The Battle of Paniotipa (2)

A shrieking roar split the heavens.

A meteor came screaming down through the atmosphere, tearing the sky open as it fell. The instant I saw it, I knew exactly who had dropped the damn thing.

"Aman, you son of a bitch!"

The one who'd summoned that meteor was none other than Montblanc's Fairy — Aman, an 8-Star Fire Dragon at Level 149. He had just unleashed his ultimate.

When does the operation start?

I'll fire a signal flare you can't possibly miss. Start when you see it.

That was what Aman had told me before we split up, wearing a smirk that said I was in for a show. I'd wondered what kind of signal he meant. Now I knew.

"Everybody get down!"

I shouted it at the party, but the words were worthless. The moment that meteor hit, this entire stretch of land would be reduced to ash. Even if we ran as hard as we could, there was no getting outside the blast radius.

You've gotta be fucking kidding me. This is how I die?

I wouldn't, of course. Even if I did, Molt would bring me right back. But Kanisia? Abraham? My Fairies?

My Fairies could be summoned again if they died — in theory. The odds were miserable. Out of a countless sea of Fairies, how was I supposed to pull Aquaril, Oralisa, and Sonic specifically? And Aquaril and Oralisa hadn't even been mine to begin with. I had no guarantee I could call them back at all.

Then—!

I'd have to use my own body as a shield and take the impact for the rest of them. Except that was impossible too.

I can't cover all of them.

I wasn't built like Abraham. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't save everyone.

"God-fucking-dammit!"

I ran every angle I could think of. The chance of surviving that meteor was zero. A helpless, choking uselessness settled over me — the knowledge that I couldn't protect a single one of them.

The roar grew louder. The meteor was close enough now that I could make out its shape with the naked eye.

"No!"

"Alan!"

"Master!"

I squeezed my eyes shut against what was coming — against the image ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the people I loved burning alive.

The impact hit like the world cracking open.

"...Huh?"

The pain never came. Neither did the heat. A violent wind slammed into me hard enough that I nearly went over backward, but I locked my legs and held my ground.

"What the—?!"

I opened my eyes carefully, and what I saw stopped my breath cold.

A wide-area barrier had unfurled over the entire Paniotipa Granary. It had stopped a meteor thrown by an 8-Star Fire Dragon at Level 160. The shield was cracked, spiderwebbed with fractures — but it had held. I was alive. So was everyone else.

"W-we're alive..."

"....."

"Eek! Master! Oralisa thought she was gonna die!"

"Hah... I wish I could become as strong as I used to be. An attack like this wouldn't have meant a thing."

"Is everyone unharmed?"

Relief broke over the party in a shared, shaky breath. Aquaril's face had gone a little tight. Sonic was already aching for the power she'd once held.

If this were the Sonic from my past life...

The Sonic I had known before carried a Mythic-grade class called Night Specter, and a Mythic-grade skill to match: Darkness Prison. It summoned a cell of absolute durability — something you could drop on an enemy to pull them out of a fight entirely, or wrap around yourself and your allies to shrug off whatever the other side threw at you.

Even Aman's 8-Star, Level 160 ultimate wouldn't have made me flinch like a coward, wouldn't have left me drowning in that helpless dread, if Sonic had still possessed the power she'd once wielded.

"Whew... thank god everyone's okay."

Kanisia, the party's second-in-command, finished her headcount and came to my side.

"Alan, what do we do now?"

"What do you think? We get behind those trees. Right now."

"Hide behind the trees?"

"Look up."

"Look up where... ugh?!"

She followed my pointing hand, tipped her head back — and went white.

The sky was screaming again. And again. And again.

Meteors were still coming down. One shockwave had already nearly knocked us off our feet. If the rest of that barrage landed, we'd be flung through the air like scraps of paper. Cover was the only way to avoid that particular humiliation.

"Get behind the trees! Now!"

"Okay!"

"Yes, Master!"

We scrambled behind the nearest trunks just as the falling meteors slammed into the barrier still wrapped around the Paniotipa Granary.

Impact after impact. The collisions came so fast and so loud I thought my eardrums would burst. A wind that rivaled a storm tore across the fields, and the thinner trees snapped like toothpicks.

A final, ringing crash — and the wide-area barrier that had sheathed the granary shattered. The moment it broke, the meteors stopped.

"Those crazy bastards. If that was the plan, they could've said so beforehand."

Aman had opened the operation with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his ultimate for one reason: to crack that barrier. Either a healer-class Fairy on his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠level had thrown up a shield large enough to swallow the entire granary, or a wide-area barrier enchantment had been installed here from the start.

