In the vast plaza of the Kingdom of Eden, the roar of a beast that shook the earth rang out.
Encircling the gigantic boar Twrch Trwyth, three guardians formed a flawless battle formation. The first to move was Barghest, her predatory instincts fully awakened.
"Chains, bind it!"
Massive chains of magical energy burst from Barghest's hand, slicing through the air before wrapping tightly around Twrch Trwyth's four legs and enormous body.
At once, two Black Dogs forged from pitch-black magical energy sprang out of midair and savagely tore at the boar's nape and thigh.
"Kraaaaagh!!"
The beast let out a howl, but Twrch Trwyth's hide, condensed with dense magical energy, was tougher and harder than imagination could grasp.
Even the Black Dogs' fangs could do no more than leave shallow scratches.
Barghest's Mystic Eyes flashed at once as she activated her skill Foul Weather. Thick storm clouds and torrential rain swallowed the plaza, strengthening her allies while suppressing the enemy's momentum.
Without missing that timing, Talos thrust his massive left arm forward.
With a clank of machinery, the tips of Talos's five fingers opened, and dazzling golden magic bullets poured forth like machine-gun fire.
Pururururuboom!!
The golden magic bullets struck Twrch Trwyth's thick brow with flawless precision, focusing on that single point alone. Countless explosions erupted, and the hardened hide began to blister and tear apart.
"There!"
Britomart, the moving queen's fortress, kicked off the earth and leaped. Her massive greatsword, tangled in black and violet, came crashing down like lightning toward the exact spot Talos had battered.
Boom!!
But the might of the monster that had once been a heathen king was no trifling thing.
Even bound in chains, Twrch Trwyth thrashed like mad and swung its giant tusks, attempting a countercharge straight at Britomart.
"Kgh!"
A terrifying mass slammed into Britomart head-on.
But [Fortress Angela], which enveloped Britomart, was a Noble Phantasm that boasted absolute invincible defense so long as her feet remained on the ground.
The boar's tusk crashed against the black armor and threw off sparks, but the armor did not suffer so much as a scratch.
However, that armor had one fatal weakness. It could not nullify knockback itself from explosions or overwhelming gust pressure, and the instant her feet left the ground, that invincible defense would be undone.
Because of that very blind spot, Arthegall had once met his death, impaled by a tusk while trying to protect Britomart when she was nearly launched into the air.
"This time... I will never be pushed back!!"
Britomart poured fierce magical energy into both feet, fixing herself to the earth as though taking root.
Then she spread both arms and seized the gigantic tusks of the Twrch Trwyth that had rammed into her, gripping them head-on with all her strength.
The ground split apart, and her feet dug into the dirt, but she forced the monster's charge to a complete stop right there.
While Britomart held the beast in place, Barghest stepped forward.
She ruthlessly snapped off one of the horns rising from her own head.
"[Black Dog Galatine]!!"
The instant she released its true name, Barghest's body swelled to the size of a house.
Throwing off the frame of a Fairy Knight and transforming into an incarnation of calamity, she raised Galatine, the greatsword wreathed in swirling black flames, high overhead.
This was not a blow that merely cut flesh, but one that shattered the very domain in which the enemy existed.
The slash of the black sun split Twrch Trwyth's brow cleanly apart.
"Kgyaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!"
As flesh burned and bone shattered in agony, the monster screamed and sprayed fountains of blood.
Barghest cast Wild Rule. Her intent was to devour the enemy's enhancements and make them her own.
But confusion flickered across Barghest's eyes.
"No enhancements...?"
There were no magical buffs or blessings of mystery upon Twrch Trwyth's body. This monster was unleashing such overwhelming power through nothing but its own pure, primal size and brute strength.
"Hahahahat! Pure size and strength? Splendid!"
Barghest's predator blood boiled over, and she let out a bold, exultant laugh as she gripped her black-flamed greatsword once more.
At the same time, Britomart also moved to drive in the wedge of a counterattack.
