It was a bold, immoral, inhuman, and altogether merciless plan.
“Who would do such a thing…?”
But already in the back of Finn’s mind, the sadistic smile of a certain woman had sharpened into focus.
“Valletta…!”
“Lord Dionysus!”
“An attack out of nowhere, shrouded in shadow…A mass assassination?”
Back on one of the backstreets, still reverberating with the sound of rain and screams. Dionysus and Filvis were kneeling beside the slain corpse of an Amazon, a group of white-faced onlookers behind them.
The dead Berbera’s eyes were staring blankly at the sky, evidence enough as to the warning-less strike that had taken her life. Blood was still dripping from the laceration that refused to heal; from what they could tell, the attack had taken place sometime last night.
“They’re trying to wipe Ishtar’s followers off the map…Thanatos and his lot have certainly chosen a disturbing route,” he murmured, hia graceful features twisting in apparent distaste. Behind them, Lefiya pushed her way through the crowd.
“Miss Filvis! Lord Dionysus…”
“Lefiya…”
“Thousand Elf…You’d best look away.”
But Lefiya’s gaze had already fallen to the sprawled-out corpse on the ground, and her words left her. The demi-human lying there, being battered by the rain same as everyone else, was someone she had seen alive and well only last night.
“She’s…one of the Amazons we asked for information…”
“Come back here!”
Tione shrieked, her Kukri knives flashing as she furiously wiped her sopping-wet bangs out of her eyes.
“Grruuaaaaagh?!”
“You bastaaaaaaaard!”
The black-robed figure fell to the ground as, nearby, Tiona slammed one of his peers and his jet-black weapon against the wall with her Urga.
“You…monsters…”
“Tione! Are you okay?!”
“Just what the hell is going on here, huh?! Amazons are getting attacked all over the city!” Tione howled, hands pressed to the torn skin of her arms as her sister, Tiona, ran over to her. Having heard the screams and rushed out to help, they were just starting to realize the gravity of their situation.
“Hey! Shit-for-brains! You know something, huh? You better spit everything out right now…!” She turned toward the assassin still lying on the ground, yanking him up by his collar. But it was too late—he’d already cracked something with his teeth, and in an instant, his eyes rolled back in his head. A bubble of blood popped between his lips as a scalding smoke hissed its way out of his mouth.
A strong acid, no doubt, to kill them quickly in just such a situation. They clearly didn’t want any information on their plans getting out.
Tione ground her teeth together in maddened futility at her assailant’s abrupt end.
“Goddammit…!!”
“Get the wounded to Dian Cecht’s hospital! Quickly now!!” Gareth thundered, his voice practically shaking the cobbles underfoot as he slammed his great ax into a swarm of incoming assassins.
Amazons with blood leaking down their faces. Amazons with stab wounds in their guts. Amazons whose wounds simply would not heal, the blood flowing, flowing, flowing. Loki Familia worked together, shouting back and forth as they hurried to carry every wounded Amazon they could find off to the hospital.
“Every one of their attacks is a suicide attack…!”
Neither the Amazons, covered in blood, nor the adventurers helping them were simply standing there. In fact, there were quite a few hero figures who had stepped up to the plate, facing off against the onslaught of assassins. However, their enemies had no regard for their own lives, and all they had to do was land one strike on one of their Amazonian targets to succeed in their mission.
After all, they fought with cursed weapons.
A single hit was all it took to inflict what might as well have been a deadly poison, spelling doom for the victim.
“Our numbers are dwindlin’. We don’t have enough to protect ’em all…!”
It was a single, coordinated assassination attempt on the Berbera. And considering those Berbera were currently scattered about the city in their new respective familias, Gareth and his crew couldn’t even begin to imagine the full scale of the attack. The rain was surely swallowing up more screams all across Orario.
Gareth narrowed his eyes beneath the low-hanging rim of his helmet.
“Gngh!!”
Aiz’s sword went whistling through the throng of leaping assassins, sending countless bodies tumbling across the stone and the shattered remains of weapons spiraling through the air.
“Aiz! Don’t let their weapons touch you!” Riveria called out from her position a short distance away. The high elf’s long silver staff was mowing down a multitude of enemies of her own. Her jade-colored hair clinging to her forehead in clumps and the last thread of her composure all but vanished, she finished off her remaining opponents before dashing to the side of the Amazon they’d been defending.
“Are you unharmed?”
“I’m fine! And I never asked for your help, either! Just leave me alone!” the prostitute Aisha Belka shouted back as she thrust her large podao sword into the ground for support. Indeed, the ground was already littered with the bodies of the assassins she’d taken care of herself. Having narrowly avoided being wounded, the lone female warrior was breathing hard as she tossed a glare in Aiz and Riveria’s direction.
“Aisha!”
“Samira?”
Another Berbera, this one with ashy-gray hair, ran over to the trio.
It was the same Amazon Tiona had been interrogating only the day before. Her skin scored with shallow wounds, like Aisha, she quickly filled in her fellow Berbera on the situation: what was happening all over the city, the scope of the wounded, and everything they knew at the present time. Once Riveria added in her own short explanation, Aisha brought a hand to her forehead and tightened her fingers.
