Editing Godhorn Tech:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Chapter 3 Section 2===

The blizzard was still raging outside after they spent the night at the village’s inn.

But Miyabi Blackgarden’s party had to brave the storm if they were to meet White Seidr Eliza Silverstorm who controlled the Icicle Bullet.

Alicia Blueforest breathed a very elderly-sounding sigh while trudging through the snow first thing in the morning.

The heavy sigh was colored white.

“This is horrific. My toes are already going numb. Do the people of this kingdom end up with soaked shoes every time they go outside?”

“The locals wear shoes that do not sink into the snow and can slide along the ice. They spread out the edge for increased friction or balance up on the edge to skate on it.”

Celina Bodenburg had visited in the past, so she knew a lot about the place.

Their breakfast was hot sandwiches filled with plenty of heavily-seasoned wild animal meat. Just like their desperation to find shelter the night before, they were afraid they would freeze to death without getting something to eat on a regular basis. The snowy land wore them out a lot faster than they expected.

The glasses woman did not look pleased with her food.

“Ugh, how can they call this breakfast? Did they ban vegetables here?”

“Hee hee,” laughed Celina. “Every child on the continent wishes they could live in this land of hamburger steak and sausages.“No, Miyabi.”

The boy jumped at Helen’s comment.

How had she known he was suddenly excited about visiting the Arsenal Kingdom!? Maybe the kind of young woman that demanded you eat your veggies had a special 6th sense for that kind of thing.

Celina sighed as she nibbled at the edge of her hot sandwich.

“Munch, munch. With all this snow, their cuisine is primarily focused on the meat they can hunt, while vegetable and other crops are a luxury item for those wealthy enough to look after their health. That is why most of those crops were shipped in by my company.”

They followed a path half-buried in snow until a massive castle wall came into view. The stone wall was tall and thick. The height alone made it as unapproachable as the Schwarz Schütze.

That was the Arsenal Kingdom.

A fortress state of metal and smithing. The castle, the castle town, and all of its limited land were surrounded by the thick castle walls, providing an impregnable defense. It was a safety measure, but was there really a need to reject outsiders to quite that extent? Miyabi was only familiar with his home village, so it felt downright bizarre to him.

And something happened before they even passed through that wall.

“?”

Miyabi could hear a rumbling in the distance. No, were those voices? So many people were shouting so loudly that none of the individual voices could be made out.

As cold as it was, he still came to a stop outside the gate and frowned.

“What’s going on? That’s a lot of noise.”

“Koo…”

“I do not like the sound of this,” said Alicia. “Alma, hide behind me.”

“Don’t say that while holding me out in front! If you ask me, you should use a smithing skill to increase my defense stat!! That’s this kingdom’s specialty, isn’t it!?”

“Shh!!”

Helen forbade the radio from speaking. And in an act very unlike a classy adult lady, she shoved her hot sandwich in her mouth. She had no idea when they would get more food. It may have been a ritual to help her focus on the battle at hand.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” said Helen Clockgear. “Tension is hanging in the air.”

Miyabi tried to follow the capable young woman’s example and set his throat on fire with the seasoning. He started choking on reflex, so the elf hag rubbed his back with an exasperated look.

“Why isn’t there a single guard at their front gate?” asked Alicia.

“Have they withdrawn inside?” speculated Celina.

No one had an answer.

The gate…was not locked. The thick double doors were sitting half open. They could twist their bodies to slip through – no Godhorn Tech necessary. The castle wall was supposed to be the border between countries, yet no one was monitoring who passed through.

“Sh-should we really be doing this?”

As a government official, Helen was getting cold feet, probably because of the small bag she carried. When crossing a border, any Compress Cargo magic had to be deactivated so everything within could be checked over by the guards. Anything else would make your country a smuggler’s paradise.

This was concerning.

There should have been people here, but there were not.

It was like wandering onto a ghost ship from a picture book.

“Koo…”

Alma cried anxiously while standing atop the snow at Miyabi’s feet without sinking down. Curious what was going on, Miyabi stuck his head through the half-open gate.

His face was immediately slapped by a wall of sound.

At first, he was unsure what had happened.

The limited land within the wall was crammed full of stone houses and shops, making for a unique type of city. The several towers jutting into the frigid air in the distance had to be the king’s castle. That was a castle town, something he had only ever seen in picture books. After a lifetime in that forest village, the stone-paved roads, bridges, and perfectly straight aqueducts had to be a strange sight for him.

But he failed to notice any of it.

His eyes widened as the voices rushed in at him with such terrible density.

“Drag that incompetent king from the throne!!”

“No more military expansionism! We demand peace!!”

“Why are we paying to fight foreign enemies when we can’t put food on our tables!? The taxes are the real enemy!!”

People, people, people, and more people.

Men, women, boys, and girls were boiling over with anger and rioting. They were packed in so tight it was hard to tell who they were angry with or who they were trying to get at.

