Sortie (4)

“Grrr.”

A fierce wind blew in as she instinctively squeezed her eyes shut.

Silbana could not bring herself to open her tightly closed eyes.

She wanted to shout that something like this did not scare her, but she did not have the courage to face the horrific monster.

Thud!

As her hair whipped in the wind, she heard the sound of rock shattering.

At the violent noise, Silbana’s eyes flew open.

With her eyes wide open, she saw the monster’s face with its mouth stretched wide toward her.

“…!”

The monster did not manage to swallow Silbana’s head.

A huge spear that had pierced the back of its skull and burst out through its mouth jerked roughly.

When the spear pulled free from the monster, the creature that had been alive and moving just moments ago crumbled into gravel.

Rumble.

Even as she watched the chunks of stone collapse, she could not believe it.

The monster had vanished.

But the terror did not end.

Thud, thoom.

In front of Silbana stood a monster even bigger and more powerful than the one that had just died.

The horned monster, whose horn was as big as a person, made the ground tremble with every step it took.

The whole world shook violently with heavy thuds.

If the fallen monster had been a young demon of hell, then the monster before her felt like the absolute being of hell itself.

Atop the gigantic beast wrapped in black hide sat a lady with a pale, cold-looking face.

“Are you all right?”

The face with its sharp, delicate features spoke lightly.

The cold and noble aura that made one afraid to even address her shattered for a moment.

Unlike the chilly first impression, the voice that spoke to her was warm, as if it were gently stroking her ears.

“…Y-yes…”

Silbana barely managed to open her mouth.

The lady riding the gigantic black beast looked like a cold-faced hostage captured by a demon.

Her purple eyes, surrounded by the monster’s black glow, were mysterious.

In her seemingly delicate hand, she was gripping an absurdly huge spear, and she was dressed in a neat riding habit that made it hard to guess her status.

Even so, Silbana firmly believed that the person riding the monster had to be a noble lady.

It seemed that the other party had saved her.

Yet Silbana, true to her origins in a mountain village, felt she ought to at least pick up a stick and save the purple-eyed lady in return.

“Remember the wreckage in front of you. As long as you keep going in the direction where you can see it, you are on the right path. If you walk briskly, you can get down the mountain in an hour. There are already monsters in the desert and on the grassland, so head for Tessen. Stay strong. Well then, I’m busy, so I’ll be on my way.”

The lady with the purple eyes and that unique aura spoke breezily.

After she finished telling Silbana all the precautions, the enormous beast she rode thundered up the mountain path—thud! thoom! thud! thud!

Only her first impression had been noble and frigid.

Now that she looked closely, the side seams of the lady’s riding habit were split as if they had been slashed with a blade.

She seemed to have a down-to-earth personality that did not match her exquisitely sharp and delicate features.

“Th-thank you… There are monsters up there… Ah, of course, you can take care of them.”

The gigantic monster bearing the mysterious lady crashed through the mountain trees as it ran, carving out a path.

When it ran along the smoother mountain trail, it was only natural that it broke every branch in its way.

Those born in the mountain village treated the mountain as sacred.

On any other day, they would have complained that such a thing was a vicious being that ruined the mountain.

Right now, she felt nothing but gratitude.

“Hic!”

Just as Silbana was about to set off again, the child who had been holding his breath let out a hiccup.

“It’s all right, everything’s all right now. Let’s go.”

Silbana soothed her son and walked quickly along the mountain path.

Once she had a clear destination, her anxiety faded.

Her everyday life had been completely destroyed, but she was grateful simply to have survived.

The calamity that had begun at Mount Kaip spread past the Regi Plain and all the way to the Seberi Desert.

The eight mountain villages did not even leave a trace behind.

Most of the nomadic clans that moved between the plains and the desert were wiped out.

The free cities of the desert had their movements restricted and suffered greatly in their isolation.

The overland route that linked the Eastern Continent and the Western Continent was cut off.

All five continents suffered serious damage.

However, no one could demand that Tessen lift its border closure.

The Grand Duke of Tessen proposed that the mountain villagers and nomads who had lost their homelands become imperial citizens.

Tessen only opened shelters to those who agreed to that proposal.

There were not a few voices raising complaints about this.

The Grand Duke personally stepped forward and told the malcontents that they did not have to become imperial citizens, and sent them back.

The Grand Duke of Tessen was known to the world as a devil or a Satan.

Yet when he revealed himself, he looked more like an angel descended from the heavens than a demon.

Only then did everyone realize that he, too, was of the imperial bloodline.

Those who decided to migrate to Tessen praised the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess.

So this was what they meant by saying they were like angels.

Inside the border checkpoints, the glorification of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess reached an extreme level.

Rumors spread wildly that the two of them flew around like angels.

But no one rebuked or denied it; everyone genuinely agreed.

When Tessen’s forces crossed the border and began dealing with the monsters, several of the beasts’ habits became known.

The monsters that had come down from the mountain only operated around Mount Kaip, the Regi Plain, and the edges of the desert.

Once you got beyond that range, people were safe from the threat of the creatures.

There was no particular reason for Tessen to deploy its forces to wipe out the monsters of Mount Kaip, the plain, and the desert.

Using this as his basis, the Grand Duke demanded permanent ownership of Mount Kaip, the Regi Plain, and part of the Seberi Desert.

By the time Tessen decided on a campaign, ownership of Mount Kaip had already been transferred to the Grand Duke.

The Grand Duke’s stance in demanding not only autonomy over the plains and desert but permanent ownership was somewhat excessive.

The original inhabitants claimed that the plains and desert belonged to everyone.

