Assault on Ratstein Island! (3)
The stench of blood and the acrid reek of gunpowder mingled with the fog, stabbing all the way down into my lungs.
From every direction around Ratstein Manor came the grotesque howls of the chimeras.
It was pure hell on earth.
"Leave those monsters to the gendarmerie! We secure the objective first!"
I led the main force of Rat Rangers in a swift assault into the manor, weaving through the hail of magic and raking chimera claws.
The chaotic melee could be left to Coldwell and the gendarmes.
Our absolute top priority was only one thing: rescuing our kin locked up as prey.
"Stop right there, you filthy rats! This is a restricted zone—aaaargh!"
The guards blocking the corridors tried to draw their weapons.
Arrows loosed from my bowgun and the Rangers' tore through them without mercy.
"How dare you bar our path!"
"Die! Enemies of the Hamster Wheel! Squeak!"
We trampled over the bleeding bodies and finally reached the manor's central hall.
The very same filthy place where the hamster-wheel races had been held.
"Good heavens, what is this…!"
"Smash it all!"
Dozens of massive hamster wheels linked to generators. Inside them, rodent beastmen with iron chains around their necks foamed at the mouth. The Rangers recoiled in horror, then exploded with rage.
Clang!
"Dismantle them now!"
Temi and the girls immediately swung short spears and daggers, mercilessly severing the wires of the electric shock devices.
With a high-pitched whine the machines died, and we hauled the beastmen out of the wheels.
"S-save me… please…"
"It's over. You're safe now. Come with us."
The Rangers cut the chains of the terrified beastmen collapsed on the floor and helped them up.
"Evacuate every last one to the boats waiting by the lakeshore! Don't leave a single person behind!"
At my order the Rangers formed a protective ring around the rescued beastmen, secured a safe retreat route, and began pulling out of the manor.
First objective complete.
Now it was time to deal with the baron outside and his black mages.
When we burst back out into the square, the battle outside had grown even more chaotic.
Rat-tat-tat! Bang!
"Graaaaah!"
"Hold formation! If we break, we're finished!"
"All units, fire!"
Gendarmes met the chimeras with guns and bayonets. Every time a monster swung a foreleg, a gendarme went flying like a dry leaf; every time a thunderous powder blast and choking smoke rose, chimeras staggered and fell.
The situation was deteriorating so fast it was impossible to see even a step ahead.
KRA-BOOM!
"Everyone down!"
Black mages formed up behind the manor poured out murky mana bullets like a rainstorm. Coldwell and the gendarmes were forced to give ground step by step.
I rolled through the curtain of fire and reached the gendarmerie line.
"Inspector! Over here!"
I shoved the holy water and sacred oil I had brought into his hands.
"Damn it, little mouse! You're still alive!"
"Where's the baron? That elf bastard—where did he go?"
Coldwell ground his teeth and pointed toward the forest.
"Used his own men as shields and… ran for the woods!"
I immediately linked with the senses of the horned rats.
His location was easy enough to pin down—right by that ominous altar.
"He's in the middle of the forest!"
"Those chimeras and mages have us pinned. Loti! We'll hold them. Leave those bastards to us!"
Coldwell shouted.
"What about you and the gendarmes?"
"Stopping criminals is the duty of the gendarmerie!"
That iron resolve in his eyes told me everything—they would buy us time.
I was just about to charge for the altar when—
"Judgment upon the heretics!"
From the fog-choked manor gate a group of people appeared: Camilla leading a unit of porcelain-masked skeletons, investigators of the Heresy Inquisition, and priests.
The black mages lifted their chins and sneered with arrogant laughter.
"Bwahaha! A handful of priests and a few lich-kin who play with bones think they can stop us? You walked straight into your own graves!"
"We'll tear you to shreds and offer you to the Great Demon!"
Their mockery did not last even a full minute.
Camilla's group was only the vanguard clearing the way.
Clank. Clank.
Heavy, rhythmic steel boots shook the earth as they advanced through the thick fog.
The black mages who had been so full of themselves only moments earlier went deathly pale and began to tremble.
"U-ugh! Wh-why are they here?!"
Knights clad head to toe in silver plate, cloaks bearing the emblem of the Church fluttering behind their helms.
Sena recognized them and cried out in a voice thick with awe.
"The Pantheon's Holy Knights! Their absolute elite—only deployed when the worst heresies must be uprooted…!"
The towering holy knight at the front raised the massive sword in one hand and roared.
"To the heretics who harm innocent lives!"
Another knight took up the cry.
"There shall be no mercy!"
