Chapter 74: Interlude: Wild Hunt

Green, inorganic trees stood in ranks upon the red earth.

The Tree Crystals sprouting in the wilderness suggested not rugged vitality so much as a sense of irreversible decay.

—No.

Even here on a battlefield—no, precisely because it was a battlefield—D.D., a dog-faced Tooth in an elegant suit, gave a small shake of the head, as if denying that thought.

The world does not change.

The red earth, the inorganic trees that grow upon it—they have not changed in three hundred years.

And yet this feeling of decadence now is only because we are in the midst of a war.

The unbroken thump of ranging mortar fire in the distance shook the air. One round, unlucky enough to drop into a trench, hurled up clods of dirt and made corpses without a single scream.

“―”

Brushing the soil from his shoulder, D.D. felt something he could not quite name.

His blood was up. A chill rose as if his guts were lifting. With every breath, the iron-rust smell in the air stirred some nameless thing inside him.

The Tooth are those who—no, let’s not say “evolved,” certain people get loud about that—changed form under the influence of the Tree Crystals.

And the direction of that change was toward fighting.

In other words, the Tooth are a breed born to fight. Of course, a battlefield would quicken them.

D.D. was Tooth through and through.

Even so, there are those who are not. Such cowards are forever hunting for reasons to flee the field.

“Hmph.”

Which is why D.D. walked with deliberate grace—as if to say, This is everyday life here. As if to say, There’s nothing to fear. …Even as his breath grew a shade harsher at his kin’s fecklessness.

Still, the situation had to be dealt with.

The ranging would end soon. The deliberate bombardment would follow.

At the same time, the enemy was extending communication trenches.

Humans, with their legions of first-rate combat engineers called Monoz, excel at this sort of war.

There were two broad courses: attack or defend.

Defense did not suit him. Attack, then. If attacking—

“…I could use a sniper.”

He pictured his cousin, the girl currently in full flight as a runaway. Even if not at her level, a sniper close to it could pick off the mortar crews.

“No.”

He shook his head, as if to eject the thought.

Hunting for someone capable of precision sniping under this rain of shells would be a waste of time. Better to throw together a sniper detachment to apply pressure while sending the cavalry around—that would be the sensible play.

“Good grief. To be struggling with mere humans… we’ve grown rather pathetic.”

D.D. sighed.

Two hours later, a lone sniper appeared before him.

***

They were driving forward in the communication trench—half on the off chance—the air reeked of death.

Rikan, a four-armed Tooth infantryman, felt it keenly.

Even with the main force not yet moving along the road, the barrage pouring down scattered death almost indiscriminately.

Of course, the shelling wasn’t the only threat.

The enemy had forces that could advance without fear of it.

Monoz. Those living metal spheres with a single eye used the bombardment as cover to slam surprise attacks into the trenches where Rikan and his men took shelter.

In a trench—such a confined space—these small raiders were a serious nuisance. Because the cuts weren’t straight, they had plenty of blind corners to work with. It made fighting them viciously difficult.

Even now, a scream rose from a neighboring trench. It didn’t cut off at once; it went on and on.

It wasn’t torture.

It was simply that kind of attack.

A flamethrower. A mercenary they’d hired once had used the same thing: a gouted mix of flame and a viscous, heavy, lingering incendiary gel. Once it stuck to armor, it didn’t come off easily.

Wrapped in a burning exoskeleton, you couldn’t move properly. Unable to move, you caught more of it. The end of that road was the same: turned into a human torch—screaming, thrashing, dying.

Two Monoz tumbled into the trench where Rikan stood.

Shaken by the screams around them, several of his men tried, reflexively, to fall back.

It was a mistake.

“Don’t retreat! Forward!”

He barked the order and, by taking the lead himself, showed them the way.

Rikan the Four-Armed.

True to the epithet, a practitioner of the Fourfold style, he now held four curved blades, one in each hand.

He caught the blast of fire on the two blades he’d thrust forward, then closed the distance in a single rush with a lion’s legs.

