Chapter 18
Chapter 18
AXEHOLM, a stone spire as big as a skyscraper, now faced a crisis.
Until now, the rust beasts had stayed in the ore mine they’d commandeered, but a group of them had suddenly moved in. From above, we could see countless shadows swarming the outer wall of Axeholm, like ants attacking a sugar hill.
The silhouette of a rust beast was a lizard with six legs. But its entire body was covered in thick, red-brown rust, and an unusually long tongue waved from its mouth. It could be distinguished by the straight, pointy horns that grew out of its head. The horns in the back were long, and the ones in the front were short.
“Shweee!”
“Sha-geee!”
I had once heard a gecko “crying” on a video site, and that’s exactly what these things sounded like. Their eerie cries enveloped Axeholm.
The beasts swarmed over the outer walls of Axeholm, looking for a hole to infiltrate. They stuck their heads into the narrow windows and air holes within the stone. With their three-meter-long bodies, they couldn’t really fit through any of these holes, but when they saw metal parts and ore inside, they happily stuck out their tongues.
Those long tongues had holes in their tips that looked like the mouth of a hose, and their entire length dripped with a noxious mucus. Any metal touched by the tips of those tongues immediately started to corrode from the mucus—it was essentially a powerful acidic spit. Ultimately, they used the hole in their tongues to happily slurp up the rust.
The outer walls of Axeholm were mainly made of stone, which had kept them from infiltrating the perimeter, at least so far.
Meanwhile, the main gate was in crisis mode. Gazod of House Valvaron, leader of Axeholm’s military, shouted orders to his troops.
“Damn it! We need rocks! Bring rocks or lumber!”
“Y-yes, sir!”
Apparently, it had all begun with a surprise attack at dawn. The one saving grace was that they hadn’t yet opened the main gate at the time. Even so, there were more than ten beasts clambering along the outside of the main gate, corroding the door to their hearts’ content. This was a rare case in which the dwarves’ belief that metal was better than wood had backfired. The main gate of Axeholm was primarily made of steel.
At this rate, the main gate would soon fall, and the rust beasts would pour into Axeholm. Gazod was going hoarse barking orders to somehow try and avoid that fate.
All the other dwarves desperately struggled to help the soldiers of House Valvaron. They stacked up stone and wood in front of the main gate as quickly as they could. The dwarves had prepared for a rust beast attack, but they’d never anticipated an attack of this magnitude.
Thoom!
“Aaagh!!”
Ribbons of pink flesh slipped through numerous holes punched in the main gate. Masses of mucus burst from the tips of the rust beasts’ tongues.
A saliva acidic enough to melt steel struck the soldiers as they clutched their spears, splashing over the workers who were carrying lumber. The victims screamed, rolling around frantically to try and save themselves.
“Wipe off the spit!” barked the commander.
“W-we can’t keep up, sir! There’s too many!”
“Help me…!”
The dwarves’ sturdy armor was useless. Everyone hit with the saliva swiftly burned into smoldering husks. All that remained was rust and corpses. Then, the tongues that had shot the mucus greedily stretched out to slurp up the delicious rust.
“Dammit! Where are the siege weapons?! We’ll hit ’em with the power of fire-water! Let’s fry these blighters!”
“N-no, commander! Look! The main gate!”
The gate towered more than ten meters high, but it was filled with corroded holes. The whole thing began slowly caving in under the weight of the rust beasts stuck to its outer side.
“Shweee!”
“Sha-gee, gee! Shree-ree-reeee!”
The six-legged beasts waved their long tongues and tails as they waltzed right into Axeholm.
***
“Lord Margilus!”
“Margilus!”
I went out into the corridor with my Staff of Wizardry and Infinity Bag slung across my back to meet up with my friends. We didn’t really know the situation, but judging from the commotion we heard below, the rust beasts were already inside.
“Lord Margilus!” An out-of-breath dwarf ran up, calling for me. It was Feivel. Other dwarves were calmly evacuating humans from their guest quarters. I caught a glimpse of the blonde-haired girl among the fleeing merchants—the same girl we’d seen in the elevator. I hope she makes it out in one piece.
“A-Axeholm is surrounded by rust beasts,” Feivel informed us, “and the main gate has been destroyed!”
It took me a moment to process. “The main gate already fell?”
“I-It’s the worst thing that could have happened! The rust beasts are getting closer! I-If they come all the way in here…Please, I know this wasn’t the plan, but protect Axeholm!” Feivel begged me shamelessly, ignoring the fact that his glasses were slipping down. This desperation reminded me of when Mora had asked for my help in the past.
I didn’t even need to think about my answer. “Leave it to us.”
I took Clara, Reyha, and Lade and headed toward the main gate.
Apparently, there was some sort of shelter in the basement levels where Ild, Ted, and the three recruits would hole up.
