Chapter 247: People Come Before Words
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 247: People Come Before Words
The angel's explosion was a sacrifice. A light of purification that drives out all that is wicked. The exploding light gnawed at Tyr's darkness, launching a final strike against the vampire's shadows.
In that instant, the Regressor intervened. She hastily brandished Chun-aeng, carving a circle around the light just before it could detonate.
Skyblade Art, Heavenly Mirror.
The torrent of light that should have burst in all directions was blocked by something and deflected. Ricocheting within the space the Regressor had carved out, the light found the one remaining opening and surged upward. The pillar of light returned futilely to the sky from whence it came, unable to encroach on anything else.
The light flickered like an afterimage. Tyr swallowed it with her darkness, then scowled as if she had eaten something foul.
[Even its actions. A perfect copy of an angel. Is this Military State protected by angels?]
"Not an angel. To be precise, it's something the Military State created in imitation of one."
The Regressor answered as she sheathed Chun-aeng.
[Created in imitation of an angel? Is such a thing possible?]
"As you know, angels are transcendent beings summoned by the priests of the Sanctum through sacrifice. But the Military State's angels are a little different."
In a previous timeline, the Regressor had faced all of the Military State's Six Generals. The most troublesome among them was the Envoy, an Arcane in its own right. Having been annihilated along with the resistance for lack of a countermeasure, she had gone to the Sanctum to uncover the secret.
The Sanctum, which had preserved and observed all manner of Arcane for two thousand years, provided an answer to her question.
"They suppressed all other faiths to an extreme degree and made their soldiers into followers of the State. Then, they forged these beings from the singular will for national defense and protection. You could call them artificial spirits, or perhaps artificial guardian angels."
[Artificial guardian angels.]
"Yes. They even took the concept of an angel, broke down its principles one by one, and artificially recreated it. Of course, being guardian angels, their range of activity is limited. They can only block conceptual invaders. That's why this is the first time it's appeared."
Until now, the battles involving the Military State had taken place on the Meta Conveyor Belt or the lands beyond it. The State itself was not under attack. Therefore, the conditions for Eimeder's deployment were not met.
But now, as we cut through the heart of the Inner Circle, Eimeder had descended as a guardian angel to protect the Military State. And to protect the Warforger, one of the Six Generals.
"The Envoy, Eimeder, is the collective name for these angels. Or perhaps it's the name of the original being they were based on. I've never seen its true form, so I don't know for sure, but if we attack the command center, we'll find out one way or another."
[Are they unrelated to the Sanctum?]
"I can't be 100% certain, but I doubt the Sanctum is involved. If they were, the Military State wouldn't be taxing the Church of the Sky God."
[I see.]
Convinced, Tyr gazed at the spot where the angel had vanished and muttered.
[I have mixed feelings. The fact that the angels the Sanctum boasts of are actually worthless things that can be copied at will is quite delightful. But having one of them run rampant before my very eyes is irritating.]
"Well, with me and my Chun-aeng and you with your darkness, we can defeat them easily. No need to worry too much."
[Still, they will continue to appear. That is the nature of angels.]
Tyr was a legendary being who had waged war against the Sanctum for centuries. However, the battles between the Sanctum and the vampires had always ended in a stalemate, as their respective strengths and weaknesses were too pronounced.
To vampires, who had to advance as far as possible at night, the angels that would hinder their rearguard before self-destructing in a flash of sacrificial light were beings so troublesome they inspired a terror beyond mere hatred.
[What's more, this one is slightly more powerful and annoying than the angels I've seen before. It could rival even the archangels summoned by a Saintess.]
"Is it that strong? I've never fought an angel, so I wouldn't know."
[You don't know of angels? Well, Shei, you may look like you've been through hell and back, but you are still young. It's possible you wouldn't... Wait.]
In the middle of their conversation, Tyr sensed something and spun around. Her red eyes pierced the darkness, taking in the events unfolding on the other side.
[Hm?]
Right after Historia was unhorsed, the princess, still atop the white steed, was left exposed. But she felt no particular sense of danger despite being alone.
The ability to avoid hostility. A power that, depending on the situation, was nigh-invincibility. She was never in danger.
