I sent out a report about the current situation to every world leader, just in case. Given where the emergence was occurring, none of them objected to me sending out a few Frame Gears.
Yulong had been left to rot after the last Phrase invasion and the civil war after that.
Most of Yulong’s citizens began migrating outwards towards the borders of other countries and establishing small towns there in order to rebuild their lives.
The majority of them headed west to Hannock’s border, or south to Roadmare’s border. Very few actually headed north or east.
That was because Xenoahs to the north was ruled over by the Demonkin, and they didn’t typically entertain the requests of migrants or other nations. Plus, the northern areas of the continent actually had pretty harsh weather conditions, so it was hardly what I’d call hospitable. Demonkin had far sturdier bodies, so it didn’t matter as much to them.
But then again... There’s the Nokia Kingdom to the east, right? Why didn’t the Yulongese migrants head there?
I voiced that question to Linze, who responded with a simple enough answer.
“Yulong and Nokia didn’t have friendly international relations. Actually, Nokia is said to have been founded when a group of people seceded from Yulong and formed their own independent nation to the east.” There was a steep mountain range along the border of Yulong and Nokia, which acted as a natural barrier to defend the Nokian people from Yulong.
Back in the day, Yulong had made several attempts to reclaim the land, but each excursion ended in failure.
I could understand why the Yulongese people hadn’t headed that way to seek refuge, given that relationship. The Nokians would probably be suspicious of anyone that came in from Yulong, since they might want to sabotage the place and claim it or something.
Still, it seemed that Nokia was another closed-off nation like Xenoahs was... They were similar to Elfrau, a cold northern nation with more isolated borders.
“The wind is pretty cold out here. I wonder if Yulong’s in the middle of its winter.” The seasons here didn’t work the same as they did back on Earth. The spirits made the climate generally unstable, but some countries did have cyclical seasons. Brunhild and Eashen had a standard spring, summer, fall, winter progression. It seemed like Yulong did, too. Brunhild’s summer had just about ended, incidentally.
Linze shivered slightly as she took out a small canteen and poured a hot drink out of it. She then passed it over to me.
Prepared as ever, eh? That’s certainly one of your strong points, Linze...
“Linze, do you think you’ll be able to handle the flying Phrase this time?”
“Of course. I have my Phrasium Blade and my Phrasium Scattershot, so fighting shouldn’t be a problem. Also, it only takes about half a second to transform, now.” Impressive. Guess Doc Babylon’s been working hard.
She’d been so focused on the Reverse World that I’d thought she’d forgotten all about the Frame Gears.
“Come to think of it, Touya... Your personal Frame Gear isn’t finished yet, is it?”
“Well, the design part is done... But honestly, it’s not urgent or anything. I can handle stuff without a Frame Gear for now... Plus the Doc would rather focus on the Reverse World research right now.” Saving that kind of stuff for later seemed fine to me. It wasn’t like I didn’t want her to make it, but she was only one person... Even if that person was a genius. It was still better to be safe than sorry, though.
“Your personal Frame Gear... What was it called... Reginleif?”
“That’s right. It’s basically following the same naming scheme as the Valkyries, so that sounds fine by me.” I was originally planning on calling it Odin, but I thought giving it the name of the Norse All-father might have been a bit arrogant... So I settled on Reginleif.
Reginleif meant “daughter of the gods,” so I thought that was appropriate, given that someday I’d succeed the gods and become one.
I sipped on the coffee that Linze had poured out for me when my smartphone suddenly began to vibrate.
“Master, we’ve-a confirmed the signal. They’ll be-a coming-a in about five-a minute.” I was being called by Parshe, who was aboard the Gungnir.
She’d been put in charge of support and intel for this skirmish, but she was technically being advised and guided by Cesca.
It wasn’t as if I could give full intelligence control to a moron like her, even if she did have some redeeming qualities... That being said, the pervy maid was hardly any better.
