Nechagni
Nechagni
Nechagni Fortress.
The last place Aslan had visited before meeting Angie — the place where this entire journey had more or less begun.
And now an air of battle hung over the fortress, though not the sort that suited a battlefield.
It wasn't the feeling of preparing to face an enemy.
It was the feeling of bracing to survive a disaster.
And at the forefront of that tension lay fear.
A fear that felt black, crimson, and somehow viscous all at once.
A fear that seemed capable of breaking an army or rendering even a demigod powerless.
Yet Aslan made no attempt to suppress that fear or push it back.
Even as it spread like a plague, like a wildfire.
Watching that dread race through the soldiers like red flames devouring everything in their path, Aslan knew it wasn't what it appeared to be.
It was, in a sense, closer to an inoculation than an epidemic.
Some wouldn't overcome it and would collapse, but those who endured would be able to fight.
It was a cruel calculus, but there was no helping it.
If they failed to stop it here, the Sword of the War God would gnaw away at humanity's lands inch by inch, birthing nothing but pain and death.
Aslan was human too, and a human couldn't protect what lay beyond their sight.
Protect everyone. Let no one die.
Aslan had fought for twelve years — far too long to cling to such idealistic notions.
Long enough for any idealist to be ground down by reality.
And so he had deliberately spread that fear through Karl.
The dread sown by the woman disguised as a man had worked exactly as Aslan predicted, and now as he walked, he glimpsed in the soldiers' eyes a certain resolve — something almost like sparks flying from a fire.
Most of them were locals, people who lived in Sholukund and Warpol.
While the supplies they hauled were being built into palisades and sharpened stakes to impede any approach, Aslan drifted aimlessly among the soldiers.
"Oh, Lord Aslan!"
It was around then that Aslan, lost in thought about how to fight this battle, stopped in his tracks.
A vaguely familiar voice. Turning his head, he saw Richard, who had arrived just the day before yesterday with soldiers from the Kingdom of Bida and the Duchy of Hilsinger.
The ducal heir approached with the same lack of formality as his tone, nudging Aslan's shoulder with an elbow and flashing a grin.
"Where are you headed?"
He blinked his grey eyes and asked. Meeting that gaze, Aslan gave an awkward smile.
"Nowhere in particular. You?"
"Me? I've been helping the soldiers. My hands aren't much good for anything clever, so I've just been hauling supplies."
Back when Itar had died, Richard had worn a somber expression, his face heavy with grief. But now he was bright.
It seemed things had gone well — whether persuading his father or resolving the family discord.
Which was likely why he'd been able to bring soldiers.
Shaking off the thought, Aslan glanced at Richard's hands, blackened with soot, and asked idly.
"Is it proper for a noble — the young lord of a ducal house, no less — to be doing that sort of work?"
Richard scratched the back of his neck at that.
His hand, thick with grime — tar or something of the sort — left a smear on his nape, and the soldiers nearby snickered.
They didn't act like they were dealing with a noble. They treated him more like a friend their own age.
And Richard, as if that was exactly what he wanted, grumbled at the soldiers' laughter but kept talking.
"Well, I still feel more like my teacher's disciple than a noble... I'm just more comfortable keeping my hands busy. When my teacher was alive, I mostly handled the odd jobs, anyway."
"I suppose it does suit you."
"Right?"
Richard replied with a grin. The remark was more or less an insult — that he looked better suited for manual labor than nobility — but he didn't seem to catch it.
Or maybe he just didn't care.
Either way, it wasn't a bad thing.
As Aslan nodded with that thought, Richard suddenly let out an "Ah," as if something had just occurred to him.
"Now that I think of it, Lord Bahot Head was looking for you. Have you already seen him?"
Bahot Head?
Aslan shook his head, and Richard nodded toward the fortress entrance with a grin.
"He said he'd wait at the fortress gate. Asked you to come see him if you had the time. Why not go, if you're not busy?"
Aslan couldn't guess why Bahot Head wanted to see him right now, but he nodded at Richard's suggestion and set off at once.
