19 7

The enemy was still targeting Renji, so Team Renji’s situation hadn’t changed all that much. Still, the pressure on them had let up a little, even if it wasn’t a massive shift.
The hostile black creatures were being exterminated by someone who was moving faster than the eye could follow, and the center of the action was shifting away from the leading group, toward the main gate.
“Which means...”
He had no definitive proof due to the limits of his vision, but in this situation he didn’t need it to be sure he was right. Adachi’s brain had put the pieces together.
“That’s Jin Mogis!”
Jin Mogis had done something by chanting “nostarem sangui sacrifici.” That was what had made the leading group collapse. Several of them had fallen prey to the enemy, but his actions had done more than just endanger the volunteer soldiers. That probably hadn’t been his goal. In exchange for putting them at risk, Jin Mogis had gained power. A special power that let him move about at inhuman speeds, mowing down the hostile black creatures.
It was still difficult to believe, but for now it was probably best to set aside his feelings of surprise, as well as his common sense about how things worked, and reach a conclusion based purely on the facts at hand. He couldn’t let his thoughts be hampered by quibbles like, No, that can’t be. There’s no way he could have done that. It’s impossible.
Besides, Adachi knew there was a way for people to do things that seemed impossible—or a type of equipment, rather, that allowed them to. “Relics!”
At that moment, it all fell into place. A relic. Jin Mogis had a relic and he’d used it.
Relics came in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, but some of them could do incredible things. With the right relic, you could do the impossible.
Also, the hostile black creatures had been after Jin Mogis. Just like they were after Renji. Because of a relic. Renji had a relic too. He was wearing Aragarfald. Those two relics were the key here.
“Renji, take off Aragarfald!”
Adachi might have been asking for something unreasonable. Aragarfald covered Renji’s torso, arms, and legs. But it wasn’t like normal armor, which would have had clasps all over it.
The original owner of Aragarfald had been an aberrant warrior, the terrifying sword fiend Arago, who’d stood over two meters tall. That was a massive difference in height from Renji. And yet, something surprising had happened as Renji approached the fiend’s remains after slaying him. The armor the warrior had worn had all come off his body and crawled toward Renji. Adachi and the rest of the party had all warned him to get away from it, but Renji hadn’t listened. The armor of the sword fiend had moved as if it were alive, stripping off Renji’s other armor. Renji hadn’t put on Aragarfald. The demonic armor had wrapped itself around him as if it possessed a will of its own and was choosing a new owner for itself.
If Renji gave the order, Aragarfald would fall off him. That said, they were in the middle of a battle now. What kind of idiot would take off his armor mid-battle?
“Ron!” Renji shouted, sweeping away the hostile black creatures with the sword of Ish Dogran and jumping backward. “Cover me!”
“Yeah, you got it!”
Ron moved up in front of Renji. Sometimes Ron talked about “removing his limiter.” According to him, there was a switch inside his buzz-cut head. Normally it was on, but once he flipped it off, he totally snapped.
“Urah, urah, urah, urah, urah, urah, urah, urah, urah, urah, urahhhh!” Ron swung his greatsword around like it was a toothpick. It goes without saying, however, that his giant cleaver was not, in fact, a toothpick. Once an object started moving in a specific direction, inertia got involved, and it took a considerable amount of strength to stop it. Basically, under normal circumstances, once a massive sword like that started swinging, it needed to swing all the way through. Stopping it before finishing the swing would require the wielder to really brace himself. That was how it should have been, but with his limiter removed, Ron must have been able to unleash incredible bursts of strength or something. However he did it, he was able to swing with inhuman strength, stop his blade, jump up, swing down, stop, and jump again. All of this at terrifying speeds.
Ron would close his eyes whenever he did it. He wasn’t looking at his opponents, his targets. He was just swinging about at random. He swung and he swung, hoping to get lucky. That meant the enemy could just stay out of his reach. Simply move away from him. It didn’t matter how powerful he was if he couldn’t hit them. If his opponents could understand that, then Ron releasing his limiter made little difference. It might work if he caught them by surprise, but beyond that it was of no use other than to intimidate them.
But the hostile black creatures fell for it. Many of the enemies had humanoid forms. They moved in a manner similar to humans too. But some of the enemies were different. There were these slug-like, or perhaps snake-like, creatures too. What were they? That was a total unknown, but in any case they apparently didn’t have the ability to detect a threat and get out of the way.
The enemy immediately charged Ron as he stepped in front of Renji. Was attacking Renji the only thing on their minds? Or did they not think at all? Whatever the case, they would make ideal prey for Ron with his limiter removed. The hostile black creatures were all sent flying by Ron’s massive butcher’s knife. He couldn’t keep it up for long, but it would be long enough.