Plus, Miyabi had never seen so many people at one time. So when they were all too furious to think straight, it was enough of a shock to rattle his very soul.

He initially thought they had to be using magic to amplify their voices, but they weren’t.

Since when were humans such violent creatures?

The public square immediately inside the gate was packed full, so he didn’t want to even think what the central castle area was like.

The village boy was frozen in place, unable to take a single step.

“What in the world!?”

“I’d heard there was unrest, but this is a full-on riot!”

Helen was a Republic official, but her eyes widened too.

Alicia winked and rubbed her index finger against her temple like she was viewing this human foolishness from a more detached viewpoint.

“That explains the lack of guards at the gate,” she said.

“If the border guards were dragged into an internal conflict, their chain of command must have fully collapsed,” said the philosopher’s stone, sounding exasperated.

“L-look over there!”

Celina pointed toward a woman running beyond the wall of people. Her equipment was too delicate to call armor. She wore a feather headdress and a shortish skirt. Several of the rioters appeared to be pursuing her. Her long silver ponytail was swimming behind her.

Her armor stood out, but so did her giant lance which resembled a control device. Was that part of the local knight gear? She might as well have been waving a torch and yelling for the rioters to attack her.

Celina was the only one who recognized her, so the girl explained.

“Eliza Silverstorm is one of the Arsenal Kingdom’s chosen knights. I do not know what has the people so riled up, but if their ire is directed at the monarchy, then the White Seidr Chosen Knights would be the most obvious symbol of its political and military might. The angry mob will attack her first!”

That settled it.

Helen responded with a bitter look.

“If she dies, we lose any information she has on the 11th.”

“Or we could hide among the rioters and throw stones from afar. If we intentionally push her to the limit, she might just use one of those rumored sorcery bombs.”

Alicia’s sly suggestion made Miyabi click his tongue.

Not even he was sure why, since the idea itself was sound.

But he couldn’t help but ask ''who would decide where “the limit” was?'' How could they be so confident that their calculations were correct and Eliza was in no risk of actually dying?

And what if she was innocent? No, even if she had some guilty secret, what if some remaining sliver of a conscience prevented her from using the sorcery bomb?

Could they really hold their heads high and say they had done the right thing just because it was the “the most logical choice”?

(No, now isn’t the time to make Alicia into a villain. She only made that suggestion because she knows no one else will. Simply listing it as a possibility isn’t wrong.)

Would they save her or kill her? Creation, or destruction? The cards had all been laid out on the table.

But it was Miyabi’s job to choose one.

No matter what anyone else said, this was Miyabi Blackgarden’s adventure. He could not force someone else to do it for him and he was not obligated to accept someone else’s choice. He was free to choose. So his real task here was to find an option he would not regret taking later on.

He had to reach for a version of himself he could be proud of.

“Koo!!”

“Yeah.” He clenched his teeth and nodded. “None of that matters. I can work through all these vague doubts later on. For now, I’ll go with what I know! If we don’t help Eliza get away, she’ll be killed!!”

He was afraid.

Of course he was.

This was different from Celina’s Schwarz Schütze or the mysterious 11th’s sorcery bomb. It was a group. Instead of a single powerful threat, this filled him with the same disgust as seeing a swarm of spiders covering a window.

However.

If he did not act now, she would be overwhelmed by the crowd. If that happened, he would lose all faith in humanity. Including in himself.

He wanted to believe there was more to humans than violence and thoughtless rioting.

And doing that required proving it himself. Right here and now.

“Hold your horses, boy,” said Alicia.

Even if he did charge right into the crowd, he would have a hard time weaving through the gaps. And clearing a path by blowing the rioters away with his Godhorn Tech was out of the question. He, Alicia, and Helen discussed what they had noticed, like that the cold wind indicated an area with fewer people and that Eliza could not enter just any alleyway carrying that big lance. Afterwards, they circled around using the relatively deserted back alleys.

“!?”

They appeared to catch her off guard.

Eliza Silverstorm’s eyes widened when she ran across them. She may have recognized Celina.

“What are you doing here!?”

“Watch out!!”

Miyabi tackled her to the ground just as an imagined red color filled his vision. The rusty flavor had to be his imagination as well, not something coming from his senses. The actual pain was minimal. Even though a thrown rock had definitely struck his temple.

“Gh!!”

“Wh-why do this!? What are you after!?”

Eliza grew suspicious after he knocked her to the ground, so Celina breathed an exasperated sigh.

Eliza talked a lot.

He had imagined her as being cold as ice, so this came as a surprise.

But he was also glad she had the energy to yell like that. He was also proud of himself for being glad that the suspect was unharmed.

His rattled head noted this may have cut off the quickest route to the answer they wanted, but he knew this was the correct answer for himself.

“I can’t believe you. And so soon after that nauseating pickup line about becoming my strongest.”

Celina had lost everything when her armored trained was destroyed.

But she appeared to have gotten over it. She smiled as if to say she had a new goal in sight and was intent on accepting the challenge fair and square.

