Chapter 156
“Rain... That works in our favor. It’ll hide our scent even more.”
Balmung murmured in a whisper, keeping his eyes fixed on the footage sent from the Digger tied to a tree outside the bridge.
On the screen, a group of several dozen people in hooded cloaks to shield themselves from the rain, wind, and direct sunlight approached at a slow pace, matching the steps of the Beastfang children and elderly. A few Beastfangs without cloaks were visible among them, perhaps because they hadn’t had enough to go around, revealing what they looked like.
Though their name included “beast,” the Beastfangs didn’t look all that beastlike. Aside from their animal-like ears and tails, they looked much like humans.
The shape of their ears and type of tail varied from person to person, but that was all. If they hid those features, you wouldn’t be able to tell them from humans.
The only noticeable difference was that they were larger than humans.
The Beastfang men were huge, as if they’d been born to fight, their bodies taut with muscle. It was almost as if Takako had multiplied and was walking around in a pack. The women were slimmer than the men, but still toned enough to suggest they were agile.
Furthermore, the Beastfang youths wore finely made clothes of animal hide and cloth. They carried cloth bags over their shoulders and knives that had likely been taken from humans, suggesting they had reached a certain level of civilization.
“Hey... Parna-san.”
“...I don’t know. But this isn’t Earthclear... Everything is different here.”
They seemed to have fled in a hurry after the Cannibals attacked; there were no carts or anything of the sort. Protecting the children and elderly, the Beastfang youths kept watch around them as they headed for the stone bridge.
To Alice, the scene overlapped with the image of the demons being driven away by humans long ago. She couldn’t help feeling the faintest hope that perhaps there were Beastfangs who wanted peace, just as she did.
Parna, too, considered that possibility in light of past mistakes. But this world was different from Earthclear, and the Beastfangs were not the demons. It would be dangerous to indulge in easy hopes. Even so, with so little information, Parna judged that worrying about the Beastfangs was foolish. Even if they didn’t fight here, the grudge from their past bloodshed would not disappear. So the answer to what they needed to do now was clear.
“...They’re crossing the stone bridge. Are you ready?”
The moment one of the Beastfangs stepped onto the bridge above them, everyone present gave a small, silent nod at Balmung’s words. He smiled with satisfaction as he saw their fearless gazes. Then he waited for the Beastfangs to reach the trapped area. When they were just about to come within range, he silently raised five fingers and folded them one by one, as if counting down.
“Now!”
The instant his last finger folded, a blast of hot air so fierce they wanted to shield their faces and an explosion so loud they wanted to cover their ears struck, despite the distance. The massive blast from the traps caught the Beastfangs squarely, knocking nearly all of them off the stone bridge and into the river along with it.
But despite being caught so close to such a massive explosion, most of the Beastfangs suffered only minor injuries.
“Don’t give them a chance to recover! Everyone... attack!”
“Woooooo!”
However, the Beastfangs were caught one after another in the electromagnetic net set in the river, struggling in agony as it robbed them of control over their bodies. Seeing their chance to take them all down at once, the Resistance members let out a roar that shook the air and attacked with their respective weapons.
The magic bullets fired from the raised magic guns didn’t stop at a single shot. The moment one was fired, magic reloaded the next, and another shot followed without pause. The rear support team from Earthclear—including Menou, Alice, Parna, and Kururu, who didn’t have magic guns—also used magic to unleash a wall of flames toward the Beastfangs, as if to burn them all to ashes.
An utterly merciless barrage of attacks rained down on the immobilized Beastfangs.
“...What was that?”
At that moment, Balmung was struck by an indescribable sense of unease.
Just as the magic bullets and flames were about to rain down on the Beastfangs, the ground suddenly shook and rumbled as if a meteor had struck, followed by a deafening boom.
Their own attacks might have made the ground shake a little, but it was obvious the tremor and sound just now hadn’t come from them. They were still attacking without pause, and yet nothing like that great boom or shaking had happened again.
Just before the sound, he thought he’d seen something hurtling down from the stone bridge into the river at tremendous speed. But the impact of the magic bullets and the heat of the flames had turned the river water to steam, obscuring their view, so they couldn’t tell what had actually happened.
“Everyone, stop attacking! Have the support team blow the steam away with wind! We need a clear view!”
At Balmung’s command, the rear support team used magic to send a gust sweeping beneath the stone bridge. The steam that had billowed up was blown away, gradually revealing the state of the Beastfangs caught in the trap, but—
“No... way.”
“Oh, hell...! This is really, really bad, isn’t it?!”
The unexpected sight left everyone so shaken that they couldn’t help voicing their alarm.
Despite the barrage they’d unleashed, the Beastfangs showed no sign of injury. They were still struggling, immobilized by the trap.
That alone would have been bad enough.
Standing before the struggling Beastfangs was a slender man in a hooded cloak who didn’t look like a Beastfang. He held a huge, circular piece of the stone bridge—at least ten meters across—with one hand, as if it weighed nothing.
The man in the hooded cloak had punched the riverbed, using the resulting spray to cushion his landing and quickly turning a piece of the stone bridge that had fallen with him into a shield to block every attack. Even as a fragment, it must have weighed an incredible amount. Faced with the sight of him effortlessly holding it in one hand with an arm too slender to seem capable of lifting it, everyone could only stare in disbelief.
“Th-the Ace! The Ace is here!”
One of the Resistance members shouted, his face twisted with fear.
The face of the man Balmung had told them about before they came here—the one called the Ace—was hidden by his hood, so they couldn’t see what he looked like. But clinging close to him was a very young Beastfang girl with straight, mid-length orange hair, large, bright eyes, and fluffy yellow foxlike ears and tail. From her, it was clear the man was probably a Beastfang, too.
“...Kagami-san?”
While the Resistance members around her panicked at the arrival of the Beastfangs’ Ace, Alice alone stared with a puzzled look at the man who had fallen before them and murmured those words.