Interception

Esper tucked the necklace into her collar and pointed to the north.

“We take the Northern Main Road. She left through the main gate last night; that's the path she took.”

Starting from the northern gate of the City of Holy Radiance, heading all the way north along the Northern Main Road, passing through several border villages, would eventually lead to the edge of the Black Tide contaminated zone.

At Esper's speed, it would take less than half a day to catch up.

Assuming there was no interference along the way.

Yat finished off her apple in two or three bites, casually tossed the core into a trash bin in the corner of the square, and clapped her hands clean.

“Let's go then. You can tell me more about that mage girl on the way.”

“Okay.”

...

Esper moved swiftly along the road that followed.

Her boots trod heavily on the packed dirt road, every step filled with suppressed anxiety.

The Holy Sword hung at her waist, the white light on its blade pulsing in rhythm with her steps, as if beating along with her heart.

Yat followed close behind. The necklace swayed gently against her neck, its three silver cubes clinking together with a soft, metallic ring.

With two Rank Seven powerhouses traveling at high speed, they soon passed the first outpost.

Esper questioned the outpost master there, who confirmed that a blue-haired girl had indeed passed by alone during the night.

“Which way did she go?”

“North.”

That was all.

Esper offered her thanks and continued on her way.

On the way to the second outpost, Yat removed one of the three silver cubes from her necklace as she walked, tossing it idly in her hand.

“Say, are you sure she was set up by the Pope? Is it possible she actually wanted to run away on her own?”

Esper did not answer.

Yat shrugged and squeezed the cube back into her palm.

The moment the cube returned to her palm, the clouds in the sky suddenly erupted into flames.

Something was falling from above the cloud line.

At first, it was a single streak of orange-red light cutting across the sky, then a second, a third, and soon, countless more.

An ominous dark red glow bled through the tears in the clouds, and then a torrent of fiery meteors poured down from the rifts, trailing black smoke as they hurtled toward Esper and Yat's position.

The first fiery meteor crashed less than twenty paces from Esper, followed immediately by a second and a third.

The impact points crept closer and closer, until one was plunging straight toward the spot where Esper stood.

Before Esper could move, Yat acted first.

She ripped the silver cube from her necklace, crushing it in her grip with blinding speed.

The instant the cube shattered, silvery-white metal erupted outward from her palm, transforming into a sword-spear.

The metal then reorganized into armor over her body, spreading from her arms to her shoulders, torso, and legs.

“『Autonomous Pseudo-Engine: Apostle Hector』!”

Plate armor formed over her skin, interlocking layer upon layer, while spear-tip-shaped metal winglets extended from both sides of her shoulders.

Yat gripped the sword-spear with both hands, pointed it high into the sky, and channeled her mana.

“『Troy's Eternal Glory』!”

The tip of the spear began to heat up at an extreme speed. With the very tip as the boundary, an invisible gravity field expanded above her head.

The moment the falling meteors entered the gravity field, their trajectories violently warped, steering them away from their original targets and crashing into the desolate fields on either side of the main road.

The ground trembled continuously under the successive impacts, sending burning debris scattering in all directions.

“They got here pretty fast.”

Yat's voice sounded entirely unbothered.

She slung the sword-spear over her shoulder, her gaze sweeping across the smoking, blackened craters.

Esper glanced at her armor.

“Are you jealous?” Noelle asked in a breezy tone.

“...Just a bit curious.”

“Well, these Type IV pseudo-engines—the autonomous ones, that is—were the main culprits behind the angel rebellion. I'd advise you not to get too curious about them.”

“...I understand.”

Yat's voice drifted over, calm and detached.

“Miss Hero, an attack of this scale isn't something ordinary small fry can pull off.

There is a high-ranking caster nearby, or someone set up a spell formation here in advance.”

Before Esper could answer, the dirt beneath her feet began to churn.

A pale skeletal hand burst from the ground, its five finger bones clawing at the air before gripping the soil to drag itself out.

Then came a second, a third...

Countless skeletal hands sprouted like bamboo shoots after a rain from the soil on both sides of the road. Some were humanoid, some were deformed creatures with three skulls, and a few skeletons, significantly larger than the rest, still retained their horns and claws from life, looking like the remains of ancient demons.

