Chapter 254: Descending from the Sky (1)
In a secure room within Sentinel, Maximilian explained the operation they were to take part in.
To save the Zerpha monarchy. To cut down the traitors who had staged the coup and restore order as the master of the continent. To bring relief to the innocent people crushed beneath poverty and persecution as civil war swept through their country.
The justification was a handwritten letter sent personally by Crown Prince Alonso.
The practical benefits were more than ample.
The Empire would inevitably collect on this favor someday, and for Sentinel, this would also be an important proving ground.
Knight’s Descent. The first stage on which its power in real combat and its potential uses can be tested.
“At present the Republican Faction’s offensive is concentrated on ‘Gandela’.”
It was the point on which the fates of both the Republicans and the Royalists hung.
Gandela was the junction where the roads and railways running toward the Zerphan capital all converged. If it fell, the Royalist line would be snapped in two; conversely, the Republican line would be joined into one.
The Republicans had already swallowed up one riverside strongpoint after another through nighttime river crossings. However, thanks to the Royalists’ timely redeployment of troops, their offensive had been halted before Pannel Ridge, the final gateway to Gandela.
A limestone wasteland where even a shovel could not bite into the ground. The Republicans were now throwing troops against that bare stone mountain, clawing their way upward while the Royalists held out atop the ridge.
For either side, it was not a fight that could go on for long.
“Accordingly, the essence of this operation is as follows. In coordination with the Royalist command…….”
While the Royalist army fixes the enemy’s attention with a frontal engagement on the ridge.
“……we will descend behind enemy lines and strike at their heart.”
The knights would descend in dispersed formations deep behind enemy lines─ into the heart of their command structure and river-crossing points, and there they would put the Empire’s sword to the test.
Just how sharp a blade were they? And just how swift were their legs?
“Participation in this operation is voluntary. Any knight who does not wish to participate, raise your hand now. No record will be kept, and there will be no disadvantage of any kind. If you do not wish to take part in the operation, raise your hand now.”
No matter how long he waited, not a single person raised a hand.
“Confirmed.”
With that, everyone gathered in the room had volunteered.
“For security reasons, individual drop points will be issued directly to each knight at a later time. Battlefield maps will be distributed en masse before the day is out, and any personnel who fail to demonstrate complete mastery at the pre-deployment inspection will be excluded from the operation, regardless of the reason.”
The briefing was over.
For a moment, silence settled over the room.
Tension stretched taut as a drawn string.
Yet beneath that tautness flowed a quiet sense of exhilaration, something distinctly different from pressure.
“…….”
They all stole a look around the room. A few of the young knights felt as though they were dreaming.
Names and faces they had only ever seen in the textbooks of Empire Point, in the campus journals they had read as cadets, or in academic papers.
To be gathered in a single room with them, all of them looking toward one operation.
To find one’s own name on that roster.
It was a strange feeling.
Frightening yet overwhelming; crushing, and yet it made their shoulders straighten instead.
“The operation’s name is──”
Chiron, Knight Commander of Sentinel, opened his mouth.
“──’Spear of Heaven.'”
Royal authority was a power handed down from heaven. The name carried the sense of punishment for the ringleaders who dared defy that mandate, and at the same time it was meant quite literally.
For soon enough, spears would be falling out of the night sky over Zerpha.
* * *
The World Expo was still in full swing in Prozen. The Imperial Pavilion drew packed crowds every night, while the Eastern Pavilion remained just as formidable, and the two giants continued raking in tourists day after day.
Beneath their shadows, however, another country’s pavilion had begun quietly attracting attention.
At first, it had mainly drawn people from the industry such as painters, critics, and collectors, along with the sort who fancied themselves intellectuals and wanted to appear cultured. These days, even ordinary tourists were circling the place on their maps and deliberately seeking it out.
「Zerpha National Pavilion」
“What’s this pavilion about? Zerpha? Where even is that country?”
