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Arc#5 Chapter 30: Pincer

  Twenty large ships tailor-made to transport massive War Golems were found at the bottom of the sea. Each was presumably stuffed full of Arkhanian survivors, so the lives lost were immense.

  Reivan tried very hard not to punch something when he heard the news.

  It was, perhaps, a blessing in disguise that the forces of Samsara were using their sky arks as lodgings now. Doing so split them up and slowed the spread of bad tidings.

  The knights and the darkin, at least, would have been fine since they were comparatively less attached to Arkhan and its people.

  Of course, they weren't evil gremlins who took pleasure in the suffering of others, so they wouldn't be happy about it either. But they would undoubtedly feel a sense of distance from the tragedy, akin to a modern person hearing how some kids in a third-world country somewhere in Africa or Southeast Asia were dying of hunger and disease—they would sympathize, sure, but very few would actually take action.

  The sorcerers that made up the majority of the Samsaran Expedition Forces were another matter.

  A lot of the mages threw their lot in with Samsara due to practical reasons like securing protection for themselves, obtaining employment, or simply because they weren't spoiled for choice. But most of these sorcerers were, in their hearts, still Arkhanian. And they had all come here to save as many Arkhanians as they could.

  Finding out that twenty ginormous ships full of their countrymen probably ended up as fish food was not going to do any favors for morale.

  Such an outcome wouldn’t cause any big issues. For one thing, nobody was going to desert given the sheer lack of anywhere else to go. Sabotage was counterintuitive too. This expedition would stick with them for the rest of their lives—because even though they ultimately succeeded, it did not feel like they’d won.

  Reivan felt the same, honestly. Night had come and passed, and with it, a new dawn rose. And yet, the bitter taste in his mouth was still there.

  It was, perhaps, a good thing this expedition was essentially a military operation, because he had a perfectly viable excuse to skip his usual morning routine. He simply wasn’t in the mood and would likely not achieve much anyway.

  ‘The seas are so vast. How unlucky were they to stumble upon something that could take out twenty ships...?’

  Nobody would ever debate whether the open seas were dangerous or not because even children of this world knew that it was full of hidden horrors. But if you rode a big enough vessel and traveled in large “packs”, the lesser sea monsters would usually leave the group alone, thinking the ships were a large family of sea creatures.

  To run into anything that would see such a large group of massive ships as prey was incredibly rare. And even then, they would usually just take out one ship and be satisfied with the harvest from that.

  Yet twenty ships were sunk. And they were all in the same general area.

  ‘Hm. I suppose it didn’t have to be a single entity. Maybe the fleet happened upon a really large group. That’d explain why all of them got taken out.’

  Regardless, a tragedy had just come to light.

  “Yani?”

  Reivan pried his eyes away from the vast open sea, pushing against the sky ark’s railing to turn to his sister. “Did they send word already?”

  Jiji nodded, dressed in a modest but charming black and gold dress. Her snow-white hair was in a fairly elaborate milkmaid braid that made her look like she was wearing a crown. She looked nice, as usual, and he would have complimented her too if times were better.

  “And?” he asked, his gaze urging her to elaborate.

  “The Golden Gear held a vote last night and it was mostly—according to them—unanimous,” she said. “So they’ll spend this morning getting ready. They even gave us some numbers.”

  “Great.” Reivan smiled. Finally, some good news. Though he was about sixty percent sure things would go well on the Golden Gear front, his sister’s words finally concluded the situation. “How many survivors do they have in there?”

  “Apparently about seven hundred. Not including the golem pilots themselves or the few sorcerers they have.”

  “That’s…”

  Not that much, he almost said. But he managed to beat the words in his throat down before they crawled out. If he was being honest, he wanted there to be more so they could at least say that they had saved more lives than they missed. It wouldn’t do much, but he hoped it would provide a measure of solace to anyone who felt bad about the twenty lost ships.

  That hope had just gone up in smoke.

  “There’s no need to take multiple trips or have Zee eat them then.” Reivan gestured at the fleet of sky arks all around them, anchored at sea. “We can squeeze them into some of the ships if we distribute them.”

  Jiji nodded, but he didn’t miss the awkwardness of her movements.

  He realized immediately. “There’s something else, isn’t there? There’s always something else, goddamn it…”

  "It's not what you think."

  "Just tell me. Get it over with."

  “Okay, so I took the initiative in giving them some supplies after they agreed,” she explained hastily, as if racing against his depression. “You know, so the people packing up their stuff don’t have to do it hungry. And who knows if any of them were about to die from it. Medicine, clothes, and boots too. They really appreciated that. I popped in to take a look.”