“Aragarfald!” Renji commanded, thumping a fist on his breastplate. It was almost instantaneous. Renji didn’t take Aragarfald off. It looked more like the demonic armor was opening its ominous maw and ejecting Renji from inside it.
Renji was only wearing the clothes that had been under his armor now. Aragarfald was behind him, kneeling. It looked almost like a headless knight—a dullahan.
 
 

“Whoa!” Ron jumped to the side and rolled. He must have been at the limits of his breath and stamina.
“To the gate!” Adachi shouted and started dashing.
Renji jumped over to Ron and pulled him to his feet. Chibi cast some sort of spell on Ron too.
Things went just like Adachi had expected. The hostile black creatures didn’t get in Team Renji’s way. For a moment, he turned to look back at Aragarfald. The enemy was swarming over the demonic armor. Like he’d thought, it was the relics. He still had no idea what these enemies were, but they were after the relics.
“What about them?!” Ron shouted. He must have meant the members of the leading group, who were hunched over or lying on the ground.
Renji rushed over to a female volunteer soldier who was just barely managing to stay on her feet.
“Kajiko, can you move?!”
“Renji... I don’t need your concern!” The leader of the Wild Angels started snapping orders at the other female volunteer soldiers.
Britney was gazing up to the sky. “What in the world happened?!”
“Doesn’t matter! Head for the gate!”
With Renji yelling at them, Britney and the other volunteer soldiers helped their comrades to their feet, encouraging each other as they tried to regroup. Their movements were still noticeably sluggish, though. These were elite volunteer soldiers. All of them had been through some truly difficult battles before. Even mages like Adachi, while they might not have been cut out for melee combat, had the stamina to keep walking all night and all day. Or they should have.
Now that was all gone.
Had it been stolen, perhaps? It seemed Jin Mogis was still racing around at super speed, eliminating the hostile black creatures. Adachi’s kinetic vision wasn’t good enough to catch him. However, there were enemies that weren’t part of the swarm going after Aragarfald, and they kept on starting to move in one direction, then shifting to head in another. It looked like they were confused, not just wandering. Meanwhile, explosive impacts kept sounding out all over, each one sending another hostile black creature flying.
“The enemy won’t come for us!” Adachi said, raising his voice. He sounded weirdly shrill, but what did he care? “Hurry! Get to the gate! Keep moving!”
Renji, Ron, Chibi, and a number of the Tokkis—all of the people on their side who could still move freely—were assisting their comrades. Adachi was too. He’d lend his shoulder to a volunteer soldier, get them walking, and then give them the push they needed to start running.
Team Renji was more important than anything to Adachi. He valued Renji, Ron, and Chibi over himself, and didn’t want to lose another member of the team ever again. Honestly, he wished he could focus on just his own party. But he couldn’t leave the other volunteer soldiers here to die. That would be wrong. Not out of humanity or a sense of camaraderie. Adachi wasn’t that emotional.
Renji had taken off Aragarfald for him without questioning it. He’d been so happy to see it that he had almost teared up. Maybe he had actually cried a little. Now, that was him getting emotional. This was different. Adachi was only looking at the other volunteer soldiers as potential assets in combat. It goes without saying, but more was always better when it came to battle. The more volunteer soldiers who made it out of the main gate, the brighter their prospects would be going forward. He wanted to secure as much fighting potential as he could. So that was the only reason he was doing this.
The survivors were finally about to make it through the gate. Adachi might not have been at the vanguard, but he was near the front. There were a number of torches placed high on the walls around the main gate. Thanks to them, Adachi could more or less see what the situation was like in the area.
The main gate, which had been forcibly opened inward, was still jam packed with hostile black creatures, with more of them rushing through by the second.
The volunteer soldiers were supposed to break through that? Was it even possible? Adachi couldn’t imagine it was. No, it wasn’t just him. None of them could. And yet the survivors kept running headlong toward the gate. Weren’t they being reckless? This was suicide. Was there no other way? Adachi questioned it, but the survivors didn’t stop. And being in the middle of the press, Adachi couldn’t either.
It wasn’t like Adachi had forgotten about Jin Mogis. What was he doing now? This was all his fault, wasn’t it? Adachi would resent the man forever after what he’d done. No, nothing could be expected from him. It seemed unlikely that Jin Mogis would do anything that might cause things to change for the better.
Which was why what happened next took him by surprise. Some humanoid figure raced past the survivors at an incredible speed, then charged into the main gate. It blasted away all the hostile black creatures that had been blocking the gate as they streamed in, pushing them back out.