In every free hand they held something else—horrifyingly thick, crude steel blocks that made the skin crawl.
Wait… is that…?
KA-BOOM!
Triggers slammed home.
At the same instant twin barrels spat thunderous blasts.
Buckshot left the muzzles in a fan and scythed across the square.
"Kreeeeaaagh!"
My guess was right.
Double-barrel shotguns!
The shot must have been thickly coated in holy water and divine power; black smoke boiled up from the chimeras struck head-on as if they were burning from within.
"Fire! Purify the dregs of demons!"
KRA-BOOM! BANG!
Heavy reports like siege cannons dominated the square.
One overwhelming shotgun barrage from the Holy Knights shredded chimera flesh like rags. The black mages' barriers were no exception.
"Aaaaargh!"
Then the knights charged. Plate turned aside magic; blades butchered chimera and mage without pity.
"We're going too!"
I poured Ratpid Bowgun fire into the remaining black mages, advancing shoulder to shoulder with the Holy Knights and the gendarmerie.
Under the combined assault the baron's forces were literally annihilated in moments.
I shouted urgently toward Camilla.
"The baron! He's in the middle of the forest! There's an altar set up there!"
The instant the words left my mouth we were already racing through the trees without pause.
We broke through the thick fog into the heart of the woods.
Moments later the gendarmerie, the Holy Knights, and our Rangers surrounded the baron standing atop the altar in tight concentric rings.
Dozens of muzzles and cold blades locked onto his throat.
"How does it feel to be a rat in a trap, Baron?"
I adjusted my grip on the bowgun and spat the words coldly.
What came back was no surrender.
"Haha! Hahahahaha!"
Cornered, the baron did not drop to his knees. Instead he flung both arms wide and howled mad laughter at the night sky.
"You think you've won? You're too late, you stupid fools!"
His eyes wild with madness, he pointed at the floor of the altar.
"Wh…?"
My pupils trembled.
The enormous magic circle on the altar was spewing a bone-chilling crimson mist.
"You idiots! Every death and every agony that happens in this forest feeds the ritual! That includes the sacrifices of my own men and the chimeras! Thanks to you, the rite has accelerated to perfection!"
For a second my mind went blank white.
We walked right into it!
Even the chimeras and mercenaries dying to us had been twisted into fuel for the ritual as a last-minute improvisation.
WUUUUM!
KRA-KRACK-CRACK!
With the baron's maniacal laughter the earth split open and a colossal pitch-black gate yawned wide in the center of the altar.
From the reeking sulfur smoke that poured out of the rift came an overwhelming pressure that crushed the entire island.
An evil presence equal to—no, greater than—the Dragosius I had once faced in Oakwood.
"Grrrrrr…"
A massive shadow tore through the smoke and rose.
A blood-starved lion's head, a torso grotesquely woven from dozens of human limbs, and a gigantic scorpion tail dripping with vivid blue venom.
Camilla muttered, face drained of color.
"A m-manticore… Legion Commander of Hell… a Great Demon…!"
The Great Demon's thick, bone-chilling voice shook the entire forest.
"Demon scum! Taste holy shot!"
A holy knight bellowed bravely and squeezed the triggers of his double-barrel shotgun at the manticore.
KA-BOOM!
But—
The manticore snorted and casually swept its enormous scorpion tail.
KRA-KRASH!
The holy-water-laced buckshot slammed into the grotesque barrier cloaking the manticore's body, sparked uselessly, and bounced away.
"All units, fire!"
The manticore roared and swung a massive foreleg.
"Gyaaaah!"
"Guhk!"
A storm-like shockwave scythed across the altar.
Holy Knights in heavy breastplates and gendarmes flew like dry leaves.
And rodent beastmen of our small stature?
We were flung farther, more wretchedly.
"Squeak! No!"
"Hieeeek!"
The Rat Rangers' formation collapsed helplessly. Desperate screams of children slamming into trees and tumbling across the ground filled the forest.
I was no exception.
THUD!
"Urgh…!"
My head rang as if it had cracked open. I must have struck a tree head-on; my vision flooded red. When I touched my forehead, hot blood streamed between my fingers.
"Bwahahaha! Kill them all! O great Manticore! Start by stomping those ridiculous little rats into paste!"
From behind the altar rubble the baron cackled, pouring out pure madness.
Damn it. I never thought we'd be pushed this far.
But I refuse to end it here.
My pride will not allow me to kneel to that cursed long-eared bastard and a demon.
