Hana SIDE
"Blanca! How many are left?!"
"I can't say for sure, but from a rough glance, whether we've got five thousand still on their feet is anyone's guess!"
Among them there must be those who can barely stand, so as a fighting force the number is even smaller than that...
In less than an hour since the battle began, the Southern Viscount's army had suffered casualties exceeding two-thirds of its whole. That said, it wasn't as though we were merely being slaughtered; we had managed to deal that red dragon a fair amount of damage. Only
a
fair
a
mount
of it,
...is what I mean, but.
As I'd feared, that opening ambush had cost us dearly. On top of something that huge assaulting us from the sky, of all the rotten luck it went on a rampage right in the very middle of the army, so several thousand soldiers of the Southern Viscount's army were cut down before they could recover from the confusion. Even after we somehow re-formed the ranks, our numbers were whittled down one after another before the red dragon's ferocious assault.
For all its size, it left few openings, and any half-hearted attack was simply bounced off its hard scales—an existence truly worthy of being called the strongest of all living creatures... For us, it was nothing but a nightmare.
Even against such an existence, the attacks of Blanca, Amour... or rather Raiden, and myself somehow got through, and we managed to strip off a few of the hard scales. After that, by concentrating our attacks there, we succeeded in exposing the dragon's skin in several places... but that skin, though softer than the scales, still couldn't be wounded by any half-hearted attack.
Even so, we learned that through concentrated attacks on the exposed areas by the beastfolk, who prided themselves on their strength, it was possible to make the red dragon bleed—and by repeating that, we've made it this far.
"We've paid over ten thousand lives, and yet I can barely feel any real effect..."
It's true that the red dragon is bleeding from several places on its body, and it does show signs of disliking being wounded. But that was all.
No matter how I look at it, I can't believe the wounds we've inflicted are any great damage to the red dragon. If I were to compare it, it's like a veteran adventurer who underestimated a goblin, let his guard down, took a slight scratch, and, surprised by the unexpected turn, is making a bigger show of the pain than warranted—something like that? Though even then, the goblin-versus-veteran-adventurer matchup would have a far higher chance of a great upset.
"Raiden! Draw the dragon's attention! Amour, don't get thrown off even if it kills you!"
"Don't ask the impossible——!"
The most troublesome of a dragon's attacks is the beam of light called its 'breath,' but so far, thanks to Raiden, we've managed to prevent it from being fired.
"This is bad! Raiden! It's gone into firing stance! Strike its snout!"
"Brrr! ...Bruaaaa——!"
At Amour's instruction, Raiden made a motion of gathering power for an instant, then unleashed lightning magic first, aimed at the red dragon's face.
In response, the red dragon fired a half-formed breath to cancel out Raiden's magic, letting the lightning magic pass by unharmed.
Because Raiden had been dealing with it every time the red dragon tried to breathe from earlier, the Southern Viscount's army had been able to keep down the number of casualties from the breath.
As one would expect, the red dragon's rank as a monster had to be several tiers above, but Raiden too possessed power equal to or greater than an S-rank (or so Tenma had said), and in fact the only one who could actually challenge that red dragon to close combat single-handedly was Raiden (Amour was riding on his back, but she wasn't much use in the fight).
Even Blanca and I, who had the highest ability in the Southern Viscount's army, found it hard to get close except while covering for each other, and anyone besides us was attacking at the cost of casualties by the dozen. Without Raiden, we would surely have been wiped out right at the start.
"Blanca, you've recovered your strength, right? Even if you haven't, we're going in soon!"
"Yeah! We can't leave everything to Raiden! Besides, it's about time we gave Raiden a rest too!"
However strong Raiden was, the red dragon was a step above even that. Raiden being a golem might be unacquainted with fatigue, but there was the worry of metal fatigue, and since he ran on magic, if we didn't let him rest and recover, there was a chance he might suddenly seize up right in front of the red dragon.
"Raiden! Fall back and resupply your magic! Amour! Use a recovery potion somewhere safe!"
