A day after the Old Kingdoms' loyalist uprising. A major thoroughfare in Aureatia.
What am I doing?
Yuno the Distant Talon had this on her mind inside the carriage.
There were two people riding with her. One was a slightly elderly man, Twenty-Seventh General Haade's envoy. The other was a short young man, wrapped in a unique dark-red outfit. His name was Soujirou the Willow-Sword.
The carriage was headed to the postwar negotiations. The war between Aureatia and Okafu had ended with Zigita Zogi the Thousandth—and the entire Free City of Okafu itself with him—submitting to Aureatia as a hero candidate, but in order to wrap up the war diplomatically, there were still other huge affairs that needed to be hammered out.
The scenery going by outside the window was the very same everyday landscape that Yuno was familiar with. And she couldn't believe that she was on her way to sit in on such important negotiations.
"You don't need get yourself so worked up there, lass."
The envoy spoke up, showing consideration for Yuno, her body stiff with nerves.
"I'll generally be doing all the talking. You can simply sit there and watch. This meeting will be for ironing out the finer conditions, one of many more negotiations to come… Ummm, you lass, the new secretary. What was your name again?"
"Y-Yuno. Yuno the Distant Talon."
"Right, right, Yuno. Slipped my mind for a second there. I'm counting on you to ensure Soujirou here fulfills his duty as bodyguard."
"Y-yes…sir…"
"What the hell's that about…? I ain't Yuno's damn pet or anything…" Lying down in his seat, Soujirou's objection was mixed in with a yawn.
The details behind Yuno the Distant Talon, naught but an average young girl
who once lived on the frontier, being employed as Haade the Flashpoint's secretary was the result of a number of coincidental events.
Having lost the person he was originally going to sponsor, Kazuki the Black Tone, Haade the Flashpoint now needed to decide on a different hero candidate to participate in the Sixways Exhibition. The powerful fighter he picked out was a visitor who had already earned a certain amount of military achievements in the conquering of the New Principality of Lithia, Soujirou the Willow-Sword.
Yuno, as one of the few people involved with the visitor from a world separate from their own, as Soujirou's accessory so to speak, mediated the dealings between him and the top echelons of Aureatia. Her status as a scholar of ruined Nagan, now an unfortunately rare breed, also aroused the interest of the Twenty-Nine Officials to some extent.
As a result, Yuno remained in her role as Soujirou's manager of sorts, and together with Soujirou's sponsorship, she had been made into a secretary in Haade's care.
I'm sure that what the old me was striving for…
A path open for anyone to claim glory, no matter what sort of past they had— or their racial or social status.
She had even dreamed of such a future.
…was this sort of good fortune, wasn't it?
For the current Yuno the Distant Talon, even this dream turned reality was hollow.
She only had one goal in involving herself with the Sixways Exhibition. Revenge against the powerful fighter who destroyed her hometown of Nagan. Whenever her thoughts turned to her revenge, she'd ask herself:
Just what am I doing…?
"Do you have any questions about your job this time, Yuno?"
"Um… For the time being, Soujirou's being treated as a hero candidate, right? I feel like his fighting power's a bit excessive to serve as a bodyguard for these negotiations."
"I see. That is a very good question."
The gentlemanly envoy answered with a composed look.
"But, my dear Yuno. They say that on Okafu's side, there is a visitor called the Gray-Haired Child. In order to prepare ourselves in the unlikely event of an Okafu attack…we need a bodyguard who can handle the methods of the Beyond, yes? It is not about having more or less fighting strength, but that it is only
another visitor who can match up with the standard tactics and ways of thinking used on the other side. Understand?"
"…I do. However, the need for such preparations means that Okafu and Aureatia's relationship is in a strained enough position to warrant them, doesn't it…?"
"Are you scared of battle, Yuno?"
The envoy flashed a toothy smile. A ferocious and brutal smile incongruent with his facial features.
"Come now. Soujirou here is just our precaution against a worst-case scenario—and nothing more. Besides, if you're going to be working under Lord Haade, you'll need to grow accustomed to some degree of barbarity."
"..."
Yuno lowered her head to avoid meeting the envoy's eyes.
Not many days had passed since she was placed under Haade the Flashpoint's command, but there was one thing she had come to learn.
The air that surrounded Haade and his subordinates was completely different from the followers of the other Twenty-Nine Officials. They seemed to intrinsically crave combat. Just like Soujirou the Willow-Sword.
