Episode 449 Opening of Mayhem

The news of Linfelt’s escape caused quite a commotion in the Galahad fortress.

I was stunned before I joined the Spada knights in their haste to join in the search.

“Oh, what a pain…”

She was an important enemy general that I had captured alive after a lot of recklessness. No, it’s not the result of me alone. It’s a precious battle result that was made possible by many sacrifices.

I couldn’t bear to have it escape me so easily.

But the biggest problem of all is that we are once again exposed to the threat of her Sanctuary.

“Damn, next time it won’t go that well.”

If Linfelt had returned to the Crusaders, there was a good chance they would have used the same strategy again. It was only a failure because they had unintentionally allowed the enemy to get close to her, but the strategy itself had worked.

If they cut off part of the city wall again, there is currently nothing we can do to prevent it. This time, they might just cut out the main gate area.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Good morning, Kurono. There’s been a lot of noise this morning. Are you also celebrating Holy Night?”

Just as I was about to despair, Fiona came in, yawning with an expression that said, “I’m always sleepy, but I’m not really sleepy, but I’m just really sleepy right now.”

Incidentally, this is the lobby of the inn where we are staying. Information about the battle is posted on a large board that looks like the quest board at the adventurer’s guild. The information about Linfelt’s escape was also posted here in a big way.

“Fiona, Linfelt escaped.”

“Really, she escaped?”

“We’re in all this trouble because she actually ran away.”

“Sactuary is a defensive barrier magic. So, it can’t help her escape from prison in any way. Also since the shackles that blocks magic power were put on, her magic power must be at its lowest, so it was an insider’s job.”

She came up with a theory which I couldn’t deny.

“Could it be that a Crusader rescue team secretly infiltrated the fortress?”

“If that were possible, the Galahad fortress would have fallen by now.”

“Well, if it’s …, does that mean we really have a traitor in our midst?”

It is impossible for the Crusaders to infiltrate from the outside. But if someone on the inside helped them escape, then there is more than enough room for success. It’s hard to believe, but it’s nothing but the most realistic possibility.

“It’s not our job to investigate who the culprit is, so we’ll just have to let it go.”

What is the motive for the betrayal? Was there a Spada knight who was bought off privately before the war started? Or was it because he fell in love with Linfent’s good looks?

I was curious about it, but there was nothing I could do about it. At least for me right now, I can only hope that Linfelt and the culprit will be caught.

“Huh, I should’ve killed her if this was going to happen…”

Just when I couldn’t help but complain about the noise, I saw a familiar green light at the edge of my vision.

“Kurono! We’re in trouble!”

In the lobby, which was crowded with adventurers, Lily dexterously made her way through the crowd.

Lily continued to work with Simon to reboot the Taurus. She didn’t even come back to her room last night, which means she worked all night, or rather, slept over there. She seems to be very enthusiastic about it.

In any case, the fact that Lily took the trouble to come back and tell us that she was in trouble could be information about the escape of Linfelt. If so, then it’s a waste of time.

“The Crusaders are coming! They’re bringing out all the Taurus!”

“What?”

“I don’t see any movement yet.”

Leaving the details of the situation aside, we first came to the city wall.

The place was packed with Spada soldiers monitoring the enemy lines, so it was never empty, even in the early morning.

From a height of fifty meters above the ground, I look down at the Crusaders’ field position, which is only a kilometer away, and confirm that they are not going to charge right now.

Lily had said that they were coming, but at least for now, the crusaders looked the same as yesterday.

Of course, the Spada soldiers only continued their patrol quietly. The sound of the warning bell had not yet been heard.

“Then, Lily, tell me more.”

“Let’s see…”

“Hey, Lily, are you still a kid when you’re trying to explain?”

“Mmm, even I can explain things properly!”

Fiona suddenly interrupted her, and Lily countered with a cute, indignant look.

However, I am sure that usually whenever she talks about this kind of thing, she brings back her adult consciousness for clarity.

“…Well, Lily, you’ve consumed your transformation time, haven’t you?”

“Uhh!”

Lily’s reaction was shocking, and she could not hide the fact that I was right. She is so honest to a fault.

“You’ve been working too hard to restore the Taurus, haven’t you?　Worst-case scenario, one transformation should be enough.”

“I’ll be fine! I can do it!”