Unless, of course, she was caught in a natural disaster like a landslide or a runaway carriage.
The princess was safe from humanity's greatest enemy: the hostility of other humans.
Perhaps that was why. Even as the battle raged, the princess had remained in a far too complacent position.
Neeeeigh!
Selphy reared up as if struck by something. It was a dangerous movement, enough to make the princess on its back sway. The princess thought Selphy had been startled by the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka's darkness and tried to soothe it.
But the moment Selphy's hind legs buckled and her eye level dropped sharply, the princess instinctively felt that something was wrong.
The princess was violently pulled back to reality. She couldn't process the shock. A physical impact, compounded by a mental one, shook her to the core.
Selphy's warm, soft body was like a cushion. Her legs, pinned beneath the white horse, wouldn't move. Hot blood flowed in the darkness. The white mane was stained a deep red.
She couldn't make sense of the sudden turn of events. Yet, her reason calmly provided an answer that explained the situation.
'Ah, Selphy is dead.'
The princess registered the situation a beat too late. Someone had attacked, and Selphy had been killed before it could even cry out. It was still alive, but its life was a thread about to snap.
Beasts are generally stronger than humans. But that only holds true when their opponent is an ordinary human.
"Princess Grandiomor, is it? I have no personal feelings for you. But I must ask you to die."
Her opponent was no ordinary human.
One of the Six Generals, Warforger Maximilien. He had only pretended to flee, using the moment the darkness swallowed his surroundings to circle back.
Finding herself face-to-face with one of the Six Generals, the princess asked dumbly.
"Yes, huh?"
"The Dog King seems to be confused, to be distracted by a mere princess of a fallen kingdom. Then again, you are of the royal bloodline. The bloodline of the five traitors who slaughtered the King of Humans and stole his power, are you not?"
"Yes, yes."
"A symbol that the King of Humans is not needed. The arrogance to believe you can represent humanity even without a king. The stubborn pride that your bloodline will remain great forever. Only when all of you who carry that burden disappear... will the King of Humans truly return."
Maximilien explained this quickly to the princess, then nodded to himself.
"You understand, don't you? As expected of one so clever. You are worthy of being a descendant of monarchs, at least."
The princess did not understand the situation at all. Pinned beneath Selphy's body, she could only answer the General's questions reflexively.
Maximilien stated conclusively, like an administrator finishing a report.
"Then I shall kill you."
Maximilien thrust a sword with a rotating saw blade at her. The force that could slice through steel approached, ready to dig into the princess's soft skin and explore what lay beneath. Only with death before her very eyes did the princess finally realize her predicament.
'Oh, am I... going to die?'
The princess, with her ability to avoid hostility, had always grown up surrounded by goodwill. One might say her head was in the clouds, but Yerien Grandiomor was the one person in the world who could cultivate the most beautiful flower garden in her mind and still be safe.
An innate composure, a benevolence born from never being hurt. With such a seemingly insignificant ability, the Grandiomor royal family had survived the longest.
But the Warforger, who entrusted a part of his thoughts to his gears... was a man who could kill without a shred of hostility.
Neeeigh....
The dying horse swung its foreleg in a final, desperate act. A pitiful display of loyalty. Thwack. Flesh was torn away, and the severed foreleg flew through the air, shredded by the saw blade. The blood-soaked blade now approached the princess's head.
There is no beautiful death that leaves the corpse intact. A death where a blade pierces the chest or cleanly severs the neck to cause blood loss was a luxury.
The princess was going to die. The rampaging saw blade would crush her head, spilling all the fluids within. She would die a desecrated death.
It was then.
Crack.
Maximilien's arm was bent outward.
At the last possible moment, Shiati's black magic activated, and his arm twisted again at a bizarre angle. The saw blade was wrenched away.
"This, damn it. Noise."
Maximilien ground his teeth, his voice clipped and mechanical. He snapped his gaze over. There was Shiati's left hand, now blackened up to the middle finger.
Shiati groaned from the backlash of her injury but slowly raised her prosthetic right hand to grasp her remaining fingers. Only her thumb and index finger were left, but her expression was still full of defiance.
"...Don't move, General. I still have two left."
"Mere noise. To think you could interfere with me twice and expect to survive."
