Chapter 243. The Immortal (11)
The buzzing crowd retreated with a clamor, and the sneering died instantly.
Enoch raised his head and looked around.
At Enoch's cold-eyed figure, even Lily was clutching her magic gear with both hands, eyes round as saucers.
The freelancers around him gripped their magic gear behind their backs with chilled expressions, shuffling backward.
Beside him, a freelancer girl about his age — wearing a tactical robe over her school uniform — cried out in a trembling voice,
"Why, why does it have to be us?!"
"Simple. Because there's no one else."
The girl pressed her hand to the bloodstained chest of her uniform and wailed,
"We don't even have a hundred people, and we have no supplies! How are we supposed to fight? Against that Immortal, there's no way to win!"
"If we're short on personnel, we can add a few."
At Enoch's words, the man writhing at his feet twisted his stiffened face into a mocking sneer, as if the idea were absurd.
"Nngh! Wh, where are you going to find those people? Don't tell me you're planning to drag the deployed support staff and evacuation crews into combat?!"
"No. There are people available — right over there."
When Enoch jerked his chin in that direction, every gaze snapped to follow. Groans of disbelief rippled through the crowd.
The man, apparently too shocked to remember the blood running from his gripped shoulder, stared with bloodshot eyes and muttered.
"D, Direct Lineage. You don't mean……"
Beyond the wide-open rectangular gap in the massive steel wall, the man's face went pale as he stared at the pitch-black container buildings used to evacuate the wounded behind the front line.
Enoch gave a light nod.
"That's right. The wounded."
"You can't be serious! Some of them have lost ears and had their hands and feet shattered!"
"They're not dead. If we lose this fight, everyone dies anyway. Besides, some of them are faking injuries to dodge the fighting."
Enoch tilted the axe in his hand before the man's eyes and declared,
"If we pull all those freelancers out and secure forty more, the numbers will work."
"Y, you're telling us to fight even to that extent?!"
"If you want to survive, you fight back with everything you've got. Nothing gets solved by sitting still."
"But there's no way we can win like that……!!"
"We can. I, as Direct Lineage of Elsyde, guarantee it."
He had not the slightest intention of mixing in lies.
Nothing gets solved by sitting still. That was the conviction Enoch had clung to, struggling to survive in this place, and as a result here he stood.
Beads of sweat broke out across the man's face.
"Y, you're insane. Out of your mind! Hey, why isn't anyone saying anything? Our new leader's lost his damn mind!"
"Well, out of my mind, you say. That's my line."
Enoch looked down at him coldly.
"If all you ever do is desperately search for reasons not to act instead of reasons to act, then even if you die here, there's nothing to be done about it."
"D, don't make me laugh!! That's nothing but sophist——!!"
The man, mid-outburst, spotted something behind Enoch and twisted his face into a vicious grin.
"Isabel! Kill this son of a bitch!!"
Spinning around reflexively, Enoch's eyes met the abyss-black muzzle of an assault rifle.
The girl pulled the trigger, and with a roar of muzzle flash, 5.56mm rounds streaked toward Enoch on full auto, trailing crimson mana light.
"Dragoon Bombardment Art, Number Eight——"
But an instant before impact, a massive blast erupted a few meters ahead of Enoch's position, detonating a shell in midair.
An explosion with its flames suppressed to the extreme birthed a stark white shockwave that swept every single bullet from the sky.
"Phantom Ring Star."
Right before his eyes, intense sparks flew as every round was shattered and deflected in all directions.
With the explosion's accompanying flames suppressed to the extreme, a magic-stone-forged shell had been manipulated to deploy a shockwave, intercepting every bullet.
Enoch shielded his face against the powerful blast of air and narrowed his eyes.
"Alicia."
The Dragoon uniform skirt of the girl standing before Enoch billowed in the wind.
With a clatter, the jet-black assault rifle customized with optics hit the ground. The girl called Isabel slowly raised both hands above her shoulders in surrender.
"Uggh……"
The skin at the girl's throat was just barely pressed by Alicia's pitch-black Lance, touching so close it left a faint indent.
Enoch recognized the freelancer girl averting her gaze. Just hours ago, she had been the one at the shops, searching for supplies, holding an optics-equipped assault rifle.
The mark on her shoulder was identical to the man's. They must have belonged to the same Interim.