***
In the end, we never reached the main gate. The rust beasts had already advanced as far as Main Street and were approaching the elevator hall.
There were so many of them. Monsters crowded the entire breadth of Main Street. The beautiful shop where Clara had been window shopping just days before was completely destroyed.
“If rust beasts really like precious metals,” Lade cut in, “then do you think they’re aiming for…you know…”
Lade eyed the sparkling green elevators. Every piece of them was made from mirsdine. If I had to think of an equivalent in Japanese games, that stuff was probably Sedia’s equivalent to mithril or adamantium. Lade was right. They’d love to get their disgusting tongues on it.
“Shu-gee-geee! Shree-ree-reeee!”
“Fire! Fire! Fire at will!”
The dwarf soldiers had formed a barricade at the entrance and were desperately firing their crossbows and ballistae.
A ballista is a giant artillery weapon that takes multiple people to load. It fires spear-like arrows, kind of like a giant crossbow. They had five ballistae lined up and were firing as quickly as they could. The actions of the soldiers in charge of operating the ballistae and the mechanisms on the ballistae were excellent. The considerable speed at which they shot the arrows compared to the length of the beasts made the dwarves look extremely skilled.
But…
Thud! Thud!
The beasts heartlessly climbed over their fallen, spear-skewered brethren. Shots of deadly mucus rained from their tongues. Each beast could only shoot one load of mucus at a time, but there were just so many of them.
“Whaaa?!”
“Aaaghh!!”
“It’s hot! Hot! Heeelp meee!”
The ballistae and the soldiers operating them were melting and crumbling. This battle… Just the sheer grotesqueness of it is worse than the daemons.
“Margilus! Wall of Force! That should protect us from the acid!”
Clara’s advice wasn’t bad, but I shook my head. “I used up all of my Wall of Force and Wall of Stone charges yesterday. I never got a chance to refresh.”
Clara froze for a second. “What…?”
I knew I should have trusted my gut.
I cursed my own poor planning and tried to think of another plan. Part of me was paralyzed by the sheer gravity of the scene, but I had the mind of Geo Margilus, and it worked a mile a minute.
Since I had given that presentation to the dwarves the day before, I’d mostly charged spells for creating monsters and walls instead of attack spells. But that meant I had also mostly used up spells like Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, and Create Monster. What’s more, I was unable to charge spells that morning, so I was left with very few choices at that moment.
For example, my Rank 7 spell situation was this:
RANK 7 SPELLS
Spell Name - Remaining Uses / Total Charged
Create Ogre Platoon - 0/2
Create Monster - 0/3
Sense of the Adept - 1/1
Apport - 1/1
Transport - 1/1
RANK 8 SPELLS
Spell Name - Remaining Uses / Total Charged
Create Monster: Special - 0/5
Wall of Force - 0/1
Greater Transform Other - 1/1
Six Runes - 1/1
RANK 9 SPELLS
Spell Name - Remaining Uses / Total Charged
Meteor - 2/2
Complete Recovery - 2/2
Time Stop - 1/1
Create Monster: Any - 1/2
Chaotic Wall - 1/1
Invincibility - 1/1
In here, Meteor and Chaotic Wall were too risky, and Rank 6 attack spells like Fireball, Lightning, or Ice Storm would run out too quickly. Soldiers of Bronze would make for good bait. We would have to fight the king beast later anyhow.
“Shreereeree!”
“Sha-gee!”
“Lord Margilus,” Feivel screamed, watching the beasts break through the barricade. “Is there nothing we can do?!”
I had no choice. I would have to start with Create Monster: Any.
“Hey.”
Something suddenly hit my shoulder, hard. It was Lade, putting his hand on my back.
I looked up at him, surprised. “Are you going to fight?”
“Fight?” Lade sneered beneath his ghoulish helmet. “A warrior only fights when he is hunting daemons. But since these bastards interrupted my day off…”
He slowly drew his greatsword.
“Today, I’m on pest control duty.”
***
“Wait just a second longer,” I cautioned Lade and Reyha.
The warrior had his blade braced on his shoulder, ready to go. Reyha stood with daggers in hand. My imagined self quickly dipped into the fifth-level spellbook archive.
Clara waved her staff beside me. “Falbolza Chain!”
“Shreereeree?!”
Eight fire arrows fell upon the beasts. The flames singed their rusty skin, but a bit of fire wasn’t enough to slay them. It did, however, slow their advance.
“Don’t give up!” the dwarf commander bellowed. “We stop them here!”
“Rah! Rah! Valor!”
“Valor!”
At their commander’s order, the dwarf soldiers used a wooden ladder to keep the beasts from advancing. It was probably an improvised response to deal with the strong acid spit, but I was impressed by how quickly they adapted, dropping fur and wooden boards on the beasts from above.
