Lucen sat in the command vehicle and stared at the commotion that had risen over by the warehouse. It was a disturbance within the range he had assumed, so there was no great alarm in him.
Beneath Lucen's composure, Zex and those with him handed down new directives. They would slowly pull back the assault squad, which had been little more than a discard card, and send up the forces prepared to match Ironstick's captain: Kimberly Page.
"...Zex, what is this situation?"
"O-one moment, please. River 1, report the situation properly, right no—"
—N-no good. We cannot take them on......!
But their composure did not last long. The captain and vice-captain of Ironstick, whom they had judged easy to remove, had begun dragging the course of the battle into a shape no one had expected.
Backed by body armor and an iron door, they ignored the bullets and swept the combatants away in droves. They burst the heads of the entire infiltration squad, then seized a vehicle.
It was the appearance of a variable no one had wanted.
***
"What the hell is that? They're way stronger than the report said. Is that for real? Is it really the cult juicing them up?"
That was Flag's shout.
"...Getting ready to withdraw looks like a good idea as well."
The second remark was Migo's judgment.
"It does look that way."
The last belonged to Odysseus, who had listened to every word of theirs.
The boy's hand tucked the magic pen he had been spinning on his fingertips into his coat. The thought of trying a sniper shot did cross his mind for a moment, but this was someone else's operation.
If it were only allies here, perhaps, but acting on impulse among people he could not fully trust was not wise. Besides, to use a sniper rifle he would have had to contact the rear and have a new one brought up anyway.
"Let's fall back, kid. It won't be any fun if we catch friendly fire out here."
"I was about to say the same thing. Let's pull back for now, reform the line at the rear, then either push in again or retreat for good. If it really can't be done, I'm fine with taking his head off with a sniper shot."
He did want to gift the man a death as painful and as horrific as possible, but he had no intention of forcing the matter past reason. Odysseus readily made his willingness to let it go known.
"Good, you're easy to talk to. If you were always like this, how nice would that be."
And once a decision had been made, there was no reason to be slow about acting on it.
The three of them notified the command room that they would withdraw while continuing their observation of the enemy. In their field of view were one Bear Folk who had finally swept the entry squad clean away, and one Satyri who had come out of the building rather late. If the command room's guess was right, that bastard was the one who had slaughtered the entire infiltration squad.
'Well, Pan's children have been famous for their toughness since long ago.'
Pan was the name of the god who had gifted humanity livestock such as goats, sheep, and horses. He had not stopped at shaping beasts after his own likeness; he had molded beings to raise and manage them as well.
Those were the Satyros¹. The ones with long, pointed ears like a goat's, a pair of horns curled round like a sheep's, and legs as sturdy as a horse's.
RATATATATAT.
TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK-BANG.
"Shoot! I said shoot!"
"Aim for the tires!"
"We have to stop them first......!"
For reference, the Satyros of the Age of Myth were not a lot that particularly enjoyed fighting. But as befitted those who guarded livestock from wild nature, neither were they bad at it. That was why the ferocity that Satyri was showing now did not strike Odysseus as anything remarkable.
SCREEEECH!
RATATATATAT.
Setting that aside, the being whose upper body resembled the Teeming Folk but whose lower body, ears, and horns marked it as a different species fired without pause. Even when the bear who had seized the vehicle—Ironstick's captain—suddenly stamped the accelerator or the brake, the bastard paid it no mind.
Ironstick's vice-captain thrust his muzzle out through a modified hole, indifferent to whether bullets lodged in the bulletproof glass. His skill at aiming precisely at an enemy even through a dark, shaking field of view was considerable.
In an instant the pair, having crushed one side of Pluto's encirclement, wrenched the vehicle around. SCREEEEEECH! Skid marks were carved thick into the road, and the vehicle spun a full one hundred and eighty degrees. They seemed to intend to race back down the alley they had come through.