She rested her rifle-shaped control device on her shoulder while gathering his attention.

“The strongest must hold their head high with pride. Yes, this could make for an excellent advertisement in its own way. Now, Miyabi, we do not have time to mess around.”

The air stirred.

The danger was growing.

“That guy’s protecting the arrogant knight!”

“They’re trying to steal our money too! Why else would they be helping the White Seidr!?”

“String them up! Wring out everything they’ve stolen from us!!”

Miyabi was already woozy after the blow to his temple, so he and Eliza ended up propping each other up. That appeared to anger the rioters. Their yelling never ended and they all reached out as one.

Celina aimed her flintlock rifle skywards and fired once.

The rioters would only flinch back for a moment.

Once they realized she had not fired toward them and once they detected any fear or hesitation at all, they would rush in with double the intensity. The blonde girl used the time she had bought them to load more powder and another bullet into the muzzle with the long, skinny rod, all while shouting at Miyabi.

“Both ways out of here are blocked by rioters. If you aren’t willing to kill them, then you need to ''create'' a new escape route!”

“!”

He drew his control sword.

“Contract Owner: Under Lilith, grant me the power to move the Palette Dice!!”

First, he lined up enough boxes of packed snow to form a wall blocking the wide street. Blocking the main thoroughfare led more people into the back alleys, so the rioters packed themselves in too tightly to move. But that would not last forever. Miyabi held his hand out toward another location, arranging snow blocks to form roughly-made Layer Stairs. He even created a landing supported by a building’s wall to build the stairs up to the roof of a three-story apartment.

“Hurry!!”

He gestured them all on and the snow wall blocking the street was forced down just as they climbed to the dark stone roof. Just before the rioters could rush toward the makeshift stairs, he swung his control sword to “cancel” it. The white Layer Stairs crumbled before the mob’s eyes.

Celina could not believe what she was seeing far below them.

But not because of the rioters filling that space.

“I-I-I know I asked for it, but that creation ability really is something else. All I have is the destruction side of things.”

“Still upset about that?”

“Not at all. You said you would become my strongest, so that means all of this actually belongs to me.”

The roof put them well above the rioters, but that was no guarantee of safety. Most of the roofs were sharp and pointed, presumably to keep snow off of them, so they were not easy to navigate. The tall and skinny apartment building had a flat roof, but it was coated with hardened snow and they could easily slip and fall.

Plus, humans were not animals. They might throw stones or fire bottles from the street. Someone might even construct a large slingshot or bow using the tools at hand. His imagination informed him of many unpleasant possibilities. The angry rioters might not have lost their creativity.

The ponytail woman who was even mores strait-laced than Helen shouted at Miyabi while they still supported each other.

“Creation? A-are you saying you used a Godhorn Tech’s power in the city!? Are you insane!?”

“Maybe so, but that insanity just saved your life!”

“Eh? Wha-?”

She must not have expected him to shout right back at her because her voice caught in her throat and her eyes wandered uncertainly.

He kept going regardless.

He wanted to preserve his faith in people, so he worked to get closer to this person here.

“Your armor and control lance are too conspicuous! We need to escape outside the castle walls. That way we can avoid this crowd!”

“No, wait! I cannot do that!”

Even the radio sounded exasperate by that.

[[Image:Godhorn_Tech_v01_bw21.png|thumb]]

“Cut the ‘cool as a cucumber’ act, you blushing tsundere. It’s a little late for that.”

“Tsun…what? What is that box saying?”

Her enormous lance must have been difficult to use at close range because Eliza used her hand to push Miyabi’s face away while he held her close.

“Anyway, I belong to this kingdom’s White Seidr Chosen Knights. I must protect the king!”

She even bowed at the end.

How strait-laced could you be? Was she trying to OD on it?

“You have my thanks for your concern, but I cannot flee and leave my king to fend for himself!!”

“Tch.”

“U-um, Miyabi?” asked Helen.

He was intrigued.

He was willing to laugh it off if someone like this manipulated him into providing assistance.

Helen sensed the dangerous idea growing inside him and she tried to nip it in the bud, but…

“Then what choice do we have? Let’s hurry to your king.”

“Miyabiiii!? W-we can’t! Any chance of survival is evaporating fast!”

“Hah hahhh hahhh!!” rejoiced the radio at Alicia’s chest. “Now this is more like it! In a swords and sorcery fantasy, no one’s looking for clever tricks. They want pure freedom. When you see a girl in a bind in a setting like this, why would you even need to think twice!?”

“(God, has he completely forgotten we’re here to figure out who placed the sorcery bomb in the crashed train?)”

“Alicia?”

“Nothing, boy. The grownups will protect you, so go have your fun.”

Looking down from the roof, the rioters looked like a single massive organism – a sea anemone spreading throughout the city. Miyabi never wanted to go down there again. Especially not with a primary target like Eliza.

That meant it would be best to travel between rooftops.

