EP.297 A World Made of Gears - 4
*Whirrrr.* The projectile gear spun fiercely, scraping the grooves in succession. Accelerating instantly along the evenly spaced grooves, it flew right in front of my nose in the blink of an eye.
Still, seeing as it was visible to the naked eye, it wasn't as fast as Historia's qi-bullets. However, getting hit by a heavy gear would result in a massive impact.
‘Shoulder.’
But my ability is telepathy. I grasped where he was aiming and dodged a step ahead. The gear whizzed past where my shoulder had been, whipping up a whirlwind.
If it were Historia, it would hit the moment it was fired, making it absolutely impossible to dodge... But against Maximilian, who wasn't even a firearms specialist, this was manageable.
‘You dodged one. Not bad skill... Then how about a hundred?’
Huh?
Dozens, hundreds of gears crawled up Maximilian's entire body. The sight looked exactly like bugs swarming over a body. The gears that reached his shoulders slid down the contours of his body. Falling into rank and file, the gears that arrived at his wrists were sequentially loaded into his crossbows, accelerating along the grooves like before.
*Whirrrrrrrrrrrr.*
Now there was no aiming or anything. He intended to swing his arms and scatter the gears. No psychological warfare, just an indiscriminate spray relying on brute force. If he did this, telepathy was useless.
*Tch.* If you're a technical fighter, you should fight with fierce psychological warfare and a trump card, not this brute force! Instead of fighting a battle I couldn't win, I called my trusty sandbag.
“Azi!”
“Woof!”
The King of Dogs answered my call.
Azi, who had been scrambling up the Steel Beetle, leaped toward me without even a moment to catch his breath. Azi's head, having arrived in front of me, snapped to the side. The flying gears disappeared as if sucked into Azi's mouth.
Every time Azi worked his cheeks, a crunching sound rang out. Sparks flew from between his teeth. Each and every gear Maximilian used was at least a 4th-tier alchemy steel, but in front of Azi's teeth, they were just slightly hard dog treats.
No matter how many he shot, Maximilian only had two hands. Out of them all, Azi ghostly picked out the ones flying toward me and chewed them up.
The barrage ended. Azi, having spat out the last gear, stiffened his tail and howled long.
“Awooooo!”
The King of Dogs. Man's oldest friend still took my side. Even if he couldn't bite Maximilian to pieces, he would at least protect me from dying.
How about that? This is the power of the King of Humans...
“Even this is a half-baked power that can't fully reveal itself.”
Maximilian, who muttered softly, spread both his hands.
*Rumble rumble.* The ground beneath my feet shook. The Steel Beetle vibrated fiercely. At the sudden earthquake, Azi got spooked.
“Arf! Arf arf! Ground, move! Earthquake!”
“It's not an earthquake! The Steel Beetle is shaking!”
“Woof? Beetle?”
“No. It is an earthquake!”
Having half-heartedly resolved Azi's confusion, I sought the source of the tremor. The Steel Beetle hadn't moved.
For someone like me, who purely lacks in sheer power, massive weapons of mass are the most troublesome of all. Maximilian hadn't attempted it so far due to carelessness, but if the Steel Beetle were to charge at me, I would feel a massive threat to my life.
That was why I had climbed on top of the Steel Beetle, restraining Maximilian from moving it.
“I'm clearly blocking it, but how...?”
Maximilian kindly answered that.
“The Steel Beetle stores numerous spare gears for emergencies. It seems you can't control them since you can't reach them.”
The gears allowed to me were only those 'in contact' with me.
If two gears are interlocked, they are essentially no different from one large gear. Because the operating principle is the same. Therefore, I could control interlocking gears as well, and I even used that property to attack Maximilian.
However, I couldn't reach the ones scattered about in disorder. They were unrelated to me right now.
But Maximilian, who wasn't constrained by conditions like I was, could command them. For example, like this.
“How can gears move like this!”
The identity of what was creating the tremor was soon revealed.
