--- Those were days of lonely struggle and irremovable remorse — so went the tale that had been told.
A story of history he had sworn must be handled with care, with gravity, with reverence.
And even after pouring every last word of it out, the fragile resolve to press forward without letting it go.
"The price, you see."
The
The noxious being who flashed her red tongue and trailed an air of mischief seemed intent on toying with him through her hollow beauty, scheming to lead him wherever she pleased.
"Alright, I've decided."
The first time, she had commanded oblivion. What would she ordain this second time?
He braced himself — and the Witch, wreathed in the scent of flowers, touched a fingertip to what fluttered white in the wind.
A white handkerchief. Its edges trimmed in gold, embroidered with the figure of a great spirit in the shape of a grey cat.
"The handkerchief Petra gave me before we set out for the
He wanted to scream until his throat tore — *Stop.* He wanted to scream until his throat split open, but here, there was no throat with which to scream.
He wanted to throw himself before this abominable Witch and cry *Stop* — but here, there was no body with which to stand in her way.
And so, screaming *Stop, stop* in his heart, trying to throw his very soul forward, he could not halt what was happening.
"I have duly collected the price of the tea party. I look forward to your next visit — from the bottom of my heart."
The value exacted as payment, and the relief and faint happiness that spread in its wake — the pride of knowing that he had been the one to bring it was nothing, *nothing* compared to how terrifying it was that the Witch had noticed it.
What exactly had he just helped bring about? He could not fathom it.
"
The dream world ended in a wash of white light, and he returned to the dark, cold space of reality.
Replaying his encounter with the Witch upon returning to where he'd been — he noticed something wrong.
"...Where's
Her absence where she should have been scattered his thoughts, and anxiety flooded through him.
An overflow of dread, a creeping sense of wrongness — for someone who had been forced to *repeat* things over and over, this was a violation of the natural order that should never have occurred.
Driven by the foul premonition welling up inside him, he strode quickly from the place, leaving the tomb behind.
And the moment he stepped outside the tomb, into the moonlight, what he beheld was — "...Shadow."
The Sanctuary, sealed in pitch blackness. And beyond that — footprints. Traces left by a Witch more terrifying than the one who had wrought this.
He screamed *Stop,* he rejected, he lamented, he resisted — and still it would not end.
This was real. It was a chapter of history that could not be erased from his steps.
— And within it, what had *I* helped bring about?
--- △▼△▼△▼△ --- The voice that called out — *Hey, helmet-bastard!* — had clearly identified Aldebaran.
Yae had sensed the ambush, and that bold, familiar voice. Without even thinking too hard about it, he knew his grand feint — splitting off his main force — had ended in failure.
But even knowing that, the problem awaiting Aldebaran was — "Hey! That voice just now — it's that blond brat! Reinhard's master! What's she doing in a place like this... Wasn't she supposed to be hidden!?"
Heinkel, flustered and frantic, expressed the confusion of the situation with admirable clarity.
His panic mirrored Aldebaran's own, but thanks to the man making such an undignified ruckus first, Aldebaran himself managed to keep his composure.
That said, things were far from bright.
"...The matrix was updated fifteen seconds ago."
The periodic matrix refreshes — a precaution against surprise attacks. He'd meant it as a cautious measure to avoid risk, but it had backfired spectacularly.
From this point, Aldebaran had only fifteen seconds before the next window for a second attempt. That alone meant he could no longer avoid an ambush from the enemy. — And an ambush was, for Aldebaran, a far worse tactic than a direct surprise attack.
Whether by intuition or sheer instinct, they'd struck at the most inconvenient possible moment.
"So the 'Sword Saint's' master — that means the rumors about Lady
"— If you think you can use me as a hostage to break through, you're wasting your time! They want to put that brat Reinhard in charge of the Astrea household! The way things stand now, being with you lot puts me in a terrible position... If they've got just cause, they'll come for me without mercy!"
"Well then... wouldn't that make you even *more* suited for the role of human sacrifice?"
"This is no time for jokes!"
It probably wasn't a joke at all. As Heinkel shouted back, Yae shrugged at Aldebaran and asked, "So what do we do~?"
Unlike the two flustered middle-aged men, Yae took in the situation with cool detachment. Perhaps the product of her shinobi training — her trained mental fortitude was nothing short of admirable.
