The Siberia War

We usually call a person who charges into the middle of a battlefield with a sword while bullets and shells scream past a maniac.

So after doing exactly that for seven years, I was clearly a crazy bitch.

"Monsters have broken through the first defensive line! All units, draw swords!"

And this world, which put swords into the hands of little girls and threw them onto the battlefield, was clearly insane as well.

"...I already knew it was like that, but still."

I muttered under my breath and crumpled the operation plan in my hand. I simply could not make sense of what was written on it.

Of course I couldn't. No sane person would have cooked up a plan this deranged: drop me alone in front of the first SS-rank gate in history.

Two S's. The symbol of absolute overpowered bullshit, doubled.

An A-rank gate was already enough to destroy a nation. An S-rank meant you had to be ready to write off an entire continent. And now they wanted me to fight an SS? Alone? Was the planet itself supposed to end? And they were sending ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me?

"Pfft. Looks like the brass finally lost their minds."

I let out a dry laugh and leaned back against the transport's wall. Through the tiny window, a tower rose into the sky as if it had no intention of ever stopping.

That structure, which immediately called to mind the Tower of Babel from scripture, was named the Siberia Gate. It was the entrance of a tower that endlessly vomited monsters, and it was exactly where I had to go.

"...I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You don't have anything to apologize for, Uncle. We're all just people who have to jump when the higher-ups say jump."

When you hear something so absurd that your brain simply blanks out, this is exactly how it feels. I was so dumbfounded I didn't even have the energy left to get angry.

"But where are the rest of the heroes? To clear a tower-type gate by the book, you need at least five more S-rank Awakeners."

"Well... they're still not ready..."

"And who here was ready? It's not that they're unprepared. They're just scared shitless of dying, so they refused to show up."

Near the end of the seven-year Siberia War, an SS-rank gate had suddenly appeared and begun devouring lives by the truckload. Only two days had passed and a million people were already dead.

Among the casualties were two S-ranks and thirty A-ranks.

Awakeners who had spent their careers cleaning up gates from the safety of the rear lines were never going to survive a place like this.

"So in the end it's just me grinding again, huh?"

They knew that coming here meant death, so they delayed and delayed, telling themselves someone else would handle it.

And that someone else was me. Fuck.

"Haa... Physical condition normal. Sword secured. The seizures aren't acting up yet. If it's today, I can probably fight for about a minute."

Beep—

The transport's red siren shifted to green. The signal that drop clearance had been given.

Through the hatch I could see an outpost wreathed in smoke. As the plane drifted a little farther, the ground below turned black with the seething mass of monsters.

Even by the most generous standards, the base's situation right before being completely surrounded was not good. Thousands of lives down there were praying for rescue.

"Hooo..."

I closed my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠eyes, shouldering the familiar weight of that burden. My mind, chilled by the freezing Siberian wind, was spinning faster than it ever had.

I slowly drew up mana. The medicine that had been crushing my body began to thin. With each breath the drug's effect unraveled, and the world I could perceive expanded.

"Ugh...!"

Information beyond my limit suddenly flooded into my skull. My vision wavered. Reason frayed.

The sounds of the battlefield rang with crystal clarity and prodded at the deepest parts of my memory. If I stayed like this any longer, the bad memories would start clawing their way up.

"Hup—"

So I jumped from the transport without another second's hesitation.

My light forty-five-kilogram body scattered on the wind as it fell. I wasn't wearing a parachute, but I felt no fear. I had already made this drop dozens of times.

What filled the space where fear should have been was a brand-new set of senses.

As my heightened perception expanded its range, I could see my own plummeting form in third person even though my eyes were closed.

I saw the speed of the wind brushing my cheeks. I saw the vast open sky. I saw the ground racing up at terrifying velocity.

My silver hair streaming. The fluttering hem of my coat. The hand locked around the sword hilt. The flow of the wind itself.

Shells leaving their barrels in flashes of light. Monsters howling in fury. Machine guns spitting vicious tongues of flame.

