The Old Soldier's War
There was no telling how much time had passed.
Simon's head throbbed, and the only thing he could register was some monotonous sound repeating over and over. Then—
"...Ugh."
His eyes opened.
When he came to, he found himself sprawled on the floor of a room. It was the same white room Simon had first passed through from the Shailey family's office.
Then what was that room full of flowers? Was it a dream?
Simon shook his head and pushed himself upright.
Oh.
It hadn't been a dream.
Right in front of him was the 'unidentified skeleton' he had picked up in that flower-filled room—dressed in white vestments, a banner still clutched in its hand, exactly as he'd found it.
The state of preservation was immaculate. The surface of the bones was white and clean, showing the telltale signs Aaron had taught him to look for in the remains of holy power users. Though the material's origins were dubious, there was no time to think about that now. Simon tucked it into his subspace and rose to his feet.
Weeeee—
Through the sealed wall, he could feel the muffled drone of an alarm. Simon made for the exit the same way he'd entered.
Weeeeeeeeeee—!
The alarm was far louder now.
Something had happened—and it looked like it had really, truly gone wrong.
-Simon! Where are you? Simon!
-What the hell is that kid doing?
Amid the blaring sirens, he could hear students shouting for him. His heart sank like a stone.
How long was I in there?
He gathered his wits and bolted out of the office. He had no idea where to go, but for now he ran in the direction the voices had come from. He sprinted recklessly down the corridor and was swinging around a pillar when—
"Wha—!"
He ran straight into Loraine.
Both of them slammed on the brakes at full speed, but couldn't stop completely, and ended up stumbling into each other's arms in the middle of the hallway.
"Simon!"
Her expression, frozen stiff as ice, melted like spring snow the moment she saw him, relief flooding her face.
"You were here! Thank goodness."
She wrapped her arms around him in a hug. Simon flinched, too flustered to know what to do, but she pulled back first and fixed him with a hard look.
"What were you doing? I was worried sick."
"S-sorry. It's just..."
"We move. Now!"
Loraine immediately kicked off with Jet-Black and started running, Simon dashing along beside her.
"What on earth is going on?"
"An emergency alert just came in from outside."
Loraine swept her bangs out of her eyes.
"The Holy Federation seems to have caught on that we're in this museum."
"!"
"Professor Grelion has ordered a full retreat. We have to get out before the Federation's forces arrive."
BOOM! KRAK! KRAK!
But it wouldn't be so easy to slip away.
Across the museum, pale white monsters were emerging into view. They had faces packed with dense, tightly-clustered features and long, sinuous arms—Holy Creatures, a type of summon used by the priests.
So the museum's security system has activated.
It seemed the alarm triggered these things to come swarming out.
"How's the evacuation going?"
As Simon asked, he tilted his head back. A clawed Creature's arm passed a paper's width from his cheek—and Simon dove in after it, driving his palm into its torso.
BOOOOOM!
The Creature went flying, and Simon snapped out a shockwave with his index and middle fingers pressed together, like flicking a knuckle-rap.
WHAM!
WHAM!
He hammered the staggering Creature with consecutive Gale Bursts, slamming it into the wall, then hurled a freshly assembled Bone Sphere straight through its chest.
Crunch!
Loraine drove her fist down and crushed one of her own Creatures, then answered.
"About eighty percent. The students who got out first were loaded onto Professor Grelion's chimeras and sent off. Two chimeras have already departed, and there's only one left. We're on defense detail, so we ride out on the last one."
The evacuation wasn't at one hundred percent.
Which meant—
"There are still kids who haven't made it out of the museum besides me?"
"Yeah. About five."
Loraine pointed toward the corridor.
"I'll sweep the third floor. Simon, you take the second and check if anyone's there."
"Got it!"
"Students! Hurry, please!"
In the distance, teaching assistants were running around, herding students along.
"Let go! Let go of me! I haven't gotten my materials yet!"
"The Death Knight isn't the priority! Your life is!"
Simon watched a student being dragged away by the assistants with rueful eyes. But only for a moment—then he steeled himself and began searching the second floor.
I can't leave a single person behind. We save everyone. No exceptions.
Outside the museum.
Grelion stood with his arms crossed and his legs planted wide, staring fixedly straight ahead.
"Something's coming."
He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky.
GOOOOOOOO!
A massive cross of light hung in the clear blue sky—and at its center, an eye had opened, slowly sweeping its gaze across the surroundings.
"Professor!"
An assistant came sprinting toward Grelion.
"The second chimera just crossed the border!"
"How many are left?"
"Excluding the defense team, five students still haven't evacuated!"
Grelion exploded in fury.
"The evacuation order went out ages ago! What the hell are those students still doing inside the museum?!"
No one had ever seen the normally jovial Grelion rage like this. The startled assistant snapped to rigid attention.
"Th-they must have gotten greedy and gone in too deep... We'll find them quickly!"
Grelion let out a long breath.
"There's no time. Subdue them with curses if you have to—just bring them out!"
"Yes, sir!"
As he watched the assistant sprint into the museum, Grelion looked up at the sky again.
I deployed a high-tier barrier that makes detection impossible. So how did they sense us?
Someone—a priest—had apparently held back from the strike on the necromancer facility, watching from a distance, one step removed.
Who was it?
As Grelion was running through the candidates in his mind, his eyes narrowed into a predator's squint.
"Here it comes."
"Sir?"
The cloud-hazed sky was splitting open. A holy magic circle unfurled across the heavens, and a single shaft of radiance poured down like a spotlight.
"Ghk!"
"My eyes...!"
Grelion and the assistants shielded their eyes with their arms. Then came a rumble as the heavens shook, and something dropped into the very heart of the spotlight.
