Northern Fortress Defense (4)
"Wh—what is that?"
"Something's falling from the sky!!!"
"What did you say?!"
Julian, riding at the head of Serpina's vanguard, froze where he sat, staring up in pure bewilderment.
A boulder was falling.
A burning boulder.
A mass of stone so vast it might as well have been the divine punishment the priests always spoke of.
And that boulder—
—was slowly blotting out the sky above Julian's upturned face.
……!!!!
In that instant, Julian grasped just how deadly his situation had become. He shoved every stray thought from his mind and yanked hard on the reins in his hands.
His mount surged forward at a full gallop.
He had to get clear!
Command structure be damned—if he didn't run right now, he was going to die!
Death!
Even a general who had taken countless lives on the battlefield could not pretend death meant nothing to him. Had he fallen fighting bravely to the last in some hopeless stand, he might at least have consoled himself that it was a death with meaning.
But this?
Crushed to death by a boulder that simply dropped out of the sky?
His name would live on in history, all right—as the general flattened by a rock from heaven. Not the general who fought with valor to the bitter end against impossible odds. Not even the general who died in some unlucky accident while preparing to march. Just the general who got squashed by a boulder that fell out of nowhere!
"Absolutely not!!!!"
Julian screamed the words and spurred his horse for all he was worth, desperate to escape the blast radius.
Because their commander had, for a single critical moment, given in to raw terror, the entire chain of command collapsed into chaos. Had he only managed to shout something like Scatter! Run for your lives!, things might have gone differently.
But the water was already spilled.
And then—
"Aaaargh!!!"
"Somebody help me!!!!"
—the colossal meteor, utterly indifferent to the plight of Serpina's army, slammed down squarely into the densest concentration of soldiers and siege engines.
BOOOOOOM-------!!!
What came next was a roar that seemed ready to tear the earth itself apart—and, threading through that roar, the utterly wretched screams of Serpina's men.
The crackle of spreading fire rose with it, and then a fierce wall of smoke swallowed every line of sight……
Before long, a few scattered raindrops began to fall—and within moments a proper downpour was soaking the ground.
How much time passed, Julian could not have said.
Only when he felt the rain lashing hard against his forehead did he slowly lift his head.
"Kh…… khh."
The shockwave of the meteor's impact had thrown him from his horse and left him sprawled on his side. He wiped the blood running down his face as best he could and pushed himself up into a sitting position against the earth.
It was a thoroughly undignified state to be in—but the simple fact that he was still breathing carried enormous weight.
He felt pain. He could draw breath. A deafening ringing still hammered at his eardrums.
All of it proved a single truth.
I'm alive……!!
That realization alone let him manage a smile of relief, even as agony flooded every corner of his body.
Pain was fine. Pain could be endured, pushed through, waited out.
Death could not. Death ended everything. Everything he had lived for would simply… stop mattering.
But Julian could not hold on to that relief for long.
W-wait…… wh-what the hell happened?!
Only then did the full horror of the scene before him come into focus.
A massive boulder sitting dead in the middle of his own army's ranks. The crater gouged into the earth around it. ……The remains of the soldiers who had failed to get clear in time, crushed flat where they stood.
H-hiiik……!!
He had taken more heads on the battlefield than he could count. He knew better than anyone that if you did not kill, you and your comrades would die instead. He had believed he understood that on a battlefield like this, human lives—including his own, including the lives of men who had been breathing beside him moments earlier—were treated as cheaply as flies.
But this…
An unknown power. Something fundamental, something utterly beyond comprehension. Being crushed by a giant rock that simply fell out of the sky.
Before a terror so alien that no amount of skill or discipline could control it—before a fear that rewrote a man's very instincts—even a battle-hardened commander like Julian could do nothing but freeze in pure dread.
He was, after all, only a commander who happened to be good at fighting. He was no superhuman.
And then—
"……!!"
Sensing a subtle gaze upon him, Julian slowly turned his head and looked back.
The walls.
The fortress walls—not particularly high—came into view. His wild gallop had brought him closer than before.
And there, atop those walls—
—stood a white-haired man with one hand outstretched.
He was looking at the boulder.
The distance made his expression hard to read…… but at the very least, he did not look shaken. He was simply watching this place with a calm so complete it bordered on indifference, as if nothing surprising had happened at all.
Wh…… what the hell is he?!
If a boulder like that fell out of the sky, any ordinary person would be stunned. So how could that man remain so utterly composed?
As if he had known from the very beginning that this was exactly what would happen……?
Come to think of it—that man.
He had been up on the walls building some strange altar and performing the most bizarre actions. Beating a drum one moment, screaming at the top of his lungs the next. The image of that ritual was still vivid in Julian's mind.
At first he had simply assumed the man had lost his mind.
But now that something had occurred which could only happen if the man had not lost his mind…… Julian found he could no longer dismiss those actions so easily.
It can't be……?!
Magic……?
Was it magic?
Had that ritual been some form of sorcery?
Magic couldn't exist. Mages belonged only in legends. And even the magic described in those legends had never been this absurd.
But if it wasn't magic, how else was he supposed to explain what he had just witnessed with his own two eyes?
Did it make any sense for a boulder like that to simply drop out of a clear sky? Wasn't it far more plausible that whatever that man had done had called the thing down?
And then—
—the man on the wall slowly lowered his gaze and looked down at him.