  Reivan crossed his arms and grunted. “Good thinking. That’s not bad news though…”

  “The tricky part is that a portion of the Golden Gear won’t be coming with us. Or rather, they’ve already left.”

  “...Hah?”

  “Oh, but they gave us leave to empty their warehouse. Each of the leavers only took one of the smaller Assault Golems. We can take the vast majority of their stock.”

  Reivan frowned as he scratched the back of his head, confused at what to make of the situation.

  Even if the Golden Gear didn’t let them take their stock of golems, Samsara had control—or was poised to take control—of Eastern Arkhan, which held a lot of industrial production sites including golem factories. While not numerous, there were still golem pilots left in Lageton and schematics were available.

  What they all really came here for were the pilots.

  Controlling golems required a certain aptitude for it and didn’t depend on acquired knowledge or skill—which meant Reivan couldn’t just mass-produce a swarm of golem pilots by using a pearl of wisdom. This fact made the trained and experienced golem pilots of the Golden Gear much more valuable in this war, where only mortals could participate.

  Reivan turned an inquisitive gaze at his sister. “How many left and how many are coming?"

  “One hundred and twelve left, including that Head Engineer Barithos you talked to yesterday. The other two hundred or so pilots are willing to come and work for us.”

  “Huh? So there were only about three hundred pilots down there? That’s significantly fewer than what we came here for, no?”

  “Well…” Jiji averted her gaze for a moment before continuing. “Some of them splintered off…”

  And there it was. The reason she seemed reluctant.

  “The boats?” he breathed out.

  “The boats,” she confirmed with a solemn nod. “Not all of them, naturally. Some more journeyed deeper into Arkhanian lands, going back to their homes to search for their families.”

  “Any who went north are goners, then. I sent the darkin to scout north and they found another imperial coalition.” Reivan closed his eyes and sighed. “There might still be hope if they headed eastward—which is to say they journeyed to Southern Arkhan. But the heat there is the worst because that's where the elf Transcendent lit himself on fire the longest.”

  “We should take this chance to send people to scour that place then. House Barial approached me about their clan volunteering for roles like these. They said the heat has grown mild enough that they can barely feel it now.”

  “Barial…”

  Reivan recalled they were another one of the Four High Magus Families. And contrary to House Demoscene which seemed to have an affinity with water, House Barial preferred flames.

  “What’s the catch?” he asked, a bit skeptical. There was often a hidden agenda when people volunteered for cumbersome tasks. “They want preferential treatment and a private sky ark too?”

  Jiji shook her head, the corners of her lips quirking up into a smile. “They said they just want to do it because they’re the best for the job.”

  “Uh-huh. And what do you think?”

  “They probably don’t like how House Demoscene was strutting around as if the Four Houses were about to become Three Houses and One. With the One standing above the other three.”

  Reivan, again, sighed as he massaged the bridge of his nose. “I really don’t like internal politics and pissing contests like this, so please make sure their competitive spirits don’t become a problem. Please? There, I said please twice. Now you have to do it.”

  “Fine, fine...” Jiji playfully bumped him with her shoulder. “You won’t even notice they’re fighting.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. If you feel thankful though, why not reward me?”

  In exasperation, Reivan rounded on her with a frown. “Now’s not the time for these jokes, Jiji.”

  “What jokes?” Jiji turned away, feigning ignorance. “In any case, we’d better collect the golems. We’ll need Zouros’ help since we’ll have an easier time storing things with him around. I’ve seen their spatial storage artifacts and they’re all huge. Which, I suppose, makes sense because what they’re meant to store are equally massive.”

  He scowled as he watched her change the subject, but she was right. Since the Golden Gear agreed to relinquish all their golems to Samsara, then it was better to seize them as soon as possible.

  They really were better off just getting the hell out of this area as soon as they could.

  The secret base in the dried lake didn’t have a very complicated structure.

  Its first level was mainly miscellaneous rooms like the cramped meeting room Reivan entered yesterday. Then there was an elevator that led to other expansive underground floors, most of which served as warehouses for golems.

  Specifically, they served as the spatial storage devices that stored ten War Golems each.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Due to recent events imploring the base’s masters to take in evacuees, the bottommost floor reserved for excess parts was modified to facilitate habitation. It was cold there too, apparently, because prolonged heat and humidity might deteriorate exposed parts, so the place was the perfect temporary residence for the survivors.