"Sniper attack," Soujirou suddenly murmured, still lying on his back.
Yuno couldn't surmise the meaning of his comment. It happened in a brief second.
"Huh?"
There was a loud bang. Something had pierced the carriage wall. Still lying down, Soujirou had drawn his sword, and the diverted bullet had grazed Yuno's hair before flying off somewhere.
"What?!"
Outside the window, the citizens were coming and going the same as always.
A scene of everyday life. "How—?"
"We're taking sniper fire! Turn into the nearest alley!" the envoy shouted, and the carriage accelerated suddenly. Soujirou broke the window and jumped out of the carriage's passenger car, blocking the bullet aimed at the driver at the last moment. He groaned, annoyed.
"Ugh, give me a break…! I gotta defend three people like this?!" "No… There's no way. Right?! We're in the middle of town!" "Yuno! Get your head down!"
"Yo, it's coming from the fire tower! There's two more shots on the damn
way!"
Soujirou performed an acrobatic leap through the air, and flying backward against the carriage's path, he cut off the roof on a diagonal. The arc of his katana blocked the shot aimed at the envoy, while a scattered fragment of the carriage roof blocked the shot aimed at the driver.
The carriage catapulted into the alleyway with enough force to roll the vehicle over.
Horse hooves crushed piled-up wooden boxes filled with fruit. The loud roar and tremors assailed Yuno inside the carriage.
"…Koff… Ah!"
Her brain was rattled. Her insides were thrown into chaos in the span of a second, to the point of nausea.
Her life was being targeted, too. In the middle of this everyday scenery, without any warning.
No one had noticed. Even the overturning of their carriage, in the eyes of the citizens, likely appeared to be a simple runaway carriage accident.
"Yo. Get out, Yuno. They're gonna pick you off."
The carriage door, warped from the impact, was instantly cleaved through.
Soujirou was peering inside the carriage car. "What about the envoy?"
"He jumped outta there a while ago. You're the only one still dillydallying." "Seriously… Why is it always like this…?!"
Led by the hand, she guardedly looked over the narrow alleyway stretching out in front and behind her. But then, her senses couldn't determine the snipers' location, or if they still had their sights set on Yuno's position.
It was sniper fire, but there weren't any arrows piercing the carriage. Our enemy's definitely using guns.
They were using the bustling city noise to cover their gunshots—and attacking them without revealing themselves.
If Soujirou's intuition hadn't sensed the sniper fire, then they all would've been assassinated right in the public eye. Yuno tried to get her breathing under control.
"Hah… Hah, koff. Soujirou. You knew about the attack…before they fired?" "How many thousands of times do you think I was under sniper fire back in
my other world? Just going off experience here."
Whether she knew the tricks from the Beyond or not, Yuno understood one thing. Soujirou the Willow-Sword's level was far beyond this attack. At the very
least, for him, this didn't even register as being in danger.
"Do you think we can hold out if we hide in this alleyway?"
"Nah. That big main road back there was one-way despite how many people were on it, yeah? If we suddenly come under fire, we don't got a lot of options for side streets to escape, too, neither."
"Th-then…they've dispatched enough fighting power to chase us down no matter which side street we escape down…"
Prompting Yuno's group to then flee into the present alleyway. It meant the enemy had finished encircling them again—if the enemy truly intended on assassinating them.
"Geez, protecting weaklings is such a pain in the ass…"
Soujirou scratched his head while he followed through with his sword, gripping it upside down. There was the metallic sound of a bullet being repelled.
With the sound behind her, Yuno desperately dashed over to the shadows behind stacked wooden crates of fruit.
The envoy and driver were already hiding there. The envoy stroked his beard as he spoke.
"I'm glad you're all right, Yuno." "Y-yes, barely."
She turned around. Soujirou vaulted in a zigzag between both walls of the narrow alley and rushed up to the top of the buildings with tremendous momentum. These were abnormal physical abilities.
No gunshots came. Not yet.
"D-does Okafu…intend to oppose Aureatia? Sniper attacks. Well-trained gunmen. They knew we would be passing by here today, too. Mercenaries from Okafu are the only logical explanation."
"Judging by the current situation, I see no other interpretation! Reluctant as we may be, there's even the chance war will break out inside Aureatia's borders! At the very least, subduing the hero candidate Zigita Zogi and the Free City of Okafu is all but unavoidable at this point, isn't it?!"