"They were getting steamrolled a minute ago and now they want to make sure of the kills? What the hell are those two thinking?"
"Who knows. Maybe after dealing with the infiltration squad they decided it was worth a try."
"Hmm... so until then they didn't know their own level of force? Does that make sense?"
"They are from the upper district. It would not be strange for them not to know the rough level of force of those from the lower districts."
"Is that it... hah, forget it. Let's just keep pulling back for now."
"Okay."
"Be careful, Yul. If they have any sense, they will target the magician first."
"Don't worry."
Most magicians were of little help in a melee. There was a mountain of things to calculate, distance, area, power, and by its very nature a melee changed all of it in real time.
And yet, in spite of that, magicians never escaped being the highest-priority target. Give a magician time and distance and he could create an infinite number of variables, so it could not be helped. Unless the fight was some utter shit-tier scuffle, the enemy's magician was always target number one.
Knowing that, Migo and Flag escorted Odysseus from behind. The fact that Odysseus was a magician was relatively easy to work out—naturally, short of a peculiarity like being a magician, there was no reason for a twelve-year-old child to be mixed into a battlefield—so their protection was all the more thorough.
"Ah, son of a bitch. Why did he have to come this way of all ways."
"Do not make pointless noise. Move."
Migo's bulk meant their stealth suffered somewhat, but in exchange Odysseus' body was well hidden. The three of them used that to slip slowly toward the rear. Toward where the command vehicle was.
"Hmm. Could those bastards have detected the magic power used in the magic? Their heading's too precise for them to have come this way blind."
"...At this distance?"
"You never know. Yul, what do you think?"
"Uh, me?"
"Yeah. You're a magician. Wouldn't you get information from a different angle than us?"
"Um......."
"Or not, then."
"No, it's not that I have nothing."
Magic power was a force generated only where a living body and a soul touched. Even when magic was used at long range, invoking it required drawing magic power out from within the body and moving it to the desired coordinates. Which meant the caster and the point where the magic went off were necessarily connected at least once.
So, just as Flag said, if one's sensitivity was outstanding, working out a magician's position was not entirely impossible. The same held even if the range of that sensitivity was not wide. Merely perceiving the incoming magic power was enough to infer at least a rough direction.
"I don't think they're at that level, though?"
But that only held when one's sensitivity was truly good.
As Odysseus saw it, those bastards were not at that level. The shape of the magic power that had drifted faintly off them said as much. Their magic power was disordered and without restraint, like back-alley thugs.
"Yeah?"
"Bastards with good sensitivity usually have good control too. Their magic power, though, is a bit... should I say it's running away from them? Like they can't properly govern their own magic power."
Of course, there was no law that said being outstanding in one meant being so in the other. Just as they themselves were pulling back because of that damned 'one in ten thousand.'
"Well, if they have a 'Field,' that's another matter. That works on a principle separate from sensitivity or control."
What Odysseus overlooked, however, was his own ill luck. He had assumed his misfortune had run its course with the enemy proving stronger than Pluto expected, but reality went one step further than that. As most of the trials he had met in his life had.
"A Field, a Field user!"
"Huh."
The instant they linked up with the command vehicle, Zex's shout burst out from inside it like a scream. If what he had spat out was true, it was well worth screaming over.
'Field user,' or 'Scribe.' That was the word for a superhuman at the stage where he ceased to be one soldier and came to be treated as a tactical weapon in his own right.
"Wait, that bear oaf is a Scribe?"
"It is certain. A refraction phenomenon is being observed."
The moment he heard Zex's voice, Odysseus went pattering off toward the vehicle. The guards, flustered at the small presence, adjusted quickly and opened the door for him.
Light from dozens of screens spilled out through the door as it rattled open.
"I want to see too."
"Who... ah."
"Here, right here. You see it?"
Subordinate A of the planning office, who had never even been introduced by name, noticed his presence, while Lucen and Zex did not seem to have so much as heard him speak.