"Fuck. Are they even on our side?"

We were supposed to be allies, and Montblanc's Fairies hadn't bothered to mention any of this. The irritation sat hot in my chest.

Hold on. Couldn't they have just handled this themselves?

Meteor was a wide-area ultimate. The destruction it packed came with a matching mana cost — one cast ate through a fortune of it. But Aman had a Special-grade trait called Half-Price Sale, a broken ability that refunded half the mana any skill consumed.

He hadn't emptied his reserves. The enemy's barrier was gone. All he had to do was keep dropping meteors until the tank ran dry, and the Paniotipa Granary would burn without me or any of the other Masters lifting a finger.

What is this? Something about this whole thing smells wrong.

There was a rotten edge to this operation. It could have been nothing — I was guessing, and I had no idea what Montblanc's Fairies were actually thinking. Maybe they really did just want to torch the granary for her. Maybe they had another objective entirely. Maybe those back-to-back meteors had burned through Aman's mana after all. The possibilities stacked up without end.

But my gut was telling me this mission didn't stop at setting fire to the largest granary in the East.

"...Tsk. Forget it. We move first and figure it out later."

"Huh? Alan, what did you say?"

"Let's move. We torch the place and we get out."

If you wanted to turn an incident into profit, you needed the power and the means to match. I was still too small to squeeze anything extra out of an arson job like this.

Together with the party, I started toward the granary.

At the same moment, three men stood on a hill that looked down over the whole of the Paniotipa Granary. Each of them wore a mask painted with a different expression.

"Hah... the barrier's finally down."

"Well done, Aman."

"Let's go, Zoldik."

The man with the staff was Aman — the peerless mage who had just rained meteors on the granary. The two behind him were Zoldik and Falcones.

"You two go on ahead and suffer a bit~ I'll rest a minute and catch up soon~"

Aman waved them off in a lazy drawl as Zoldik and Falcones dropped from the hill and sprinted toward the fields. His role in the operation was simple: shatter the granary's wide-area barrier, then support the other two.

The barrier itself was a product of high-order magical theory, and it could tell friend from foe. Authorized personnel passed through it as if it weren't there. Anyone else hit a wall. Burning the granary had been impossible until that shield came down.

"I shall go first."

"I leave it to you, Falcones."

Zoldik and Falcones tore down the steep face of the hill at a dead run. Falcones drew his sword, launched himself into the air like a bird of prey, and landed inside the granary.

Zoldik, by contrast, bled off his speed and invoked a stealth skill.

Darkness folded around him, and he was gone. Cloaked by the skill, Zoldik cut sideways, peeling off on a path that had nothing to do with Falcones.

Zoldik had received a private order from Montblanc, and he had broken from Falcones to see it done. Falcones would run wild up front and pull every eye in the field. In the gap that left behind, Zoldik would carry out her command.

He vanished into the golden wheat.

"Who among you will receive my blade?!"

"Gah—!"

Falcones had entered the granary a step ahead of Zoldik, and he was already harvesting lives the way a farmer reaps wheat. Every swing of his sword dropped five or six of the Blood King's soldiers.

"You bastard!"

A woman came flying at him. Amanda — a Fairy of the Blood King, and a Heavy Swordsman of Rare grade, a class a step above a common swordsman.

"Die!"

She brought a greatsword larger than her own body down on Falcones. Her Strength had to be considerable; she handled the massive blade as if it weighed nothing.

"Too slow."

A thin smile curved behind the grinning face painted on Falcones' mask. His sword moved.

"Ghk— i-impossible..."

His blade sheared Amanda's greatsword in half and never slowed, carving straight through her neck. Her head came off. Her body dissolved into light and was gone.

"L-Lady Amanda has fallen!"

"R-run!"

Amanda had charged in full of fire and died without lasting a single exchange against the masked swordsman. The soldiers' morale collapsed on the spot. The fear of death settled over the field, and they broke.

"Turning your back on the enemy! A disgrace to any swordsman!"

"Graaaah!"

"Aaaagh!"

"I'm not a swordsman, I'm a soldier— ghk!"

Falcones sent a skill screaming after the ones who fled.

He sprayed the cutting light in every direction, killing as he went, making as much noise as he could. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠He wanted every eye on him.

"Stop right there!"

"You piece of shit!"

People came running to put an end to Falcones' rampage — the Blood King's subordinate Masters and their Fairies, nearly thirty of them. Any one of them was far weaker than he was. There were, however, a great many of them.

"Saves me the trouble of hunting you down. Come at me, brats!"

"Uwaaaaah!"

Falcones turned his sword on them and swung.