The strange harmony of falling casings. Someone's muffled sobs buried under the battlefield noise. The chattering teeth of a recruit staring monsters in the face. The desperate voice of a soldier reciting a prayer—

As the range of my awareness widened, information I normally could never have noticed was hammered straight into my brain, and my unrestricted mind greedily swallowed the tidal wave of data.

"Ugh...!"

A headache like an ice pick stabbed through my skull. A high-performance brain had never belonged in a frail human head.

Even after the soft thud of my landing in the snow, my brain kept wringing every last drop of energy from my body to continue calculating. At this rate I was going to collapse from exhaustion before I ever swung the sword.

"...Twenty-five seconds left."

Even so, I forced myself to stay calm. I struggled upright from the impact crater and wrapped my fingers around the hilt.

My closed eyes ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠opened. The Siberian plain, blanketed in monsters, filled my vision.

BOOM—!

Then a massive dragon slammed down right in front of me. An A-rank monster dragon. Its roar shook my heart as a colossal sheet of flame erupted.

"Don't get in my way."

In the middle of a peaceful city this creature would have been called a catastrophe. Out here in this slaughterhouse, that name meant absolutely nothing.

Shiiing—

A silver arc of the longsword howled through the air with a sharp metallic cry.

The giant dragon's body split cleanly in half. A cloud-shaped scar that looked exactly like a cumulonimbus was left hanging in the sky. Beyond the collapsing halves of the dragon, the enormous tower finally revealed itself.

"Hahaha, you want me to take that on?"

I forced down the reverse-flowing blood caused by the reckless use of power and laughed through the cough.

If the world were ending, would it look like this?

Under a blood-red sky stood a tower caked in gore and shredded flesh. Monsters poured out without end, and no matter where I looked I could not find a single ally.

Meanwhile my body was already at its absolute limit. The screams the monsters hurled from every direction felt like they were cracking my skull open. This useless carcass was already creaking after a single swing.

Trying to clear the tower with a body like this was pure madness.

Which meant there was only one method left.

"Hooo..."

I exhaled a heavy breath and lifted my gaze to the sky. Countless fine threads I normally could never see entered my vision—the flow of mana that made up the world itself.

I raised my sword without hesitation, as if draping the blade across the fiercest current. The interrupted mana twisted slightly, as if irritated.

From that warped point, space itself began to distort.

Fifteen seconds remaining.

Feeling the muscles in my arm pulverize themselves, I dragged the sword straight down along the distortion without a moment's pause.

———!

At the same instant, a colossal explosion swallowed the whole of Siberia.

Anything in excess is never good.

Talent was no exception.

For someone who had been reborn with the stacked conditions of "frail genius swordswoman," talent that was far too outstanding felt closer to a curse.

A memory closer to a computer's than a human's simply refused to grant me the mercy of forgetting.

The thousands of soldiers who had willingly thrown away their lives to protect me.

The faces of the comrades who had died right beside me.

The face of the older sister who had sacrificed herself in my place.

Remembering every last expression they wore at the end was never going to be a pleasant feeling.

"Ugh..."

Clutching my throbbing head, I opened my eyes to the familiar dark-green canvas of a tent ceiling. The field hospital on the front lines.

"Mmm..."

A little later, the senses that made up my existence began to return. The hard frontline cot and the scratchy blanket. The Russian cold climbing up my body.

The simple design of the single-occupancy sickroom. The placement of the furniture. The distances between pieces. The width of the room. Its volume. Its temperature. The flow of mana circulating inside it...

"...Ah, fuck. The medicine."

I quickly shook my head to cut the train of thought short and called out toward the presence that had just entered the room.

"Perfect timing. Give me the medicine."

"Unfortunately, I didn't bring any this time."

Through my blurry vision I saw a golden-haired man hesitating—Mikhail Gorshkov. Maybe he simply couldn't bring himself to inject narcotics into the girl he had raised like his own daughter.

