“Ah-ha, you all look ready for some sweet, sweet violence! This is gonna be one heck of a party!” Dodriel smiled wickedly and raised his arms. “Are you ready, everyone?! Our exhilarating invasion of Aurest begins…NOW!”
He clapped his hands, and the Black Organization members all summoned their Soul Attires.
“Incinerate—Blazing Cherub!”
“Entwine—Weaving Wand!”
“Disorient—Ethereal Mountain Pass.”
The rest of the Elite Five Academy students and I all responded by summoning our own Soul Attires.
“Destroy—Rapacious Demon Zeon!”
“Consume—Ice Wolf Vanargand!”
“Fulfill—Neba Grome!”
We all prepared ourselves for combat. Just as we were about to attack the Black Organization members, however, they shocked us all by turning toward the city outside the coliseum.
“Hya-ha-ha! Burn, burn, burn! Hell’s Hymnal!”
“I’m gonna zap you! Stray Lightning!”
“Ah-ha-ha! Don’t you want to be my friend? Doll Garden!”
Instead of us, the Black Organization members started attacking the regular citizens of Aurest. They were ransacking the city without even looking our way.
“Wh-what’s happening…?! EEEEEK!”
“Someone… Help me…”
Heartrending screams sounded from outside the coliseum, and I saw smoke rise in multiple directions.
“Ah-ha, ah-ha-ha! Yes, yes! Just like that! Destroy everything in your path! Trample the land underfoot until there’s nothing left!” Dodriel yelled, clapping his hands.
Four swordsmen, most likely members of the Thirteen Oracle Knights, led Black Organization members and enhanced swordfighters over the coliseum’s walls in every direction.
“Tch, you evil bastards…!”
Shido clicked his tongue hatefully and turned toward the rest of the Elite Five Academy students.
“Listen up! Our enemies are being annoying as hell and have made it their primary goal to weaken Liengard as a nation! We in Ice King Academy are gonna go north and send those bastards to hell. You all split up so that one school goes east, one goes west, one goes south, and one stays in the coliseum to murder the dregs that remain here! I’d better not goddamn see anybody get stupid and try to fight alone! Find some of those idiot local holy knights and work with them! This should go without saying, but people with healing and remotely controlled Soul Attires should support the others from the rear! Water wielders, gather around Shii Arkstoria, split into four groups, and fight fires in the city!”
Foul language aside, Shido’s orders were precise and efficient. Ferris had told me during our summer training camp that he was smart, and I could now see that she was right.
After some discussion, Ice King went north, White Lily went south, Divine Emperor went east, and Flame Emperor went west. Thousand Blade remained in the National Crusade Coliseum to fight Dodriel and the few hundred enhanced swordsmen who’d stayed.
“Eighth Style—Eight-Span Crow!”
“Hegemonic Style—Annihilation!”
“Cherry Blossom Blade Style—Sakura Flash!”
Lia, Rose, and I used three attacks to tear through a group of enhanced swordfighters, but…
“““GUHHHHHHH!”””
…they continued to run at us despite their injuries, none of them faltering. The soul-crystal pills might have completely numbed their sense of pain.
“DIIIEEEE!” one man yelled, swinging his sword down at me with a grotesquely enlarged arm.
The haphazard nature of the swing made it easy to dodge, which I did with a casual step to the side. The man’s blade struck the ground, sending up chunks of dirt and causing an enormous shockwave.
That’s some power…
His physical strength wasn’t all that made the attack dangerous; when his sword struck the ground, his Soul Attire activated and caused a hot semisolid substance to burst up and fly out in all directions.
Does he have the ability to create magma?!
…No, it wasn’t magma, but regular fire that had taken on a viscous quality. The flames rippled violently, then turned blue, then became luminescent, never remaining in the same state for long. His Soul Attire probably had a fire-type ability, but the soul-crystal pill had made it unstable.
Shoot, this won’t be easy to deal with.
The enhanced swordfighters were difficult opponents. They weren’t particularly skilled—about equivalent to or below the average Soul Attire Wielder—but their abnormal strength, inability to feel pain, and unstable abilities combined to make them unpredictable.
The biggest problem was their numbers. Ten or twenty of them would be no problem, but fighting hundreds at once is another story…
I spurred myself to fight through my exhaustion as I cut down the enemies before me. I defeated ten, twenty, thirty of them before I heard a voice address me from above.
“Hey Allen, my dear, do you have a moment?” Dodriel called out.
“Sorry, but I’m a little busy. I have nothing to say to you anyway!” I shouted back.
“Ah-ha, don’t be so cold. We honed our swordcraft at the same middle school. Such bonds are for life.”
Dodriel waved his hands and smiled; I had no idea what he found so amusing. His facial expressions, words, and tone of voice were really getting on my nerves.
“Allen, would you happen to remember a country called the Principality of Theresia?” he asked. “It’s ancient history now, but it used to be one of the Five Powers. We conquered it at the beginning of the year.”
“What about it?” I said.
“All these enhanced swordfighters were taken from there.”
“What?!”
My sword hand froze.
Dodriel grinned at my reaction and continued.
“According to that clown scientist, ‘scientific progress cannot be made without sacrifices.’ He told us he wouldn’t be able to improve the soul-crystal pills without tens of thousands of test subjects. The problem was, he needed healthy Soul Attire Wielders under the age of forty, and you can’t find people like that just anywhere, especially in those numbers.”
He crossed his arms and nodded to himself affectedly.
“Do you know how hard it is to train someone from novice to Soul Attire Wielder? How much money that costs? That’s hardly worth it if we’re just gonna hand them over to the clown so he can horribly disfigure them in his experiments, right? So we decided that raising such a force of Soul Attire Wielders ourselves was just unrealistic. It threw a real wrench in our plans until our wise emperor came up with a solution: Why not just conquer a country and use their swordfighters?”
Dodriel created a shadow copy of Barel and gave it a round of applause.
“It was the perfect solution. After thorough investigation, we chose to invade Theresia! They had the weakest military of the Five Powers yet were brimming with people and resources! It was like they were begging to be invaded. The plan went smoothly from there. The Black Organization conquered Theresia, succeeded at upgrading the soul-crystal pills, and obtained a sizable force of fodder in the form of these enhanced swordfighters… And all’s well that ends well!”
“You’re vile…,” I spat.