"It's about a hundred kilometers north-northwest, so we should be arriving soon."
As the afternoon wore on and the autumn sun began its descent toward the west, the radical faction coalition reached their objective.
"There's nothing here but a river..."
"It is said to be underground. Raidros, I'm leaving this to you."
Raidros was the current chief of the Frenzy clan, having succeeded his father, Garogras, who had perished in the recent Ether Stampede.
Bafrosk, the chief of the Jest clan, had brought them along not simply because they were fellow victims of the disaster, but because of the specific technology they possessed.
Golems.
Marcosius, the man who had once manipulated Elsa's father in the Shouro Empire, was also a member of the Frenzy clan. He, too, had been pressed into service for this mission.
"Consider it done."
Raidros, the clan's most proficient user of Teleportation Magic, began by summoning their forces. He repeated the spell four times, bringing forth four golems in succession.
Next, it was Marcosius's turn.
"Marcosius, proceed."
"Understood. Belgris, activate."
The Belgris units Raidros had transported were giant golems standing roughly four meters tall. Though smaller than the Rock Giants employed by the Toying clan, they were superior in both strength and speed. Marcosius, often hailed as the greatest genius in the history of the Frenzy clan, was the only one capable of crafting such machines.
As the four-meter golems marched, the ground trembled beneath their weight. Eventually, they identified a spot where the resonance of the earth changed.
"There appears to be a hollow space beneath this point. No. 1, strike!"
Each of the four Belgris units carried a different weapon. No. 1 brandished a massive hammer—a heavy blunt instrument closer to a mace.
The golem swung the weapon high and slammed it into the ground with bone-shaking force. A roar erupted as dust choked the air. It struck again, and then again. After five heavy blows, the ground buckled and gave way. At the bottom of the crater, a metallic glint caught the light.
"Just as I thought. Excellent. Now... Distruzione!"
Bafrosk unleashed a blast of Explosion Magic. The remaining soil was swept away, fully exposing a metal plate. But just as they prepared to launch a follow-up attack on the revealed hatch...
"Good grief, how noisy. I suppose I should commend you for finding this place. However, that discovery will be your undoing."
As the voice echoed across the wasteland, holes opened in the ground nearby, and four silver gargoyles emerged.
The demons were momentarily shaken, but they did not feel the same terror as when they had first encountered these creatures. The image of Reiko and her squad easily dismantling them was still fresh in their minds.
"Do not think so highly of yourselves just because you managed to defeat my disposable pawns."
The gargoyles charged. The Belgris units moved to intercept.
These gargoyles stood three meters tall, while the Belgris stood at four. At a glance, the golems seemed to have the advantage, but that assumption proved premature. The silver gargoyles were incredibly fast, far outstripping the slower Belgris units. The golems struggled to land a single hit, while the gargoyles' strikes found their marks with unerring precision.
However, the Belgris were protected by thick armor and sustained no critical damage. It looked as though the battle would descend into a long-term struggle of attrition.
"Distruzione!"
Then, a spell was cast that upended the flow of battle. The Jest clan began supporting the Belgris with their trademark Explosion Magic.
Hidden behind an Invisible barrier, Reiko and twenty Land units observed the skirmish. They were standing by to intervene the moment the demons fell into true danger.
"It is quite bothersome, but we cannot have any more of them dying," Laojun mused while monitoring the combat. "Particularly for the sake of My Lord's peace of mind."
This observation served a dual purpose: it allowed them to gauge No. 13's military capabilities without revealing themselves.
An explosion from the Jest clan's magic staggered one of the gargoyles. In that split second, a strike from No. 1's mace connected. The impact of the ultra-heavy weapon crumpled the gargoyle's torso, severely hindering its mobility. A second blow rained down on its head, pulverizing the machine instantly.
Three remained.
"No. 1! Support No. 3!"
Marcosius showed a decent grasp of battlefield tactics, immediately directing his unit to assist the nearest ally. With the fight turned into a two-on-one backed by magical artillery, the advantage shifted decisively to the demons.
No. 3's weapon was a massive sword with an enlarged, weighted tip—a design clearly intended to maximize centrifugal force for devastating cleaving blows. Its power was immense, though it was useless if it couldn't hit its target. While it had been toyed with by the gargoyle's speed in a duel, the two-on-one formation allowed the demons to overwhelm their foe.
"There!"
As the gargoyle's movement was momentarily halted, the massive sword swung with raw power, biting deep into the creature's waist.
"No. 1! Finish it!"
No. 1's mace whistled through the air, striking the opposite side of the gargoyle's waist. The crack initiated by the sword widened until the gargoyle was snapped in half. Its upper and lower sections tumbled uselessly to the dirt.
"No. 1, aid No. 2. No. 3, assist No. 4," Marcosius commanded.
The battles were now segmented into two separate two-on-one encounters. No. 2's weapon was a massive spear—or more accurately, a lance—specialized entirely for thrusting.
No. 1 successfully pinned a gargoyle that had lost its footing in a crater created by the supporting Explosion Magic. With the target immobilized, the lance drove straight through its chest, shattering its internal magi-device.
No. 4's weapon was a massive battle axe with a long handle and a double-edged head. No. 3 swung its sword wildly to herd the final gargoyle, which used its superior agility to evade every strike. However, as No. 1 and No. 2 joined the fray, the machine found itself four-against-one.
Cornered and overwhelmed, the gargoyle finally took a direct hit from the battle axe to its head and went limp.
"We did it! We have nothing to fear!" Bafrosk shouted, his confidence soaring.
In response, a voice filled with mockery resonated from the air.
"...How pathetic. To be so blinded by a pittance of strength."
Then, a dark silver-gray gargoyle descended.
"Another one? But there is only one of them this time. Attack!"
No. 4, the closest unit, brandished its battle axe and charged. The dark silver-gray gargoyle simply kicked off the ground and soared into the sky.
"Guh... The air again? How is it flying?"
Jin was observing the battle from the Hourai Island command room. Beside him, Elsa watched the screen with a grim, focused expression.
"...Are they all idiots?" Jin muttered.
"Eh?" Elsa looked at him, puzzled.
"No. 13 is committing the classic blunder of sequential deployment, and the demons are getting far too ahead of themselves."
Jin added that the demons seemed to have already forgotten the horror of the Ether Stampede.
"...Setting the demons aside for a moment," Elsa began, offering her own insight. "Jin-nii, what if No. 13 isn't just trickling in his forces?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if that is a unit equivalent to Jin-nii's Reiko-chan? If it is, then the gargoyles we've seen until now were nothing more than toys."
As if responding to Elsa's hypothesis, the screen zoomed in on the dark silver-gray gargoyle.
"That color... is it adamantite?" Jin wondered aloud.
If it were made of such a material, it should be incredibly heavy. Yet, as he scrutinized the visual data, the tracks it left in the earth weren't particularly deep.
"Is it only plated on the surface?"
Just then, No. 4 launched its attack, and the gargoyle took flight.
"It flew again. As I thought... it's a sophisticated combination of Gravity Magic and wind magic."
"Jin-nii, how does that work?"
"Hmm? Oh, it's likely doing this..." Jin explained, having deduced the secret of the flight. "It's using Gravity Magic to reduce its own weight to about one-thousandth of its mass, then using wind magic to provide lift. If you reduce the weight to zero, you actually lose too much control."
Jin noted that according to Reiko's report, Lardus had used a similar technique with his dagger—keeping it light for the swing and making it heavy only at the moment of impact.
"You can't pull that off without incredibly precise control," he added.
As he spoke, the dark silver-gray gargoyle on the screen plummeted back to earth, landing right in the middle of the demon ranks.