Chapter 324: The Tin Knight and the Revived Myth - Haiden
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 324: The Tin Knight and the Revived Myth - Haiden
To Franka Aglaia, Dorothea and the Tin Knight were hardly figures she could harbor any goodwill for, not even as a mere courtesy.
Of course, Franka had been the one to initiate their ill-fated relationship.
Having been the first to attack with lethal intent, she understood she had no right to complain if they killed her in retaliation.
But logical understanding and emotional acceptance were two different things.
Had the Witch of the West not captured Franka’s homunculi and blackmailed her, had she not received the help of Dorothea’s party in rescuing those ‘children,’ they would never have maintained this connection, however awkward it might be.
I don’t want to get close to them personally, but I suppose I can manage a business transaction.
That was the compromise Franka allowed herself. It was also an excuse she made for the sake of her ‘child’ who had died because of her misguided command.
And now.
She was once again engaging in a ‘deal.’
“My apologies, Lady Franka, but I believe it would be difficult to classify ‘One of the monsters trying to indiscriminately slaughter humans is heading your way, so do what you must if you don’t want to die’ as a deal.”
“Shut up! Who made that rule?!”
“It is so according to the unspoken agreement between people—in other words, ‘common sense.’”
“Enough, just be quiet! I’ll take down that monster thing and demand payment later, so it’s a deal! It’s a deal because I say it is!”
“I believe demanding payment from those lunatics is akin to diving naked into shark-infested waters after covering oneself in blood, but if that is your will, Lady Franka…”
Franka inwardly ground her teeth at the golden monkey, who never failed to get in one last, infuriating remark.
After defeating the Witch of the West, Franka had collected all of her former master’s legacy (minus what Dorothea had taken), which included a formidable force of homunculi.
The one she had just been speaking to was the representative of the surviving homunculi created by the Witch of the West. Its specialty was a manner of speech that, while seemingly polite, was expert at getting under one’s skin.
She had considered replacing it countless times, but it was the most fluent communicator among the homunculi and as competent as any top-tier butler. There was simply no other suitable talent—or rather, raw material—to take its place.
“Lady Franka. The scouting party has located the target. It is Number 84.”
“Understood.”
Franka focused her consciousness on the necklace around her neck, which was shaped like a human eye.
Threads stretched out from her in multiple directions. As she grasped one, the vision of a golden monkey out on reconnaissance appeared in her mind.
There stood a dwarf, his body short but powerful, his aura so grave it bordered on somber. And deployed all around him was an arsenal of massive siege weapons.
“Ugh.”
A chill ran down Franka’s spine.
As a brilliant alchemist, she could intuit the power and sophistication of the surrounding siege weapons with a single glance. She knew that the moment they opened fire, any city within range would be obliterated in the blink of an eye.
Therefore, her judgment was swift, and her actions faster.
“Prepare the ballista. Fire.”
The string of a golden ballista was drawn taut to its limit. The moment it was released, a massive bolt, nearly the size of a pillar, soared through the air and smashed one of the siege weapons.
Franka clicked her tongue in annoyance.
The bolt, which should have struck the dwarf, had hit the wrong target.
The vast distance between them and her unfamiliarity with the surrounding terrain had been her undoing.
Just as Franka was about to load a second bolt.
The dwarf, whom she was observing through the homunculus’s eyes, pulled out something resembling a spyglass and turned his gaze directly toward her position.
“Hk…!”
The distance between them was immense, with numerous obstacles in the way. Normally, it should have been impossible to see her with a mere spyglass.
But Franka knew instinctively. The enemy had perceived her.
And the retaliation was immediate.
Fzzt! First, the body of the scouting homunculus was pierced by something shot from the ground and burst apart.
The shared vision momentarily flooded with red and black before going dark. Franka recoiled at the gruesome sight.
“Ooki!”
“Oookiii.”
Bat Wings and Insect Wings, the two homunculi who had been with her for a long time, circled her, seemingly worried for their master.
Franka soothed them before her expression turned venomous and she yelled.
