novelraw Chapter 15 : Chapter 15
Chapter 15 : Chapter 15
༺ 𓆩 Chapter 15 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
In the past, two hundred years ago.
In the age when the Millennium Empire still ruled the continent, when things now dismissed as relics of a bygone age were real, there were those known as superhumans.
Mana. Divine power.
Each with their own name for it, they wielded forces both mysterious and undeniably real, powers beyond human; they called themselves Knights, Priests, Magi, and they strode through the glorious history of the Millennium Empire.
Though the Empire’s story has, over the last two centuries, been buried under rumor, speculation, and scant scraps of evidence, casting doubt on its credibility, that much is inevitable.
Most of its tales sound like myth — a single knight cutting down dozens of Dual Numbers, a single mage hunting a Singale Number alone.
Yet no one doubts that knights, priests, and magi existed.
Not when their successors, the Specialist Officers of the Military State, still stand on the battlefield.
“…It’s all over.”
Even in this age, when a single pull of the trigger could kill an enemy thanks to the technological leaps brought by the Meisters, their power had endured.
And it was only natural, scholars claimed their quality had fallen to a fraction of what it once was, yet even so, to the eyes of ordinary soldiers, they were overwhelming; they were forces beyond any normal measure.
“How the hell are we supposed to stop something like that…”
Perhaps that was why even the soldiers of the Cerberus Brigade couldn’t help but feel a flicker of hope.
Only four Specialist Officers here, one of them no more than a Grade 4 against two Dual Numbers, not even a single Grade 3 in the fight, and one officer nowhere to be seen.
“Heh… heh-heh… We’re all dead.”
And yet, some part of them still dared to believe they might win. A foolish, hollow hope.
―Kiiiiiieeeeeee!
A sound sharp enough to raise gooseflesh tore through the air, and the scarecrow-shaped giant surged forward, climbing the fortress wall before anyone could even raise a rifle, its bulk scaling the piled corpses of beasts like a ramp.
“Stop it! Stop it now!”
“Shit! What about artillery?!”
“When do you think we ran out of shells?!”
“The batteries are a wreck!”
Captain Menharn’s 1st Battalion poured fire into it with the rifles in their hands.
Bang—!!!
Bababang—!!!
But the bullets only punched through the weathered human hide it wore, flesh so ancient no one could guess when it had been claimed, without slowing its advance in the slightest.
“Master Sergeant!”
“.................”
Even Rier Yung had no answer to the sight.
For all his cries of atonement to the Forgotten God, for all the monsters he’d slaughtered, he was still a man, and against such overwhelming force, even he was powerless.
“................”
“..........Ah.”
These were the kind of creatures that, under normal circumstances, would never have gotten close, not with the fortress guns fixed into the walls spewing their fire.
But two hundred years of deliberate neglect, or perhaps unconscious indifference, had reduced the fortress to something unrecognizable. And now, it was being violated by a Dual Number that, in the past, would have been dismissed with a scoff.
CRRRRK—!!!
At last, the creature hooked its foul legs and writhing tentacles over the edge of the wall.
Then their eyes gleamed, and they roared.
―Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiek!
This was fear beyond human comprehension, a primal terror of death that stripped away everything the soldiers had learned and upheld as military virtue.
“Uwaaaaaah!”
“Run!”
“Hiiiiiiek!”
As if proving this, it was the 1st Battalion, the very unit that had best maintained discipline, that broke first; rifles fell from trembling hands and wounded men were dropped where they lay. From a wall high enough to shatter bones with a fall, they leapt anyway, limping away in the opposite direction.
“…It’s over.”
Captain Menharn watched them scatter, exhaling a sigh as he pulled a crumpled cigarette pack from his breast pocket.
God certainly had a sense of humor.
How perfectly He'd left just one cigarette.
He almost laughed at himself as he stuck it between his lips and murmured,
“No… maybe it’s because they’re 1st Battalion that they even have the luxury of running.”
Beyond the smoke from the cigarette he'd managed to light with trembling hands, he could see the remaining company members who couldn't even flee, just trembling.
And there, in the middle of that hellscape, the only figure standing alone; the tall, red-haired man. Master Sergeant Rier Yung.
"He's going to fight. Against that monster, no less."
Should he call it courage or recklessness? Or was it madness?
...It didn't matter anymore.
He slumped down at the broken wall's entrance, shoulder to shoulder with an unknown corpse, smoking his cigarette blankly.
As if enjoying a last supper before approaching death.
Suddenly, he smirked.
"The mage officer hasn't even shown up in this situation."
As always, probably holed up in that room making who-knows-what while cursing up a storm.
That short-tempered little bastard.
Maybe he'd already fled.
No camaraderie, so self-centered that even Major Arditi had given up on him.
No, in her case, should it be called sympathy?
‘...Speaking of which, did Ain Krieg survive facing such monsters?’
To bait and distract a monster that could pulp a man into juice with those grotesque… limbs, whether they were wood, vines, or tentacles?
That wasn’t sanity. Not by a long shot.
BOOOOM—!!!
A string of explosions shook the air, and then Rier Yung’s body crashed to the ground in front of Menharn, rolling several times.
“Ghhk!”
For someone over one meter ninety, he looked suddenly small, hunched over as he spat blood onto the dirt.
It was no wonder.
If anything, surviving the blow at all was a miracle.
―Kikikikikikikiki!
The creature paid no mind to having swatted Rier Yung aside in a single blow.
It only grinned in that twisted, inhuman way as it seized the soldiers nearby and shoved them whole into its own body.
"Ugh, uaaah! Don't! Don't do it! Kkuaaaaaaak!"
