Artist
Artist
A rebellion didn't require much.
First, numbers.
They could stage a revolt using only Northern Empire prisoners, but Aslan didn't rate their chances very high.
The enemy was the city guard—the ones who kept order here, men who had drifted to Olpasbet and become its wardens. They had seen their share of combat, and they carried White Iron arms. Under normal circumstances, rebelling prisoners wouldn't stand a chance.
That's why they needed numbers. They had to overwhelm them with sheer weight of bodies. No amount of preparation could match the guards' White Iron gear.
The man who did the most to gather those numbers was none other than Tiyamal.
His towering frame alone was persuasive; if that failed, a glance at Catherine, whom he brought along, usually sufficed. Catherine herself didn't seem to enjoy being paraded around, but when her mistress Maria gave the order, she showed up without a hint of displeasure.
Once the factions came together, the revolt launched with a surprise attack. Subdued guards were stripped of their weapons and locked away, swelling the number of prisoners now clad in White Iron.
The prisoners' objective was to capture the lord and force him to relinquish the city. The lord's aim was to escape the city or crush the prisoners outright; with the entire city guard backing the baron, neither option seemed particularly difficult.
Except for one variable.
The Masters.
Not just one—five of them.
With the Masters actively involved, a rebellion that should have been doomed rapidly became a city-wide emergency.
Faced with such a threat, what would the baron do first?
Maria had little trouble foreseeing it.
He would seize the woman who had appeared unannounced and requested an audience.
This time, that woman happened to be Maria.
Maria tilted her teacup with leisurely grace, listening as footsteps approached from afar. As she set the cup down with a soft sip, the door burst open.
"Maria!"
"Finished with your business already?"
"Is this your scheme? Do you covet my land so much?"
The baron leveled an axe at her as he shouted. Maria smiled sweetly.
"Scheme? I have no idea what you're talking about."
At her reply, the baron's face twisted, and he shifted the axe toward the man seated beside her. Toward the man who was introduced as Maria's husband, his face wrapped in bandages.
He had a trained build, but that was all. No weapon. No sign of the escort or guards she usually kept.
"Don't play dumb. I know everything. Where's your bodyguard?"
"Catherine? Probably still asleep. She loves her morning lie-ins."
The hybrid bodyguard. Having confirmed the most dangerous element in the current situation was absent, the baron smirked. The ring of White Iron arms being drawn behind him was unmistakable.
"...Ha, fine. I see you mean to stall me here so I can't escape. That won't work."
A jerk of his chin. The guards advanced, weapons bared, on Maria and the man beside her.
"Don't kill them. We might need hostages to get out."
"Aye!"
The distance narrowed. The man rose and stepped backward, but the guards sneered and kept their weapons fixed on him. Sword points and spear tips aimed at him. The moment the gap closed enough—he moved.
Crack!
A jaw split with a sharp crack. The guard crumpled. But no one saw what he'd done. Seeing his comrade fall, another guard didn't stop to think; he simply swung his sword, aiming for the throat. Even a graze would be fatal. A cut, even if shallow, could kill if it tore. He'd been told not to kill, but subduing without killing was impossible. That much was clear. The baron would surely understand. The guard swung for the neck, and his reasoning was sound.
Bang!
The only problem was his opponent.
A hand shot up toward the swinging blade and struck the flat of it. The sword rang once and slipped from his grasp. It hit the floor and stuck there. The guard's eyes flew wide just as the man's body shifted sideways.
Crunch!
Pain followed, then nothing. An elbow snapped into his jaw, and he collapsed. The remaining guards stared, eyes wide. The first guard had fallen to an invisible punch. The second had lost his sword before going down.
Caught off-guard by the sudden turn, the baron froze, then shouted.
"...What are you doing? Kill him!"
The guards rushed in at their lord's command, but what came next was inevitable. None of them could have hoped for victory, and so it proved.
A spear thrust forward. The bandaged man seized the blade, leaned aside, and the guard who held it pitched past him and crashed to the floor.
Crack!
A kick to the downed guard—his foot slipped between the helmet and collar, and the man went still. A sword swung high. He arched his back to evade, grabbed the guard by the nape, and drove a knee into his face. Crunch—helmet buckling as the guard dropped.
One by one, the guards crumpled, until only the baron and the bandaged man remained conscious besides Maria.
"Kh... Damn it!"
That was when the baron lunged.
Unable to face the bandaged man, he went for Maria to take her hostage. He flipped his axe mid-swing, aiming to club her with the flat of the blade. The instant he swung, the bandaged man intercepted. He caught the axe as it dropped toward her head and twisted. With words she didn't understand.