"Behold, you primitive vermin! How utterly insignificant you are! Only the power of the Abyss is truth! We shall replace the order of the slumbering World Tree with demonic might and reopen the age of the newly evolved elves! Hahaha!"
Insane laughter.
The manticore's next step was aimed, of all places, straight at me—isolated.
"Loti! Dodge!"
From far away Sena screamed and stretched out a hand.
Hilde fired her air gun again and again, trying to stop the demon. Tiny spirit bullets flew, only to scatter uselessly at a casual wave of the Great Demon's hand.
Mani also shrieked and loosed a ballista bolt; it bounced off and fell away without effect.
The manticore's enormous shadow fell over my head.
If I couldn't dodge, I would face it head-on.
I staggered to my feet.
I refuse to die lying down.
I am the chief of a village and the Apostle of a goddess.
The mocking voice drifted down from above.
With trembling hands I drew the dagger at my hip.
"Come at me, you monster! Squeak!"
The instant I screamed and tried to charge—
FWAAAAASH!
My surroundings erupted in a golden radiance as brilliant as midsummer sun.
"Squeak? Squeeeeak!"
Suddenly the shadow at my feet writhed as if alive, and the world around me was swallowed by countless black shapes.
"Squeak-squeak!"
"Squeeee!"
Countless wild field mice.
Had they crossed the lake and been hiding in the island's forests all this time?
Tens of thousands of field mice poured in like a waterfall, bathing in the radiant wave of light, and began to change.
From the foreheads of ordinary field mice, sharp and sacred golden horns sprouted.
Wait… every last one of them…?
"Rise, my Apostle! The hour for thee to come to heaven is yet far off, it is!"
Rodentia's thunderous voice rang inside me.
At that signal, tens of thousands of wild field mice awakened as spirit horned rats.
"Squeak! Squeeeeeak!"
A colossal golden tsunami formed by the horned-rat swarm crashed forward—straight at the manticore's massive bulk!
The panicked manticore thrashed.
Tens of thousands of horned rats blazing with golden eyes swarmed up the Great Demon's body, biting and tearing without pause.
It did not stop there.
Between me and the Great Demon a towering pillar of light shot straight into the sky.
The oppressive storm clouds parted in an instant; in the center of the pouring pale moonlight, Rodentia's golden-aura-wrapped apparition appeared more vivid and majestic than ever before.
"Apostle!"
"The desperate prayers of my pitiful people and thy unbreakable courage have awakened yet another of my powers, long forgotten, it is!"
Rodentia's voice crashed across the land like thunder.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!
With tremendous vibration the earth itself heaved.
When the choking dust settled, a colossal form stood revealed in the open ground between the manticore and me.
"Squeeeeeak—!"
House-sized, plump and fluffy, golden fur. The being was a gigantic hamster with twitching cheek pouches that looked ready to burst—adorable yet awe-inspiring. From its forehead rose a golden horn sharper and more magnificent than most greatswords, gleaming with pure majesty.
"Apostle! Mount it at once!"
"…What the heck is that?"
At my flustered question Rodentia answered, voice swelling with pride.
"The next stage of the brave spirit horned rat! The divine beast that acts as my power and courage—the Great Hornster, it is!"
Hornster.
Literally a horned hamster.
It stomped its cute little forepaws and unleashed a roar that seemed ready to tear the whole island apart at the manticore.
"Squeak!"
The manticore snorted and raised a hand. In it was a flaming greatsword whose tips were grotesquely forked.
"Squeak-squeak!"
The result was overwhelming.
BOOOOM!
One straight punch from the Hornster.
The Great Demon hastily raised an arm to block—and its massive body was shoved backward as if blasted by a storm.
Only then did the Great Demon's eyes blaze with killing intent as it realized the situation was far from ordinary.
At the same moment the weapons in both my hands grew scorching hot and began to change form.
The Ratpid Bowgun blazed with brilliant light. Into my empty opposite hand a long, sharp, pure-white weapon materialized.
"This is…"
"Take it! The holy horn-spear forged from the horns of sacred horned rats, that shall judge the enemies of the Hamster Wheel Church, it is!"
An awakening that arrived in the moment of crisis.
At last the dedicated weapon and mount befitting the title of Apostle rested in my hands.
"Perfect."
I grinned fiercely and vaulted up onto the soft back of the Great Hornster.
Along with the plush sensation of fur, an enormous tide of holy power surged through my veins and wrapped around my entire body.
The target: the manticore thrashing, tangled in the swarm of tens of thousands of horned rats.
"Come on!"
I thrust the golden-flaming holy spear forward in a long, gleaming line.