“An assassination attempt…on the Berbera? Goddammit! Even with that Goddess of Beauty out of the picture, she still finds ways to make our lives a living hell…!”
“What do we do, Aisha? Even some of the high-class courtesans who were employed at the palace were killed…Ah! That’s right! You haven’t seen Haruhime, have you?!”
“Calm down! She’s not on any familia list. Not even the Guild knows where Lady Ishtar hid her, so there’s no way they’ll find her!”
“Right. Then…erm…Phryne! What about Phryne…?”
“You really think that frog would let herself be killed by the likes of this lot? Don’t make me laugh!” Aisha barked loudly at the frazzled girl, her responses a harried mixture of irritation and comfort. As the chaotic questioning continued, Riveria stepped forward with a request of her own.
“Our efforts to stop the attack are falling behind. By the time we heard the commotion and rallied our forces together to help, we were already too late. If you know of anyone who might still be targeted, you must let us know.”
“Gimme a second! Let me think! Anyone else who might be attacked…?” Aisha snapped, her hand still on her forehead as her face twisted in frantic thought.
But her answer came in less than a second.
Her head snapped up, and a name left her mouth.
“Lena…”
“Huh?”
“Lena…!” she said again, her face a picture of horror as she dashed in the direction of the Pleasure Quarter to the city’s southwest—and the location of Lena’s secret place.
“Lena’s in trouble!”
It was a knife to the shoulder that finally sent the girl to the ground.
“Unnggahhh!”
“Dammit!!” Bete howled as he sent the rapidly approaching black shadow sailing into the air with a high-speed kick. Repelling the white blades flying in his direction with his armguard, he focused everything he had on protecting the girl behind him from the bevy of cursed swords. His
cheeks already bore a jagged pattern of wounds.
The rain-swept battle in the corner of the ruins had yet to show any signs of stopping as Bete and Lena put up a desperate, isolated struggle.
“B-Bete Loga…”
“It barely scratched you, ya idiot! Stop actin’ like he cut off yer arm!”
Lena’s eyes filled with tears as she watched Bete fight.
Using his sopping-wet body as a shield, he was doing his best to keep the girl on the ground safe from the incoming attacks. And attacks there were by the dozen—members of the Evils, of Thanatos Familia, had joined the fight, adding more fuel to an already chaotic brawl.
“It’s me they’re after…isn’t it…?”
“Took you that long to figure out?!”
“Then…it’s my fault you’re caught up in this mess…?”
“…As if that matters! These are my enemies, too!”
Indeed, Bete hadn’t gotten Lena tangled up in anything at all.
Quite the opposite, actually—Lena had dragged Bete into this mess.
The true target of the assassins was none other than the Amazonian girl behind him, the bearer of Ishtar’s final secret. It had simply been fortuitous (or not so fortuitous) that Bete had been with Lena that day.
But even with the sparks flying down around him, he refuted the ignorant girl’s trembling question.
No, this was his fight, too.
How dare she think this involved only her. No, she was gravely mistaken.
“…Hyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
The true target of the assassins’ attacks was as plain as day.
Not Bete but, rather, Lena. And as Bete fought to ward off the attacks coming at them from every direction, he found himself unable to so much as retaliate. There were simply too many of them, too many cursed weapons, and Bete was falling prey to them together with their target.
This would never have happened had Bete been alone.
No, he could have used his ultimate weapons, his lightning-fast feet, to their full potential, mowing down the mob of assassins like they were nothing more than toys. Staying true to his namesake, Vanargand, he could have taken out every single one of them with his patented high-speed battle style.
But he had Lena.
A tiny little girl who couldn’t fight off the multitude of attacks, who’d be crushed beneath their sheer numbers. A fragile doll who’d be killed in an instant if he didn’t do everything in his power to protect her.
That thought alone was enough to make Bete see red.
The tattoo on his cheek, the fang chiseled into his skin, was throbbing.
No matter where he went or what he did, these weaklings, these helpless pieces of fish bait, were there to torment him.
And yet, in spite of all the grief he’d given her, he just couldn’t abandon her now.
“GrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAARRRGGGH!”
In the split second between his relentless flurries of defensive maneuvers, he slapped a lightning knife to his Frosvirt, wrapping his boots in a web of electric sparks. The resulting arc of lightning zigzagged its way through the throng of surprised assassins, culminating in a deafening white blast of thunder and electricity that plunged the world around them into a blind and soundless void.
For just a moment, the ceaseless wave of attacks, that perfect offensive they’d formed around him, came to a halt. It was now or never.
“RUN!!” he hollered, yanking Lena’s arm and urging her along.
“O-okay!”
They slipped between the stunned assassins, bursting free of the tight circle ensnaring them—
“And just where do you think you’re going?!”
“?!”
Only to see a whirling blade flying straight in their direction.
Bete threw his leg up in an attempt to protect Lena, the force of his lightning boots shattering the blade; but that same force also turned those broken pieces into flying shrapnel that cut his skin and battle jacket to shreds.