She clasped her small hands tightly together and insisted that I should believe her words. In the first place, I have a sense of trust in her, because I don’t think she would make such a bad move. I’m not worried at all.

“Okay. So, what’s going on with the Crusaders?”

“Yeah, you know what?”

But, let me say.

It was a tongue-in-cheek explanation by the young girl Lily, but it was still enough information and to the point. However, as Fiona had feared at first, it would be wrong to say this to Lily but in short, it took us a certain amount of time to grasp the situation accurately. There was also an incident where Lily got a little teary-eyed because she couldn’t communicate well.

“Oh, I see. Data link, huh?”

Lily said that while she was working on the recovery, she happened to have access to the remaining Taurus units in the crusade.

Seeing this as an opportunity, she searched for information, and apparently got information that work was being done at a rapid pace to get all the remaining Taurus units up and running – the moment she found out, her access was cut off, and she couldn’t connect to them anymore.

The trick was that Lily had challenged this information war in her adult state, so she had used up a lot of her transformation time.

“I’m sorry, I tried my best, but this is all I could figure out.”

“No, that’s enough. I didn’t expect them to unleash all of their weapons at once, so I’m glad I was able to detect them as soon as possible.”

It would have been quite dangerous if the full-tuned Taurus had suddenly charged at us all at once without any warning.

They had a total of twenty-four Taurus at the start of the war. Eleven of them were destroyed in the first day of the battle. Lily’s information has already revealed that there are only thirteen left.

The number itself seems manageable since we’ve already defeated eleven of them, but we mustn’t forget that ten of the ones we’ve defeated were sample Taurus, which are only capable of walking. The thirteen that are still inside the magic circle are all full-tuned Taurus that have tremendous mobility with that magic booster.

This time, the great wall of Galahad may fall.

“We’d better tell Spada’s army as soon as possible.”

“Then I will go.”

For some reason, Fiona was confidently running for office. But what is this uneasy feeling?

In the end, I decided to just walk away. Hmm, Fiona, I wonder if she’ll be okay. Will she be able to explain properly? I’m afraid she might get sidetracked in the middle of the conversation.

“It looks like they’re not going to start up all the Taurus right now.”

“Yeah, I think it’ll take a little longer.”

Whenever the Taurus appeared, a huge, dazzlingly luminous magic circle was deployed. So, it was easily detectable.

So far, I could not see any luminous phenomena in the crusaders’ camp, nor could I sense any sign of magic. At the moment, they were probably in the final stages of making adjustments for the attack.

“Either way, it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see.”

The warning bells rang out in the Galahad fortress at a time when even the knights, whose breakfast had been postponed due to security duties, had finished their meals.

All of us had eaten our fill, and Spada’s troops were quickly moving into defensive positions.

“Oh, oh, there are so many of them today…”

Kai says in a voice so bouncy that you’d think his eyes would be glittering behind his dragon mask.

“They’re all lined up, but they’re not moving at all.”

Charlotte is the one with the lifelike cat ears and tail twitching as she takes a stance that looks like she’s peeking out from the wall.

“I’m waiting for them to summon the Taurus or whatever that golem is.”

Safi, with skull mask covering her face, spoke her predictions quietly, yet clearly, as usual.

“Unless they’re hiding another secret weapon, it’s their only way.”

In contrast, Nero, in his white mask, answered with a slightly more serious tone than usual.

With the exception of Nell, the four members of the Wing Road’s disguised party, Alter Face, are already in position on Galahad’s wall.

“Judging by the summoning speed from before, it’s going to take them a while. Worst case scenario, even if we set up after the team releases the spatial interference light, we’ll still have plenty of time.”

“Until then, we’ll just have to wait quietly. It’s so cold when everyone’s quiet.”

“If only there was a nice prince here to warm me up with a gentle hug on the shoulder…” Charlotte glanced at him, but her masked childhood friend just looked straight at the enemy. She doesn’t even react to her statement.

Charlotte’s tail wagged wryly.

“By the way, everyone’s already here, but I wonder if the enemy’s daughter, Lin something, has been re-captured.”

“If they catch her, they’ll make a big deal out of it. That’s what I meant when I said it’s so quiet.”

The news of Linfelt’s escape was known throughout the fortress as early as the morning when they woke up. Some of the adventurers had already begun to participate in the search for the prize.

