Chapter 109 — Moving Fortress (6)

Shaaaa—

A hard rain was falling over the streets of Tokyo, and the city was all but empty because of it. Scrub your eyes and look as long as you liked—there wasn't a soul in sight.

It could hardly have been otherwise. After the Cataclysm, most of Tokyo's survivors had gone south, toward Shinagawa.

Still, every rule has its exception.

Even on streets everyone else had abandoned, someone was still living. A woman, for one, making her life in an old mansion on Fourth Street in Ikebukuro.

Tok. Tok-tok.

A light tapping at the window. Not quite the sound of rain.

The woman who heard it rose as if the sound were an old habit and drew the curtain. What waited beyond the glass was a flock of dozens of crows.

Rattle.

The moment she opened ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the window, the crows poured inside to escape the sudden downpour. She gave them water and food, then sat back down at her desk.

From the first moment to the last, her eyes stayed shut.

She should not have been able to see a thing, and yet she moved as if the room were perfectly clear. The reason was a unique skill she possessed.

Her name was Kurogane Kotori. A shaman blessed by crows.

As a child, an accident had ruined both her eyes and taken every scrap of her sight. In the end she despaired of the world and shut herself alone in her room. A life in which neither family nor friends came looking. In an existence that was little more than remaining alive, her one small joy had been the crows.

They had begun visiting her room one day. She fed them, grew close to them, and little by little built a bond. She had been living that way for ten years when the Cataclysm struck out of nowhere. Afterward the world became, quite literally, a hell choked with chaos.

And then a miracle found her.

A shaman who had received the blessing of crows. Now called a Crow Shaman, Kotori could share every sense with any crow she had ever bonded with, even once. That was why she could move with her eyes closed, like someone who could see. She was still turning that old memory over when—

"Hey. Kurogane."

A voice cut through her thoughts without warning. It drove deep into her mind, and Kotori opened the eyes she had kept shut. The scene she had been observing changed in an instant.

Not the interior of the old mansion, but a comparatively clean, spacious conference room. Around the table sat a dozen or so people.

This was Fukushima City, Japan. Roughly 230 kilometers from Tokyo.

The reason she could open her eyes in Fukushima so suddenly was, again, a unique skill she held as a Crow Shaman.

Kotori could shape crows without substance—creatures called illusion crows—into a clone of herself. What sat in the Fukushima conference room now was that clone. She was settling her mind into the clone's consciousness when the voice came again.

"Kurogane. Are you listening to me?"

"Ah, sorry. I was thinking about something else."

"…Focus. This matters."

The man had grown a thick beard. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, and he scowled as if her attitude displeased him.

"Anyway, what were we talking about?"

"You really… Haah. Forget it."

He crumpled his face, started to say something to her, and then let the breath out in a sigh.

His name was Yamashita Goto. A level-31 lighthouse keeper. The class was an unfamiliar one, specialized in command and leadership, and because of it Goto led Fukushima's survivors.

"We were discussing when that man you mentioned would get here."

"The Fire-Lightning Mage?"

"Yes."

Goto nodded in silence. Only then could Kotori recall what they had been saying a moment ago. They had been arguing over how much longer they would have to hold until the Fire-Lightning Mage, who had promised his support, actually arrived.

"I hear it'll take about two to four days."

"And what day does that make today?"

"Today makes it exactly two."

The moment she finished, sighs and mutters drifted from every corner of the room.

"Which means…"

"We have to hold for two more days, at the outside."

"…Do you really think we can?"

Pessimistic laments poured in from all sides. They had no choice. Fukushima's situation was, quite simply, as bad as it could be.

An enemy host numbering in the tens of thousands. The clashes that host had sparked, large and small, had already produced several hundred casualties. Most of the defensive lines blocking the approaches had been broken as well.

All of this happened in just three days.

The force still able to fight numbered a little over three hundred. Hold for two days with that? It would have been stranger if no one were already wailing.

"Holding two days is unrealistic."