For Raiden, resupplying magic wasn't just a matter of waiting for it to recover naturally; there was also the method of using a magic-recovery potion the same way a person would. That method was less efficient than for a person, though, so it required several times the amount a person would. Well, Raiden worked at least ten times as hard as us, so it would be fine to divert our share to him.
"Raiden, open your back! Magic resupply, begin!"
Raiden's method of recovery was to pour recovery potion into the space on his back that belonged to Slarin.
According to Tenma, being a golem, Raiden recovered his own magic by absorbing the magic around him, and if you scattered magic-recovery potion in Raiden's vicinity at that time, the magic in the air would temporarily increase, speeding up the recovery.
Applying that phenomenon, by pouring it into the space inside Raiden's body meant for Slarin (which apparently isn't used much these days), he could absorb magic even more efficiently.
When I first saw Amour, who had heard this and knew of it, doing it, I thought, what a waste at a time like this—but since the recovery did seem to be quickening in practice, I ended up leaving it all to her.
"Sis, we're going for the wings again!"
"I know that!"
The red dragon's wings had already been torn wide open by Raiden, so there was no worry of it flying up and attacking from above. But even with such tattered wings, the red dragon would still swat down at us from overhead, so there were times when it would crush someone flat while their attention was on its legs or tail.
The dragon's attacks confirmed so far can be broadly divided into those using the head (mouth and so on), those using the body (torso), those using the legs, those using the tail, and those using the wings.
Of those methods of attack, to reduce casualties even a little and to raise our chances of victory, Blanca and I had been concentrating our aim on the wings, which seemed the easiest to neutralize.
"Ooryaa——! ...Sis, you're clear to go!"
"Got it!"
Blanca slipped past the dragon's attack, and hurling with all his might an axe he'd picked up, succeeded in scoring a wound a little below the wing. I ran full-force at that wound, put my momentum into it, and thrust out my spear.
The spear, striking the wound vertically, sank into the red dragon's body with a resistance unlike anything before—but at about a few dozen centimeters it hit something hard like bone and stopped.
"Uh-oh!"
Even the dragon was startled by that pain, and it twisted its body to shake me off, but I managed to escape at the very last moment.
"After all that, it only sinks in a little..."
"But the dragon seems to hate it. And thanks to landing a good hit, the movement of its wing has grown sluggish!"
I'd tried imitating the story of the hydra that Blanca had heard from Jin, and it seemed more effective than expected. Driving in the spear enough to weaken it the way you would a hydra is surely on a whole different level of difficulty, but even so, if it can dull the dragon's movements even a little, it's worth aiming for.
The soldiers of the Southern Viscount's army fighting around the dragon, seeing the dragon showing pain in a way it hadn't before, began throwing their axes and hammers just as Blanca had.
Most of them, far from wounding it like Blanca, didn't even land properly, but at the soldiers who had begun attacking from a distance different from before, the dragon—partly because of the pain from earlier—showed signs of some confusion. And there—
"Break's over! Raiden, go!"
Raiden and Amour dashed out, aiming to strike the dragon's blind spot. From Raiden, running at a tremendous speed, the recovery potion that had been poured in leaked and scattered out through the gaps, reflecting the light and looking almost fantastical despite the situation.
The dragon must have anticipated Raiden's return, but charging in at that speed from its blind spot seemed to be beyond its expectations, and by the time it had turned its face the other way, Raiden had already kicked off the ground with all his strength and was flying through the air. And Amour, riding on his back, readied her beloved bardiche... and drove it into the red dragon's eye.
"It went in! Amour, that girl, she did it!"
With that momentum, it might just be piercing through the eyeball and reaching the brain. That's how it looked to my eyes—a perfect strike—and Blanca seemed certain of it too. However—
"Amour!"
The bardiche snapped off at the base of the blade before it could reach the dragon's brain, and from that shock Amour was flung off Raiden's back.
The dragon seemed to lose sight of Amour as she was thrown into the air and tumbled down, but it immediately spun its body and took a stance to sweep with its tail. Rather than having found her, it seemed to intend to just attack a wide area at random. And Amour was falling right into the range of that dragon's attack.
Blanca and I started running to save Amour, but no matter how we struggled, either Amour would hit the ground or the dragon's tail would swing first. And in the midst of that—
"Grrua!"
