Zero no Tsukaima:Volume7 Chapter5

Roughly a mile out from the battlements of Fort South Gotha, at the staging area for the assault, the three hundred and fifty troops of the De Vinuiyu Battalion were awaiting the horn to signal the beginning of the attack.

Today, fifteen days after the landings, the Allied Army was finally launching their offensive.

Leading the Second Company, Guiche was shivering from head to toe, staring intently at the mist-covered city of South Gotha.

“Company commander, sir!”

The sergeant on guard at his side, Nicola, spoke in a soft tone.

“W-w-w-what is it?” Guiche stammered.

“You dropped your wand.”

Guiche immediately looked below at his feet and saw his rose-shaped wand lying on the ground.

He frantically picked it back up and shoved it into his chest pocket, while trying to maintain the solemn expression on his face.

“Company commander, sir!”

“W-what is it?”

“Although it might not be my concern, I still think it would be better for you to go take a leak first.”

Guiche immediately glared at him and exclaimed:

“I’ve already gone!”

“That’s good, then.” Nicola replied while grinning.

“There’s nothing to be nervous about. According to the reports in the past few days, the enemy’s cannons have all been destroyed by our fleet’s bombardment, and they’ve only deployed monstrous humanoids [--- TL: replace with something better? Basically a category for orcs, trolls, ogres, etc. but not monsters in general ---] troops to guard the streets”

“M-monstrous humanoids are incredibly ferocious, and their bodies are massive.”

“But they are foes that are incredibly easy to lure into traps.” Nicola remarked while watching ahead.

Guiche observed the small man carrying his arquebus. This was the first real battle he has participated in, and there was no one else he could rely on. With such thoughts in his mind, the man in front of him appeared to be larger than any lunkhead he knew.

“However… from where could we start our assault? The whole city is surrounded by those huge rock walls…”

Hearing Guiche’s concern, Nicola nodded his head.

“Someone’s going to come ‘open a route’ for us soon.”

After some time idly passed by, a fleet of battleships appeared in the skies above. The ten battleships, by then all neatly lined up in a row, proceeded to begin bombarding the wall with cannon fire. In the face of the floating battleships’ firepower, the enemy was completely powerless.

“Boom—! Boom—! Boom—!” Accompanied by the thunderous roar of cannon fire and thick clouds of smoke, the walls began to crumble and cheers could be heard erupting from the soldiers assembled at the staging area. Under the barrage of cannon fire, the walls along the battlements collapsed.

And then, appearing right in front of their eyes, was a group of huge mud golems.

“They must be golems made by Triangle Class magicians.” Guiche thought to himself.

Since he himself was a Dot Grade magician, he could never create such large golems. He looked up at it in admiration – Although it was slightly smaller than the mud golems created by Fouquet of the Crumbling Dirt, whom had once rattled the whole of Tristain, they were still huge. The mud golems, with a height of roughly twenty meters, solidly stumbled along, gradually nearing the collapsed walls.

On the backs of the mud golems were flags bearing the family emblems of their respective creators, and Guiche, upon noticing a familiar emblem amongst them, instinctively yelled out loud:

“Brother! That is brother’s mud golem!”

Bearing the emblem of the Gramont family, it must belong to his second brother who was attached to the Royal Army. The flag fluttering on its back, bearing the emblem of the Gramont family, ‘A Rose and Panther’, was glowing brightly.

At that instant, with a whoosh, a large object of some short flew straight towards the mud golems approaching the wall. Wham! One of the mud golems had its abdomen shot through into a gaping hole. The golem immediately lost its balance, and collapsed into a heap onto the ground. The metallic lights shot towards the approaching golems one after another, felling many of them as they were struck by its fire.

“What in the world is that?” Guiche gasped.

“It’s a giant ballista.” Nicola replied immediately. “I’m afraid they're probably operated by the orcs. It's a three meter-long weapon based on the crossbow, capable of shooting giant bolts. If a human were to be struck by it, they will surely be smashed into pieces. But then again, they were not designed to be used against people.

Guiche worriedly watched his brother’s golem. A bolt stuck out of the golem’s leg, but fortunately, the mud golem still remained standing.

“Is company commander sir [--- this is a tad bit awkward ---] a member of the Gramont family?” Nicola asked, noticing Guiche’s excitement.

“I’m the youngest son.”

Hearing Guiche’s reply, Nicola's eyes opened wide in astonishment.

“That means you are the Marshal’s…! What a surprise! What brought you to a lowly gun battalion like ours? With your father’s name, whether it be the knights, or an elite regimental headquarters, wouldn’t you be able to join any battalion you desire to?”

“If I were to use my father’s name, does it not mean that it is no longer because of my merit?” Guice replied as he looked to the front.

Nicola was unable to say anything, but after a while, he grinned and slapped Guiche’s shoulder.