The roofs were dangerous enough with the snow and ice, but there were no routes between them, no matter how closely packed the buildings were. Fortunately, Miyabi had the power of creation.

“A Bypass Bridge should do the trick.”

The redhead boy packed the snow together while picturing boxes in his head. He lined up those Palette Dice to form a white bridge between this rooftop and the next. That allowed them to stay off the ground despite the main street blocking the way like a ravine. Still, the bridge support extended down to the road, so it might be brought down if they were not quick.

And the rioters were not the only threat.

Some squawking cries reached them from the sky.

“Kyah!?”

Frightened, Celina grabbed at Miyabi from the side, but now was not the time to be excited by the softness reaching him through that dress that was too revealing for such a snowy climate. His feet nearly slipped down the steep angle of the roof.

“Isn’t this the royal castle town?” he shouted, wide-eyed. “What is a Beast Nova doing in here!?”

“You know that classification counts me as a Beast Nova and Alma as a Wicked God, don’t you!?”

Alicia was upset, but his question received an answer from an unexpected source – the richest of the rich girls: Celina Bodenburg.

“Wh-why, that’s Millovannes! My messenger harpy! I used her to send our entrance request to the Arsenal Kingdom!!”

“Hey, that cheeky thing is keeping her distance and firing projectiles at us,” said Miyabi. “We should shoot her down just to be safe. We can’t afford to be pinned down halfway across the bridge. If the makeshift Bypass Bridge goes down, we’d fall right into the rioters’ hands.”

“Got it, Miyabi,” said Helen. “I’ll use some Lure magic to keep her focused on me.”

“No, stop!! Millovannes might as well be part of my fam-”

Something grazed Celina’s cheek.

It came from the messenger harpy squawking atop a roof a short distance away. That monster looked like a human girl with wings for arms. Millovannes had gone feral and was using her toes to grab sharp-edged metal disks with the company logo on them. And she appeared to be enjoying herself.

Celina lowered her shadowy face.

Her shoulders were shaking. From laughter.

Her head sprang up again and she aimed the very black control gun adorned with gold.

“Heh, eh heh heh. Very well. If that is how it must be, I will label this beast feral. I was growing sick of the greasy meat in this snowy region’s cuisine anyway, so tonight we can feast upon some healthy grilled chicken!!!!!!”

“There is something severely wrong with your human-nonhuman relations,” sobbed a trembling Alicia with fiery Alma in her arms.

Meanwhile…

“Everyone is so focused on the internal conflict no one is thinking about external threats,” bitterly replied Eliza, her massive control lance in both hands. “I apologize, but prepare yourselves. We must fight our way through!”

Bizarre creatures with bat wings were clinging to the roofs and chimneys while will-o’-the-wisps swooped through the sky on their own. None of them was a match for Miyabi with his Godhorn Tech. Celina no longer had the horn’s power, but she still had her bayonet-equipped rifle, so the two of them eliminated all of the monsters before they could even get close.

Eliza Silverstorm even had time to look down to the ground.

The chosen knight whose armor included a feathered headdress and a miniskirt pointed at the stone bridge across a river using the tip of her control lance.

“I apologize again, but please take care of that as well!!”

“?”

“The rioters can use that bridge to gather into a single mob large enough to break through the king’s gate.”

“Sure, but it looks more like they’re gonna topple like dominoes at this rate,” added the philosopher’s stone.

Eliza nearly clung to the boy as she asked a favor.

“My Icicle Bullet cannot take aim at such a precise target. Please destroy that bridge to keep the rioters separated!”

Miyabi stabbed his control sword into the roof.

A magic circle opened at his feet and he sent an instruction to the Lucifer Horn flying overhead.

Immediately, a thick pillar of light dropped from the sky and tore across the ground.

The colossal winged Godhorn Tech flew along the path of the river.

The stone bridge was more vaporized than simply destroyed.

“I still can’t get used to that. Both the power and the accuracy are impressive. I’m not sure even my Schwarz Schütze could have attacked with such precision.”

Eliza grimaced at the brightness of the light, but she clenched her fist in triumph after noticing the rioters were separated by the river.

“Yes, thank you. Yes!!”

She was their #1 target, but she sounded delighted that no one had been hurt. Celina put a hand on her hip in exasperation.

“There is no end to the world’s troubles, is there? Argh, we need to paint the company name on the Lucifer Horn’s wings ASAP! This charity is going to waste! Miyabi, let’s get this over with. The central castle is our goal, isn’t it?”

She was right about the world’s troubles at least.

The city was overrun by human rioters, the Beast Novae who had gotten past the walls…and there was more. Something else was beginning. What looked like giant muscular stone sculptures were extracting themselves from the pedestals in the public squares or the walls of cathedrals and slowly approaching the rioters. Their strength was an unknown, but the weight of those 3m stone figures would be enough to kill a human.

“The security gargoyles are activating in error?” frowned Eliza.

“Gar-what?” asked Miyabi.

