Editing City Series:Volume6b Chapter5 (section)

===Part 1===

Schweitzer and Alfred walked down a wide, dark stone hallway.

Their clothing was torn and their skin was marred by a few scratches and bloodstains.

Their footsteps sounded wet. The ground was flooded up to their ankles. Around 6 hours had passed since they started down the hallway indicated by Bermark. It had sloped down, sloped up, and curved every which way, but they still had not reached the end.

Alfred walked out in front and he did not slow his pace as he asked a question.

“Hellard, what do you make of this? That juvenile dragon we ran across at the start seemed awfully real, but the great serpent after that seemed fake to me. I’d say the three creatures after that were real, but what about that one just now?”

“I think it does not matter.”

“Agreed. …Although in children’s stories, the illusions fade away and you reach your destination once you identify them as such.”

Schweitzer sighed.

“I doff my cap to your refusal to show mercy even to illusions, Alfred.”

“Don’t flatter me.”

Alfred’s tone was serious, but he swung his right hand the very next moment.

An instant after the slash, a white light was released from Rein König’s path, like the blade’s afterimage had taken flight. The destructive light shot toward the supposedly shallow water.

A pillar of water roared into the air to their right before parting to reveal a massive sea serpent.

“–––––!”

It screeched beyond their audible range and raised its head. The left half of its face had been sliced away.

The remaining eye was glaring at Alfred.

But Alfred ignored it and casually waved his left hand toward Schweitzer.

“You can have this one. It’s too tedious for me. …Honestly, nothing here has any real fight in it.”

The serpent may have understood his hoarse words because it opened its mouth and charged.

Schweitzer took an exasperated step forward.

The wet footing was irrelevant as long as he controlled his weight and center of gravity appropriately. He moved his right foot forward and rotated it by pushing his toes, ankle, knee, thigh, and hip to the right in that order.

The movement of his lower body pushed his upper body forward.

Der Held’s metal fist flew forward like a shell, crashing into the side of the serpent’s face as it tried to attack Alfred.

Its face audibly burst open and its body was propelled backwards.

Alfred used a swing of Rein König to keep the spraying blood off of him as he walked on ahead. Schweitzer held up Der Held to do the same.

“This may not be an illusion, Alfred. What if these are being created by rearranging the Tons of the ether?”

“Giving them an artificial life? This seems too largescale and constant to be Tuning. And if it’s been mechanically automated…well, I’ve never heard of that kind of technology.”

“Bermark called this a ‘castle’. What if the Geheimnis Agency base was built atop the ruins of an old castle full of Ober Geheimnis, similar to the area below Munich’s central hospital?”

Alfred stopped out ahead of him and looked back, so Schweitzer asked a further question.

“Why must we pass through here to meet our commander? This hallway seems to stretch on to infinity, but I think it is actually being created as we walk using the same technique used for the serpents and dragons we have encountered.”

“But based on how this is going, it doesn’t look like the way forward opens when we prove our strength.”

“Our commander must be testing us. To see if we will notice something here.”

“An interesting idea, but what are we supposed to notice?”

Schweitzer saw Alfred raise Rein König in his right hand.

He launched an attack of light upwards, earning a scream from the ceiling. A bestial scream.

Something like a thick rope made of nothing but dark shadow dropped down. Three such things did.

Screaming, they fell behind Alfred. Schweitzer noticed several sharp horns on their heads as they splashed into the water. They screamed and struggled, thrashing in the water, but then…

“They disappeared?”

Yes, they vanished. More like they turned invisible than dissolved into the air.

Alfred looked around.

“None of these serpents or dragons can put up a fight. Why would someone create the technology to mass produce them? I know during the Obstacle Era there was a war fought using inhuman mass-produced soldiers known as Divine Warriors, so is this the same tech here?”

“We honestly do not even know this is a form of technology.” Schweitzer sighed. “Whoever made this place must have known what they were doing, but what were they trying to make?”

“Probably a real dragon that could put up a fight, Hellard.”

He immediately answered that with another question.

“Then think about it, Alfred. The true dragon would have been with the Messiah…so why were they trying to create one here? And why hide it?” He was not done yet. “Our leader must be able to control a dragon. Not to forcefully bend it to her will like we did 3 years ago, but to have it obey. And after the Messiah vanished a millennium ago…”

“Yes?”

“What if someone tried to obtain a dragon in order to lead us? What if they used the technology passed down to them in order to obtain an Erde Drache or Luft Drache so they could lead the leaderless Neue Kavaliers?”

Alfred cut in to answer those questions.

“That would have to be the emperor who the Messiah left Germany with.” Alfred spread his legs a bit and looked up. “The four Neue Kavalier families of Naylor, Karlsruhe, Maldrick, and Borderson served the Messiah and received certain benefits in return. After the subjugation of Germany, my Maldrick family even demanded this Rein König that the one-armed youth left with the emperor.”

“…”

“So once the Messiah was gone, maybe the emperor wanted a dragon – even an artificial one – in order to lead someone and to become greater even than the Messiah.” He continued with a note of self-derision. “And history shows just how well ''that one'' went. The German imperial line died out a mere 200 years later with the death of Henry VI in 1197. You learned all this in school, didn’t you? Or did you forget it all? When did the Germania Dragoons declare their independence from the throne after returning from the Crusades?”