A state that Aldebaran could never reach no matter how many millions of times he died — "In any case, offering up the old man would be pointless."
If Felt and her forces were waiting beyond the forest, then just as Heinkel sadly recognized, his value as a hostage was virtually nil. In fact, the likeliest outcome was that they would exploit the opportunity, kill him without hesitation, and chisel *The Honorable
The problem was that every picture his mind conjured was bleak — there simply wasn't enough material to paint an optimistic one.
"Yae, old man — stay here. I'll go check it out first."
"Wh— Are you insane!? She's a shinobi, isn't she!? If anyone should go, shouldn't it be her!? Tell him that too!"
"... Lord Al, that is the best course of action?"
"It is."
He answered curtly and tucked his chin, and Yae bowed without hesitation — "Understood~" — and withdrew. Heinkel, cheeks flushed red, tried to press the issue further, but — "I told you not to be so persistent, Heinkel. Even without your worrying, who other than Lord Al would have thought to *and actually been able to* use the Divine Dragon
"That... that's... true..."
With Yae's covering fire, Heinkel reluctantly retracted his objections.
Indeed, the prestige of the Divine Dragon carried weight in all manner of ways, even when the person in question was senile. It was enough to make even this completely outmaneuvered man believe unconditionally that Aldebaran would not fall so easily.
Alas, Yae had just explained how there was no plan at all.
"Well then — will it be an ogre or a snake?"
Whichever it was, the prospect weighed on him. Hiding that grim foreboding inside his helmet, Aldebaran left the two behind and walked straight toward the forest's edge.
What he needed was confirmation of the enemy's identity and their fighting strength — "— Oh? Coming out bold and proud like that — you sure have made up your mind, haven't you?"
The view, blocked by tall trees, suddenly opened up, and a plain spread out before Aldebaran.
On the far side of that plain, standing with imperious authority and baring a grin of double-capped white teeth, was a girl with golden hair and crimson eyes — the opponent he'd deduced from the voice and the conversation. Felt.
"— — —"
He had already finished a skirmish with Reinhard. That, in itself, was no surprise.
Moreover, from the moment he'd identified his opponent as Felt, Aldebaran had already begun calculating the enemy's combat strength. — As of this moment, the two aces — the 'Sword Saint' and 'the Grey' — had been eliminated.
What remained, judging from the siege of
Even if she *were* Priscilla, fighting alone, she was no match for Aldebaran.
In the unlikely event that Felt harbored hidden power, there were countless ways to deal with it. — That had been Aldebaran's calculation as he approached the forest's edge.
But — "...Oh, come on. What kind of joke is this?"
Before the unexpected spectacle arrayed before him, Aldebaran couldn't help but let a dry laugh escape.
His original estimate had been five or six people at most. Instead, roughly a hundred times that — a crowd of over five hundred — had assembled to welcome him.
--- △▼△▼△▼△ --- Felt, raised in the slums, never shed the mentality of the destitute — no matter how far her station had risen.
Now she wanted for nothing in terms of food, clothing, or shelter. But none of it was truly hers — it all belonged to Reinhard's Astrea household.
True, Reinhard was Felt's knight. But she had no intention of taking such a leap in logic as to believe that his possessions had somehow become her own.
And so, no matter how delicious the food, how dramatically improved the quality of her clothes, or how soundly she could sleep until morning — she refused to let her original hand, the cards she'd held from the start, go to waste.
Felt's hand, in short, was the set of abilities she had honed for the purpose of *living strong.* The eye for spotting marks and the quick feet she'd trained in the slums. The nerve that refused to flinch in any situation, and the intuition that kicked in when things went south — every last one of them had been refined during the Gut Hunt, the incident that had led to her encounter with Reinhard, because she'd realized they had to be sharper if they were going to mean anything in the Royal Selection.
In truth, every skill had grown far more effective than before. — Though even so, she had never once managed to shake Reinhard.
In any case, by continuing to hone the tools she'd always had, Felt had broadened her vision and prided herself on being able to see things her former self could not.
That pride was what prevented her from overlooking the faint sense of unease that had snagged on her awareness.
— When word of the crisis had reached the royal capital from Flam, still at the
"Lord Felt, I must depart immediately for the
"Hold on. ...The fact that it started in that sandy wasteland of all places is what bugs me. Isn't that the place where you said you'd be at your absolute weakest in the world?"
