One day, the Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit received an alarming report of a Grotesquerie appearing on the mountain. Since they had no information on the nature of this creature, the military higher-ups called for a careful and deliberate response, but Itsuto ignored this and began investigating the enemy in preparation to eliminate it. Fortunately, he and his unit successfully suppressed the threat, but since the dangerous mountain was virtually untouched by human hands, Itsuto lost his life in a freak accident.
Owing to its long history, the Earth Spider was infamous and widely feared. For this reason, it would be too risky for the government to reveal that the Earth Spider had not only become active again, but it had even decimated the Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit. At least, this was what the military decided.
After the military presented the false outline of events, the fallout was swift.
The higher-ups instituted a gag order on the affair to ensure the truth would never get out and began strictly regulating traversal of the mountain, even for the Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit. They also found Koumyouin culpable for the tragedy on the grounds that someone in his position should have convinced Commander Itsuto to abandon the idea, and he was subsequently demoted and transferred to the Second Unit. The upper brass even floated the idea of temporarily dissolving the unit and forming a brand-new organization in its place.
Since Kiyoka had been at the scene of the incident, there was a chance the military might have attempted to covertly silence him had he declined to join the Special Anti-Grotesquerie Unit. Fortunately, Kiyoka wanted to join the unit anyway, so nothing of this nature occurred.
Due to all this, the affair became unspeakably taboo, even among the military higher-ups, and even after so much time had passed, getting permission to climb the mountain had been an ordeal.
Kiyoka continued down the trackless path that was seared into his memory, impossible to forget even if he wanted to.
“We’re almost there.”
When Kiyoka said this to his men, their faces stiffened even more, and their breath caught in their throats.
After he and his men struggled past the animal trail so thick with foliage that it obscured their vision, they suddenly came upon a clearing.
It was wide open, bereft of any trees. The area was penned on all sides by tall trees that blocked out the sun, and as such, the only vegetation consisted of some small grasses growing at their feet.
Nothing had changed from the moment prior, yet all of a sudden, the air seemed suffocating to Kiyoka. He blamed his mental state for this.
Whenever he came to this spot, he would experience a vivid flashback of the moment Itsuto expired after his battle with the Earth Spider, as though it had happened yesterday.
Kiyoka stopped moving for a moment and closed his eyes. His men sensed they should follow his lead and did the same.
They stopped to mourn the dead here for a spell before advancing farther. The Earth Spider had been sealed away just up ahead, at the bottom of a cliff with exposed rocks and soil.
It didn’t take them long to reach their destination.
As they walked, however, Kiyoka could detect there was something different about the place.
The Earth Spider’s aura, which made one instinctively fear its power, was much fainter than it had been the last time Kiyoka came here.
“This can’t be…,” one of the soldiers murmured from behind him.
The Earth Spider was gone, its body no longer bound to the rugged rock precipice. All that remained of the creature was a single leg.
The barrier around the area had been torn open and reduced to scraps, and the magical blade Kiyoka had used to pin the Earth Spider to the rock face was now sticking out of the ground.
Kiyoka stopped at a spot with a clear view of the entire area, and Godou came up next to him.
“…Never imagined this was how it would end up,” he said.
“It must have left one of its legs behind as a decoy,” Kiyoka replied.
“Okay, but it was sealed away in addition to being stuck behind a strong barrier, right? Only a few years have passed since you bound it to this place, so it makes no sense it would be able to slip out that easily.”
Unexpectedly, Godou had delivered his assessment with a clear and level head.
Kiyoka nodded in response to his subordinate’s opinion and went inside the barrier, placing his hand around the magic sword and pulling it out.
It was almost effortless. With just a little tug, he pulled the sword from the ground.
Much weaker now. It’s all rusted.
The magic sword possessed powers beyond human comprehension, so the blade itself hadn’t lost any of its luster. Instead, it was the power contained within the blade that had rusted. Once vibrant and alive, the mystic blade now emanated only the frailest of auras.