Without so much as turning around, Zex enlarged several screens and set the playback slow. The frame showed a bullet about to touch the bear oaf's clothing.
"The bullet is being pushed aside."
The bullet, traveling in a straight line, abruptly twisted and lost its force. It was as though a magnet had been brought up against another of the same pole. It went on and on, and then from some point simply fell straight down.
And it was not just one. Every bullet fired at him did the same. Impossible, unless something was interfering.
The rounds glancing away caught the thin light and glittered like stars in the night sky.
"...Any possibility he is a psychokinetic?"
"No. If you look closely, the nature of it differs from a psychokinetic's psychokinetic barrier. Here, look here. In the end they do touch him, do they not? With a psychokinetic barrier, even a round that had lost its force would never reach the body."
And indeed some of the rounds did touch the man's body. Mostly the ones fired toward his midsection, though strictly speaking they had not arrived by the bullet's own force. First the round lost its force and was caught by gravity and fell; second, in the course of the bear's body moving, it struck the spot where the round was falling.
"So this is the refraction phenomenon, without a doubt. The one peculiar to Scribes!"
Well, in truth this part—how exactly the bullets were deflected—did not particularly matter. Whether that was a Scribe's Field or the psychokinetic barrier of some psychokinetic he had never seen and so did not know, the upshot was the same: bullets did not work.
"What puzzles me is... with such, such power, why until now......?"
Ah. If the opponent was a Field user, that is, a Scribe, then there might be some slight advantage in it. After learning what consciousness acceleration was, he had been taught by Captain Songha about the stages beyond it.
"No, this is not what matters. What will you do now? You must decide quickly. Whether we withdraw or press the offensive—"
"I-I don't know. Why, why is a Scribe turning up? Nobody said anything about this. This wasn't in it, this story wasn't—"
"Lucen, sir!"
"You had better leave right now."
And according to that learning, the Scribe was a stage he himself had once stood upon. Unlike with a psychokinetic, predicting what a Scribe's fighting strength would look like was not so difficult.
"?!"
"When......."
"I said leave right now if you don't want to die."
Even as he took stock of his own feeble body, his mouth spat out the words that ought to be said. Odysseus' eyes, ordering body and mind, were checking the bear oaf's position on the screen.
KABOOM!
Pluto's combatants were swept away like leaves in an autumn wind. Nothing new in that. The gap in physical ability between them and Ironstick's boss was overwhelming, and the weapon that would have narrowed that gap—the gun—had been neutralized by the refraction phenomenon. Which meant the situation left them no choice but to be driven back one-sidedly.
'Judging by how he flinches whenever a muzzle flashes, he doesn't seem used to the refraction phenomenon yet, but.......'
Humans were creatures of adaptation. He would have the situation in his bones soon enough.
"Sis! Bro!"
So his advice ended there. Now that an unforeseen variable had appeared, they had to work at cutting their own losses rather than minding other people.
Odysseus decided to forget the word revenge for a while.
"Uh-huh."
"Was he really a Scribe?"
He climbed down out of the cramped command vehicle and looked for Migo and Flag outside. They had heard that shout earlier as well, so they were not far off.
Two steps from the vehicle, watching every direction, they regripped their guns and greeted the boy.
"It seems so."
"Is that so... the worst."
"Kid, what do we do? I've sent word to the captain, at least."
"We pull back, of course. Taking down a Scribe with no preparation costs far too much effort."
"Right, good thinking. Ohhh. Our kid's finally grown up a little."
"What are you talking about. You've been acting like I'd dig my heels in over nothing this whole time, but I'm not so blind with revenge as that."
He did not think he would die if they engaged right now, but with a variable of this size the right move was to regroup and come back. Odysseus checked his gun as they had, then spoke in Gauri.
"Let's move between the buildings. If we take a car at this distance, we'll be spotted."
"...How do you know that?"
"How do you know it, Bro?"
"From the captain, obviously."