  That was not where Reivan, Jiji, Sir Xander, and the very rattled engineer they commandeered as their escort were headed.

  Between the bottom and the surface floor, there were two floors that were kept relatively untouched.

  ‘These look like shipping containers.’

  Reivan couldn’t help but think as he scanned the spacious chamber. Despite it being about as large as the interior of a famous sports stadium, the walls and the floor were coated in thick steel. Yet that wasn’t as important as the sheer number of house-sized rectangular implements filling the place. Rows upon rows upon rows of the stuff.

  “There are ten War Golems in each of these?” Jiji confirmed with their unwilling guide, who twitched upon being suddenly addressed.

  “Y-Yes!” the Arkhanian responded, a little too loudly due to his fraying nerves. “Each of the War Golems will have a hundred Assault Golems inside of them too.”

  Jiji thanked the man and turned to him, speaking in their home tongue so the Arkhanian wouldn’t understand. “These spatial storage devices are massive. I’ve never seen ones this big.”

  “Well, the stuff they’re containing is the size of buildings.” Reivan shrugged. “War Golems are bigger than most buildings, so it makes sense.”

  Their spatial rings were top-quality stuff, so despite being so small, they could fit a few warehouses worth items—but not the warehouses themselves. They had to be this big, considering what they were meant to contain. The fact that each of the shipping container-like spatial storage artifacts could have ten of those things inside was crazy to him.

  “I’m not well versed in artificing,” Jiji walked up to one of the containers and gave it a hard tap, the sound revealing that it wasn’t hollow, but rather a large solid block of metal. “But didn’t the republic have bad artificers? That’s why they used magitech or whatever it’s called, no?”

  Reivan was stumped on this subject, but it seemed Sir Xander had something to offer.

  “They still have artificers, however few they may be,” the knight said. “And from what I know of artificing, artificing skill actually just allowed one to create more compact artifacts. With such a large block of material to work with, however, the gap between an extremely skilled artificer and someone with mediocre skill becomes irrelevant.”

  Apparently, if one of the kingdom’s best artificers and one of the republic’s were asked to make a hundred of these crates, the resulting products would be about the same. Except the former would complete the task much quicker, and perhaps the artifacts themselves would last longer.

  In any case, that pretty much sated the two royals’ curiosity on the subject.

  “Better get to work,” Reivan crossed his arms, turning to their guide again. “I’m just making sure, but the War Golems here don’t have any spatial storage enchantments themselves, right?”

  “Huh? Th-that’s right, Your Excellency. The War Golems physically contain the Assault Golems.”

  “They don’t have built-in spatial storage devices to hold ammunition or things like that?”

  The guide’s eyes widened. “No, Your Excellency. But that’s a good idea to add…”

  Reivan grinned at the man. “I see. Thanks for the clarification. You can leave us now. We’ll find our way to the next floor when we’re done here.”

  Once their guide left, Jiji and Xander started taking out spatial storage artifacts shaped like suitcases from their rings—except they weren’t suitcases that opened up, but rather, boxes with a handles for ease of carrying.

  “Right, let’s get to work,” Reivan said as he summoned Zouros, who then started devouring the storage containers on the farther end of the hall. Meanwhile, Reivan, Jiji, and Sir Xander worked together to fill the suitcases.

  The fundamental law in spatial artifacts was that you could put storage artifacts inside other storage artifacts if the latter was extremely well-crafted. But you could not put a storage artifact containing another storage artifact into another storage artifact even if they were the masterpieces of the best artificer in history.

  To make it easier to understand, Reivan could put some of these shipping containers into the suitcase-shaped artifacts without issue. But if he then put said suitcase into his ring, then there was a very high likelihood that he would be sent to the afterlife by the ensuing spatial distortion that would occur—after a short delay to say his prayers or potentially make a run for it, of course.

  Luckily, Zouros’ stomach seemingly didn’t count, so it could eat suitcases full of rings without exploding. That made his serpentine comrade one of the perfect assistants for retrieving all this loot and promptly heading home.

  Reivan and his two happy helper’s use of the suitcases was just to speed things along.

  This also made things easier later because the containers that Zouros ate up would have to be stored in suitcases when they got home anyway. It was more compact, after all. They just had to add a warning label on the suitcases in case someone tried to chuck them in a ring.

  With a voracious giant serpent and three Senior-grade Knights, the work was done in a jiffy and they went off to the next floor. The three didn’t help with this one because they had discovered how easily Zouros could do the entire task by itself. They would only be saving it a few seconds at most.