“Gotcha. Tell everyone to start firing up their Frame Gears.”
“Si, si!” There was no moon up in the sky tonight. The only thing illuminating this battle was the pale starlight. The Valkyries had night vision, so Yumina and the others would be able to see fine. But the standard Chevaliers didn’t have any functions like that...
That’s why I went to the Storehouse and picked up some external equipment that the regular knights could use. It kind of looked like the Chevaliers were wearing visors, which was a little funny... But it did the job and gave them the necessary low-light vision.
I originally thought of casting [Light Orb] to illuminate the place, but that would’ve just made us easy targets in the night, so I scrapped that idea pretty fast.
Anyone outside of a Frame Gear would find it incredibly hard to see in the dark, but I could easily use my own divinity to grant amplified vision to myself. I was slowly becoming less human, that much wasn’t in dispute.
Linze slowly headed towards Helmwige’s cockpit, as the sound of mechanical whirring echoed out from various spots in the dark.
I hopped down from Helmwige and looked ahead into the dark, until finally, I started hearing a sound like splintering glass.
“They’re here.” Space itself began to divide as sparkling, shimmering beasts filed out of the very air. The Phrase were here.
Yep, just Lesser and Intermediate Constructs.
“Try to remain as a group, and don’t let a single one escape. Leave the airborne ones to Linze, Yumina, and Leen. Lu, you act as the situation demands, alright?”
“A-Alright!” Leen’s Grimgerde, Yumina’s Brunnhilde, and Lu’s Waltraute were all capable of long-range combat. Though in Lu’s case, she needed to swap out gear for it.
“Alright... Guess I’ll start off with a good old bout of Meteor Rain... Then I... C-Can...” Just as I thought about opening a portal in the sky, I noticed something weird going on.
The Phrase were moving irregularly. They weren’t charging at us, like usual.
They hunted people instinctively... I knew that they chased down heartbeats and sought to end them... That’s why they headed towards the nearest population centers they could find and targeted all the people there. In other words, they were meant to come right at us. We were the nearest gathering of people.
So why in the hell were they scattering in all four random directions? Some were coming towards us, but others were running in the complete opposite direction.
“The hell? Are there actually civilians in the area?!” I was worried about that. It reminded me of when the wrecked Frame Gear was stolen... Back when that organization had taken it to make their inferior replicas.
They’d used an artifact to make themselves invisible when they stole that Frame Gear, it was entirely possible that something similar was being employed here to hide people... But that wouldn’t mask their heartbeats.
I decided using Meteor Rain wasn’t a good option right now.
Still, we couldn’t afford to let the Phrase escape.
“Linze! Take out the ones that are fleeing! Yumina, take down the stragglers!”
“Got it!”
“Understood!” Helmwige soared up into the sky after transforming.
I looked down and saw Phrase shattering to pieces as their cores were expertly sniped from afar.
Yumina’s Brunnhilde was located in the back, wielding a sniper rifle. She was expertly dispatching many Phrase mooks at once with precis
e shots.
It was definitely doing a fine job as a vanguard support unit.
“Still... They’re acting really weird. They don’t have a leader or anything, so I guess they’re just wandering around and dying... Almost makes me pity them.” As the melee continued on, I could see the crack in space start to close, signaling the end of this weird mess. Alright, now I just gotta...
“Master! Grosso problema! Big trouble! Another wave incoming!”
“What?!” Parshe, who was analyzing the battlefield from Gungnir, delivered some devastating news.
Right on cue, the opening in space began to spread apart.
A new batch of Phrase came crawling out in the same horrifying manner as usual.
“Wait... Hold on...” Size-wise, they were no different to standard Lesser Constructs... But something was different.
Their bodies were not transparent or crystal-like, as the other Phrase’s bodies had been. They were more of a muddy-gold... Shaped kind of oval-like. I wondered if they were some kind of mutated subspecies... Their forms also seemed to shimmer and distort in the air.