Hundreds, thousands of gears rolled down the side of the Steel Beetle. They weren't moving by interlocking. They just 'rotated' and rolled like normal wheels. Without any particular control.
It was like a swarm of thousands of ants rushing in. Violence that pushes through with sheer numbers.
“Indeed, will the King of Dogs be able to save you this time as well?”
Damn it. If I could reach them, I could stop their rotation, but there was more than one or two, and the speed they built while rolling would deal a blow to me as is. I needed to intercept them before they arrived.
Desperately clutching at straws, I shouted.
“Azi! Kick them all away!”
“...Duh.”
Azi made the stupidest expression in the world. He just stares blankly at impossible demands. With a dog's intellect, no way to overcome this would come to mind.
Here, a human had to step up.
I took out a card. Clover. A glyph containing a one-time-use spell. The last resort I hoarded until the very end, the final move that would protect my life.
Magic is irreversible. Unlike tools, mana once used cannot be recovered. Using Clover meant a permanent loss of my wealth. Even now, having made up my mind to use it, my hands were trembling.
Still, it was better than dying. It wasn't like I could take it to my grave.
I imbued it with mana and scratched the card. The sealed mana resonated with my mana and emitted light. Giving off a bluish mana glow, I picked up the card with two fingers.
“Set.”
The Imperial standard magic is based on black magic that uses the body as a medium and sacrifice. My body takes damage, but it's easy and fast to activate. With a simple chant, it consumes the mana within my body to create useful phenomena.
And there is white magic, a concept opposite to that. This is a classic magic that uses objects imbued with mana as a medium to draw magic circles and bring out phenomena.
True to its classic nature, it looks good on the surface, but it's hard to actually use in real combat because you have to draw mana from something else, making the activation slow and requiring high-difficulty spell formulas. On top of that, items containing mana are expensive, so the word 'classic' fits perfectly in the sense that only people overflowing with money and time can enjoy it.
However, there are people in the world who value their bodies more than money, and I am one of them.
Right before the light exploded, I threw the card. The thrown card was Clover 5. It cut through the air and landed right in the middle of the gears. For a moment, the card spun like a top in place as if opposing the gears.
But a single thin card is too fragile to fight against steel. Even more so when there's a difference in numbers. The spinning card was soon buried in the steel wave....
Now. I reached out my finger and shouted the trigger word.
“Aqus Litor!”
What was contained in Clover 5 was an enhanced version of the condensation magic favored by the Empire.
It collects the moisture in the air that reacts to mana. A normal condensation spell would be lucky to gather enough water to wet one's throat, but the one I made was a special order, so it was somewhat forceful. To briefly explain how forceful, it's to the point where it instantly crystallizes even water vapor.
After a flash of light, a pure white storm raged. Mana spread in all directions like a spider web, pulling the captured moisture right in. The ice crystals created in an instant grabbed the rolling gears.
It contained enough mana to turn a human into an ice sculpture. Restricting the gears' movement with that should be quite troublesome for him.
As I expected, Maximilian was quite flustered.
“Magic?! No way...!”
...Though the direction was a bit different.
'Just with that?'
From all directions, the sound of ice being gnawed echoed. Though covered in ice, the self-rotating gears didn't stop. They scraped and gnawed away at the ice blocking their path. The shattered ice fragments sparkled.
Not long after, most of the gears broke through the ice zone.
The time my magic bought was about 3 seconds. Even that was largely thanks to the gears slipping and spinning vainly on the ice.
Maximilian, hiding his disappointment, shouted.
“Is that the trump card you've been hiding? Just mere magic? You should know that magic cannot beat an Intrinsic Art!”
Who uses it because they don't know? I use it because that's the only thing I can use! I don't have an Intrinsic Art! The King of Humans wouldn't have anything unique to him!
*Tsk*, as expected, cheap tricks don't work against a Six-Star opponent. I should be satisfied with buying 3 seconds of time. In the meantime, I ran for my life. Leaving the rear to Azi.