Faster than the dragon's tail could sweep, Raiden, who had landed a moment earlier, jumped and skillfully caught the falling Amour in midair in his mouth. But the dragon's tail bore down on Amour and Raiden... and they were sent flying.
"Make it in time!"
Raiden seemed to have let go of Amour while being flung, and she was about to fall in a different place from Raiden. Perhaps because Raiden had cushioned her, Amour's momentum had been killed somewhat for having been swatted by the tail, but she still had considerable speed, and at this rate she'd be slammed into the ground—it would be no small injury.
Fortunately, Amour's landing point was just barely within reach from where I was. I threw away the weapon I was holding, ran with all my might, and dove beneath Amour just before she smashed into the ground.
"Guh! ...Gofu, cough!"
"Ugh... uaah... gehon!"
Having flung my arms around Amour just before she crashed, I couldn't kill the momentum and rolled together with her. A considerable pain ran through my whole body, and a little blood came out with my cough, but neither Amour nor I had suffered anything you'd call a fatal wound.
"Sis, run! You're being targeted!"
Blanca shouted in a panicked voice, but unfortunately, after that shock just now, I couldn't move right away. Realizing this, Blanca tried to carry Amour and me away, and the soldiers around us threw weapons and shouted to draw the red dragon's attention, but the dragon ignored all of it and seemed to have fixed its aim completely on us.
"Blanca... take Amour and go. I'll hold it off here."
"Don't talk nonsense! There's no way I could abandon you!"
"You're not abandoning me—you're saving Amour! Now go!"
Being driven into a corner had brought out Blanca's softness toward his own kin. The old Blanca might have silently obeyed my order if I said it was to keep Amour alive. But ever since Yoshitsune was born, Blanca had gotten a bit soft. As his elder sister, that change is something to be glad of, but... just this once, I wanted him to be the old Blanca.
But at this rate, Amour and I—and Blanca too—would be killed by that red dragon. To keep the casualties to the absolute minimum, there was nothing for it but to make myself the decoy and draw the dragon's attention. Even Blanca, once he understood there was no path for me to survive, would surely take Amour and fall back.
Having steeled myself, I forced myself away from Blanca, gripped a stone that lay nearby, and glared at the red dragon.
The dragon too seemed to have decided to deal with me first, for it was glaring not at Blanca but at me. Amour's bardiche hadn't reached the brain, but it had managed to destroy the dragon's left eye—a feat worthy of being called a great accomplishment. As the last thing in my life,
my daughter's
battle achievement—being able to witness even just that, let me call it enough.
As I thought this and was about to hurl the stone at the dragon—
"Hunryaaaaa——!"
Suddenly, along with a somewhat goofy, loud voice I felt I'd heard before coming from somewhere, something slammed into the side of the red dragon's face with tremendous force.
That something seemed to have considerable power, and the red dragon—no doubt owing in part to its carelessness—fell to the ground for the first time in this battle. But since it immediately got back up, that single blow apparently hadn't been enough to deal it anything like a fatal wound.
However, upon the red dragon that had lost its balance, a white group... a group I didn't recognize, clad head to toe in white gear with their heads and mouths hidden by white cloth, closed in with a speed no less than mine or Blanca's, and launched attack after attack.
"Who the hell are those guys...? There shouldn't have been anyone like that in Bro's unit. Did he find them during the march?"
I had an idea of who that white group was. There were only about ten of the white-clad ones attacking the dragon, but each and every one of them seemed to possess ability close to mine or Blanca's. And since all of them coordinated with one another so well—
"I'd only heard about it, but they really are strong."
"Sis, you know them?"
Blanca didn't seem to have realized, but that might not be helped. If even one of them had come near us, being folk with such easily recognizable features, Blanca would surely have known at a single glance.
"Hana! Amour! And Blanca too—you're all safe, right?!"
"If being alive counts as safe, then I suppose so... More importantly, who are they?"
Given the state of my injuries, ordinarily this could hardly be called safe, but since it's the middle of a battle with a dragon, you could also say it's an injury light enough to call safe. And maybe because help arrived at such a good moment, the pain of the wounds felt somewhat lessened too.