“Manmade autonomous traps.” Celina brushed her hair back from her shoulder. “I see no simplification in the design, so these must not be from our company’s factories. Did a local craftsman make them? Either way, we cannot allow military-grade weapons to attack those people. Miyabi, I will snipe them, so you support me. Move around on the rooftops to draw the attention of the gargoyles!!”

The gargoyles apparently would not crush the rioters if their attention was on the fighters safely up on the roofs. After a moment’s thought, Miyabi dropped a cube of snow from the roof and had it burst from within before it reached the ground. It functioned like a low-temperature firework.

As expected, that gathered the attention of everyone on the ground.

Bat wings grew from the gargoyles’ backs.

Wait. How were they storing those wings in their stone bodies!?

Concern rapidly filled Miyabi and he asked a worried question.

“U-um, Celina? They just grew stone wings, so, um, I was wondering…”

“Sigh. They’re gargoyles. ''Of course'' they grew wings.”

“How was I supposed to know that!? You have to tell me these things! And what happened to the roof being safe!?”

“My, my. Ho ho ho. Silly boy. When you make a deal with a professional company, you need to read the terms of the contract with utmost care!! Ohh ho ho ho ho!!”

“Miyabi, I just dumped some Lure Powder on her head,” coldly stated Helen in her assassin mode. “They’ll all be focused on her, so stay away from her.”

Celina’s newfound popularity forced her to tearfully fire her rifle-shaped device over and over. The gargoyles’ stone bodies must have been coated with a special wax that could deflect a certain amount of magic. When the red lines of light imbued with a flame effect came in contact with the stone surface, they burst into a spray and scattered behind the gargoyles.

Celina clicked her tongue while peering down the sight.

“I had a feeling my control gun wouldn’t be enough. Miyabi! Let me link with your horn!! Then I can fight with the level of power I’m used to!!”

“Hold on, what happens if you register two control devices with the same Godhorn Tech? You aren’t trying to hijack the Lucifer Horn, are you?”

“…”

She was unwilling to answer, so he was unwilling to give her access.

But that did not mean she was unable to fight. She made a subtle adjustment to her aim. She knew her shots would be deflected, so she aimed for the airborne gargoyles’ hands or the ends of their wings. The attacks did not pierce through, but they could not brace themselves in midair. The impacts knocked them off balance, buying some time.

She used that time to load her next powder and bullet in the span of a breath and fire again, the bullet flying right past the gargoyle.

No, it hit the clocktower behind the gargoyle, bounced off, and hit the stone statue in the back.

She used the ricochet.

The gargoyle twisted around, falling into an uncontrollable tailspin.

There was a round hole on the gargoyles’ backs. It may have been a socket for inserting the tool for winding up their spring, but when the magical bullet accurately flew into that hole, this one trembled and ceased to function. It spiraled down to the surface where it crashed into a frozen river.

“Hmph, who needs a Wicked God horn to fight?” Celina pulled the skinny rod from the muzzle and took aim again. “I can still promise eternal prosperity to my Bodenburg Company. I only need to invent new ways to fight when the need arises.”

Just as she began her next ricochet sniper shot, the gargoyle hopped to the side. No, someone had soared through the air to hit it with a flying kick. With an elderly masculine cry of effort.

“Nwohhhh!!”

“Out of the way, commoner!! What is wrong with you!?”

Celina shouted in frustration at having her timing thrown off.

What was happening, anyway?

Anyone could use magic these days, but kicking a gargoyle out of midair still seemed superhuman. Those were hunks of rock, after all. If magic could give people that kind of leg strength, Miyabi’s party would not be at all safe up on the roofs. The countless rioters would have just jumped up to surround them.

Alicia did not look pleased when she saw the small old man.

“Is that a dwarf, by any chance?”

“Eh? So he’s a Beast Nova?” asked Helen. “Be careful, Miyabi. He’s a new enemy!!”

“Discriminatory language!! And don’t go all ‘A Monster has Appeared’ and calculate out the money and item drops the instant you see someone from another species! It’s legitimately terrifying!!”

The elf bristled and protested, but then strait-laced Eliza spoke up.

“Oh, is that Sir Garret?”

“Hm?”

“Garret Goldcave. He is a craftsman with a royal warrant. The Arsenal Kingdom is supported by our superb smithing techniques, so human or dwarf makes no difference as long as they have the skills we require. In fact, dwarves like him have established metalworking techniques found nowhere else.”

“Tch, so he’s your pet.”

“Don’t look so disappointed you can’t attack him!

The elf was truly in tears now as she grabbed at the glasses woman and made a plea for nonhuman rights.

As a businessperson, Celina coldly weighed the pros and the cons.

“Interesting. Get him on our party and we would never want for equipment, Miyabi. He appears to be attacking those gargoyles, so we can easily convince him using the classic ‘the enemy of your enemy is your friend’ argument☆”

“No, Sir Garret is-”

Eliza hesitantly began a response, but she never managed to finish.