"Same here."
Nothing of the sort, but from here on let that be the story.
Odysseus adjusted his night-vision goggles and slipped into a narrow alley instead of the vehicle road. The width was somewhat inconvenient for Migo to pass through, but there was no helping it. This was better than getting caught by the Scribe and having things turn troublesome.
"If we're spotted, don't fight, run."
"That goes without say... hm?"
"Someone is following."
Just then the sound of people came from behind. Three untrained sets of footsteps and five trained ones. Definitely not the bear oaf's, nor his colleague's or his subordinates'.
"What is it?"
"...We were not prepared for a Scribe, you see. Haha."
Listening to Zex's awkward laugh, Odysseus smiled faintly. So these sons of bitches meant to pull a drowning-ghost tactic, did they?
"Ahem. The three of you, having a Scribe for a superior, must surely know how to prepare for one better than we do......."
But a Scribe for a superior? Odysseus' gaze left the drowning ghosts trailing them and turned to Flag. Whether because of the dark or because his own eyes were thin as thread, Flag failed to notice and only scratched at the back of his head.
"Kid, what do you want to do."
At the same time he gave the gun in his hands a slight shake and tapped his own thigh with the barrel. Considering the dagger hidden there, the meaning was plain.
"...We can't cause a commotion."
He was tempted for a moment, but in the end the boy shook his head. For them to personally kill someone of an executive's rank in Pluto carried far too much risk.
"That does not mean we can take that lot along."
"True enough."
Not that he meant taking them along was a good idea. Naturally, borrowing the power of the darkness worked up to three, but eleven was a wholly different story. And when three of those were non-combatants who could not hide their presence at all, there was nothing more to say.
'Get taken down while walking, or sit and welcome him.......'
After a moment's deliberation Odysseus made his decision. Whether Flag or Migo would understand the choice he could not know, but by his judgment this was the best of them.
"Let's go into a building."
"That's your call?"
"It'll beat getting the shit knocked out of us on the way."
"...I don't know. Both sound like shit to me."
"Inside a building we can at least avoid an ambush. Either way, once we run into him we have to bet our lives on running or fighting, and that doesn't change."
"That's true."
Those bastards did not look likely to fall away easily, and if trying to force them off drew the Scribe bear oaf's attention this way, that would be the true worst case. Flag and Migo seemed to grasp that much too; after a little discussion they followed along readily.
The place soon settled on as their last redoubt was a two-story warehouse whose left and right outer walls abutted other buildings and which had a back door.
CLANK.
The warehouse door was locked, but on this side there were eight people who worked in the shade. The lock was picked in an instant. It seemed to be in use as an ordinary warehouse; inside, it was full of packed boxes.
"Cover the windows so it doesn't look unnatural, and check whether there's a basement."
Odysseus started issuing orders the moment they were inside. Lucen, apparently out of his wits over the fact that the enemy was a Scribe, did not care whether the boy put his subordinates to work or did anything else. That was easier, if anything.
"Zex, how's the situation."
"Pardon?"
"Are they all dead?"
"...Nearly all of them have been swept away."
"The enemy's position?"
"That is......."
Odysseus did not wait long. He took the device Zex had been looking at and flicked through the screens. It was fortunate the bastards had not properly grasped the CCTV. Ironstick's captain and vice-captain were caught on separate cameras, so they must have split up.
—AAGH!
—Th-the bullets aren't hitting!
—M-monster!
On the boss' side, a one-sided slaughter was continuing.
The sight of him rampaging in every direction, using his enormous bulk, his brutish strength, and the property by which bullets lost their force before they could burrow into his body, was quite savage. Had he come out like this from the start, the standoff between Pluto and Ironstick would have worn an entirely different face.
—Don't go into the building!
—Idiot, shoot! I said shoot!
—HWAAAAGH!
—Fuck, how the hell does he land precision shots while running?!
