"What the hell is that?"
He could see the light of the New Principality. Soujirou grumbled with his sword slung over his shoulder.
After his fight with Shalk the Sound Slicer across the plain, Soujirou was now heading toward not the main headquarters inside the Mage City fortress but instead enemy territory, the New Principality of Lithia.
To the blade from another world, seeking only blood and swords, pursuit was his sole option. However…
"Damn…am I too late?"
The New Principality's battle formation, a defensive line spread across the highway, was like a wall in scope. Earthen fortifications and barbed wire were laid out, with several archers and riflemen deployed on the sloping ground behind it all. While painstaking preparations had been made for open warfare, it showed how well trained Taren's soldiers were, given the speed with which these defensive battle structures had been erected in the short time following the Cold Star's surprise attack.
Additionally, those familiar with the New Principality of Lithia knew this highway en route the city entrance was already squarely within the eyes of their wyvern army. Should a large force invade, they would be immediately greeted by countless reinforcements from the skies.
Reaching Lithia with cavalry was no longer an option, doubly so by foot. Nevertheless, Soujirou the Willow-Sword continued strolling ahead,
casually closing the distance between himself and the defensive line. "Hey!" the Visitor shouted loudly, sword still slung over his shoulder.
"Y'all gotta get outta my way for a bit. Cutting you down looks like it'll be pretty boring, too."
The reply came in the form of a hail of arrows and gunfire. It was more than enough to turn a person into a bloody mist, but Soujirou was clearly unscathed. An explosive crack of air was the only thing that signaled the supernatural speed of the Visitor's sword strike.
"You only got seven shots at my body! If you're gonna shoot, aim better!" He didn't stop walking for a single second. A soldier assembled on the front line then caught sight of Soujirou's sword, as if by some mysterious
destiny…
"…Y-you bastard! An Aureatia thug, are you?!" "I told you to get outta the way."
Without a moment's hesitation, Soujirou moved to cut down the soldier in front of him and proceed.
But he turned around right before he did. "Hey. What's with that noise?" "Huh…?"
Before the soldier could react to the abrupt question, a colossal something, like a cannonball, came crashing down.
The encampment and everyone in it were smashed. The black mass came to a stop just below the incline of the slope, smashing the earth with a roaring crack, its back caked with the soldier's blood.
"…What're you all about?"
Soujirou had rolled to his side and sidestepped the blast. He had his sword at the ready.
What came flying out in front of him was an abomination, unlike anything he had yet seen in this world.
An arachnid colossus, so big he needed to crane his neck to look up at it. Its black metallic shell shined a mysterious rainbow color, reflecting the light from the city and the stars in the sky.
The monster began to speak.
"I am sorry for doing this to you all."
Completely contrary to the spider's appearance, it spoke with the charming voice of a young girl.
"But I'll need you all to die. I have to make sure everyone can get through, okay?"
"Our g-gunshots…don't affect it at all?!"
"We've been shooting at it nonstop! Ready the cannon!" "Notify the wyvern patrol!"
Arrows poured down over the beast, and there was an unending stream of gunfire. Not a single method of attack from the New Principality soldiers had any effect. Neither did the behemoth use any supernatural evasion skills like
Soujirou had moments earlier—the metallic armor was simply so abnormally strong. It nullified everything.
"Commence artillery!" "Tee-hee-hee."
With a clamorous concussive blast, high-explosive shells hailed down from the soldiers' artillery positions. The explosions blasted away sections of ground and started to kick up gravel. The tarantula giggled, showing not even the slightest movements.
"Tee-hee, hee-hee-hee…"
Helneten the Burial. The tarantula modified into an organic battle tank, piloted by Nihilo the Vortical Stampede. Its armor was made from a mystical magic gem called deep celestial charsteel, and outside of direct processing by way master-level Craft Arts, neither normal force nor heat could even scratch it.
Furthermore, its pilot, Nihilo the Vortical Stampede, was a lifeless revenant, able to withstand the sudden speed shifts from Helneten's unreasonable power output. This tank abomination, though requiring a pilot, didn't have any air holes to let in a minimal amount of oxygen, meaning it was covered in an impenetrable armor without a single weak point.
The ultimate land tank, more impregnable than even the Nagan Dungeon Golem.
"It's no use! Defensive line retreat—ngggh!"
"Gaaah!"
Helneten caught up with a group of soldiers in the distance with a single jump and crushed them underfoot. The monstrous amount of power output that moved Helneten's giant mass made its very form a murderous weapon.
The red eyes looked up to the sky, and the young girl spoke coolly.
"Are the wyvern soldiers here yet? If I don't take them down, I can't be the harbing—!"
The massive tarantula kicked the ground and fell back. The simple movement was enough to tear up a large amount of soil, mixing together with the flesh and blood of the soldiers in the tank's wake.
"Hey. C'mon…it's about time you answered my question."
The threat the girl had sensed came from a track suit–cloaked swordsman, who she'd assumed had gotten wiped out in the earlier artillery fire.