The person who jumped up to the rooftop in a single bound was a short old man. But his back was not stooped and he was far more muscular than Miyabi. He reminded Miyabi of the older men who worked in the forest. So while he looked intimidating, Miyabi felt an affinity toward him. When backed by excellent skills, stubbornness could feel reliable.

He wore a dark jumpsuit and wore a rucksack filled with hammers, saws, and other tools. He had knocked a gargoyle out of the air with a flying kick, so how powerful would he be with his weapon of choice?

Once he navigated the labyrinthine rooftops to reach them, Garret had this to say:

“Nwoah!! Are you the ones attacking my adorable traps!?”

“You’re on their side!?” exclaimed Celina. “Did you kick that gargoyle aside to keep me from sniping it!?”

Eliza held a hand to her forehead and spoke quietly, like she was revealing her own shame.

“Um, Sir Garret is a truly skilled craftsman, but he has the unfortunate flaw of adoring his autonomous traps like his own grandchildren.”

“Miyabi, if he is protecting the gargoyles, he is on their side. He is an enemy,” coldly concluded Helen. “Kill that Beast Nova and nab the money and item drops as a reward for risking our life here.”

“Why can’t you tell that’s nothing more than robbery, human!?” screamed Alicia. “A-an excellent craftsman would make a useful party member, Miyabi. So summon the Lucifer Horn and collect our new party member!!”

A wire snagged the nonhuman old man’s back collar and the bomber flew off to the farthest reaches of the world.

“D-did you just abduct a national treasure ''and'' a living treasure trove of military secrets!?” shouted Eliza.

“Not even you view him as a person? And it’s even scarier with you because you take everything so seriously I know you aren’t joking.”

Alicia wrapped her arms around her shoulders and trembled with fear in her eyes. Elves may have been susceptible to losing all trust in humans.

And things were not over quite yet.

“Ah!” shouted Celina while looking into the distance.

Black smoke was billowing into the sky. It was much too dark to be coming from a chimney.

Alicia’s eyes widened more than anyone’s, perhaps because she lived in the forest.

“There’s a fire burning!”

“The firefighters can’t possibly get past the rioters.” Eliza held her head up on the rooftop. “This fire will be devastating!”

Meanwhile, the radio spoke to Miyabi.

“Hey, herbivore boy. Water isn’t the only way to extinguish a fire. If there’s nothing more for it to burn, it burns itself out.”

“…”

The boy made a split-second decision.

He could save people with the destruction as well.

“Let’s destroy the surrounding homes to keep the fire from spreading!”

“God, it’s not that simple, you know!?” said Eliza.

“Making it work is a job for us grownups,” said Helen.

Those two nimbly jumped between rooftops to check inside the windows from the rooftops across the road. After confirming the homes were empty, they gestured to Miyabi and he stabbed his control sword into the roof at his feet.

He sent the Lucifer Horn another command.

The giant form flew by above the fortress kingdom once more.

A beam of light dropped from the sky and it was dragged across the ground. Several straight lines of destruction were carved into the city to draw a square around the fire. As all the burnable empty houses and roadside trees were destroyed, the fire began to wane. With a blizzard still raging, the fire rapidly lost strength without any new fuel.

Once she had regrouped with them on the black stone rooftop, Eliza Silverstorm looked ready to collapse. Miyabi supported her from the side and found her to be unexpectedly light.

In this sense, she was just a girl.

She seemed more concerned for the rioters flooding the streets than her own safety.

“D-did that stop the fire?”

“Ha ha! Fires and fights are the flowers of Edo!!”

The radio was shouting nonsense again, but Alicia stood on the packed-down snow and placed a hand above her eyes to look out from the rooftop.

“We’re pretty close to the castle now. Let’s get in there while we can.”

Entering the castle should have been an entire ordeal in itself, but security had collapsed from the chaos and Miyabi kept making them bridges between rooftops.

“Contract Owner: Under Lilith, grant me the power to move the Palette Dice!!”

White boxes of packed snow linked together to create a Bypass Bridge with a support below it.

After placing a large bridge up to the wall separating the city from the castle, he built some Layer Stairs down from the wall. They moved from there to the castle garden. But this garden was always buried under snow, so they did not plant any grass or roses there. Instead, something like wires were strung up in an orderly fashion to artificially design how the snow and ice formed there. Glittering transparent ice fences took the place of hedges, so it felt like entering a botanical garden made of clear crystal.

They were in the castle.

The residence of an entire kingdom’s king.

And without permission. Did he have his Godhorn Tech to thank for this? Miyabi had pulled it off so easily it actually made him nervous.

“Is this really the most strictly guarded place in the kingdom?”

“Sorry about this! I am in your debt!!”

Eliza Silverstorm had a habit of bowing whenever she said anything and the philosopher’s stone had some thoughts on the matter.

“Hm, she isn’t quite a tsundere, but she isn’t really a kuudere either. Her athletic side obscures it, but I think I would categorize her as the strict class rep type.”

