“Unfortunately for you, that can’t be arranged. Unless my magic is drained, or the artifact is destroyed, it can’t be deactivated.” Gad grinned broadly in my direction. He told me exactly what I needed to know.
“Then all I have to do is destroy the artifact, right? This is a pretty damned big barrier, you know. I doubt it’s easy to hide, so all I have to do is find it and take it out!”
“Worry about your paltry life before that, vermin! Chill to the bone, o Darkness! I Seek Obedient Bones: [Skeleton Warrior]!” A magic circle appeared on the floor, and a bunch of rattling skeletal warriors rose out of it. They started shambling toward me with their old, worn-out weapons.
Oh god damn it. Skeleton Warriors are undead monsters... They’re undead! They’re not very strong, but they’ll get up after they’re defeated. If I want to put them down for good, I need light magic, or a weapon with light infused into it.
The big issue here was that magic had been sealed for everyone except Gad, so we couldn’t generate the light we needed. Well, it’s not like it’d be impossible, but I’d need to get into close-range with them to do it.
“...You really are an asshole, you know that?”
“For the sake of the Golden Order, you must die.” I shot a bullet from Brunhild toward one of the skeletons near me. It fell down to the ground with a clatter, but I knew it’d be up again in under a minute.
Tsubaki, Sonia, and Rengetsu easily took out some of the enemies on their own, and even Jesty had managed to take one out. But we couldn’t keep fighting an endless tide. Sol was attacking us alongside the skeletons, too. The situation was grim.
Damn it... I guess I don’t really have a choice here. I’ll try it out...
I let some of my own divinity flow through my palm, and I allowed it to soak into Brunhild. I lined up a shot at the head of a Skeleton Warrior, and... It crumbled into dust the moment it was hit by a divine bullet.
“What?!” I ignored his screams of surprise and continued to reduce the skeletons to dust. Divinity was beyond mere magic, after all. I was fairly sure that the divinity inside me was the reason I could use all of the elements, as well.
In a sense, a blast of divinity probably contained all the elements of magic in one place. The barrier also did nothing to stop my divinity. Only a god could hinder the power of another god.
I finished mopping up all the mooks and then turned my attention to the throne. I charged over and held Brunhild’s blade to Xiaofah’s neck.
“Eek!”
“Drop your weapons, or I’ll drop his head.” I leveled my threat toward Sol and Gad. Doesn’t really matter in the end, though. I’m gonna give this guy to Jesty, and then he can do what he wants. I need these two alive though, so I can interrogate them about the Golden Order.
Gad suddenly adjusted his posture and pointed his staff toward me.
“Come forth, Fire! Purgatorial Sphere of Flames: [Fireball]!” A massive fireball suddenly came hurtling toward both Xiaofah and me.
W-Wait a second, hey!
“Eeep!”
“Oh come on!” I shot a bullet toward the fireball, splitting it clean in two with divinity.
The two halves of the flaming projectile landed behind me and exploded.
“Did... Did you seriously just try to kill the two of us?”
“We have no use for him anymore. We were going to get rid of him soon, either way. All you did was bump up the schedule!”
“Wh-What?! You dare betray me?!” The fake emperor screeched at Sol and Gad.
“A betrayal? Don’t be foolish. Who ever said you were our ally? We gave you the Steel Battalion, and you gave us manpower. We are thankful that you so thoroughly field tested the units for us, but that’s where our relationship ends. The Golden Order will handle matters from here, and you’re no longer needed.”
“What are you going to do next?!”
“We’ll use the Steel Battalion to conquer Felsen, of course.” I stared at them in disbelief. I thought they intended to invade Hannock, not Felsen.
Wait, wait... Felsen? Don’t they know how strong the magic military is over there? There’ll be massive losses on both sides! Unless they’re seriously saying that they’re prepared for that...
“Are you trying to avenge the old Golden Order? Get vengeance for Garland’s death? That’s fruitless!”