“He-he-he-he-he!! Did you really think I’d let you get away that easily? I’m having far too much fun for that!!” Valletta, the one who’d launched the cursed blade in their direction, squealed at them from atop her perch. The sheer destructive power and speed behind her throw, coming from the only Level 5 in their group of assailants, had increased all the more after the retaliatory strike from Bete.
What was more important now, however, was the huge gap this left in the duo’s defenses.
“Waltz of blood!”
“?!”
It was a direct hit, and the curses and anti-Status Magic finally took their hold on Bete.
“You’re mine now, Vanargand!”
The assassins were on him in a flash, their eyes glinting as they leaped toward the now sluggish werewolf. Valletta watched in glee from on high as he reattempted his lightning attacks, but no matter how many of the black-robed assassins Bete took out, there were always new ones to take their place, ready with another blast of curses to further dull his movements. To make matters worse, they still refused to attack Bete directly; the whole lot of them were doggedly focusing their strikes on Lena.
The dull gloom weighing down his every move made him feel as though he were stuck in the middle of a giant spiderweb or, perhaps more accurately, a wolf in chains.
“You’re a monster, you know that? Just how many people have you taken down to get to where you are, huh?” Valletta hissed as she watched Bete fight off not only the assassins but the Thanatos Familia reinforcements, as well, even in his labored state. Ten, twenty, thirty went flying, skulls crushed, ribs smashed, and blood spraying from their mouths in an almost constant deluge.
“But it ends now,” she finished, her lips curling up into a smile. “And here I thought I was just gonna do a bit of Amazon hunting today…But look at what just fell into my lap! I’m finally gonna have your head tonight, Vanargand!”
Almost as though in tune with Valletta’s euphoria, the jet-black shadows increased the fervor of their attacks. Deep wounds were beginning to form along Bete’s shoulders, and the spark of electricity in his Frosvirt was all but dissipated.
“Gnnngh…!”
The Unhealable Curse had morphed into a fierce heat that was now searing across both his shoulders. Aside from the deep gouge in his right shoulder, the other cursed injuries he’d sustained were nothing but light scratches. He could still fight. But against how many more? And for how much longer? He let out an almost desperate roar, his insides burning as the assassins’ relentless attacks continued.
And all the while, she watched him.
Having fought her own fight as well as she could, she dropped her arms uselessly to her sides. Her lips trembled.
“I’m sorry…Bete Loga…”
Even through the rain, her voice was just loud enough to make Bete’s lupine ears twitch.
“You were right. About everything. I’m sorry for being so weak…for always getting in your way…”
Oh my god, shut up!
This is not the time to be talking!
You’re gonna make me sick whinin’ like that!
This ain’t the place for cold feet! For moanin’ and wailin’ and I’m sorrys! Pull yourself together!
Howl! Just howl already! If that’s the only goddamn thing you can do, then you do it—
Bete’s head whirled with insults, all of them aimed at the sopping-wet girl behind him. Time was running out, and he fought against that ticking clock with everything he had, frenzied limbs flying, blood spraying, blades ricocheting, and kicks meeting the soft bodies of those assassins again and again. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes; everything was slowing down, and the rain was now a dull roar as Lena’s voice echoed in his ears.
He hated how annoying she was.
Hated the wa
y his fang throbbed at that whimpering murmur.
“But.”
Then…
“If it weren’t for me…you’d be strong…wouldn’t you, Bete Loga?”
Just like that, Lena’s whispered words brought time to a halt.
“”
He threw a glance behind him, only to see Lena standing there, pools of what could have been tears or rain quivering just beneath her eyes and a blubbering smile on her face.
It was the face of a girl who was less than a moment’s breath from turning tail and running.
—Hey.
Wait.
You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.
Just what the hell you doin’ there? What’s gotten into that head of yers?
You think you can just start makin’ decisions on your own? Huh?
You’re a lousy piece of fish bait! You don’t have the right to go rogue!
So don’t move. Don’t you dare move!
You’re not goin’ anywhere. You’re just gonna stay right there.
Stay right there, you damn brat!
Bete didn’t even notice the rampant inconsistency in his thought processes.
How the words echoing in his heart right now directly contradicted the verbal abuse he’d been flinging in her direction only a moment earlier.
—Weaklings should just stay in the back.
—Anyone who gets in our way needs to scram.
No, Bete didn’t notice the disparity at all.
And the girl behind him, water dancing in the corners of her eyes, smiled.
“Win for me, okay, Bete Loga? —And don’t die.”
Then…
She turned on her heels—and ran.
“—Lena!!”
How ironic that the first time he’d use her name would be at a time like this.
His voice cracking, he faced her retreating form—and screamed.
“Gnfph! He-he-he… Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!! After the woman, assassins!” Valletta howled from atop the roof, sending the remaining manpower after the fleeing girl. Bete felt a searing heat shoot through his body as he watched the bat-like swarm descend on Lena.
“Ngh!”
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 8 Page 11