“Fire the ballista at the originally planned angle! All other scouts, converge on the area where Number 84 fell and begin reconnaissance!”
TWANG! The ballista fired another massive bolt.
Since the scouts had yet to arrive, she couldn’t visually confirm the hit, but there was no need to.
WHOOOOSH! A giant boulder flying in a straight line toward her from the distance was proof enough that the fight was far from over.
Franka hastily gathered her mana.
The trunks piled high around her flew open in unison, and the golden blocks within began assembling themselves around her.
Sloped armor, designed not to block the impact but to deflect it. No, a barrier. The moment it collided with the incoming boulder, a staggering shockwave reverberated through the area.
KRA-KOOOOM!
The sloped barrier did its job. The massive boulder failed to hit Franka, its trajectory deflected as it rolled away to the side.
But its destructive power was horrifying. The golden blocks, which would normally be unscathed even by powerful sword strikes, groaned as if screaming. Every building in the boulder’s path was pulverized. Even the city wall was torn apart like paper.
If the dojo master of Lowefelt hadn’t heeded Franka’s warning and evacuated the people beforehand, the casualties would have been catastrophic.
Of course, Franka wasn’t the kind of good witch who would worry about civilian casualties. More accurately, she didn’t have the luxury to spare them a thought.
He spotted me, and in less than ten seconds, he adjusted the trajectory of his weapons on the fly and scored a pinpoint hit?! From tens of kilometers away?!
The word ‘phenomenal’ didn’t even begin to cover it. What was more terrifying was that even as she stood there in shock, more boulders were already on their way.
Staring at the groaning golden barrier, Franka realized she couldn’t afford to let the enemy keep the offensive.
“Load!”
New ballistae materialized beside her. Recalling her previous miss, she adjusted the point of impact.
Three ballistae were loaded in unison.
The golden barrier stood in the bolts’ path, but Franka paid it no mind and shouted.
“Fire!”
The barrier blocking the ballistae’s line of fire parted to the left and right as if it had a will of its own, clearing a path for the bolts.
Almost simultaneously, the vision of a scout who had just reached the enemy’s vicinity was shared with her.
CRUNCH! CRACK! CRUSH!
The bolts Franka had fired pierced and pulverized three of the enemy’s catapults.
It was god-like marksmanship. Had the Tin Knight seen it, he would have given her a thumbs-up and declared her worthy of being an artillery ace.
But Franka’s joy was short-lived.
“Where did the dwarf go?!”
She had destroyed the catapults, but the dwarf who was supposed to be operating them was nowhere in sight.
Wondering if he had been caught in the attack and turned into meat paste, Franka tried to locate him using her homunculi.
CRACK! “Gah!?”
But her plan was cut short. The homunculi near the rocky terrain were all killed in the blink of an eye.
Even if they were just scouts, each homunculus was on par with a skilled, elite knight. This meant an entire order of knights had just been wiped out without a chance to fight back.
It was a shocking enough development for any alchemist, but Franka’s survival instincts, honed through the bloody battles she’d endured with the Tin Knight’s party, spurred her to move before despair could set in.
Franka quickly recalled the ballistae and the barrier into their trunks and yelled to the golden monkeys.
“All units, evasive maneuvers! Relocate!”
The homunculi readily obeyed the command of their master and adoptive mother.
Insect Wings grabbed Franka and began running at full speed, while Bat Wings detected ‘something’ approaching from the distance and alerted its kin.
Each homunculus grabbed a trunk full of golden blocks and followed Franka.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
By a hair’s breadth, a meteor shower of boulders rained down on the spot where Franka and her monkeys had been positioned just moments before.
In a single volley, a quarter of Lowefelt was pulverized, practically vaporized.
Cradled in the arms of a massive homunculus, Franka shrieked her orders.
“Scouts—no, just send in the combat units! The enemy has some kind of unknown long-range attack, so watch for ambushes!”
“How many soldiers shall you dispatch?”