The audience, realizing the ringleader Interim had been suppressed in a single stroke, gaped in unison. They looked utterly unable to believe it.
"Wh, what. What on earth was that……"
"A Dragoon of Victoria's elite, indeed……"
"Th, that wasn't even a shield. Is that even possible?"
Intercepting supersonic rifle rounds not with a defensive spell like a shield but with offensive bombardment magic alone, and perfectly at that.
Naturally, even for the highest-ranked mage, that would demand exceptional reaction speed and control.
The fact that the survivors here represented only the cream of the freelancers who had lived through the battles only made the stunned awe on their faces all the more stark.
Though she had not yet reached 10th Rank, they were overwhelmed by the reality that, when it came to the application and improvisation of bombardment magic, she was an extreme-level specialist.
Enoch quietly watched Alicia.
Of course, even scouring all of Victoria Kazimieśi Domain and the entire Dragoons, the only person capable of such bombardment technique was the single girl before him, but…
At the very least, it seemed he had succeeded in impressing the Dragoons' might upon the freelancers.
CLANG——!!
Before the frozen audience, Alicia swung the Lance — venting white gas from its chamber — in a single arc and drove it point-first into the ground before her.
Then she squared her shoulders proudly and let her long hair stream in the wind.
"Including myself, I will recommend to my superior that the other Dragoon members also be placed under Leader Enoch's command. Is that still not enough manpower?"
A collective shudder swept over the crowd.
"No way — the Dragoons?"
"No, but…… is that even possible……?"
"I, I heard the Dragoons for this operation were……"
Through the freelancers eyeing each other, half-convinced and half-skeptical, Enoch slowly walked forward.
On the black-and-white tiled ruin floor, Enoch drove the axe into the ground.
Then he calmly faced Alicia, who had planted her Lance across from him and was looking straight at him.
"You're going to persuade the Dragoons to join the fight?"
"Alicia of Victoria — yes, sir!"
In the midday sun, Alicia's vivid blue eyes gleamed steadily beneath her long hair.
With her giant cavalry Lance planted in the ground, its contours and silhouette merged with her shadow on the ground, forming a shape that looked just like the chess piece of a Knight.
Meanwhile, the shadow of the tip of the long double-bladed axe Enoch had cast upon the ground sat atop his head like a crown, looking like the chess piece of a King.
Gazing down at the sight, Enoch quietly asked,
"Can you do it?"
"Yes. I intend to do everything I can."
Enoch slowly raised his head and fixed his gaze on Alicia.
"Then I'll trust you. And I'll also do everything in my power to help you, Alicia, in finding a way."
Enoch nodded and turned an even colder gaze upon the surrounding freelancers.
"I've said everything I have to say. Now, there seems to be only one thing left."
The response to those words didn't take long.
Among the silenced audience, one of the nearest freelancers slowly raised his magic gear before his chest.
Then the next, and the next after that, one by one, each hoisted their own varied magic gears upright before their eyes.
Mechanical-design staffs, submachine guns, wands tipped with processed magic stone — each unique weapon's owner paid their respects.
Around Enoch, long silhouettes fell.
The other freelancers, declaring they would follow Enoch, cast their shadows upon the ground in the shapes of Pawns — the soldiers on a chessboard.
Gazing down at them briefly, Enoch spoke.
"Desertion from the battlefield or any attempt to undermine the group's cohesion will not be tolerated. Defiance of orders will likewise not be tolerated. Further instructions will be given later. That is all."
Enoch pulled the axe free, his clothes sweeping behind him as he left the spot.
Sirocco, hopping down from the platform, and April, cautiously eyeing the surrounding freelancers, followed behind Enoch in silence.
As the crowd dispersed, Sirocco's ears twitched as she looked up at Enoch with her prim gaze, her voice carrying a slightly flushed excitement.
"Hmph, making even weaklings like them submit to a leader. Honestly, I'm impressed."
Enoch didn't answer.
Whether to call it luck — it hadn't been as confident a move as it might have looked, but the reactions he had roughly calculated had turned out to match fairly well.
"Just a moment, Direct Lineage!"
After a few steps, he turned back and, sure enough, Lily was looking at him.
From the agitation in Lily's eyes, it was blindingly obvious she was not favorable toward his actions.