"I'm not afraid of death. In fact, I'd welcome it if you killed me. Why don't you try?"
Maximilien scoffed and reset his bent arm. Just like before, his arm was not structured in a way that bending it caused any problems. He raised the saw blade with his perfectly fine arm.
Shiati panted, glaring at him.
'His arm bends like that, and he's completely fine. At this point, I don't even think of it as cowardly or unfair. He's just... a monster.'
But Shiati still had one last resort. The final contract, renewed when all other sacrifices were spent.
The final curse that, in exchange for her own life, would snap her target's neck, forcing the same mortality upon them. Shiati faced Maximilien, prepared to use it if she had to.
"Do you think you're the only one who knows black magic? How arrogant. You possess neither the power nor the right, yet you refuse to acknowledge your own insignificance. That attitude of yours... is sickening."
"Glad you know. I was about to explain it to you."
"Yes. Do you really think snapping my neck with your black magic will kill me?"
Shiati flinched, her final curse seen through. As if he had expected it, Maximilien let out a contemptuous sneer.
"How absurd."
Maximilien stood still and turned a gear somewhere. Click, click, click. The sound of a different mechanism engaging was heard.
Maximilien's neck bent to an angle it should never have been able to reach.
Surely, a normal human would die just from their neck reaching that position. The neck is a vital point, the conduit connecting the head to the rest of the body.
But for Maximilien, it was not a vital point.
"Insignificant. The belief that death is to be feared, that it has value. The death of an insignificant being is, by definition, insignificant. Yet you act as if you can stand up to me with a single piece of secondhand knowledge... It's truly... preposterous."
She could snap his neck with black magic. But he would not die. Maximilien, with his modified body, would not meet death in a conventional way.
As fear and helplessness washed over Shiati, Maximilien slowly returned his neck to its original position.
"Go on, then. Try to achieve your goal... with that pathetic power of yours."
Maximilien took a step toward the princess and added curtly.
"Though it is impossible."
Powerless. The single blade Shiati had spent her entire life honing was utterly powerless before the monster that was a Six General, a being beyond all standards.
But feeling despair didn't mean she could stop. Live or die, she had to move, fueled by spite.
Otherwise, the princess would die...
And there would be no meaning to Shiati having survived this long.
Shiati gripped her left index finger, her body tense as she watched Maximilien's every move.
Shiati couldn't break her finger before Maximilien moved. Now that she knew she couldn't actually harm him, her black magic was nothing more than a way to interfere with his actions. If she used it preemptively, he would simply reset his arm with a laugh and kill the princess.
Therefore, to protect the princess, Shiati had to aim for the moment right after Maximilien made his move.
'...So that's what she's thinking. The thoughts of insignificant beings are so easy to read. That's why they're so boring, so monotonous.'
Maximilien didn't move. Instead, his weapon moved as if it were alive.
Clank. A gear in the corner moved. The structure connecting his left arm and the saw blade slid apart, extending its length.
A complex harmony that only Maximilien could understand occurred, and the mechanism moved according to its own formula. To an outside observer, the saw blade simply extended without any warning.
"Yerien!"
Shiati quickly grabbed her index finger, but the black magic didn't activate.
Black magic is the act of forcing the same action upon a similar object. By breaking a finger, she could break something else that was long, thin, and had joints.
In other words, that was all she could break.
Maximilien's saw blade did not resemble a finger. Its complex structure was neither long nor thin, and it wasn't clear what constituted a joint. Thus, Shiati's black magic was rendered useless.
But it was not meaningless.
Because Shiati had bought enough time for me to arrive.
"Well, not that there's much I can do now that I'm here."
Same as Shiati, I guess. Just blocking a single blow.
Lamenting my own powerlessness once again, I jammed my skewer into the joint of his saw blade. A discordant noise entered the precisely interlocking gears.
Krrrrk. The sudden intrusion of a foreign object brought the gears to a halt.
"Hm? To approach without a presence. The Progenitor... no. Is it you?"
"Yes. It's me."
Tyr's darkness filled the area and was gradually expanding. Hiding within it, I had managed to cause a slight malfunction in Maximilien's saw blade with a surprise attack.
Thanks to that, the princess's life was spared once more. Phew, what a super save.
