“Nnh~~~~, fuhhaah~~~~”
Ymir quickly got ready and began taking a deep breath.
“It really is an island devoid of any sign of life.”
They had stopped the ship offshore, and after disembarking in a small boat, Ymir looked around and spoke to Leina by her side.
“Yeah… Don’t the others have to disembark too?”
“No matter how robust we might be, we still need to rest.”
The many rowers that had been working to keep the ship sailing—no matter if it was day or night—ever since they left Sheldan were now resting. The only ones who seemed like they’d disembark were Ymir, her attendants and Leina, who hadn’t participated in the sailing.
“Are you sure that Fio is on this island?”
“I am. Faint as it might be, there’s a reaction.”
The blonde stated clearly, focusing on the feeling from the Sword sandwiched between her breasts.
The size of the Sword of the Unicorn represented Fio’s life force. The fact it kept dwindling was a clear tell of how there wasn’t much time left. With it shrunken to fit into her palm, it wasn’t much of a weapon now anyways.
[I won’t be able to fight like I did back at the elven forest.]
She didn’t know if it would work as a treatment, but she dropped one drop of the Soul Drop from the small bottle towards the Sword by her chest.
“Guhah! Gehoh! Gahoh! Ugeeeeeeeeeh!”
Suddenly, Ymir started coughing violently. Considering how unladylike that sounded, it seemed she was seriously suffering.
“What’s wrong?”
Leina was confused; the other was reacting as if she had smelled something horrid.
“Nnngh, your nose isn’t that good, is it, Miss Leina?”
“My nose?”
“Do you seriously not smell it?”
The dwarf shrugged her shoulders with an exasperated look.
“Since we’re both girls, I didn’t really want to breach the topic, but… during the cruise, did other dwarves besides me get close to you?”
“Err…”
Now that she mentioned it, no dwarves had accosted her indeed. They all had looked at her from afar, and had moved away in silence if they started to get close.
“That’s the culprit!”
Ymir’s fingertip pointed at the small bottle with the Soul Drop.
“Because of that, the stinking smell of elves is coming from your body.”
“Smell?”
She tried sniffing around her body, but she couldn’t notice anything in particular. At best, only a pleasant smell like fresh green.
“It might be perfume, but it’s not in good taste.”
When she heard that, Leina realized the root of the problem: it was the very smell of the Soul Drop she had been smearing her body in so as to treat Fio which was causing her petite companion trouble.
“I’m sorry. I never noticed.”
Given the confrontation between the dwarven and the elven tribes, she should have shown a bit more consideration, even if she hadn’t been able to get into a bath.
[My head’s focused on Fio, I can’t sweat the small stuff.]
The Vance daughter lightly put a hand to her temple to focus herself, then turned her eyes towards the center of the island.
“Let’s hurry, Ymir.”
“Good grief, how impatient. We came to the land of legends and everything, can’t we do a bit more sight-seeing?”
Even as she complained, she lifted up her favorite battleaxe. She boasted about it being larger than she herself was and weighing 37 kilos; the only reason she could wield it around without losing her balance was thanks to the Ancient Gauntlet fitted into her dominant arm.
“How about it, Miss Leina, won’t you use any of our iron weapons? In deference to our relationship, I might even give you a 10% discount, depending on the items we get in this adventure.”
She eyed the blonde’s long sword as she joyfully started her pitch.
“I’ll think about it.”
Leina’s beloved sword was a product one could buy anywhere.
“You seem to be one of Queen’s Blade’s star fighters, using a sword of quality might be best for you.”
The Vance girl gave a wry smile to her companion’s eager business sense, and walked towards the stone road that spread to the center of the island.
She trod with caution towards that center surrounded by huge stone pillars.
[Our foes can freely manipulate wraiths. It wouldn’t be strange if we got attacked all of a sudden.]
“Ooh, this is unusual.”
Contrasting with the nervous Leina, Ymir followed with a relaxed attitude.
“Unusual?”
“I thought this pillar was made of stone, but it’s metal.”
She knocked on one with her battleaxe, and looked up with a charmed expression.
“A metal that doesn’t rot away even after a thousand years—or maybe tens of thousands. Hm, should I take it back home?”
“What do you intend to do?”
“What do you think? Cutting it down and taking it home!”
As soon as she said so, she hammered her axe into the huge pillar.
*Gogaaaaaaan!*
“Ukyaaaaah!”
Ymir’s scream overlapped with the resounding bass.
“My arm! My arm is getting numb!”
*Gong, gong*, the pillar shook with a fine vibration.
