[152] Forced Breakthrough (7)
The squad leader's eyes looked ready to pop. An iron gate that wouldn't flinch at most siege engines had been punched through.
"Damn it! Hit him with direct fire!"
It was an order that smacked of desperation. With the gate already breached, if they failed to stop him here, the tide would swing sharply to the enemy's side.
Knowing that full well, the underlings aimed straight at Sirone and drew their bowstrings.
"Fire!"
Forty magistone rounds, loosed with all their might, screamed in toward the area around Sirone.
Even as he watched the arrows rush in, Sirone didn't move. Teleportation alone couldn't carry him beyond the blast radius.
But Space Shift was a different story.
The instant the forty arrows came crashing down, Sirone's body turned into a flash and shot skyward.
SCREEEEEEEEEE!
No sooner had the distinctive whine of Space Shift spread than a savage bombardment blanketed the spot where Sirone had been.
Tess stared, stupefied, at the barrage. With thunder echoing through the gorge, she felt as if she were standing in the heart of a battlefield.
"S-Sirone…"
The blast was enormous, and the roar alone was enough to rattle the mind. Because of that, nobody realized Sirone had cast Space Shift.
Except Amy. They say to an archer the hiss of an arrow is crispest, and to a swordsman the ring of steel is sharpest.
And so, as a mage, Amy could hear, even amid the deafening explosion, the distinct sound unique to Space Shift.
"Sirone's fine. Let's go in as well."
Amy cut through the smoke and moved forward. As expected, once she was past the blast zone, she could see Sirone standing before the gate.
Space Shift bends light. That's why the flash looks like it surges into the sky—it's only an illusion.
In reality, Sirone wasn't shooting into the air; space itself was bending.
What's more, that illusion is only noticeable from far away. At close range, what you perceive is simply that he vanishes.
This is precisely why mages identify Space Shift by sound.
"Puhahahaha! It's over! Totally over!"
"There's not even a trace left! Nothing to be afraid of now. Boys, all units—prepare to charge!"
Falcoa's underlings set down their bows and grabbed their weapons. The mage who had shown the scariest power was dead; there was nothing left to fear.
Watching them, Tess cocked her head. Sirone was standing before the gate like a grim reaper, and yet the enemy was cheering.
"What's with them?"
"They, like you, didn't hear the sound of Space Shift. They think Sirone's dead."
It didn't take long for Falcoa's men to correct their mistake.
As Sirone slowly backed up, stepping out from the wall's blind spot, they all recoiled as if they'd seen a ghost.
"L-Leader! There…!"
The leader's face flushed red. Sirone—who should have been blown limb from limb—was brazenly looking up at the wall.
"Y-you little bastard!"
Before launching into a full-on siege, Sirone decided to give them one last chance.
"Release Jis's younger sister. Do that, and we'll turn back here."
The leader stared blankly at Sirone. After all this ruckus, turn back? Turn back where? Did he think this was some amusement park taking admission tickets?
"You think we'll let you walk? A siege only truly begins after the gate's been breached. Do you even know how much that magic circle you wrecked cost? Not a debt you could pay with your life. I'll make you beg for death."
"I don't want to keep fighting a meaningless battle. You were in the wrong from the start. So I'd like this to end here."
"Puhahahaha! End it? Do you know who we are? We're the Aengmu Mercenary Corps—born on the battlefield, dying on the battlefield! Boys, move out! Slaughter them to the last!"
"Uwoooooooo!"
The soldiers lifted their blades with cocky shouts.
Seeing words wouldn't work, Sirone sighed and walked toward the wall's dead angle.
"Helpful of you to walk right in! Boys, get down there and— Huh?"
The leader cut himself off. A scene flashed across his mind:
That strange magic that had powdered the boulders falling into the valley. Was he truly confident this wall was harder than rock?
"H-hey, wait…!"
He bolted down the stairs to look at the gate. As expected, Sirone had slipped in through the hole in the iron and lowered his fist.
"H-hey, kid, this is a joke, right? Don't tell me you're about to—"
Terror quavered in the leader's voice. His mind felt bleached white.
"Hey! Don't! Do you have any idea how hard we worked to build this wall? Hey!"
Sirone finished spooling up the spell and glanced at the leader standing on the landing.
Meeting those eyes, the leader finally understood—Sirone had already decided.
"Evade! Everyone jump!"
As the leader shouted while scrambling up the stairs, Sirone murmured under his breath.
"Light Frenzy."
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM!
A twenty-meter-diameter Light Frenzy pulsed fifteen times a second. The wall shook as if an earthquake had struck, and Falcoa's men lost their footing and tumbled.
As expected of a massive structure, its durability was considerable. But Sirone didn't stop. All matter has a limit to its endurance. If you strike it until it fails, it will fail—such are the laws of physics.
The iron gate clanged like a hammered anvil, and cracks raced across the wall like lightning.
Those cracks branched again and again, infiltrating the whole structure, and at last the ground itself trembled as the first signs of collapse began.
The leader was beside himself.
He was a veteran, with a fair amount of siege experience, and while he had seen gates destroyed, this was his first time witnessing a brute-force tactic to bring down an entire fort.