“I like your kind of attitude, young master. Since that’s how it is, we ain’t returning back home till we win our merit and glory!”

Soon after, a troop of dragon knights arrived as well. Heading straight towards the ballistae upon the battlements, with magic and dragon fire, they quickly silenced the ballistae.

Finally arriving at the foot of the collapsed wall, which had been turned into rubble by the cannon fire earlier, the mud golems began clearing away the rubble.

“They're making an entrance.”

His men would soon breach into the city through that entry. Guiche’s entire body began to tremble uncontrollably.

“You are shaking?”

“… E-even though I would really like to say it is due to the excitement… but it is most probably because of fear. Uh…”

“Heh, being honest is a good thing, you will never succeed on reckless courage alone. But, you can’t be too cowardly either. Regardless, just let me take care of it.”

Nicola raised his hands towards the roughly hundred arquebusiers behind him. Another fifty or so pikemen acted as their guard. This company numbering roughly hundred and fifty men, were the soldiers under Guiche.

“Prime and load your cartridge—!”

The arquebusiers then leisurely loaded their barrels with the bullet and gunpowder.

“Company commander sir, might I trouble you to light this?” Nicola pulled a length of slow match towards Guiche.

Guiche nodded, and cast an ‘Ignite’ spell on the cord. Accompanying the sizzling noise of the slow match smouldering, a burning smell hung in the air. Nicola called a soldier over, and handed the ignited cord over to be distributed amongst the other soldiers.

“This is a slow match given by our company commander! Make sure it is not extinguished!”

The response that returned lacked any sense of enthusiasm.

Rumble—! The golems cleared away the wall. At that moment, Nicola poked Guiche in the waist and said:

“Company commander sir, let’s go.”

Raising his wand whilst still trembling, Guiche yelled out:

“G-gramont Company, forward!”

The veteran arquibusiers followed behind him with staggering footsteps. It was only then that Guiche realised – it was only his own company that was charging forward! The order to charge hadn’t been passed down from the top yet!

“Hey, sergeant—“ He was about to voice his complaint, but stopped upon noticing the Nicola’s calm and confident expression.

Once a troop has begun advancing, it was almost impossible to halt their advance, and thus they could only continue moving forward.

A few seconds later, an order to “Charge!” was sounded from the ranks behind.

Like a surging tidal wave, soldiers, knights and assorted others all stormed in their direction.

“We are all old veterans after all. If we don’t start out a bit earlier, we won’t be able to catch up.”

Probably due to the reason that they had set out earlier, Guiche’s troop was the first to reach one of the breaches along the battlements. But a couple of knights chased past them, storming into the city.

“But we were the first to get here!” Guiche shouted as he prepared to storm inside, before Nicole grabbed him.

Immediately afterwards, the knights which had just charged in were sent flying back out together with their mounts, landing in front of Guiche in a miserable state. It seemed that on the other side of the wall, were club-wielding orcs waiting for simple-minded fools like them to deliver themselves to their doom.

Enormous monsters with a size at least five times that of a human - the group of orcs, spottied Guiche's party and immediately stormed towards them. Guiche remembered the time when he had gone treasure-hunting with everyone; how they had been ambushed by orcs like these as well. His bronze golems had been pummelled into oblivion by them back then.

A sense of dread welled up within him.

“Fire! Fire! Quickly, fire!” Guiche began to yell frantically.

“Don’t fire just yet! Company commander sir! Use an incantation to knock over that guy furthest at the back! Quickly!”

Then, acting accordingly to what he had said, Guiche waved his artificial rose. Erupting from the ground below, a hand grabbed a hold of the leg of the orc at the back.

Crash! Right in the middle of the narrow breach in the wall, the orc tripped over.

“First platoon! The leading group is your target! Fire—!”

Without delay, Nicola issued the order to pour volley fire onto the orc at the head of the approaching group.

The thirty or so aruquebusiers fired their guns in concert at the leading orc, shredding it into a honeycomb. The other orcs at the forefront were felled onto the ground as well, blocking the advance of the group behind them. Not the type to let such an opportunity go, Nicola bellowed his next order without hesitation.

“Second platoon! Fire—!”

Although orcs were capable of waving their clubs about even after a barrage of bullets, they still couldn’t endure the impact of the dozens of bullets fired at such close quarters.

The orcs which were trailing behind decided to retreat, but within the narrow breach of the wall, the orc at the rear had been knocked to the ground by Guiche’s magic, unable to move. To the front, they were obstructed by the corpses of their allies. Just as they stumbled and trudged through the corpses to charge through, they were greeted with the volley fire of the remaining arquebusiers.

The last few remaining orcs were then met with the charge of the pikemen and quickly eliminated.