“There’s not even a scratch…”
The blonde stared wide-eyed at the part that had taken the hit from the weapon, marveled at its strength.
“What kind of building would need to use huge pillars like these?”
“A building? That’s not what this is.”
Ymir smiled fondly, as she held down her dumb right hand.
“These are the ruins of what once were the arrows shot into this island back in the age of the gods.”
“Arrows?”
“Can’t blame you if you find it hard to believe. But, according to the legend transmitted between us dwarves, it is said that twelve arrows were shot directly from Heaven to seal the devil created to fight the gods.”
The number of huge pillars was also twelve. The legend seemed to check out so far.
“Oh well, I’ll pick up the pillars next time. Also, Miss Leina…”
“Yes?”
“You should relax your shoulders.”
The dwarf looked up at the Vance daughter as she shook her left hand covered with a long glove.
“You’re too nervous. We can’t change the fact that there might be traps ahead, and if you’re always tense, it’ll put you in a disadvantage.”
“Being only tense will put me in a disadvantage…”
“Hm, even if there are traps, none of us are good at removing them, right?”
As Ymir said so, she poised her battleaxe.
“Look, it seems they’re coming from over there.”
Maybe they were roused by the vibration from the pillar, but skeleton soldiers stood up one after another and surrounded the two of them, their bones rattling.
“So this is why there was no one to welcome us when we disembarked.”
Grumbling with a wry smile on her face, the princess put herself on guard for the attack that would start at any time.
“It doesn’t seem to be an actual trap set up here however.”
Holding her sword, the blonde looked towards the center of the island. The skeletons were emerging as if to block the way between them and the center.
“How many will come out?”
“Oh my?”
The Vance daughter noticed something about the skeleton Ymir was about to face: they were all on the small side. Even the tallest one only reached up to Leina’s shoulders.
“Maybe they’re dwarven skeleton soldiers?”
“Their skeleton is different! These are human beings!”
When she heard the heiress’ murmur, her companion denied it with all she had.
“Maybe it’s young people who died, and were enslaved taking advantage of their regrets… Now, what should we do?”
“We force our way through! But…”
The blonde’s voice clouded over, seeing how the horde of skeleton soldiers extended as far as the eye could see. Besides, they were immortal.
“Normally we’d cut them as we run through their files, but they’ll gather their bones and revive immediately.”
“If we crush up the bones, they won’t be able to gather them.”
The dwarf smiled, and swung the battleaxe to protect herself from the approaching creatures. With a whirlwind, it mowed them down.
The soldier who took the hit shattered with the shock, and was blown away in a way that took the skeletons behind it along. That power of the battleaxe, able to knock down enemies from afar, was the result of adding the might of the Ancient Gauntlet, which gave one a giant’s strength.
With a single swing, ten or more of the skeleton soldiers had been crushed.
“Wow…”
Leina couldn’t suppress a voice of admiration.
“One blow is enough.”
The other snorted, and preparing her battleaxe, began moving forward bit by bit.
“Let’s go, Leina.”
[This is no time to be fascinated by how Ymir fights.]
She took up her sword, determined to bring the approaching skeletons down for good.
What she was aiming for was the small bone that connected the spine with the pelvis; if that got broken, they wouldn’t be able to stand up. Since she couldn’t crush them like the battleaxe could, she didn’t have other choices.
Of course, the skeletons wouldn’t just let themselves get attacked. They came at her in twos, in threes sometimes.
Their movements weren’t so fast, but it turned troublesome with the advantage in numbers. Perhaps it depended on how the original person had been, but none of them had the strength of the skeleton warrior she had fought back in Logan’s inn, fortunately.
She only needed not to get careless; a veteran warrior shouldn’t have trouble avoiding attack from two or three directions at once, after all.
“Haah!”
She calmly fixed her eyes on the skeletons’ movements, and disposed of the one she regarded the most dangerous.
[Still, these numbers…]
Facing those skeleton soldiers who kept coming out one after another, with a momentum that could certainly be called inexhaustible, the breaths in Leina’s party became labored.
“This goes beyond ‘being outnumbered’ ”.
She complained briefly as she dodged the blade of a skeleton who wouldn’t let her catch her breath.
[If the Sword of the Unicorn was alive and well, I’d only have to let out the holy sound…]
Forced to fight a hard battle against the skeleton soldiers—making them lose their joints and collapse—, she noticed how much she’d come to rely on that power.
“How easily one gets used to a strong weapon.”
Muttering in self-derision, she thrust her sword at a skeleton that had jumped out from the right side.
