2

That’s right.

Keep coming. Straight this way.

Vassago savored the experience of the ambush, rolling the flavor of it on his tongue like a piece of candy. His hiding ability was flawless. Even the negative concealment of his metal armor didn’t have an effect on the way he melted into the darkness of the shrubbery.

The dark-brown-haired girl was being cautious, but even her piercing gaze just passed right over his hiding spot. Seven more yards…five…

Nice. Very nice. Oh, it’s been too long since I did this.

When she was within ten feet, the girl suddenly turned to her right, moving in the direction of the body Vassago had hidden. He’d been hoping to draw her even closer, but this would have to do.

He slid, silent, out of the darkness, closing in on her, hand reaching for her back. He would cover her mouth, and when her throat convulsed with fear, he would draw his sharp dagger right across it…

The premonition, the anticipation of the moment was so strong and real that Vassago failed to react immediately to the blade that flashed before his eyes.

“…Whoa!”

He darted backward just as the tip of the blade grazed the exposed skin under his chin.

The girl shouldn’t have been aware of him at all, but she’d drawn and swung her sword from an away-facing position. It was a brilliant swing—if he’d been one step closer, she would have slit his throat.

When she faced him, sword held in two hands, the girl’s navy-blue eyes were full of fear and hostility but not surprise. Vassago had to reluctantly admit that she had seen through his attempt at hiding quite a while ago.

He spun the dagger in his fingers and said “Hey, baby” in English, then recalled that it wasn’t spoken here, so he switched to perfectly accentless Japanese instead. “How did you know, Miss?”

The girl kept her sword up, not letting her guard lapse, and said harshly, “My mentor taught me not to rely on my eyes…but to feel with my entire being.”

“Y-your mentor…?” Vassago repeated, blinking. He felt some distant memory being triggered, a quote he’d heard years ago…

But before he could travel back to the source of that memory, the girl sucked in a deep breath and shouted, incredibly loud, “Enemy attack!! Enemy attaaack!!”

He clicked his tongue and stashed the dagger at his side. Playtime was over.

Vassago raised his left hand and shouted, “All right, boys…Time to go to work!!”

This time, there was real shock in the girl’s eyes.

A hundred or so feet behind Vassago, the brush rustled as people stood up—thirty lightly armored scouts handpicked from the dark knights. A second girl, who’d jumped out of the wagon after the warning, and the ten or so soldiers who’d rushed down from the north all froze in unison.

“Wha—? Enemies in the rear?! Dozens of them?!” Renly shouted back when he received the report from the supply team.

Oh no…Oh no!

If they attacked the wagons and burned all the supplies, the army would be immobilized. Not to mention those three children were in the back. He had sworn to protect the two student girls and the young man they watched over.

He had to send a hundred men—no, two hundred. But if he started sending the main forces now, the enemies approaching from the north might pick up on the ambush being set for them. If that happened, his side would be utterly crushed before the numerical superiority of the enemies.

Or should he assume that they’d seen through the ambush already? Would it be better to send everyone south and hope for another chance to strike back later?

Renly couldn’t come to an immediate decision with what he knew.

But just then, he heard a deep voice ask, “So they knew we would be heading south and had forces in place and on the lookout for us…?”

It was Commander Bercouli and Alice, returning from the hill to the north. From Renly’s perspective, they might as well be legendary figures, far beyond his level, but they both looked near desperate. Alice in particular seemed ready to rush to the supply team’s aid.

Over Bercouli’s shoulder, Renly could see the faint outline of a dust cloud to the north, kicked up by the pursuing army beyond the hilly region between them.

The commander briefly closed his eyes, then opened them, the gray-blue portals piercing. “Renly, have the troops retreat. Little Miss, go help the supply team at once. I’ll hold off the enemies to the north.”

“Hold them off…? But, Uncle, there are over five thousand pugilists among them! And you said that swords don’t work on—”

“Look, I’ll manage. Just go! Remember that it was your idea to use up every last man to whittle down the enemy’s numbers, Little Miss…I mean, Alice!”

And with that, Bercouli spun to the north. His gnarled right hand reached across his body to draw the Time-Splitting Sword. The faded color of the aged blade made it clear at a glance that there was very little life left in it.

Three bursts of sparks lit the darkness in succession.

