She held her breath, preventing the motion of her inhales and exhales from transferring to the gun. And then, just as she had practiced time and again, Berta pulled the trigger.
Boom.
The bullet was spat out with an earsplitting gunshot. According to Yukinari, the round was far more powerful than that in either Dasa’s Red Chili or his own Durandall. The gun kicked back hard against her body as the bullet went flying.
It was more than powerful enough to tear through the puppet she’d used for target practice. But...
“Oh...” Berta breathed.
She had hit the statute. But it produced only a spark on the surface; the giant didn’t so much as stumble. She could see through the scope that there was a small scratch on its armor, but that was all.
“It... It didn’t work...?”
She wasn’t targeting a person, a living being. Hence Berta was able to pull the trigger with comparatively little reluctance. But if her shots had no effect, then it was all pointless.
“No...”
She held her breath, pulled the trigger again. Another bullet sped toward the statue, leaving another forceful recoil and thundering gunshot in its wake. And it produced only another spark.
Berta tilted the gun again, opening the stock, loading new rounds in place of the empty ones that had been automatically ejected. Thanks to all the practice she’d done, she hardly had to think about the process anymore. But it looked likely that no matter how many hits she landed, she wasn’t going to bring down the statue of the guardian saint.
Derrringer, as a weapon, worked on the same principle as Yukinari’s Durandall. Maybe he, or perhaps Dasa, might have been able to use it more effectively. Maybe she really was incompetent, incapable of helping.
The thought caused a profound sadness to well up in her chest, but she had no time to indulge it. The situation around the observation tower was a matter of one step forward and one back. Ulrike and the other familiars were giving battle well. They still weren’t able to use Yggdra’s full power, and their weapons and attacks weren’t powerful enough to destroy the statue. But the team of familiars had quickly adapted their thinking, targeting not the statue, but the knights beyond it.
With the knights, the familiars could fight on even footing, or perhaps even have the advantage. And precisely because the missionaries were under attack, the statue couldn’t ignore the familiars and move forward. The statue couldn’t move on its own, and in order for the organist who gave it its orders to advance, the huge wagon bearing the instrument would have to be brought forth, along with all its guards.
However, the battle between the missionary knights and the familiars was almost at a stalemate. At this rate, neither side looked likely to gain the upper hand. Right now, the only one who could act freely was Berta.
That meant she had to do something. If that statue succeeded in reaching the town, executing a pincer attack against Yukinari with the other statue, it wouldn’t matter how strong her lord was. He would never win.
“If I don’t... If I don’t do something...!” she murmured, and returned to sniping. Even if it wasn’t very effective, this was everything she could do. It was the job she’d been given. Clinging to that fact, she continued to work.
“Calm down... Calm down...” She repeated the words to herself over and over. Panic only caused you to miss things you should have hit. That was what Yukinari had taught her. So Berta dedicated herself to doing as he had said. Calm down. Don’t panic. Don’t worry. Don’t think. Only load, aim, fire, eject, as if you were a part of the gun.
But then...
“Hey, woman!”
“Wha?!”
She cried out as a voice suddenly came from behind her. Had the missionaries snuck around her position without her realizing it? Terror made her body go stiff; she let go of Derrringer and turned around. Turning the long, heavy gun around with her was impractical; Berta didn’t even think about it.
“M-Mister A-Arlen...?”
To her surprise, it was Arlen standing there. Sweat pearled on his forehead, and his shoulders were heaving with his breath; he had obviously run as hard as he could to get here.
“What’s the situation?!”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
“No, not ‘Yes, sir!’ I’m asking you what’s going on!”
His fervent shouting only caused Berta to freeze up again. She knew Arlen, of course, but she had rarely spoken to him herself. So to find him exclaiming angrily at her was terrifying enough.
“Ahhh, fine, get out of the way!” Arlen didn’t have time to wait patiently; he shoved Berta aside and knelt at the edge of the platform, observing the battle.
“So they did bring out the statue of the guardian saint—I knew it!”
His muttering made Berta think: Arlen had also had a guardian saint statue when he had come to Friedland. He knew the weapon well. Perhaps he could tell her where to aim—where its weak point might be.
“E-Er, L-Lord... Lansdowne...?”
Arlen spun. “Woman! Is this the ‘sniper rifle’ or whatever Yukinari called it? The gun that can strike an enemy even from this distance?”
“Oh! Y-Yes, it is! B-But that giant is too strong... When I hit it, nothing happens...”
“Of course not! Do you know how thick the armor is on those statues?!”
“I—I’m sorry...”
“You can’t just shoot them anywhere and hope something will happen!” Arlen held up a hand to shield his eyes, squinting into the distance. It looked like he had something in mind. Berta looked at him expectantly, but...
“If you need a target, aim at the organist controlling the statue!”
“Wha?”
“The statue of the guardian saint is controlled by the music of the organ. If there’s no one to supply the melody, it won’t be able to move—so shoot him! The man on the seat on that wagon!”
Berta could say nothing.
The organist was a human.