"... Yes. It is. The miasma of that place and I have poor compatibility. But I cannot choose not to go. Flam and Lord Ezzo are in that tower. And besides..."
Receiving Grassis's report, Reinhard had been driven by the Sword Saint's sense of duty. Felt had scratched her head and said, "I know, I know."
The expression he wore at moments like this was one of the things about Reinhard that grated on Felt — but picking at it now wouldn't help. More important was getting Reinhard to accept her next proposal.
And that proposal was — "Reinhard, I'm not gonna tell you not to go. But don't go charging off alone. —Take us along. At least to the halfway point."
"Lady Felt, that's—!"
"When you're about to do something reckless, you think you're gonna stop *me* from doing the same? Get over yourself. Anyone and everyone has the right to do everything they're capable of."
"— — —"
Reinhard fell silent, struggling to find an objection. His mind, she understood well enough.
The enemy had not only neutralized Ezzo and Flam, but had also brought the Divine Dragon Volcanica along. This was nothing short of a national crisis.
A task worthy of the Sword Saint to resolve — that was precisely what it was.
"I can't just sit with this."
"Can't sit with it, meaning?"
"Even if you didn't know about Flam's blessing, the moment you drag out the Divine Dragon, it's gonna get back to you. And once it does, it's obvious you'll come flying in. And yet — that helmeted bastard went and did it anyway."
"... So Lady Felt believes that Lord Al is moving with that foreknowledge?"
"Which is more likely — being on guard because you *might* show up, or being underestimated because you *won't*?"
Felt's question, one eye narrowed, prompted Reinhard to genuinely consider the possibility.
Reinhard's countermeasures would have been prepared. In fact, the possibility was quite high that allying with the Divine Dragon had been part of them.
Whether they could reach even the unfavorable Augria Sand Dunes, with the Divine Dragon present — even for Reinhard.
"Even so. Even so, I must go. If the enemy has prepared extraordinary measures, and I am the only one who can overcome them..."
"— Reinhard, stop."
She ordered the knight kneeling before her to stop. Reinhard's eyes went round. When he didn't move, Felt reached out with both hands and grabbed his cheeks.
Reinhard's eyes went wide as saucers, the beautiful features that set tongues wagging across the city now thoroughly ruined.
"Idiot — I said I'm *not* stopping you! You take the bait the enemy's laid out. Go wild with every ounce of that ridiculous strength of yours. —I'll mop up whatever's left."
"— Ah."
She leaned in close, faces nearly nose-to-nose, and declared this. She held his gaze until the shock registered in those blue eyes — and just then, the inn room's door was kicked open.
Standing there, out of breath and familiar — "Well, isn't this a perfect time. How'd it go?"
"Hah, hah... Lady, all you do is say reckless things..."
"If you're gonna ride a carriage hard enough to break it, just use your own damn one, milady!"
"Idiot — I can't exactly bring Rommy along, can I? What happened out there? Grassis wouldn't tell me a thing."
"Dragon carriage — secured."
The trio filed in shoulder to shoulder through the cramped doorway, Grassis trailing behind with sleepy eyes.
Surveying the motley crew that had swaggered in, Reinhard's eyes went wide again. Felt snorted at his face — which, for all his reputation, still looked a touch too young.
"You oughta carve a few more years onto that face of yours."
"Lady Felt, this is—"
"Don't go thinking you can handle everything on your own, Reinhard. There's no way you could hold hands with all three of these guys at once."
She shrugged, and Reinhard blinked. Then he took a deep breath, slowly settled the emotions in his eyes, and — "Yes. I am a Sword Saint who cannot hold hands with all three of them at once."
At last, with more than just the Sword Saint's smile — with Reinhard's *own* face — he nodded.
--- △▼△▼△▼△ --- What followed was a race against time, and Felt drove Reinhard mercilessly.
She had Grassis's group find a dragon carriage, loaded it up, and sent Reinhard hurtling from the royal capital to the Augria Sand Dunes — with a stop at the Astrea domain along the way.
"I'm off, Lady Felt!"
"Go knock 'em out with a bang!"
An emergency trip she never wanted to experience a second time, even with Reinhard's Blessing of Wind Warding. But the detour had proven its worth.
Because the helmet-bastard's countermeasure against Reinhard was far more vicious than she'd imagined.
