Chapter 154
It was an incident that occurred in an instant.
The elite mage corps stationed at the very rear of the battlefield had been attacked. The battalion to which Helena belonged was among them.
From underground—not from the front or the sky.
They had made some preparations against attacks through the underground, but the enemy's assault surpassed their expectations.
Their attacker was Grave Vine, a gigantic plant-type magical beast that lurked deep beneath the earth.
While a fierce battle raged aboveground, it concealed its presence, detoured hundreds of meters underground, and approached the rear.
Grave Vine's staple food was mana.
It had targeted the mage corps, where enormous amounts of mana gathered.
After trapping everyone inside the barrier with hundreds of tentacles so they could not escape, it carved out the earth and hurled it away.
That was the result.
The mage battalion and escort knights inside the barrier shot into the air together with the ground beneath them.
“Uuuuuugh…!”
The earth shot vertically upward.
Gravity beyond imagination crushed the entire bodies of everyone inside the barrier.
They did not even have time to scream.
Amid the pressure that dragged every organ downward and choked off their breath.
Knights and mages alike flattened themselves against the ground like frogs.
Just as the earth, flying for a long while, reached its apex.
Just when it seemed to hover in midair for a moment.
“……Huh?”
It began to fall.
The bodies of those pressed against the ground now floated up into the air instead.
“Waaaaaaaa?!”
The humans, thrown into empty space after losing their gravity, flailed their arms and legs helplessly.
Their bodies shot upward as if pulled along by an invisible hand.
And above their heads, the blue barrier that had still surrounded them on all sides remained in place.
The magical shield deployed to block external dangers had now transformed into an unbreakable ceiling.
-BANG! KABOOM!
“Agh!”
“Ugh!”
The knights and mages slammed mercilessly into the barrier ceiling.
Blocked by the wall of mana with no escape route, the humans dangled in midair, tangled together pathetically.
The ground beneath their feet plummeted at a terrifying speed, while the people clung to the upper part of the barrier and flailed in a scene of utter chaos.
Beyond their upside-down view, the ground was rushing toward them at a terrifying speed.
If they collided with the ground together with the barrier like this, they would be crushed without a trace.
“Dispel the barrier at once……!”
Through the moment when their eardrums felt numb, someone's urgent cry reached them.
The mage maintaining the barrier severed their mana connection to it without even being able to open their eyes.
-WHAM!
The blue veil pressing down on their bodies shattered into pieces and scattered in every direction.
The moment the ceiling they had been pressed against disappeared, dozens of people were flung completely into the air.
Now it was a raw free fall, with neither a barrier nor a foothold.
“Mages! Do something! At this rate, we're all going to die!”
No matter how far a knight's body had reached into the realm of superhuman ability, a fall from this height would leave no limb intact.
It went without saying that the mages, whose physical abilities were no different from those of ordinary civilians, would have little chance of escaping instant death.
“You think magic can just be whipped up on the spot……!”
The mages gritted their teeth.
Flight magic did not yet exist.
All they could do was somehow slow their descent with magic.
But magic was a technique that demanded intense concentration.
Even court mages would find it difficult to use magic high in the air, with their vision turned upside down and a storm roaring as if it would tear their eardrums apart.
‘How? There has to be some way……!’
Helena desperately racked her brain, but no viable alternative came to mind.
There was no way Helena could solve what neither the knights nor the mages could do anything about.
Had she needlessly volunteered to join the subjugation?
Would it have been better to wait quietly in the castle?
Was she going to die pointlessly like this without even becoming a knight?
All kinds of distracting thoughts flashed through Helena's mind like scenes from a revolving lantern.
Just then.
-Whoosh!
A sword that had flown from somewhere stopped in front of Helena's eyes.
Rather than stopping, it was falling alongside her, perfectly matching the trajectory and speed of her descent.
Its hilt was extended toward her as if telling her to grab it.
‘What is this…?’
She could not understand what it was, but Helena unconsciously reached out and grasped the sword.
Then Helena's arm, the one holding the sword, was lifted upward.
Her falling speed began to decrease gradually.
The sword was slowly pulling her upward.
“This is…….”
Helena lowered her head and scanned the ground below.
Leon, who had gone with the knight order to subjugate the magical beasts, had made it as far back as the rear where the mage corps was.
A golden ring spun beneath his feet.
Both his arms were stretched toward the sky.
Helena instinctively realized that Leon was the one controlling this sword.
Dozens of swords shot up from the ground toward the sky, centered around Leon.
They stopped one by one in front of the falling people.
“W-what is this?”
Unlike Helena, those who had no idea what was happening merely stared blankly at the swords before them.
“Grab the swords!”
They still did not understand the situation, but, feeling as though they had to grasp at even a straw, they reached out and began taking hold of the swords.
Then, just as with Helena, their rate of descent gradually decreased.