At first, Franka was about to say half. But then she remembered her master, who had died holding back, never getting to use her full power. She yelled.
“Leave one to carry me and a few to carry the trunks! The rest of you—all of you, go!”
“As you command, Lady Franka.”
All the golden monkeys, save for the one with insect wings and nine others carrying trunks, took flight toward the enemy’s position.
As Franka fled the ceaseless rain of boulders, she received a report from a bat-winged monkey, one specialized in flight. It had found the target.
She shared its vision and was stunned.
The dwarf was speeding across the ground.
He was on a peculiar vehicle. It had two large wheels, one in front and one in back, where a horse’s legs would be, and handlebars where its head should be. It was a mount the Tin Knight would have called a ‘motorcycle.’ The dwarf rode with one hand on the handlebars and the other holding the spyglass to his eye. He stopped at a spot with several suitable boulders and reached out a hand.
Several boulders vanished into thin air. The dwarf then stretched his hand toward a wide-open space.
A catapult, ready to fire, materialized. In its basket was one of the boulders he had just made disappear.
The catapult launched the boulder. The dwarf then retrieved the catapult and sped off on his motorcycle.
The entire process took less than five seconds.
Franka couldn’t help but blurt out.
“That’s cheating! How is that even possible?!”
“Oookii!?” The insect-winged monkey was startled by its master’s shriek, but it had no time to fret.
The boulder the dwarf had just launched was already hurtling toward them.
Realizing she couldn’t dodge in time, Franka gritted her teeth and formed the golden blocks into another sloped barrier.
The barrier successfully blocked the volley of boulders, but at the cost of three trunks, which were reduced to useless scrap.
And while she struggled, her army of homunculi finally succeeded in surrounding the dwarf.
The dwarf pulled a loaded crossbow out of thin air and fired bolts of terrifying power at the homunculi.
Fire a loaded crossbow, stow it in a subspace, pull out a new one, fire, stow it away. He performed this entire sequence with one hand, with perfect accuracy, all while on the move.
In contrast, the homunculi’s javelins either missed their mark due to the motorcycle’s high-speed maneuvers or were blocked by the various obstacles the dwarf summoned on the fly.
Sometimes it was a shield, sometimes armor, and at one point, an entire building.
But the homunculi, with their tenacious vitality and sheer numbers, relentlessly swarmed the dwarf, and his movements began to slow.
At that moment, Franka’s ballista bolts rained down from the sky.
One, two, three.
One, two, three.
One, two, three.
After dodging or blocking the ninth bolt with a summoned object, the dwarf concluded that his opponent had made a mistake.
‘She’s trying to trick me with slight variations, but the firing position is the same.’
He hadn’t had a moment to use his spyglass while fending off the monkeys’ assault, so for his opponent to reveal her own position was a welcome gift.
Drawing on his experience from the repeated exchanges—no, the artillery duel—with Franka, it wasn’t difficult for the dwarf to reverse-calculate his enemy’s position from the trajectory of the incoming bolts.
After forcing the monkeys back with a powerful attack, the dwarf loaded all the boulders he had gathered and fired them at Franka’s presumed location.
The ballista attacks stopped. The monkeys’ movements faltered, as if in turmoil.
Just as the dwarf was certain of his victory.
VROOOOOOOOOOM!
When had it gotten so close? A carriage made entirely of gold—from its wheels and chassis to some unknown pinwheel-like contraption on the back—was hurtling toward him at a terrifying speed.
In that instant, the rational and calculating dwarf, Haiden, understood.
I see. The continuous ballista fire from the same spot was a feint, to hide the fact that the witch herself was somewhere else.
He had been focused on his attack; it was too late to evade.
His barriers had been exhausted by the homunculi’s assault.
Facing his final moments, Haiden left no last words.
He considered them meaningless.
He simply, silently, paid his respects to the victor.
CRUNCH!
The golden carriage pulverized the dwarf’s body.
Dwarf Haiden VS Franka Aglaia & 500 Homunculi
—Victor: Franka Aglaia & 124 Homunculi