Editing City Series:Volume6d Chapter6 (section)

===Part 2===

Lehrer’s Bust attack counteracted Sylphide’s shockwave and cleared a path.

With a roar, the powerful wind was split by her spear and flew to either side.

The tire stacks on the sides of the road were blown backwards like leaves in the wind.

The storehouses’ front walls were broken through and their roofs pulled away.

Bolts audibly popped off and walls noisily crumbled.

“Hurry!” shouted a voice ahead of Hazel while the wind blew her hair.

Her response was drowned out by the wind.

The road alongside the waterway was about 5 yards wide. When she emerged from behind the destroyed storehouses, she saw a collapsing bridge to her right and a road to her left. There was no sign of the enemy.

She ran.

Lehrer beckoned her over from near the railing ahead.

“I’ll be right there!” answered Hazel as she saw something in the sky that shouldn’t have been there.

A white streak of cloud floated in the night sky to the east. She hadn’t noticed that before.

The cloud instantly stretched out toward her. It was closing the distance with unbelievable speed.

Some Aerial Words shook the air.

<The Elf King descends upon a new world.>

The cloud was being drawn out by…

“Sylphide!?”

The craft resembled a black blade. Unlike Sylphide, it had no upper cockpit and thus a slimmer silhouette. Hazel recalled the name of the craft Lowenzahn had said had launched from Germania.

…''The Erlkönig.

It was still a fair distance away, but it sprayed physical metal bullets toward Lehrer.

Its aim was true, so Lehrer was forced to intercept the incoming bullets with her Bust power.

The white light launched from her spear shattered the metal projectiles.

But inertia carried the fragments toward Hazel behind her.

Hazel could avoid them if she kept running and moved behind Lehrer.

But that was when Hazel realized her coat’s pocket felt unusually light.

…''Eh?

A weight had vanished from the bottom right side of the coat, so she looked down.

She saw a white ampule case falling from the pocket as the coat flapped in the wind.

She reflexively caught the case out of the air.

“Hazel!” yelled Lehrer.

That shout made Hazel stop where she was and she saw the supersonic scattershot of bullet fragments flying her way. Countless powerful red Lives were about to reach her.

“!”

She couldn’t scream and she didn’t look away. She started to dodge, hoping she could somehow make it.

She moved her feet left, hoping to bring herself behind Lehrer.

Then a wall shot up to protect her.

The blue wall was Sylphide. Her eyes reflexively widened when she understood what this meant.

…''You belong to Lehrer!

“Stay away!!”

Her shouted request was not obeyed. The metal scattershot crashed into Sylphide.

The metal screamed in protest. Sylphide was pierced by bullet fragments that were more like thin needles than spears. With a light sound like breaking bone, the fragments broke out the other side on either side of Hazel.

The bullets flew past her on pure inertia, like fish leaping from the water.

“Why?”

<The Wind is the Messiah’s guardian dragon.>

Hazel’s question was answered by some Aerial Words and then the blue craft suddenly ascended.

Erlkönig was trying to fly westward at an altitude of about 100 yards.

The blue Sylphide shot up toward the black Erlkönig and crashed into it like it was stabbing into it from below.

With a loud crash, the Sylphide’s tip pierced the Erlkönig’s belly.

The black craft stalled with its rear tilting downwards and began to fall, but the blue craft could not keep up with its momentum. The pressure on the Sylphide’s tip from the rapid forward thrust and downwards momentum was too much for its frame and it bent in half like a papercraft.

The two ships fell, twisted and tangled. They fell westward, toward the waterway past the collapsed bridge.

They soon vanished behind that bridge.

Sounds reminiscent of breaking stone and shattering glass tubes rumbled off into the distance.

“Ah…”

Hazel let out a dazed breath and looked forward to Lehrer.

Lehrer kept her back turned and raised the spear in her left hand.

Her eyes were turned toward where Sylphide had fallen, but…

“I should have known. Of course Neue Erde would send Erlkönig.”

After that resigned comment, she looked back over her shoulder to Hazel.

When their eyes met, Hazel lowered her head and squeezed the ampule case in her right hand.

“Sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it. Sylphide chose to defeat Erlkönig. And you told it to stay away because you knew you could take care of yourself, right?”

Hazel did not nod, but Lehrer said “that’s right” and sat down on the ground. Her butt touched the ground and she folded her legs underneath her with her back still to Hazel.

“It looks like I was more naïve than you.”

She collapsed. Toward Hazel.

Hazel rushed over and placed one arm around Lehrer’s back and the other under her shoulder to prop her up.

Then she looked down at the woman’s body.

A jagged piece of metal a foot long was stabbed into the left chest of her purple uniform.

Lehrer opened her mouth and blood spilled from her lipsticked lips, but she still spoke to Hazel.

“Not getting my Bust attack out quickly enough was my mistake. And Sylphide didn’t save me.”

“Stop talking!”

“Which means Sylphide decided you deserve the Messiah eye more.”