Chapter 11

It didn’t matter, though. There was no pain. Her heart felt like it was about to explode, but for some reason, her lips curled into a smile. “Ha-ha.” A laugh slipped past as her sky-blue eyes stared straight into the secondary’s red compound eyes. Right up against the enemy’s body, she suddenly shot upward. It looked like she was flying straight up the secondary’s torso, but the enemy would not attack at that range. Or rather, the secondary could not attack at that range. “—Gh!” A fusillade of light rounds flew at Rusalka as she climbed the secondary’s torso. But they were all slow, slow, slow. Far too slow. There was no way they would be able to hit her. It hadn’t practiced enough, hadn’t studied enough, wasn’t self-aware enough. It didn’t love the sky enough. “You think you can hit me with a joke like that?!” Rusalka howled as she clenched the control stick. The Gs were adding up as she accelerated, but she didn’t care at all. She just glared into the secondary’s compound eyes as she ascended. The light rounds could not keep up with her, just like she had planned. And having missed her, they crashed straight into the secondary’s torso one after the other. “—Ghhhhh.” Did it hurt? Was it mad? There was a strange sound from the secondary. The praying mantis it was based on didn’t normally chirp in the wild. That was another mark that it was an unnatural simulacrum—and either way, its punishment had only just begun. “Second wave! Now!” “Aaaaaaaaah!” Again, the Valkyrie flight fired as one on Rusalka’s order. About ten seconds earlier, they had detached from Rusalka and spread through the sky, and now they were aiming their fire on the compound eyes that had been focused on the crimson Deus ex Machina, letting loose with all they had. Friendly fire from the tertiaries was striking its torso, while the full force of the Valkyries’ guns was spraying into its eyes. During that onslaught, the secondary completely lost sight of Rusalka. That was when she zipped right by its face, intentionally flying a provocative route across its field of view. Seeing that, the secondary raised a scythe into the air, desperately trying to catch her. If it swung, it would hit Rusalka and all the tertiaries around her— “Alma Conturo!” Just then, Alejandro’s voice rang out, calling for the girl who had been circling in wait above the desperate battle. Her Lancaster dove down—and she unleashed her last Grand Slam. “” The seismic bomb fell in slow motion, blocking out the moon. And finally, the bomb that boasted the greatest destructive power of conventional weapons, second only to nuclear warheads, approached the secondary before it disappeared. Just before the secondary was caught in the expected blast radius of the Grand Slam, the bomb was swallowed up by a distortion. If it fell into an area around the city or the base, that would be the end of everything, but— “Checkmate.” “Checkmate.” Coincidentally, Rusalka and Alejandro had the same reaction. The very next moment, the Grand Slam reappeared…right next to the secondary’s waist. Ironically, it was the very same distortion that had led Natalie’s shots to hit Shannon. Because of that friendly fire incident, they had been able to determine the exact location of the distortion. In other words— “You lost because you showed too much of your hand,” Rusalka declared. She escaped the secondary’s zone of control just as a fireball engulfed the air behind her. —An enormous explosion shattered the night sky, swallowing the secondary in a swirl of flames. “” A hellish inferno sprang up, consuming the secondary and all the tertiaries in the vicinity. The destructive shock wave flattened everything around it as Hamburg was treated to the world’s most intense fireworks display. As the flames and black smoke cleared— “That can’t be…” —Natalie saw a silhouette still standing, shrouded in black smoke. There was shock and despair in her voice, but she could hardly be blamed. For it to still be standing, even after all that— “No, this is—” “Finish it, Rusalka!” Just as Rusalka shook her head, the radio crackled with Alejandro’s agitated voice. Hearing that, Rusalka exhaled. “Roger!” Swinging around, she dove straight into the smoke, charging right at the silhouette. As she approached the smoke, the secondary’s figure gradually came into view. She could not see all of it, but miraculously, she managed to keep track of its movements. A scythe aimed right at Rusalka swung upward, slicing through the billows of smoke. It was an attack the secondary had not shown before. It had been consistent up to that point in only swinging its scythes downward or in horizontal slashes. But it was not an intentional change in attack pattern so much as a last resort forced upon it by the situation. “—I can see it.” She could see the secondary through the tear in the wall of smoke. Its green shell was lined with fractures from withstanding the full force of the Grand Slam, and all the tertiaries that had been caught up in the explosion had already undergone annihilation. The enemy was battered, bruised, and barely standing. It had lost six of its scythes, and it was using two of the remaining ones to hold itself up to avoid falling completely. It was leaning unsteadily, which was why it had been forced to rely on a rising attack from below. And that swing missed. Shrouded in wind, Rusalka closed the distance in the blink of an eye. There was no space between her and the giant figure. