Chapter 16 - The light at once

The basement of the barrack had seemingly been made to hold storage rooms of diverse type.

Having fled the scene of slaughter they had encountered earlier, the children were now taking a rest in one of them full of smoked and salted meat. Hungry, their guilt of stealing this food had only stopped them for a mere second, before they jumped on it but, under the advice of Crisnée, they had not eaten much, to not upset their stomach for future fights.

After that, they cutely tried to take a nap one at a time but, being tired children who just ate and felt secure, everyone was quick asleep.

Lucky for them, they had two guardians watching over them. Guardians who, not even fifteen minutes after the children closed their eyes, sprang into action to kill a p-spider that tried to ambush them.

The door had opened without any noise and the intruder, sure of its advantage, just walked in after a quick look around.

Not a second after was it pinned down to the ground by the four sharp appendages of Vivianne’s pet, and just another second passed before its head flew, cut by the blade of air in which I had poured all the rage and restlessness I had built up to that point.

Conserve your energy, we can’t run out of Mana before we’re sure that they’re safe.

Sorry, I needed that.

It’s alright if it’s only once.

Two seconds. That’s all it took for us to kill the monster without a sound. Of course, creating an air blade sharp enough to cut like that took quite the amount of mana, but man was it worth it.

The children, once awake, were horrified to find the body of a monster on their literal doorstep but they quickly gathered their wits. Thinking that her pet had saved them (which wasn’t false per se, I had just finished the work), Vivianne started petting her pet’s head, not bothered at all by the strange texture of its shell/skin.

Even the two others started relaxing a bit more around it, if only slightly. As for me, I still did not trust it, but the actual pieces of evidence to do so weren’t really queuing up.

In the end, it took us around an hour to find the staircase leading to the ground level, two if you took the nap into account.

Fortunately, we did not find other p-spiders or corpse over the last half-an-hour of search, as I don’t think the little ones could have withstood it, in particular another corpse.

Fighting was one thing, but finding the body of someone, of a human like you, me or anyone, that would have been heavy on their consciousness. Too heavy.

The ground level, just like the basement they just exited, was eerily silent.

No. That wasn’t true.

If you listened carefully, you could hear the sound of battle coming from outside.

“Y-you’re sure we should keep going like that?” Unsettled by the distant ruckus, Noa wasn’t really sure about their plan anymore.

“Yes. We need to flee deeper into the city, or we may be surrounded. Maybe the gate has already fallen.” Crisnée answered him seriously, with a longer sentence than her usual reply.

“O-okay.”

They kept going but, even after their break, I could feel Noa weakening under me. A full day of training topped by carrying me and a heavy metal shield around was more than starting to take its toll on him. However, courageous as he could be, he gritted his teeth and kept going, fueled by fear, yes, but fear for… me? Each time I felt as if he couldn’t take another step, he always looked at me, then at his sister, and gritted his teeth once again, taking this next step.

What resolves from seven-years-old children.

...Yes. It’s impressive. And sad.

Indeed.

They’re really good seeds of heroes. Heroes always die.

Not always. Not with us here. If they want to become heroes, we’ll be there for them, as much as if they want to become anything else. The magnitude of a task never stopped you doing it, and it won’t start now, right?

True. I just don’t want to see them waste their life for others.

Maybe that’s what will make them happy. Their call, not ours. We’re just behind, with a length of rope to take them out of the pits they’ll fall in because of their choice, with a ladder to help them reach what they want to attain.

Haha, yeah. Ropes and ladders, never chains and locks. I’m a bit overprotective sometimes hehehe…

You are. Just remember, don’t steal their life by making their choice in their place.

Yup.

Five more minutes went by as the group tried to find their way in the labyrinthic building, only to come to a violent stop when Vivianne raised a hand and lowered herself, her spear ready. The two others, at first, were confused, but they quickly understood Vi’s choice when they started hearing running footsteps. Human footsteps.

Crisnée and Noa started relaxing, but they went back to their tensed battle-expecting position when they saw Vivianne keeping her aggressive stance.

Seconds went by slowly, extremely slowly as Vi tensed more and more, until someone turned the corner of the hallway.

They suddenly stopped running, their brows shooting upward under the surprise.

It was a woman, in her late twenties maybe, clad in a half-plate armour under which you could see her gambeson, dried blood covering it chaotically.

“They’re alive.” She was whispering, seemingly talking to herself.

But then she saw the p-spider beside Vivianne and my heart skipped a bit.

The scene happened so quickly that the woman really dodged death by a fraction a second, and because Psaï was holding me back.

The woman, in a flash, had thrusted her sword toward the creature, a blade of solid yellow that nearly pierced it but, as quickly, Vivianne had jumped in front of her pet and tried to parry the strike, only for her green silky Shi to be shattered into pieces.

