Uhak the Silent was massive.
Just what did he have to eat to grow so huge?
There was little Zigita Zogi the Thousandth could speculate.
One could rephrase the ability of tactical strategy as the ability to create options.
Cut down the enemy from the front? Scheme behind the scenes and cut off an enemy's path to victory?
None of the methods were superior or inferior to one another. Here in the Sixways Exhibition, all the candidates had prepared their own strategies for victory as well.
However, there were those who only held a single option to advance through the tournament, and those who confronted the tournament with countless different options prepared ahead of time. Zigita Zogi the Thousandth was the latter.
He had utilized a great number of troops to probe into the state of affairs in Aureatia; he was at a stage where he could manipulate the citizens through forecasting the weather with an impromptu meteorologic station far off in Imag City or through his complete command of the flow of goods.
If victory was all he was after, then there were other methods to make it possible.
There were many reasons he had planned to use chemical weapons in his match.
Phosgene was a weapon that incapacitated the opponent and induced a number of side effects; however, as long as the victim was immediately given medical treatment, the chances of death were low.
If the attack came with any serious aftereffects, then it would serve as a reason to have Ozonezma treat him long-term. He would usurp Uhak the Silent's physical fighting abilities while simultaneously increasing the chances for them to interact. It would become easier to control him. It was not his physical ogre
strength but his unique power that Zigita Zogi saw as necessary.
There was an additional point as well.
Phosgene's relative density was heavier than air and, once used, would linger behind in an area.
…In short, he could use it against anyone who immediately approached them following the end of the match as well.
That way, it would create a chance to investigate said individuals' bodies under the pretext of treating their exposure to the gas.
The target of his tactics was not only Uhak the Silent.
It was a trap to capture the corpse intruders, using Zigita Zogi in the arena as bait.
Underneath the garden theater. Dant the Heath Furrow was walking down the corridor, accompanied by several soldiers and a doctor.
Uhak the Silent's sponsor, whom Zigita Zogi was supposed to have disposed of—Sixteenth General Nofelt the Somber Wind—had suspiciously made his return to the city. Dant needed to ascertain the truth of the situation.
"There's something I'd like to ask. Had Nofelt been inoculated with the vampire antiserum?"
"No. Since cases of vampire infection themselves have died down, even among the Twenty-Nine Officials, less than half have purchased the antiserum," the doctor replied. Using the word purchase was the characteristic turn of phrase for all of Flinsuda's subordinates.
"I figured. I haven't, either."
Select personnel from Flinsuda's medical team had arrived ahead of them.
The emergency vehicle, flying white and blue flags to signal they were with the medical division, would also be arriving eventually.
Must be a way to make the enemy mistime our arrival. Always calculating, isn't he?
The soldiers accompanying Dant were elite troops, picked out to prepare against an ambush by the invisible army. Three minia, one goblin. The goblin was under Zigita Zogi's command. With them were the three doctors from the medical team they'd met up with. In the event they encountered a corpse or
vampire, there were many circumstances that only doctors could handle.
…Should I bring one more with me?
Dant called out to a senior soldier on patrol.
"… I'm Twenty-Fourth General Dant. You there, a moment." "Yessir…! What may I help you with, General Dant?"
"Ashamed to say it, but it seems all my men were solely focused on the perimeter. No one seems to know the layout of the garden theater. Can you be our guide?"
"Ha-ha, that is indeed a problem! After all, it's been rebuild after rebuild, so the underground's gotten quite complex. Where, then, are you heading?"
"Uhak the Silent's waiting room." "Of course, right away!"
As though proud to be relied on by one of the Twenty-Nine Officials, the elderly soldier seemed a bit giddy, standing out in front of them all as he walked. Unfortunately, Dant didn't consider this man to be part of his fighting force.
His aim was to have the man act as their forward shield through the corridors leading to Nofelt's waiting room. If their enemy truly was Obsidian Eyes, then it was impossible to be too well-prepared against an ambush.
"However, sir, if you're heading there, I assume you have some business with General Nofelt?"
"Yeah, I do. Since Uhak the Silent's showed up, he's here, too, right?" "Indeed. However, General Nofelt just walked down this corridor and left a
few moments ago…" "…What?"
"You didn't pass each other?"
Dant had no recollection of such a thing. Before he found the old soldier, he had passed by several other lightly armored soldiers, but he should've been able to immediately pick out an abnormally tall man like Nofelt.
Up until just a few moments ago Nofelt was here. Or at least someone who looked like Nofelt.
What sort of method had they used? Even assuming Obsidian Eyes possessed some degree of unknown infiltration techniques, were there any methods of disguise capable of reproducing the man's physique, too?