  “There we go,” Reivan warmly received the shrunken serpent’s body after it had done a job well done, giving it a good rub which it clearly liked. “Cleaned house.”

  Xander cocked an eyebrow and gestured at the floor. “Aren’t there more below, Your Excellency?”

  “Spare parts,” Jiji answered. “They kept all the containers away from there in case one of the survivors accidentally summoned a War Golem and crushed them all to death. Don’t worry about those. I already tasked the battlemages with retrieving those. I also lent them one of the suitcases to help store the citizens’ belongings.”

  A lesser ruler would have been angered by her constantly doing things without consulting him, but Reivan was once again appreciative of having so many competent people around him.

  The things that slipped through his attention didn’t turn into problems because his allies were resolving the situations before they became situations. Though ultimately small and insignificant to Reivan and Jiji, the small gesture would help endear the Arkhanians to them. And that was on top of the supplies Jiji handed out in Samsara’s name earlier.

  Without even lifting a finger himself, Reivan’s reputation was probably benefiting from his sister’s actions too.

  Smiling, Reivan reached over to give her head a light pat. But of course, he didn’t want to mess up her braid so he didn’t do it as roughly as he did when they were little. “Good thinking.”

  Jiji grabbed his hand before he withdrew it, placing it atop her head again. She smiled sweetly at him. “Praise me more, Yani.”

  “Go to hell.” Reivan rolled his eyes, internally cursing at how his heart quickened ever so slightly. He then turned around and made for the elevator. “There’s nothing left to do here so let’s get back up.”

  Seemingly amused, Jiji nodded. “Alright. But don’t you want to talk to that girl?”

  Knowing who she meant, Reivan waved his hand dismissively. “Some other time. There’s no point to it right now.”

  “Don’t want to rip off the bandages yet?” she probed. “You feel bad about manipulating her, huh?”

  “... I won’t deny it.”

  Falling into step beside him, Jiji hooked her arm around his and patted his arm. “Don’t feel too bad. It wasn’t like you were doing it to be an asshole. You were performing work for the crown. That doesn’t mean sins aren’t sins anymore, but you didn’t do it with malice, at least.”

  Reivan had half a mind to pry his arm away, but could only sigh. “I was under the impression you were trying to make me feel better.”

  She hugged his arm tighter and grinned impishly. “They say the truth will set you free, but I think that doesn’t apply to every situation. My opinion? It’s better for you to just end things with her. Make her think her lover died in this whole debacle.”

  “That’s…” He licked his lip in thought. “Is that really for the best?”

  “Better than telling her the person she loved was never real. Just a disguise the prince used to dig out information about the president. Information that was never even used because the entire republic got devastated.”

  “I guess…”

  “If her lover died, and she found out,” Jiji continued, her words gradually convincing him. “Then she’ll find closure. She’ll get over it, in time. Maybe she’ll find someone better, and her memories with your fake identity will just be a pleasant souvenir from the past. Her first love ended tragically, but she was happy while it lasted. Not a bad ending, if I do say so myself.”

  Reivan nodded, slow and pensive. The alternative, he thought, would be revealing the truth to her. Which could go about any number of ways, of which none were good for him or her. Nobody would come out of it happy.

  Naturally, continuing to manipulate her by pretending to be her lover was out of the cards. He no longer had reason to do so.

  “Take it from me, Yani.” Jiji laughed, a little forlorn. “I would be devastated if I found out that the person I loved with all my heart was just leading me around and that he wasn’t even a real person at all. I’d be a lot better off if he never told me and just made me think as if he’d died where I couldn’t see.”

  “...Fine. I get it.” he relented. “She’ll probably try to send a message to one of my holostones. I’ll have a knight respond in my place. As if the holostone was found on some corpse.”

  “Good. Ah, and you should use the incident with the ships that House Demoscene found at the bottom of the sea. If she thinks her lover died due to Samsaran negligence, she might unreasonably resent us.”

  While they talked, Reivan discovered that they had somehow reached the surface. The sun was unpleasantly shining down on his face, making him summon cold energy around him and the two people with him to fend off the heat—which, he noted, was really starting to revert back to normal heat.

  As if to brighten the situation and divert it away from dark topics, Jiji shook his arm and said, “I think that by next month, the weather will be friendly enough for Samsara to really try some things. Agriculture, for one thing. And we can finally donate some livestock that won’t immediately die from overheating.”

  Reivan smiled at that, her attempt to raise his spirit succeeding. “If we clean up the shoreline, we could have them fish, too. Though I don’t think they’ll be self-sufficient any time soon.”