"The fighters we have left are already dead on their feet."

"Even now, retreating would be…"

Perhaps that was why. Opinion was gathering toward retreat when someone objected.

"Th-then what about the civilians?"

"There are more than a few children and elderly who can barely move. Taking them with us and running…"

"…We'd have no choice but to leave them."

"What? What are you saying?"

"We can't save everyone anyway. Things being what they are, shouldn't the people who can live at least get to live?"

It was a middle-aged man's proposal. The words had barely left his mouth before another man shot to his feet.

"Don't make me laugh. We are never doing that."

"Judge this coldly. In the present situation…"

"Listen. You can spout that nonsense because you don't have a family to support!"

"What did you say? You really—"

The conference room turned noisy in an instant, and opinion split in two. One side wanted to hold until the mage arrived, if only for those who could not move. The other insisted they abandon the base and retreat even now. Everyone was desperate for a way out.

Kotori's face, unlike the rest, stayed comparatively calm. Of course it did. Her real body was in Tokyo, more than two hundred kilometers from here. Even so, there was only one reason she had sent a clone all this way to help Fukushima.

If this place falls, Tokyo is next.

There were great cities beyond it, yes, but she had sent her crows to look, and every one of them had turned out to be a ghost town where no one lived. It was only natural. After the Cataclysm, most of the survivors had come down to Tokyo. And now the front had already been pulled back as far as Shinagawa, in the city's south.

Ikebukuro, on the other hand…

It lay northwest of central Tokyo. If the Fukushima line was pushed back, it was the obvious first place to be hit. Then Kotori, too, would have to leave the mansion she had grown attached to and evacuate. That was why she had gone so far as to make a clone and come support Fukushima—even if that help was about to come to nothing.

…The matchup is bad.

The monsters that had poured from Sendai's liberated rift. A swarm of jellyfish the size of grown men was lethal by its mere presence, spraying a nerve toxin that paralyzed everything around them. Fukushima's survivors, meanwhile, were more than nine-tenths classes built for close combat. They could not fight properly at all.

Even supporting them with shamanic arts has its limits.

If even half their classes had been able to strike enemies at range, they would not have been driven back so one-sidedly. She was wearing a bitter look at that bleak reality when—

Bang!

The conference-room door flew open. Two messengers burst in, and each of them shouted with a face gone bloodless.

"Urgent report from the final defensive line!"

"The rift's owner is approaching!"

The hall stirred. The confusion did not last. Before the uproar could spread, Goto pressed them for the situation.

"How far has it come?"

"It's already engaged at the final line!"

"What?"

"Then what were the sentry units doing—!"

"Th-they… were wiped out."

"…What?"

People asked it back in a daze. At the despairing news, the survivors' faces darkened at once. Kotori, watching the battle through her crows' eyes, was no exception.

Looks like we're about at our limit.

The final line had just been breached. Fighters who had lost the will to fight were fleeing to save their own lives, and not a single force remained to stop the monsters' advance. Kotori rose, turned toward the window, and then looked back at Goto and everyone else.

"All ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of you, run. Even now."

"…Kurogane."

"I'll buy you the time."

Goto knew her body was a clone. He did not try to stop her. He only nodded in silence.

We can't save everyone.

They could not save the children and the elderly who could barely move, the ones already named. Even so, she had no intention of giving up on all of them from the start. She would do what she could, at least as far as that reached. Kotori set herself to it.

I'll have to apologize to the mage separately.

She had said she would hold the line, and now she was going to end up running. Thinking of the mage who would arrive in Fukushima only to find the place empty, she smiled bitterly. But the stray thought lasted only a moment.

Kotori focused. She was preparing a fight to buy time when an unfamiliar voice drove straight through her mind.

"…!?"

A low voice, out of nowhere. It did not come through her ears. It spoke directly into her head. But that was not the only reason Kotori startled.

This voice…!

She knew it. And she was not the only one who had been startled. The voice that had come so suddenly reached everyone in the conference room, vivid and clear.

