[V11C11] The Strength and Fearsomeness of Humans
Translated by Jodas 11: Envoy of the AbyssWith Wren and Sevil in tow, Tia ran across the Wedge Tower’s campus, keeping her ears perked all the while.
Her sister, Charonlala, sang a song from up above, intent on putting the humans around in a weakened state. To counteract that, the sound of a gentle fiddle and singing voice could be heard from the main gate in the South.
(That has to be Spiremaster Alto.)
The old lady who taught Tia choral magic was going toe-to-toe against a Harpy with nothing more than a single instrument and her own voice.
Yet it could not fully cancel out the song. As soon as Charonlala noticed there was a human playing music around the main gate, she headed towards the North side. The Harpy’s song drifted away from the human music. The more distant they were, the more potent the Harpy would become.
Most importantly, whereas Harpies could fly around singing wherever they went, humans had a hard time moving around rapidly, playing an instrument, and singing all at the same time.
(North… That’s where Rikard and the others are…)
There was only one other who could resist Charonlala’s songs — Tia herself.
Tia fretted, but Sevil turned to her and said:
“Is that your sister, Tia?”
“Uh-huh.”
Both Sevil and Wren knew how much Tia wanted to see her sister. Neither of them had the heart to tell Tia to go fight Charonlala.
It was a very human expression of kindness — of naïveté.
(But I am a Harpy.)
Tia pulled on the lever of her Magical Flying Device. The shorter metal wings of her leaping mode sprang out.
Tia was the only one here who could put up a fight against Charonlala.
“I’m going up there. Take care of the ground for me.”
“Tia…!”
Wren called Tia’s name, but then bit his lip.
Wren had to have been conflicted. He didn’t want to make Tia fight her own sister, but he knew the circumstances would not let things go so smoothly.
Wren searched through his whole vocabulary, found his words, and then swallowed them. Then, he slowly forced out the only words he had left.
“If you run into trouble, just call your favorite pretty boy!”
“Piyopp! Thank you, pretty boy!”
Lifted by her leaping wings, Tia bounded into the sky. Finding a foothold on the edge of a nearby building, she leapt once more, until she reached an altitude where she could swap to flying mode.
Riding along the wind currents, Tia opened her mouth wide. In time with the fiddle and Alto’s singing she could hear from the main gate, she began to sing.
Choral magic was a form of magecraft that relied on conveying mana through one’s voice. However, the effects were limited — sapping strength, hypnosis, charming, and the like — and the efficacy was vastly inferior to what a Harpy could accomplish.
Therefore, Spiremaster had to put all of her effort towards cancelling out the Harpy’s song. Tia likewise matched her rhythm and sang to nullify her sister’s song.
— In the skies above the Wedge Tower, two songs dueled.
No matter how masterful the music was, the discordant clash between the two created a horrendous cacophony.
This was not the sort of fun time singing with her sister that she had imagined. This was a battle to the death, between one Harpy and another.
Once Charonlala noticed Tia’s presence, she caught the wind on her wings and rocketed up high.
(She’s gonna attack!)
Harpies hunted by tearing apart their prey with the talons on their feet. That meant she could not attack unless she was above her prey. In a battle between bird-type Monsters, securing the altitude advantage was the key to victory.
Charonlala broke into a dive, aiming at Tia with her talons. Those talons were sharp enough to slice open a human’s skull with ease.
“LuuaaAAA…!”
While continuing to sing, Tia dodged the attack. As she did, she climbed higher as well.
Suddenly, the Eyeball Birds that had been circling nearby all came after her at once. With the Eyeball Birds blocking her path, she was unable to fly any higher. Charonlala took this opportunity to take the height advantage once more.
(Sis, a Harpy, working with the Eyeball Birds…? No, that can’t be it. They’ve gotta be here to steal her prey.)
Harpies and Eyeball Birds had a long history of clashes and skirmishes over territory.
The other, land-bound Monsters were much the same. Be they plant Monsters, bug Monsters, reptile Monsters, or Beast Monsters. All were adversaries in a constant battle for turf. Monsters killing each other over such things was a frequent sight.
Yet now, rather than fight over territory, it seemed that they instead had a single-minded fixation on taking humans, the objects of their obsession, from beneath each other’s noses.
(These Monsters aren’t quite working together… They’re just swarming their prey to claim dibs.)
Humans, on the other hand, were quite different.
Bolts of lightning magic descended on the Eyeball Birds around Tia. The birds fell out of the flock, crashing down towards the ground.
Behind the lightning magic was the flight-magic-using Director of the Extermination Office, Haydn.
“You’re Tia aren’t you? The Apprentice!? What are you doing here!? Aren’t you going to get mana poisoning!?”
Haydn wasn’t anywhere near as deep into the Wedge Tower as Tia was. Probably it was because the mana density hadn’t yet dropped to a safe level.
Nonetheless, he drew as close as he could with his flight magic and tried to support Tia.
With a roar, a blast of hot air accompanied a massive fireball that burned through one Eyeball Bird after another. This attack, tremendously powerful even from Tia’s perspective as a Monster, was fired off by Hegelich, standing on the ground a ways away.
“You!? Why in the world is there an Apprentice here!? Don’t tell me, are the others…!?”
“Piroro… Director Hegelich! I’m sooorry!”