They crawled out from all directions, their white bones gleaming coldly in the morning light. The phosphorus fires in their eye sockets flickered chaotically, resembling a swarm of leaderless fireflies.

Esper placed her hand on the hilt of the Holy Sword.

“『Storm』!”

A cyan light flared on the blade, creeping along the spine to the tip, where it burst into a dense web of electric arcs.

She drew the Holy Sword and swept it horizontally. A gale poured from the blade, carrying countless tiny streaks of cyan lightning, acting like an invisible broom sweeping from one end of the road to the other.

The moment the skeletons touched the storm, they were torn to shreds. Bone fragments and phosphorus fire were swept into the air, raining down over the smoking, desolate ground.

“Oho, not bad power.”

Yat rested her sword-spear on her shoulder, her tone slightly surprised.

“Summoning skeletons on this scale and level takes quite a bit of effort, and you cleared them out in one go? Not bad at all.”

“...Yes.”

Esper gave a brief nod, then turned her gaze to the end of the road, where two figures had finally emerged.

A tall, thin figure wearing a beast-bone mask sat cross-legged at the foot of a hillock, hands resting on his knees in the exact same posture he had held while meditating in the corner of the guild last night. However, his fingers were twisting and shifting in a bizarre rhythm. With every change, the shattered bone fragments on the ground around him twitched and danced.

Behind Beast Mask, his companion—a figure draped in a worn grey cloak—knelt on one knee, cradling the yellowed old book in his hands.

He did not move, but the book in his hands flipped its pages automatically. With every page turned, new dark green runes floated up from the paper and sank into the ground.

Esper recognized them. Yesterday in the guild, these two had been sitting in the corner—one buried in his book, the other meditating cross-legged.

At the time, she had only glanced at them before looking away. She never expected their next meeting to be under these circumstances.

“A peak Rank Six shaman and warlock. People usually just call them Beast Mask and Remains.”

Yat introduced them.

“...Why are they attacking us? Is it a commission posted by Beatrice?”

“That, I wouldn't know. The commission listed a joint campaign to subjugate a powerful monster, and the location was in the exact opposite direction.”

Esper took a step forward, channeling mana into her chest to project her voice forward.

“I don't want to fight you.”

There was no response. Beast Mask's fingers shifted into another gesture, and a red glow began to brew in the sky once more.

“...Fine then.”

Esper raised her hand and fired off several Crimson Pierces. At the same time, the writing on Remains's book suddenly flared with green light.

Mid-flight, the Crimson Pierces were stained with a sickly green hue. As if they had spoiled, they splashed onto the ground, dissolving a small pit in the soil.

“...”

Esper dashed forward.

In any case, there was no real difference between sniping with Crimson Pierce and just cutting them down; either way, she had to keep moving forward. She might as well charge.

She activated Crimson Scale Surge, and then Winged King burst from her back in two plumes of blood mist. She dragged the Holy Sword behind her, its tip plowing a thin, scorched furrow in the ground.

Dash. Draw. Slash. That was all she needed.

There was no need to waste time on these people who wanted to kill her, and she didn't have time to waste anyway. Eladia was still on the road.

Then, a metallic figure plunged vertically from above.

The air around it was compressed into white turbulence, and the heat generated by friction scorched a dark red aura onto its metal shell.

The figure suddenly transformed in mid-air, about a hundred meters above the ground.

Originally a glider mimicking a pterosaur, the moment it began to descend, the wings were retracted into its body. In their place, heavy stegosaur-like bone plates rose in neat rows along both sides of its spine.

The armor on its shoulders and elbows thickened dramatically, swelling its entire upper body into the shape of a metal artillery shell.

He slammed straight down toward Esper.

Stegosaurus.

Dinoman.

“...Yat!”

“I know, I know. I'll leave dealing with those two in the back to you.”

Yat thrust Hector into the ground and ripped the second silver cube from her necklace, crushing it.

The plate armor she wore dissolved and flowed onto the sword-spear to reassemble, while another set of armor replaced Hector, wrapping around Yat.

“『Autonomous Pseudo-Engine: Apostle Achilles』!”

Achilles covered Yat's body even faster than Hector had.

The streamlined, silver-white shell clung tightly to her limbs and torso, while her toes mutated into curved, blade-like talons.

