The shattered moon of the planet Trappist 4.
I had been there before.
My first battle with a control object in the underground ruins of the city.
Together with the control object I was fighting, I had gone to the moon through a spatial transfer device in a sewage treatment facility.
Back then, I had succeeded in blasting the control object beyond the moon and into space, then returning to my original location.
And now I was going back to that moon.
This time, however, there was no need to depart from the sewage treatment facility in the ruined city.
Now, as long as it was within the same planetary system, I could use any spatial transfer device to move to another.
Of course, the spatial transfer device on the moon had been destroyed, but I remembered its coordinates.
I stood before the spatial transfer device on the surface of the Ice Star.
The only one going to the moon was me alone—no, only me and Sopeu.
Since the festival was underway, there was no one to see me off.
Before departing, I stood in front of the spatial transfer device and cast magic.
Countless formulas flowed through my mind, and magic circles continued to be drawn.
Air isolation, contamination isolation, purification, heat insulation, cold insulation, defense enhancement, and more.
“Block it, stack it. Overlapping Shield.”
The various magical shields I had learned from Sopeu and created myself began to pile up in layers around my body.
[Excellent.]
Seeing the completed shield, Sopeu praised me.
It was uncharacteristic of him.
Was it because of the festival speech he had given just a moment ago?
In any case, preparations were complete.
Now I could endure for a long time even in a place without air.
The black stones needed to repair the magic circle were ready, and I had brought nuclear warheads to hold off the monsters.
Now it was time to leave.
After taking one last look at the ice plains, I gripped my spear and crossed through the portal.
Fwaaaaaah!
The world filled with light.
Within the brilliant light, I picked out the path I had taken in the past.
A gray path lying between shining roads and roads that had lost their light.
I set my foot upon the path I had once taken.
Chwaaaak!
The moment my foot touched it, my vision changed.
The light that had covered the world vanished, and stars filled my eyes.
A massive planet filled one side of my view.
The planet Trappist 4. Adomside.
I looked down.
Far below, dozens of kilometers away, I could see a ruined stretch of ground.
It was the shattered moon.
I had transferred into the orbit of the moon I had visited before.
Back then, I had been overwhelmed by the unexpected sight, but this time there was no problem.
Thanks to the shield, I could breathe, and I could withstand the cold and heat of outer space, as well as radiation.
[Ten thousand years have passed, and yet it’s busier than I expected.]
However, dangers other than those lurked here.
Thud.
Massive rocks collided right before my eyes.
There was no sound because there was no air, but the impact was enough to shove my body backward.
Papapapak!
Fragments rained down over the shield.
Rock shards like bullets.
Without the shield, they would have pierced straight through my entire body.
And those weren’t the only rocks and stones drifting around me.
Countless fragments were orbiting around the moon.
The pieces of the moon destroyed ten thousand years ago were circling in orbit under the moon’s gravity.
Shoooooo.
This time, a boulder the size of a small building came flying toward me.
No, perhaps I was the one moving toward it.
Either way, we were about to collide.
It seemed I could block this one with the shield as well, but there was no reason to do that.
I stretched my hand toward the surface.
Then I chanted the spell.
“Blink.”
The moment the spell ended, my vision changed.
I was standing on the lunar ground I had just been looking at.
When I looked up, I could see fragments of the moon crossing the distant sky.
“I was thinking of flying into lunar orbit, but with the sky like that, it won’t be easy.”
Since the moon had been half-destroyed, I had no way of knowing the location of the magic circle Sopeu had supposedly created.
So I had intended to fly around and search for it, but there were too many obstacles.
“Even if I use spatial transfer, it’ll take time to find it. What should we do?”
Though only half the moon remained, the remaining area was not small.
It was the size of a decent continent.
There was no telling how long it would take to find the magic circle from the surface.
While I was at a loss, something caught my senses.
Not fragments crossing the sky, but monsters racing across the ground.
The moment I confirmed those monsters with my eyes, Sopeu spoke.
[It seems we can follow them.]
Black monsters racing over the ground, visible at the far end of the horizon.
As Sopeu said, it seemed we could follow those monsters.
A chase began across the desolate moon.
The moon was full of craters, its surface torn away.
As I continued running beneath the black, airless sky, I began to see other monsters as well.
All of the monsters were running in the same direction.
I kept running after them.
When the path was cut off by a massive fault and the monsters had to go around, or when I fell too far behind, I used spatial transfer to find and chase after other monsters.
As I raced across the lunar surface like that, I encountered several monsters.
Scouts and control objects suddenly broke through the ground and charged at me.
All such monsters were killed by Sopeu’s magic and mine.
I quickly collected the black stones and kept running, and then I saw monsters soaring into the sky.
Monsters wrapped in shields, rising through magic.
Those must have been the monsters heading toward the mother planet, or the ones flying toward the Ice Star.
I could have interfered, but this time I simply let them be.
I couldn’t waste time capturing them.
Only after crossing the lunar surface for several days did I finally reach the destination.
A vast plain surrounded by craters.
Like when monsters gathered at the sanctuary, monsters were swarming there.
At the center of the plain where the monsters gathered,
a translucent shield bulged upward.
A hemisphere dozens of stories tall, surrounded by monsters.
Even now, the shield was shaking violently.
At the edge of the plain, I concealed myself with stealth magic and watched the scene.
Looking at the shaking shield, Sopeu said,
[That was close.]
“Was it a dangerous situation?”
[It seems the monsters gathered faster than I expected. The shield appears to be near its limit.]