As if on a fixed course, the survivors ran through the main gate. Some of them were surprised, and Adachi even let out a “Wha?!” but they kept on running until they were outside. The darkness spread out before them.
The wind was fairly strong. The skies, cloudy. Dawn was still a long way off, and both the red moon and the stars were nowhere to be seen. Grimgar was blanketed in an impenetrable darkness, too thick for the lights atop Riverside Iron Fortress to pierce.
Adachi drew the short staff that hung at his hip and began drawing elemental sigils in front of him.
“Delm, hel, en, trem, rig, arve.”
A single line of flames rose up, stretching toward the darkness. It wasn’t just the darkness of night spread out before the survivors. Doubtless, the entire area would be awash in hostile black creatures too. Adachi hadn’t used the Firewall spell to attack them, though. Unfortunately, it seemed that the survivors’ enemies couldn’t be burned away with Arve magic. Adachi was just hoping to use the light of the fire to identify how many of them were out there.
Two or three other mages also cast Firewall.
A total of four walls of fire appeared in a sunburst pattern extending out from the main gate.
The survivors gulped.
The hostile black creatures were everywhere.
Black forms blotted out the ground. No, that can’t be right, Adachi’s reason argued. Look closer. The survivors were currently standing on the ground, after all. Some of them were shouting “whoa” and kicking away one of the black things that had wrapped itself around their leg, or “take this!” and beating them back with their weapons. If the survivors stayed put, they might end up buried in enemies, whether it was the humanoid ones or the crawling ones, but that hadn’t happened yet, at least. There was grass, dirt, and stones exposed here and there. It was a bad situation, but they weren’t completely out of places to stand.
“Jin Mogis...” Adachi murmured. His throat was tight, and his voice escaped like a groan.
There was a red-haired man standing between two of the walls of fire that stretched into the darkness, his back turned to them. His sword was drawn.
“Hrmm...” Jin Mogis let out a low groan. Then, immediately after that...
He vanished.
Jin Mogis was gone.
No, not just him. Two of the walls of fire disappeared too.
Adachi’s eyes couldn’t make it out, but it seemed to him that something like a whirlwind had instantly formed where Jin Mogis was standing. That had blasted away the walls of fire and the hostile black creatures.
“How can he move like that?! Is that guy even human?!” Ron shouted.
“Wah-hah!”
Someone laughed in the darkness. Was that human laughter? It was presumably Jin Mogis, but it sounded so bizarre. If a laugh were to escape not just from someone’s mouth, but their eyes, nose, and ears as well, it might have sounded like that.
“Incredible! So this is what it means to be set free from one’s humanity! What a shame that I can only use it once more!”
There was something pale and blue shining in the dark. Adachi squinted. It wasn’t a large light. It was quite small, actually. He couldn’t say for certain, but it was probably Jin Mogis. Was part of the man’s body shining? Or was it something he was carrying, perhaps? Something like a jewel, maybe. Like a necklace, or possibly a ring.
A stone.
A jewel.
A shining rock.
“Is that the relic?!”
Jin Mogis had used a relic. One that had sapped dozens of volunteer soldiers of their strength, only to add it to Jin Mogis’s own, no doubt. “I can only use it once more!”
What did he mean by that? That it wasn’t unlimited? That relic had a usage limit. Also, its effects weren’t permanent. They were on a timer. It must have had a limited range too. That was why it hadn’t drained Team Renji.
But it had one use left.
Meaning, Jin Mogis could do the same thing again.
If that man used his relic again, this time all the survivors would be sapped of their strength. Adachi hadn’t experienced it himself, so he couldn’t say for certain, but it had managed to knock down many experienced volunteer soldiers, so it was unlikely that any of them could resist it. Jin Mogis would then have superhuman strength, even if there was a time limit on it.
With his first usage, the man had gotten out of Riverside Iron Fortress. What would he do with the second? Adachi’s prediction was that he’d use it to ditch the survivors and flee. Probably try to get as far as he could while the effect lasted.
Jin Mogis had never seen the volunteer soldiers as allies or comrades to begin with. They barely even rated as disposable pawns. The man had always been willing to sacrifice them if it came down to it. If that relic had a usage limit, then he would probably avoid using it if at all possible, but would still use it if forced. The man had needed sacrifices. And those sacrifices were the volunteer soldiers of Riverside Iron Fortress.
“Renji!”
They had to kill him. That man needed to die immediately. If they didn’t snuff him out before he could use the relic, then the survivors would be wiped out for sure this time.