The representatives of the nomads, among whom many clan members still remained, and some of the mountain villagers loudly insisted that they would return home once the calamity ended.

The Grand Duke of Tessen asked them how it would be if they went home right now.

Until then, everyone had thought of the Grand Duke as nothing more than a violent warrior who swung an axe.

No one had expected this kind of attitude from him.

Driven to make a choice in an urgent situation, they ultimately swallowed their humiliation.

There was no helping it.

The Grand Duke carried out the sweep of the monsters on Mount Kaip quickly, but left alone the monsters that had spread to the plains and the desert.

It was a ruthlessly imperial attitude.

The Grand Duke of Tessen only moved after all the treaties had been signed.

The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess declared that they would prevent the number of monsters on Mount Kaip from ever increasing.

To everyone staying along the border, their declaration sounded like the voice of a god.

Reichardt and Alicia entered Mount Kaip.

Tessen’s army proceeded to wipe out, one after another, the Kakan, the Gottlan, the Eto, and the Fenya on Mount Kaip.

To the world, Tessen was known as the land of death.

The soldiers of Tessen were another name for death and destruction.

The beings of death and destruction who came from Tessen violently saved the world.

The Black Castle was shrouded in mist.

The closer they came, the more a fine rain scattered about, like water sprayed from a watering can.

North Kaya.

Alicia read the words written on the antique door.

Then she recalled the places she had already passed.

West Alik. East Noah. And now, here, North Kaya.

Alik of the west. Noah of the east. Kaya of the north.

Tilting her head, Alicia wondered if that meant there was still one more.

“Alicia.”

Reichardt approached and swept back his hair, damp from the rain.

Alicia took out the magic crystal she had packed in the leather bag at her waist.

“Please, take this.”

The last time Alicia had smashed a stone and taken out a magic crystal to hand it to him, Reichardt had been wary.

To show that there was no problem, Alicia had eaten one herself first.

“What about you, Alicia?”

This time, Reichardt simply ate what Alicia gave him.

“I’m fine.”

Alicia had no intention of wasting the precious magic crystals.

It would have been wise to take a configuration that repelled curses, amplified strength, and kept her stamina from dropping, but for some reason she did not feel like doing so.

Even without that, she felt that she already had more than enough strength.

“All right.”

Alicia and Reichardt entrusted Lusa to the escort detail and had it taken down to the foot of Mount Kaip.

It was a precaution so that Lusa would not get caught up in the power of the Black Castle, North Kaya.

“Let’s go.”

Alicia spoke briefly and leaped into North Kaya.

Kwhang!

Alicia’s spear struck the black, sharply pointed, Gothic-style door.

The door slowly opened.

North Kaya, which rose at the summit of Mount Kaip, stood at the end of a single narrow path.

Along the muddy hill, stairs shaped from packed earth revealed themselves.

The earthen steps looked as though they would crumble the moment you stepped on them.

The mud on the slope where there were no stairs writhed as if it were alive.

It was like a massive snake wriggling and winding its way through the soil.

With light steps, Alicia ran up the earthen stairs in an instant.

The drizzling mist scrambled her vision.

The ground beneath her feet was slippery, but there was no hesitation in Alicia’s movements.

Reichardt ran after Alicia, on guard.

While covering Alicia, he had many thoughts.

Alicia’s way of fighting consisted only of attacks.

It was as if she had never learned any system of guarding or defense.

She seemed unaware that she could get hurt, and even if she did, she acted as though it did not matter.

That way of fighting was also Reichardt’s own combat style.

As he covered Alicia, he realized just how much his own way of fighting must have worried other people.

After realizing that, he focused even more on offense, so no one else would ever know about his realization.

Just as Alicia had expected, the environment here in North Kaya was different from that of Tessen.

Unlike that time when they had scorched everything around them and then entered the fortress, North Kaya was crawling with active monsters inside.

“Kraaa!”

When Alicia reached the castle gate of North Kaya, a monster that had been writhing in the mud revealed itself.

A Giant Mud Snake.

The thing that raised its head up to the stairs had no face.

In the place where a face should have been, there was a wriggling mouth split into many tendril-like branches.

Among all the monsters, Alicia hated the Giant Mud Snake the most.

She said that just looking at it made her stomach twist.

There were none of them in Tessen.

With an ear-splitting roar, Reichardt sliced clean through the mud snake’s head as it appeared.

He cut down the ones that sprang up, one after another.

As Alicia dove through the castle gate, she shouted.

“…You’re ugly!”

The shout that burst from her contorted face carried pure fury.

“……”

Even after losing their heads, the Giant Mud Snakes kept moving, so Reichardt chopped them several more times with his axe.

The severed heads and the movements of the headless bodies trying to form mouths at the cut surfaces were ugly and horrifying.

Just as Alicia had warned him, Reichardt waited for the transformations to begin, then cut the remains into pieces to block their regeneration.

Thunk!

A dull thud echoed behind Reichardt.

“Damn it!”

Alicia slammed her spear into the castle gate as if she were smashing it apart and sprang inside.

At Alicia’s shout as she entered the hall, Reichardt moved swiftly.

“Rei, watch your head!”

Alicia was riding a monster with the head of a monkey and wings made of membrane.

The creature flew through the air.

Alicia grabbed the base of the monster’s wings and steered its direction.

She had not been carried off.

She had mounted the winged monster and was hunting a huge lizard-like beast flying all around the hall.

The lizard monster, whose name was unknown, looked as though it had a huge muff wrapped around its neck.

Feathers sprouted all around the muff-like frill.

The gaudy, grotesque-looking lizard monster seemed to determine its direction by swinging its tail.