The vice-captain's side looked much the same. Knowing that his own running speed beat the speed at which Pluto's combatants could swing their muzzles around, he tore about like a boar with its tail on fire.
He might not be a Scribe, but he was clearly at the stage of handling consciousness acceleration freely.
SWIP.
Having confirmed that much, Odysseus flicked to the next screen. It was the CCTV watching Ironstick's home base. He saw the wrecked warehouse and the rabble staggering out of it.
'Not many of the leftovers survived, then.'
If the other side had tried to search using their underlings it would have gotten a little awkward, so that much was fortunate. However sharp a Scribe's presence-sense, he could not sweep the whole sprawling harbor district alone. With good luck, they might slip by.
'Even so, it's only stalling.'
That is to say, only if their luck was truly good.
"Oh, word from the captain."
Flag, peering at his own device, spoke up. A reply had come, it seemed.
"What does she say?"
"Says she'll come as fast as she can, so hold out somehow."
"The Sword Master......!"
Hearing the color come into Zex's voice, Odysseus was certain. So Captain Songha was a Scribe too. That was why they had treated our captain the way they did.
The boy filed away the fact that finally made sense. Had the captain gone about with her Field unfurled he would have noticed sooner; because she had not, he had not. Since one who had once realized a Field almost never withdrew it, even imagining her stage had been difficult.
"For now, let's make our top priority keeping the Scribe from noticing us."
"That is the best of it."
"Hm. There is nothing for me to help with......."
Why did the captain live with her Field withdrawn? If she feared a strong presence would do harm to those around her, she need only have shrunk the Field to its minimum.
Odysseus was a little curious about it, but he left it right there. Satisfying that curiosity after everything was resolved would not be too late.
Instead the boy's gaze went over the faces of the group one last time. Three non-combatants, eight combatants.
"How far can you people go? What I mean is, what stage are you at?"
The men who had come to guard Lucen, Zex, and Subordinate A of the planning office were not on the operation roster. So he did not know how skilled they were.
"...Consciousness acceleration, a little."
"And the others?"
So Odysseus tossed out a few questions to gauge their strength, and in the end the harvest was poor. There were none among them fit to use even as a stalling tactic.
"Hopeless."
"...Agreed."
Flag and Migo, checking the situation with him, spat out their discouragement in Gauri in a perfectly unremarkable tone. Anyone who did not know Gauri would never guess those words were pouring out despair.
"As I see it, spreading them reasonably through the warehouse would be best. Bunching together will not let us beat him."
"Hmm. Even so, would it not be better to place them in groups to some degree? We are this badly outmatched in force; if we scatter on top of that, the risk of being picked off one by one......."
"That's the story when everyone can buy at least a little time. There are only four people here who can hold out more than ten seconds against a Scribe."
Ah. Migo was fleet of foot, so on the assumption that she devoted herself purely to fleeing, she might last about five minutes. Not that he had the slightest intention of sacrificing Migo for the likes of Pluto.
"Hmm."
"Three, not four. What a cheeky kid. Look at him slipping himself in there."
"...The way I see it, everyone apart from the three non-combatants and the four of us should go up to the second floor."
Odysseus offered his opinion, ignoring Flag's remark as a matter of course. The face of the combatant who was now set to remain on the first floor for the crime of being able to use consciousness acceleration went dark and blotchy.
"Oho, kid. And yet you won't send your bro and sis up to the safe second floor?"
Flag, by contrast, snickered and patted Odysseus' shoulder. It was in no way the attitude of a man who truly minded staying on the first floor.
"For Sis, going up to the second floor costs more than it gains, and Bro is too much of a show-off, so I'm leaving him on the first."
Playing along like that only made Flag cackle harder. He seemed to have caught on, at least roughly, to why the boy was leaving the two of them on the first floor.
Quite unlike Zex, who was half delighted that Freedom would take on most of the dangerous first floor and half puzzled as to why the non-combatants were being left on it.