*Thump!*
What came through her long sword was a clearly different feeling than when she broke a foe’s bone: the skeleton that had come out stuck out his right arm towards the point of her sword, and caught it with his bone.
“Damn!”
With no time to even chastise herself, she took on the attack of the soldier that approached from the other side with her shield, and with the same momentum, swung the shield down and crushed her foe.
“Kuh!”
Her left arm was numb.
[It seems I forced it too much.]
The skeleton who had caught her longsword wouldn’t stay still either; taking advantage of her focusing on the opposite side, he jabbed his rusty iron sword towards the flank of the blonde—one that wasn’t protected by armor.
“Eek!”
[I can’t dodge it.]
She closed her eyes, imagining the impending pain.
“Huh?”
However, it never came. The moment the rusty sword touched her soft skin, it weathered and crumbled into nothing.
Thankful for the miraculous event, she sent a kick at the skeleton—still watching his weathered sword, dumbfounded—and recovered her sword.
“Unpreparedness is one’s greatest enemy.”
Then, Leina swung her sword to intimidate the soldiers around her.
“Realize the power of the Iron Mountain weapons! Uhahahahahahahahahaha!”
In contrast with the struggling blonde, the dwarf moved forward as she crushed the creatures among a loud laughter.
Faced with the wide range of the battleaxe and its striking force, they were being destroyed without ever having the chance to get close.
Fortunately their stride was different, and Leina didn’t get left behind… under the circumstances, that would be a terrible idea.
“That’s some dreadful power, Ymir.”
The heiress called out to her comrade, who kept mowing down foes heroically.
“How is it, Miss Leina? Feeling like using my weapons from the Iron Mountain?”
“Battleaxes are not suitable for my swordsmanship.”
“Hahaha, that’s not the only weapon we make in our firm, you know. We do everything from knives to great swords, and of course we do special orders as well! If you wished to, Miss Leina, we could make one weapon for you comparable to the Thunderclap the Lord of Thunder has!”
As she kept on her sales pitch, she brought down more skeletons.
“Thanks, but I have enough weapons for now.”
She shook the dust of her sword, and kept following Ymir from up close.
“Pity! Just let me know whenever you change your mind!”
Even as she talked, she never let up with her attacks.
“Eeei, you fellas sure are persistent.”
“How many of them have you defeated?”
“Well, I stopped counting after ten.”
As they talked, Leina looked backwards. The road they had travelled was shining white with the remains of the crushed skeletons.
“I wonder how many will come out?”
“Did you get tired? You youngsters are so undisciplined.”
The dwarf laughed, her battleaxe making a whooshing sound as it cut the air.
“Although, I’m getting a bit tired myself, don’t we have any killer technique?”
“It’d sure be nice if we…”
As she said so, Leina remembered the Sword of the Unicorn, giving off a slight warmth inside her cleavage.
[The holy sound is—as all sounds are—actually a wave. Maybe the Devil Ring is blocking the hole the sound comes from, but you just can’t seal a small wave.
If I could amplify the vibration…]
She looked around her, and her gaze ended up resting on the huge pillars, that jumped into her eyes.
[There!]
Recalling the heavy basses that had resounded back when Ymir had struck it with the battleaxe, she decided to carry out a certain strategy.
“Ymir!”
“What is it? I'm busy here.”
Still, the princess turned around after cleaving more soldiers with her weapon.
“Can we retreat back to the pillars?”
“Hm~, the word ‘retreat’ isn’t in the dwarves’ dictionary.”
“Then, let’s go forward to the pillars.”
“Got it!”
After confirming that Ymir had changed her stance, the blonde ran to the side of a pillar.
“What do you intend to do?”
“Buy me a little time!”
She took out the Sword from her cleavage, and pressed its point towards the pillar.
[Lend me your strength, Fio!]
Screaming inside her as a prayer, she put her lips to the back of the Sword of the Unicorn.
The vibrations of the weapon got transmitted to the pillar, and the holy sound got amplified to a scale it had never been before. The vibrations in the air resonated from pillar to pillar, becoming an enormous wave of sound that reached all over the island.
Upon being directly hit by the vibration, the skeleton soldiers raised a horrifying scream.
“I made it.”
“Magnificent…”
As they were still bathed by the holy sound multiplied by the pillars, Ymir couldn’t help but admire how it was making all the skeletons collapse.
***
A sailboat was aiming for Fiend Island, braving the seas as it went. Its name, as it appeared ahead of the sails, was: Erebus.
Its forecastle and broadside were lower than many cargo ships, conveying that this ship was built for battle rather than transporting any cargo. Drawn on its widely spread mainsail, was a motif of a white tiger—the coat of arms of the Earl Vance.