“Oh…… this place looks kind of impressive.”
“Excuse me, are photographs allowed in here?”
Visitors slowly passed between enormous murals and iron sculptures, until most of them came to a complete stop before one particular painting.
「Zernica」
A massive black-and-white oil painting. Its sheer height was overwhelming.
The viewers stared up at it for a long while, then crossed to the painting opposite it and found themselves seized by an even stranger emotion.
「Where the Light Points」
A canvas already judged by more than a few art critics to be a masterpiece among masterpieces. A masterwork by Pablo, showered with endless praise by Prozen’s foremost gallery.
Interpretations of the figure depicted on the canvas varied.
Some called it a portrait of a saint, others a warning of disaster. Some claimed it represented the darkness harbored by the Empire’s Aran, while still others argued that it depicted the form of a ‘complete human being’, something everyone imagined within their hearts but could never ultimately reach.
Yet Pablo offered no answer to any of those interpretations, saying only, ‘Isn’t he simply a man?’…….
──Pablo Sobakin.
Around the time his name was beginning to be passed from mouth to mouth across the continent.
In an atelier on the outskirts, a short distance from the exhibition hall.
“Pablo! Pabloooo!”
Footsteps thundered energetically up the stairs, while a voice trembled with excitement.
“Pabloooo!”
It was his manager. Pablo frowned without putting down his brush.
“What is it this time?”
“Look at this!”
The papers the manager thrust out were sheets of bids that had come in from a number of galleries.
“The whole continent wants your paintings!”
“…….”
Pablo’s eyebrows drooped indifferently.
Paintings he had made in his youth now carried prices higher than an entire year’s living expenses from those days, while the painting currently sitting on his easel, its paint not even dry yet, had an even larger number attached to it.
“And that’s just the opening offer! Get them bidding against each other and it’ll climb higher.”
Art dealers had begun competing by outbidding one another, and some of the more impatient among them were even putting down deposits in advance.
“Sell them however you see fit.”
“Which reminds me, about 「Where the Light Points」-“
“Not for sale.”
Pablo had painted it himself, yet somehow the idea of anyone owning it simply did not suit the painting.
Someday, far in the future, he might well be ashamed of the simple fact that he had painted the man at all.
“……Obviously that’s what I told them. It’s only going to get more expensive with time, so why sell?”
Then, carefully, he held something out.
“And…… I thought you ought to see this.”
It was a newspaper. One brought from Zerpha itself, and from territory under Republican control at that.
──「The Revolution’s Iber Army Crosses the River: Gandela’s Liberation Within Sight」──
……At dawn on the 25th, our heroic Iber Army forced a crossing, broke through the enemy line, advanced forty kilometers, and captured thousands of prisoners. The revolution’s victory is in sight…….
─────────
Pablo read the sentences in silence.
“……Pablo. The Republicans might actually win.”
“…….”
Without a word he raised his eyes and looked for a while through the studio window, toward the stretch of sky where his homeland lay.
Under that same sky, someone is crossing a river right now, and someone else is dying on a ridge.
“……Bring it back to me when the war is over.”
The Royalists sneered at him as ‘the broken painter’ and the Republicans denounced him as ‘a collaborator of the monarchy’, but in truth there was only one thing he had ever claimed.
War is not right.
「Zernica」 depicted a place destroyed by war, while 「Where the Light Points」 depicted the man who would bring about war.
The two pictures had never once said different things.
…….
Bang bang bang bang─!
Gunfire and flame engulfed the ridge. Shells and bullets plowed up earth and flesh, and in between, flashes of mana-charged light glinted.
Shweeeeeeee──
A single Lance, spinning blue, came arcing in on a parabola.
KABOOOOOM──!
It burst in the middle of a trench. Sandbags and men were flung up together in one lump.
“Damn it! This is Hill 481, the left slope is being breached! Requesting support! Requesting support!”
“Fire! Fire──!”