Kai was also brave and said, “Let’s go look for her too! But he was stopped by Nero and Charlotte, and when he stopped, he was beaten up by Safi.”

In the end, the policy of “Alter Face” was decided by the principle of majority vote to be “no search”, and no investigation was made into the missing Linfelt. However, it was a failure of Spada’s army. It is nothing not to be concerned about.

“Is it true that there is a traitor in our midst?”

“Oh, there’s already a huge rumor going around!”

There was a conspiracy theory that a Crusader spy was in the mix, that the knight guarding her had fallen for Linfelt’s good looks, or that the man who captured her, the Nightmare Berserker himself, had let her go, and that the previous battle itself had been staged to take credit. These were the conspiracy theories.

Especially in the camp of the Gladiator, where adventurers gather, it is still whispered about here and there as a way to pass the time until the Crusaders start moving.

“There’s a lot of crap …but the one thing that’s definite is that there’s a traitor.”

“Well, if Safi says so, then it must be true.”

“Hey, name.”

“Oh! Oh, hmm, if D says so—“

“No, it’s too late to rephrase that…”

“Unh! Unh! Shut up! Shut up!””

Charlotte was furious that she had made a mistake on the same level as Kai. Underneath the cat’s mask, her true face must have turned bright red.

Charlotte unfairly throws a punch at Nero due to her embarassment. In the face of such fierce but cute blow, Nero as usual, said, “I can’t help it”, and countered with “First Technique- Flow.”

“What, you idiot! You were just admiring Linfent!”

“What the hell is that? It’s got nothing to do with…”

“Oh, if you don’t deny it, then you must have been admiring her!”

“No, I’m not.”

Charlotte’s mind must have been replaying the scene of just three days ago.

At that time, all the members of the party had witnessed Kurono, the perverted tentacle man known as Nightmare Berserker, the mad warrior, using his still perverted tentacle technique to bring back with Linfelt in his arms, bound in a way that would humiliate a woman.

Kai was frankly moved and excited by Kurono’s single-mindedness in breaking through the enemy lines alone, capturing the enemy general, and coming back with impunity, while Safi showed little interest and concentrated on repelling the crusaders attacking the city walls. Charlotte, having had the same experience of being caught in Kurono’s clutches, could not help but feel a chill run through her body, even though she knew that he had brought victory to her army.

And Nero… Nero was silently staring at Kurono and Linfelt but because of the mask his expression was hidden.

However, the fact that Charlotte did not respond when she spoke to him made it clear that he had more than a little on his mind. In the end, after calling out his name two or three times, Nero responded as if he had finally come to himself.

If he wasn’t admiring her, what was it? Even if it wasn’t Charlotte who was making assumptions, it could only be taken that way.

“I wonder… if it was… who let that woman go.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Yeah, but you were all alone yesterday.”

“That’s because I wanted to be alone.”

Nero doesn’t always hang out with any of the members. He often skips class to take a nap on the rooftop, or just disappears like a cat.

Charlotte recognized that this was Nero’s habit, or hobby, or something like that, which had continued since childhood. And after several attempts to follow him, she finally couldn’t find out where and what the lone Nero was doing.

Therefore, Nero’s argument that he wanted to be alone as usual was quite plausible.

“Hmmm…”

However, Charlotte’s suspicions were still not clear. There was nothing strange about him, and yet she felt strangely uncomfortable, perhaps because of her experience his childhood friend.

“Well, okay, it’s the usual, you know!”

“Yeah, it happens all the time.”

Nevertheless, Nero smiled faintly at Charlotte, who was willing to take the brunt of her suspicions.

And so their lively chatting went on for the next hour or so. It came to an end, of course, when a huge figure emerged from the crusader camp.

Thirteen giants stood tall on the white earth.

“Hmm… still very brave.”

After three days and three nights of almost all-night preparations and adjustments, all thirteen fully-tuned Taurus aircraft were finally ready for action.

Today, too, a clear blue sky stretches out overhead, and a huge steel golem stands with an overwhelming sense of presence and weight on top of the ground that glitters silvery white in the brilliant sunlight. The back armor of the Taurus is already deployed, and pale phosphorescence is leaking from the gaps.

Count Bergunt already knows that the light is the incredible power that makes the steel behemoth float in the air.