“Shoot... Shoot a person...?”
“What’s wrong with you?! If shooting the statute doesn’t work, you shoot the person controlling the statue! It’s obvious!”
“But—But he’s a... a person...!”
A living thing, with blood running through his veins. A human, just like her.
And she was to shoot him. To kill him.
“That’s... That’s awful...!”
“Then why did you bring that thing here?!” Arlen asked angrily. “Those who aren’t prepared to kill shouldn’t have weapons! They shouldn’t be in battle!”
“I—I’m sorry... But...”
“Hrr—”
Arlen wasn’t listening to Berta’s excuses; he had turned back to the battle between the missionaries and the familiars.
“Those fool familiars of Yggdra’s! They call that fighting? What are they, animals?!” he spat, then turned and began climbing down from the observation platform. “If I can get close, bring down the organist—”
“U-Um, Lord Lansdowne...”
“You do what you can do, woman! What only you can do!” And with that, Arlen was gone from the platform, running with his sword in his hand toward where Ulrike and the others fought. Perhaps he felt that if Berta couldn’t kill the organist, he would do it himself. Arlen was, of course, a knight of the Missionary Order. Chances were good the other side would think he was a friend and wouldn’t attack him.
But what would the missionaries think of Arlen, carving a path past Ulrike and the familiars directly toward the man at the organ? Would Ulrike and her companions even recognize Arlen as an ally? It might be very difficult for the young man to reach his objective.
“But...”
Feeling she had no options, Berta picked up Derrringer and looked through the scope. She could see the missionaries, beyond the statue of the guardian saint. She could see the man playing the organ, too. But the massive statue out front sometimes blocked her line of fire.
“I...”
Would she do it? Could she
do it? She felt her stomach knot tighter as she asked herself these questions.
In front of her, Ulrike and the other familiars were fighting for all they were worth.
Ulrike had said they had to fight, lest their own town of Rostruch find itself in danger. Lest Yukinari be killed. Veronika had said that sitting and waiting sometimes just made a situation worse. She had been talking about the relationship between Yukinari and Dasa, but it was just as true of what was unfolding before Berta’s eyes.
She might be scared, yet in silently waiting for the problem to fix itself, she might find herself in a situation she regretted far more. There came a moment when she had to do something by her own hand, whether she wanted to or not.
Logically, Berta understood that. But she was scared.
But...
You do what you can do, woman! What only you can do!
Those had been Arlen’s words. He had been her enemy once, but he had said those words and then gone to do what he felt only he could do. Berta didn’t know what had caused this change of heart. But...
“What... only I... can do...”
This was the first job Yukinari had ever given her. The first object, Derrringer, he had ever given her. And the first expectations anyone had ever had of her.
Ever since she had been offered up as a living sacrifice, ever since she had been assigned to serve as a shrine maiden, she hadn’t once been able to be of real use. She didn’t feel that doing menial chores was really being of use to such an exalted entity as a god. And if she had no other way of serving her lord, she was prepared to give herself to him as a woman—but then he never laid a finger on her.
The profound concern Yukinari had shown for this town while Berta fretted about how to be helpful was truly worthy of being called the glory of a god. It meant so much. Her “little sisters” at the orphanage would most likely be able to go without starving—even though they were no longer to be living sacrifices. They would be able to live their lives—be it tomorrow or in the far future—without fear.
Berta profoundly respected Yukinari. She wanted to repay him, even if it wasn’t much. That was why she had offered herself up: her body, her spirit, her life, everything she was.
This was what brought Berta to realize that she had been thinking only of herself. Because she was afraid, because she didn’t want to hurt other people, because she wasn’t confident in herself, she thought she couldn’t do it.
Even though she had sworn to give herself to Yukinari. She just needed to give these feelings of fear to him as well. If she felt she would lose something in doing so, that was itself proof of her sacrifice to him.
Without a word, Berta looked down the scope once more. She was still afraid; she fought to keep herself from crumbling. She inhaled deeply, trying to calm her breathing.
But then she swallowed heavily. Through the scope, she could see that the statue was getting closer to the town; it blocked her field of view more frequently now. This made things worse—while Berta had been arguing with herself, the difficulty of the shot had gone up exponentially.
I knew it, Berta thought, ashamed. I knew I was a worthless little girl.
But just as she was thinking this—
“You shall not pass!” Ulrike bellowed. There followed a boom.
To Berta’s shock, the statue disappeared from the scope. Without really thinking about it, she closed her right eye, which had been looking through the scope, and opened her left. She found the statue tilting crazily. She thought it must have been the effect of an “anti-guardian-saint-statue trap” that Yukinari and Dasa had set up, as the god had explained to her ahead of time. In simple terms, it was a shallow hole that the statue could fall into. In order to prevent Ulrike and the other familiars from falling into it, there was a “lid” on it. The boom must have been them removing the lid.
Quickly, Berta looked back through the scope. She could see him—she could see the man playing the organ.
Now she could hit him. She was sure of it. Just where she wanted.
