Chapter 229. Path Forward (4)
To shoot dead — in that single fleeting instant, as if it were only natural — a magical beast whose reflexes surpassed a human's.
Watching Lien, a small shiver ran down Enoch's spine and he gave a thin smile. If she hadn't stepped in, he would have had to draw his sword. Perhaps Lien hadn't wanted that either.
Suddenly, what Ixion had shouted before flashed into his mind — 'As expected, not even a 9th Rank.'
At the time, it hadn't quite registered, but seeing her display her skill like this, he felt he was now beginning to grasp the real meaning of those words.
What on earth had happened between Enoch and her in the past, for someone as strong as Lien to have become his exclusive maid?
The question that rose up again and again only grew more tantalizing each time, without ever tiring of itself.
"……"
The crisp clicking of heels caught his ear, and when he looked ahead, Lien had already drawn right up in front of him.
Unfazed by the silver hair flickering in the sunlight filtering through the trees, her greenish-blue eyes looked up at Enoch without expression.
"Are you alright, Young Master?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
With a small nod to Lien, Enoch turned his body and approached the collapsed wall.
Thanks to the magical beast smashing through the wall and ceiling, a few of the previously locked cabinets had been broken open along with it.
Forcing open a cabinet whose lock had already been half-undone, he looked inside, and from among the documents pulled out a few of the files that seemed most important, stashing them in his duffel bag.
Lien, who had come up to watch beside him, tilted her head slightly as if puzzled.
"You're taking those files with you?"
"Yeah."
Enoch nodded and tipped the stack of files he was about to put in the duffel bag slightly.
Unlike the other files, this one had a large number of labels and markings on its packaging, and given that it had been stored at the very back of the cabinet, there was no doubt it was the most important item among all those many documents.
"I can't check this now, but I want to know the information contained in it later."
Tantalus's true purpose, or the reason Ixion had joined forces here in the Outsourcing District.
A powerful intuition — one that surpassed even those immediate questions — was sweeping through Enoch's mind.
These documents undoubtedly contained something.
The reason two thousand magical beasts had needed to gather here in the Outsourcing District. And something that tied into the great butterfly effect that, in the original story, had led to the destruction of civilization.
At the very least, to grasp even a clue, he would need to check these documents later.
Enoch zipped up the matte black, techwear-styled tactical duffel bag with its white printing and slung it onto his back. Just then he glanced to the side.
There stood Alicia, who had been standing stock-still with a somewhat dazed expression.
Unlike the composed Lien, she still seemed shaken by what she'd seen earlier, staring down at the fallen magical beast, frozen as if nailed to the spot.
Unable to watch any longer, Enoch walked over to her.
"Alicia, are you alright?"
When he placed a hand on her slender shoulder, Alicia startled, whipped her head around, and, confirming Enoch's face, she let out a breath of relief as she placed her hand over her chest.
"Ah! Direct Lineage, I'm sorry. Whew, phew."
"You don't look well."
"No, I'm just glad you're unharmed, Direct Lineage."
Alicia's shoulders drooped a little in slight dejection, and her lashes lowered weakly.
"In a situation like that, I should have been the one protecting my commander. But I made another mistake…"
Instead of answering, Enoch kept watching her quietly. Alicia weakly shifted her gaze to the side.
The direction of her gaze led to the enormous cabinets lining the wall, and inside them, experiment reports packed densely from floor to top.
Rough guesses about the number of people recorded per file made it easy to tell how many had been sacrificed in this place.
Alicia slowly walked over, ran her fingers along the cabinet, and raised her head as she whispered softly.
"I'm sorry. I never imagined it. That so many non-mages had been transformed into magical beasts, every last one of them."
"Don't worry about it. Right now, just focus on the target."
Enoch looked at Alicia, shoulders trembling slightly, shrinking in on herself with her face downturned.
"Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do for those who've already been turned into magical beasts. So at the very least, we have to stop them from claiming any more victims."
"Yes, you're right. There's no excuse — I was inexperienced."
Alicia nodded with a firm expression, then bent forward and lowered her knees.
From among the fragments of the magical beast that had crumbled to pieces on the ground, scattering black ash, lay the small teddy bear whose strap had been caught in the carapace of the beast's arm.
Picking it up, Alicia clenched it tightly in both hands and pressed it against her chest.
"I'm sorry, Direct Lineage. Something like this won't happen again."
Enoch was a little surprised to hear a clear resolve in her voice — different from before.
With her eyes lowered, her expression shadowed by her bangs, Alicia bit her lip, and in the next instant snapped her head up.
"There's no sign of enemies nearby. It must have been a straggler from the enemy's main force. Let's continue our advance!"
Enoch silently nodded.
Regrouping mentally. Looking at the spirited figure of the Dragoon girl, who had somehow steeled her heart again, he found himself thinking that it was perhaps a good thing.
If it was a truth she had to learn at some point, then perhaps her finding out now, before striking Indiviltal, was actually better.
Through the rain that was beginning to pour down in earnest, Enoch gazed into the shadowed forest.
In any case, from here on was a stage where no more mistakes could be allowed.
***
How long had they walked through the underbrush?
A little while ago, a sound — similar yet not quite similar to the rain — had been coming from within the forest, raising an unpleasant feeling. And that feeling soon became reality.
Enoch's party, who had been swiftly cutting through the forest, had prepared themselves in advance, and so when they saw it, they weren't thrown off and were able to calmly observe the situation.
Beside him, Alicia's quiet murmur reached his ear.
"So this is the enemy's stronghold…"
Glancing over, he saw her gently clenching her hand against her chest, as if trying to soothe herself not to be startled.