"Those guys? Right after we left Nanao, they joined up with us, saying they'd come from the 'Hidden Village.' They had the chieftain's letter, so I added them to the army—was that no good?"
"It's not 'no good'—it's a great accomplishment! Well, second only to Raiden and Amour, at that."
"I see, so they're the Hidden Village lot... I figured they were strong, but I didn't think it was to that extent."
The people of the Hidden Village, because their bestial features come out so
ex
ceed
ing
ly
strong
ly
in
them
and
so
on,
cannot live among human settlements, and living hidden away with only others in similar circumstances, they're scarcely known to anyone; but their ability is said to be not merely a match for the top figures of the south—rather, despite their small numbers, they possess strength enough to shift the balance of power.
The reason I say 'said to be' is that I haven't seen the full extent of that ability up close myself—it's all from stories I heard from Grandpa... the previous bandit king.
Long ago, because there was a belief that those living in the Hidden Village were comrades of monsters, the situation was apparently one of kill-or-be-killed on sight. Grandpa tried to do something about that, and thus created the present-day Hidden Village... and in order to make a place for the discussions at that time, he had to force his opponents into submission. Well, without doing so, the situation was such that they wouldn't hear him out... Even if Grandpa's ability back then was exaggerated in the telling, he was far stronger than me, and if the stories are true, he must have been an ability holder surpassing even Tenma.
Since these are kin to the very people who gave such a Grandpa a hard time, it's only natural that they'd be strong.
"Sorry to interrupt, but we haven't got room to spare either. To move a bit more freely, we're going to remove the cloth from our heads—so give word so no one panics even a little."
So saying, the Hidden Village man who had approached tore away the cloth from his head and mouth all at once.
Beneath the cloth was the face of a tiger, exactly, and taking cue from that man, the Hidden Village men removed their cloths one after another. From beneath the cloth emerged the faces of animals unlike humans—bear and raccoon dog, wolf and fox.
For now, few of the Southern Viscount's soldiers had noticed those faces, but since the Hidden Village men were fighting on the very front line, it was only a matter of time before the whole army learned their true nature, and as the number who knew increased, confusion would be inevitable.
"Dear! Blanca! Give word to the whole army at once! The 'White-robed' men are our allies...
Ten
m
a
knows them too, allies
of the south
—tell them that!"
Just saying they were allies of the south would probably be believed, but if I brought up the name of Tenma—who isn't here but is a celebrity so famous there's no one in the south who doesn't know him, and one we have ties to—the credibility would shoot up, and people would find it easier to accept, thinking, "Ah, so that's the kind of existence they are." As for Tenma... I'll just ask him to play along with the story the next time we meet, and there'll be no problem.
""Yeah!""
As soon as that man and Blanca ran around shouting that they were allies, the soldiers who had been startled at first accepted it and began coordinating with the Hidden Village men. However, because the difference in ability was too great, rather than fighting close combat together, it took the form of the soldiers falling back to provide support from the rear; but even so, bleeding wounds began to increase on the dragon's body, and our side was clearly gaining the upper... or so it appeared.
In reality, however, the Hidden Village men's gear was dyed red with their own blood, and both the soldiers I had led and the soldiers of the follow-up unit that man had brought were beginning to dwindle in number.
As I'd feared, as our momentum waned, the difference in raw underlying strength began to stand out. The difference in the rank an organism possesses is not something that can be so easily overturned, it seems.
"Nngh... stubborn thing."
"Amour, you're awake? Can you move?"
"Somehow... And you, Mom?"
"I'm
some
what
how
...hanging on too. And Raiden?"
"Brr..."
"Raiden says he's somehow managing too."
At first glance Raiden looks unharmed, but in reality his left hind leg is broken partway and he's a pitiful sight. If an ordinary horse had suffered such an injury, it would surely struggle even to stand from the pain.
Losing Raiden, our greatest fighting force, in this situation is too painful. Thanks to the Hidden Village men and the follow-up unit, the red dragon is clearly weakening. But even so, it's still more powerful than us, the Southern Viscount's army, and it was precisely now that we needed an existence like Raiden who could deal damage even alone.