Along the way, there were soldiers. Dragon-kin, Baramunz warriors, soldiers of the Kallus Empire. Some eyes gleamed with resolve, while others trembled with fear.
The closer he got to the fortress gate, the thicker the fear became — a fear whose source Aslan could easily guess.
At the end of that trail of fear, Aslan's brow furrowed slightly.
Shlik!
A severed head rolled across the ground, its terror-stricken eyes staring at the sky. Aslan's narrowed gaze fixed straight ahead.
There stood Bahot Head, axe in hand.
He was disposing of deserters.
Men who'd failed to overcome the inoculated fear and had tried to flee in the dead of night, only to be caught.
And what awaited them after being caught was death.
Beheaded in the name of maintaining discipline and order. Not many, but not a small number either.
Aslan took in each death, one by one, until his eyes met those of Bahot Head, still in the middle of reaping that harvest.
An aged Dragon-kin warrior with dry, flaking scales. The chairman of the Council of Elders. He looked at Aslan, scanned the expression on his face, and gave a faint, bitter smile.
"Do you think this is wrong?"
A question followed. It carried little obvious context, but Aslan didn't ask for clarification. He answered instead.
"...No. For the sake of overall order, this is correct."
They couldn't afford to have more deserters and watch the fortress's entire defensive manpower crumble.
So this was right.
Aslan had no disagreement on that front.
What surfaced was a matter of personal taste, beyond right and wrong.
He gave voice to that taste.
"All the same, personally, I don't like it."
Bahot Head stared at the axe in his hand with deeply sunken eyes, then wiped it roughly against his trouser leg and returned it to his belt.
As the axe settled back into place with a grim gleam, the elder spoke.
"Good."
It wasn't clear what exactly was good, but he didn't open his mouth to elaborate.
"Take this."
Instead, he rummaged inside his coat, pulled something out, and tossed it lightly to Aslan.
Aslan caught it reflexively — an object heavy enough to make the corners of his eyes twitch.
With a puzzled look, he quickly realized what he'd caught: it was a hand.
A blackened hand, its grip and nails as sharp as any Dragon-kin's. Cleanly severed halfway up the forearm.
Looking at it, Aslan felt a strange sense of familiarity.
A familiarity that flickered in the forcibly suppressed, blurred memories — a scene barely stirring. It felt almost like déjà vu.
After staring for a long moment, Aslan recognized what it was and looked up at the elder. The elder spoke.
"The reason I called for you... is because of that."
That.
Following the elder's extended finger with his gaze, Aslan looked down at the object in his grasp.
The thing the elder called 'that,' the thing Aslan could only recall in hazy fragments — it was the arm of the Dragon-king.
Specifically, the arm Aslan had severed the moment he'd grown Purity.
He'd been certain it had disappeared. As he raised his head with that doubt plain on his face, the elder spoke.
"It was retrieved from that crater where you were found... from the lava at its very center."
"From... inside the lava?"
"Yes, from inside the lava."
It was a statement that ordinarily shouldn't make sense.
Lava is molten rock. Retrieving something from within it wasn't something that ordinarily held up as a claim.
Both Bahot Head and Aslan knew that.
But it wasn't a lie.
Looking at the hand in Aslan's grasp, Bahot Head recalled the sight he'd witnessed then.
The lava that had abruptly solidified, and the sword hilt and Dragon-king's hand that had emerged as that lava split apart.
Whether it was an omen of fortune or calamity, he couldn't say. But he could tell for whom it was intended.
And so now, the Dragon-king's hand rested in Aslan's grip.
Aslan looked at the Dragon-king's remains in his hand, and multiple thoughts ran through his mind.
One of them was: why hadn't it been processed?
Brought exactly as it was in the moment Aslan cut it off, the Dragon-king's left arm was packed with metallic muscle.
A thought he wouldn't have had if it had been forged into a gauntlet or a weapon. Aslan's questioning gaze turned to the elder, and the elder laughed — a laugh tinged with embarrassment.
