The last of the members of Exercitus not driven to total point loss regenerated exactly twenty-seven minutes later.
Haruyuki recognized more than a few faces among the survivors gathered at the entrance to the gorge, but the mood was very much not one in which he felt comfortable calling out to them. He and Chiyuri stayed close to each other at the southwest base of the cliff and watched as Juniper Weasel called out in a loud voice from the top of a flat rock.
“Scouting party’s report says there are no Enemies on the road from here to Sunshine City. But who knows when one could pop up, so we’re gonna move in formation. Anyone with enemy detection abilities to the front or the rear, close-range-types guard ’em, distance- and support-types, you’re in the middle.”
Hearing these instructions, the survivors began to move. Excluding Haruyuki and Chiyuri, their number was one hundred thirteen people. The Sun God Inti attack team, made up of members from the six Great Legions, only had ninety-six people, so this looked like a seriously large armed force to Haruyuki’s eyes. But at the start of the mission, they had exceeded three hundred people. Which meant that his own guess of two hundred people being forced to total point loss was unfortunately correct.
In less than two minutes, the survivors were in formation, and at Weasel’s “Move out!” command, the long, large procession started forward slowly. They cut diagonally across the intersection scarred by the battle, detoured around the towering stone statue, and headed for Sunshine 60, visible in the northeastern sky. Their movement was so well regulated that Haruyuki found it hard to believe this was a mixed corps with members from several different Legions. Most likely, they’d taken the time to practice coordinated movement before challenging Tezcatlipoca.
Abruptly, he heard a murmur from the past in his mind.
At any rate, if the small and midsize Legions have formed an alliance to upend the stagnation created by the seven Great Legions, then the Accelerated World might begin to move in big ways again. And then a flood that not even Enju can control will come rushing in and sweep us away.
I have to say, I’m a little looking forward to it.
The one who had said this to Haruyuki was the Black King Black Lotus, aka Kuroyukihime—Sayuki Kuroba. Kuroyukihime had long fought to break the stagnation of the Accelerated World, and the seed of hope she’d planted in Exercitus was real. But the atrocities of the Deity of Demise, Tezcatlipoca, had swallowed up even a force of three hundred people.
There should still have been two hundred or so level-three and lower members of Exercitus who weren’t able to dive into the Unlimited Neutral Field. But because most Legions had lost their leaders and main members, simply continuing to exist was not going to be easy, just as Juniper Weasel had said.
To start with, the Accelerated World itself was poised in a moment of crisis. Would the world itself continue to exist? Haruyuki and the other members of the seven Great Legions now had to expend every effort to make it so that these Burst Linkers, walking now with their heads held high after enduring brutal loss and living hell, could return to this place again at some point.
Juniper Weasel, the last person remaining in the valley, checked to make sure that none of his comrades had been left behind before nodding slightly at Haruyuki and Chiyuri and racing away like a gale wind. A minute later, the formation was absorbed into the rocky mountains standing to the northeast of the intersection and disappeared from sight.
After turning his ears to the sound of the lonely wind blowing across the vast wildlands, Haruyuki said slowly, “You okay, Chiyu?”
After a second, a murmured voice came back to him. “Mm… I’m okay.”
This was followed by a klak. Chiyuri had plopped down onto the ground.
Haruyuki took a seat beside her. There were a million things he had to do, but he was suddenly exhausted all over again. If he let his guard down, he might very well fall asleep.
Thinking about it now, so much had happened that day.
On his way to school that morning, Zelkova Verger of the Legion Gallant Hawks had been the first of four duels; and at school, he’d taken care of the sole animal in the custody of the Animal Care Club, Hoo, the northern white-faced owl, together with the club’s super president Utai Shinomiya and club member Reina Izeki.
After that, he’d met up with the Red King Scarlet Rain/Yuniko Kozuki and the Triplex’s Thistle Porcupine/Kao Fukaya, and handed Hoo over to Kao, who kept birds of prey. He was about to go home, his job finished, when he got a message from Oscillatory Universe’s Snow Fairy, and he’d headed for the private Eternal Girls’ Academy, Oscillatory’s headquarters in Minato Ward’s Shirokane, together with Rose Milady/Tsubomi Koshika and Orchid Oracle/Megumi Wakamiya, who were in the taxi that came to pick him up.
The first, second, sixth, and seventh of the Seven Dwarves had been assembled in the EG student council office, and Haruyuki had undertaken battle training at Platinum Cavalier’s insistence. The objective was to defeat a Beast-class Enemy alone, but this turned out to be Cavalier’s trap, and just when Cavalier’s Femto style sword technique had Haruyuki backed into a corner, the Archangel Metatron had intervened, and he’d just barely made it out alive.
He’d ended up in a taxi home with Kuroyukihime, due to Megumi’s scheming. He wanted to properly apologize for changing Legions, so he’d invited her up to his condo. In his living room in the evening light, he’d told her the feelings that he’d been pushing down all this time. And then his lips and hers…
✦ ✦ ✦