"What the hell are you?"
"I've heard about you. You're Soujirou the Willow-Sword. We're allies." "Listen up, now. That ain't what I'm asking."
Soujirou lazily brought his sword down and looked out over the New Principality encampment, dyed with patches of blood and organs, flesh and fat. Soujirou, tasked with infiltration and assassination, had been unaware of the existence of this last resort called the Vortical Stampede.
Even had he known, however, as someone who sought out only powerful fighters to kill, it wouldn't have changed his actions.
Sauntering once again, he headed toward the ultimate ground tank. The M1 Abrams that Soujirou mentioned to Yuno in the ruined city of Nagan had been the main battle tank in the Beyond.
"Enough tearing up the place solo. If you wanna fight, then let's fight." "Tee-hee… Why?"
"'Cause you're strong."
Soujirou instantly closed the distance between them and brandished his sword.
By the time his attack was complete, the tarantula had already retreated. "…Are you really a minia?"
She hadn't intended on letting him get close enough to even unsheathe his sword. All she wanted to do was waylay the wyvern soldiers from her current position and bring them down without coming to blows with Soujirou.
The man didn't seem to have any structural differences beyond a normal minia, unlike the modified corpses of Nihilo and Helneten. Nevertheless, his rush forward, the speed of his sword…
"You seriously like fighting that much? Are you crazy?"
"…Inside that body. I saw it. That's your core," he muttered, still positioned with the follow-through for his attack, looking downward.
"You only got one life, huh? Just one shared between that vehicle and the person inside it."
"...!"
Nihilo the Vortical Stampede, in addition to boasting exceedingly sturdy armor, had several other mechanisms, too. However, there had never been anyone up until that point who could fathom this part of her inner design, especially not by looking at her from the outside.
Nihilo heightened her guard toward the Visitor. Even though they were allies, both working with Aureatia—no, she thought, that made him all the
more dangerous.
The massive tarantula moved up to the top of the hill and looked down on Soujirou with its red eyes.
"I don't intend on fighting you. Now that this encampment's…"
There was a plucking sound, like a stringed instrument, and a group of New Principality marksmen was torn to pieces all at once. They were the last soldiers leftover from the giant spider's massacre.
"…all cleaned up."
With these final words, she turned in the direction of the New Principality and disappeared.
Having confronted her at point-blank range, Soujirou could see the true form of her attack.
"…String, eh? Shot some damn string at 'em."
The warp threads of a tarantula's webs boasted such durability, an ogre's Herculean strength wasn't enough to pull them apart, while the weft threads possessed a sharp edge that could easily slice through a wyvern, bones and all.
This artillery functionality, firing threads and boasting the precision and range to fell wyverns in the night sky, was one of the mechanisms that made Nihilo the Vortical Stampede into the invincible tank she was.
Furthermore, separate from such weaponry, she, as a construct, had her greatest function of all—
"Huh?"
As she continued trampling toward the city lights, Nihilo sensed something was off.
She could feel the abnormality in her mount Helneten, through the nerves extending from her spine.
"There are three eyes missing."
Was it possible the overly sharp cut had remained closed until that moment? Or did the supernatural flash of the otherworldly deviant's sword manage to leave its opponents unaware they had even been cut? Helneten's head had been sliced through diagonally and lost three of its eyes.
The armor enveloping Helneten was created from a mystical magic gem known as deep celestial charsteel. Normal force and heart were unable to
scratch it—or so she had thought.
"Soujirou the Willow-Sword. With that step forward, he cut through my head without my even realizing it… Tee-hee-hee."
Nihilo simply laughed after becoming aware of the wound.
Helneten darted, trampled, and shot down the wyvern soldiers covering the sky one after another with its five eyes. Even after losing half its head, the tarantula's movements showed not even the slightest sign of faltering.
The bodies of both revenants, Nihilo and Helneten, were already long dead. On the other hand, just as a golem wouldn't know death as long as it had its core animating it, as long as the revenant's vitality core was intact, they were alive.
Controlling life was one of the end goals the creators of constructs sought to achieve. Techniques that borrowed another's existence, separate from the creator themselves, and giving it life was another route to that extreme end.
Helneten's vitality core was its very pilot, housed within its armored exterior.
"Well then…it seems there's another one out there capable of killing me, Kuze."
A shared curse. As long as the driver, Nihilo, was in one piece, the Vortical Stampede was immortal.
She was dead and, therefore, adapted to the speed and colossal force of her mount, its walking force enough to bring topographical destruction.
She possessed artillery mechanisms, bringing instant death from a distance, cutting apart whole armies with a single web.
She had both armor that insulated her against any and all regular attacks, while also simultaneously being an unstoppable immortal herself.
Though given two bodies, they were an atrocity-summoning cavalry, wanted solely for their function to trample everyone before them underfoot.
The revenant and the cataphract. Nihilo the Vortical Stampede.