At the officers’ shouts, the entire trench line erupted in flame. Riflemen pulled their triggers until their shoulders felt ready to break, while machine-gun emplacements swept the slope below until their barrels glowed red-hot.
Bang─ Bangbangbang─!
And over that curtain of fire— the warfare of this era was laid on top.
Bang! KABOOOOOM──!
Howitzers bellowed without rest behind the ridge, and tanks crawled up from the foot of the slope, driving direct fire into the trench line.
Hisssssss── Ka-krack-BOOM!
Whenever a tank was flipped and set ablaze by a mana blast, infantry used the wreck as a shield and continued crawling up the slope.
Soldiers squeezed themselves behind low walls piled from stones, and every time a shell struck the rocks, metal fragments and shards of stone sprayed through the air.
“Charge─!”
“Cough…… help…….”
“Ignore him! Keep climbing! Get up there──!”
Corpses rolled down the slope. Explosions burst around them. Fragments of bone and flesh scattered through the air.
No one could tell who was pushing whom, nor even distinguish one side from the other. It was simply a battle that fed human bodies into a grinder.
The ridge of Gandela was soaking through with blood.
…….
A dark night.
Crown Prince Alonso stood before the table with a face steeped in worry.
“…….”
The red line on the map had not shifted from Gandela in days.
But did that mean they were holding well? Or that they were crumbling?
The tallies of ammunition and lives the ridge garrison burned through each day came up onto this table every night.
The Royalist Faction’s elite corps had gone down into southern Zerpha together with the Imperial Guard. It was to prepare for the next advance.
In that case, was he to call them back up by royal command? Was he to hold Gandela at all costs, even if it meant leaving the south exposed?
“Haa…….”
To the sighing Crown Prince, the Chief of the General Staff and the Ministers of Defense carefully offered their counsel.
“Trouble yourself not, Your Highness.”
“The Empire will soon make its move.”
“……But we have already received far too much from them.”
Gratitude and dread were mixed in equal measure in the Crown Prince’s voice.
They had received supplies, received arms, received soldiers.
If on top of all that he were to ask for a greater army, would the Empire truly grant it?
And even were it granted, how long would it take to raise an army in their homeland and bring it across the mountains? Would the ridge at Gandela hold for as long as that?
And the price of all that kindness, however was it to be repaid in the days to come?
“……Let us wait, Your Highness.”
The ministers did nothing but repeat the same word over and over. Wait.
Because that was precisely the instruction they had received from the Empire.
──Wait.
They simply waited, without knowing what was coming or how it would arrive…….
* * *
The home of newly appointed Knight Ruin.
Inside the small armory of the house, which was practically half-owned by the bank, lay a single sword.
A keepsake of his father, who had been a soldier.
The family sword.
Gazing at it, Ruin sank into thought.
He could already draw the terrain around his descent point with his eyes closed. Not merely its location, but its very contours had been perfectly engraved into his mind.
“…….”
But then, what was this feeling coursing through his body?
Hot and yet cold, chilling as a knife’s cut. The sensation of his first real battle.
“Are you afraid, sir?”
At the voice, Ruin turned his head.
It was Beck, a Yaken.
Most Sentinel knights employed at least one Yaken. The relationship between knights and Yaken had grown so close that some cadets began searching for a compatible Yaken back in their Empire Point days.
“……I’m, not sure.”
Doubt over whether I can actually do it.
Certainty that I am about to cut down a human being for the first time.
Those emotions had become tangled together.
“You need only carry out what you were taught, sir. Wherever your conviction leads you.”
“……I suppose so.”
Ruin gave a small laugh and nodded.
He strapped the sword to his waist and tucked his knight-issue helmet beneath one arm. He had long since changed out of his ordinary uniform and into the armored suit designed for descent operations.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes, sir.”
The two of them got into the car together.
Their destination was the Imperial Air Force 3rd Airfield.
While Beck drove, Ruin looked down at the helmet on his knees and put his mind in order.