"…Subduing?!"
In situations where it was evident a hero candidate participating in the Sixways Exhibition attacked another participant, the other hero candidates were obligated to put the attacker down.
Would the Free City of Okafu set up an attack like this knowing full well about this rule?
"But then what does Okafu's side have to benefit from—? Eek!"
Yuno screamed. A mysterious burning mass had fallen from the rooftop. It was a mangled minian corpse.
Soujirou landed on the ground after it. He had been fighting the fallen man moments prior.
"The guy went and blew himself up," Soujirou said with displeasure.
"I cut down four of 'em, but they'd all had some kinda explosive in their bodies. Weird."
Yuno covered her mouth with both hands. The urge to vomit from the carriage's rollover welled up inside her again. She still couldn't come to grips with the terrible battlefield opening up before her eyes.
"Do you think it's to cover up their association…their association with the Free City?"
"That really all there is to it…? Get the feeling that torching everything, body and all, is a little much."
Soujirou kicked the corpse with the tip of his foot. The burned torso blocked the latest rifle bullet flying their way. Soujirou looked toward the main road.
"Those guys are a bit far away."
Hearing Soujirou's words, the envoy made a window with his fingers and measured the distance to the spot they believed the sniper attacks were coming from.
"…About three hundred meters, I would say. Can you capture them alive, Soujirou, my boy?"
"I mean, I tried. I ain't some bloodthirsty killer or anything, okay? They all blew themselves up when I got close; it's a real pain."
"Just try to do what you can. I'd like to recover one of them." "No guarantees."
Smacking his shoulder twice with his sword, Soujirou dashed off again. He was as fast as the wind.
No matter how imposing the target, Soujirou didn't hesitate to cut them down. In the blink of an eye, he had traveled an impossible distance.
"The enemy—"
Yuno wiped cold sweat from her cheeks.
"—must have known that Soujirou was here escorting us, right?" "What do you mean?"
"I can't see their self-destruction prep work as anything but these snipers anticipating a counterattack. They're the ones encircling us, yet…blowing themselves up the moment Soujirou gets close makes it seem like they knew
they'd lose from the start, doesn't it?"
"…Still, if the Okafu's side knew about Soujirou the Willow-Sword's presence, they would never have thought their ambush would succeed in the first place. Personally, I feel like that doesn't mesh with meticulously setting up a sniper attack and cutting off our route to escape on the way to the meeting."
"Yes, and that's why it's strange. Pardon me, envoy, but do you have a
replacement?"
It was a truly rude question. Yuno herself felt as much even saying it. "…Replacement?"
"If you were truly an irreplaceable member of Mr. Haade's, someone worth assassinating, even when taking into account the sacrifices it would require… then maybe in that case, it might be possible that they'd risk the small chance of success to ambush us. But if that isn't the case… Um, I don't think there's much benefit for Okafu's side."
"You, my girl…"
The envoy raised his eyebrows slightly and looked Yuno in the eye.
"…have very good combat intuition, don't you? Indeed, military provocation is the only result one could anticipate from this attack. There aren't many young girls who could calmly come to such a conclusion in this situation."
"…I've had something far more terrifying than any armed force standing beside me for a long time."
Regardless of the motive, that only means any hope Yuno and the others had of making it out of this situation lay in Soujirou the Willow-Sword.
Until he returned and told them he had secured their safety, they couldn't go anywhere.
"However, the fact remains that there are a limited number of individuals who knew about the postwar negotiations being held today—and who could obtain our route to the meeting. Taking that into consideration, I don't think our attackers could be anyone but the Free City of Okafu, but—"
"Ah!"
Yuno let a small cry slip out. Another carriage tried to enter the alleyway they were hiding in and was showered with sniper fire before rolling over. It was likely a civilian carriage, wholly unrelated to the situation.
For a brief second, she was able to see the small child inside the carriage.
"...Mn!"
Right as she instinctively went to dash over, the envoy grabbed her shoulder. "You'll die if you go out there, Yuno, my girl. Wait for Soujirou."
"B-but… Soujirou won't save them!"
Soujirou the Willow-Sword wasn't a fiend, only capable of killing others. Yuno knew that. He carried what resembled his own form of duty and obligation, which was why he was trying to carry out his job as bodyguard for Yuno and Haade's envoy.