Gently, gently.
Dozens of people slowly descended as if riding parasols. One by one, they landed softly on the ground.
The moment their feet touched the earth, they collapsed forward as if their strength had left them.
“Haaaah! It's the ground!”
“A-are we alive?”
“What do you mean, are we alive?! We almost died, you crazy bastard!”
“But we're alive, right?”
As if they had returned to their hometown, the people sprawled on the ground, embracing it and breathing in the smell of the soil.
“Leon!”
Helena immediately ran to Leon. Leon, looking slightly exhausted, was slowly catching his breath.
“Helena, are you hurt anywhere?”
“I'm fine. More importantly, were you the one who controlled those swords just now?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, you can do things like that now?”
“Mm, I guess it just happened?”
The dozens of swords that had saved the people spun around Leon in a circle.
Leon had sensed the presence underground and immediately run toward the rear, but the incident occurred before he could do anything.
The rear mage battalion to which Helena belonged was ambushed by a magical beast and shot into the sky together with the ground.
It was a hair-trigger situation that would have become a catastrophe if left as it was.
The mages left on the ground tried to respond, but even that proved difficult because Grave Vine, hidden underground, was rampaging.
So Leon chose the art of sword control.
He controlled a large number of swords simultaneously to catch the falling people.
It was not as if he had failed to train in controlling multiple swords.
He had practiced steadily because he never knew when it might be needed.
It simply was not perfect yet.
He had kept it out of consideration because the risk was too great to use it in actual combat.
But if all he had to do was catch people, he could manage that much.
And he succeeded in saving them all. Not a single person died.
Some people had been bruised from rolling and falling around inside the barrier, but that was still better than dying with their bodies smashed apart.
“Thank you, Leon. It would have been disastrous if you hadn't been there…….”
“Let's save the thanks for later. For now, let's deal with those things first.”
After that, the knights and mages who had regrouped joined in and subdued the remaining magical beasts.
The subjugation battle, which had begun at noon, did not end until after sunset.
Only when the sunset had completely faded and deep darkness had settled all around them could the subjugation force form a column for the return journey.
***
The Second Division finally arrived at the knight order's headquarters after trudging along on heavy feet for what felt like ages.
“Uuugh, I'm so tired I could die.”
Knox, who had trudged along, plopped down on the ground.
“Ugh, I stink horribly.”
“Haaah, I want to wash up quickly, gulp down some cold ale, and go to sleep.”
“Me too.”
Complaints from the knights erupted here and there.
Faces ravaged by fatigue.
Their entire bodies were covered in mud and the bodily fluids of magical beasts.
They were standing only by forcing themselves to maintain appearances; the desire to collapse at any moment was plain on everyone's face.
Richard, who had been walking silently at the head of the formation, climbed the headquarters steps.
He turned around and surveyed the knights.
“You all worked hard responding to the emergency. Thanks to you holding the line, we were able to successfully subjugate the magical beasts. You did a truly commendable job today.”
The knights gave wan smiles at the commander's blunt but heartfelt encouragement.
“Everyone, you're dismissed for now. Go back and get some proper rest.”
“What about the report to the higher-ups?”
“I'll handle the paperwork. Stop complaining, go wash yourselves clean, and get some sleep. We never know when another incident will break out, so rest whenever you can.”
“Nyeeeeh.”
The knights answered in drawn-out voices, as if they did not even have the energy to maintain proper discipline, and dispersed to their respective quarters.
Before long, only Leon and Helena remained in the courtyard in front of headquarters.
Richard looked back and forth between the two.
“Helena.”
“Y-yes!”
“You worked hard today.”
“Not at all. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even properly fulfill my role…….”
“Simply volunteering to join the battlefield was already an impressive thing to do. Hold your head high.”
“Thank you.”
Helena's gloomy expression brightened somewhat at Richard's words of comfort.
“Leon, let's go too.”
“Wait a moment.”
“Leon?”
Leon looked Richard straight in the eye.
His gaze was so serious that Richard became serious as well.
“What is it?”
“I have an idea about the cause of this magical-beast invasion.”
“You mean you know what caused the magical beasts to invade?”
“Yes.”
In recent years, incidents of magical beasts swarming together in groups regardless of species had been occurring frequently across the continent.
This magical-beast invasion was the same. As before, the magical beasts had simply come swarming in droves.
The only differences were that its scale was far greater than before and that stronger individuals were mixed in among the horde.
But the circumstances were not favorable enough to dismiss it as nothing more than a minor anomaly.
“It seems to be because of the Three Great Calamities.”
The conclusion Leon had reached after witnessing such an anomaly firsthand.
The Three Great Calamities.
The three calamity-level magical beasts in the world of [Lady Maker] that threatened the world.
One of them.
“Rahav, the Despair That Crawls Across the Sky, is coming here.”