She bent her knees and leaped. Hector disassembled and reassembled onto her feet, transforming her foot-blades into sword-spears. She then became a streak of silver light, crashing into the iron-gray figure plunging from the sky.

The sound of clashing metal rang out across the sky as the two collided in mid-air.

Dinoman's metal body slammed into Achilles's foot-spears. A visible white shockwave exploded from the point of impact, blowing away all the burning flames and skeletal fragments nearby.

“Hey, Dinoman, care to say something?”

Yat's voice filtered through her helmet, carrying a distinct metallic edge.

Dinoman did not reply. Instead, the bone plates on his body suddenly elongated and stretched, slicing toward the joint of Achilles's neck with blade-thin edges.

“Can't speak? Or are you not allowed to?”

Yat's foot-blades bit into Dinoman's metallic hide, scraping out a shower of fine sparks.

With a twist of her body, she used his momentum to fling Dinoman aside. She landed steadily on the ground, shaking out her numbed leg.

The thrown Dinoman retracted all his bone plates back into his body, returning to the humanoid form he had when he first met Esper.

“First switching to pterosaur to take flight, then to stegosaurus to plunge, and finally back to humanoid form before hitting the ground to prepare for melee combat. Every move is exactly what Dinoman would do.”

Yat's voice grew colder.

“But you're not him. Who the hell are you?”

Esper was still charging toward the two warlocks, but even she couldn't help but tighten her grip on her sword.

After all, why were they attacking them?

Noelle's voice rang in her ear, carrying a lazy drawl.

“Hmm... these guys are a bit off. I just took a look through your field of vision, and those two in the distance don't have faces.”

“...What?”

“Have you seen those wooden puppets? Their faces are just like that—literally non-existent, a complete blank.

We couldn't tell at first with Beast Mask and Dinoman because they're wearing masks, but I just took a closer look. In the areas where their flesh should be exposed, there is only a blank space, completely different from their original forms.

And further down, their exposed bodies aren't made of flesh and blood either, but something that merely looks like it.”

This time, Noelle used a voice-transmission spell to share her analysis with Yat as well, allowing her to hear the breakdown.

Yat paused for a moment, then dug Achilles's talons back into the ground to stabilize her stance, her eyes scanning Dinoman up and down.

He didn't have facial features to begin with, so it wasn't easy to notice at first.

But normally, even fully prostheticized cyborgs from Fibores would retain some skin tissue or neural ports under their masks.

Yet now, the material beneath his mask was a continuous, seamless piece with the mask itself.

What was once skin with a metallic sheen was now entirely metal.

A thin, dark gray mist seeped from the wound sliced open by Yat's foot-blade, dissipating the moment it touched the air.

“Not the real deal... Copies? Or puppets? Copying even Dinoman's technology is a bit too ridiculous, isn't it?”

“The books don't mention this scenario. But judging by the phenomena, they are closer to puppets. Their abilities and combat experience have been replicated in some way, but not their complete consciousness or physical bodies.

In other words, these things are just hollow dolls with no signs of life. As for the mechanics of the control system, it's still unclear. I don't feel any trace of the Black Tide either, so who knows what's going on. But since they're just puppets, there's no need to hold back. Not that you were planning to in the first place.”

Esper took a deep breath, already standing before the two warlocks.

And Yat let out a low whistle, though it was hard to tell if she found it troublesome or was impressed by the mastermind's handiwork.

Dinoman stood up from the edge of the crater, his metallic cybernetics still reflecting a cold, sharp gleam.

Sensing Esper's rapid approach, Beast Mask and Remains made their move.

The pages of Remains's old book flipped even faster. Three streams of runes swarmed from the paper like startled moths, gathering above Beast Mask's head into three swirling green clouds.

The clouds writhed and expanded, casting a sickly, dark green light over Beast Mask, illuminating his body in a grotesque display.

And then, Beast Mask began to dance.

He contorted his body as if performing some ritual, causing his skin to dry up and crack open like cooling lava.

Esper swung the Holy Sword.

The blackened craters left by the fire rain were still smoking, and the phosphorus fire from the skeletal fragments scattered in the muddy water of the wheat fields, emitting a faint, dying glow.