"Don't look at me like that. We tried to process it. But... it wouldn't work. Most tools couldn't even scratch it, and what little we managed to carve out would just... restore itself and fill back in the moment we looked away. So... well, I brought it to you to use as you see fit. Whether as a charm, or a weapon."
At those words, Aslan lowered his eyes and studied the Dragon-king's hand.
Blackened metal scales and metal muscle boasting a density beyond the scales — a hardness that wouldn't have been cut by anything but Purity. Even in Aslan's blurred memories, that had been an impressive sight.
But what could he use this for?
An awkward, slightly embarrassed expression crossed Aslan's face, and with that expression still in place, he tucked the hand into his coat.
He couldn't fathom why the elder had called him here just to hand this over, but since he was here anyway, he decided he might as well ask.
"Are the preparations going well?"
Bahot Head nodded at the question and gestured with his chin toward the ramparts in the distance, where Anton was barking orders at a soldier.
"Mm, they're going well. The siege crossbow you requested, the repeating crossbow built from the plans that old fossil provided, and even the blue-iron tents. All of it is finished."
That was fortunate. As Aslan formed the thought, the elder added a remark with a quizzical look.
"Although... is that correct? Is there really a reason to make tents out of blue iron...? I can't help thinking it would have been better used making scrolls for the mages."
Clearly, the elder didn't understand. But Aslan could understand. If he hadn't met Tiyamal, it was a plan he wouldn't have even considered himself.
So he just gave an awkward smile and said there was a use for everything.
Beyond the Dragon-kin elder's skeptical gaze, the sun was gradually setting.
Another day passed, and a week later, the situation changed.
*
"Move, you dullards! Faster, faster!"
"Form up! Spears at the ready! Keep them close enough to use at any moment!"
"Eyes front! Is anyone short on arrows?!"
A place where shouted orders overlapped, where a subtle tension and a strange calm coexisted.
Countless soldiers held their positions atop Nechagni Fortress.
Even within that ambiguous atmosphere, they maintained discipline and moved busily.
Checking equipment, taking positions, hauling short supplies, reconfirming their training.
Behind the soldiers, mages rotated their rest, ready to unleash magic at any moment.
Amid the bustle unfolding across the fortress, a golden-haired, one-eyed woman ran her fingers over the weapon at her waist as she surveyed the scene.
Morale wasn't bad. The preparations were flawless. Even if the foe were the Beastmen Empire of the Southern Continent, she might have dared to predict victory.
But today's enemy wasn't the Beastmen Empire. It wasn't even human.
The anxious faces of the soldiers who knew that fact caught her eye, and the woman clicked her tongue and raised her head.
Up on the high watchtower stood a man, leaning at an angle — her younger brother, black-haired, with melancholic teal eyes.
Traces of tension were plain on his face, but there wasn't a shred of fear to be found. If anything, she could feel a certain resolve.
The determined will to kill something today, no matter what.
Had the time finally come? The woman sensed it instinctively as she looked at her brother's face.
The subsidiary plan, designed to enable the greater plan, had been simple.
Send wave after wave of Baramunz's finest cavalry to attack the Sanctuary.
Strike and withdraw, strike and withdraw — making it look as if they were genuinely trying to assault the Sanctuary.
Under the relentless attacks, several Warrior Monks and cavalrymen had traded their lives, and only when the ground grew slick with those spilled lives did the War God act.
It summoned the Warrior Monks from every nearby region.
The movement, as if to guard against the attack coming from Nechagni, was proof that the War God had clearly taken the bait.
And when, simultaneous with that proof, the regular reports from the scouts watching the Sanctuary abruptly ceased, everyone in the fortress understood.
The Sword of the War God was coming here.
But what mattered to the woman wasn't that the sword was coming.
It was when, and how.
Would it send the Warrior Monks first and then storm in behind them? Would it burrow through the earth? Or would it act in some way beyond imagination — something only the War God could do?