“I care not for avenging my father. I simply wish to create a world where the Golden Order reigns at the apex. A new world. A magical world. Where we mages stand elite. I wish to create the Magia Imperium.”
“Wait, father?! You’re the old leader’s son?!”
“That I am. Leader of the Neo Golden Order. Son of Garland Goldie. I am Galzeld Goldie.” Gad, or... Galzeld, introduced himself in a flashy manner and smacked his staff against the ground. This guy was the leader. I had never expected to meet him here.
“I will succeed where my father failed! I will cast the forbidden spell [Sanctuary], and when I do... This world will be purged of all non-magic users! This world will be pure at last!” What...? [Sanctuary], is it? Is that the spell his dad was trying to cast? I guess he’s saying it’ll wipe out people who can’t use magic, but not everything adds up here...
Why Felsen? Why invade them? Is there an artifact there that they need or something?
“There’s still a lot I don’t really get, but that doesn’t matter. If you’re the leader of the Golden Order, then I can’t let you get away.”
“Oh, really now?” Galzeld stared me down. There was no fear in his eyes. As he laughed, the wall behind him and Sol broke. A large mechanical hand burst through into the room.
A short and headless machine appeared amongst the wrecked wall. It wielded a conical lance in its hand. It’s one of the Steel Battalion! It bounded into the room with incredible force and thrust its weapon toward the throne.
“Guh!”
“Eeekeeeh!” The fake emperor and I darted out of the way just in time. His beautiful throne was completely trashed. No manner of gaudiness could save it from looking like the trash it was now.
Damn, this thing’s actually pretty strong. If the old model Chevaliers are around a ten, then this thing’s definitely an eight.
“Uwaaah!” The fake emperor ran away down the hallway at top speed. He was a former thief, so I wasn’t too surprised. It seemed like his biggest talent was running. I couldn’t afford to let him go, though.
“Tsk... Jesty! You guys! Go after him!”
“G-Got it!” Jesty, Rengetsu, and Sonia all ran after the faker.
The only people left here on my side were Kohaku and Tsubaki.
“You really think you can attack the Steel Battalion on your own? How arrogant...” A loud voice came out of the machine. It sounded crackly, like it was being transmitted through a cheap speaker. It was the voice of the pilot inside.
There was a lot of stuff falling over, so the voice was a little difficult to make out, but... I knew who it belonged to.
“...I see. So you ran off and joined these guys, huh? Is that right, Bowman?”
“Wh— Buh... H-How?! How do you know who I am?!”
I knew it. What an idiot... This guy is none other than Roadmare’s former magitech expert, Edgar Bowman.
He was the guy that caused that disaster with the rampaging Golems. He was stripped of his position and sent to the mines as a convicted criminal. He obviously had no idea who I was, since I was still in my Silver Oni disguise.
I’d been informed that he’d escaped due to outside interference, but it all fell into place now. He’d been jailbroken by the Golden Order.
“I see, I see... So your Golden Order buddies made this with you, huh? This piece of junk.”
“Junk?! What did you say?! This is one of my incredible Steel Battalions! They are my masterpieces who will conquer the entirety of Yulong! You’ve seen what they’ve done, haven’t you?!”
“Don’t go getting high and mighty over something you reverse engineered based on stolen tech. Comp
ared to the Brunhild Frame Gears, these things are garbage.”
“You little wretch!” He thrust his lance toward me. But his movements were way too telegraphed.
I dodged it, over and over, while taking note of how it attacked.
The function behind moving it seemed different to a Frame Gear’s. The Frame Gear scanned your brain and read your motions, so it was like an extension of your own body. It worked in tandem with its pilot.
The machine before me felt like it had been programmed with movement patterns. It kind of moved like fighting game characters did after inputting certain commands.
I didn’t exactly mean it seemed as simplistic as ‘press A to punch and press B to kick,’ but it definitely felt similar to that kind of control system. The controls might have been functional, but it probably meant they couldn’t adapt all that well to diverse situations. The one inputting the commands was human, after all.