A few more girls in armor similar to Eliza’s approached them. Did that make them more of the White Seidr Chosen Knights? They carried large lances and they initially looked cautious, but their faces lit up when they saw Eliza.

“Lady Eliza!!”

“W-what should we do now!?”

The armored girls gathered around Eliza and awaited instructions, suggesting they were not just perfect warriors. But Miyabi appreciated seeing that human side of them.

The younger chosen knights glanced over at the others.

“Um, who are these people?”

The girls appeared to be Eliza’s subordinates, not her companions. She also looked more relaxed and smiled now that they were with her.

“That is hard to explain, but I can assure you they are not our enemy. Anyway, is our king safe? That is our top priority!”

They entered the castle from the garden.

The inside was all white marble floors, red carpets, oppressive crystal chandeliers, and portraits of what appeared to be kings of different generations. It was a spacious building, but it did not feel chilly like the inn had the night before. Miyabi doubted the air was heated with nothing more than fireplaces.

He did a double take when someone passed them by.

“Wow, that was a real maid. I’ve never seen a professional court worker before. They must be the best of the best.”

“I am offended you did not react that way when you saw me, a real knight.”

“And you already saw and were served by a maid: me! W-working up the nerve to do that wasn’t easy, so why didn’t it count!?”

Eliza and Celina took issue with his comment, but the younger knights guided them through the resplendent castle. Now was not the time to worry about appropriate etiquette in the presence of a king. Everything was polished to a shine, the air was warm, and a sweet aroma reminiscent of roses or lilies hung in the air. Were their flowers in vases, or had the entire place been turned into a greenhouse? It felt like walking into a fairy tale. Then again, that may have been part of what inspired so much anger in the people freezing outside.

They were shown to the central hall.

By swapping out the furniture, this core of the castle could be converted into an audience chamber, a dance hall, and more.

It was large enough to hold a sports match inside and every surface was decorated with bright and shining artwork.

An old man in gorgeous clothing was accompanied by many chosen knights who wielded giant lances and whose armor included the same feathered headdress and miniskirt as Eliza’s.

“I have much to report, my king!”

The silver ponytailed servant bent her knee and lowered her head, but then she noticed something wasn’t right.

Eliza Silverstorm’s head snapped back up.

“!?”

The others remained standing.

If her bow was what etiquette demanded, then the other knights were all in violation. They refused to pay him the honor due a king and they instead surrounded him and looked down on him.

Eliza stared in disbelief and her lips trembled as she questioned her fellow White Seidr knights.

“What the hell do you think you are doing? This is your king!”

But none of them moved.

The air seemed to have grown solid. An awkward silence hung in the air, like Eliza was the one who had stepped on a magic circle landmine.

One of the chosen knights shrugged like she was sick of hearing those by-the-book responses.

“What are we doing? We are having the king fulfill his duty to the people. By offering up his own head.”

Eliza appeared fully stunned. She did not even show any anger on her face.

“The people’s anger comes from his failure to lead.”

“Don’t you dare!!”

“Do you have any idea how much money was poured into the Icicle Bullet!?”

Eliza’s shoulders shook.

She was saying all the right things, but she could not silence the others. In fact, they argued back with twice the intensity.

The values she believed in meant nothing to these other knights.

Her values rang hollow in their ears.

She had bowed her head with everything she said, she had rejoiced at finding a way to avoid killing the rioters trying to take her own life, and she had refused to escape to safety when her king could be in danger, so the impotence of those values hit her like a powerful blow to the heart.

The person wearing identical magic armor instead criticized her.

Using another set of values.

“The heavy taxes needed to pay for it have left the people starving. Our noble knight’s spears are rented out to other countries like lowly mercenaries and thugs!! Acquiring foreign currency? We’re supposed to be the noble chosen knights, paragons of our kingdom’s virtues! But even you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve bloodied your hands with that dirty work, haven’t you!?”

“But…”

“No one wanted that Godhorn Tech! No one but this king here!!”

Their raised voices were indistinguishable from those of the rioters outside.

Was that because the knights were human too?

Or was this the true ground zero of the uprising?

“He is a poison to our great kingdom, so we cannot afford to show mercy! This will never end until he has been hanged for all the people to see. He must be torn to pieces or this kingdom will be!!”

“…”

Silence fell.

Eliza clenched her teeth before speaking quietly.

“It is true our king may have been led astray by the Godhorn Tech’s power. His lust for its power may have caused him to neglect the people’s wellbeing.”

“Exactly our point!”

“But I am his knight.”

She used her words to cast out those careless feelings.

She stared straight at the other knights and raised her voice to a roar.

“Whatever might happen, I, Eliza Silverstorm, was appointed a White Seidr Chosen Knight by the king!! So I shall dedicate my life in service to the king who gave it meaning. I will never abandon him. I might correct his mistakes, but I have been granted no power to judge him guilty!!”