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!” Rusalka started shouting as she charged the enemy. Was it to spur herself on? —No, it wasn’t that. Her soul was telling her to roar. Her soul, her resolve, the very core of her being, and her wings were all screaming for her to sink humanity’s fangs into the incomprehensible invaders that dared trespass on their skies. Her Valkyrie instinct was screaming. Howling. Roaring madly. And seeing the secondary’s emotionless compound eyes right in front of her— “—Heh.” —she tilted the nose of her Spitfire up into a sudden ascent. The tertiaries following her could not keep up with her sudden turn, and they crashed head-on into the fractured shell of the secondary. It was like a pileup on a highway as they slammed into the secondary one after the other. And finally, finally its shell cracked wide open. —That was when humanity saw it. “There’s a globe of light inside the secondary…?” Looking down from on high, she saw a shimmering ball of light floating inside the secondary’s torso. It looked like there was some kind of coin floating in the middle of the orb. Rusalka—and all the Valkyries there—instinctively understood just what that was: the pillar’s weak point. If they could shatter that, it would mean their victory. And as if sneering at their brief moment of hope, the orb of light faded, gradually disappearing inside a distortion in space, threatening to turn their battle into a farce— “—I won’t allow it!” But Natalie Chase wouldn’t let the secondary escape so easily. Late off the blocks when Rusalka rushed the secondary, she still managed to follow the trail Rusalka had blazed. Natalie was the only one in position to threaten the weak point that had been revealed. The machine guns on her gray Spitfire erupted. An instant later, the bullets slammed into the glimmering orb, mercilessly shredding it. “” The light swelled as the orb cracked and then finally shattered. The secondary raised what sounded like a pained scream. And as that echoed over the battlefield, something amazing happened. “The pillar—” There was a dumbfounded voice on the radio, but there was no need to figure out whose voice it was. No one had the presence of mind to bother. They all turned their eyes to the pillar of light in the distance. As the secondary’s scream hung in the air, the pillar of light lost its shape, fraying at the edges. The light fractured and then broke into countless pieces before finally disappearing. In other words, it was the pillar’s complete defeat and— “Rejoice…” —the secondary’s final death throes, the tertiaries’ silent annihilation, the pillar of light’s brittle, fragile end. As everyone watched that, an intense, powerful voice called out to all the troops through their radios. “—This is victory! For us and for all of humanity!” “—!” Hearing that, Rusalka’s eyes widened and her hand clenched. She shouted for joy as a swell of emotion rose in her breast. “” The spreading cheers all drowned her individual cry, swelling up all across the land below her—no, it was not just from down below; they were coming from the sky as well. The pilots, the Valkyries—everyone in the air was cheering, too. The cheers from the ground and the sky merged, becoming a song of victory. And as they spread, the secondary’s screech finally ended, and it lost its form completely. A tree consumed the remnants of light coming from the crumbling orb and began to sprout, but it was nothing like when a tertiary was downed. A gargantuan tree hit the ground, and a rampant growth spread out all around it, breathing life back into the barren earth with a wave of vibrant foliage and flowers. It was the first time humanity had ever seen anything like it. “Amy…” With the emergence of the third generation of Valkyries, there had been minor victories. But this was the first time a pillar of light had been toppled with the total defeat of the pillars that it had spawned. At the very least, it was a feat that had never been managed by a Valkyrie other than Amy. “Valkyrie.” She heard someone’s feverish voice. Not from the radio but from the ground below. A massive crowd of voices had become one and somehow reached her ears. The people on the ground below were shouting up at the Valkyries in the night sky above. “Valkyrie. Valkyrie.” And now, through the radio, the voices from the command post reached Rusalka’s ears. “Valkyrie. Valkyrie.” “Valkyrie! Valkyrie! Valkyrie!” The chants that Rusalka had heard once before, back before she had been a Valkyrie herself. When she had felt empty as she watched Amy, who was so different from her, flying calmly through the skies. How did it feel now? “Valkyrie! Valkyrie! Valkyrie!” “” She quietly took a breath. The battle was over. Humanity had been pushed to the brink. They had just endured a massive, unprecedented assault by the pillars. But they had repelled the attack and defeated a secondary pillar for the second time in human history. It was a day to be celebrated. —And so the curtain fell on the battle that would later come to be called the Return of the Valkyries.