Looked down at the place where Julian sat.
"Wh…… what……!"
Overwhelmed by the man's expression, Julian flailed his arms and scrambled backward without thinking.
Those cold, ash-gray eyes looked ready to swallow him whole.
And in that moment—
—the man frowned down at him with an expression of pure, open displeasure. As if to say, Why are you still alive?
"H-hiiik……!!"
Julian was certain now.
The one who had dropped that boulder from the sky was this man!
Whether it was magic or not no longer mattered. Once the result was clear, the process became irrelevant.
Which meant the true identity of the man who had done this was—
A…… a god……??
Only moments earlier he had been sneering at religion as weakness, dismissing the very idea of praying to something that did not exist. And now, staring into those cold eyes, he found himself thinking of a god that could not possibly be real.
Just then—
"General Julian!!!"
A soldier came riding hard from the rear and reined in beside him. Judging by his condition, he had been far enough back in the formation to escape the worst of the blast.
He dismounted at once and helped Julian up.
"Are you all right, General?!"
"I…… I……"
He wanted to stand.
But those cold eyes held him down as surely as if someone had forced him to his knees. His feet would not move.
This was fear.
A primal, fundamental fear of an unknown power.
Humans feared death because they could not even begin to imagine what lay beyond it. There was no one to ask—you could not raise the dead and put the question to them. That was why people turned to the power of religion, trying to master that terror.
The fear gripping him now was very nearly the same as the fear of death itself.
"S-save me……!"
"General Julian……?"
Only then did Julian fully register the soldier at his side again.
"R-ru…… run! The whole army! We have to retreat! A god…… a god has appeared……!! We have to run!!!"
"Sir? What on earth are you—!"
"Did you not hear me?! Hurry! We have to flee!"
The soldier was no less lost than anyone else—a boulder had just fallen out of the sky, after all. In a situation like this, the only thing left to do was obey the commander's orders.
"Yes, sir……!"
The soldier helped Julian onto the horse he had ridden in on. Julian hauled himself into the saddle, bit down hard on the pain wracking his body, and kicked the animal into a run.
He had to get away!
That single thought was the only force still driving his body.
And so Julian fled on horseback, racing to preserve his own life without so much as attempting to rally what remained of his shattered forces.
……Hard to make out from here.
There was a man among the enemy near the base of the walls, and I had considered getting a better look at his face. Even squinting, though, I couldn't see much.
I thought about going closer for a proper look, then abandoned the idea. My body simply had no strength left in it.
Still—just as I had expected—Serpina's army had begun a full retreat. They were abandoning even the siege engines they had dragged all this way and fleeing in a blind panic. Thoroughly terrified, by the look of it.
Well. A meteor had just dropped out of a clear sky. Being unafraid would have been the strange reaction.
"……Hah."
I was glad things had worked out—but the truth was, I had been terrified.
There had been no sign whatsoever that lightning was going to strike. The sky had churned a little, but no rain or wind had come. In this game, lightning—true thunderbolts—only ever fell when it was raining. The enemy had already reached the fortress, and still no rain. I had been thoroughly rattled.
When the siege engines rolled right up to our gates, I will admit I was a little frightened…… but even then, I was not truly anxious.
Hold the fortress had been the correct answer. Something was bound to happen.
Even so, I had never imagined a meteor would fall. In the ten thousand hours I had spent playing this game, I could count the times I had seen a meteor on one hand.
To witness one in the world I had been possessed into……
If I calculated the odds, just how vanishingly small a number would come back to greet me?
When the meteor first hit, I had worried for a moment that the shockwave might bring the entire fortress down with it. Fortunately, the damage seemed limited to whatever the game's internal settings allowed.
Looking at how the battle had unfolded, it was within the predictable range—but still, it was almost a relief to see this world following the game's rules so faithfully.
For reference: when a meteor strikes, roughly ninety percent of an army is wiped out on the spot, regardless of total numbers.
I let out a quiet breath.
Even though the outcome had matched my prediction in the end, there had been no controlling the tension. Now that it had finally drained away, my whole body felt leaden and limp.
And when I turned my head slightly, sensing a gaze—
—Irene was standing there, eyes gone completely white, frozen solid as she stared at me.
"Swen…… what in the world…… what…… what have you done……?"
Right.
From Irene's point of view, the sequence of events must have looked something like this: I built an altar, started spouting nonsense about "communing with the heavens," screamed at the sky while performing all manner of bizarre antics—and then, suddenly, a meteor fell.
I considered how best to explain it, then decided on the simplest answer available.
"……Fortunately, it seems I succeeded in drawing out a distortion in the heavens……"
Huh?
The words were not coming out properly.
My vision was dimming at the edges. I felt as though I might lose consciousness at any second.
Ah. Of course.
A low Martial stat meant low base stamina. Even knowing things would work out, I had spent the entire time performing a ridiculous ritual while staring death in the face. My body had been wound impossibly tight—and now that the tension was releasing all at once…… the overload had finally caught up with me.
"Swen!"
As I swayed and started to fall, Irene lunged forward and caught me.
Having her there was nothing short of a blessing. If I had hit the ground, I might well have hurt myself.
"Lady Irene…… just as I told you…… Lady Irene, you……"
I managed that much, mumbled a few more half-formed words—
—and then lost consciousness entirely.