He jammed the flaming pair into the mouth gaped open for the shot, then smashed the head with the hilts of the other two, forcing the jaws shut.

Never mind the core crystal—once you had burning blades inside and the mouth clamped down, the body was finished.

—That should do it.

Rikan slowly let the air left in his lungs seep out.

There had, without question, been carelessness—an opening.

And of course, the enemy struck at it. This was a battlefield.

A large sphere dropped from overhead. Metal through and through, its weight alone made it a weapon. It crashed down on him. He braced with all four arms to shove it back, but blades snapped out from its flanks as if to pry his hands away. Then the sphere began to spin, its edges biting in—the Monoz’s slashing attack.

“Not happening!”

He caught the blade in his grip.

Blue blood welled from the bio-type reinforced exoskeleton sheathing his arms. Muscle swelled along all four limbs as he forced the Monoz’s rotation to a halt—or so it should have been. The Monoz’s single eye flickered. The blade began to creep forward again.

“Tch—variant Tree Crystal!”

A burst-type variant of Tree Crystal.

The very stuff mined from the deposit they planned to seize in this war now bared its fangs at Rikan.

“—OoooooOOOOOOO!”

He roared, dropped his limiter, and held it. Even so, the balance lasted only a heartbeat; when the edge began to turn again, Rikan drove in a headbutt. The sphere lifted—just a hair.

His fiancée and second-in-command, Vaize, arrived to exploit the opening, driving her spear straight for the core—for the Monoz’s eye, its very life.

“Are you all right?”

“You saved me, Vaize. I’d like to say I’m fine… but I’m not,” Rikan admitted with a small shrug.

Pinned by the bombardment and unable to move as they wished, they were at a brutal disadvantage against the Monoz—metal spheres that could take a direct blast and merely get tossed.

“We’ll have to break out.”

“Agreed.”

Rikan gave a grave nod to Friege, the man with insect-like compound eyes assigned to him as a subordinate. Sit here and they’d bleed out.

But if they rushed out blindly, the artillery would shred them.

“…If only we could do something about the shelling.”

“The enemy is likely thinking the same.”

On both sides, more rounds were surely being hurled at each other’s mortars than at the line where Rikan and his men fought. And the fact the thunder never stopped… well, that said enough.

The mortar duel was a stalemate.

But the fighting inside the trenches could hardly be called even. We were losing. Our troops were taking casualties; theirs weren’t. All we were managing to destroy were weapons that could be replaced with relative ease.

“Hmph. Another wave already? Humans—without setting foot on the battlefield themselves they just keep sending in spheres… hmm?”

Rikan’s words trailed off.

He recognized the three Monoz that had just dropped into the trench.

Black paint. Crosses marked around the single eye, the edges picked out in red. The white lettering was familiar, too: dog, monkey, pheasant.

Proof enough—once they spotted Rikan, they rolled right up to him like old acquaintances.

『Yo, Gabriel. Been a week.』

And from inside one of the Monoz came a human voice.

“Ratchet?”

『Ah, yes. It’s me.』

“…What are you doing here? Don’t tell me—”

『Yeah, it worked. I took the results of our guerrilla ops as a calling card and got myself hired by D.D.』

“Is that so.”

『Mm. That’s how it is. So I came to help you.』

“Help me?”

A faint laugh colored the voice over the comm. It was a voice he’d heard on the battlefield before—the cheerful voice of the dog he’d once kept.

『The mortars are in your way, aren’t they? I’ll take care of them. So you lot push out. Charge. Do your job. Trample them. I’ll cover you. What, they’re all within range of my bark.』

The matter-of-fact voice carried on.

“…Can you really do it?”

『…What’s wrong? Gone senile? You’re the one who gave me the name Gabriel Ratchet, Gabriel the Hound of the Wild Hunt. Anyone who hears my bark dies. I’m that kind of hound.』

“So it was. Well then, shall we get down to business, Ratchet?”

『Yeah. Let’s make a show of it, Gabriel.』

A breath.

—The Wild Hunt.