Sailboat aficionados, let alone seamen, would easily notice that one of its masts had a strange shape: the huge column rising in the center of the hull was a slingshot used to attack castles. It was a new weapon of the Earl Vance’s naval force: a sailing ship built to attack coastal enemy fortresses, difficult to attack from land.
When Elina—after failing to catch her sister—came to Sheldan, what awaited her was information that Leina had gotten in a dwarven ship and departed. Their destination was obtained from the dwarves that remained in the Iron Mountain firm, but their prey was already far beyond the seas.
The very moment it seemed they had no way to follow, the maid Irma found the Erebus anchored at the dock. Her mistress immediately commandeered it, and the hunt resumed.
Since they belonged to the Earl Vance, they couldn’t go against the orders of Elina—2nd heiress and Captain of the Royal Guards. She didn’t need much more than to pull rank, but as a captain herself, she knew how to change their dissatisfaction into motivation: she addressed the crew, who had their rest interrupted, and promised to pay a suitable reward if she saw her goal accomplished.
“Can’t we go faster, Captain Shade?”
As her blonde hair swayed with the sea breeze, she called out to Moon Shade, a grey-haired middle-aged man in control of the warship.
“The wind’s direction works against us, Princess.”
He replied, in a servile-like butler tone.
“Under similar conditions, they’ll have the advantage, since their hull is light and they have many strong rowers. In addition, since the Erebus has many heavy siege weapons, our speed will naturally be slower. It will be hard for us to catch up to them.”
Narrowing her eyes at his words, she stared at the wave crests.
“We should lose some weight.”
“Sorry, there’s nothing we can throw away.”
“Come to think of it, when I went around to check out the whole ship, I was shown the hold.”
She didn’t miss how the captain’s eyebrows twitched when she mentioned the word ‘hold’.
“Half of the cargo or more is alcohol, isn’t it? Wouldn’t we be lighter if we threw some away?”
“Miss Elina.”
“W-What?”
She had trouble reacting when the captain’s voice suddenly became stern.
“That’s indispensable for a man of the sea. You might be the Earl’s daughter, and the Captain of the Royal Guards, but if you give the order to discard that, you will be in grave danger.”
“Are you, threatening me?”
“No, I’m warning you.”
Feeling something dangerous in his gaze, Elina kept quiet.
[Even if the whole Erebus crew turned on me, I’m sure I could defeat them.]
However, neither Elina nor Irma could operate the ship. To say nothing of how the usually reliable Irma couldn’t stand up right now due to seasickness. With the maid being as she was from Gainos, in the center of the Continent, the blonde figured her helper had never boarded a boat and gotten into the ocean.
Elina gave a small sigh.
[In this world, when it rains, it pours.]
“I appreciate your advice.”
Now it was his turn to falter before her honest reply.
“I can’t afford to have the crew rebel against me.”
She turned her gaze towards the bow again.
[I can’t let go of the chance to capture my sister Leina.]
The Erebus kicked up the wave crests, sailing over the ocean towards Fiend Island.
***
With even his faint vitality remaining being sucked out, Fio’s head hung down. If he hadn’t been bound hand and foot, he’d have collapsed on the floor.
“Congratulations on your revival, Master Swordswoman Maria.”
Just when the pink girl called out to the woman who had released her lips from Fio’s, she heard a faint tone.
“Is this sound the Sword of the Unicorn?”
[It was something I heard many times in the elven forest, there’s no doubt about it.]
The sound came from the very walls of the basement. As if the earth itself was singing.
At the same time, the room began to shake, as if suffering in agony. Unable to bear the violent shaking, Maria kneeled down.
“W-Wha-wha-wha-wha…”
Melona changed her body into a shape that wouldn’t fall down, and waited for the shaking to stop.
“This miiight be bad.”
The wave of the holy sound emitted by the Sword had the effect of purifying otherworldly beings. It could have a lethal effect against the thing they were trying to sacrifice Fio’s vitality to revive.
The shapeshifter checked the progress of the revival on the crystal ball, and frowned her eyebrows in the shape of an inverted V.
“Just what are you doing? You’re so mean!”
Leina didn’t seem to know about their plans, but the action she had taken might interfere with them: she had driven the holy sound directly as a vibration into the pillars buried in the island.
“Maybe it’s still okay, by a hair's breadth tho…”
Some cracks had surfaced in the basic skeleton, but it seemed like the thing would hold if they didn’t work it too hard.
