The Hope They Left Behind (Premium)

by Sakon Kaidou

  My jaw dropped.

  That was shocking news.

  ◆◆◆

  Thirty minutes ago, ???

  [This is a directive from Zircon Leader]

  [High energy mark discovered in the surrounding area]

  [Threat level — A++]

  [The mark resembles incarnations]

  [Determined that it is pre-■■■■■■■■ — Superior class]

  [Detected intention to invade this facility]

  [Absolute defense initiated]

  [All Prism Soldiers, prepare for battle]

  [All 2065 Zircon Fire units, run in defense mode]

  [All 898 Zircon Laser units, run in defense mode]

  [Analyzing the current state of the anti-incarnation weapon]

  [Anti-incarnation weapon no. 3, Acra-Vesta — 37% complete]

  [Hull alone is 75% complete]

  [Main armaments and sub armaments unimplemented]

  [One analyzed weapon complete and equipped]

  [Deliberating — determined to release to the front lines]

  [Initiating sortie preparations]

  [Time of release will be determined by Zircon Leader, standby]

  [Due to release of anti-incarnation weapon, searching for cooperators]

  [Requesting assistance from no. 1’s and no. 2’s storage bases — communication failed]

  [This facility will defend against the threat independently]

  [Ignore all casualties and damage to the surroundings until the threat is eliminated]

  [The fate of mankind depends on this battle]

  [Purge the threat of the Extra-Continental Vessel]

  ◇◇◇

  Prism Rider, Ray Starling

  “There are that many?!” I exclaimed. A thousand Prism Soldiers?! How?!

  The very notion filled us all with terror.

  “How do they have the fuel?!” Nemesis howled the most important question here.

  Prism Soldiers worked only when they had a living being as a source of energy. Due to this, the machines already deployed on the mountain should’ve been all they were capable of releasing. Even the factory had tons of units in stock, it wouldn’t mean anything if they couldn’t power them. We’d speculated that there might’ve been one or a few units with a reactor, but a thousand? No way!

  “They say these Prism Soldiers had pipes going into their backs!” cried the guild worker through the comms device.

  “Pipes? Ah!” I gasped as it all suddenly made sense. “Electric cables!”

  It was probably “magic” rather than “electric” power here, but whatever. Same difference.

  These units were powered not by animals, but by the ruins themselves.

  Unlike the first unit I’d encountered, these probably couldn’t leave the ruins, but if all they had to do was defend the place, that wouldn’t be a problem.

  It also wasn’t a surprise that the ruins had the power to pull this off — the place had been active for two damn millennia.

  “Tell them to pull out the cabl— I mean, pipes!” I shouted.

  “They say they tried that, but the machine didn’t stop right away and quickly reconnected itself.”

  Great. So they can store some charge, move briefly while unplugged, and prioritize restoring the link, I thought. The designers thought it through, I’ll give them that, but damn, that’s annoying!

  “What of Tom Cat and the others?” asked Azurite.

  “Half of them were taken out by the Prism army’s surprise attack and the nearby traps,” the guild worker replied gravely. “Most of those who survived can’t break through the Prism Soldiers’ defenses.”

  Masters were powerful, but a thousand Demi-Dragon-tier machines with a home field advantage would be a bit too much even for them. Even if some Masters there had some devastating skills, using them wouldn’t be an option. There wasn’t enough space there to use such skills without wiping out their own allies.

  However, I knew someone these circumstances wouldn’t affect.

  “You said ‘most.’ Does that mean that someone made it past?” I asked.

  “They say that Tom Cat carved a path through the Prism Soldiers and went deeper in.”

  “Tom!” I cried. He was all right, just as I’d expected.

  The odds were much worse than yesterday, but he’d still pulled through.

  “Understood,” said Azurite. “We’ll focus on defense now.”

  “Roger that,” replied the guild worker. “We’ll contact you again if the situation changes.”

  With that, the call ended.

  “This is unexpected,” Azurite sighed, comms device in hand and a grave look on her face. “It really shouldn’t be, though. We shouldn’t have underestimated the ruins’ defense system.”

  “So we can only hope that Tom succeeds in shutting down the factory,” said Nemesis.

  “Yeah.”

  A part of me thought that might be too much for him alone, but then I remembered the way he’d fought yesterday. He might actually pull it off.

  “Either way, all we can do now is destroy all the Prism Soldiers leaking out through the entrance,” I concluded.

  “Indeed,” Azurite agreed.

  The moment I turned to head towards the ruins, the comms device turned on again.

  “What is it?” Azurite answered and asked.

  “Lady Azurite, we just received more news from the ruins!” cried the guild worker, panicking even more than before. “The group fighting the Prism Soldiers was ambushed by wooden marionettes!”

  “What?!” I exclaimed.

  Clearly, those must be the same marionettes that had killed the thirty Masters wandering the mountain — the ones likely being controlled by Dr. Mario.

  “An ambush?! Now, of all times?!” I cried.

  “In all honesty, there’s no better time than now,” Azurite commented. “They can effectively team up with the Prism Soldiers to crush the kingdom’s forces, then focus on carving their way through the machines.”