"Uaaaah! All right! We lose! Stop!"
He screamed, but photons endowed with mass were drumming on the fortress like a percussion instrument; his voice didn't carry a meter.
'Damn it! This can't be happening!'
This was truly dangerous.
If the fortress went down like this, the fate of forty lives would be a matter only God could decide.
"Urrrrrgh!"
Frowning along the ridge of his nose, Sirone focused on Light Frenzy. With a rhythm that neither sped up nor slowed down, he batted everything around him outward.
From a vantage where the wall filled her view, Tess watched the spectacle, dumbstruck.
At first, the central section of the wall was partially smashed; then a hysteric web of cracks raced along the face. The left side seemed to sag a little, and then the right settled as if to balance it.
And finally…
RRRRRRRRRUMBLE!
The entire fortress collapsed.
"Good grief… He's basically a human siege engine."
Rian agreed with Tess's assessment. Up to now, Sirone had tended to use magic to protect someone.
Seeing what happened when he truly set his mind on breaking something—how different the results could be with the very same magic—hit home.
"He's certainly incredible. I guess I didn't really know Sirone either."
Amy smiled and agreed. Combat isn't everything to a mage, but it certainly is a matter of pride.
"Sirone rarely lets things escalate. But if he wants to, his combat ability itself is exceptional. At this level, he could rank comfortably in the upper tier of the graduating class."
Tess let out a small laugh. She knew what Amy was really saying.
'So she's been worrying about him without admitting it. Honestly, she's different on the inside than she looks.'
Amy was genuinely happy about Sirone's growth. At this pace, graduating alongside him might not be just a dream.
'You've come along, Sirone.'
When Light Frenzy ended, the wall lay completely in ruins. The side built facing the valley barely held its shape, but the center had collapsed as if a giant boulder had rolled over it.
"Ughhh…"
Soldiers buried in stone groaned and twitched.
Not one person was unscathed. The leader who had tried to stop Sirone couldn't avoid the collapse either, and his arm was broken.
But he was so stunned he couldn't even feel pain.
Five years of backbreaking work to establish the northern hideout flickered past his eyes like a lantern show.
"This is absurd. Annihilated by a single man? The Aengmu Mercenary Corps?"
At the sound of footsteps approaching, the leader flinched and turned his head. Meeting Sirone's fierce eyes, an uncontrollable terror surged up.
"Bring Jis's younger sister. Now. Or I won't let this slide."
"Eeek!"
Instinctively, the leader covered his face. His broken arm dropped like a pendulum and swung before his eyes.
"Ghhh…!"
Seeing his grotesquely bent arm, the leader's eyes rolled back and he fainted on the spot.
Sirone's party.
First gate: cleared.
"Wow. You're amazing, Sirone."
Marsha had been watching Sirone's battle from two hundred meters off the wall.
Sitting on a handkerchief she'd spread on the ground, she looked like a girl out on a picnic.
It was sad her underlings had suffered. But isn't bearing that sadness part of a mercenary's life? She herself was the one who'd lost hundreds, duped by politicians' tricks.
"So strong, and he fooled everyone cleanly. No—maybe he was so relaxed because he's strong."
She'd known he had talent for magic, but hadn't expected this level of performance.
What impressed her most was that all of Sirone's magic seemed to be applications built off a proprietary power source of his own.
"An Unlocker…"
Marsha was in a good mood.
She liked that Sirone was strong, and she liked that he was a "fake" kind of person who tried to shoulder other people's pain.
Best of all—what thrilled her—was the fact that before long, that pure and beautiful boy would be pulped by her own hand.
"You're ten years too early to catch me, brat."
Marsha stretched and rose to her feet. Her bracelet flared, and in an instant it hurled her body toward the northern cliff.
Second Encounter (1)
Sirone's party kept heading north. With most of Falcoa's underlings injured at the first gate, no battle broke out.
"This way."
Finding a path through the woods was Amy's job.
In a natural maze, if you run without thinking, you're liable to lose your sense of direction.
But such common wisdom didn't apply to Amy. Following behind, Tess recognized that Amy had a knack that would shine in espionage.
'Huh. So this is another way to use those Crimson Eyes.'
Amy's self-image memory restores a specific moment's state perfectly. So long as she didn't lose consciousness, she could pinpoint her bearings no matter where she was moved.
"Amy, there's a mountain path over there."
At Sirone's words, Amy veered and led them out of the forest.
A winding mountain path flowed up toward the crest of the terrain.
Tess checked the ground. The tracks suggested time had passed, but the ruts of a wagon remained.
"From here on, we're in their stomping grounds. In siege terms, we've entered the inner bailey, right?"
It was welcome news to the group, tired from sprinting through the woods.
But it still wasn't time to relax. They had taken out most of the rank and file, but the so-called officers hadn't shown their noses.
"Follow this road and we'll hit the hideout. Just a bit more—hang in there."
Amy spoke as if certain, but she couldn't be sure. She said it out of a leader's duty to keep her friends' spirits up.
Totaling up the movement in her self-image memory—the battle's maneuvers and the arcing distances—they'd covered roughly twelve kilometers since the fighting began. Converted to a straight line, they had advanced more than seven kilometers on the map.