that was following along at his feet.

“Sniper fire!”

“Geh!”

The golem Kaete raised up high squeaked. A chakram flew in from somewhere, biting into its composite armor and charring the wood layer until it was finally severed in two.

Three golems automatically jumped up and stopped the next long-range attack with their body. All of them were destroyed.

There was a tall building that could look down over this overpass bridge.

“…There were two of them after all!”

“Hey, Kaete! Those’re my golems, dammit!”

The several dozen wood golems were about as big as a minia’s balled fist. Nevertheless, each one possessed armor and combat capabilities on par with Aureatia soldiers. Four of them had been destroyed all at once.

Then from behind them.

“…Ahhh… What do we do?”

Hyakrai the Tower was closing in. The wood golems that were supposed to be swarming him, in the span of an instant, were culled in significant numbers.

One after another, the golems’ blades closed in from three directions. Hyakrai casually dropped his body and evaded them.

Finishing them off from below with a minimum number of thrusts, he held back the opening moves from a golem’s scythes using the hand not holding his sword and destroyed the golem with a kick.

Then moving as if he weighed nothing at all, he rose back up once again.

His sword vanished for an instant in the kickback from getting up, then it slashed a golem in two, blades and all.

“Y-you should’ve waited…just a bit longer for me… If they got away, it’d b-be my responsibility…”

“Set your mind at ease.”

While hiding in a blind spot away from the long-range chakram attacks, Kaete turned back to this enemy.

How many of these golems had gone down? Five… Ten. They could still definitely fight with these numbers. There was always a chance of victory. That’s what he tried to believe.

Kaete had his back up against the abandoned house’s wall. Close enough to be slashed if he stepped forward.

The enemy was a swordsman like him. For their range, his was slightly wider, given the length of his arms. Kaete tried to lure in his enemy’s attention with his words.

“You can take care of that responsibility of yours in the next life.”

“Hoo…”

Hyakrai suddenly stumbled a step forward and fell to the side. The same abnormal opening move as before.

However, this time, it wasn’t a sword attack, but a throwing move aimed at a different target beside Kaete. Kiyazuna immediately pulled in her arm and evaded the dagger swooping toward her. The blade stuck itself nearly halfway into the stone wall behind her.

Hyakrai stuck one leg straight up into the air right as he collapsed, and the tip of this foot touched one of the two golems that’d flown toward him at that same moment. That single touch seemed to have slightly deviated its direction, as the golem’s scythes destroyed the other golem.

Kaete thought to stab during the opening caused by Hyakrai’s collapsing posture, but he listened to his gut telling him to hold his ground.

“Too bad.”

The series of movements had been a rotational motion. As if foreseeing that Kaete would catch him off guard, Hyakrai swept with his sword using the height of his shin. As he slashed through the air, he smoothly stood back up.

If he had lost his balance the slightest bit, he would then have fallen straight down from atop the bridge.

It was a completely unnatural recovery, as if he was raising up his entire upper body with just his ankle.

…What exactly…is with this guy’s joints? Going off balance doesn’t leave any opening at all. He can fight with this much force from that stance? Damn abomination.

Hyakrai the Tower held out against the incessant slicing from the golems assailing him and kept Kiyazuna in check, all while shortening the distance between them little by little. As if he was the god of death himself.

“Ohhh… D-do you think if you hide like that, those ranged attacks won’t reach you? Surely not.”

“……!”

A chakram was stuck in the wall. It was the wall surface that Kaete was hiding behind, creating a dead angle for the long-range attacks. The throwing weapon could rotate to change its trajectory. Even long-range attacks that curved around corners were possible for him, too?

“…Calm down, Kaete! As long as he’s launching those from that distance, there’ll be a limit to the curvature radius! Don’t move, and it won’t hit you!” yelled Kiyazuna.

“Heh-heh. That’s true. But it’s too late,” said Hyakrai.

Hyakrai turned his sights up above him.

“Rehem!”

“Tch!”

Kaete followed his sights and braced himself.

Supposing the chakram thrown just now, knowing it would miss, was launched to keep him and Kiyazuna in their place.

Their enemy squad wasn’t necessarily a group of two—

An elbow was stabbing into his ribs. Kaete dropped his sword.

“……!”

Accelerating in an instant, Hyakrai pinned Kaete up against the wall.

It was simple good luck that stopped Kaete from being skewered on the spot. Hyakrai had used the momentum of his rotation to stab his elbow into Kaete while he curbed the encroaching golem swarm from the rear by swinging his sword behind him.