Once they killed him, what then? That didn’t matter. Well, no, it did, but Renji—or someone else, it didn’t have to be Renji—needed to kill Jin Mogis first.
Renji understood what Adachi was getting at even without a full explanation, and he wasn’t the only one. Ron and a number of the other volunteer soldiers sprang into the darkness after the maniacally laughing Jin Mogis.
“Whoa!”
There was a light. A different one. Not the pale blue light of the relic, but one that was closer to white. The light grew, and now Adachi was able to see Jin Mogis. The light was in the middle of his chest. Was it a blade? Something like a sword? A sword of light, piercing through Jin Mogis.
“Gworgh! Hurgh...”
Jin Mogis coughed up a gout of blood. The red-haired man attempted to raise his trembling left hand. The ring sat on his index finger, harboring a pale blue light with a petal-like pattern floating in it.
“Nosta...rem...”
Jin Mogis was no doubt trying to say the incantation. It was probably the key phrase to trigger that relic. But he couldn’t do it. The blade sticking out of his body wouldn’t let him speak. His feet rose from the ground as the sword of light lifted him up high, leaving him suspended like a hanged man.
The sword of light wasn’t an independent entity. Clearly, it hadn’t impaled Jin Mogis and lifted him aloft on its own. It had a wielder. There was someone over there, behind Jin Mogis, who was responsible. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but whoever it was carried a shield giving off a dim glow in addition to the sword of light. The figure looked human. It wasn’t a giant, at least. They weren’t particularly large or small. A solitary swordsman, seemingly clad in the darkness of night.
“San...gui...” Jin Mogis tried to finish the key phrase between coughs of blood.
The night-clad one began to rise into the air with Jin Mogis still impaled on their sword of light. The figure was riding on darkness, on some sort of black thing. Like a dark knight on a black horse. Was it all one single being? Or was there a separate creature pushing the figure upward?
The night-clad one swung the sword of light diagonally to their rear, throwing Jin Mogis off it. There was no sound as the man impacted the ground, because it wasn’t the ground that broke his fall. It was the black things.
“Oagh, argh!” Jin Mogis’s death cry was short-lived.
The night-clad one approached the volunteer soldiers silently. As did the black things that had swallowed up Jin Mogis. Were they going to attack? The survivors had no relics. Would they still not be spared? “The seventh—”
As soon as Adachi opened his mouth, he realized that this plan had been stuck in some corner of his head the whole time. It would be impossible to fight their way through the night-clad one’s forces to freedom. No matter how lucky they got, none of them would get out alive.
The seventh tower. One of Riverside Iron Fortress’s fourteen towers, the seventh, had an escape route that led outside the fortress. Britney and the Wild Angels had been defending the seventh tower, but had been forced to retreat. What was it like there now? He didn’t know. He couldn’t say he had much hope for it, but they faced certain doom if they kept trying to push forward here. The same went for if they tried to hold their ground. That meant they had to gamble on the escape route out of the fortress.
“Everyone, turn back to the seventh tower! Hurry!” Adachi screamed. Some of the survivors turned instantly. It’s time, thought Adachi. During this battle, he hadn’t wasted his magic. He’d been conserving his power. This was the moment to use it. Sure, he couldn’t harm the enemy with magic. But he could smash buildings and other things to block their pursuit. Adachi could stay behind and start wreaking mass destruction in order to buy a few minutes for the rest of the party to flee. If he felt that was what was best for Renji—and for Team Renji—he wouldn’t hesitate.
For starters, he’d blow up the main gate once the survivors had all pulled back into the fortress, crushing the night-clad one in the rubble, if possible.
“What are you doing, Adachi?!” Renji shouted at him.
Renji’s silver hair was so pretty. So were his pale eyes.
Once, Adachi had asked, So, that’s your natural color?
Seems like it, Renji had replied.
Thinking back, they’d had almost no deep conversations that really touched on who they were as people. Maybe not even one. Neither Renji nor Adachi accepted others easily, and they never actively tried to get closer to anyone either. As Sassa had pointed out, Adachi had fond feelings for Renji—impulses and desires he felt he had no choice but to hide.
What about Renji? Did he feel anything like that?
Adachi wished he knew.
He’d been by Renji’s side for so long. He should have asked, even if he’d had to force himself to. There was no way Renji had feelings for him. He couldn’t possibly love him back. But even if it made Renji hate him, he should have tried to learn more. He wished he had.
“Okay, let’s go!”
With a nod to Renji, Adachi headed for the main gate.
“O Light, O Lumiaris, bestow the light of protection on my blade!”
The reason he’d stopped was because someone had jumped out from within the group of survivors.