It wasn't as if I couldn't understand the feeling.

If I had to watch a girl I cared about begging for drugs right in front of me, I'd hesitate too.

"Right inner breast pocket of your jacket, second pocket down. The dose is a little higher than last time. Hurry."

But I was in just as much of a rush.

Letting my range of perception expand any further was dangerous. This body was like a 1946 computer with a brand-new CPU jammed into it. If the medicine's effect vanished completely, the whole system would overload.

So I had to throttle the brain's performance before that happened. Otherwise... I would start remembering those terrible things again.

"Hnn... hnn..."

As my senses stretched their range, simply holding on to reason was becoming a struggle. When my attempt to forcibly control the expansion failed, my head began to hurt like it was splitting open.

I could feel beyond the walls. The rebar embedded inside the concrete. The tangle of electrical wiring. The water flowing through the pipes.

...Fuck. At this rate even the bad memories were going to surface.

Instinctively I knew that letting my perception expand any further was dangerous. Cutting the sky twice had left my body's performance critically degraded.

In times like this, ordinary medicine was useless.

Only the pure extract of madman's grass—classified as a narcotic—could suppress the brain. Madman's grass flooded the user with overwhelming pleasure and then turned them into an idiot; it was pure poison.

"Hey, this is starting to get dangerous, you know?"

"...Haa. Fine."

In the end, unable to watch the girl in front of him continue to fall apart, Mikhail took out the syringe. I gave a faint smile and rolled up my sleeve.

An elbow mottled with blue bruises was exposed.

The syringe filled with ominously colored liquid pierced the soft skin.

"Nngh..."

A thin whimper slipped out of me before I could stop it.

I could never get used to the sensation of something sharp stabbing into my body. Or to the filthy pleasure that followed right ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠after.

"I told you over and over not to push yourself. If you pull a stunt like this one more time, your body won't hold out."

"What was I supposed to... nngh... do? The ones who dropped me alone in front of hundreds of thousands of monsters were... hah... you people in the military."

"...I'm sorry. I couldn't stop the World Government by myself."

As the drug began to circulate, my body turned strange. A hot flush spread through my lower abdomen and heated, feverish breaths started escaping without my permission.

My razor-sharp mind sank into a soft, fluffy sea of pleasure. The hard cot suddenly felt as soft as down, and the scratchy blanket turned as smooth as microfiber against my skin.

"Ahh..."

Strength left my lips and my pronunciation blurred. I tried to say something with those mashed-up sounds, but I couldn't form a single coherent sentence.

So I gave up on answering and simply listened to Mikhail.

"First, as Commander of the World Government's Far East Army, allow me to express my gratitude. Serena Eustania, thanks to you the Siberia Gate has entered a dormant state. Because of that, the Siberia War has ended in humanity's victory."

"Tha's... goo'..."

"As compensation, the former Russian, now World Government Far Eastern Administration, has decided to award you the First-Class Grand Order of National Defense along with full immunity privileges."

I nodded lightly. I had expected at least that much.

I had succeeded in sealing the Siberia Gate that had brought Russia to ruin. It was only a temporary measure, but from the government's perspective they probably wanted to prostrate themselves and kowtow in gratitude.

The immunity privileges were simply an extension of that.

In any case the World Government could never actually detain me. Locking up a walking strategic nuclear weapon capable of cutting the sky would only make the soldiers on the front lines pay the price.

"And finally, directives have come down from the World Government."

"...?"

At the words "World Government directives," a tiny question mark floated up in my head. Guidelines issued by the massive government that had unified the entire planet... that made me uneasy.

"It's long if I go into detail, but most of it is formal boilerplate, so to put it simply..."

Mikhail paused for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.

"Due to health reasons, they have decided to discharge Sword Saint Serena Eustania from the Far East Army."

"That means...?"

"Yes. You are a civilian now. It means you no longer have to get tangled up in the fights of adults."