“As a consequence of this spell, the physical abilities of all allies within a three-meter radius of me will be enhanced. Physical Boost!
“As a consequence of this spell, the weapons of all allies within a three-meter radius of me will be enhanced in both strength and accuracy. Enchant!”
It took a precious twenty seconds to cast those two spells. The glimmering enchantments enveloped my friends, strengthening both them and their weapons.
“Okay,” I cried out. “Do it!”
“Let’s not waste time,” rumbled Lade.
“On it,” said Clara.
We rushed into the tunnel that was filled with the strange monsters.
“Huh?” Clara let out a gasp of surprise, a fierce expression on her face.
***
“Shree-ree-reeee!”
“Aaagh!”
We soon discovered the purpose of the lopsided horns on the rust beasts’ heads. The short horns on their foreheads popped out as if powered by springs, skewering the dwarves. When that happened, the back horns shrank in size, so they must have been somehow sliding back and forth inside their heads. Perhaps they normally used those horns to mine for ore to eat.
“Hraaahh!”
A dwarf who’d been pierced through the middle swung his ax down with surprising force, crushing one of the eyes of the beast that had wounded him.
“Shu-gee?!”
It let out an eerie scream, but then aimed its acid tongue at the dwarf.
“Eyaaagh!”
A dark shadow fell in front of that particular beast. It was Reyha, leaping as if gravity didn’t apply to her. Before her feet hit the ground, she had already cut off the tip of the beast’s tongue with her daggers.
“Shu-geee?!”
The beast arched back, screeching as the dwarf flipped into the air and fell. At that moment, a figure some three times larger than a dwarf rushed in.
“Hmph!”
With a sharp breath, Lade lunged straight ahead, greatsword slashing for the kill. The impact of his blade to the beast’s chest was an explosion. Its body, bigger than a cow’s torso, split cleanly in half.
“Shu-gyeeeaaah?!”
“Whoa…!” At the screams of the beast, the dwarves looked up in shock. “Damn it all, what was that?!”
“Shri-ree-reee!”
“Shwee!”
The other beasts began to realize that the warrior and dark elf weren’t the kind of enemies they were used to. They all aimed their tongues in unison to create a shower of acidic saliva.
But those two weren’t waiting around to be targets.
“Yah!”
Reyha leaped up again. Actually, it seemed as if she had yet to touch the ground. She bounded off the heads and backs of the beasts, then from the pillars and walls of the tunnel. Everywhere her foot touched, I saw a spark of something like lightning.
“Shu-gee?!”
“Shweee!”
Every time Reyha came close to a beast, she cut off its tongue, its head, or an errant limb. Blood sprayed copiously in her wake.
If Reyha was lightning, Lade was a tornado.
“Hyaaaaah!”
“Shu-geeaaa?!”
“Shu-gee-gee-gee!”
As he stomped on his fallen prey, he hefted his mighty sword onto one shoulder to slash the throats of the beasts who remained. And then he swung—a huge arc that moved faster with every second. He spun off his back foot, drawing a large circle with his sword. Another beast tried to stretch out its tongue, but its head was instantly split in two.
Lade took a wide step with each new rotation, maintaining slashing speed. Soon he was on his third rotation. When his massive body finally stopped for a moment, a number of beasts moved in—
Only to be greeted by a wave of steel rotating in the opposite direction. Lade hadn’t stopped. He had simply wound up his body inside his oddly shaped armor and then released it like a spring. No matter how many times the beasts targeted them with their acidic spit, Reyha and Lade never stopped carving through them.
Splattered pools of the saliva that had so easily melted the dwarves hissed all over the floor, and in some places, upon still-burning corpses. Standing in the ruin of the herd of beasts, we all finally had a moment to breathe.
“What about the others?” I asked the commander.
I kept an eye on the soldiers repairing the barricade and tending to the injured while I spoke to him. Feivel had already explained that he was the head of House Valvaron.
“Right,” he said. “Sounds like our other positions haven’t yet been compromised. But there are still beasts stuck to the outer walls…and the Rust King is approaching.”
Even given the gravity of the situation, the commander had a firm grasp of the battlefield. The biggest problem was going to be the king.
“First of all, can we push them back to the main gate?”
Reyha and Lade probably had a handle on that, though it was likely to take some time.
***
I used Lightning twice and Ice Storm once to clean up the rust beasts who were occupying Main Street. The only reason I had time to cast spells on beasts with acid spit at their disposal was because of Reyha and Lade’s extraordinary vanguard.
“Now I just have Lightning one more time and Fireball twice. I’m glad I kept Destruction, even if I can only cast it once. I doubt Sleep will work…”
The bisected and burnt corpses of monsters littered the path to the main gate. Reyha and Lade had both knelt down, looking exhausted. I think they were actually more tired than they might have been otherwise, thanks to the added power of their enchantments—they’d used up too much energy.