That can't be…
The soldiers who were supposed to be on guard outside Nofelt's room weren't there.
"..."
—They had been set up after all.
The eighth Match had been unusual right from the start.
"...! This is a compulsory investigation! We're entering this waiting room!"
Everyone except the elderly soldier shared a glance and came together in a battle formation.
Dant swung open the door.
If there were some other people besides Nofelt inside the room, then— "Who's there?!"
Together with Dant's shout, a shadow lurking inside the room moved. The shadow bared their teeth, a bestial sneer—
An explosive boom. The stone floor cracked. It was the sound of an opening rush. "General Dant— Gnh!"
One of the elite soldiers stepped in the way and protected Dant.
His throat was gouged with the single attack, slicing all the way down to the cervical vertebrae deeper within.
—All done with a single, bare finger.
Dant only knew of one person who was capable of such a deed. "Haizesta the Gathering Spot…!"
"…Nyeh-heh-heheh."
The Fifteenth General, unmistakably minian yet using his unbelievable and downright monstrous physical strength as his weapon.
Why is he here? One blow will do it.
Dant drew his sword. He thrust it forward, going through the armpit of the soldier in front of him.
Haizesta dodged, advanced, and rotated. Abnormal agility.
Using the momentum of his turn, he drilled his fingers into the goblin soldier's skull.
The goblin's drawn pistol hadn't even been allowed to fire.
"Hrnk…"
He slowly extracted his spear hand. The goblin's brains stretched from his fingers.
Haizesta was on the right. Dant was unable to swing his sword, the soldier with his throat gouged out still standing in front of him.
Can I do it from this position?
He forcibly pushed the dying soldier forward with his left shoulder. The soldier's body collapsed, spinning to the right—blocking Haizesta's line of sight.
Dant sharply exhaled.
He would cleave through the armored soldier and take Haizesta behind him with it.
"Too slow."
Haizesta pinched down on the blade with two fingers and brought it to a stop.
Inconceivably fast reaction speeds.
Dant murmured:
"Sorry."
He had already taken his hand off the sword in Haizesta's grip.
It was being pushed downward, still under the momentum of his vertical slash.
I'm going to have to lethally injure him in one attack.
Dant had pushed the soldier in front of him in a way that made the soldier spin to the right in order to turn the piece of equipment, strapped to his right hip, toward Dant. He grabbed the sheath. He immediately counterattacked. A diagonal slash, upward to the shoulder.
Cutting through several ribs, he knew he had severed the man's lungs. "...!"
Spurting blood gushed forth.
Still with a bestial smile on his face, Haizesta the Gathering Spot's life came to an end.
"What…?"
Dant gnashed his teeth. One of his elite subordinates and a goblin, both slain in an instant.
Haizesta lay in the pool of blood as well. Aureatia's Fifteenth General. "…What is going on?!"
Someone who looked like Nofelt the Somber Wind.
Haizesta the Gathering Spot waiting in ambush for Dant's arrival. A preposterously abnormal set of circumstances had come about.
Dant shot a look to the elderly soldier quivering in the back of the formation. "You! Did you see that?!"
"I mean, honestly…it was so fast, the details of it all were a blur… That and…th-the man just now was General Haizesta, wasn't it?!"
"That's plenty. You're our witness! The Fifteenth General suddenly went berserk and fatally wounded my soldiers, which left me no choice but to
counterattack myself! There are suspicions of a corpse infection, so I, Dant the Heath Furrow, under my authority, will have this medical team perform an autopsy!"
"Eep, y-yes…sir!"
The insurance Dant had prepared was a success. He had thought that should the enemy be plotting to set up an attack between two internal Aureatia forces somehow, he needed to bring along a third party who wasn't a part of anyone's private forces to serve as a witness.
With a killing blow from a single attack, it served as definite proof that Haizesta had attacked them first.
Haizesta had lain in wait alone. A terrifying enemy. The plan enacted by the invisible army, architects of this situation…clearly didn't just include Dant the Heath Furrow's demise.
It was to lay the crime of the Fifteenth General's death on him.
"Dammit… I don't like it…! What happened?! Who is this, and what are they doing?!"
He didn't have any time to spare. If he brought this truth to light, would he make it in time before the match was decided?
"Let them know immediately! Right now, the eighth match is being held without Sixteenth General Nofelt's presence!"
What if the ogre who had never shown the slightest hint of ego…from the very start, hadn't paid any care to whether his own sponsor was there or not?
"Uhak the Silent is participating illegally!"
At the same moment. In an alley that adjoined the castle garden theater's main avenue, a single carriage was rolled over.
