by Fujino Omori
It wasn’t fair to call this a struggle. He couldn’t even call it hunting.
Tormented by the hunger that grew and grew out of control, he returned to his brethren—the ones who had been separated. Hunters had been attacking them, and he saved them.
His rabbit kin had hopped with joy, saying he was truly someone to count on.
His winged kin had mumbled pitifully, saying perhaps he’d gone too far.
The brethren who witnessed his hunger fell into two categories. Those who praised it and those who feared it.
He realized that even among his own he was a maverick. His dream was fundamentally different from theirs. They had feelings for these places on the surface and for the people who inhabited them. But he had none. He could find meaning only in struggle.
We must part ways here, he thought.
He saw that his dream might destroy the dream of his kin. He would give them the key. The key with the eyeball buried in it. The object he’d been keeping for them until now. When he told them that he didn’t need it, the brother in the red hat asked him a question.
“What will you do now?”
He told them what his intentions were.
To fight. To open a path.
And.
That he sensed the dream he was searching for was here on the surface.
“…I understand. I wish you good fortune in war.”
He turned his back on the brethren, who were mourning their parting.
Perhaps it would be an eternal separation.
He had a premonition that would be the case, but it didn’t matter. Not if he was able to find his dream here on the surface.
Concealing his oversized form and presence in the blackness, he continued his journey of seeking.
To meet again—and to fight again.
CHAPTER 5
ULTRA SOUL!
“…”
Tiona discovered the body of an adventurer hidden among the ruins.
The adventurer was not dead—only unconscious.
As she looked at the human with blood running from both ears, she groped around her waist.
“Damn, I don’t have any potions with me,” she said, realizing she’d forgotten to bring her items.
“Tiona, hurry up!” her sister called. Reluctantly, she left the adventurer behind.
Without using her hands, she scaled the structure that surrounded the tunnel-like passage where she’d been. At the top, she found her sister, Tione, who like Tiona had been ordered to serve as both scout and guerrilla fighter. The Amazon was stamping her bare feet and looking irritated.
“Ugh, this is so frustrating! We’re doing what the captain said, but we’re not finding any monsters. Daedalus Street is so annoying. It’s nothing but twists and turns and dead ends.”
Not to mention ups and downs.
The western section of the Labyrinth District, where the two sisters were, was so complex they felt like they were walking through a trompe l’oeil painting. It was no wonder Tione was irritated.
“Our opponent may be moving faster than Finn’s commands,” Tiona said.
“Are you suggesting the captain is falling behind? I’ll kick your ass for saying that!” her sister growled in defense of her beloved leader.
“You’re pretty annoying yourself!” Tiona snapped back with a fed-up look on her face, before mumbling that Tione was right. “But yeah, I think Finn’s instructions are spot-on. I bet the monsters passed near here.”
“…Did you find something?”
Tiona remained silent for a moment, gazing into the distance before answering.
“I’ve been thinking, Tione. Those monsters that we’re after—”
She did not complete the thought. The clanging of a bell broke the silence.
“The signal for a monster sighting…! Let’s go, Tiona!”
“…Yeah!”
Watching her sister race off, Tiona seemed to change her attitude of a moment before. She shouldered her double-edged sword and followed Tione.
Like a ferocious wave, the Xenos were barreling straight down the road in a single line.
They were in the western section of the Labyrinth District, near the center. After emerging from the shortcut immediately in front of Loki Familia’s formation, the monsters were now running as fast as they could toward the underground passage to Knossos.
“Thanks to Lillicchi, there aren’t any adventurers around!” said Lido at the head of the group.
“Don’t let down your guard! They’re coming!” Fels yelled up from the center of the line. The mage was right: Loki Familia members were at that very moment rushing from the center, northwest, and southwest to fill the gap in the formation.
“Archers, take your positions!” Loki Familia platoon leaders shouted.
The archers drew back their bows and aimed at the advancing group of monsters. Positioned on buildings in front and to the left and right, they were about to unleash a tri-directional rain of arrows on the Xenos.
But.
“?!”
“It’s cooooold?!”
The elves and animal people who had been fitting their arrows to their bows were suddenly half-frozen. A blizzard that materialized from thin air had blindsided the girls. The bow, arm, shoulder, and half the face of each demi-human were covered in an armor of ice. They cried out at the bitter cold.
“Sorry…!”
“Apologies for the surprise attack!”
Under their veils, Welf and Mikoto whispered their regrets. Their invisible hands gripped the aqua-colored magic daggers they had drawn from their sheaths.
By running alongside the Xenos at a set distance and letting the noisy band of advancing monsters draw the attention of their opponents, Welf and Mikoto had managed to pull off the perfect sneak attack. Even the upper-class Loki Familia adventurers were helpless against this bombardment from their blind side by an invisible enemy. There was no escaping the blizzard from such close range as it swept over a wide area the instant it was released; even those who attempted to defend themselves from the aqua-blue wave of cold were imprisoned in ice.
The magic ice daggers were called Hiens.
Welf had worked without sleep or rest to forge the two blades for this day. Their beauty, which recalled crystals carved from ice, belied their cruel icy waves that froze anything in their way. Welf and Mikoto each carried one.