"There's no use crying over what we don't have... And besides, I'm just the same—unable to move when it matters most..."
Even though I'm using the highly effective recovery potion Tenma gave me, since I'm still not in a state to move properly, I hardly have the right to say this or that about Raiden.
"Amour, how's your condition?"
"The pain's eased off a little, but... I still don't think I can move."
Amour is in the same state, and all that Amour and I can do now is recover enough to fight again as soon as possible and, together with everyone, take down that red dragon—
"Gaaaaaaaa———!!!"
Suddenly, a dragon's roar mixed with more rage than ever before shook the air, and—
"It's gone into 'breath' stance! Focus all attacks on its face!"
The red dragon had entered the preparatory stance for its breath.
To stop or hinder it, that man and Blanca gave orders to concentrate attacks on its face, but the dragon completely ignored Blanca and the others' attacks and gathered its power, and—
"No good! Get away, now——!"
"Flee as far as you possibly can——!"
The breath was fired toward a place
right
there,
so
very
close
be
side it—
toward where the Southern Viscount's army had gathered.
That breath, having gathered its power to the full, had a destructive force on a completely different level from when Raiden had been interfering earlier. Because of it, the soldiers near the center of the breath vanished without a trace, and the soldiers around the periphery took considerable damage as well. From that single strike, over a thousand—perhaps close to two thousand—soldiers may have been sacrificed.
However, it wasn't only the southern soldiers who had been near a breath of that much force; the attacking red dragon itself had also taken wounds by no means light. Indeed, they were heavier than any wound we'd inflicted on it thus far.
"What about that man and Blanca?!"
"They seem to have fled in a direction different from where the breath landed, so they shouldn't have taken a direct hit. More importantly..."
The red dragon, now that the obstacles in its surroundings were gone, looked around... and stopped the movement of its neck right at us, then slowly turned its body and began to walk.
The dragon was bleeding from all over its body from its own breath, but killing us would be as effortless as crushing an ant.
Still unable to move properly, Amour and I tried to get away from the spot while supporting each other, but no matter how hard we tried, the red dragon was faster.
"Brr!"
Raiden, as if to shield us, threatened the dragon in its path... but the dragon, gouging the ground with its front leg, kicked up dirt and stones and hurled them at Raiden, forcibly shoving him out of its way. Even shoved aside, Raiden tried to stand up once more, but from having dirt and stones showered on him one after another, he was rendered unable to move.
The red dragon, wearing a satisfied look at the sight of Raiden in that state, was surely certain we had no move left. If it were the current Raiden, it could have gone up to where he lay waiting in its path and destroyed him with just a few stomps. That it didn't do so meant nothing other than that it intended to toy with the weak for amusement.
We were fleeing at the fastest speed we could, but even watching us do so seemed to be part of the fun for the red dragon, and after immobilizing Raiden it slowed down even further and came following after us.
But because it had deliberately slowed down, the soldiers who hadn't been caught in the breath's damage caught up, and to help us escape they attacked the red dragon—but the dragon hurled dirt and stones and swung its tail, scattering them, just as it had with Raiden.
And so, when it had finished eliminating the soldiers who'd come to help, the dragon must have grown bored of chasing us. Stomping down hard, it leapt high and landed so as to block our path.
The eyes glaring at us head-on held a bloodlust unlike when it had been chasing us, and even if I'd been in a state to move properly just then, my legs might have frozen and I'd have been unable to move.
As if the red dragon meant to erase us without leaving so much as a scrap of flesh, it appeared to be gathering more power than in the breath it had fired earlier.
That motion should really only have taken a few seconds, yet for some reason it felt to me as though it were taking several times... no, several dozen times as long. Perhaps this is what they call the sensation just before death.
No matter what miracle might occur, Amour's and my lives would surely end here. In that case, at the very least, I want to keep Amour alive even one second longer.
It might be nothing more than self-satisfaction, but before the red light was spat from the dragon's mouth, I had thrown myself over Amour.
"Mom..."
As I listened to Amour's voice, together with Amour I was swallowed up by the red light.