Appearing to have toppled at full speed, the sturdy iron-carriage body was warped, and the driver was dead, pierced through by wood splinters.
The horse had died as well. Both of its forelegs had been ripped off and scattered from the knees down.
This was no traffic accident. Someone had attacked the carriage as it was traveling along.
"Enough."
The man who stepped out from the passenger car raised both of his hands up into the air and demonstrated no intent to resist.
"I surrender. Seriously, I'm sick and tired of this sorta stuff."
A man with a stubbly beard, dressed in black and with a slightly ominous air about him.
"This isn't an assassination, Kuze the Passing Disaster. It's a parley."
The voice came from above the shop. Sitting in a low stance and looking down at Kuze was a bipedal wolf.
Obsidian Eyes' ninth-formation vanguard, Harutoru the Light Grip.
"You're heading for the castle garden theater under the orders of Zigita Zogi the Thousandth, then?"
"Ah, well… Yeah, pretty much. Don't really plan on hiding it at this point. You ambushed me because you already know everything anyway, right? Feels like everyone I meet's real dangerous, I tell you…"
Kuze the Passing Disaster was one of the hero candidates, as well as an assassin cooperating with Hiroto's camp.
It was absolutely necessary to stop him if he was going to make an appearance at the eighth match.
"What's your reason for working with them? We're prepared to offer suitable conditions as well."
"Well…I can't answer that. Since it's a wish that you guys aren't gonna be able to make come true."
"…"
"Bweh-ha-ha. You're not attacking me, are you…? So even if you don't know my reason, you at least know that much."
Harutoru had the high ground over Kuze. The great shield Kuze used to fight was still left behind inside the carriage, and the lycan was in a position to make a one-sided surprise attack on the defenseless man.
"So then you weren't the one who attacked the carriage, were you?" said Kuze out of nowhere. "Sorry, but I'm going to have to head on to the garden theater. You should go check to see if your buddy's all right. Making the carriage roll over means that you were trying to kill me in the accident…and anyone who tries that sort of stuff will die. No matter how far away they may be, no matter how well they try to hide. Guaranteed."
"…Guaranteed?"
In that moment, a colossal mass descended down and crushed the iron carriage to pieces.
Navy-blue armor. A singular, purple eye.
There had been two lurking in the alley. Harutoru the Light Grip, and…
As his Gatling gun begun to spin, Mestelexil laughed hysterically.
"Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha- ha!"
"Whoa, whoa now…! You gotta be kidding me!"
What did one need to do to finish off a man with the supernatural ability to bring instant death to anyone who tried to kill him?
"Let me tell you something, Kuze the Passing Disaster."
—Throw someone who kept going even when dead at him.
As the loud guffaw echoed across the alley, Harutoru similarly bared his fangs with a smile.
"The side holding the most information's the only one with the right to use a word like guaranteed."
Linaris the Obsidian had spent almost all her childhood years confined to the bed in her home.
From birth, her body was so weak that she couldn't adequately stand up and walk by herself, and Rehart the Obsidian had to throw all his personal funds into ensuring his daughter would live on.
That had been her way of life for close to half of her seventeen years.
Though vampires may have looked no different at all, the mere fact that she was one made her the enemy of all minian races, and to ensure no one would try to take her life, she hadn't been able to freely leave the house even after she had become able to walk.
She had no one she could call a friend.
In the end, there were only a handful of those remaining she could even call comrades.
Frey the Waking. Harutoru the Light Grip. Lena the Obscured. Wieze the Variation. Hyakrai the Tower. Lendelt the Immaculate. Finally, Zeljirga the Abyss Web. Each one was indomitable with unrivaled strength, but once the existence of Obsidian Eyes became clear, there were no longer the numbers to ensure everyone survived.
There were also some who had left the organization. Kuuro the Clairvoyant. Hyne the Swaying Indigolite. Zizma the Miasma. Lana the Moon Tempest. Rook the Shredding Trineedle—all of them possessed the superb skills that allowed them to survive in the outside world, yet despite this, all of them, without
exception, chose livelihoods embracing conflict.
This was because the entirety of Obsidian Eyes had, in the end, become totally separate creatures from the people of the outside world. It wasn't just because they were corpses. They were creatures who had adapted themselves to the spiral of endless conflict, staining their hands with blood simply by living their lives.
She needed to keep them all alive.
Creating a warring chaos that would preserve Obsidian Eyes' existence was the method to ensure they did.
If creating war was the extent of it, she could make an armed force of corpses under her control fight with a force that was not.
Linaris the Obsidian was able to bring annihilation to Aureatia.