Flames or lightning would wound an adventurer, but ice—while painful—could be reversed without seriously harming the enemy.
“With these, we can get by without damaging the city!”
Welf smiled half-heartedly, unable to fully give himself over to pride in his creation.
The Crozzo magic daggers and the original Sage’s magic items made for a wicked combination. Without revealing that Hestia Familia had sided with the monsters, they were able to completely immobilize the targets of their surprise attacks.
Not only were the adventurers on the rooftops unable to pull back their bows, they were also unable to move, because their feet and even the ground was frozen. As the adventurers below looked up, dumbfounded at the frozen blocks of ice that their companions had become, Welf and Mikoto leaped to the ground and unleashed another attack.
“Aaaaaaahhh!”
The adventurers on the ground screamed as they were enveloped in the blizzard, and the Xenos charged forward.
“Yaaaaaaaarrrr!”
Led by the lizardman and unicorn, the parade of monsters hurled themselves against the frozen adventurers. Animal people flew through the air. Humans were thrown against walls. Weapons and fragments of armor scattered. As they broke through the enemy line, the Xenos let loose a chorus of monster bellows.
“Lady Haruhime! Tell me the way forward!” Mikoto screamed into her oculus.
“There’s a road off to the right a little farther ahead!” Haruhime responded.
Leaving Welf to watch for enemy pursuers, Mikoto went to intercept adventurers approaching from other streets. With the help o
f Hestia and Haruhime, she was able to forestall them without getting lost herself, sending waves of cold over them as they rushed toward the Xenos. The adventurers became her magic dagger’s quarry as she plastered herself to a wall above their heads and waited to ambush them. They cried out as the ice forced them to halt.
The invisible Welf and Mikoto were able to hold the sporadic groups of Loki Familia fighters entirely in check.
“Go, Welf and Mikoto! You get ’em…!”
Hestia pumped her fist into the air as she looked down at the magic map. She could see the symbols for Welf and Mikoto moving frenetically around the Xenos, who were advancing east straight through the central zone of the Labyrinth District. She cheered on her familia members as they did their utmost to hold back the enemy’s approach.
“Found ya!”
Unfortunately, the goddess’s prayers were dashed.
“—!! Shit?!!”
“Gros!”
The gargoyle rearguard spun around as he sensed a flash of light flying toward him. A knife had been hurled toward the group at high speed. It crashed into his stone right wing—which he had spread to protect his brethren in the rear—and shattered it like a hammer.
Rei, who had been singing as she flew along, looked back—and saw two Amazonian women, their black hair flying behind them.
“I knew they were around here!” one shouted.
“We’ve caught up with them!” the other responded.
Rei and Gros widened their eyes simultaneously.
There was no way they could have forgotten those two Amazons.
They were the same extremely strong first-tier adventurers who had trampled the Xenos in this very city several days before.
“OHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
Gros let out a tremendous yell. His warning alerted Lido at the front and Fels in the center to the threat, and Welf and Mikoto, too, instantly turned around.
“The Hyrute sisters!”
“So they’re here…! Let’s give ’em hell!”
“Yeah!”
Welf and Mikoto immediately dropped what they were doing and ran to intercept Tiona and Tione, who were approaching with incredible speed. Dropping from the front of the formation to the back, they lifted the Hiens. Welf was on one side of the Xenos and Mikoto on the other, running on top of the buildings lining the street. They aimed their daggers at their opponents and, at nearly the same moment, swung them forward.
They were sure they had targeted the sisters’ blind spots, as they had managed to do with the other adventurers up till now—but the sisters dodged.
“?!”
Welf and Mikoto were too surprised to utter a word. The sisters had reacted with incredible speed to the blizzard that materialized from thin air, evading it quite easily.
“What was that? Is there an ice bird around here or something?” Tione called out, brushing a strand of long black hair from her face.
“Seems a little too powerful for that!” Tiona replied, glancing backward at the enormous icy form that had risen up in the street. Returning her gaze to the front, the Amazonian girl called out to her sister again as she ran.
“Hey, Tione. Someone’s here, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if they’re shape-shifting or they’ve made themselves invisible…but there are two of them for sure.”
The sisters looked up and directed their piercing gazes at two points ahead and above them.
Welf and Mikoto shuddered. The sisters had accurately pinpointed their locations. For all their invisibility and freezing blizzards, they both realized that one blow from the sisters would crush them.
The twin warriors were she-devils incarnate.
The sight of the Level 6 first-tier adventurers bearing down on them was truly petrifying. Yet even though the glint in the sisters’ eyes filled them with a horror unlike any they’d experienced before, they summoned their courage.
“Lady Hestia, is there any terrain coming up that we can use?!”
“Uh, um…Sorry, Welf, there’s nothing! No turnoffs and no obstacles! The road just gets wider and wider. Looks like the only thing is a downward slope…”
The wind was so strong that it nearly blew Welf’s veil off and drowned out his questions as he spoke into the oculus. The answer sounded like a screech. He could sense that the invisible Mikoto was growing anxious as well. He looked up, startled.