Were they going to attack the night-clad one?
Who was it?
Britney?
“Saber!”
Britney’s sword was wreathed in blinding light. Saber. That was a paladin’s light magic.
The night-clad one was riding atop a four-legged black thing. Adachi had thought it was like a horse at first, but it lacked a neck or head. Regardless, that mount was still giving the night-clad one a height advantage over Britney. It wouldn’t be easy to land a blow on them. “I was getting bored, only having these creepy things to fight!”
The way Britney moved wasn’t that quick, but it was flexible and strangely fluid. The night-clad one swung down at Britney with the sword of light, but couldn’t hit him. It was a close shave, though. Britney had likely side-stepped the incoming slash with the bare minimum of movement, then quickly clambered up the back end of the headless horse to where their enemy was situated. Britney had gotten behind them now.
“Play with me, would you?!”
Britney held his sword in both hands as he slammed it right into the night-clad one’s neck. Yet the enemy only quivered a little, then twisted around to bash Britney with their dimly glowing shield. Britney had to nimbly jump out of the way to avoid it, doing a spin in midair. The enemy must have been watching to see where he’d land, because they immediately turned their horse to charge toward him.
“Sacrifice!”
That was a paladin. Not Britney, though. Another paladin rushed in, his shield shining brightly, and stopped the headless black horse in its tracks. He even managed to push it back a little.
“I’m getting in on this too, Bri-chan!”
“Tokimuneeee?!”
That voice was Kikkawa. Of the Tokkis. It was Tokimune who’d backed up Britney.
“You know what you’re getting into, right?! Silly boy!”
Having landed safely with some help from Tokimune, Britney began drawing some sort of figure with the tip of the sword that he’d cast Saber on and chanting a spell. It was the hexagram that symbolized Lumiaris.
“O light, O Lumiaris! Grant us determination!”
Adachi had tried to learn the names of every spell he could find, even the light magic ones that only priests and paladins could use. But this one was new to him.
“Altera!” Britney and Tokimune shouted in unison. But it wasn’t just their voices that came together. Their swords collided. When they did, a shimmering red light started to emanate from the two paladins. Normally, the blessings of Lumiaris didn’t have any particular color. They were pure white. Not this one, though.
The guiding light, Altera.
There was something different about it.
“Retreaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!” someone roared at an unbelievable volume. Adachi’s ears hurt. For a moment, he even questioned the sense of whoever had shouted like that all of a sudden.
“But—!” Kikkawa started to protest, but Tada grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and sprinted for the main gate. Had that shout come from Tada? Anna of the Tokkis and their mage Mimori followed him. There ought to have been a creepy guy with a ponytail with them too, but he was nowhere to be seen.

 

It was Adachi who had directed everyone to get to the seventh tower as quickly as possible. Still, he had to question the way the Tokkis ran without looking back. Were they leaving Tokimune behind? Was Altera that kind of magic, then?
Blood Spell, which Adachi had learned on the Red Continent, used his own blood as a catalyst. Obviously, if he overused it, he’d get anemic, and in the worst-case scenario could even die of blood loss.
There was some incredible magic out there. Secret arts only taught to a select few, which shortened the caster’s life span or used it up entirely in exchange for astonishing power.
Adachi was aware of another one, Crime, which instantly healed all of the paladin’s own wounds in exchange for completely losing the blessings of Lumiaris. Maybe Altera was a spell along the same lines.
Britney and Tokimune were probably about to pay a great price. They’d cast Altera. There was no taking that back. Tada understood that, and that was why he’d headed for the seventh tower without hesitation, right? If so, here’s what Adachi had to think: Britney and Tokimune were laying their lives on the line to hold back the nightclad one and the countless other hostiles. They were casting their own lives away in order to save as many people as possible.
It seems this wasn’t the right moment after all, Adachi thought as he ran. He’d been prepared to do it, but Britney and Tokimune had beaten him to the punch. That meant it wasn’t Adachi’s time yet.
“I love every last one of you!”
Though Britney’s voice tugged at him from behind, Adachi didn’t look back. He needed to make it to the seventh tower no matter what. Needed to get Renji, Ron, and Chibi there. For the sake of Team Renji, he needed to make sure as many people escaped the fortress as possible. What could he do to ensure that? Adachi pumped his
legs as he thought about it. Renji’s back was in front of him. Ron’s too. And Chibi was running alongside him. He didn’t feel an ounce of fear. He wasn’t afraid of what he’d lost, or what he might lose in the future. Ridiculous as it might seem, in this moment, Adachi felt satisfied.


 

Chapter end