The deer-head roared in agony and rage. I’d been waiting for that. Turning, I grabbed the tip of one of its antlers and its jaw, then rotated around, using the momentum to put all my body weight forward. Following the principle of levers, a loud snap issued from its neck.
The energy left the deer-head’s body, and the halberd, which fell from its hands, clattered to the floor.
Ripping out the billhook from the back of its leg, I turned around as Troach and our two subordinates closed in on the shaman’s scaffold. Seeing three ogrelings about to pounce on them, I yelled, “Look! He’s dead! Look!!”
When they saw me pulling its head up by an antler, the ogrelings visibly wavered. Some succumbed to fear and deserted the fight. As the shaman wailed in rage, someone grabbed its leg from underneath. It was Troach, clinging to the platform.
The shaman raised a hand, and a dully shining star appeared, hovering over its palm. The thing shot down, leaving a trail behind it, skimming right over Troach’s head. The move cast a momentary light on the surroundings, causing Troach to yelp.
“You little…”
She hadn’t released the shaman’s leg. Panicked, the monster tried to kick Troach off with its free foot. At that instant, the scaffold tilted over. Whether it was because of the extra weight or an aftereffect of the shooting star remained unknown. The platform’s construction didn’t seem all that sound to begin with. Ropes snapped, planks broke, and the entire thing quickly collapsed and fell.
The dust billowing up in curtains obscured Troach and the shaman, both of them having tumbled down along with the debris. From inside, I saw the flash of a dagger, then again. A few moments later, a hand burst out of the dust, holding the green scarf the shaman had been wearing.
Immediately, the nearby ogrelings descended into chaos and began falling over themselves to flee. The disturbance quickly spread to the front lines. The ogrelings that’d been hurrying out of the dark to join the fight turned tail and beat a retreat.
The bull-head screamed something indistinct but no less wrathful. My intuition understood it to be Don’t run! Fight, or I’ll kill you! Try though it did, the monster was helpless to calm the panic. The ogrelings wove around the bull-head’s and the horse-lizard’s feet as they made their escape.
Astoria wasn’t one to let an opponent’s distraction go unpunished. Snorts reared up on its hind legs and tried to use its front and middle pairs of claws to slash down from the bull-head’s chest to its gut. The massive creature handily guarded it. No sooner had it done so, however, than a longsword cut down from above. The rough steel blade slammed right between its horns, cleaving its head in half and killing it.
The tide had turned, now that all the enemy leaders were gone. What ogrelings remained scurried off with surprising swiftness. It didn’t even feel like ten seconds before every last one of them was gone. The next thing I knew, the only ones in the hall were us and the dead bodies.
“Victory!” Astoria shouted.
The corridor erupted into joyous cries. Both the wounded and those holding broken spears cheered in the thrill of victory.
“Long live the Great Camp Bravo Kingdom! Hurrah!”
“Hurrah! Oh—Mizuho, did you get all that?”
“Yes, yes, I got all of it! Is everyone all right?”
Mizuho came running up from the rear. She still had Astoria’s black mirror in her hands. She only had one guard with her now, and that one was nursing several wounds. I then realized Mizuho herself had blood on her.
“Mizuho, are you all right?!”
“I’m fine! This is from patching others up.”
The wounded soldiers had been laid down along the wall near the entrance. Mizuho seemed to have been busy, what with the healing and the recording.
“Anyone dead?”
“No, but three are unconscious. We need to get them back home right away—” Mizuho paused as her eyes searched all around. “…Where’s Troach?”
Troach had fallen in the debris of the scaffold beside the ogreling shaman she’d taken out. Maybe a fragment of the star that had skimmed past her had hit her, for blood was dripping from her forehead, and her eyelids were shut.
Mizuho went white as a ghost and knelt beside the other girl. “Oh no! Troach, you’re alive, right?! Please don’t die!”
Troach, eyes still shut, answered, “I can’t go on… I think I might die… I’m sorry…”
“Hey! No, stop, don’t!”
“…Well, I’m definitely wide-awake, so I don’t think I’ll die yet, but…”
“Stupid! I’ll fix you right up, so hold still!”
Troach squealed as Mizuho, who was far from a professional medical attendant, roughly tended to the wounds.
I collapsed and exhaled.
That was exhausting…
I didn’t want to go on any missions like this ever again. Sure, maybe the situation had been urgent, but charging into an enemy base with almost zero information? I couldn’t be happy about it just because we’d won in the end. It was a miracle this hadn’t ended in disaster.
After having Mizuho return her black mirror, Astoria addressed the object. “And that is that! How did you all enjoy it? Easy win, wasn’t it? It really was! I’m actually a little unsatisfied. But look at this place!” Astoria said, spinning the mirror around to capture her surroundings. “Can you see it? It goes above, below, all over! Yes, exactly! This chamber clearly leads to new adventures! To tell you the truth, I love the feeling of cutting it close… Did you know that? I guess you already do. Heh-heh-heh. Yep! Danger makes me feel most alive! This nation is brand-new, and it’s in a really tough situation. It looks like I’ll be getting plenty more footage in the future, so stick around a while!”
Astoria was in a great mood as she pointed the black mirror to me. “Before I end the stream, I’d like a comment from everyone. Hey, Ninja sitting on the floor! Sir Taiga! What are your thoughts?”
“…I want helicopters.”
“Hmm?”
The words all came out of my mouth without thinking. “I want trucks. I want drones. I want assault rifles and bullets. I want flash-bangs and grenades. I want radios. I want night-vision goggles. I want plastic explosives—”
Astoria burst out laughing. “Seems Sir Taiga has many needs! If anyone out there watching has any idea what all those things are, please tell me! Now then, next up is Lady Troach—”
And that was when we heard it: an incredible, ground-shaking groaning.
Everyone froze and looked in the same direction. The groan had come from past the large arch-shaped entranceway at the north of the hall. No matter how you heard it, it could only have been made by a creature far larger than any human.
I stood up and shouted, “Everyone, withdraw! Now! Withdraw!”
The sound continued, now accompanied by heavy footfalls. The closer they got, the more visible a pair of eyes and a mouth, like holes burning red, became in the darkness. It appeared from the direction the ogrelings had fled: a giant humanoid monster of ashen-black. Its head seemed to be an animal’s skull with two twisted horns growing out of it. The dark, sunken-in eyes set in its face blazed like coals.
This was the giant I had seen here last time. To think this thing still awaited us…
“So this is an ogre giant…,” I murmured.
Mizuho shook her head. “An ogre giant? No. Far from it. This is an aberration that lurks in the deepest, darkest depths of the dungeon… Ruler over shadow and flame…” The blue-haired young woman’s voice turned hoarse in fear. “Balgor the flame demon.”
He opened his mouth and roared in our direction. Fire outlined the fearsome thing’s entire form in crimson. On his back were wings that resembled an owl’s, as well as a long tail.
Flame gathered in the demon’s right hand, then was compressed into the shape of a white-hot longsword. In his left hand was a long flail-whip.
This wasn’t a job for an assault rifle…
What we really needed right now were anti-tank missiles or something.