"My apologies. She is my betrothed, after all."
The movement was barely more than a few centimeters, but the baron's body wrenched. He tilted, then was slammed onto the floor. A technique the world called Compliance: Richard seized his wrist and twisted it behind his back until it threatened to break.
"Kh... aaaaagh!"
A pained groan escaped him as Maria took another sip of tea.
"Honestly, I don't know anything about this. I'm not the one who planned it."
The baron wanted to curse at her for spouting nonsense, but only a strangled groan came out.
"It's all the work of the Master of Combat, Aslan."
The Master of Combat, Aslan.
The baron flinched, and the woman smiled.
"You were right about one thing. Yes, my goal was to stall you so you couldn't escape. And it looks like I've succeeded."
Checkmate.
But the baron had no time to care about that. Even his pained screams had subsided. A voice was creeping into his skull. It wasn't a language the baron knew, yet he understood every word. A voice thick and viscous, as though it might boil up and overflow at any moment. What it offered was simple—and for a baron in dire straits, too tempting to refuse.
That was what rattled him. But soon his alarm faded. His eyes rolled back, and he yanked his arm—already twisted far enough that the joints had started to tear.
Richard shouted in alarm.
But by then it was too late.
"Gah, hold still! You'll lose your—"
Crunch-snap!
Ignoring Richard's warning, the arm tore free, and poison began to seep from all over his body. Richard snatched Maria and leaped back.
"...I offer myself."
The baron swelled.
*
Under normal conditions, a revolt rarely succeeded when the disparity in equipment was this severe.
Yet this time it was proving remarkably easy.
All because of people who made the impossible possible even when hopelessly outmatched in gear.
Fay, moving with inhuman stealth and launching perfect ambushes with sublime swordsmanship and high-level martial arts.
Angie, whose overwhelming strength and Ithar's fundamental combat techniques lent her unrivaled crowd-control regardless of how many foes there were.
Tiyamal, who from a single watchtower could command a line of fire over the entire city.
And Rumel, who with nothing but a long pole could hold a narrow stairwell against a hundred men.
They were here.
When a handful of peerless heroes—each the match of a hundred soldiers—gathered in one place, a rebellion became almost trivial. They'd confirmed the one real variable—the Artist—was absent, so nothing should go wrong. Aslan and Ereta were standing by in case the Artist had left a priest behind, meaning there was no opening to exploit.
From the high guard post they'd taken to head off that scenario, Aslan stole a glance at Ereta as the wind whipped past. Through her blowing white hair, Ereta's expression was uneasy, as if dreading something.
Aslan knew what she was worried about. Amid all this chaos, she was bracing for the possibility that her mother had died helplessly. It was a look that suited her—she'd volunteered to wait with Aslan so she could pry information from anyone who might know where the Fire-weaving Spider was.
A face beyond comfort or scolding. Aslan gave up the thought and quietly withdrew the hand he'd started to reach out with.
Yet when he turned his head to look beyond the post, he found himself wearing a similar expression.
The heat of rebellion crept along his skin. The city stomped and raged. Aslan felt that savagery and grimaced.
Because in the end, people would die. Whether guard or prisoner, someone would end up dead. That truth weighed on him.
Even if stripping them of their authority changed nothing, engineering this situation left a stubborn guilt behind. But he couldn't very well demand a bloodless suppression, or shout at the guards to put down their weapons and seek peace. That would be a child's tantrum.
Thinking it would be nice to have the overwhelming power to indulge such a tantrum, he absently toyed with his sword's hilt.
Until an uproar came from somewhere in the distance.
Both of them turned toward the disturbance, and a massive creature suddenly emerged from that part of the city. It was as large as five barns laid end to end—certainly more than ten meters long—and it was a lizard. An enormous, deep-green lizard. But where its head should have been, it bore not a lizard's skull but a grotesquely rotting human face.
Aslan noted the direction it had come from and realized the creature had appeared at the lord's castle. Then he recognized the face adorning that head. It was very familiar.
"Baron of Olpasbet...."
The words escaped him on their own. As he blinked, Ereta beside him rose to her feet.
"Aslan, let's go."
Her voice was resolute. Her knuckles went white around the axe. Aslan saw that grip and understood: the one thing Ereta most wanted to find was right there. Aside from the Artist, the baron was the one most likely to know the whereabouts of her mother, the Fire-weaving Spider.
Seeing the resolve etched on Ereta's face, Aslan nodded without thinking.