— Within half an hour of sending him off, she learned that the Witch of Envy had appeared at the sand dunes, and that Reinhard had been held in place trying to stop her.
"I never imagined... the Witch of Envy. That's a move even *I* wouldn't have cooked up in my prime. That helmeted fellow — I don't know the man, but was he truly that deranged?"
Old Man
Having rendezvoused at the domain estate, Rom was now one of two brains of the faction alongside the absent Ezzo. But Felt shook her head at his assessment.
"From where I'm standing, helmet-bastard wasn't *that* far gone. His look and his way of talking were different, sure, but that's no different from how Crusch-nee and this cat-ear here differ from Emilia-nee's black-haired guy."
She held no particular impression — good or bad — of Al, the one who had caused this crisis and turned against them. — She did, however, think that, like the other knights, he possessed genuine loyalty to the master he served, despite his frivolous exterior.
So — "— That little princess died, and he just... gave up on everything?"
—
The unbelievable news had reached the Lugnican royal castle, and naturally it had found its way to Felt's ears as well.
Honestly, she hadn't been able to grasp it immediately — and even now, it didn't feel real.
That was just how far removed from death Priscilla, that woman, had seemed — brimming with vitality that bordered on the indestructible.
"... Nobody just *doesn't* die. Outsiders like us can force ourselves to accept that. But that helmeted bastard — he couldn't."
"So what does he scheme? According to Flam's report, he's got the Divine Dragon under his command. Is this some grand suicide, dragging the world down with him in his despair?"
"I don't think that's it either..."
Self-destructive despair, taking the world with him as a funeral pyre for Priscilla — Felt didn't think it was that kind of eruption.
If Al's goal truly were such a straightforward death wish, then the greatest obstacle in his way was undoubtedly Reinhard.
"And yet, that helmeted bastard didn't team up with the Witch — the Witch of Envy — to kill Reinhard. So, at the very least, world destruction isn't the aim."
"Oh, what's this? Rachins, you think you're the stand-in advisor now that the boss is gone?"
"Don't screw around. Look — from where I'm sitting, all I wanna do is tuck tail and run like hell. The Witch of Envy showing up? Can't handle it, can't handle it."
Rachins bared his long tongue ostentatiously and snapped at Felt.
Beside him stood
"Y-Yeah, milady! If Reinhard's tied up with the Witch of Envy, then the Divine Dragon's running free, right? That's way beyond anything we can handle!"
"Felt knows that. We came back to the domain to evacuate the citizens, just in case..."
"Right. We gotta deal with that too."
"See? I told you — oh wait, did I say that?"
Felt's reply momentarily relieved Gaston, who blinked in surprise. The big man's reaction made her grin and nod.
"We gotta plan for the worst, but we can't make a huge scene doing it. After all, you guys go white as a sheet just from hearing the word 'Witch.'"
"Well, duh! And you're no different! She's a *Witch*, y'know — a *Witch!*"
"Your girlfriend gets called something similar, doesn't she?"
"
"You two, stop fooling around! The conversation's gone off track!"
Saliva flying between Felt and Cambary, Rachins shoved himself between them, his four white eyes sharp, and slapped a hand down on the map spread across the table.
"We can't talk until we've settled on a plan. Felt, what's the play?"
"A straight vote? I don't even need to say it — running's the obvious move. But..."
"— We will all follow your lead."
Old Man Rom's deep voice cut through, and Felt caught her breath.
She looked. Rachins with his exasperated face, Gaston looking grim, even Cambary with legs trembling like a newborn fawn — none of them contradicted him. They were all waiting for Felt's word.
When had this ragtag bunch become so dependable?
"Has been for ages. Back in the day, whenever something dangerous happened, I'd be dead sick of standing around holding my head, waiting for someone else to fix it."
"My my, what a blood-hot way of thinking. I wonder who she takes after."
"Search me. Maybe the parent who raised her ought to put a hand on their chest and think about it."
Felt stuck out her tongue at her adoptive parent as he slowly shook his head. Then she spun around with vigor and surveyed the faces waiting for her word.
And she spoke.
"You lot — raise your butts. That bastard who made a fool of our Reinhard. No need for restraint. Let's beat the hell out of him."
--- △▼△▼△▼△ --- — Once the decision to fight was made, Felt and her forces moved swiftly.