It could’ve been influenced by the barrier, though. Frame Gears had magic flowing through them and that helped their movements. But I didn’t think that any of the Steel Battalions could replicate such complex functions.
“These things really are crappy!”
“Silence!” I darted beneath one of its heavy arms and sliced it at the elbow with my Divine Brunhild.
The arm, along with the lance it was wielding, crashed to the ground.
“What?!” I dived beneath the machine and sliced both knees in a similar fashion. The mech fell off-balance and fell forward, crashing to the ground.
“No! Impossible, improbable, inconceivable! How could this happen?! How could one of my beautiful creations be defeated?!”
“Wh— How could this be? Defeated by one man?!” Sol stared upward in disbelief, so I quickly used [Accel] to dart toward him. The barrier made it last almost no time at all, but it was enough time to close the distance.
“Guh!” He raised his shield, but that mattered not. I sliced right through it, and it cut through to his arm.
“GWAAAUUUGH!”
“Enough already. Just shut up! [Paralysis].”
“Ghuh!” I touched him and his fate was sealed. His body slumped to the floor in an instant.
There was a massive amount of blood spewing from the gash on his arm, so I quickly sealed the wound with a brief burst of healing magic. I had questions for him, after all.
“Got anything else up your sleeve?” I stared Galzeld down with fire in my eyes. But he just responded with a gentle smile.
“Ahaha... You’re strong. Incredibly strong... What a wonderful Oni. You can use magic as well, it seems. How about it, would you like to join the Golden Order? Once we create the Magia Imperium, and I stand tall as the Mage Imperator, you could join me as my right-hand man.”
“Right-hand man? Don’t give me that. I was promised half the world once by a jackass like you, and I declined that offer too.”
Well, that dragon guy would’ve ended up getting eaten regardless of whether or not I joined him.
“Oh? How unfortunate. You need to die, then.”
“That Steel Battalion bot is busted. Your soldier friend is out cold. Do you really think you’re in a position to negotiate and talk big?”
“And just what do you think a battalion is, young man? It is many.” Galzeld grinned, and the very ground beneath me began to shake and rumble.
I looked through the ruined wall at the garden area, and I saw several magic circles on the ground. An entire Steel Battalion of battle robots began to rise up from them.
They looked the same as the one I’d defeated before. They held many different weapons. Some had spears, some axes, some swords. Some even held what appeared to be crossbows.
“Crap. That’s right, there were a thousand or so in the basement... I forgot.”
“Oho? You even knew that much? Well, let me tell you a little secret. There aren’t that many here anymore. We’ve already deployed more than a good ninety percent of them toward the Felsen border. We’ve been improving them steadily, as well. We already have enough to take on those Felsen fools.”
Talk about prep work... I guess we should’ve acted sooner. If there are around fifty here, then that means there should be around nine-hundred-and-fifty over by the border... That’s bad. I guess I should take these ones out before worrying about them, though.
I wasn’t worried at all, though. I had a good reason to be calm.
“...Hey, Galzeld. Don’t you hear that sound?”
“...Excuse me?” I grinned at him, and he suddenly became a little more uneasy. He perked up his ears in a desperate attempt to understand what I was hinting at.
The sound of steel upon steel could be heard in the distance. The sound of the rumbling earth was getting closer and closer. The sound of explosions, of shaking. He ran outside to see what he’d heard.
“No...!” What he witnessed outside was simple. His Steel Battalion being ripped apart. The perpetrators? A light purple samurai machine, and an orange-gold knight machine.
It was Yae in her Schwertleite, and Hilde in her Siegrune.
“Impossible! Why are the Brunhild Frame Gears here...?!” Yae’s Frame Gear danced around the battlefield. It used its short sword to strike the Steel Battalion at all angles, separating limbs from bodies in the blink of an eye.
Hilde’s Frame Gear valiantly stomped around, blocking lances with its mighty shield. It then violently rended its foes apart with heroic slashes.
I’d considered the possibility of the Steel Battalion being deployed, so I’d set up a portal that only Frame Gears could pass through before the mission began. I telepathically contacted Luli and Kougyoku to have Yae and Hilde prepare for battle. The magic barrier didn’t affect the telepathic link, after all.