"Er, setting aside sending the others upstairs, why are we on the first floor......?"
"When the Scribe comes into the building, the people on the second floor have to jump out the window and run. Can you do that?"
"Ah."
"If you stay in the office you should be all right. We can hold the front of the office."
"Hm. If we are sending them up anyway, we could look at firing angles... ah, gunfire does not work on a Scribe. Scratch that."
"They'd be better off ditching the guns. If we take friendly fire it only makes things worse for us. Send them up with flashbangs instead. Sound, fine, but light is hard to block even with the refraction phenomenon."
"Oh. Listen to him, like he knows all about Scribes. The Captain never told me that much."
"Er... if flashbangs go off in here, we take the hit as well."
"Can't you plug your ears with magic power?"
"......."
"...We cannot block it either, so do not pick fights, Yul."
"All right, all right. Let's just send them upstairs and go with every man for himself once the fight breaks out."
"Fine, sure. That's better anyway."
And so the final decision was made. Most of it reflected Odysseus' opinions, yet surprisingly no one objected. It seemed that the boy exchanging views with Migo and Flag as an equal had done the work.
Though Zex and Subordinate A did look somewhat dazed by the conversation whipping past them.
"Er, do we not need to barricade the entrance?"
"It's meaningless against a Scribe. Just watch the back door thoroughly."
If anything, they would be found out by the noise of barricading it, or take extra casualties when the obstacles they had set up were smashed and flung about. Stone or iron more than ten meters thick might be another matter.
"Move the boxes aside, please. I'm going to lay a trap."
"Yes, sir."
Putting the frightened bodyguards to work, Odysseus took up his magic pen. Once the fighting started, magic would be hard to use, so the idea was to lay the board in advance.
"Kid. If that bastard finds us, get on Migo's back right away. However fast a Scribe is, he won't easily catch a Kentauri at full sprint."
Flag, pressing close to Odysseus, whispered it slyly in Gauri. It was a plan Odysseus had briefly considered himself.
"And you, Bro?"
"I'll buy time, obviously."
"That's dangerous."
"Son of a bitch, who told you to stick your neck out for something you didn't have to?"
But if there was a difference between the picture Flag had in mind now and the one Odysseus meant to draw, it would be this.
"Never mind that, you've got a spare knife, right? Give me that."
"Uh... here. What's this for, though?"
"Thanks. I'll put it to good use. And I'm not running, so when the Scribe comes, you run with Sis Migo."
"What?"
Odysseus' choice of this place, and of taking the first floor so that escape would be easy if it came to that, had never been a choice made for himself.
"And don't forget to run out the front, not the back. There's no telling who might be waiting at the rear door."
"No, what the hell are you—"
If possible he had wanted to throw Pluto out as bait and pull only their own group clear, but... with that blocked, there was only one best option left to choose.
"I'm going to kill the Scribe before I go."
Kill the enemy.
That was the second-best course Odysseus had held in mind.
KABOOM!
"So this is where you were!"
Not even ten minutes later, the warehouse's front door was smashed apart. It was the moment their hope of going undiscovered with a little luck was thrown into the trash.
Despair settled into every gaze.
"Hahah, hiding like rat bastards will do you no good!"
But one among them, at least, had not lost hope.
Odysseus, killing his presence as far as he could, sprinted at the enemy. On the blade of the knife he had drawn at some point, a navy-blue light clung faintly.
"You bastards' hold on power ends toda—!?"
SLASH!
The boy's body, cleaving the darkness, swung the blade.
¹Satyros Σάτυρος
A spirit of the forest with the appearance of half man, half beast. At first they were depicted as young men with the tail and ears of a horse, but later their image blended with that of Pan, god of herding, and they came to be shown with the legs of a goat. In the original sources they have no particular connection to Pan; they occasionally appear as attendants of Dionysos, god of wine, or are shown at play with the Nymphes.
The singular form is Satyri Σάτυροι.