There was no way to know.
And so she felt an ill omen.
It might appear and overturn every preparation they'd made.
Their odds might vanish.
A creeping dread. As if to shake it off, she gripped her sword hilt tightly, exhaled a deep breath, and turned her eyes.
'Aslan, are you ready?'
Toward her younger brother, who looked outwardly composed.
She wasn't the only one watching him. Most of the people in the fortress were.
And so the reaction was immediate.
The moment Aslan flinched, everyone who'd been looking at him turned their heads.
Then those who'd been hiding their fear lifted their gazes.
Clerics who'd been grinding their teeth in fury also turned their eyes.
Every human gaze within the fortress shifted toward the horizon, toward where the sun was heading.
To be more precise, toward a certain malevolence rising from there.
It was a repulsive force that acted almost on instinct.
Something vast and deeply wrong had appeared, and their eyes were drawn to it involuntarily.
Ssss— ssss— ssss—
A sound, like grass all flattening at once.
A sound, like the very dust of the earth stirring itself awake.
A sound, like raindrops plummeting fiercely toward the ground.
Amid the countless groans of nature, the sound of dry swallows echoed one after another.
Everyone strained their ears, staring toward the horizon.
Refusing to miss whatever was approaching from there.
And the moment a shadow fell across that horizon, Frida clicked her tongue.
Because the thing she'd thought impossible was happening.
'A frontal assault...!'
Strategy and tactics existed because their users were human.
Against an overwhelmingly superior foe, strategy and tactics were useless.
Everyone living in Geladrion knew that, deep in their bones.
The mighty Evil Gods — especially the mightiest among them — possessed no reason. There was no logic in their methods.
Likewise, there was no strategy or tactics.
There was only the horror born of their overwhelming transcendence.
And just like that, a shadow revealed itself boldly.
It wasn't long enough to coil around a mountain range.
Nor was it massive enough to swallow a city whole.
But that shadow, visible even from beyond the horizon, proved everything else about it.
That unimaginable enormity became a more immediate, tangible terror.
The clattering chatter of teeth. The suppressed shrieks of terror-stricken humans. Through it all, the horror slowly shed its indistinctness and rose.
A being that, even while lingering beyond the horizon, seemed to soar high enough to pierce the sky.
Only its afterimage was visible, and everyone stared blankly at it — until, abruptly, Aslan shouted.
"Sound-absorbing barrier!"
Jolted awake by the cry, others picked it up and roared.
Sound-absorbing barrier!
The barrier, now!
Shouting without even knowing why, the mages followed in rapid succession: chanting incantations, forming hand seals, stretching out their hands.
Layer after layer of barriers unfolded, blanketing the front.
A sound-absorbing barrier covering the entire fortress. Magic designed to counter monsters that weaponized sound waves.
As the thick wall took shape — a wall that seemed capable of withstanding any devastating sonic attack —
———
In that instant, space itself distorted.
The sound-absorbing barrier shuddered violently; everything beyond it trembled as if being torn apart.
Outside the barrier, the earth overturned and scattered. Soil poured down like rain. A plume of dust shot up, staining the world brown.
Trees that couldn't endure the thunderous roar were ripped up and hurled into the air all at once — it was like some colossal explosion.
Drrrrrrrr!
The barrier eroded within the cataclysm of noise, cracking, shaking. Amid the spectacle of magic shattering and scattering like shards of glass.
A roar filled the void left behind.
—!
An indescribable roar.
It sounded like hundreds of humans howling at once, and also like some vast, unfathomable monster screaming.
KWA-JIJIJIJIJIK!
That roar, the violent fury coiled inside it, some vicious will, spread outward, eating into space itself — and the dust cloud that had hung in the air was swept away in an instant.
The sound-absorbing barrier shattered, scattering traces of magic like broken glass, and through the gaps, hundreds of swords flickered on the horizon.
Everyone in the fortress knew then.
The Myth Killer, the Sword of the War God.
That boundless malice had arrived.