Her armor dismantled itself and scattered into the air, revealing the lithe figure of a knight beneath.
"[Penetrate Bladed]!!"
In her hand appeared the magic lance said to have been wielded by Bladud, king of ancient Britain. The turquoise magical gale raging from its tip became a massive cross-shaped slash and burrowed into Twrch Trwyth's wound.
As if to hammer in the final spike, the jewel in the center of Talos's chest blazed brilliantly.
Kwaaaaaang!!
A golden flash cannon, drawn from the giant automaton's power core to its very limit, slammed into the monster's torso.
Barghest, Britomart, and Talos. Under the concentrated firepower of those three overwhelming forces, Ireland's worst monster, once proud of its impregnable might, began screaming as it rolled across the ground.
At the same time, in the plaza before the massive gate surrounding the outer perimeter of the royal castle.
This was the fiercest battlefield of all, where hundreds of demonic beasts and the black magi of the Kingdom of Eden had formed their ranks.
"Gahahaha! They just keep pouring out like rats! There are quite a lot of them. Still got some room to spare, Ushiwakamaru?"
Nobunaga shouted boldly as she lounged atop a matchlock and flew leisurely through the air.
Every time the thousands of muskets deployed endlessly behind her back spat fire, wolf- and snake-shaped demonic beasts shattered into bloody mist.
Below, Ushiwakamaru, who was dancing across the ground as she cut down the beasts one after another, answered with a bright laugh.
"I have plenty of room to spare! Compared to the training I did with my master on Kurama Mountain, this is practically child's pla—!"
It happened the moment she swung her sword and split open the brow of a giant serpent beast.
Suddenly, her vision was dyed pitch-black, as though ink had been poured over it.
'What?! Loss of sight...? No, this isn't mere darkness. A curse...?'
Though her vision had been completely sealed, Ushiwakamaru did not panic.
She immediately closed both eyes and relied only on instincts close to those of a beast and on the flow of the wind, batting aside the trajectories of the demonic beasts lunging at her from every direction.
But the enemy's true aim was not physical harm.
[Poor, pitiful child...]
The voice had not come from beside her ear.
It was as if someone who had known her for a very long time was whispering gently from the deepest place inside her mind.
That single sentence alone drained the strength from Ushiwakamaru's shoulders.
[You were abandoned despite being so loyal. By your brother, and by the world.]
"...Shut up."
She said it aloud, but there was no force in her voice.
A woman's whisper, sticky and sweet as a serpent licking up the rim of her ear.
It was the voice of the Witch of Agitation, Malengin, the true culprit who had brainwashed the people of the Kingdom of Eden and driven out their queen.
Like a serpent that had scented blood, Malengin slowly licked her way over Ushiwakamaru's wounds.
[You're walking the same road all over again. You'll give everything to another young king, be used again, and be abandoned again.]
A dreadful brainwashing curse based on ritual magecraft.
That sweet venom coiled down Ushiwakamaru's cochlea and into the depths of her brain. It began skillfully digging into the deepest trauma she had suffered in life.
Malengin herself did not know it, but this curse burrowed into the target's memories, attacked the most effective trauma it could find, and tore apart the mind from within.
Each time Malengin's voice rang through her head, Ushiwakamaru's reason began to blur thickly, as though sinking into a swamp of mud.
The strength drained from her limbs, and the hand gripping her sword trembled faintly.
Within that pitch-black darkness before her eyes, a horrifying sense of relief and desire began to bloom—the desire to simply lean on the witch's voice and obey.
She knew those words were lies.
Her head knew that. But the curse was not attacking reason.
It burrowed into emotion. Into memories she had thought forgotten.
The final memory of being abandoned by her brother and left to die.
Everything came back vividly.
Her fingertips trembled.
The sword grew heavier and heavier.
Her heart turned cold.
[It was hard, wasn't it? Rest now. Trusting someone, being loyal to someone—it hurts, doesn't it?]