Far to the east, at the horizon's edge, Reinhard's battle with the Witch of Envy continued.
And the one who had surely provoked it — Al — had left the battlefield and departed the sand sea with the Divine Dragon. That much, they had tracked accurately.
The problem was — "There are reports of the Divine Dragon heading north. If we take them at face value, then the helmeted bastard must be moving with it. Which means — the destination is north."
"Taking it at face value means there's also a twisted way of reading it, right?"
"Hmm. From what we've heard, the helmeted bastard planned everything meticulously, including the Reinhard countermeasure. So why make a conspicuous display at the staging town at the desert's exit in the first place?"
"Because he wanted to impress on us that the 'Dragon' is coming for us, right?"
"Exactly. He *wanted* to leave an impression. — Which means, the Divine Dragon heading north might be flying high enough to be seen with the naked eye."
He'd prefaced it with 'twisted,' and Rom's reasoning delivered exactly that — a thoroughly sideways approach.
Most things have an obvious interpretation and a crooked one, and more often than not, the obvious one is the correct bet.
But here, too, a faint snag held Felt's thoughts in place.
"If he *showed* the Dragon heading north on purpose — what for?"
"Why, to hide the real objective, of course. The Dragon flying in plain sight would be a decoy. — I'd surmise the true target lies not to the north or east, but to the west or south."
"... The princess died in the empire. If the Divine Dragon hits the empire with everything it has, that messy tangle of grudges would finally boil over, wouldn't it? ...No, that's not it."
If the guess was correct, it would certainly create enormous friction between the Kingdom and the Empire.
But that would be wildly inconsistent with the diplomatic document that had been brought back at the same time as the news of Priscilla's death — a document outlining the future relations between the Volachian Empire and the Lugnican Kingdom.
Of course, it was possible he had no intention of dragging in the Kingdom, and simply wanted revenge against the Empire.
"That brings us back to the same thing — a self-destructive act that drags in the world. Which means..."
"— What then?"
"— My gut says west. Due west, or northwest, or southwest — I can't pin it down."
"If the Dragon is the decoy, the northwest line can be eliminated. That narrows it to two. And then—"
"Yeah, and then—"
— Betting everything on their own reading, Felt arrayed the faction's full fighting strength across the plain.
To be blunt, the forces at the Astrea domain's disposal were not many. This, too, was a side effect of Reinhard being too strong — but those few soldiers had been deployed to evacuate the citizenry from any territory that might lie in the enemy's path.
That was fine. Their strength was for protection. What was needed now was not that, but — "— You are truly quite something, my daughter."
"Well, well — I find it admirable. When the need arises, she does not hesitate to bring brutes like us into the fight. As a patron, one can only be proud."
"Where exactly is your nose, dear? The tattoos on that face are so loud that I can't make out the whole picture at all."
Speaking their minds in a chorus were the respective representatives of the gathered forces.
One was a boar-man of stature and muscular armor to rival Old Man Rom.
One was an eccentric bearing an unusual appearance, his face covered in tattoos of blue scales.
One was a woman of striking beauty, dressed in an outfit far too provocative for the situation, adorning herself with deliberate allure.
— Black-Silver. The Scales. And the Flower Prison.
Though they stood side by side, not a shred of goodwill passed between them. What they all had in common was this: they had answered Felt's call and gathered.
These were the heavyweights who ruled the underworld of
All were villains with scars on their shins, but they were also necessary evils who supported Felt — five hundred of them in total, trusting her instinct and joining this formation.
"Ha ha! What a sight! To think so many of you actually showed up!"
Shielding her eyes with a hand, Felt raised her voice toward the five hundred assembled villains.
In truth, when she'd first considered asking Flanders for help, she would have been grateful if even a tenth of this number showed up. Instead, it was ten times that.
"And you're saying the enemy's the one who outplayed Reinhard? ...God damn it, now's not the time — I wanna rub this in his face."
If only Reinhard, who wasn't here, could know this. If only she could make him understand.
That in a situation where even Reinhard couldn't measure up, there were this many people who hadn't cut and run — but had come flooding in, ready to clean up the mess.
"Well... there's always gonna be a few who can't resist coming along, like Cambary."
She muttered this, cracked her neck, and turned around with the weight of her companions at her back.
There — before them — the wide forest stretched out. Facing it, Felt drew a full breath with her small body, and — "— Hey! I know you can hear me! I know you're in there, helmet-bastard!"