However, he didn't show any compassion for those who lost their lives.
Uninvolved bystanders, people who jumped into the jaws of death on their own, along with the worthy strong who battled against him.
For all these people, he thought if they ended up dying, there was nothing he could about it.
I'm different!
Yuno flew out from the shadow of the wooden crates. She hadn't summoned her courage. It was the reckless willpower that had continued since the fall of Nagan, and she had simply found herself wanting to resist.
Depending on the model, reloading a musket can take longer than a bow! If their target's the envoy for the negotiations, then they won't prioritize shooting a simple tagalong like me! Soujirou's closing in on the snipers, too; they might not have a moment to ready their next shot!
A number of rationalizations passed through Yuno's mind. All of them completely unfounded.
Clinging to the rolled-over carriage, she kicked in the glass on the door with the heel of her shoe. A desperate move, indifferent to how it may have made her look.
"Hurry and get out of there!"
A small hand took her own outstretched hand. "Yuno the Distant Talon, yes?"
"...!"
The child inside the carriage was dressed in high-quality black clothing. His hair, an almost gray-white.
Looking up at Yuno from inside the overturned carriage, the young boy spoke to her unfazed.
"Thank you. My name is Hiroto the Paradox." "The Gray-Haired…Child…!"
"Since you didn't appear on time for our scheduled meeting, we came to you.
Please forgive me for not noticing your crisis sooner."
Hiroto the Paradox was here, right now. The mastermind leading the Free City of Okafu.
Without a moment to think about what its development meant, the sound of a bullet impacting rang out behind her.
Sending her hair fluttering into the air as she whipped around, she saw the goblin driver holding up a shield made of what appeared to be resin. A twisted fiber-like structure peeked out from the cross section opened up by the enemy's gunfire.
"First, I shall get straight to the point. We would like to protect you from this attack."
"Wh-why…? Isn't this attack something the mercenaries in the Free City planned out?"
"It's extremely difficult to explain the details properly."
Hiroto held up his hand. At this signal, a goblin force began gathering in the alleyway.
With their shields up in a close formation, they began assembling a wall that would protect everyone there from the sniper fire. The movements were efficient and extremely well disciplined.
"You are correct to assume that the ones fighting us right now are mercenaries from the Free City of Okafu. However, their actions are neither under orders from myself nor the arbitrary whims of Okafu's leader, Morio the Sentinel."
"Are you trying to say someone else made these mercenaries betray you?" "Indeed. There are a countless number of spies infiltrating any of the forces
involved with the Sixways Exhibition, not just Okafu. We have taken to calling this group the invisible army and are trying to tackle the issue."
"..."
Spies that Aureatia wasn't aware of, who had infiltrated Okafu and were capable of highly disciplined strategic maneuvers.
It was a terribly outlandish story. It would be more realistic to explain it away as a select group of Okafu mercenaries going out of control. Yet his words coincided with Yuno's analysis.
…They used Okafu mercenaries to attack us because they're trying to cause a rift in Aureatia and Okafu's relations and ensure their mutual destruction… If true, it would be consistent with this inexplicable ambush. But…
"It appears we will need to prepare our negotiations with His Excellency Haade anew. This is likely an extremely big problem for Aureatia."
"..."
There were no new gunshots. Either they saw the goblins' shield wall and
determined they were meaningless or Soujirou had reached them and put the snipers to the sword.
Sitting on the edge of the overturned carriage, Hiroto turned back to Yuno. "It seems we can relax for the time being. Yuno the Distant Talon, to shift the
conversation to the future for a moment… Can I ask you for your testimony regarding this ambush?"
"…All right. If that will possibly prevent war. But there's one thing I want to know."
Hiroto the Paradox. He called Yuno by name from the very start. Her second name and all.
"How did you know my name?"
"I investigate anyone I have the possibility of forming a collaborative relationship with."
As far as Yuno could see, he was just a child. She didn't sense that he was a powerful individual.
However, he, too, was a visitor, deviant to the point of abnormality, in a way that differed from Soujirou.
"Yuno the Distant Talon. You're a survivor from the ruined Nagan Labyrinth City, yes?"
A supernatural power of fate, bringing him to opportunity and forming cooperative relationships.
"...That's right."
"Do you know anything about the hero candidate Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge?"