In this state, it wouldn’t pose a threat against even a commonplace Grotesquerie. However, there was still one thing Kiyoka couldn’t wrap his head around.
“It doesn’t seem like much time has passed since the Earth Spider departed the area,” Kiyoka remarked, taking the magic sword as he went back to his troops.
The presence of the Earth Spider was still strong on the blade. The aura would have been much weaker had a significant amount of time elapsed since the creature had escaped its prison.
“Did someone break the barrier and undo the seal…?” Godou mumbled with a frown.
“No.” Kiyoka shook his head.
The question had confounded him ever since they discovered another of the Earth Spider’s legs in the Nagaba storehouse—why had the Earth Spider plucked off its own limb?
It was an ancient, infamous Grotesquerie. It would never let someone else pluck off one of its legs without putting up a fight. That had to mean the Earth Spider had deliberately torn off its leg, that it had needed to sever its own limb for some reason.
“I don’t know how it broke through the barrier, but…I have a rough idea how it broke the seal,” said Kiyoka.
“How?”
“It tore its own body apart to slip out from under it.”
Godou’s eyes widened in shock.
“It tore itself apart?! Oh, but now I’m starting to see it…”
“The seal used on the Earth Spider was like a net cast over its body, with this sword as the focal point. Obviously, there are gaps in any net. If it split itself into minute parts, it could slip through the gaps and escape the seal.”
The Earth Spider had separated its body from its eight legs, divided its own power between the nine parts, and sent them out of the seal one by one. However, if there had been nothing but an empty husk left behind the seal, the humans would have discovered its scheme. It had left behind a leg at the very end to prevent them from detecting its escape.
“But could it really break free of your seal so easily, Commander?”
One of the other men questioned Kiyoka after hearing the explanation. It was Godou, however, who answered.
“The larger a target, the bigger the net you need to seal it away. And when you only have a limited amount of power to work with, you may have to make the gaps in the net wider than ideal to ensure it can cover what you’re sealing. There’s also the strength of the seal to worry about.”
“True.”
“But, Commander, even if the Earth Spider escaped the seal, the barrier was there to limit the amount of force it could apply from the inside, right? The barrier should have been able to withstand any internal attack. I find it hard to believe the Earth Spider broke out on its own.”
After making sure his subordinate was convinced of his explanation, Godou once again questioned Kiyoka.
Only scraps remained of the barrier. It would take a detailed investigation to figure out how it had been destroyed. While there was a chance someone had broken the barrier from the outside, since the Earth Spider had been strong enough to escape the seal, it wasn’t a stretch to believe it had shattered the barrier from within.
“Commander.”
“What?”
Kiyoka turned to Godou after his subordinate had addressed him.
“Leave the investigation to us… You’re scheduled to depart for the old capital soon.”
Kiyoka had figured Godou would say as much.
Although Kiyoka had felt a bit uneasy after seeing Godou’s reaction to finding the leg of the Earth Spider at the Nagaba manor, now that he was peering into the man’s eyes, Kiyoka felt it was safe to leave this to him.
“Fair enough.”
Besides, he couldn’t reschedule his visit to the old capital. He would need to entrust the unit to Godou for a few days.
This was part of retiring from military life. Despite his hang-ups, Kiyoka had to stay firm, trust in his men, and let the next generation take center stage. This would be a test of whether he was really prepared to step down from his position.
Additionally, the old capital had a long history of Grotesquerie activity. There were far too many tales from the old capital about the Earth Spider to count, so he was likely to uncover new information that he couldn’t find in the capital. Perhaps the timing of his trip was a stroke of good fortune.
“In that case, I’m leaving you in charge of the barrier investigation and the search for the monster.”
Godou’s eyes seemed to glitter for a moment at Kiyoka’s words.
“You can count on me, Commander! All right! Here we go!’
Thrusting his fist into the air, Godou promptly began ordering his men to confiscate the leg of the Earth Spider.
As Godou departed, Kiyoka was struck by how different his subordinate was now from the man he had reunited with several years ago—and just how reliable he had become.