Desperate Stand (5)
200,000.
That was the size of the human army Habitz had gathered to invade the central continent.
They'd been conscripted through ideological indoctrination, but the schooling barely had any effect.
'Just being alive is a miracle…
Being conscripted into Hell's army right before it conquers the world—that's exactly what they wanted.
'Win the war and you get unimaginable wealth. No—maybe you could even become a king.'
As humanity's numbers fell, so did the number of rivals.
'What six billion once enjoyed, the two hundred thousand of us will divide. Even by simple arithmetic, each share is… roughly what a population of three thousand once enjoyed.'
'If that's what a mere soldier gets…' His face flushed with excitement—he'd started as a squad leader and risen to general.
'My life finally paid off.'
Humans didn't avoid Hell simply because it lacked pleasure.
'Joining Hell's army was the right move.'
If there was profit in it, humans would sell even their souls.
When Iruki and Valkan engaged in a battle of wits, everything was clear.
There were rules, and the variables were controllable.
Between them, strategies were either perfect or flawed, but always within predictable bounds.
Look away from the board, though, and the world outside was driven by countless probabilities.
Things could go well or badly. You could gain everything, or lose everything.
'If it's just a contest of who has better luck, then fine—I'll take that bet.'
Iruki looked down at the map.
"After all, the odds are fifty–fifty."
His gaze lingered on a place that had lived in his memory for a long time: the Tetra Mountains.
Deep in the Tetra range, along a mountain path, walked a gaunt, long-limbed man and a girl who hid one eye beneath black hair.
The man wore round sunglasses; his horse-like face had a slightly crooked nose.
The girl carried the same gloomy air, but her skin was as white as porcelain and her features were sharp.
The man was nicknamed Gitaru-man.
He was one of the infamous Mado Seven of the Black Line and counted among the world's top 100 most dangerous people.
He was also, alongside Se-in, regarded as one of the world's best in mind-affecting magic.
He was called Gitaru-man because he possessed a D-grade object called Gitaru.
Gitaru—probably a word for "guitar"—wasn't especially powerful in direct combat.
It was, however, the ultimate instrument for a musician: it could produce the sounds of all instruments at once.
Silence. Endless silence.
For four years the two had not exchanged a single word; that silence had become their language.
The girl stopped walking.
Gitaru-man sat down and chewed his jerky while she slipped into the trees.
Casually surveying her surroundings, she lowered her panties, squatted, and relieved herself.
Ssh.
When she finished and stepped back out, Gitaru-man's jerky was all gone.
The girl stared blankly.
Gitaru-man spat what he'd been chewing onto his palm and offered it.
A mashed wad of jerky.
The girl readily picked it up and popped it into her mouth, chewing as if it were delicious.
They remained wordless. Gitaru-man closed his guitar case and stood; the girl followed, still chewing.
An endless plain spread out before them.
By coincidence, Valkyrie forces and the army of Hell faced each other five hundred meters apart.
"Tch! Of all places to bump into them."
The Valkyrie unit—ordered to avoid battle where possible—found the run-in awkward, while the army of Hell was desperate to score glory as soon as possible.
"You ran like rats and now you show your faces. Boys, get ready to sweep them away."
Outnumbering the Valkyries four to one, the army of Hell was full of confidence.
Then the man and the girl walked right into the middle of the plain, between the two forces.
"What is that?"
The Valkyrie commander widened his eyes and shouted.
"Hey! Move—get out of the way! This is about to be a battlefield!"
They ignored him and kept walking, and the army of Hell burst into mocking laughter.
"Puhahaha! Came here to die on their own! The girl's not bad-looking, though. Hey, if you want to live, come this way." Even the vilest scoundrels seemed to have the instinct not to catch someone about to fall off a cliff.
The Valkyrie commander—one who'd treated civilian deaths as trifling—found the scene oddly unsettling.
"Scare them off."
These men were clearly unhinged by the chaos of war.
An archer, a master marksman, raised his bow and loosed a single arrow skyward.
With a screech it arced and struck dead-center in front of the two of them.
Gitaru-man and the girl stopped. As if considering the arrow's meaning, he fixed his gaze, slowly sat down, and opened his guitar case.
"What the—are you insane—"
Finishing his tuning in the middle of a battlefield, Gitaru-man slowly rose and plucked a string.
Ziiing.
Unlike a normal guitar, it emitted a long, viscous note as if charged with electricity.
Title: The First Night.
Lyrics, Composition: Gitaru-man. One guitar, yet countless timbres sounded together in a rapid beat.
The girl began to sing.
I was sold to the emperor—
Her voice was low for a girl, and her expression was like a cat that had tasted something bitter.
For a moment, both the Valkyries and the army of Hell listened, stunned.
It's my first time but I'm not afraid—because you are king
You can swing me however you like
Gitaru-man layered in an ultra-low chorus.
Love me—
At that instant, soldiers at random on both sides rolled their eyes and died as if seized.
"Gah!"
Exactly 111 men died, as if on cue.