Ever seen a skewer run clean through a human being?
Best if you haven’t.
It was disgustingly foul.
Captain Menharn, who had been forcing down his nausea with cigarette smoke, finally lost it and vomited.
“Gueeegh! Khh—!”
It was chaos. Complete, irredeemable chaos.
And just as he muttered that to himself without thinking, a shadow passed before him.
He looked up, and saw Rier Yung.
Step—!!! Step—!!!
Whether it was a leg injury or the aftershock of a blow to the gut, he couldn’t tell.
The man walked forward with one hand pressed to his stomach.
“Memento…”
The voice was low, almost inaudible; listening closely, Menharn saw his still-intact left hand ceaselessly rolling the beads of his rosary.
“Memento mori… Memento mori… Memento mori…”
It was as if he were brainwashing himself, and the fanaticism in that murmured mantra made Menharn’s skin prickle.
And yet, before he knew it, he’d reached out and caught hold of the man’s trouser leg.
Clench—!!!
On any other day, Rier Yung would not have stopped for such a feeble grip.
But this time, he froze.
Maybe that was why Menharn asked the question.
"Why do you fight?"
It came out more like self-mockery, even ridicule.
“You know as well as I do. We’ve lost.”
The last scrap of pride he’d clung to as a soldier stripped away, Menharn finally spat out his raw, unvarnished self-loathing.
“Thirty minutes at best. That’s what we’ve bought with our lives. You get that? You goddamn zealot?”
Remember to die?
“You think the Military State will remember us?”
As if.
To them, we’re barely a penal unit.
More likely they’ll toast the money they saved on the miserable salaries of a bunch of washed-out exiles.
“Ha… haha. I’ll give you this much, we’re all dying like dogs. Hell, it’s a blessing the Major isn’t here. She’s not someone who should die like this.”
As for Krieg, Menharn couldn’t care less.
At least for the 1st Battalion, no, for him as 1st Battalion commander, his only real superior was Major Arditi Günther.
Yes, it was fortunate, rather.
Since the fortress went to hell just days after that figurehead Krieg arrived, at least Major Günther wouldn't bear all the responsibility.
Perhaps his tirade, his sincerity, even his bitterness, reached Rier Yung, if only a little.
“Hh.”
The towering man stood silent, listening, his gaze fixed on some point in empty air.
“..............!”
For the briefest moment, his eyes widened.
Before Menharn could even ask what he’d seen, the chaplain’s mouth curled into a slow grin.
Then he answered his words.
“Memento mori.”
But those words weren't an answer to that; they were simply his reason for moving forward.
Pak—!!!
The leg that had been rooted in place stepped forward.
And then, standing firm against the monsters that had nearly surrounded them, Rier Yung shrugged off his military coat.
Shhhrrrk—!!!
Ash-water, the color of blood, dripped from the rosary wrapped around his fists. His grin bared stark white teeth as he bellowed:
“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!
(Kill them all. For the Lord knows those who are His own!)”
“You crazy bastard…”
Only then did Captain Menharn truly understand.
Master Sergeant Rier Yung was nothing more, and nothing less, than a madman drunk on faith.
“Hahahahahahaha!”
In that fanatic belief, he swung his fists, killing the beasts.
One death for one atonement.
―Kekekekekek!
He seized a wolf by the scruff, snapping its neck.
―Guuuuuuuuh!
He ripped a horn from another and drove it into its eye.
―Ahhh—aaahhh!
He tore the neck from a wretched thing that mimicked human form.
CRUNCH—!!!
Even when a wolf’s teeth sank into his shoulder—
THUNK—!!!
Even when a horn drove into his thigh—
SLAASH—!!!
Even when claws raked his cheek—
“Mors tua, vita mea!”
(Your death, my life!)
Rier Yung pressed forward, bleeding, toward the largest atonement on the field, to stand before it.
BANG—!!!
Now and then, a wolf lunging for his back had its skull blown open.
Schhk—!!! Thunk—!!!
A tentacle that reached for his heart was sliced apart by a blade.
―Kikikikikiki!
At last, he stood before the massive scarecrow.
With a smile freer than any he had worn before, he shouted up at the monster gazing down at him:
“Come! You pitiful beast!”
―Kiiiiiiiiiiiiek!
Like those that had once hunted them, and yet not the same, great vine-like tentacles surged toward him in a frenzy.
“Kh—!”
Captain Menharn, watching blankly, unconsciously closed his eyes.
It was only natural.
The sight of him shouting at the Dual Number with arms spread wide looked like suicide to anyone.
But then.
"I'll have to admit what needs admitting."
A voice drifted into the ears of Menharn and the few soldiers still alive on the field.
It was unfamiliar, and yet… not entirely unknown.
They knew that voice.
It was languid, almost lazy, devoid of responsibility or charisma, and somehow unpleasant all the same.
“…Ain Krieg?”
Menharn, who had opened his eyes, muttered softly, and at that very moment—
From atop the corpses of monsters strewn down the stairwell, a black-haired man appeared, crushing the creatures beneath his boots.
He popped open the black case slung across his back with a sharp click.
“Of all the chaplains I’ve seen…”
From the opened case, he drew a greatsword.
“…you’re the craziest.”
And hearing those words, Rier Yung responded with the most refreshing smile—
“…Took you long enough. Haha. Fuck.”
And that was the last thing he said before collapsing unconscious.
END σϝ CHAPTER
тяαηѕℓαтσя'ѕ ησтєѕ :-
In case you are wondering, Rier Yung actually said "Fuck" here. I don't know how the Atonement Order's rules and doctrines are regarding cuss words.