  So it was a golden opportunity to get rid of Altar’s infiltrators, huh? I sighed.

  “Lady Azurite, the countess claims that Quartierlatin’s knights are—” the guild worker said something, only to be cut off mid-sentence.

  “...?” Azurite raised an eyebrow. “Hello? What’s wrong?”

  All she got in response was static.

  Worried that something had happened at the guild, I looked at Quartierlatin, but the town seemed untouched. That could only mean that the comms were cut.

  “More jamming, obviously,” I said grimly.

  We already knew that Dr. Mario had jammed long-range communications. He must’ve switched to shut out close-range comms, too.

  The reason he hadn’t jammed the short-range comms until now was probably either because he’d been using them himself, or because he’d wanted us to take longer to notice that the long-range comms were jammed. Whatever the case, he apparently no longer had any reason to keep the short-range comms open.

  “Anyway, let’s head to the ruins,” I said as I took out Silver. “Now that we know Dryfe is there, too, we should... Azurite?”

  For some reason, she was staring at Quartierlatin, not moving a muscle.

  No — she was staring at something beyond the town.

  “Ray,” she said, her voice in a quiver — not one of fear, but of concealed rage. “What does that look like to you?” She pointed at the sky above the mountain beyond Quartierlatin.

  Under the clouds there, I saw...

  ◆◆◆

  Quartierlatin, mountain

  Quartierlatin was situated between two mountains: the one containing the ruins, and another, much less notable one.

  On the latter, there was a man around twenty years of age. He was clad in heroic armor of blue and white, and had long, red hair trailing behind him.

  He was handsome, no doubt, but many would be inclined to point out that he looked much like the protagonist of a successful RPG from two years
ago.

  His name was Logan Goddhart. He was a Dryfean Superior, and the owner of the Superior Job Hell General.

  There was a certain degree of regularity between Superior Job names and their nature. For example, the King of Destruction and the Nobushi Princess belonged to “King” series of jobs. Their stat growth prioritized the stat most relevant to the job, and they had few skills, but the ones they had were powerful.

  The Unsheath and The Earth belonged to the “The One” series. They had skills aplenty and could even customize or develop new ones from scratch.

  Jobs like Over Gladiator and Giga Professor were simply direct, all-around upgrades of the high-rank jobs in their groupings. They rarely had special quirks, which made them strangely balanced compared to other SJs.

  Of course, there were also Superior jobs which were difficult to classify, such as Death Shadow and Siren, but they weren’t relevant here.

  Now, Zero General and Hell General were in a series called, well, “General,” and they had a special feature, as well.

  It was the skill simply called “Army.”

  It could only be activated when the General’s party had only himself and his minions, and what it did was greatly increase the number of party slots.

  The minimum was a whole 1,000, and it grew with the skill’s level to a maximum of 10,000. Of course, the job was considerably hard to level, so Generals who’d maxed it were few and far between. Nevertheless, the numbers were impressive even at level 1.

  In a nutshell, Generals were quantity-based Superior Jobs focused on building thousand-strong parties and making the best use of party-wide buffs.

  And saying that they were “building parties” was no exaggeration — they had to gather the minions themselves.

  Doing this with monsters would mean carrying loads of Jewels and spending obscene amounts of time Calling them. Not to mention the costs involved. The Zero General, Field Marshal Barbaros, also needed to make his marionettes.

  However, the Hell General — or, rather, the current owner of the job — was an exception.

  “It’s time,” said Logan. “Let’s begin.”

  Before him, lying on its belly, there was a Demi-Dragon-tier land-dragon. He’d acquired it at the Barbaros County before he headed out to Quartierlatin.

  He held out his hand towards it and, in a sonorous voice, began chanting, “‘Here and now, I consign this life I have at my disposal.’”

  A moment later, the Demi-Dragon roared in pain, breathed its last, and became light. He looked at the job skill window at the edge of his vision. On it, the number “1,250” suddenly appeared and lit up.

  These were the points he’d gotten for the sacrifice. They were necessary if he wanted to use Hell General skills.

  To Logan, the Hell General’s devil summoning was much like shopping. He sacrificed items or creatures to receive points, which he then used on his skills.

  The devils he could summon differed depending on the skill, and the descriptions included brief summaries of their stats and traits.

  Of course, there was a time limit on all his devils, but he had a set of skills that made him really adaptable. He was particularly fond of the skill “Call Devil Regiment.”

  Call Devil Regiment: 6,000 points

  Summons 100 Soldier Devils that last 30 minutes.

  Soldier Devils were low-rank monsters with 100 for each stat except HP and LUC, which were 300 and 10, respectively. Needless to say, they were extremely weak.

  Since the skill needed five Demi-Dragon sacrifices to be used, the payoff definitely wasn’t worth it. The devil quantity did little to make up for it. The skill’s cost-performance was simply awful.

  Unless you were Logan.

  “Let’s make those 2,000,” he said as he traced his finger on the number 1,250 on his job skill window, making it become 12,500.

  Then he did the same for the skill description for Call Devil Regiment.

  Call Devil Regiment: 6,000 points

  Summons 1,000 Soldier Devils that last 300 minutes.