The other chosen knights stared blankly back at her and their representative finally responded with exasperation in her voice.

“You are a fool.” She looked at Eliza like she was garbage lying on the road. “The people out there are not the only ones angry about this. Everyone serving in the castle feels the same.”

With a scraping of metal, they moved toward Eliza.

All the other chosen knights in their magic armor and wielding their lances began to surround her.

Eliza sought no assistance from anyone. Not even from the younger knights who had led her here.

“My surname was a joyous gift granted me by the king. I will carry that proof of my knighthood until the day it is carved into my gravestone.”

She would have her way even if she had to do it alone.

She directed her control lance toward her colleagues’ many lances as if to say she needed no companions.

“Come. I may be the last one with any loyalty, but I will fulfill my duty as the king’s lance!!”

However, Eliza Silverstorm was not the only one faced with the situation.

“…”

Miyabi Blackgarden was too.

He smiled.

He wanted to believe in people.

He did not want to think of them as foolish, violent creatures that resorted to thoughtless anger.

So he would prove they weren’t by using all the power at his disposal.

“Heh.”

The smiling redhead boy had already stabbed his control sword into the floor.

“Uh, oh,” said the government official in glasses.

A deafening boom and blinding flash filled everything as the seemingly sturdy castle’s wall was mercilessly torn down. It looked like a giant claw had slashed diagonally through the stone. The many chosen knights had seemed so untouchable, but not even they could shrug off the shockwave of a Godhorn Tech blast.

They collapsed all around Miyabi as he smiled with control sword in hand.

“Have a little more faith in the world’s generosity.”

“What…did you do?”

Eliza’s voice was scratchy as she looked up at him.

She had shown him a world out of a fairy tale.

She had shown him values he could get behind.

So he only had to act on it. He raised his control sword and announced his intentions with a smile.

“I’m in too. How I use this strongest power is up to me. Eliza Silverstorm! I refuse to let you make this last stand all on your own!!!!!!”

Helen, meanwhile, was apoplectic.

Pale in the face, the government official yelled at him.

“You- you can’t just- international incident!”

“Wh-what just happened?” groaned one of the collapsed chosen knights, trying to get up from the floor.

But then she saw the massive form leisurely flying through the frigid white sky visible through the crack in the castle wall.

That was the Lucifer Horn.

“Eek!? A G-Godhorn Tech!?”

“I honestly have no clue how this happened either.” Eliza Silverstorm sighed before continuing. “But this is over. Lower your lances! I must demand our king changes his ways and pacifies the people! Or do you intend to fight against a Godhorn Tech!?”

Celina and Alicia approached Miyabi and whispered to him.

Nothing was as delightful as a secret conversation while on course to win.

“(Heh heh heh. Miyabi, they’re scared, so go ahead and finish them off!)”

“(Eh heh heh heh! She’s right. Smash a column or wall with your sword to scare them more!!)”

He only had to swing the control sword.

The power from the horn gave it the edge needed to break right through any of the columns in the central hall.

Now, how much were those marble columns worth?

The village-raised incarnation of destruction showed no mercy.

“Eek!”

The already intimidated chosen knights slowly crept backwards. This was working. Or so Miyabi thought.

But the woman who had made herself leader of the enemy knights forced a smile.

“Do not take us for fools.”

“What do you mean?”

This was not the victory he had envisioned. Eliza’s question may have summoned some unseen defeat. Whatever the case, the enemy knight continued speaking.

“We chose to rebel against the king to save the people. Because it is our duty as the White Seidr to protect them. And we will use even this kingdom’s greatest power to achieve that.”

“This kingdom’s greatest power?” parroted Eliza in confusion, but then her face stiffened. “You don’t mean…!?”

The chosen knights all used the same standardized equipment.

That included the beautiful and intricately designed armor and miniskirt that relied on magical defenses.

But it also included the lances that were much too large for them.

Yes.

Was there ''more than one'' control lance?

“That great firepower was granted to the White Seidr Chosen Knights ''as a whole''. You happened to be the most compatible, but it was not your personal possession.” The enemy knight had regained enough confidence to scoff. “Even that control lance is just for show. We were always choosing its actions by a majority vote and ''kindly'' voting your way every time.”

It was now Eliza’s turn to groan.

“Are you insane?”

“Behold the true will of White Seidr!”

The younger knights had fear in their eyes.

They had guided Eliza here and had not been influenced to same extent as the others, but they still lacked the courage to risk their lives here. Some of the girls even squeezed their eyes shut.

So none of them protested that announcement.

“The will of every last one of us, save you!!”

“Again, are you insane!? You can’t ram that thing into the labyrinthine castle town!!”

“Control lance, connect to the horn core. Tactical open.”

There was no stopping it.

The mistaken majority was about to destroy the king’s kingdom.

“Icicle Bullet.”

The devastating trigger was pulled.

“Shoot down that unidentified Godhorn Tech and offer the foolish king’s head to the people!!”