“Azi, I'm leaving the rear to you!”
“Woof! Yelp! Woof!”
I heard sounds of painful howling from behind, but I didn't know exactly. Azi caught the gears like catching mice, but howled when he was occasionally hit by the gears Maximilian shot, but I couldn't see it, so I didn't know what was going on.
The most dangerous thing to me was the gears Maximilian shot. Therefore, getting out of the line of fire was the top priority. After reaching the edge, I threw myself and hung onto the side.
I was sighing in relief when I heard the clattering sound of gears turning. I looked up, and dozens of gears were chasing me along the edge.
Azi, you useless mutt! You missed a few!
“Tch! So relentless!”
The gears poured down toward me. They simply leaped toward me, entrusting everything to their own weight, but just that alone was a handful for me. Not only would it hurt, but if I were to fall from here due to the impact, the Steel Beetle would be placed back under Maximilian's control.
That had to be prevented. If Maximilian regained control of the Steel Beetle, even Azi wouldn't be able to handle it.
I ran, stepping on the uneven surfaces on the side. The gears poured down behind my back. I barely dodged, but a few fell on my cloak and got tangled, causing my body to be violently pulled backward. Taking advantage of my broken posture, a gear rolled over me.
I quickly raised my hand and grabbed the gear.
A fast-spinning gear was no different from a throwing star. If I grabbed it bare-handed, my grip would be torn apart by the rotational force. In fact, it had already tangled up my cloak completely.
Before the gear teeth could shred me to pieces, I eliminated its rotation using Maximilian's Intrinsic Art. The gear, which had been tugging at my cloak and thrashing about, became docile the moment it touched my hand and snuggly wrapped around my hand with a *click*.
However, even if I canceled the rotation, I couldn't cancel the speed it had built up before that. A heavy impact ran through my arm. It felt like catching a ball someone had kicked with all their might.
“You can freely control the rotation, but can't do anything about inertia. Does it mean that as long as it follows the concept of a gear, the rest doesn't matter? It's somewhat irrational, but...”
It's an Intrinsic Art because it's irrational. *Tch*. Compared to an Intrinsic Art that forces its own rules onto the world, telepathy seems like truly nothing. Can't someone give me a better ability...
Wait. Rules. I can use this.
I fiddled with the gear. I thought about just throwing it away, but it would keep chasing me anyway. Grumbling, I wedged the gear I had grabbed into a suitable spot on the wall. The gear became quiet like that. I ran away, dodging or catching the gears that fell one after another.
While I was running around for a while, Maximilian's thoughts were transmitted from above.
‘King of Dogs, this is certainly annoying. He doesn't try to attack me, but he's painstakingly breaking the gears one by one. If they make contact, the King of Humans turns it against me. If they don't make contact, the King of Dogs blocks them. It's tricky.’
I wasn't the only one who found it tricky. That was a bit of a relief.
‘Without the Steel Beetle, I can't properly subdue the King of Beasts, but the King of Humans is sealing the Steel Beetle... Was the King of Beasts such a tricky existence... Wait, King of Beasts?’
Perhaps the only piece that could break through this situation. Maximilian belatedly recalled that existence.
The King of Cats, Nabi.
“King of Cats!”
You're slow to realize, Maximilian.
I never forgot about Nabi from the start.
“Nabi isn't coming.”
*Thud, thud.*
The sound of studded military boots was heard from the concrete floor. The slightly dragged-out rhythm of iron striking dry earth was added.
Her long, pitch-black braided hair swayed behind her. With a languid and exhausted expression, she approached with a strangely weak gait.
Eyes that seemed soaked in fatigue and stress. But at this very moment, she must be very happy.
“Huu-.”
It was because a mana herb cigarette was dangling from her mouth. Not a normal one, but a special product made from the leaves of the World Tree.
Historia, who exhaled a long plume of smoke, muttered with a hazy expression.
“This is good... My arm doesn't hurt, and my head feels cool. I feel my energy filling up again...”