I wish whatever tears through my body were something vast—
When the girl tilted her head to the left and danced like a drill, hundreds of thousands of soldiers copied her movements perfectly in unison.
Even horses reared in surprise, yet the soldiers' motions were synchronized, as if controlled.
"Damn it! What is this! Snap out of it!"
The army of Hell's general shouted, but he too was dancing to the music.
'This is magic. We can handle it with schema. But why—why can't I even move a finger?'
One name flashed through the general's mind.
"No way! All units, fall back! It's Gitaru-man!"
One of the Mado Seven who'd once been the world's scourge—one of the most secretive among them.
In crowd-control techniques he was said to surpass the world's best, historically unmatched.
'It's the Samun—Death Mark!'
A technique that artificially generates the brain's pre-death electrical signals through sound waves.
The girl sang at the top of her lungs.
Morning will not come!
"Haaagh!"
8,888 more died.
Love me—
When the chorus hit, another 22,222 men vomited blood and collapsed.
Hail the greed of the emperor!
When the girl raised her hand in a salute like in the capital's ceremonies, every soldier put a palm to the eyebrow beside their eyes.
Because your child will not be happy—
Turning her head to the right, she stamped her foot and moved; soldiers were crushed beneath her feet in droves.
"Th-the bastards…!"
Standing on the corpses of his own limbs—his troops—the Valkyrie commander ground his teeth.
"You damned bastards! What do you think a human life is…! Ugh!"
Exactly 40,000 had died, and the commander was among them.
I will hold you in my arms—
The girl finished the song in a low voice.
And drown you.
When the three minutes and forty-eight seconds of music ended, only the two of them remained standing on the plain.
248,247 dead.
The girl lifted her chin and stood; Gitaru-man put the guitar back in its case.
And, as they had arrived—silent—they crossed the plain together.
Two hours later.
Both the human and demon high commands reported that entire units had been wiped out almost simultaneously.
"No survivors?"
A terrified soldier reported with a trembling jaw.
"Yes. But the enemy suffered the same. The individual appears to be from the Third World, and expert opinion is that—"
"Opinion?"
The soldier lifted his head.
"The probability is highest that it was Gitaru-man."
Valkan blinked.
"Gitaru-man? Gitaru-man of the Mado Seven?"
"Yes, that is…"
At that moment Valkan closed his ears and thought.
'He's come out into the world? No—we drew him out. Damn it, how could we have missed that?'
As the army of Hell swept the world, the place where he'd been hiding had vanished.
"What should we do? Chase him?" Valkan received no answer.
'His individual combat prowess isn't the worry. He's extremely weak in one-on-one fights. That's why he hid. But his Samun ability can't be ignored.'
"No need to pursue."
"Huh?"
"It was irresistible—like a typhoon, an earthquake, a lightning strike… think of it as a natural disaster."
When Valkan slammed the table, the soldier hastily shut his gaping mouth.
"Damn! Talk about bad luck."
Was it really just bad luck?
'We'd gotten too carried away. At first I thought the Valkyrie troops simply couldn't react.'
'So he's as crazy as I am.'
The courier who entered Valkyrie headquarters looked unusually flushed.
"Report! On the Gera Plain—
We traded fifty thousand of our troops for two hundred thousand of the demon army, so it could be called a victory."
"Gitaru-man?"
As the commanders exchanged opinions, one of them looked at Iruki and asked, "You knew?"
"No."
Not knowing made the strategy possible.
"If we'd known, we would've prepared. We would've included it in our plans. The enemy would have too. But…"
The reason Iruki could guess what Valkan hadn't was precisely because the opposing force had been overwhelmingly weak.
"Valkan wouldn't be satisfied with ten thousand soldiers, but for me even a hundred are precious. To overcome an asymmetric mismatch, you have to value every single man."
In the Tetra Mountains, losses so small they could be ignored had occurred often.
"I suspected something. Of course I wasn't certain it would help us, but it was a gamble."
"So you risked it without knowing which side that 'something' would favor?"
"When things run according to plan, our chance of winning is under ten percent."
Iruki raised a finger.
"But if Valkan gambled, the odds jump to fifty percent. That's a deal I couldn't pass up."
If they'd lost, it would've been the end.
"Only gods and numbers can shoulder the responsibility humans cannot. A quote from the servant mage Veronique. We simply chose the side with better odds." Still, it had been an enormous gamble.
"Anyway, Gitaru-man showing up—perhaps the world truly has gone too far."
Iruki agreed.
"He's probably off-regulation. I'd guess he's extremely weak in single combat. His power likely amplifies as the number of targets increases."
Yet it was devastatingly effective.
"Track Gitaru-man covertly. A small elite team will be better." "Yes—leave it to me."
"This isn't the time to relax. We too lost nearly fifty thousand troops."
Iruki studied the map.
'But…'
Valkan's mistake had opened cracks that spawned countless strategies to buy time.
"One day."
Iruki raised his index finger.
"Just one day. If the Second Legion holds for a single day."
Humanity would be armed with a bomb unlike any before.