Staring at the twenty or so orc corpses on the ground, Guiche voiced out in admiration:

“S-so powerful…”

While he instructed the arquebusiers to reload their bullets, he revealed a grin.

“Because these guys are very simple-minded, once they spot the enemy, they’ll come charging straight at them.”

The veteran sergeant with much experience under his belt laughed as he patted Guiche’s shoulder.

“Company commander sir, look, now you can earn the highest merit.”

And just like that, the Ragtag Battalion demonstrated an extraordinary level of solidarity. Meanwhile on another front, was the solidarity-less ‘Trump Card [--- TL: Ace or Trump Card? ---] of the Allied Army’.

It was Louise and her familiar.

South Gotha was built upon a relatively high mountain. Circled on all sides by a wall, a main road shaped like a five-pointed star was constructed within. Legends say that this was the first city founded by the Founder on the continent of Albion; whether this was the truth or not was impossible to know.

However, it was only the five roads of that pentagram that displayed that elegant geometric design, within it was a complex of countless side streets and disorderly alleyways. It was no different than the other cities could be seen all over Halkeginia.

At the moment, Louise was running frantically through a small alleyway. Saito could be seen by her side with Delflinger firmly in his grasp, followed closely by the various members of the dragon knights dressed in disguises.

Chasing them from their rear, were ten or so huge trolls and fang-bearing ogres; both were giants that measured roughly five meters tall.

Fortunately this being a small alleyway, the beasts seemed to be struggling to squeeze through. Because they were crashing through protruding walls and windows alike as they chased through, it took them quite a while. If it had been a wide open plain instead, Louise and them would surely have been caught up to in an instant.

To find out why Louise was running back and forth through the maze of alleyways within South Gotha, we would have to begin from the mission that they had accepted.

As a rough explanation, their objective coincided with that of the assaulting main force. Infiltrating into the city from the opposite side, their original purpose had been to use ‘Illusion’ magic to create a phantom army, thus plunging the enemy into disarray…

“Why did you have to suddenly yell out like that! Hey!” Louise shouted as she ran.

Three hours ago, they had snuck into the city under the cover of darkness.

“Didn’t I already tell you! No matter what you see, don’t act surprised! Hey!”

“B-but… It was too big! That troll thing! That ogre or something!”

Louise’s Void magic required an exceptionally long incantation period.

Just as she was chanting the incantation on a street corner whilst pretending to be preaching… an Albion noble responsible for patrolling went over to inquire:

“Who are you guys supposed to be?”

“We are participants in the Founder’s Rite of Passage, which has brought us to this ancient city of South Gotha. We wish for Albion to achieve victory, and thus we are currently praying to the heavens.”

Although René had said so without blinking an eye, the patrolling magician, with a peculiar expression, still asked:

“Don’t tell me… you guys are spies sent by Tristain and Germania?”

Louise hastily shook her head rapidly.

René also shook his head.

Then Saito, noticing the huge troll standing behind the magician, inadvertently cried out loud:

“So big! Just what is it?”

The magician immediately brought his face closer to Saito who had unwittingly cried out. “A very rarely seen face….”

I’m suspected, Saito thought, assuming a straight posture. The magician meticulously measured Saito up.

“Let me ask you, who is the general who commands the Second Army of the Holy Republic of Albion.”

Saito tensed up.

General!? How am I supposed to know things like this? Looking around him, all he could see were the beads of the sweat on everyone’s forhead. Crap, the success of the mission depends all on my answer. But… I have no idea what the general’s name is.

The enemy magician pressed his face closer, and glaring fiercely at him, said:

“What’s wrong? You don’t know? You don’t even know the name of the Sir General who protects this place? Are you really Albionian [--- TL: Erm, I think this fits? Basically, someone from Albion ---]? Spit it out!”

Saito’s mind began plunge into disarray. And, having plunged into disarray… his mind was completely blank.

“Tokugawa Ieyasu”

He made up such an answer. As to general’s names, he only knew this one.

“What Tokugawa Ieyasu!? Where’s he from!? Why couldn’t you give a more appropriate answer!” Louise shouted as she ran.

“It’s not like there was another choice! It was the only one I knew!”

“Whatever, I won’t blame you for now.”

No, rather it was all his fault, but nothing could be done. Louise continued:

“Why don’t you just take care of them like usual! It’s only so few of them!”

When Saito had replied “Tokugawa Ieyasu”, the magician was taken aback, before yelling “Suspicious persons!” and launching a sudden attack with the troll.

Saito was originally going to block their attacks… but was sent flying by the troll in one hit.

The overwhelming strength of the gigantic monstrous humanoids, it was difficult to endure even as Gandalfr. Furthermore, there were almost ten of those guys. Even if I can’t kill them, I should be able to resist their attacks... However, today’s Saito was not the same as his usual self.

“What’s wrong, Partner. Why do I feel like you have no enthusiasm?”