The dark-brown-haired girl had blocked each of Vassago’s swings the first time she saw them. And he had used continuous sword techniques. So when the third blow knocked the sword loose from her hands and caused it to stick into the trunk of a nearby tree, the assassin couldn’t help but whistle in appreciation.

The girl bravely put up her fists, but he dropped her to the ground with a sweep kick. She landed hard on her back and grunted in pain.

“Ronieeee!!” screamed the second girl, racing closer.

Vassago put the tip of his sword against the throat of the girl on the ground, forcing the red-haired one to stop. Her skinny legs halted, trembling.

“Heh…heh, heh,” he chuckled through his mask, unable to help himself.

This is it. This is the feeling.

The pleasure of having someone’s life and everything they possessed balanced on the point of his sword. It was the ultimate pleasure of player killing and why he would never be able to give it up.

“…I’m not going to kill you as long as you stay there and behave,” he whispered to the other girl, then leaned over the girl whose name was apparently Ronie. Behind them, thirty blood-starved scouts drew ever closer.

Ronie’s big eyes began to fill with tears of fear and humiliation. All the determination that had rippled through her was turning to despair…

…?

Suddenly, her eyes were focused not on Vassago’s face but on the sky above him. Something was reflecting in those wet irises.

Light.

Motes of milky-white light, falling from above. They drifted downward as soft as snowflakes. Vassago looked up slowly, feeling an eerie thrill of dread down his spine.

Black sky. Stars the color of blood.

And floating against them, a small silhouette—but one that radiated an immense power.

A person. A woman.

A breastplate that shone as though made of pearl. Gauntlets and boots of the same color.

Her long skirt was stitched together from countless fine fabrics that hung loose and flapped like wings. Her long hair, trailing in the night breeze, was a shining chestnut brown.

“Lady…Stacia,” Ronie mumbled from the ground.

Vassago never heard her say it. The instant that he caught a glimpse of the woman’s face descending from the starry sky above, the assassin rose to his feet, drawn to the sight of her.

Free from his threat, Ronie scrambled back to her friend, but he did not even look back at her.

The figure floating in the air reached out her right hand.

Five slender fingers lightly swiped sideways.

Laaaaaaaaah.

A tremendous, rich harmony shook the world, like a chorus of thousands of angels bursting into song. A curtain of light, like the aurora borealis, shot from the figure’s fingers and rained down behind Vassago.

Rumbling ensued—and screams.

Vassago spun around to see a yawning, bottomless ravine in the earth—and his thirty followers being swallowed up by it.

Dumbfounded, he turned bulging eyes to the sky. The woman lifted her right hand again and this time waved it toward the north.

There was another angelic chorus. The aurora that shot down was dozens of times larger than the first, and the effect it had on the ground below was beyond the capacity of his mind to envision.

Lastly, the floating woman looked directly down upon Vassago. Her index finger flicked empty air.

Laaaaaaah.

Rainbow light enveloped him. The ground beneath his feet vanished.

As he plunged into endless darkness below, Vassago thrust his hand upward, trying to grab the tiny figure.

“No way…You gotta be kidding me,” he said, his voice tremulous.

That face.

That hair.

That presence.

“Isn’t that…the Flash from the KoB?”

Commander Bercouli stood in place, sword dangling from his hand.

An enormous fissure, at least a hundred mels across, yawned before him in the earth. It continued as far as he could see at a glance to his right and left, and it was impossible to gauge its depth. Pieces of rock continually spilled over the lip of the fissure, but he never heard any of them strike the bottom.

And the fissure had not existed just seconds before this moment.

Rainbow light had shone down from the heavens with a tremendous harmony, splitting the earth in two where it touched. Not a thousand—or ten thousand—sacred arts masters working together, not even Administrator herself could achieve the altering of creation itself like this.

It was divine. It was godly power.

First Vecta, and now another god had come to Earth.

Such was Bercouli’s first thought, with a deathly chill down his back, but he soon reconsidered.

On the far bank of the massive gouge in the earth, five thousand pugilists stood dumbfounded, their access blocked.

If an all-powerful god with the ability to give and take life had decided to side with the Human Guardian Army, she would have dragged all those pugilists down into the fissure in the earth, too. But she had placed it so they had just enough room to safely come to a stop, despite their sprinting speed.

The knights’ commander sensed an emotion in this, a hesitation to take many lives.

He sensed that this was human will at work.