Even now, tentacles and magic were constantly pounding against the shield.
Even to my eyes, the shield was growing weaker.
At this rate, there was no time to rest.
“If we leave it as it is, the shield will break before the magic circle can be repaired, won’t it?”
[……It will.]
It was the answer I had expected.
It was a magic circle that destroyed the moon. There was no way such a magic circle could be repaired easily.
That was why I had brought the nuclear warheads.
“If I simply detonate a nuclear warhead there, it’ll damage the shield too… I’ll have to lure them away.”
I took a nuclear warhead out of the box and set it on the ground.
“Dig.”
Using magic to move the ground, I buried the nuclear warhead underground.
Next was to lure the monsters here.
I lifted myself into the air.
When I dispelled the stealth magic and slowly rose, the nearby monsters noticed me.
Dozens of monsters turned their bodies toward me.
There were too few.
Watching the monsters rush toward me, I continued to rise.
After rising more than a hundred meters, I thrust out my spear.
The place my spear pointed to was not the monsters running toward me, but the monsters attacking the shield.
“If I want to draw attention, flashy is best.”
The flashiest magic I knew was lightning magic.
However, this was an airless moon.
Since there was no air, there were no clouds, and no lightning could be created.
“But when I looked into it, it turns out lightning magic is possible even without air.”
It wasn’t lightning, but discharge could still occur in a vacuum.
Especially in a place like the moon, where the surface had been shattered and the metallic components inside were exposed.
In a place like this, where rocks roamed the sky and kept colliding, a massive vacuum spark discharge should occur.
With my spear, I pointed to the trajectory of a huge fragment passing by and a fissure running across the plain.
As I piled up formulas and unfolded the magic circle, I saw the immense difference in electric charge between the fissure and the orbit.
I connected a line between those immense charges.
I chanted the spell.
“Fall. Lightning Strike!”
Along with the spell, the magic was completed.
Flash!
A massive line of light was created.
A plasma arc linking the ground and the sky.
The world was engulfed in light.
Kwaaaaang!
A tremendous explosion erupted along with the arc.
There was no sound, but hundreds of monsters burned and shot into the sky.
Unfortunately, the arc soon vanished.
Afterward, a glowing cloud spread across the ground and flickered, but it did no further damage to the monsters.
Still, the plan had succeeded.
Hundreds of monsters had burned in the spark discharge.
They were only a tiny portion of the thousands, tens of thousands of monsters gathered on the plain, but I had succeeded in drawing the monsters’ attention.
The monsters stopped attacking.
They ceased their assault on the shield and looked toward me.
Kraaaaaa!
The monsters opened their mouths and let out roars.
There was no sound, but even I, floating in the sky, could feel the vibration.
The monsters turned their bodies.
They began running toward me.
A massive wave began to surge forward.
Dududududu.
Scouts and control objects surged in like a current.
Perhaps because they had failed to create a monster factory, I saw no magical monsters or defensive monsters.
That was fortunate.
Thanks to that, aside from a few control objects, there were no monsters flying toward me.
Chwaaaak!
Instead, countless spells flew toward me.
Each one seemed easy enough to block on its own, but even I could not block that many spells at once.
If I couldn’t block them, then all I had to do was dodge.
Using flight magic, gravity magic, and even the recoil from air magic, I evaded the incoming spells.
Countless spells passed above, below, and beside me.
The closer the monsters came, the harder they became to dodge.
The scouts at the front created tentacles and pushed them up to where I was.
Countless tentacles soared over a hundred meters high.
It had been worth flying deliberately low.
As I frantically dodged tentacles and magic, I sensed that countless monsters had gathered beneath me.
It wasn’t every monster on the plain, and there were still monsters remaining around the shield, but it seemed I had gathered enough.
I stretched out my hand again.
This time toward the center of the plain where the shield was.
[Blink.]
I cast the magic.
My vision changed.
The shield and magic circle were visible below my feet.
Far away, at the edge of the plain where I had just been, countless monsters had gathered.
The monsters were flailing their tentacles, searching for me after I had suddenly disappeared.
Looking at the monsters, I cast magic again.
This time, it was a simple spell.
A simple spell that sent a prepared signal to a magic circle.
However, the black stone engraved with that magic circle was inside the nuclear warhead buried underground.
Flash!
With a burst of light, an enormous explosion swept across the plain.
There was no air, so it could not create a tremendous storm, but it was still an explosion powerful enough to shake the entire plain.
Hundreds of monsters above the nuclear bomb evaporated, and even more monsters caught fire.
The other monsters were also disoriented by the shaking vibrations.
At the same time, I entered the shield.
After landing at the center of the magic circle inside the shield, I threw my spear upward.
The old spear rose above the magic circle.
Countless magic circles unfolded over the spear.
[Take out the black stones.]
Following Sopeu’s words, I took out the modified black stones and set them on the ground.
The black stones I had taken out floated into the air.
The magic circle that had slept for ten thousand years began to shine.
The ground shook.
The monsters that had been dazed began running this way.
[I’ll finish as quickly as possible. Hold them off well.]
Even if Sopeu had not said it, that was what I intended to do.
I took a box from my backpack, held it in my hand, and shot into the sky.
From the sky, I could see the monsters gathering as they swarmed toward the magic circle.
Thousands, tens of thousands of monsters rushing in from the plain and beyond it.
It felt as if every monster sleeping on the moon had awakened.
From now until the magic circle activated, I had to defend this place.
Holding the box, I cast magic.
[Blink.]
My vision changed once again.
Battle on the Shattered Moon (2)