by Funa
The stillness was only momentary, however. The sounds of fighting still raged on all around them.
Kaoru turned her gaze skyward. The next instant, the thunderous roar of an explosion ripped through the battlefield. It could have been the work of the Goddess, or the work of a devil...or maybe even an omen of a catastrophe to come.
The booming explosion that rocked the battlefield had brought the fighting to a halt. A pillar of golden clouds had formed around Kaoru, as if to show exactly where the sound had come from.
Then she shouted for all to hear:
“I’m about to go through with an important ceremony, so you all just shut up and watch! If you want to keep fighting, then do it the hell after!”
Her voice wasn’t loud enough to reach the entire battlefield, but it still traveled decently far due to her elevated position. Word would eventually travel to the rest. No one knew what would happen to them if they tried to go against her.
Kaoru took another look in Francette’s direction. Though she looked gravely injured, it seemed like she’d be able to hold out a little longer.
Kaoru walked toward her and Roland.
“N-Now’s our chance! Quick, grab the ange—”
BANG!
The soldier who tried to move in to capture Karou suddenly had his head blown clean off his shoulders. No one else dared move an inch anymore.
Kaoru stopped a few meters away from Francette, the blood from her pierced lungs dribbling from her mouth. Then, in a loud, commanding voice, Kaoru proclaimed to her:
“Francette, your life is the very epitome of what a knight should be. You dedicated everything you had to protecting your lord.”
Francette gave a weak, yet satisfied smile as Roland supported her body.
“It’s not exactly the most ladylike life for a girl to live, though, is it?”
Francette looked to be in minor shock at such harsh words.
“That is why I shall give you a gift for your next life. What would you like? Better facial features? Glossier hair? Skin as smooth as silk? A bountiful bust? Go ahead, make your choice.”
“I...want power... I want the power...to protect Sir Roland...again...” Francette sputtered, blood dripping from her mouth as she used every last ounce of her strength to get the words out.
“...I thought you’d say that,” Kaoru said, walking toward Francette again. “It’s a foolish request...but one I think you should fulfill in this life, not the next.”
With a flick of her wrist, Kaoru was suddenly holding a potion bottle that had appeared out of thin air. Opening the lid, she poured the contents inside Francette’s mouth.
“Wh...at...?” Francette couldn’t help but let out a gasp of shock as she found all her wounds healed in the blink of an eye.
Kaoru glanced at the remains of Francette’s bastard sword. “It seems this particular blade wasn’t enough for you.”
The next thing in her hand was a sword, seemingly conjured out of thin air like the potion. It was made of a special alloy, one hard enough so it would never break. The edge of the blade was sharpened to a fine point on a molecular level, and it used the bioelectricity of whoever gripped its hilt as an energy source to vibrate the blade at incredibly high speeds.
In short, it was a sort of “vibroblade,” a weapon straight out of science fiction. She’d managed to hold herself back from giving it the ability to superheat the blade as well, though.
But how did she suddenly have the power to make swords?
Well...she didn’t.
If you twisted the hilt of weapon, you would find that the inside was full of a healing potion. It was just a container for a potion, shaped to look like a sword.
“You will have the power to create any medicine in any container you are thinking of.”
In terms of how brokenly powerful her abilities were, the power to make potions Kaoru had so casually asked Celes for was something that even surpassed her Item Box.
With equal parts awe and reverence, Francette ceremoniously accepted the blade I held out to her. This was no ordinary sword, and everyone who saw what happened knew it.
Wait, I gotta give this thing a name...
I panicked a little when I realized that. I wasn’t even thinking about giving it a name when I made it, but I kinda had to after putting on that whole show. The only problem was that nothing good was coming to mind.
If we’re thinking of legendary swords, it has to be Excalibur, right? No, that’s too easy... Maybe Caliburn? No, that’s pretty much the same thing... The sword in the stone was supposed to be called Caliburn, and it’s often mixed up with Excalibur itself, but that sword was supposed to have been a gift from the Lady of the Lake. There’s also a theory that Excalibur is just the improved version of Caliburn. So Excalibur is like an extra-strong Caliburn... Wait, extra... Caliburn... Ex-calibur...n. Is that why it’s called Excalibur? Hm.
Now that I think about it, Excalibur’s sheath was supposed to be even more valuable than the sword itself. Usually you’d make sure the sword had all the bells and whistles, not the sheathe. Guess that meant the sheathe was made after the sword, then.
Wait, did Excalibur even have a sheathe? It was stuck in a rock, so I guess it not having a sheathe made sense. Let’s see, what was Excalibur based on in the first place...
All right, let’s take a page out of Norse mythology and borrow the name of the sword Sigurd used, then combine that with Arthur’s sword to make a name more powerful than either of them alone...
“Francette the knight: I bestow upon you the title of einherjar, a protector of the Goddess, and grant you the divine blade ‘Exgram.’ Use it to cut open a path to victory. Now go, my divine warrior! Go, Francette the Einherjar!”
“Raaaaaagh!”
