Celestia’s compressed air bullets struck the outer wall of Jade and awakened the Anti-Magic Flower-Stems embedded within the stone.
In response to her spell, a colossal bud tens of meters tall swelled and opened its petals, blooming against the gray sky as it swallowed Celestia’s attack and nullified it.
“As expected. Let us see just how sturdy that defense truly is,” Celestia said, her voice calm as she gathered magic once more.
She wove a second spell, blending razor-sharp kamaitachi wind with another air bullet, then fired the combined strike straight at the massive flower.
At her side, Stella extended a hand and unleashed a lance of thermal light, a beam of heat that raked across the enormous petals.
Even when bathed in a slashing-infused shockwave and a laser hot enough to reach several thousand degrees, the petals held their shape. Celestia folded her arms, a note of admiration in her tone.
“They have built it to be impressively durable, it seems.”
But the gargantuan blossom offered no resistance of its own.
After taking blow after blow, the Anti-Magic Flower-Stems finally crumbled with surprising ease. In the end, a plant that only sprawled large across the sky was good for nothing more than buying a little time.
The moment a gaping breach yawned open in the outer wall, the Raid Unit was the first to surge through, pouring into the city like an avalanche.
Infantry followed close behind, flooding into Jade and immediately beginning their looting.
Oakley ran over the hard ground, mentally reviewing the flow of the operation.
Stella, Karatena, Whip, and the rest of the Hidden Insect Corps were to enter the mine tunnels and suppress resistance underground.
Meanwhile, Celestia, the Northeastern Branch’s surface forces, other non-insect believers, and Gerugoroi’s Raid Unit would advance across the city above.
Joanne’s task was to support the surface troops from the rear and secure an escape route.
Alex had taken on the job of holding the mine entrances and exits.
After I wipe out every surface unit except Celestia, I’ll head into the tunnels and annihilate the detachment underground. There’s nothing to fear. All I have to do is what I came here for!
The hundred-plus heretics split into surface and underground forces.
Oakley slipped through the breach in Jade’s wall last of all, entering the city a step behind the rest.
Alarm bells rang out shrilly, warning of enemy advance.
But the bell tower had already been seized by the Raid Unit; after a few frantic peals, the sound cut off abruptly.
With the blizzard raging this fiercely, the bells likely wouldn’t have carried far anyway. Oakley shook his head in the white-out haze.
It’s fine. In this, the bad visibility and the wind pounding our ears are on the side of rebellion.
He could still follow what was happening around him.
More importantly, he had already found the thing he’d been searching for. Everything was on track, progressing exactly as he’d planned.
The moment the young man reached for the third of the city’s defensive mechanisms, something foul and sticky speared through his side.
Oakley sprang straight back on instinct.
An instant later, a cluster of bolts thudded into the spot where he’d just been.
He landed, reset his stance in a smooth motion, and scanned for the source of the attack.
They’ve boxed me in on all sides. Orthodox soldiers? No. This is too precise. They’re aiming for me and only me. Once he put a name to it, Oakley couldn’t stop the bitter glare he hurled into the storm.
“Karatena’s puppets…” he hissed. Grinding his molars, Oakley found himself surrounded by seven armed believers.
Of course. A whole crowd of idiots, faces twisted in righteous fury, lured here on that woman’s strings.
Even at a time like this, you’re still getting in my way. Quite the rabble-rouser, aren’t you? he thought, a dark heat boiling up in his chest.
Thick killing intent seethed. Among the men hemming him in, he didn’t see the one face he wanted to crush under his heel.
She’d put all her effort into riling others up and hadn’t bothered to stain her own hands.
What a thoroughly vile woman.
“Oakley, we know all about your crimes,” one of the soldiers snarled, eyes bloodshot as he kept his finger on the crossbow’s trigger. “Confess the truth, you traitor.”
The familiar, played-out tone of hatred made Oakley sigh.
“So you all got together just to parrot that at me?” he asked dryly.
“You don’t deny it,” the man shot back.
“There’s no point talking to people who’ve already gone this far off the deep end,” Oakley said, his voice flat.
He let that sink in for the seven men, then pictured Karatena’s loathsome face in his mind’s eye.
All this, just on the strength of your assumptions.
Steel glinting dully, he drew his sword in one smooth motion and lashed out with a full-force kick at the nearby streetlamp.
“Wha—!?”
The metal post crashed down under a single blow, bent and shattered, and the believers ringed around him flinched in unison.
This was the result of being forced to keep up with that monster Joanne’s training.
The crossbowmen found they couldn’t move a muscle. In that instant, they superimposed the image of rank six executive Joanne over the young man in front of them.
Taking full advantage of their paralysis, Oakley crouched down where he was.
He reached for the fallen streetlamp’s head, its lantern, and with a flick of his blade, scooped out the small flame burning inside. The fire slid slowly onto the sword, then swelled, engulfing the entire length of the blade. Heat thick enough to shove the blizzard back billowed out, the flames licking at the freezing air like a demon’s tongue.
Feeling the unnatural warmth coiling around Oakley, the believers broke out into a greasy sweat.
“W-What is that flame…?” one of them whispered.
At a glance, it was just ordinary fire.
But the weight of it, the alien density they felt on their skin—the longer they stared, the more it felt like iron wire was tightening around their hearts. A crawling terror bubbled up from inside, like something monstrous was invading them from within their own flesh.
Every one of the heretics understood, on pure instinct, that this was no mere fire.