The Count, standing at the foot of the Taurus, which is thicker than a thousand year old tree, had darker circles under his eyes and his cheeks look somewhat puffy and exhausted, but the words he speaks and the glint in his green eyes are infinitely powerful.

“So if you had such weapons, why didn’t you use it first?”

The reason he asked such a question was that as many as half of the Taurus aircraft that appeared were clearly armed.

There were five of the same type as last time, with only a drill in their right arm that made a huge hole in the great wall of Galahad. In addition, there were five more specializing in shattering the city walls with a drilling machine attached to their left arm, using both arms as powerful destructive devices.

Then there were two with huge steel plates – or shields – that looked as if they had been cut directly from the walls of some castle.

There was no telling how much weight was on that thick steel plate, but Taurus was already holding it up with ease. If it were to fall down due to some kind of malfunction, it would inevitably cause serious trouble. The Taurus was attracting the attention of the soldiers around it, who wanted to see it go into battle as soon as possible.

And finally, there is one that held a very large hammer, a size befitting a giant.

The handle was probably twenty meters long, as was the entire length of the weapon. At the end of the long handle, which was as big as a steel tree, was a hammerhead as big as a small house. One side is flat, exuding a sense of intimidation that threatens to crush anything in its path. The other side is a pick, like the fangs of a legendary giant dragon.

The overwhelming destructive power could be felt from its appearance. As the only one with a weapon that looked like a weapon, only this Taurus had two horns on its head, like a bullhorn.

Seeing such a clearly visible increase in equipment, it was only natural that Count Bergunt’s question would come up.

“Uh, yeah, that’s, uh,…”

“She didn’t get them ready in time, that’s all.”

As usual, Dorothy tried to give a sluggish and incomprehensible answer, but Ai, who had been officially appointed as the explainer, responded in the same throwaway manner as usual.

“Oh, I see. Well, that’s just the way it is.”

However, Count Berglund was very perceptive. The fact that he seems to be so calm despite his glaring gaze makes it all the more eerie.

“It’s good that you’re made it in time, this time.”

Without asking anyone to agree with him, the Count was convinced on his own.

After all, it was not only Dorothy who looked at him with a somewhat creepy gaze, but also the Count’s subordinates as well.

“Wow, old man, you seem to be pretty sick after Linfelt was caught.”

“Yeah…”

Ai overheard Dorothy’s honest, yet blunt, thoughts.

Probably no one would have guessed that Count Bergunt was so obsessed with the daughter Linfelt. No matter how you look at it, Linfelt being his real daughter was questionable. However, this makes it seem as if she really was his beloved daughter.

“… I’m a little surprised that he cared so much about his daughter.”

“I don’t know about that, but that that girl looks just like her mom. That’s why, through her, maybe he was able to see the image of hid lover that he used to love back in the day.”

“Oh, please don’t do say that. It’s disgusting…”

Dorothy’s expression was one of serious dismay, while Ai’s grin was one of amusement as she told Dorothy her theory. Communication between the two seemed good.

“By the way, do me a favor, will you?”

The Count turned his face to Dorothy, as if his head was going to spin around in a circle.

“What?”

There was no way he could have overheard the conversation, but the timing and power of it brought a little tear to the eye behind Dorothy’s thick glasses.

“If at all possible, please… aim at the demon… of Alsace, no, the Incubus.”

“ He is not an Incubus. A Incubus is not humanoid. It’s a lump of tentacles.”

“What do you call someone who humiliated the neat and noblr maiden, Linfelt in front of the public?”

“Uh, yes, sorry, he was one hell of an erotic demon…”

The Count’s foaming-at-the-mouth assertion of the Kurono Incubus theory was so powerful that even Ai had to agree with him.

“Excuse me, when I recall that moment of humiliation, I couldn’t help but… so what do you think?”(Count)

Dorothy was a little stunned by the change in the Count, who had sunk into a rage of his own, but fortunately she remembered the question after about ten seconds.

“The Taurus is not designed to be used for personal reasons, but it can be used against people…”

“Please, he must be killed here at all costs. I will personally send the best of Helvetia against him.”

“Oh, I see. …If that’s the case, well, I guess it’s okay.”

Thus, the preparations for the decisive battle of the Crusaders was complete.

The 24th day of the Dark Moon month. The time was exactly noon. The final battle to capture Galahad Fortress had begun.

Also, about the unimportant backstory.

Incubus is the male version of Succubus.