However, the woman expertly controlled her attack as to not wound the reckless courageous little girl.

“What are you doing?!” Screamed the woman, flustered, ready to strike again.

“It’s tamed!” Answered Vivianne powerfully, her sole hand shacking from the earlier stab.

“What?” She raised an eyebrow, out of disbelief surely.

“Just look.” Vivianne, her softly red eyes turning back white, showed sternly to the swordswoman that, indeed, this p-spider was somewhat tamed, making it roll on itself and even put a blade on its head to show that it would obey anything.

Tiny note, I did flinch a bit when, Vivianne putting a blade over its head, the p-spider closed all of its eyes, as if ready for whatever happened next. That’s some fierce loyalty alright? Loyalty always made me sentimental.

“...How the fuck did you tame a Yiburis? No, whatever, keep it or burn it I don’t care, we need to move now! You! The baby, now!” She pointed at Noa who instantly obeyed.

So they’re called Yiburis. Interesting.

I passed from one person to another so quickly I did not react.

What the fuck is she d- But my question was directly answered when she put me on her back and a mass of yellow glass covered me, strapping me at her as if with a baby carrier.

I tried moving a bit and felt a dampening around me, as if the Shi was soft and viscous.

Wow. She’s even making a dampener for us to not die when she starts moving violently.

Shi is definitely something interesting. Look at her, she doesn’t really seem to struggle doing so, right? As if it was just a…

An afterthought. Fuck, making dampening fields is so fucking hard with magic, and she just sees it as an afterthought.

I need to learn Shi.

During my slight tangent thoughts our little group had started jogging behind the Shi warrior, as suddenly…

“Hiiiiiiiiii!” An agonizing sound was heard, extremely strong and high-pitched, making everyone but the woman fall on their feet, hands on their ears and weapons on the ground. In particular, Vi and her Yiburis had screamed painfully and their ears were now slightly bloodied, eyes closed, their body unconscious on the ground

No.

That was-

Yes. Fuck.

Initiate protocol B17.

As Psaï started charging anti-mana battle spells in her memory, the woman stopped and turned around, rushing at the children’s side with a concerned face.

“Fuck. Can you walk?” She asked at Noa and Crisnée, moving her hand over Vivianne’s face.

“Y-yes.” Noa seemed to get on his feet powered by sheer resolve and nothing else, his legs shaking hard under the strain. Crisnée, her eyes unfocused, did not even answer.

“No you can’t, do try to be brave now kid.” She looked once more around her, assessing the situation and, biting her lips, she quickly put everyone behind her back, extending her Shi to them.

She’s not taking Vivianne’s Yiburis.

No she isn’t.

...We don’t have the spare resources.

No.

Okay. No one can ask us to do the impossible.

And so, as we were all carried on the woman’s back, we let behind Vivianne’s pet.

In overall I disliked making sacrifices (but you could ask, who doesn’t?), but I could when it was necessary.

***

At the time we reached the exit of the barrack, you could feel the effort the woman was making to transport us all.

So it really does exhaust the body. On this aspect it seems that Shi does to the body the same as Mana does to the mind?

Maybe, maybe not. Still not enough data to tell if the comparison is correct or not.

Right.

More interesting, we could finally see what was happening outside.

And it was mostly a FUCKING BIG HOLE in the wall. And not as if it had been destroyed or torn apart. No, something had melted a five-metres hole in the stone wall.

So it really was a laser.

It seems so.

You could see the damage the laser had made piercing the wall as it had kept going in the city, creating a very clean five-metres large cut through the houses and the snow.

That’s already some power.

Yes.

Through the brand-new hole, lots of Yiburis were invading the city, creating a bloody battlefield where guards were stopping them, the humans keeping up only because of their formation, training and tools, as the monsters crushed them in savagery, raw power and sheer number. All over the wall, you could see tired guards trying to fend off the wave eating at them, slowly bending under the pressure as they were now spread too thin between two grounds to defend.

“BOOM!” A mass of green Shi suddenly fell in the middle of the Yiburis’ mass, crushing tens, maybe hundreds of them, alleviating the guards’ pressure for a time and mixing the snow with the blood spilt, creating some kind of gory-surrealist painting on the ground.

I looked up, where the Shi had come from, and a warrior (girl no older than twenty) was running through the sky on tiny green platforms, fully clad in plate armour and wielding a war-hammer.

What surprised me more was that the attack had seemingly not been targeted at the mass of pseudo-spider, but at something else. Or should I say, someone else.

...Lebaclas?

What? What the fuck? Lebaclas?!

As it was, indeed, Lebaclas. I could recognise its face anywhere. After all, I had worked with it for a good eight years. On Entropy’s side.