The voice was unbearably sweet. Like sinking down beneath a warm blanket.
Like a mother promising to carry all her worries for her.
Without realizing it, she nearly nodded.
'...Yes. I want to rest, just a little...'
The focus faded from her eyes.
The tip of her sword slowly lowered.
As if her mind were sinking into warm mud, her consciousness began to go under.
Just before her mind was completely devoured by the witch's brainwashing, Ushiwakamaru desperately seized the fraying thread of her fading consciousness and made an instinctive decision as a warrior.
Crunch!
She clamped her mouth shut and bit down on her own tongue with all her strength.
"Kgh...!!"
Her tongue tore nearly in half, and hot, metallic blood burst through her mouth like a fountain.
As the horrific pain of flesh being severed slammed into her brain, the sweet illusion of brainwashing that had numbed her nerves shattered like glass.
"Ptah!!"
Blood running down her chin, Ushiwakamaru spat the severed tip of her own tongue onto the ground.
In her eyes blazed a murderous intent toward the witch, and along with it, a madly burning, unshakable loyalty toward Arthur.
"My l-lord would n-never do thad!!"
Though her speech was mangled absurdly by her mutilated tongue, the force in that roar tore through the plaza like lightning.
Twisting her bloodied lips, she raised Usumidori high toward the sky.
"Chaaaah!!"
From the blade that drove off evil, a dazzling purifying light exploded forth, tearing apart the pitch-black ritual curse that had bound her in an instant.
Her vision restored, she saw the witch Malengin frozen in shock behind the rubble of a collapsed wall, where she had been hiding her presence.
"Y-you crazy bitch...! You bit off your own tongue just to break brainwashing?!"
At that moment, a loud and hearty peal of laughter rang down from the sky.
"Gahahahaha! Fool, isn't this just because your Magic Resistance is lower than mine, so you're floundering around under brainwashing?"
Nobunaga clicked her tongue but laughed in delight as she deployed her matchlocks in the air.
Tatatatang!
"Kyaah!!"
Malengin rolled across the ground in disgrace, barely dodging the bullets.
But the witch, her malice sharpened to the limit, raised her staff high and unleashed a far broader and denser curse of deadly poison across the entire plaza, far beyond anything before.
"You lunatics...! Fine then, eat this and butcher each other!!"
Once more, a sticky, suffocating swamp of curses swept over the plaza.
Nobunaga wheeled through the air, firing wildly to locate the enemy's true body by instinct, but Ushiwakamaru's mind, burdened with Magic Resistance too weak to withstand ritual magecraft by nature, rapidly grew clouded again as though sinking back into the swamp.
'Kgh... I-I can't cut my tongue again... At this rate, I'll...!'
Feeling the hand holding her sword begin to rise toward Nobunaga against her own will, Ushiwakamaru squeezed her eyes shut.
She needed a new pain to wake herself. Reversing her grip on the sword, she aimed it toward her own abdomen.
At that very moment.
The black poison covering the world scattered in an instant, as though someone had dropped a single drop of perfume into it.
[My.]
A voice impossibly soft.
But it was different from Malengin's.
It was not a voice that twisted the mind by force.
Her very existence was so beautiful it made one forget the very concept of refusal.
[To let your heart be stolen by such an ugly voice. My dear little warrior. If you are going to be enchanted by someone...]
A brief silence. Even that short silence was intoxicating.
[Then be enchanted by me, not by some vulgar witch like that.]
With those words, Ushiwakamaru's world was dyed in light.
Her breath stopped, and her heart pounded.
The blood in her whole body burned hot.
Ushiwakamaru's dazed eyes flew wide open. The tip of Usumidori, which had been aimed at her abdomen, stopped dead in midair.
[Yes, good. Now turn three steps to the left... and cut without hesitation.]
A gentle command. Like a puppet hanging from invisible golden strings, Ushiwakamaru turned without the slightest hesitation.
"Taaah!!"