"Why did you do something like that? Using such violent means to force people to follow you! Everyone's terrified!"
"Because that was the right thing to do."
"Wh, what?"
Enoch looked down at Lily and said,
"You saw it too, Sister Lily. Everyone was exhausted to the breaking point and on the verge of surrendering to the fear of the magical beasts and defeat."
"S, so. Direct Lineage became a new object of fear for those people……"
Enoch looked at her without a word. He could feel Lily trembling.
"Don't tell me, Direct Lineage…… Then everything you've shown us up till now was all an act……?"
"……"
He heard the sound of Lily clenching her fists.
"Then eventually everyone will stay away from you, hate you, and no one will be on your side!"
"I don't need that. At least not right now."
That was the conclusion Enoch had reached after confronting the casualties of the Outsourcing District and the war up until a few hours ago.
To change the future and do everything in his power to prevent any more needless sacrifices — he had no choice but to give up human sentimentality.
Enoch stared at the drops of blood falling from the axe in his hand, expressionless.
Alicia had said she wanted to be a champion.
April had said hope was needed.
But reality was neither that simple nor straightforward. Becoming a champion or becoming hope — in this situation, neither path was easily taken.
Therefore, this was Enoch Elsyde's method.
Just then, a sudden embrace from behind made Enoch's body go rigid. A familiar, prim voice rang in his ear.
"Hmm~. Everyone will hate you? You don't know anything."
The warm body heat of the arms wrapped tightly around him from behind seeped into Enoch's chilled body.
"……"
He felt his heart flood with warmth.
"Even if nobody really takes your side, it doesn't matter. I'll be right here."
Sirocco, clinging to Enoch from behind, looked a bit amused as she covered her lips with a finger and laughed at Lily as if in teasing provocation.
"No matter what weaklings like you say — I'm his Follower Family, after all."
Then, still hugging his side, Sirocco sauntered over and made a point of nuzzling her soft, pale cheek against Enoch's chest.
Lily, slightly flushed, protested,
"Weakling?! I, I was! Just worried about Lord Enoch……!"
"Hmph, until just now you were calling him 'Direct Lineage,' and now it's gotten awfully familiar, hasn't it."
"Ugh, ahhh……!!"
Lily flushed crimson as though struck at a nerve, and clutched her staff tightly.
Sirocco watched Lily diligently trying to say something in rebuttal, her mouth opening and closing, and then calmly looked up at Enoch.
"See? Another female, added to the collection. You."
"There you go again with the weird talk."
Enoch left it at that and raised his head.
Beyond the massive steel wall where nemesis Anarchilon and its forces lurked — he gazed toward the far side of the forest.
Having succeeded in rallying the freelancers, their defeat was not yet set in stone. And this, naturally, was only the beginning of the cards Enoch was assembling.
"S, so. What are you planning to do?"
April approached from beside him and asked cautiously.
"Even if you've succeeded in rallying the freelancers, this alone might not be enough……"
"Of course it's not over. There's more I've prepared."
"Huh? Then……"
Just as April widened her eyes at his words, a clear voice reached his ears.
"Young Master."
Enoch lifted his gaze.
Before the group, a silver-haired girl in a maid outfit had quietly approached and was standing there.
Lien walked up to them with measured steps, stopped, and with one hand gently lifted the hem of her maid skirt as she bowed her head.
"All preparations you ordered are complete."
"Thank you, Lien."
When Enoch nodded, countless questioning gazes from beside him converged.
"Direct Lineage, what does that mean-mka?"
Nano, who had been walking alongside them, tilted her head in confusion. April chimed in too,
"Right! Pr, preparations? What are they?"
"There were people I needed to contact. After we eliminated Indiviltal last time, external communications became possible again."
"Huh? But contact — with where?"
To April, who was still staring at him in bewilderment, Enoch held out his left wrist.
There, fastened around it, was the jet-black SIEG Industry tactical bracelet she had given him as a gift before.
"April. You mentioned before that SIEG Industry's young lady was reaching into this Outsourcing District?"
"Y, yes. She was, but."
The instant April blankly nodded at his calm words.
From the distant sky above, the rotor sounds of multiple helicopters began blaring simultaneously.
As everyone's eyes turned upward, Enoch too looked up and quietly added,
"Seems they've arrived."