  “Patience, Yani. One lit candle at a time. Until the darkness is banished for good.”

  He couldn’t help but roll his eyes at that, but his grin remained. “Everybody’s quoting classics these days.”

  Jiji shrugged. “They’re classics for a reason.”

  “I suppose so.”

  They laughed, and for a moment, Reivan forgot that every decision he made could lead to lives being saved or forsaken.

  By noon, the fleet was ready to depart.

  They had scoured the lands and rescued as many survivors as they could, so much so that the sky arks were getting quite cramped. House Demoscene offered to give up their ride and ride their whale spirit beasts instead. Following them were House Morvala—the Four High Magus family that had [Wind] affinity—who offered to ride their avian spirit beasts on the way back.

  Reivan always had the option to have Zouros eat all the refugees temporarily, spitting them back out when they arrived in Lageton. But apparently, the pitiful things were looking forward to riding sky arks and Reivan didn’t have the heart to rob them of that chance. Not when the past months had been so hard on them.

  As such, House Demoscene and House Morvala were forced to take the loss. Both genuinely didn’t seem to have any problems with the arrangement, however.

  ‘Man, all those stories made me think most bigwigs were assholes, but everyone’s been mostly nice.’

  When he’d first heard about the Four High Magus Families of Vel Ayala, they had given him the impression that they were filled with prissy sorcerers who made a big deal of lineage and made it their entire personality. But all of the ones he’d met were workable so far.

  Elder Bernadine, the jolly and motherly elder he met when he was infiltrating the Spirit Tower, was a member of House Sentel, if he remembered correctly. And he was now being treated to the sight of Houses Demoscene and Morvala sacrificing their comfort for their own countrymen. House Barial, according to Jiji, had also offered to go on an expedition to Southern Arkhan to look for any survivors.

  ‘I guess they wouldn’t have remained at the top if they were assholes who wracked up resentment with their bad attitude, huh?’

  In any case, he would have to revise his impression of the Four Houses.

  Reivan was on his sky ark’s deck when someone landed right next to him. “Good afternoon, Lady Iselle. Anything of note?”

  The darkin princess saluted faultily, not quite used to the act just yet. “The empire is still far away and there are no signs of movement, Your Excellency. Though I have no way to confirm if they know of our actions here.”

  “Yes, we can’t really stop espers from peeking in on us from afar. Don’t mind it too much. Good work out there. The darkin’s presence here is a boon to my heart, knowing the skies belong to our side. Even if we didn’t clash with the empire in the end.”

  Reivan was worried that he had laid it on a little thick, but Iselle seemed to be very happy with his praise. He wasn’t exactly lying, either. Though he was certainly going the extra mile to make his gratitude known, so the darkin didn’t start associating merit with combat.

  With a nod to the sky ark’s captain, the ship surged forward and so did the rest of the fleet.

  Except for that one time with the espers, Reivan’s return trips from anywhere had been pretty peaceful. In some stories, something bad happened to the main character during those times, but his personal experiences proved otherwise.

  As such, he couldn’t help but think that those kinds of events really were just a plot device by the authors to induce some conflict.

  Sadly, his record of peaceful return voyages was about to receive another black mark after a surprise development.

  From beneath the water, gargantuan monsters akin to megalodons burst out of the sea. Their maws filled with jagged teeth opened to swallow unlucky sky arks whole. If it weren’t for their driver’s presence of mind, a few of the flying ships would have ended up in a giant monster’s stomach.

  And at the same time, large flying creatures could be seen slicing through the clouds from the mainland’s direction.

  Stunned, but mind working to analyze the situation as best as he could, Reivan manifested armor around his body as he inwardly cursed.

  ‘They’re fucking homunculi! Why are they swimming and flying…!?’

  Those abominations had never done that before. At least, there were no records of such things in the empire’s long history of fighting the kingdom.

  Which, Reivan lamented, meant they were new.

  Or maybe the empire invented them a long time ago but was waiting to unveil them when the treaty was signed. After all, the way the War God suggested the terms as if he’d already thought of them for a long time made Aizen’s wisemen think that the War God wanted to exclude immortals from interfering in wars a long time ago.

  The War God wouldn’t have suggested such conditions if it would place Argonia at a disadvantage.

  ‘These motherfuckers, I swear to Sormon…’

  Reivan gripped the ship’s railing hard as he glared at the incoming flying creatures.

  He was starting to think racism was valid when aimed at Argonians.

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