Just as Alicia's murmur suggested, the view beyond was wide open, and there were countless experimental magical beasts, large and small, of all kinds, in every direction.
A rugged humanoid magical beast dragged both arms — as though stone had sprouted from them — along the ground.
Above its neck sat a carapace head, worn like a helmet, the carapace splayed into several petal-like sections and fanned open like a flower, with green light spilling from the crack at its center.
Judging by its body mass and the thickness of its carapace, it looked like a specimen specialized in defense and melee combat, but its entire body was so crushed by the weight of that carapace that it couldn't even straighten its back properly.
Apparently no consideration had been given to anything other than combat — such as the magical beast's normal mobility or activity efficiency.
Looking to the side, it was worse still.
Two pairs of rocky wings — attached to a massive bird reminiscent of a dinosaur — did they serve any purpose other than flight?
Dragged along the ground, those stone wings were pressing the flying-type experimental subject down with their own weight.
"Their shapes really are unusual."
"Yes. Naturally occurring magical beasts are more like animals or plants that have just grown larger…"
Alicia, crouched on one knee beside him watching them, murmured with concern.
"These magical beasts definitely don't look like any I know. From these forms, it's certain they're Experimental Subjects artificially engineered by Black Mages."
Noticing her voice trembled a little more than usual, Enoch glanced over.
"……"
For some reason, Alicia seemed to be holding back something she wanted to say, pressed firmly between her lips. Perhaps the memory of the field laboratory they had just seen had come to mind.
In truth, Enoch was sensing something off too, though in a slightly different way from her.
The humanoid experimental magical beasts Tantalus had created previously had certainly possessed combat capability.
But even so, those magical beasts hadn't been specimens so bloated all over — so extreme in their specialization for combat — that they couldn't even move properly in normal times.
There was no need to overthink it: this was the result of reinforcement and modification through Ixion's Unique Magic.
The differences between the two Annihilation Officers in disposition, and in the Unique Magic they had each manifested and perfected.
And because their goals — the ends they were pursuing through all these Experimental Subjects created by sacrificing so many lives — differed, these different phenomena emerged.
Enoch briefly narrowed his eyes.
It wasn't because he had any personal feeling about the situation — just that he was starkly realizing the sheer capability of those who had set this in motion.
Just two men.
The magical beasts created by Tantalus and Ixion, the two Annihilation Officers of Vendetta, had now spread to this extent, becoming an enormous threat potentially capable of destroying the entirety of the 19th Outsourcing District.
Why 10th Rank mages were regarded with such awe in the Empire.
And why the Empire was so wary of Black Mages, who were considered to have stepped outside the boundaries of humanity — just from this fact alone, it was plain to see.
"……Direct Lineage, there are too many enemies."
Following Alicia's gaze, which held a hint of unease, Enoch looked ahead — and took in the enemy base.
Beyond the curtain of thin rain falling. The experimental magical beasts, visible faintly through the green light leaking from between their carapace plates, were all different in form and size.
Apparently they were taking rest scattered in separate spots all over.
From creatures roughly the size of a human to creatures nearly the size of a small building, everything in between.
Enemies filled the whole area.
The two leaders — Indiviltal and Anarchilon — were undoubtedly somewhere out there too, but the sheer number of Experimental Subjects around made them impossible to spot.
On top of that, the huge trees of the forest were blocking the view. Between that and the rain suddenly pouring down, identifying the targets would prove quite difficult.
Lowering his stance, Enoch calmly glared ahead into the forest.
Just then, hidden behind a rock and scanning the surroundings with the binoculars Enoch had given her earlier, Alicia cried out softly.
"Direct Lineage, at seven o'clock, I've spotted movement suspected to be the top-priority target. Confirming!"
Following Alicia's gaze, 'that thing' was only about two hundred meters away.
"So that's the…"
Between the curtain of rain, the barricade of trees, and the wall of countless experimental magical beasts, a massive silhouette was moving sluggishly.
Something in the form of a spheroid, swollen like an enormous balloon, was there.
At first, given its sheer size, it could easily have been mistaken for a shadow between the trees, but once Alicia pointed it out, closer observation revealed clearly writhing movement.
Its full form still wasn't visible, obscured by dense tree trunks, but from size alone, it was easy to guess Monarch Class.
Leader-class magical beasts were ranked by their scale, so at a minimum, its size clearly exceeded 'Exceed' or 'Master' Class.
Enoch calmly stared at the unknown enemy.
"Definitely Monarch Class. But it's not Anarchilon."
Alicia looked back at Enoch and nodded firmly.
"Right. I've seen it myself from afar. But it didn't have that round shape!"
Enoch exchanged one glance with her, then shifted his gaze back to the unknown enemy.
Feeling sweat running down his palm from tension inside the hand gripping the strap of his cloth bag, Enoch looked through the forest where the magical beasts were deployed.
If it really was what he thought, then that enormous silhouette visible ahead — a form as large as a fifty-meter building laid on its side — what on earth could it be?
The answer was already decided.
"That leaves only one of the leaders."
Enoch slowly spoke.
"The other Monarch Class. Indiviltal."
At those words, a silence briefly fell over them. Only the tense breathing of the two girls and Enoch could be felt.
The tempo of the raindrops beginning to fall, one or two at a time, layered their sound with the wind. White spray rose all around, and the curtain of rain grew gradually thicker.
"Direct Lineage…"
Amid the wind whipping through thin streams of rain, Alicia rose and slowly raised her head, fixing her eyes on the enemy.
Her Dragoon uniform skirt flapping in the storm and rain, she glanced back at Enoch with resolute eyes.
"Give the order."