“This isn’t the sort of thing you can fix by apologizing, you! Get down here and explain yourself this instant!”
Of course, she didn’t have time to explain herself.
Charonlala’s song changed. Now, instead of weakness, it was a song that lulled its listeners to a gentle sleep.
And mixed in that song, her sister whispered in a voice only Tia could hear.
— Leave, leave this place, Folulutia. I’m begging you.
A Harpy’s throat could make three voices at once, but Tia could not do so while she was in human form.
Instead, she put her emotion into her voice, and responded in song.
— I’m sorry, sis, I’m sorry.
Still sticking to her human form, Tia sang with her claustrophobically small throat. It may have felt suffocating, but she has already grown quite accustomed to singing in this body.
Spiremaster Alto continued to play, picking songs that were easy for Tia to sing along to. Playing and singing constantly as she was doing must have taken quite the toll on her by this point, but nevertheless that old human kept on playing her instrument and belting out her voice, no matter how drenched in sweat she became.
And so, Tia added her own song in support.
(You know, Sis, humans are really amazing.)
Humans were weak. Just a little scratch and they could die.
Tia reckoned, however, that the strength of humans was strength in numbers. Just the sheer amount of them alone made them a formidable opponent.
While they were weaker than Monsters, humans used agriculture to stabilize their food supply, and built a herd called ‘society’ to protect their weak. Thus their numbers multiplied.
She recalled Hütter’s lesson.
“The rules of society fundamentally exist to protect the weak… Well, there are definitely powerful people out there who add rules that benefit themselves, but that’s not the point. Essentially, rules are there to protect people. Things like ‘don’t kill people’ or ‘don’t deceive people.’ If those rules didn’t exist, people would just run around doing whatever they wanted, you know?”
Don’t kill, don’t deceive. From those sorts of rules emerged an order that protected the weakest individuals and helped the species multiply.
If this was Monsters we were talking about, the weakest ones would have been crushed.
Yet because humans could grow their numbers under this order, they could accumulate and share their knowledge. They could move in organized groups and overwhelm the Monsters. This was the humans’ strength.
While the Apprentices who snuck in from underground weren’t significant battle assets by any means, they still had a definite impact towards turning the tables in the humans’ favor. This was an area where humans should never have been able to enter under the current mana density. Simply the mere fact that intruders had made it in meant that the Monsters now had to be on guard for threats both inside and outside the walls.
In the emerging chaos, it was the humans with their more orderly command structures who held the upper hand. The Monsters, meanwhile, had no aptitude for precise commands. Even if some species might be able to coordinate among themselves, any combination of different species would lead to them fighting over who got the prey. There was no hope of them moving in sync the way humans could.
— Humans find ways for even their weakest to help the collective. They can do that because they understand how powerful they can be in a group.
Tia climbed a little higher, then looked down at how the battle around the Wedge Tower was progressing.
Without a doubt, the most impactful fighter at the main gate was Rose. The thorny vines he controlled attacked Monsters, provided support like Spiremaster Alto was doing, and absorbed the excess mana. He was doing three jobs at once, and doing them well.
To the West, Sevil’s ‘Darling’ was holding off the Primordial Beast, the most formidable threat, all by himself. The soldiers from his army were likewise holding formation as they cut through waves of Monsters.
There was also Rikard and Helena in the North and Director Hegelich in the East. Each person on those fronts was fighting their hardest. It would only be a matter of time before the mana density dropped enough for them to charge in past the walls.
Some of the weakest Monsters made an attempt to break out and leave the Wedge Tower. Such Monsters fell on after another to the swords and bows of the reinforcing army. Already, the Wedge Tower was trapped in a layered encirclement.
(Sis, this is what makes humans strong.)
Since Monsters were strong, they never had a need for order.
Since humans were weak, they needed order. In the end, that let them grow their species and become strong.
…Now it made sense to her. It was only no wonder that the Monsters were driven out and confined to the Crystal Territory.
Julius headed to a part of the Wedge Tower’s campus with the most trees alongside Sophie and Gerald. The Ancient Magical Devices ‘Ignatius, the Severer’ and ‘Despina, the Chain of Fools’ were not lying on the ground where they had been dropped, but they figured it was always worth checking just to be sure.
Ancient Magical Devices posed a grave danger to the Monsters. So the odds were high that they had already been destroyed… But Monsters cared little for such tools, so they were betting on the chance the Monsters may have just left them lying around.
Julius didn’t care much for Ancient Magical Devices himself either. Still, he had Gerald, who knew how to handle a sword, and Sophie, who had the potential to use ‘Despina, the Chain of Fools,’ with him. If they could get their hands on the Ancient Magical Devices, it should give them a huge advantage over the Monsters.
To prevent Agniol from running off at an inopportune moment, Julius held her close to his chest as he followed along behind Gerald.
Sophie’s eyes darted back and forth; she looked nervous.
“Julius, Sophie, hold on.”
Gerald suddenly spoke up, causing both Julius and Sophie to stumble a bit. Neither of them were nearly as athletic as Gerald after all.
Gerald’s hand was already on the hilt of his sword. Something rustled in the bushes nearby. They could hear the ragged breathing of a beast. A beast-type Monster.
“GrrroOOOWWLL!”
Jumping out just in front of them was a black wolf.
From its neck dangled an ornament fashioned from a fang.