  Then he traced the Soldier Devil description, multiplying all their stats except LUC by ten.

  “‘Remove the lid of hell and gather, my forces,’” he intoned. “Call Devil Regiment.”

  At once, darkness emerged from the ground beneath. It bubbled as if boiling, and each bubble burst to produce a devil. This continued until there were 1,000 of them.

  He then used the skill again, doubling that number.

  These devils were not the weak imps originally described, but true, vicious devils boasting Demi-Dragon-tier stats. And there were 2,000 of them. He’d sacrificed a single Demi-Dragon to create 2,000 devils of the same tier.

  The input didn’t match the output in the least — the equation was far too absurd.

  This was the reason why he was nicknamed “Contradictory Equation.” It was the power of his Superior Embryo, who was a Type: Another Rule “False Finesse, Rumpelstiltskin.”

  Its constantly-active ultimate skill, “Straw-into-Gold — Rumpelstiltskin,” let him multiply up to ten numerical values on his job skill descriptions by ten.

  It was broken even among Superior Embryos, most of which were infamous for being broken. This skill was at odds with the very concept of game balance.

  “With the budget they gave me, I could’ve easily created ten times more than this... but that won’t be necessary,” he grinned, as he overlooked his horde of devils.

  They looked almost as if they were pledging allegiance to him.

  Of course, that wasn’t the case — Infinite Dendrogram’s summoned devils lacked sufficient intelligence to have a concept of loyalty. In fact, they weren’t even living beings — they were just lumps of devil flesh, temporarily put together by a skill.

  They were somewhat like the monsters used by Summoners, but they had no medium, so they were always throwaways.

  Their loyalty, skills, stats — everything was already within them the moment the creator spoke the skill. In a way, they were “instant devils.”

  It was part of the reason why preparing a large amount of high-spec devils was difficult, but again, Logan Goddhart was an exception.

  His Superior Embryo made his Hell General skills so much more powerful that it was almost maddening.

  “Now, let’s begin,” the Dryfean Superior sneered, and made his devils march.

  ◇◆

  Thus, the three armies were gathered.

  Three thousand machines.

  A thousand marionettes.

  And two thousand devils.

  As Ray’s third day in Quartierlatin began to dawn, the town began to be menaced by three immense hordes.

  Conjunction: What Was Left Sleeping

  It had been there for two millennia, silent and dormant.

  Its years had been full of monotonous repetition, comprised of naught but slowly building its body, preparing for its grand mission.

  But today was different. The commanding unit, Zircon Leader, had declared the arrival of hostiles.

  Its own sensors confirmed it — its ultimate foe, and creatures much like it, were invading the structure it slumbered in.

  It was incomplete, but the time had come for it to carry out its mission.

  It observed all the hostile forces in the area — the Hell General, his 2,000 devils, and all the Masters in Quartierlatin — and reached a single conclusion:

  The current completion level is sufficient to annihilate them all.

  There were no faults in that evaluation, but it would remain on standby until the Zircon Leader ordered it to depart.

  The hope left behind by the pre-ancient civilization still slept, but it was almost time for it to awaken.

  To Be Continued...

  Afterword

  Xun: “It’s afterwOrd time. I’m Xun, AKA Xunyu.”

  Fox: “And I’m everyone’s favorite Sister Fox, Tsukuyo Fuso. Pleased to see youuu. In case you’re wondering, the bear’s still in jail and the kitty’s outsiii
de.”

  Xun: (That’s whY we got this crack pAiring.)

  Fox: “So, li’l Yu.”

  Xun: “‘Li’l Yu!?’ Is that supposed to be me?!”

  Fox: “Who eeelse? So, what’s the plan for this afterwoorrd?”

  Xun: “We’ll tAlk about the scene in the frOntispiece.”

  Fox: “The bathtime?”

  Xun: “Yup. BUt we’ll leave that to the aUthor. It’s time fOr his serious commEnt!”

  Dear readers, thank you for your purchase. I am the author, Kaido Sakon.

  All right, so... the seeds for the bathing scene were planted in December of the year 2015, when I was uploading the web novel parts that would become the basis for volume 5. That was about when editor K came to me with an offer to novelize my work.

  We met up in person and talked about various things, one of which was the color pages. That was when he mentioned how common it is for two-page color spreads to show a bathing scene. Upon hearing that, I decided that I should write a bathing scene of my own.

  The rest is history — this very volume has it. It never would’ve been illustrated if this series had been cancelled, but thankfully, that didn’t happen, and you now get to see it in its full, colored glory, just like I first intended.

  Taiki’s drawing is so splendid that it feels more “beautiful” than “cute” or “erotic,” but that’s good in its own right.

  On another note, with this volume’s frontispiece, cover, and text, Azurite is gaining greater amounts of HP (heroine points) than even I, the author, anticipated. How will Nemesis protect the throne of the main heroine against this mighty foe and her relentless heroine-ing?

  Little would give me more joy than your excitement for volume 9 and its intense battles (both physical and the one for the aforementioned throne.)

  Kaido Sakon

  Fox: “...‘Serious comment’? Really, now?”

  Xun: “I get what yA mean. It wAsn’t all that sErious.”