“In 1198, a year after the imperial line died out.”

“Correct. And by around 1200, the Ring of the Nibelung was being recited across Germany as an epic poem. That poem used a ring as a symbol of karmic retribution and eternity and we still use Nibelung to refer to the Wheel of Ruin.” He scoffed. “But the center of a ring is empty. Was that a reference to our lack of a leader and how we traded a thousand-year vacancy for peace? The emperor from a thousand years ago created this place to become our leader and ultimately failed, but is that destiny going to repeat itself now, Hellard?”

“The Wheel of Ruin, hm? Lady Rose mentioned that.” Schweitzer thought while he spoke. “Alfred, didn’t our commander say ruin would come to this world in ’43? And the prophecies are meant to avoid that? All so the Messiah will return and become our true leader.”

He stopped there, his face briefly stiffening in realization.

“I see.”

Then he smiled and moved with enough force to blast away the air around him.

He turned to the right and raised Der Held.

“Eingeweide arm Der Held, prepare Ober Beweisen.”

The surface of the prosthetic arm briefly glowed dully in the darkness.

“Alfred, I know why we must pass through here.”

“In that case, my own guess must be right.”

Alfred stepped up alongside Schweitzer.

He gently raised Rein König and kept the movement going, drawing out a silver arc and preparing for an overhead slash. He grinned and slowly crouched down.

The water before them opened wide as if in response.

What had been a hallway transformed into a vast space filled with darkness. A faint mist rose from the water at the bottom of that space and it continued to change.

The space’s Tons were remade before their eyes.

“I hear a voice. The lament of a historical relic – of a poor machine that has gone unused for so very long.”

A quiet Text entered the space, perhaps as a response to Schweitzer’s statement.

<A Legend spreads through the populace.>

The dark water spread further, growing too large to see the end.

Alfred stopped moving.

“This appears to be an Eingeweide system build in the middle ages. Its master must be long dead, so does it run off of a powerful posthumous will, similar to the Sylphide? What do you think?”

“The persistence of those who wished to rule Germany lives on in this place. This was abandoned after it failed to create a dragon, so our base was used to seal this secret history away.”

About 100 yards ahead of them, the water’s surface slowly rose as something pushed up from below.

There was so much water, the swelling of the surface looked more like a sand dune than water. Something massive had to be lurking below.

At some point, the swelling accelerated all at once.

A few moments later, the tip of the swelling ruptured and the water cascaded down.

The water bud split open and a great water dragon blossomed from within.

The crashing water was like the roar of an avalanche but much more pleasant. The smooth water dragon’s exposed head and neck measured more than 20 yards long.

“I bet Naval Division Commander Lillie Telmetz could use her Tuning to create a dragon like this,” said Schweitzer, his expression serious.

“This failure from the past is no match for a dragon made by one of the Fünf Leithammel.” Alfred had a smile in his voice. “And the Fünf Leithammel who can make that dragon isn’t even our leader, so the past emperors who could only create these failures were never cut out for the job. …The Messiah led a far stronger dragon.”

“Our purpose is to protect this country and its people and that is why we desire the Messiah as our leader.”

They both smiled at that.

Maybe it was meant as a response, but the water dragon bent its body into an arc and then rushed toward them.

It had to be more than 200 yards long in all, so its body alone was a weapon. A collision from that would do serious damage.

But the two men were unfazed as that great pressure and water-scented wind approached.

“This place is meant to teach us that the Messiah is the only leader for us,” said Alfred. “By showing us the alternative.”

“Then let us go meet out commander. The one and only commander who can lead us to the Messiah.”

“That is why we pass through here and why we must go meet our commander.”

The dragon approached.

In a flash, Alfred straightened up, stretched up, and bent back.

The wind shook. He used the bend of his body to swing the Rein König forward with all his might.

A voice accompanied the powerful slash.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Light flew. Light massive enough to fill the vast space. The white light lacked heat, but it had strength. Rein König amplified his Ton until it could tear right through the approaching destruction.

It exploded.

The dragon, the water, and the entire space before them were struck by the whiteness.

Everything they could see was subtly distorted. The scenery unraveled like a loose thread, the shadows wavered, the water tremored, and the air rippled.

The dragon and everything else were equally struck by the destructive power.

“Schweitzer!”

“Eingeweide arm Der Held – Ober Beweisen.”

His calm voice signaled the beginning of it all.

With a bang of gunfire, an empty cartridge was ejected from his prosthetic arm.

A metal-reinforced staff was pushed out from the ejector in the upper arm, so it struck the air. It produced a solid sound of impact, despite nothing existing there to be hit.

A barrier line of bluish-white ether raced out, as if to slice apart the wavering and distorting scenery, and then an Erklärung shook the air.

<The scattering lights in the sky are the stars

Excellence is determined in the sky

Do not compare your height to others

All power is lost in the face of humankind

In the heights dwell the soaring dragons

In the depths dwell the foundations of the earth>

The ether forming the space around them came to an immediate stop.

The wavering shattered, the distortion split, and it all revealed its true form. The form of the hallway they were to walk through.