"Red Chili."
Dasa whispered the weapon’s name as she held it at the ready. It was a black, large-caliber revolver fitted with a scope and bipod, clearly excessive and inappropriate for the hands of a young girl.
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“Huh...?” Berta stared blankly at the scene in front of her.
There had been a thundering, earsplitting sound as if lightning had struck very close by, and the next moment, one of the familiars was rolling on the ground, gushing blood. Judging by the way it was twitching with its tongue hanging out and eyes rolled back in its head, it was in no state to stand anymore. It had probably been dealt a fatal wound.
But how? Even a single familiar was incredibly challenging for a lone human to deal with. How had a girl clearly smaller than even Berta, in a single attack...
“Killed... it...?” Berta said with a gasp, looking at the familiar, which was no longer moving.
The black item that the girl was holding was most likely a weapon. But it wasn’t a sword, and it wasn’t a spear. Nor was it a bow, or even a club. It was something that Berta had never seen before—in fact, never even heard of. It was a weapon that made a deafening noise like thunder. In which case... she didn’t know how it worked, but maybe it was a weapon that fired lightning or something?
“DEAD...”
“DEAD?”
“DEAD!”
“DEAD!”
Berta could tell that something like unease was spreading among the familiars. Although they were the servants of a god, they were not gods themselves and were still mortal. Unlike the erdgod, it was not impossible for an individual human to fell them—if the human had a weapon of unparalleled strength. Berta understood the logic, but even so...
“...What is... the meaning... of this... You... oppose me... the holy... guardian... of this... land...”
There was a sound like mud boiling. No—that was the erdgod’s voice, the words of a god boiling with anger. Perhaps it had affected the familiars, too. They were clawing up the ground with their four legs, muttering words like “KILL,” “BEAT,” “RIP,” and “TEAR.” It looked like they might attack all at once and at any moment. An ordinary person’s legs might have turned to jelly, or they might have wet themselves in fear. Yet this boy—
“Are you... a demigod... looking to... usurp me... as erdgod...? Or are you... a human... foolish enough... feeble enough... to not know... the natural... order...?”
“A god? Hah... A god, huh,” the boy answered with a faint smile. It wasn’t empty bravado. There was virtually no tension in his expression or his voice. In fact, he looked like he was standing in a relaxed pose. The only hint that this was a proper “stance” was that at some point, he had placed his right hand on his weapon, that long sword with the strangely bulky mounting. “Hate to burst your bubble, but I’m neither.”
“You...”
“An erdgod, huh... I see.” Slowly, the boy drew the sword and freed it from its sheath. He swept the black-lacquered blade noiselessly through the air, then pointed it at the erdgod. “You think just ’cause you’ve got a little brains, you’re hot shit? You’re just an animal. I’ll cut you into pieces, cook you up, and eat you for dinner.”
This insult showed a fearlessness toward the divine that went far beyond irreverence. But where on earth was he getting that confidence? It was the girl’s weapon that had killed the familiar, and even more crucially, it was impossible for a single human to fell the beings known as “erdgods”; being able to kill a familiar meant nothing.
Neither swords nor arrows worked on most of them. Their fur was harder than an iron helmet, yet flexible. Human weapons, whether they be blades or blunt instruments, would never reach the flesh behind it. Not to mention the sheer strength they packed in the attacks from their gigantic bodies. They could easily kill a human in a single punch. On top of which—
“Even you humans... are merely... monkeys... with brains...” The erdgod bared its teeth and grinned. In keeping with its claim of being a god, erdgods had an intelligence that matched that of humans; they were different from animals. It was said that crafty tricks didn’t work against them, and that doing something like that was, in fact, often counterproductive. That was why humans had decided to enter into an agreement rather than a confrontation with erdgods, worshipping them and offering them sacrifices in exchange for their power.
“Yeah. You might be right!” The boy, showing no sign of fear, was still pointing his sword in challenge directly at the erdgod. Nothing good could come of a human challenging an erdgod. That was what Berta had been taught, at least. It was common sense, common knowledge that everyone who lived all the way out here knew—it was the fundamental understanding, burned into their heads, that informed all their decisions.
“R-Run!” Berta screamed, but it was too late. Her voice was drowned out by the erdgod’s roar as it attacked the boy.
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Dasa leaned her back against a nearby pillar, securing a temporary place to stand. She pulled off her hood, took out her “ears” from her bag, and attached them to her headband.
Yukinari was the one who had actually made them, but the design was hers and based on her own knowledge and experience. It was her very own battle item. The construction wasn’t especially complicated: they were just large, triangular, parabolic microphones.
These ears, which had several times the area of Dasa’s own, efficiently picked up the surrounding sounds and fed them to her own ears without the slightest loss of detail. They’d been created based on the shape and structure of animal ears. And therefore—
“EAT!!” One of the familiars came flying at Dasa.
“...Enough.” Almost without looking, Dasa pointed Red Chili at it—the hammer was already cocked—and pulled the trigger.
A .44 Magnum bullet thundered out of the barrel. Dasa had good grip strength, and in any case the gun barely kicked, thanks to the recoil compensator attached to the muzzle and the weight of the scope and bipod. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the familiar collapse and writhe on the ground, then cocked the hammer again with her thumb, readying the next round.
“E-Excuse me...!” said the sacrificial girl beside her.
“Keep... quiet. Don’t... move.” Dasa aimed Red Chili ahead of her. In exactly that spot was a familiar about to jump at Yukinari diagonally from behind him.
She fired without hesitation. It was close range, so there was no need to use the scope. The bullet and its powerful point, originally loaded for hunting purposes, impacted the familiar’s hind leg—and tore it clean off.
“Erk.” Yukinari noticed the familiar and turned toward it, swinging his weapon Durandall around with him and bringing it crashing into the familiar’s neck. Its head flew off to the side.
“Yuki, concentrate on your own... enemy.”
“I know. Thanks!” Yukinari turned to face the erdgod once more.
As she was checking on Yukinari, Dasa used another three .44 Mags to kill three more familiars. Including the one she had killed initially, that made five total. It wasn’t quite half, but they had at least reduced the familiars’ numbers by a third.
Perhaps wary now that several others among them had been killed in quick succession, the familiars’ movements became hesitant and dull. Meanwhile, Dasa opened Red Chili’s loading gate, ejected the empty cases, and started mechanically reloading it with more .44 Magnum cartridges she had pulled from an inside pocket. Red Chili produced satisfying, metallic clicks as she worked. All the while, Dasa’s eyes were trained on the familiars and the erdgod who governed them.
“So they are a part... of the erdgod... after all...”
Every time one of the familiars was shot and killed, the erdgod’s body trembled faintly. Dasa remembered her sister Jirina telling her once. These beings called “erdgods,” or sometimes “demigods,” started as normal animals. It was said that when a group of a certain size centered around an aged individual and they achieved a mutual spiritual link, they would acquire the intelligence and character of a god. Gods acquired their power through being worshipped by those beneath them. In other words—
“The more familiars we kill... the more we can reduce the power of the erdgod... itself,” Dasa said under her breath, and aimed Red Chili, now fully loaded, not at the erdgod, but at the crowd of familiars surrounding them.