A turquoise slash filled with all her strength tore through the air.
"Kraaaagh!!"
Dark red blood burst from empty air, and the witch Malengin, who had perfectly concealed her presence with illusion, toppled over hideously, cut deep from shoulder to chest.
"H-how... how did you pierce through my perfect ritual magecraft...!"
As Malengin coughed blood in shock, the air directly beside Ushiwakamaru rippled, and someone stepped out with elegant grace.
It was Stheno, who had concealed herself with Presence Concealment.
"Hehe, this is how one uses charm, little witch."
The moment Stheno smiled seductively, a radiant and sacred light exploded from behind her.
The witch's pitch-black curses vanished without a trace before the beauty of a true goddess, like snow melting in the morning sun.
An absolute beauty rooted in myth, enough to steal the breath even from other women.
And Ushiwakamaru, though her body was that of a lovely woman, was a being whose record as a hero engraved upon human history had been marked as male.
That was why Stheno's absolute charm, specialized in captivating men, worked upon Ushiwakamaru with extreme lethality. The overwhelming enchantment of the goddess completely overlaid the witch's vulgar brainwashing and rebounded it in turn.
"Th-this... this is impossible...! M-my curse...!"
Panicking, Malengin raised her bloodstained staff again to deploy another ritual curse.
But the black magical energy she tried to squeeze out scattered into the air and crumbled away powerlessly.
"My, what a low-grade and tasteless curse."
Medea descended elegantly from the sky amid drifting violet feathers.
Having burned all the beasts in the other sector to ash with magic cannons before joining them, she looked down at the crawling Malengin as though she were an insect and sneered.
"Back in the Age of Gods, not even stray dogs on the roadside used such crude brainwashing Magecraft. Do you know why? Because if they used it carelessly, everyone feared the gods would think their territory had been trespassed upon and strike them down with lightning, so it was treated as taboo."
When Medea snapped her fingers, violet lasers of magical energy poured down like a rainstorm and mercilessly burned Malengin's legs and the arm holding her staff into charred black lumps.
"Kyaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!"
As the witch rolled on the ground screaming horribly, Ushiwakamaru approached with cold, sunken eyes.
"Glory to my lord."
Slice!!
Usumidori drew a silver half-moon through the air and cleanly sent Malengin's head flying skyward.
Once the battle had fully ended, Medea let out a deep sigh and walked over to Ushiwakamaru, who stood there with her lips and chin stained red with blood.
"Honestly, really. Even if it was to break brainwashing, what kind of idiot cuts off her own tongue?"
The warm light of Medea's magical energy wrapped around Ushiwakamaru's lips. Her severed tongue regenerated in an instant and regained its original function.
"Pwah! Ahh, thank you, Lady Medea! Thanks to you, I can eat the delicious meals my lord gives me again!"
"...You're thinking about food in a situation that reeks this much of blood?"
Medea shook her head as she looked at Ushiwakamaru's bright, innocent smile.
Meanwhile, together with Merlin and Morgan, I was strolling through the empty interior of Eden's royal castle.
"We've taken down all the guards inside the castle... but the usurper bastard himself is nowhere to be seen."
I shook the blood from Chrysaor and kicked open the door to the throne room.
The splendid throne stood empty, and there was no trace of Grandot anywhere.
"Did that bastard already run for it?"
As I clicked my tongue and swept my gaze around, Morgan, walking beside me, lowered her eyes.
"Arthur. Over there."
What she pointed to was a secret stairway leading underground, cleverly hidden behind the throne.
From the deep darkness beyond those stairs, an utterly ominous and disgusting magical energy was creeping upward—something that did not merely kill people, but seemed to rot space itself.
Merlin, too, had lost her usual smile and tightened her grip on her staff.
"Looks like that rat is playing some interesting little game underground. Is he preparing a welcome for our young king?"
With Chrysaor drawn, I stepped toward the underground stairs drowned in darkness without a moment's hesitation.
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