But that’s when it hit me. When I realized what I was looking at. When I saw the light emanating from them.
No matter how you looked at it... They were emitting divinity.
They had an aura proving they were blessed by a god.
“Son of a bitch... What the hell has that thing created?!” These Phrase were clearly not normal... They were probably created by the wicked god, the one that had eaten the servile god some time ago. They were clad in divinity, but I didn’t sense massive power in them. That being said, they were several degrees stronger than a standard Phrase. I could tell that much.
But that meant that the wicked god must have already emerged from its cocoon... I started to gather my thoughts, but had no time to complete them. The Divine Phrase were on the move. “Wait... What?!” They did something I didn’t expect. Something nobody expected. They started attacking their own. They extended their crystalline limbs and pierced the cores of the Lesser Constructs around them... Then they plucked the cores out of the other Phrase’s bodies.
For whatever reason, the Lesser Constructs did not break to pieces... They started to... Melt.
It looked like ice turning into water... But it was a bit more viscous than water. They melted into what seemed like a sticky syrup.
The Divine Phrase then began to slurp up the goop that was once their allies, until only the cores remained. They didn’t seem to care much about the cores, which were tossed to the ground and shattered. I had no idea what was unfolding before my eyes.
They ate their own kind... Something about that shook me to the core.
I had just witnessed Phrase-on-Phrase cannibalism. And then it clicked in my head. The Phrase in the first wave weren’t running because they sensed human heartbeats. They were running to escape. They might have even been running in fear if they could feel it. At the very least it was something instinctive that told them to move away. As I tried to gather my thoughts on the situation, the Divine Phrase continued to devour their own kind. They completely ignored the Frame Gears surrounding them.
The Phrase species attacked human beings in order to find the Sovereign Core. That was their instinctive mission, and it was all they did. But these Divine Phrase didn’t seem to care about that at all.
Which meant they served a new cause and were probably devout apostles of the wicked god.
“Touya... What is this?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t mean our mission is over here. Yumina... Can you try to hit one of those things from here?”
“Uhm... Yes, I can. I’ll do it.”
“Take the shot.” Yumina fired a sniper round at one of the Divine Phrase as it was slurping up one of its kin.
Its dirty-gold body completely tanked the shot, save for a tiny crack. My divinity-laden eyes caught the moment of impact clearly. Its exterior was monstrously hard.
The surface began to regenerate quickly, but Yumina wasn’t done. A second shot, and then a third, began penetrating through the broken area. Yumina was shooting it faster than it could heal.
The Divine Phrase wasn’t letting its core be exposed without a fight, it kept on forcing its own metallic material back into the impacted area, desperate to cover it up. But Yumina kept on shooting into the precise area she thought the core was located.
If we called the regular Phrase the “crystal creatures,” then calling these things “metal devils” would probably be more apt. The fourth bullet pierced it, and it began to change its behavior.
Its round body began to melt away, black fumes rising from its form. Gradually it turned into a goop that resembled mushy ice cream, and its busted core lay on the ground among the mess. Yumina’s bullets had really done a number on it...
Seems like damaging the core can stop the metal devils, at least. But I gotta say, melting instead of shattering is a hell of a lot creepier.
“That means they can be defeated, then... Alright, everyone! Approach them in groups! Sakura, handle the support.”
“Got it...” Sakura’s Rossweisse began blaring a song that acted as a passive support spell.
Oh... That song... If I remember right, a four-man rock band from England played this... They were from Liverpool, I think. My grandpa really liked their music... I guess I have more of their songs than anyone else’s...
“Still... Why that song of all things?” To be honest there was no point speculating. Sakura couldn’t understand the English lyrics, so she probably picked it based on melody and rhythm.
The Phrase began to slow down as the soundwaves washed over them. It seemed like this song had the effect of decreasing their speed.
“Brunhild knight order... Charge!”
“HOO-RAH!” Commander Lain led a charge in her Shining Count.