The ground shuddered, and the enormous shockwave of the impact whipped Grelion's clothes violently about. The two assistants behind him swallowed hard, their faces gone rigid.
"This is the worst."
A lament slipped from Grelion's lips.
Thud. Thud.
From the hazy pit of sand and dust, a glinting gleam of eyes. A hulking man was approaching with slow, deliberate steps.
"But still, just one man? I thought they'd at least send a platoon's worth of force."
"Who... who is he, sir?"
To the assistants' question, Grelion answered with his eyes closed.
"Late. Chief Inquisitor of the Holy Federation."
"!!"
No death sentence ever handed down could have sounded more hopeless than those words.
Grelion waved the trembling, terror-stricken assistants back and lowered his head. Lined up neatly on the ground before him were six briefcases. They looked like briefcases, but every last one was made of writhing lumps of flesh—insect wings fluttering across some surfaces, chitinous shells covering others.
"No choice left, then."
He grabbed the pitch-black case on the far right and lifted it up.
"Professor! That case—!"
"Stand back."
Click!
The moment he broke the seal and spread the case open, every organ of a living thing came boiling up out of it. The ceaselessly pulsing mass was enough to inspire pure revulsion in anyone who saw it, but Grelion pressed the case against his body without a moment's hesitation.
GRUUUURRRRKKK!
The case's bones and nerves punched through Grelion's skin and burrowed into his body. His eyes bulged wide, as if they might pop out at any second. The chimera's flesh draped over Grelion's frame and began to shift and transform.
His frame swelled outward, and in an instant he had become a monstrous giant standing over three meters tall.
Blade-wings at his back rasped against the ground with a metallic shriek, his six newly multiplied eyes glared in every direction, and his elongated, ropelike arms dragged along the earth.
Fwoooosh—
A twelve-species fusion chimera, soaring far beyond every regulation and limitation governing chimera research. Only a handful of people alive could create such a thing—and fewer still could fuse with it.
Spewing Jet-Black breath from his maw, the fully-chimerized Grelion stared straight ahead. In this form, every one of his five senses was screaming a red alert.
Thud. Thud.
The footsteps rang sharply in his ears. What followed was the unpleasant rasp of metal dragging across the ground.
"Well, if it isn't you."
The man bearing the winged cross emerged from the shadows stretching long behind him.
"It's been a long time since a Legend graced our border."
GRUUUUURRR—!
Grelion's voice rolled out from the chimera's maw.
[Late, you whelp. You've grown a great deal.]
"And in the meantime, you've gotten old."
Late took hold of his own neck and rolled it with a satisfied crack.
"What business does a dying old man—who ought to be off scrawling graffiti on walls—have coming all the way out here?"
Having offered that courteous greeting, Late lightly stamped his foot in place. His body vanished in a flash and reappeared behind Grelion's back.
[!]
Grelion raised an arm sheathed in thick exoskeleton, and Late swung the cross.
KRA-KAKAKAKAKOOM!
A single strike.
With just one blow, the chimera arm protected by layers upon layers of exoskeleton caved inward, spraying blood in every direction. Late smirked and kicked his cross free, and the chimera arm shattered completely, splitting apart.
An agonized roar tore from Grelion's throat.
"Professor!"
The assistants rushed forward, hastily arming themselves with their own chimeras—but—
[He is not someone you can fight! Fall back!]
Grelion bellowed. The assistants flinched to a halt, and Late chuckled, casting a sinister glance their way.
[Hup!]
Grelion could not simply stand by and watch. He hurled himself forward instantly.
KWAAAAAAAANG!
A catastrophic shockwave erupted, and the surrounding dirt and dust surged up like a hill. But the massive monster's arm, thrown with all his might, had been stopped—by the outstretched fingertips of Late's hand.
"Time is a cruel thing."
Late dropped the cross from his other hand to the ground. Then he lightly rolled his fist closed, slid forward, and hammered a blow into Grelion's abdomen.
CRUUUUUUUUMBLE!
Grelion literally burst apart. Chunks of flesh and throbbing organs scattered in every direction, and Grelion's true body, riding inside the chimera, tumbled across the ground.
Kghh!
Blood-foam burst from his mouth.
Blood poured from holes punched through his body in a dozen places, parts of him still mutated, not yet reverted to human form. Organs clung to him in clumps.
"I'll ask again. Why would a senile old man, already dying of age, bother coming all the way to the border?"
Late spoke as if the whole thing were utterly baffling.
"Have you lost your mind? Or did you decide you wanted to spend your final moments in regret, hanging dead from my cross? Especially since you and I are matched about as badly as matchups come."
Khack! Khack!
Coughing up blood, Grelion closed his hand around one of the fresh bio-cases lying on the ground.
There was no time to choose a better chimera. He slapped the case in hand against his body at once, and once more joints and bones spilled out, connecting to Grelion's frame as the mutation began.
PSHHHHAAAAK!
But Late didn't wait for him.
He wrenched the cross-blade out of the ground and swung it, carving a clean arc through the chimera's body in a fountain of blood. Grelion, caught inside it, spilled out of the chimera's back and rolled across the ground.
"Necromancers age even faster, I see."
Late murmured. Grelion spat blood-foam from his mouth and let out a dry, rattling laugh.
"...Fine. I admit it. My age of glory is over, just as you say. But—!"
GRUUUUURRRRRKKK!
GRUUURRK!
The collapsed, ruined flesh and bone frame began to move. At the same time, every bio-case scattered around the field broke its seal and spread open, the house-sized lumps of flesh inside them swelling and rising.
"!"
In an instant, a storm of bone and flesh raged up around them, engulfing Grelion and Late both.
"An old soldier has a war that only an old soldier can fight!"