There was no advance warning to his stance change. The enemy’s range was, from the very start, longer than Kaete’s.

This guy… No, both of them…!

They had tried to convince him there was a third among them. That was why the sharpshooter had purposely thrown his projectile.

In addition to these sword skills, which outmatched the Twenty-Nine Officials, they possessed enough proficiency to work with such precise coordination, even when separated by such a distance. They were mysterious. There were only two enemies. Each one of them was abnormally strong.

“…Grams!” Kaete shouted. Over Hyakrai’s shoulder, he saw Kiyazuna collapsed on the ground, lying on her back. A short sword was stabbed into her stomach, and she wasn’t moving. This swordsman had, in the brief second he had created with his words, incapacitated two people simultaneously.

The right half of his body neutralized, Kaete tried to fight back with his free left arm. Even then, the enemy was faster and would split Kaete’s head open with the pommel of his sword.

“Ah.”

However, said sword was guarding against a slash from behind.

A hatchet, resembling a meaty kitchen knife, was turned away by the straight sword and smacked the ground.

A hatchet. Someone freshly arriving to the fight had assaulted Hyakrai.

“……!”

She was a burly and muscular woman, taller than Kaete. Her deeply taut smirk and narrowed eyes, combined with the scars on her face, had a monsterlike ferocity.

Who is this?

“Not good enough…” said Hyakrai.

Hyakrai the Tower was a master who hadn’t missed a beat while taking several dozen golems on all at once.

Even if a single fighter came in to help, with his flexible body posture, he could instantly slash back with his straight sword and—

Then he turned in Kiyazuna’s direction.

There was a bursting sound— Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

“Hngh…! Augh! Gah!”

The straight sword he guarded with shattered into pieces.

Blood burst from Hyakrai’s hands and feet, and he collapsed in a knot where he stood.

“The HK MP5. You got sloppy, brat.”

The weapon Kiyazuna the Axle had whipped out was called a submachine gun. A remainder of the Mestelexil-produced weapons from the Beyond.

“I-impossible…”

Much like his reaction to the incoming projectile moments prior, Hyakrai hadn’t neglected to remain constantly vigilant against any movements from Kiyazuna. However…in that brief second, his attention was diverted to the sudden arrival of the giant woman.

The old crone smirked amid the smoke of gunpowder.

“You think a golem master…didn’t prep any golem armor for herself, did ya?”

The composite armor hidden within her clothes fell, and there was a metallic echo on the stone pavement.

Of course, Hyakrai’s dagger had pierced through that armor and lightly tore into her abdominal muscle, so her performance had also been a bluff that required her to muster all the strength she had.

“Gahak…ngh.”

Severely wounded, Hyakrai began to sink lower, teetering.

Kaete didn’t hesitate to step right in front of him and go to cut off his head.

“Back, Kaete!” shouted Kiyazuna.

With a light, tumbling motion, Hyakrai’s sword flashed smoothly. Kaete’s forehead was lightly grazed, and Hyakrai fell down, face looking upward. Down below the overpass bridge.

“…Dammit! I should’ve won…!”

“Hey, what about the sniper?”

Kiyazuna looked at the building across from the bridge.

He had vanished without a trace. They’d immediately retreated the moment Hyakrai was knocked out of the fight.

On top of the bridge stood Kiyazuna and Kaete. As well as the mysterious hatchet-wielding woman.

“…Who’re you?”

“I’m not your enemy, former Fourth Minister Kaete the Round Table. You two are going to come together with us.”

She was undeniably a skilled fighter. She didn’t appear to have lost any composure during the series of offensive and defensive back-and-forths just now.

However, Kaete the Round Table had no recollection of seeing a warrior such as her among Aureatia’s soldiers.

In which case, which power did she belong with?

“Don’t piss me off. Who are you? Can’t reveal who you’re with—is that it?”

“Caneeya the Fruit Trimming.”

The woman spun her meaty hatchet with one hand.

Kaete had heard the name before. The abnormal and valiant woman who had battled against Twenty-Fourth General Dant on the Toghie City lines. It was said she brandished an enormous hatchet and always wore a smile on the battlefield.

More than anything, however…she wasn’t an Aureatia soldier.

“I’m an Old Kingdoms’ loyalist. You two don’t have any options… Of course…”

Kaete the Round Table, believing that this day of the sixth match marked the doomed fate of it all, ended up having his doomed life saved through a wholly unforeseen encounter.

Nevertheless, it absolutely didn’t mean that the situation had changed for the better.

“…that’s only if you want to survive.”