And with that, she unleashed the declaration of war that would begin the battle.
--- △▼△▼△▼△ --- Completely unaware that such an unexpected move had been made, Aldebaran could do nothing but stand rooted before the impossible scene that unfolded before his eyes.
"...Oh, come on."
A dry laugh escaped him involuntarily. This was a development that threw all his calculations into chaos.
A hundred times the estimate? He wished. He truly, genuinely wished.
Arrayed across the plain before him was a motley assembly — lacking any visual cohesion whatsoever — but unified by a single purpose: opposition. An uneven regiment of steel.
"— — —"
Still wearing that dry smile, Aldebaran stood in utter bewilderment.
This was, precisely, the difference between him and Yae — the girl he had just been admiring for her composure. Where Yae would have absorbed it coolly, his mind had been rattled, defenseless against the utterly unexpected.
The respect Yae commanded wasn't even his to claim — it was a borrowed fiction, snatched through the power of a cheating authority.
But regardless — "Quite something, isn't it, little Miss Felt."
The very person at the center of his surprise — Felt herself — was the unexpected protagonist in all of this.
Her bearing left no doubt of it. And even after only three months without seeing her, that sharpness had only grown more keen. Truly worthy of the prodigy who had, in barely a year, earned Priscilla's recognition as a worthy adversary.
Fundamentally, her importance to this world was on an entirely different level from Aldebaran's. — And yet, that was no reason for him to back down. His resolve, too, was not so cheap.
"Thanks for the warm welcome. But, uh — shouldn't you be more concerned about me? Even as we stand here chatting, your 'Sword Saint' over there —"
"— Sorry about this, but—"
"— — —"
Aldebaran attempted to draw this into a war of words, to extract whatever information he could. But Felt cut him off without mercy, scratching her head and squinting one eye.
And then — "— Shutting your mouth first is what old man Rom and I agreed on."
"—!"
In a flash, Aldebaran's entire body tensed with a surge of terror. But he was too slow.
Before he could react to that dread, a small figure darted out from where it had been lurking at the forest's edge, and a slender foot struck Aldebaran hard across the side of the neck.
"Kuh... ck..."
A devastating impact. His brain rattled. The strength drained from his knees.
At the edge of his vision, the one who had delivered the blow landed lightly on the grass, shook twin bundles of pink hair, and regarded Aldebaran with drowsy eyes.
A familiar face — and a girl who bore an uncanny resemblance to it. Her identity was — "Avenge Flam."
Short, flat words. That was how he knew — Flam's sister.
From that single strike, consciousness crumbling, about to slip into darkness, Aldebaran whispered: "I'm not... dead..."
And as awareness faded slowly into the depths of the abyss — reflexively, he bit down on the poison.
The lethal capsule hidden behind his back teeth. For Aldebaran, it was the technique he had practiced more than any other action in his life — something that had soaked not just into his body but into his very soul.
This — even the Sword Saint
There was no one in this world more skilled at killing Aldebaran than Aldebaran himself — but— × × × "— Hey! I know you can hear me! I know you're in there, helmet-bastard!"
The sensation of his brain being incinerated by poison cut out, and what jolted him back to consciousness was Felt's voice — brimming with hostile energy.
The redefined matrix — timed to Felt's declaration of war — Aldebaran returned to it, counting the first cycle in his head.
"Hey! That voice just now — it's that blond brat! Reinhard's master! What's she doing in a place like this... Wasn't she supposed to be hidden!?"
Watching Heinkel's panicked outburst and Yae's attempts to calm him from the corner of his awareness, Aldebaran updated his understanding of the battle situation with the intelligence he'd just gathered.
A pre-estimated assessment of Felt's faction's combat strength — one that would need a major revision.
His original estimate had been three upstart thugs, an aged giant, and Flam's sister — five people at most. Instead, roughly a hundred times that — a crowd of over five hundred — had been waiting in ambush.
"You've got quite the troublesome brain backing you up, haven't you?"
For Aldebaran, this was the worst-case scenario — different in form from the decisive battle against the Sword Saint Reinhard van Astrea, but no less dire.
"... You really know how to hit me right where it hurts most, little Miss Felt."
— The inevitable battle between Aldebaran and an enemy that attacked with sheer numbers had begun.