Elze and the other frontliners began contributing to the melee themselves until it was an all-out brawl.
“Take... This!! Pulverizer!” Elze’s pile bunker smashed into the side of a metal devil’s body, but it countered using its bladed limbs... She hadn’t managed to penetrate its core.
After three strikes, she finally managed to take it down, then she jumped back from its melting body.
“Eww... It looks gross.” I agreed with her on that front. These metal devils were both Phrase and not Phrase at the same time, and frankly, I hated it.
Still... If they were apostles of the wicked god, why were they consuming the Phrase? I thought the wicked godbeast that ate the servile god was under the control of Yula, that Dominant Construct. Something didn’t add up.
“I wonder if that means something’s going wrong on the Phrase’s side...” If they were having a bunch of in-fighting, then I wasn’t exactly going to complain... But it did make me feel a bit uneasy.
Still, the stronger metal devil subspecies is going to be a pain... I had no problem with fighting both groups at once.
“Master! It’s another-a fissure!”
“Huh?!” A third fissure suddenly opened up out of nowhere, and a lone creature jumped down from it.
It was a humanoid crystalline creature with a coarse body.
“Oh hell no...!” I was face to face with a Dominant Construct. One of the apex of Phrasium life, superior to even the Upper Constructs.
To make matters worse, I remembered who this asshole was. It was the one I fought back in Xenoahs... Gila, if I remembered right. Gila grinned wide as he shot me a fierce glare. His piercing red eyes almost looked right through me.
He was a true scumbag... From what I remembered of the Xenoahs incident at least. He was a war-loving monster. He reveled in slaughter and didn’t care who he killed.
Gila glimmered softly in the starlight as he looked me down.
One of the metal devils reached out a bladed limb and tried to attack him. Gila simply showed a look of displeasure on his face as he caught the handrail-wide limb in his hand, and dug his claws hard into it.
Th
e sound of straining metal rang out as Gila’s fingers dug deep into the metal devil’s limb... Then he began to tug at it, pulling the creature’s body towards him... Then he swung it and threw it into the air.
The metal devil soared into the sky before crashing into a nearby woodland area. Gila’s power was immense as ever...
Still, that confirmed my suspicions. A Lesser Construct would never fight against a Dominant like Gila... It meant they weren’t allies. I was honestly a little relieved to find out the power-hungry bastard in front of me hadn’t sided with the wicked god.
He looked in my direction and extended an arm, then stuck out his index and middle fingers. Slowly, light began to gather between his fingertips. OH CRAP! A whooshing sound bellowed out as Gila fired a laser beam right at me.
“[Reflection]!” I created a deflecting shield at an angle in front of me.
“Ghah!” The beam hit the barrier and launched off into the night sky. The very air around it seemed to reverberate.
It was a hell of a shot, but I knew not to back down. Gila clearly hadn’t gotten serious. He’d fired a beam like that before, and it was stronger that time.
He probably just sent the attack as some twisted way of saying hello... He really liked to mess with people, so I decided to fight fire with fire.
I opened up [Storage] as I cast [Power Rise] on myself, and then took out a warhammer made out of Phrasium.
“[Teleport]!”
“Wh-?!” In the blink of an eye, I appeared next to Gila and swung the hammer like a baseball bat.
Just as I made impact, I invoked [Gravity] to massively amplify the weight of the hit.
Then I released the hammer, sending it smashing into the Dominant before me. Gila and the hammer both went flying into the air.
The Phrase hit the ground and began rolling several meters along the plains. It was satisfying to watch.
But then he simply stopped and stood up as if nothing had happened. I should’ve known it’d take more than that.
“Hey now, Tooya! Ain’t you rough-housin’ me a little hard there?!”
“I don’t need your nonsense today, Gila. You should’ve just stayed down.” I grinned right back at him before drawing my weapon, Brunhild, from [Storage]. I switched it to Gun Mode.
In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 13 Page 9