With a spirited warcry, Francette stood up once more, and the war was back on.
Shng!
The newly christened Exgram swung through the air without the slightest hint of resistance. It looked like nothing happened, or maybe that she’d missed—but that was before the upper half of the Aligot troops slid off their bodies. The swords and armor that tried to defend against it all melted like butter.
“““Huh...?”””
Friend, enemy, and even the person who swung the sword herself were awestruck by the sharpness of the blade’s honed edge.
Heh...
Heheh...
Heheheh...
A demonic smile crossed over Francette’s face. She broke off in a sprint toward the enemy troops, showing them the reason she’d earned the nickname “Fearsome Fran.”
The screams of the Aligot soldiers echoed across the battlefield...
Roland turned to look at me, eyes full of expectation.
All right, fine. I can’t have him dying on me, either.
I reached up into the air and worked my magic.
“Here, this one’s called Exridill. I’m going to have to ask you to give this back after the fight’s over, though. You’re not an einherjar or anything, after all.”
“Aw, what? Come on...” Though he made his disappointment known, Roland charged off to join the battle.
Before I knew it, I had the other four imperial knights looking at me with the same puppy-dog eyes Roland had been giving me...
Francette sliced anyone close to her into actual ribbons as she cut her way through the battlefield. It was no use trying to block her strikes with swords, since they’d just end up cleaved in half as well. Even if they managed to get in one good strike on her in exchange for sacrificing their own soldiers, she’d just be brought back to life again—and even stronger the next time. There was no way they could win against that.
So they ran. They ran away as fast as their legs would take them, not caring one bit about keeping up appearances...and with Francette in hot pursuit.
Not having friendly troops nearby made things easier for her, since she didn’t have to worry about them getting caught up in her warpath. She was free to swing Exgram to her heart’s cont
ent, the legendary weapon that would become her trusty blade from this day forth. Though Francette had already gone beyond the realm of normal humans the day she drank the potion Kaoru gave her, the giddiness she felt after obtaining a power even beyond that had her shaking with joy.
The enemy... I have to get somewhere with more targets.
Francette took off in a mad dash, completely forgetting about the person she was supposed to be protecting.
Roland desperately chased after Francette. She was a simple girl at heart, and after the spectacle Kaoru had put on to give her the sword, she was completely out of control. He couldn’t just leave her alone.
Following after them were the other four imperial knights, each with their own divine sword in hand.
The legendary blade, Exhrotti. Just with Gram and Ridill, Kaoru had borrowed another name from one of the swords Sigurd had used.
She’d told them it was one legendary sword split into four and its power was diminished because of that, but the sharpness of its blade was more than worthy of its legendary status. To tell the truth, it was just a sword she’d put together out of special alloys, and didn’t have any super high-frequency vibration functions or anything to it. Still, that should be enough for a group of elite soldiers like them.
No girl could have resisted the four pairs of puppy-dog eyes being turned at her...probably. Well, not this one at least.
The (supposedly) elite Aligot troops screamed bloody murder, turning tail and running for dear life—with one war-crazed berserker laughing as she chased after them.
The fleeing Aligot soldiers didn’t have a chance of outrunning her. She cut them down one after the other, laughing maniacally all the while.
“F-Fearsome Fran has a divine blade!”
“Sh-She was on the brink of death, but she’s alive again! And she’s even stronger than before!”
“That angel isn’t human! She’s on the same level as the Goddess herself! We should have never tried to lay hands on her!”
The explosion in the sky, the angel’s solemn warning, and now, the one mad warrior sowing death and destruction wherever she went, with five other grim reapers following behind her...
The screams of their fleeing allies in their ears, the other Aligot soldiers were frozen in terror. Unable to fight against that fear any longer, one soldier slowly backed away, eventually turning around and making a straight dash away from the front lines. Another soldier followed after the first, then more and more after them, until the Aligot troops were fleeing en masse.
The front lines of the Aligot troops crumbled. Francette hunted down the fleeing soldiers, while Roland and the other imperial soldiers cut down any stragglers who managed to escape her wrath.
“We’ve already come this far, so this is pretty much what was going to happen anyway,” Kaoru muttered to herself. “If that’s the case, then it’d be better to end this quickly to keep the amount of casualties to a minimum. Since Francette and the others are the ones making the empire turn tail and run, you can even say this is a victory for the soldiers of Balmore.”
With that, she turned her attention to a spot just beyond the front lines that had nothing but Aligot soldiers gathered there. Aiming for the sky just above them, she created two gourd-shaped glass containers out of thin air. She’d filled one full of pseudo-nitroglycerin and the other with concentrated sulfuric acid, bringing them together to create one enormous explosion. And then another... Then a third.
Next thing she did was create a vast array of small glass balls in the sky filled with her pseudo-nitroglycerin. They fell down one after the other, leaving a sea of explosions in their wake.
She’d tried picking a spot without too many people around, but that didn’t work out exactly as planned. A good number of Aligot soldiers ended up dying after being caught up in the blasts.