“They’re coming this way,” someone shouted.
“Mmm,” Lade grunted.
They were probably talking about the beasts that had been crawling on the outer wall. Had the things noticed that their companions had all been annihilated? They dexterously used their six limbs to drop down from the wall.
“Sorry, wizard.” The commander smiled grimly. “It’s going to take a bit longer to patch this up. Can you buy us some time?”
“Please, Mister Margilus!” Feivel shouted.
They both looked at me hopefully. We had to somehow take care of the beasts outside and slay the king…
Of course I’d do it. “Leave it all to us.”
We moved outside. Enemies dotted the wide-open space beyond the gate. I took stock of the situation and my remaining spells, trying to decide which to use next.
I couldn’t waste even one more spell.
“Grooooo!”
I used Create Monster: Any to make three red dragons appear in the air above Axeholm. They were the small red dragons I’d used more than once before. Since they were Level 12, I was able to make three at once.
The commander stepped out after us. “Goodness… I know I saw them yesterday, but it really is amazing…”
I telepathically commanded the dragons to attack the rust beasts. From the perspective of the freely flying, fire-breathing dragons, the beasts probably looked like little more than bugs. The problem was that this spell only lasted for thirty minutes.
“Wow, that’s great!”
Dwarves watched from the windows of Axeholm, cheering us on.
“Get ’em!”
“Burn those rusty monsters up!”
The dragons got right to work. Their breath immolated the beasts on the Axeholm outer wall and in the surrounding fields. The dragons were more effective in one-on-one combat than I’d expected, but the problem was the sheer number of beasts.
I prioritized attacks on the beasts that were closest to the main gate, but thirty minutes didn’t seem like enough time to wipe them all out.
“Wizard!”
“What is it?”
It seemed the commander had received a report from a messenger. He looked at me with sad eyes. “It looks like the Rust King is finally approaching. We’re going to take him down with the troops we have left. I’m entrusting the defense of Axeholm to you!”
I was silent.
It wasn’t only sadness I saw in the commander’s eyes. There was a burning sense of mission and fighting spirit. The same resolve was evident among the workers and laborers struggling to get the main gate closed and the soldiers picking up their weapons.
It reminded me of the way Sedam and Gillion had looked at me in front of the daemon nest before. Thinking of Japan, I wondered if it was the same look in the eyes of SDF and rescue workers when faced with a disaster. To me, who’d never done anything but office work, it was a grand thing.
But… But…
“No.” I stepped forward. “You’ve got it the wrong way around.”
The commander balked. “What?”
“Garde already gave me my duty. And it should be a magic user who takes on such an unreasonable opponent.”
I couldn’t hide behind my ‘office worker’ facade forever. No matter what I was inside, I had already become a lord. I was the great magic user. Even if I was just faking it.
I wiped my sweaty palms on my robes and gripped my Staff of Wizardry. “Well, no matter how strong the Rust King is, we’re outside now. Let’s see how it likes the taste of Meteor.”
“A meteor?! No, Mister Margilus, you mustn’t!”
Huh?
***
Feivel was desperately trying to stop me.
All of the dwarves’ living quarters and their important public areas were located underground. They were lucky that the rust beasts and their king hadn’t found a way to get underground, but if stones dropped from above and crushed the basement levels…it would be bad.
It made sense. “Oh, I see.”
“You see what, exactly?!” Clara yelled at me, shrill. “If you can’t drop your meteor, then how will you defeat the king?!”
I wanted to say that there was more to me than just dropping rocks, but my spell stock was lacking. The dragons were busy exterminating the beasts on Axeholm’s walls.
“I can use low-rank spells to wear him down,” I assured her. “And I’ve got something else up my sleeve.”
That last part was true. It wasn’t something I wanted to resort to, though. Well, as long as the Rust King wasn’t a super monster like a Great Wyrm or something, it would all work out.
“My lord!” Reyha stood up. “I’m coming with you!”
Lade slowly levered himself to his feet. “Seems like there’s still a few more pests to take care of…”
I appreciated the sentiment, but I shook my head. “I’m going to attack from a distance with spells. You guys protect the main gate.”
I used a spell to summon a black horse with a pale blue aura. I hadn’t used Phantom Horse in a while. I would ride him out to take on the king a safe distance away from Axeholm.
“Wait!” Clara grabbed my arm. Before I had time to ask her what she was doing, she mounted the saddle of my phantom horse.
“You can’t cast spells while holding the reins, can you? I’ll steer. Get on!”
“O-oh…”
Clara had ridden on the phantom horse with me before. Back then, we’d even flown. And she was right, if I rode on the back, the phantom horse could fly while I cast my spells. We’d be like some kind of four-legged bomber.
There was only one thing wrong with this picture…