“Le… ina…”
A whisper escaped the boy’s lips.
“Ooh my? You’re still conscious.”
She looked away from the crystal ball, and back at Fio. His eyes didn’t have a light to them anymore, and they lacked focus. The gloss of his skin had deteriorated, as well.
If she just left him like that, he’d be ceasing to breathe in just a few more absorptions.
“It’d be easier for you if you faint, y’know.”
She poked his head lightly, and turned her head around to Maria, who was kneeling, enduring the tremors.
[I’m so busy, I have to take care of everything myself.]
“I’ll have to prepare some clothes for you.”
[We can’t have her nude in just a crown forever.]
The resurrected woman showed no reaction to her call in the slightest.
“Maria?”
Last time, the resurrected Ancient Princess Menace had been able to converse with her at the time of her revival, showing human-like reactions.
And still, Maria had yet to utter a single word.
[Did the revival end in failure?
Maria is an important factor in the plan. If the resuscitation went awry, the witch’s sure to get angry.
Maybe the crown I placed on her to keep her consciousness under control has affected the process.]
“Gaaaaaaah!”
In front of the scowling Melona, the woman held her head and screamed.
[No, this isn’t a scream. It’s a wild cry.]
“M-Miss… Maria?”
Before the pink girl—surprised by the other’s sudden eccentric behavior—, the resurrected woman’s appearance began to change.
Her human features, brimming with beauty and elegance, were covered with a white and black tiger striped fur in a moment, turning her into a white tiger in a person’s shape.
“I-It can’t be.”
White beast ears grew on the top of her head, and a slender tail extended from the part where her exquisite butt flesh began to divide into two lumps.
Melona had an inkling of what might be happening: some of the remains of the Master Swordswoman Maria—that they had acquired surreptitiously in order to revive her—were mixed in with one of the white tigers buried with her.
She had tried to remove those before the revival process, and the witch should also have confirmed it for herself, but…
“We knew there was some possibility of it happening, but why did the white tiger factor express itself now of all times?”
Disregarding the slime girl, who was staring in wonder, the other raised a beastly shout. With a *clank* sound, the black crown fitted on her head fell down.
“Crap!”
The other stretched her hands in a hurry to collect it. However, it escaped them by a paper-width’s difference, and jumped around in the floor with a dry metallic sound.
“Kyauh! Crap! No good!”
With a scream of her own, she increased the number of hands to try and grab it.
“I-It’s fragile, handle it with care!”
Her complaints intensified when she began to see many cracks forming in the object.
Seemingly not caring about her predicament, Maria raised another load roar.
“Hiah!”
The cry made the air vibrate, forming ripples in the slime girl’s body.
“That’s at the same level as Menace’s Shout.”
As if responding to her cry, a part of the floor rose and spat out a long sword and an armor. She took no notice of the armor, and only grabbed the wide barbarian sword.
“Guah!”
Reacting to her howl, the exit to the room appeared. It was a proof that the features built into her as she was revived were working normally.
“Are you going out…?”
After she spoke, Maria swung the barbarian sword without hesitation at her.
“Gyah!”
Easily separated from her upper body, she jumped back. If she hadn’t been an amorphous creature, that would have been a lethal blow.
“H-Hey, I’m your ally.”
Still torn in half, she scrambled to show the palms of her hands, making clear she bore no hostility.
“Seriously, you barbarians are mother and daughter alright, she did aim for my head suddenly that time…”
Maria gave a low groan, glaring with her blue and golden eyes.
“Y-You know, we should probably call you the Beast Empress now, instead of the Master Swordswoman.”
After one last glance at the joking Melona, the Beast Empress Maria turned her sight towards the exit.
“Are you going out~?”
“Gaah!”
The revived woman barked, and ran off towards the exit at once.
“H-Have a nice day.”
Melona was left behind at her wits’ end, with a troubled expression on her face to match.
“If she runs away now, what do we do?”
She took out the crystal ball from her body, and softly whispered magic words.
Inside the ball, an image of Maria running towards the ground appeared.
“If I don’t keep her within sight at the very least, this will get ugly.”
If she managed to bring down Leina and her Sword of the Unicorn, it’d be cause for celebration.
“I’ll have to do something about this thingie afterwards.”
She looked at the crown in her hand, and gave a sigh.
“Can I even fix it? Might be impossible with so many cracks…”
The Beast Empress was an essential part to carry out their plan. While she was out fighting somewhere, she had to repair the crown they had prepared to control her.
“Well, I won’t know until I try.”
She tucked it away inside her body and left for the workshop, crystal ball in hand.
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