She stopped breathing. She stopped feeling.
And then she pulled the trigger.
Boom.
The bullet reached its target in an instant; in the scope’s narrow field of view, Berta could see red blossom on the organist’s shoulder, and he tumbled from his chair. The bullet then passed through the organist and struck his instrument: Berta saw a bullet hole appear in the frame, cracks spidering away from it.
With a wumph, the statue of the guardian saint stopped moving.
The other knights near the driver’s seat hurriedly tried to reach the organ, but...
Boom.
The second bullet was a direct hit on the organ. White keys flew up into the air.
Panic began to run through the missionaries. “The statue! The statue of the guardian saint—!”
The missionaries were put on the back foot, but the familiars were inspired. An instant later, they attacked.
●
Once he assumed his angel form, Yukinari could use all the power that was within him. But the situation wasn’t so easy that he could simply walk away with the victory. He had tried to bluff the female knight, but chances were she’d seen through it.
“Now, what to do, what to do...?” Yukinari muttered behind his mask.
The angels had been created by the True Church of Harris in order to perform miracles to promote conversion; they hadn’t been intended for battle. The reason Yukinari could fight so effectively was because he consciously used the angels’ power of physical reconstitution. Though its true offensive power came not from physical reconstitution itself, but from the weapons he produced with it.
And most of those weapons—whether the .44 Magnum bullets of Durandall or the rifle rounds of Derrringer—simply weren’t able to pierce the thick armor of the statue of the guardian saint.
If Yukinari could touch the statue, he could break it down with physical reconstitution no matter how thick its armor was, but because of its ability to spew flames, he couldn’t get too close. The knights of the Missionary Order, for their part, were starting to recover from the shock of the incomprehensible weapon called a gun.
The Friedlanders were continuing their attacks with their Durandalls, but they had little practice with the weapons and even less hope of hitting moving targets; the missionaries had begun to realize that despite all the noise, casualties were relatively few.
Dasa, of course, was able to exert some control using Red Chili, with which she could accurately hit the missionaries’ legs or shoulders, but she was just one person.
Above all, the enemy were trained, professional warriors. They had been taught how to suppress their fear. They took the shields from the fallen to double their own defenses and began closing in on Friedland’s main gate.
This was more or less the way things had happened during the fight with Arlen’s unit. Dasa’s gun wasn’t capable of punching through two shields at once. And once they knew they were protected, sheer numbers did the rest.
“Didn’t you say this was going to be over soon?” the female knight who appeared to be leading them said triumphantly. “An angel you may be, but there’s only one of you; the rest are a flock of sparrows. It was madness to think you could defeat me.”
Yukinari didn’t respond, even as he dodged the massive sword that came crashing down at him. Whatever the commander felt about this, she smiled like a cat playing with a mouse and said, “Blitz them! Destroy them in a single breath!”
The missionaries had been staying on the defensive, judging Yukinari’s powers—but at the woman’s orders, they instantly went on the offensive.
A knight’s primary offensive tactic is the charge. Obviously, it works best from horseback, but they can also stab or trample the opponent to great effect. Faced with a brigade of knights executing their most cherished tactic, the Friedlanders began to panic.
Green soldiers had no hope of victory. It was one thing to fire Durandalls from a distance, but if it
came to crossing swords, they would have no chance without years of experience. If things got too chaotic, it would also be difficult to keep Dasa safe. If she got caught up in melee combat, she wouldn’t be much better off than the farmers.
Perhaps the best thing Yukinari could do would be to produce a giant cannon and use it to shoot the statue of the guardian saint, as he’d done during the battle with Arlen’s forces. But unlike that time, the enemy was bearing down on him now, and Yukinari was too busy for such ploys. He could have created a cannon in five seconds, but it was time he just couldn’t find.
But then...
“Yargh!”
“T-The enemy is—hrgh?!”
The shouts came not from the front line of onrushing knights, but from the rear, where the female knight accompanied the huge wagon.
Yukinari squinted and looked in the direction of the noise. There he saw Veronika, laying waste with her halberd. When had she gotten there? Maybe she had moved in using the dust as cover when the statue fell into the hole.
“Yaaaaaaaaah!”
To attack a fully armored knight with a bladed weapon required finding the chinks in his defenses. But Veronika wasn’t concerned with killing her enemies; she spun around, using the centrifugal force of the halberd’s butt to slam into helmets and smack into knees. She clearly intended to confuse the enemy and buy her allies time. Then Yukinari, or perhaps the Friedlanders, might be able to come up with some way to change the situation.
Sweeping missionaries out of her way, Veronika closed in on the female knight.
To her surprise, though, when she stabbed at the woman’s midriff, the knight pulled out her sword and deflected the thrust.
“Hrr!”
The move was stronger than she expected, and Veronika was thrown ever so slightly off balance. In contrast, the female knight was able to assume a better fighting stance as she jumped down from the driver’s seat. With a mad smile, she shouted, “You underestimate me! I may be a young woman, but I’m commanding this army on merit!”
Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 3 Page 18