The moment I put this on, the world will recede from me anyway.
The instructor had put it this way.
‘Becoming one with the Empire—’.
So the fear is not mine either. There was never any need to fear in the first place. For I am a knight of the Empire, of Sentinel.
“We’ve arrived.”
Before he knew it, they had reached their destination, and Ruin stepped onto the asphalt.
“Sir.”
Beck grinned at him through the window.
“I’ll be looking forward to that celebration dinner.”
Ruin gave a faint smile in return.
After that he walked on, guided by a soldier who came out to meet him.
─Thud. Thud.
They arrived at the mouth of a corridor.
“Loyalty!”
The escorting soldiers came to a crisp halt before it. From this point on, the area was off-limits even to them.
“Carry on.”
Answering gravely, Ruin walked on alone.
─Thud.
A long, dark space.
The stagnant air seemed to press down on his shoulders.
His breathing echoed loudly in his ears.
─Thud.
Strange.
In training, extremes far worse than this had trampled his whole body. He had endured all that pain, all those brutal nights.
Then why did this ordinary corridor feel so much heavier than those days?
─Thud.
Just as the tension was drawing every nerve in his body tight enough to tingle.
Not far ahead, he saw the back of someone walking.
The same uniform as his own.
The same helmet as his own.
A single man walking in silence.
A knight of Sentinel.
──Thud.
Ruin walked after that back.
Without realizing it, his stride quickened by half a beat.
The pace that fear had slowed found itself again.
──Thud. Thud.
The two men’s boot heels struck in unison.
The back ahead did not look around. Nor did Ruin bother to call out.
──Thud. Thud.
Slowly, ‘they’ began to appear.
One from a branching passage.
Two at the next corner.
Three at a stairway landing.
──Thud. Thud.
They joined as naturally as if they had been together from the start.
Nobody spoke, nobody so much as looked at anybody else, but the destination was the same for every one of them.
──Thud. Thud.
The footsteps overlapped and grew louder.
One set of steps became five, and five became ten.
──Thud. Thud. Thud.
Before long, a single mass of footfalls filled the entire passage.
The thicker the sound grew, the more Ruin’s heart seemed to swell.
Fear…….
──Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Fear was being trampled under boot heels, forged into something else.
A ‘oneness’ in which one became the whole, and the whole became one.
──Thud.
And so, as the end of the passage began to brighten.
WHOOOOM──!
His field of vision opened.
In that instant, Ruin let out a ragged breath.
A wide-open expanse.
A hangar where Mana Stones gave off white light beneath a steel-framed ceiling that soared high out of sight.
Countless knights stood arrayed with solemn dignity beneath that radiance.
The sight, like a single drawn sword, seized Ruin’s heart at once.
Thud──
He flinched and turned at the footsteps. Knights had already filed in behind him as well. Ahead, behind, to the left and right, all of them were knights.
……That’s right.
He was standing here now as a knight of Sentinel.
The moment that realization struck him, an indescribable emotion wrapped around his whole body.
His eyes grew hot.
His fear had scattered somewhere within the formation and vanished, and in its place the heartbeats of the knights filled his chest as though they were his own.
“…….”
At the hangar’s center hung the Empire’s flag, and to either side, the banners of Sentinel, swaying heavily in the night wind.
Yet the knights, as if by some agreement, were all looking toward one place.
At the far end where every gaze fell── there stood one man.
Moonlight spilling in through the flung-open hangar doors settled upon his shoulders, tracing a faint silver rim around the outline of his jet-black uniform.
An uprightness that did not bend beneath countless burdens, but rather seemed to stand willingly upon their weight.
A figure who, without a single word, drew all of Sentinel’s focus by presence alone.
The man who had led them this far, and who would now lead them beyond that sky.
The name of the one gazing up, alone, at the Empire’s flag.
……Maximilian Albrecht von Ebenholtz.
~~~
Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/cdZPxPVrXW