"Wh-what?"

"Just now, a voice in my head…"

"Who's talking to us?"

Their reactions were plainly shaken. The owner of the voice, by contrast, went on without the slightest ripple of feeling.

At that, everyone came back to themselves. They understood at once. This was not the moment to stand around startled. Kotori moved first.

With the skill, totems she had planted in advance burst up through the earth and began to cry with the voices of crows. A cry that lured the enemy. The rift army, advancing without pause, turned toward the totems, and in the end every enemy gathered in one place.

Taking the whisper that followed as the signal, dark clouds suddenly formed in the sky over the battlefield. It was nothing natural. Dozens, hundreds of storm clouds came rolling in.

Kuurung. Kuururung.

Flashes showed between the clouds. At the sight, not only Kotori but Goto lifted their eyes to the sky. A moment later, just as every gaze turned to the field, more than ten bolts of lightning came down.

Kwaaaaaang!

Kwang! Kwang! Kwaaaaang!

The flashes the clouds spat became spears of light and slammed into the rift army. The enemies packed into one place were swept away before they had a chance to dodge. Lightning kept falling after that. Dozens of bolts ceased only after they had silenced everything still moving on the field.

A little while later—

"My god…"

The people in the conference room wore blank faces, full of disbelief, as if the words had been struck out of them. All of them could only stare, eyes wide, at a battlefield turned to ruin. Goto, the leader of the group, was no different.

Then Kotori, who had been watching, let out a laugh colored with relief.

"Heh. Looks like that man has arrived."

"What? Who are you—"

"The Fire-Lightning Mage."

Because no one else could do something like that. Kotori's eyes glittered like stars.

Teleportation, a fourth-tier skill. In a single breath, Hanseong and his party moved from Hanseong's Suwon Base to the helicopter landing pad on Ulleungdo. Once the final checks were done, the Moving Fortress carrying all of them lifted off and flew for Japan.

The Moving Fortress pressed on toward its destination with the report from the AI, NOAH. Even so, having nothing in particular to do was no excuse to relax. Elite monsters, and worse, sometimes showed themselves in the skies and on the waters of the East Sea. They were steadily subjugating those monsters as they went when good news arrived without warning.

"Mage, this is—!"

"Looks like they actually pulled it off."

A notice that Russia's rift had been subjugated. Good timing. He had already been worrying over how they were supposed to reach Russia after dealing with Japan's liberated rift. Hanseong smiled, satisfied. And then one more piece of good news arrived.

"Ah! I can see land up ahead!"

The shout came from Subin, in the cockpit. With Open Map active at all times, Hanseong already knew, of course. Still, the report was not meaningless. The moment they reached land, Fukushima City—their final destination—began to appear on the map.

Countless red dots marked the map. Their number alone reached thirty thousand. And at the head of all those dots, one more was visible: a red square, presumed to be the rift's owner.

The battlefield unfolded. Having confirmed where the rift's owner was, Hanseong narrowed his eyes.

The defensive line is about to collapse.

The survivors fleeing after they lost the will to fight were proof enough. Better, then, to open the attack before the line was completely breached. Most of the skills Hanseong had learned were wide-area strikes. If he wanted to keep unlucky people from being caught in them, he had to attack right now. He went straight into preparations.

A rift owner weak to lightning. Its minions, the jellyfish legion, shared Enkinus's weaknesses exactly. Pour lightning down on them, and this would be over quickly.

The formation is a little unfortunate, though.

Better if they were packed into one place instead of spread in every direction. After a brief thought, Hanseong decided to ask the people on the field for their cooperation. He had just gained an ability well suited to a moment like this.

Language Master, engraved at his throat. Using Transmission, the engraving's special effect, Hanseong gave his orders to everyone on the battlefield.

"Draw the enemies into one place."

So he could wipe them out in a single stroke. Contrary to expectation, the people who heard the Transmission stood frozen like statues and did not move. From their reaction, the sudden voice had startled them. Hanseong frowned and urged them again.