Now it wasn’t just the front lines turning tail and running, but the soldiers behind them, and the reserve troops even further behind running for dear life. There was only one thought going through their minds: “We pissed off the Goddess!”
Even if it had been fifty-three years since she last appeared, the Goddess wasn’t just a legend here—she was a reality. Some of the elderly people had even seen her the last time she descended. Only someone on the same level as the Goddess herself could cause a phenomenon such as this.
While the explosions could have been caused by devils or demons, the existence of the girl who was said to be a messenger and friend of the Goddess meant it wasn’t likely. The way she’d conferred Fearsome Fran with her own divine blade was like reenacting something out of a legend.
One of the soldiers who’d escaped Francette’s wrath managed to make it back to the commanding officers of the western invasion forces. Expressions of despair covered their faces when they heard what was going on. They’d all thought she was nothing more than a little girl who was able to create potions thanks to the grace of the Goddess.
All this time, the Aligot forces had been under the impression that they would be on the Goddess’s good side if they could get the girl to the pope in Rueda and have him talk things over with her. Anyone who opposed them was opposing the Goddess herself. As far as the empire was concerned, Balmore just happened to be the place the girl had decided to settle down in. She already had an open feud with the temple and the royal family before, after all.
But now she’d not only brought about a miracle in reviving one of the Balmore warriors from the brink of death and granted her a legendary weapon, she’d even doled out divine punishment to their soldiers. Forget about trying to persuade her, they couldn’t even try and capture her at this rate. If anyone tried to get close to her, their head would explode into a shower of red mist. Who’d be insane enough to try and capture someone like that?
She wasn’t just some girl who received a blessing from the Goddess, but was someone who handed out blessings instead. That being the case, she either worked directly under the Goddess, or maybe she was a goddess herself...
They’d thought Balmore was plotting something when Balmore troops began shouting about potions and Roland and how the invasionary force to the north was defeated. But now they’d seen what happened with Francette, so it might all be true. It was hard to believe Balmore had wiped out their forces to the north without taking any losses themselves, but it wasn’t impossible if they’d met their end because of divine punishment.
For now, their only option was to retreat. Though they hadn’t lost that many soldiers in the fighting, their numbers were still less than Balmore’s.
But that wasn’t the reason why they chose to back off. Rather, morale was at an all-time low. They’d angered the Goddess, and divine punishment had been delivered unto them as a result. If they angered her any more than they already had, all of them were going to face punishment from on high and get sent straight to hell. Their families back home would be killed as well, and their entire country would perish. They couldn’t keep it together and fight with all that on their minds.
Besides, they’d more than fulfilled their mission of keeping the bulk of Balmore’s army away from the capital. If Balmore had been lying, then the northern troops would lay siege to the capital and bring it down.
Even if Balmore’s main forces returned now, they’d have no choice but to surrender if the capital had fallen. In fact, the whole country would have no choice.
And what if the northern forces really had been wiped out? The answer: they didn’t know. That was the responsibility of the general in charge of those troops, not theirs. It didn’t have anything to do with the western invasion forces.
But they only had just shy of 40,000 troops with them. Not only were they outnumbered by their enemy, they barely had heavy armor or mounted troops after being forced to trek through the mountains. Who knew if they’d be able to take the heavily fortified capital after being forced to march there on the limited provisions they could acquire from the villages they’d passed along the way.
They wou
ld have to rely on the precious few resources the laborers they brought with them carried, and then keep looting whatever they could find as they moved on ahead. It was an uphill battle even under normal circumstances, but the fact that everyone’s morale had plummeted certainly didn’t help. They would have to rally and reign in the troops had fled, lighting a fire under them so they would keep fighting as the wrath of the Goddess rained down on them.
...It would never work.
They wouldn’t be able to retreat at that point, and they’d lose every single soldier who’d stepped foot in Balmore, the northern forces included. The only soldiers left would be the 20,000 on standby in Aligot as a deterrent if Aseed ever decided to attack them while most of their army was absent. It would mean the end of the empire if that happened.
If enough time passed, Aseed and Brancott would just end up sending reinforcements to aid Balmore. Both countries knew that if Balmore fell, they’d be next. In fact, it wouldn’t be strange for Aseed to start sending troops in a surprise attack from the south right around now.
The commanding officers thought it over long and hard but, in the end, they already knew the answer from the beginning. They just needed a little extra time to accept it themselves.
“We need to fall back.”
Everyone present nodded silently in response. Even before the order was given, the troops had already been moving westward, back from where they came, but it was an order they still needed to announce. They were still an army, after all.
In the end, the Aligot forces had finally reached the base of the mountain path, all the while taking a severe beating from Balmore’s fierce counterattack. They ditched whatever heavy equipment they had with them and disappeared into the craggy mountainside as they fled back to their own country. The 40,000 they’d marched in with had now been reduced to about 30,000. They’d lost a quarter of their troops in the carnage, and had barely managed to avoid being declared as annihilated.