The Steel Battalion went after Schwertleite and Siegrune, one after the other. There were over twenty of them remaining. It wouldn’t be impossible for them to win if they swarmed with sheer numbers, and that was probably what the pilots were hoping to achieve.
But the swordswomen from my household weren’t the kind who would lose to mere fakers, numbers be damned. The new Frame Gears weren’t just for show, after all.
The destroyed members of the Steel Battalion piled up one after the other.
“Ghh...!”
“I don’t know what you were planning, but you should just give in here. How about I take you straight to the king of Felsen?”
“Hah... Hahahah... You are a Felsen dog, then... But Felsen has no future, I promise you this! They will yield to the Golden Order, they will yield to me!” Galzeld yelled as he held his staff to the sky.
At that moment, his staff let out a tremendous burst of light, I brought my arm up to shield my eyes.
When the light subsided, Galzeld was no longer there. I heard the sound of small, beating wings, and I looked over toward it. There was a bat flying toward the east.
Wait, is that him?! Did he use a transformation spell or something? Is that his Null magic?! Regardless of how he’d done it, I couldn’t let him get away. I invoked [Fly] in order to give chase, but I flew about two meters before crashing to the ground. That damned barrier was still active!
“Kohaku!”
“Understood!” Kohaku ran over, and I jumped on to her back. She sprinted for the massive walls and leaped over them. I soared into the air with [Fly] once I was out of range, but I couldn’t find the bat at all.
“Search. Any bats nearby?”
“...Search complete. No bats within a five-kilometer range.”
Damn it! No way can a bat fly that fast. Did he transform into something else? Or did he just use another barrier to screw with my search spell?
Guess he got away... No, wait. I can still get him!
I used my smartphone and locked on to all trees in a five-kilometer radius with [Multiple]. It took a while to calculate, the city had a good number of trees in it.
But then I used my spell... [Absorb]. The trees, on command, began sucking out all magic from their vicinity. All the
magic around them was wiped away, except mine of course.
“Search. Galzeld.”
“Search complete. Three kilometers, southeast.” The magic had been sucked away, effectively undoing his disguise. I needed to hurry up and catch him. He’d be able to regenerate his magic if he got away from the trees.
I ran through the city and dragged Kohaku along with [Teleport] to quickly reach his position.
We came out in the forests on the city outskirts. I looked over to see a bird suddenly turn into a man and fall to the ground. The process repeated itself a few times. It was Galzeld, constantly trying to transform so he could escape. After a while, he noticed Kohaku and I.
“D-Did you do this?!”
“Well, well. We meet again. Time to show you that spell I promised you. [Slip].”
“What?!” I canceled [Absorb] and tripped him up. He fell down and lost his staff, and promptly smacked the back of his head.
I loaded a special round into Brunhild and then pointed it at Galzeld’s feet. It was my ultimate Infinity Omega Slip Bonanza Bullet.
It constantly invoked a slipping spell, over and over again. It would draw from my magic to constantly reapply the spell, trapping someone in a slippery hell that never ended. Even if I wasn’t nearby, a single bullet contained enough power to keep someone falling for three days. So I guess calling it an Infinity Omega Slip Bonanza Bullet wasn’t quite right... Maybe Three-day Omega Slip Bonanza Bullet worked better.
“Gwuh! Ughuh! Fhguh!!!”
Can’t channel magic while you’re falling all the time, can you? The beauty of my slipping magic was that it responded to motion. So a person falling into it would slip again, and then slip again forever. From the first fall, your fate would be completely sealed.
I whistled merrily, ignoring Galzeld’s pleas, and took a certain item out of my [Storage].
The item was a large three-meter by three-meter cube with a glass-like surface. Within this cube was the foul-smelling corpse of a particular species of slime. That’s right. It had been a long time, but the dreaded stinkbox was back. I’d also added a few improvements since last time, as well.
In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 10 Page 12