"There's no time. Hurry."

Had they come to their senses late? Only then did people begin to move. The first among them was the Crow Shaman, Kurogane Kotori. She used some skill he didn't recognize and successfully bound the enemy in place. The rift's owner was no exception. Hanseong smiled, satisfied.

"Well done. Leave the rest to me."

The people who had fled the collapsed line. The enemy host, gathered just where he wanted them. With that, the conditions were perfect.

The evolved skill of Call Lightning. With Thunder Storm, dark clouds formed in the sky above the ground where the enemy host had gathered. And in that instant, dozens of lightning bolts poured down.

The world flashed white.

A single strike, into which he had poured about seventy percent of his mana, was more than enough to sweep away every enemy on the ground. He would have to accept the penalty of Mana Depletion, of course. But the worry proved groundless.

Was it because he had subjugated tens of thousands of monsters, and the rift's owner with them? His level rose at just the right moment, and the Mana Depletion penalty never came.

A little while later—

Thud-thud-thud-thud.

The rotor, which had been spinning furiously, slowly lost speed. The Moving Fortress, an AH-64, had arrived at its final destination: Fukushima City. It landed safely. Hanseong then sent out the Phantom he had stored in his Inventory. He had spotted a man not far off who seemed to be waiting for him.

"…"

A thickly bearded man. He readily extended a hand toward the Phantom coming toward him—an offer of a handshake. Hanseong stretched ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Phantom's hand out and took it. The introduction followed.

"Yamashita Goto. I lead the Fukushima shelter. Might you be…"

"The Fire-Lightning Mage."

"…So it is."

Goto nodded. Then, letting out a sigh of relief, he bowed his head without hesitation.

"Thank you for the help. We're alive because of you."

"Don't mention it. I only answered a deal."

"A deal? What do you mean…"

"The deal with the crow."

Come to think of it, he couldn't see the very person who had proposed it. She had been nearby until a moment ago. Where had she gone? Hanseong turned the Phantom's head and glanced around. From behind the Phantom came a familiar voice.

"Heh. Were you looking for me?"

Kotori, appearing without a sound. She came over at a quick step, glanced at the helicopter he had arrived in, and murmured.

"This is a little unexpected, though."

"What is?"

"I was sure you'd come alone."

"I could say the same."

From what he had heard before, she preferred to work alone, didn't she? When he mentioned what she had said then, Kotori shrugged.

"I didn't have a choice. Wandering alone is more comfortable, but when you're facing an enemy on this scale, cooperation is better."

She let out a deep sigh, then smiled brightly at the Phantom.

"You seem to be the exception, of course."

Inwardly, Kotori was startled. She knew the Fire-Lightning Mage was strong. The man she had met in the rift had erased every enemy with truly overwhelming firepower.

But this time was different.

Not hundreds. Not thousands. A host of tens of thousands. She had not expected him to sweep away that many monsters in a single blow. Kotori understood anew why that man was called the Fire-Lightning Mage. She was still marveling to herself when—

"Ah. Right."

Something she had forgotten came back to her. The mage's real objective. He had not come merely to deal with the rift army. Remembering that, Kotori turned and pointed at the helicopter.

"I'll guide you to the rift first."

Sendai's liberated rift. That was what the mage had come to erase. Sendai was about fifty kilometers from here. In that helicopter, they could cover the distance quickly. She was about ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to approach it when the Phantom suddenly blocked her path.

"You don't have to."

"What? But Sendai is quite a way from here. Rather than going by car, taking the helicopter would…"

"I'm saying there's no need to move."

And what was that supposed to mean?

Kotori asked again, puzzled.

"Huh? No need to move?"

"It means exactly what I said. The liberated rift is already inside observable range."

"…I don't understand what you mean."

Then he would have to show her. Hanseong fixed on the coordinates of the liberated rift marked on the map. He stored the Phantom in his Inventory, then released it at those coordinates.

About ten minutes passed. Then—

Sendai's liberated rift had been subjugated.