"Pardon the intrusion. I'll be on my way."
Having landed the blow, I pulled out the skewer without a moment's hesitation and threw myself backward.
My opponent was one of the Six Generals, a monster who could tear me apart with pure strength even without his gears. Any hesitation would get me ripped to shreds.
As I beat a hasty retreat, Maximilien's voice followed me.
"You cloaked yourself in darkness and hid your presence! Tucked yourself right into the Progenitor's aura! You, you're incredibly skilled!"
"Thank you for the compliment. Now, if you'll excuse me."
"Someone like you wouldn't have just touched it! Let's see, what did you do!"
Maximilien swung his saw blade wide. It instantly doubled in length, aiming to tear my back to ribbons.
Its speed was extraordinary. I was running at full tilt, yet the blade was already right behind me. What was more surprising was that Maximilien hadn't moved an inch from his spot.
Phew, thank goodness.
He used his gears.
"Oh dear, you found me out."
But just as it was about to extend even further, the saw blade gave a loud clunk, and its gears spun uselessly. Maximilien smiled.
Having succeeded in getting some distance away, I opened my clenched fist. Clatter, clatter. The gears I had just removed rained down.
"You seem to be dropping things. You should be more careful in the future. Every little piece of trash like this has a negative impact on the environment, you know."
The weakness of gears. If one comes out, it can always be replaced, but until it is, it can't function properly.
If they don't mesh, they can't transmit power. No matter how strong it is, if it's just spinning freely, it's nothing more than a poorly performing fan. I aimed for that weakness and attempted to pickpocket his gears, and I succeeded.
Of course, there was the prerequisite of understanding the structure to pickpocket the valuable gears.
"To grasp the structure of my gears in that brief moment! How did you know?"
I knew through mind-reading. Maximilien's head contained the blueprints for his gears, so I just picked out the truly important ones and removed them.
As always, I gave a vague excuse.
"The automaton carriages. Their structure collapses when you strike them upward from below. I just applied what I learned from that to your weapon. Pushing out from the inside."
The automaton carriages maintain their form through the interlocking of gears, and because of that structure, they are weak to impacts from below.
The same was true for Maximilien's weapon.
It was strong against external impacts, but Maximilien's gears were designed from the ground up for easy assembly and disassembly. Applying force from the inside out would make them pop out easily.
I figured out that structure, bent the tip of my skewer, and used it to pull the gears out. Thanks to that, I'm still alive and talking even after attacking one of the Six Generals.
Well, I probably won't get a second chance, but hey, I'll take it.
"You mean to say you understood that in an instant! Incredible! Truly, you're another kind of genius!"
Maximilien praised me enthusiastically, spittle flying. It was a completely different attitude from when Shiati had interfered.
"You're not angry?"
"Why would I be angry? The intuition to grasp it, the drive to immediately realize what you've understood, and the decisiveness to act without doubting you'd succeed! You are definitely qualified! No, even if you don't have the qualifications to be the King of Humans! You are qualified to be my successor!"
Despite being thwarted, Maximilien laughed heartily, looking even more satisfied. He sure laughs easily.
I rolled the dropped gears back to his feet. Upon reaching him, the gears crawled up his body on their own and disappeared under his cloak.
At the same time, another pillar of light erupted. Tyr and the Regressor had finished off the angel.
Now I was safe. I regained my composure and spoke calmly.
"They say clingy people are unattractive. Shouldn't we be having a beautiful farewell about now? This darkness is as good as being inside Tyr's body. If you stay here, you'll be in danger too, you know?"
"Indeed, that is so."
Maximilien readily agreed and stepped back. Because of the darkness filling the area, his form became blurry after only a few steps.
"I believe I still have time to spare, but I shall withdraw as a sign of respect to you. For you, who may be the King of Humans."
"Geez. You don't even pay taxes, yet you're hyping up this 'king' so much. I have no idea who it is, but if the King of Humans is here, shouldn't you be a little more polite?"
"Hahaha! They are still just a candidate! Once it's confirmed to be one person, I will show them all the respect I have left!"
His booming laughter soon faded beyond the darkness. After waiting until I could no longer hear his thoughts, I let the strength drain from my body and muttered.
"This place is tough."