The Queen and certain members of the Twenty-Nine Officials had been inoculated with antiserum, but most of the citizens in the country didn't have any resistance to the vampire virus. Even without setting her sights directly on the central figures, if she controlled every single one of the high-ranking bureaucrats tasked with the day-to-day business, she could easily bring about the collapse of Aureatia's societal structure.
However, that wasn't a victory for Obsidian Eyes. That was Linaris's thinking.
Even if she successfully guided the world toward war, should Obsidian Eyes' secret activities and Linaris's existence as the source of a vampire-infection epidemic be brought to the light of day, they would end up fighting on with the whole world as their enemy.
Even if they destroyed Aureatia, the sort of shura who appeared in the Sixways Exhibition would kill them off. Lucnoca the Winter, able to lay waste to a nation with a single breath. Or perhaps Shalk the Sound Slicer, who was physically impossible to infect. There were countless threats still remaining in the world that couldn't be bested either through exhausting individual strength or through manipulating an entire army.
The Sixways Exhibition, meant to control said threats all at once, was necessary for Obsidian Eyes as well.
They would push through this battle until the end and purge all the exceptionally powerful players that could threaten their existence.
In the process, they had forcefully stolen the ultimate strategic weapon in Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge, using the exhibition arena where
his combat abilities were limited as much as possible.
What Linaris was trying to create was the spark to ignite war following the conclusion of the Sixways Exhibition.
The conflict needed to be born from the intent of those involved, without any getting wise to the secret maneuvering behind the scenes.
The key to it all lay with Hiroto the Paradox's camp.
With the combined power of the Free City of Okafu and the nation on the new continent Hiroto had behind him, they would become a force able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Aureatia both in scale and national strength. They could create a long entrenched period of war.
Obsidian Eyes had repeatedly used their control over Okafu mercenaries to provoke Aureatia and the hero candidates, trying to sow discord between Okafu and Aureatia. Ambushing hero candidates. The sniper attack on Haade's envoy. A large number of suspicious deaths.
However, there was someone who had seen through all their sabotage both material and immaterial and immediately taken actions to block their objectives
—Zigita Zogi the Thousandth.
A goblin genius. The tactician who avoided any and all conflict with strategies that surpassed Linaris's own thoughts.
He had defined her organization as the invisible army and dealt with Linaris's schemes with terrifying speed. If he secured one of Linaris's corpses as evidence, Obsidian Eyes would be clearly identified. She needed to dispose of Zigita Zogi for good before they reached such a conclusion.
What was the most suitable situation to try finishing off the most brilliant tactician in the land?
A situation where their enemy was assured to be by himself, when it was impossible to set up any traps ahead of time, and when he was surrounded by people other than his allies. The only choice was in the middle of the eighth match.
During the third match, Linaris had infiltrated the castle garden theater in order to look into Haade the Flashpoint's movements. On that occasion, she had turned many of the garden theater's soldiers into corpses under her control.
She had sent Uhak the Silent, originally supposed to be unable to participate, into the arena with the help of Lena the Obscured's mimicry.
Intervention from Hiroto's most powerful pawn, Kuze the Passing Disaster, had been blocked off by Mestelexil.
They would bring about Dant the Heath Furrow's fall from power by making
him kill Haizesta the Gathering Spot.
Then Obsidian Eyes' powerful members would infect Hiroto the Paradox in the spectator seats.
The biggest difference between Hiroto's camp and Aureatia was the existence of a leader who could influence the camp all by themselves. Though it appeared that he hadn't contributed one bit to the tactical decisions, Hiroto was truly the cornerstone of the camp, controlling all the political relationships himself. Linaris was cognizant of this fact herself.
By killing Zigita Zogi and controlling Hiroto, they would then be able to manipulate two nations, the Free City of Okafu and the goblin nation, with minimal active participation. She would then use Hiroto to manipulate Okafu and the goblins into choosing war with Aureatia of their own volition.
The seeds of war had been scattered in untold numbers.
After the conclusion of the Sixways Exhibition, a war would begin between Aureatia and the Free City of Okafu.
With both sides now lacking any shura of their own, the conflict…was sure to become a long and drawn-out war, completely different in nature from the Lithia War and the suppression of the Old Kingdoms' loyalists.
The eighth match, the keystone to all of Hiroto's camp's plans.
To Linaris the Obsidian as well, it held even more importance to her than the outcome of the sixth.
She would kill Zigita Zogi in a way that no one would suspect Obsidian Eyes of being involved at all.
Linaris didn't need to gain anything else. She didn't need to kill anyone else. With it, Obsidian Eyes' battle would end in victory.