“A slope…!”
Far in the distance down the arrow-straight road, he could see a hill that appeared to lead into a basin.
The young smith spoke once more into the blue crystal in his hand.
“Lady Hestia, please connect me with those two.”
Hestia understood immediately who he meant by “those two.” Working with the flustered Haruhime, she pushed Mikoto’s and Fels’s crystals together with Welf’s so they could hear him.
Mikoto and Fels paused for a moment after hearing the gamble Welf proposed, then agreed. Fels spoke first.
“We have no other choice. We’re betting on your magic daggers, Welf Crozzo. Lido, run as fast as you can!”
“I’ll try, too, Sir Welf!” Mikoto said.
“I’m counting on you!”
The Xenos mustered their strength and ran even faster.
Having given up on aiming directly at the approaching sisters, Welf and Mikoto now attempted to stop them by freezing the road, throwing up dozens of ice walls and knife-sharp ice mountains to block their progress. But Tiona and Tione crushed each one in the space of a single breath, slashing them down with the double-edged sword, kukri knives, and even their bare feet. Mikoto grimaced at the sight of the extraordinary woman warriors in savage pursuit of the Xenos amid a blizzard of shattered ice chunks.
“Run! Run!” the lizardman shouted to his brethren again and again in the howling language only the other monsters could understand. They had to take full advantage of every second Welf and Mikoto gained for them.
Wiene gasped for breath as she ran, and the flat-footed troll flapped its arms even more clumsily than usual as they tried to keep up. Lido and Fels took on the other Loki Familia members who Welf and Mikoto—now fully focused on the Amazons—were no longer able to hold back. Lido’s longsword and scimitar mowed down all who tried to block their progress forward, while Fels’s jet-black gloves sent out invisible shock waves that kept others from approaching.
Rei, who was flying above the party, dropped back to Gros’s position to protect Wiene and the other Xenos at the rear, as well as Welf and Mikoto. With feather projectiles from her wings, she somehow managed to intercept the knives that Tione threw and send them to the ground before they reached their intended targets. But again and again, the white blades made their way through her defense and ripped into the siren’s body.
As the parade of monsters grew increasingly ferocious and the fighting verged on spinning out of control, the narrow road began to widen as Hestia had said it would. Soon they were running down an avenue more than eight meders wide.
“This is annoying! Tiona, you throw something, too!” Tione shouted, clicking her tongue in irritation at her inability to draw closer to the Xenos.
“Okay, but Urga is all I’ve got!” Tiona called back before hurling the double-edged sword.
The massive hunk of metal was impossible to fend off. Welf, Mikoto, and Gros gaped at it, and Rei shrieked shrilly for her kin to get out of the way.
With no time even to glance backward, Wiene and the others in the rear rushed away. In the next instant, the huge double-edged sword hit the ground.
“?!”
The stone pavement buckled at the tremendous impact, sending the Xenos flying. Avoiding a direct hit by a mere hairbreadth, they tumbled down a slope paved in black bricks.
It was the hill Hestia had told them about.
“Tiona, let’s kill them he—”
Tione stopped mid-sentence. She had just begun to descend the slope with her sister, who had retrieved her sword from the ground before running on. She
sensed that the invisible sources of the bombardment had stopped in the middle of the road at the bottom of the hill.
“They’ve stopped!”
“So they think they can cut us off?!”
Tiona and Tione knew their opponents were facing them, poised for battle.
Instantly, they realized they were facing the fiercest attack yet. In the distance, they could see the monsters falling back into formation as they escaped, but they nevertheless made their decision without an instant’s hesitation.
“I’ll shield you. Kill them, Tiona!”
“Okay!”
Rather than retreat from the wide avenue, the sisters had chosen to charge the enemy.
Tiona stood directly behind Tione, hiding in her shadow; her older sister would take the fire while she brought down the enemy. Their target was clear.
As Mikoto braced herself for a direct attack from the warrior sisters who were ready to risk their lives in the fight, sweat trickled beneath her veil.
But her heart was as clear and quiet as a perfectly still pool of water.
If they lost the upper hand here, everything was over.
If the enemy caught up with the Xenos, they would be destroyed—and she could not let that happen.
The girl from the Far East met the gazes of the approaching first-class adventurers with her invisible eyes and brought her hand to the hilt of her magic dagger.
“!”
Welf swung his dagger from his position diagonally below them in a final attempt to stop the advance. Unfazed, Tiona and Tione positioned themselves firmly in the middle of the slope. Whether their opponents tried to freeze them or burn them, the sisters were confident they could withstand the attacks. No matter how terribly they were wounded, they would not back down from their enemy. They flew through the air toward the invisible presences.
The instant before they made contact, the sisters heard a metallic shing.
“—”
The sound was neither ice crystals forming nor raging flames.
It was the sound of a glittering metal blade sliding along its sheath—and a sword being loosened from its scabbard.
Mikoto, crouched low to the ground, had two weapons at her hip. One was her third-tier adventurer’s weapon, Kotetsu. The other was a sword with a magic blade.
