00.OLD HAG DIES AT THE SUNSET
The world at the sunset. A red world. It was not only dyed in the red of the sunset, but also by the the death of people oozing out at the ground. It was h.e.l.l there. It was the depths of h.e.l.l. A h.e.l.l where giant Shuras covered in steel were killing each other.
“s.h.i.tty old hag, this is your end!”
At the center of all this, a giant sword was being swung. The more than three meters sword was being swung by the giant in black armor that had more than four meters.
“Silly brat. Alas, you haven´t eaten enough. Let me suck your hard thing!”
And the golden giant, who was looking at the eyes of the black giant, raised its giant war hammer in response to the descending blow of the sword. And then, the sound of the two heavy steel crashing echoed through the battlefield, making sparkles fly around, swirling at the dimly dark surroundings and illuminating it sublimely.
However, there was pretty much n.o.body that had the chance to look at this fantasy like scene. Most of the ones that had been alive here had already died. There were innumerable wreckages of iron giants throughout the land. There were pieces of meat that used to be humans. There were also dead bodies of beasts.
At the beginning, the ones killing each other at this land weren´t only the two of them. There were many other iron giants. There were soldiers standing at their surroundings, there were magicians, there were huge beasts baring their fangs and killing one another.
It was the deciding battle of the two power houses: The Rowen empire and the Doubah alliance.
The outcome of all the people swinging their own weapons, continuing to kill and continuing to be killed was the fight of those two giants. Because those two had kept killing, they only had each other left as opponents to kill.
If it wasn´t for that, a one-on-one situation like this one would be impossible to happen. With both of the generals clashing, the spectacle was just like the heroic tales that would be told to children.
The one inside the black iron giant was the emperor of the Rowen empire, Jiin
The one inside the golden iron giant was the queen of the Mourian mercenary nation, Beladonna.
Right now, both were putting all their power into killing each other in this battlefield. Their bodies were fired up without limits.
“Hyahyahya, this is so fun, Jinn, my boy.”
“Nonsense. Because of you that I had failed my ambitions. The army I´ve been raising for long years and months became in this state.”
Jinn shouted. However, he could not stop the attack. The armor of the giant had already become worn out, and he didn´t have any other tricks in his sleeve. Therefore, all he could do was to swing his sword. Silver vapor was being blown off from the pipes at the back of the giant. All he could do now was swinging the sword the giant carried.
“As if it is possible to say a disastrous occurrence like that is fun.”
The black giant swept his sword at the feet of the golden giant, but seeing through these movements, the golden giant caught the sword with the sole of its feet before it could catch speed.
“Ghggh!?”( グヌゥゥウッ)
“Ha, naive.”
The old woman shouted. And then, after the golden giant kicked the sword off the hands of the opponent, it attacked the black giant whose stance had been broken. Stepping at the foot pedal with all the strength she could muster, spurting out the silvery vapor in one go, the golden giant crashed into the black giant. Then, as Jinn raised a groan due to the impact of the crash, Beladonna continued to laugh at him.
“Hyahya!!”
“What are you laughing about? You too; your own subordinates had also died, and you are now only by yourself. What is so funny? What are you laughing about!?”
“Hey, hey, are you serious? Are you seriously saying that?”
The old woman was insanely laughing. She kept laughing as if he had told her a joke.
“You are having fun as well, aren´t you?
As if going through the vision of what her iron giant could see, she asked at the emperor that was inside the black giant.
“Despicable!”
“Even if you say all these things, you body is honest. Hey, hey, look at us, spirits of the dead in this battlefield. Look at this pa.s.sionate love scene between this emperor-sama and this old hag!!”
The golden giant was pretty much at zero distance from him. It was possible for Jinn to imagine the figure of the old woman inside the giant insanely laughing. But at the same time, Jinn was able to understand that she was the exact reflected image of himself. He was self-aware that his lips were raised to the point of them feeling they would tear apart. However, he could not admit this. Jinn had decided to be a ruler. He could not be a soldier.
“Die, old hag!!”
Therefore, what he pressed forward was his fist. The steel fist covered by a knuckle guard crashed at the golden giant that was on top of the black giant, forcing it away with the impact.
“Hya, aren´t you hard, my boy?”
At the same time the old woman had been , she was about to swung the war hammer at his side, but…
*Crumble(ギャリッ)
With this dull sound, the hand dismantled in the air. And then, being thrown to the sky, the war hammer was sent to a place away from the black giant, making a metallic sound when it fell down to the ground. What happened was that the right hand reached its limit after how it had been recklessly overworked until now.
“Tch!?”
Because of that, the old woman immediately clicked her tongue.
“It looks like you were unlucky!”
The golden giant that had lost its weapon and had its stance broken was pierced by the sword of the black giant. The attack went through the armor and went straight in direction of the old woman´s torso.
“Hyahaaaa!”
However, stepping at the left foot pedal, the old woman made the golden giant slightly turn to the side as it dived into the sword.
“Ggh”(ぐぬぅうッ)
While having its direction bent by the previous movement, the giant sword pierced through chest of the giant. With the impact, Jinn clenched his teeth, but the old woman kept laughing as if she was at her climax.
The broken pieces of the golden giant scattered around and silver vapor blew out of its slits in a uncontrollable manner. However, the momentum of the giant didn´t lessen.
“s.h.i.t!”
“Don´t be upset, my boy!!”
With its still intact left hand, the golden giant hit the black giant at its chest. The fingers of that giant hand didn´t have much protection; they were fragile and weren´t made to be hitting with. However, the old woman had no intentions of even caring about that. If she didn´t bring him down, she would be the one to be brought down.
Moving the control stick many times with as much strength as she could muster, the old woman kept sending punches at the black giant. With her whole body soaked in blood, she kept hitting it. In fact, the old woman had lost part of her right arm of her real body. The attack from the giant sword didn´t immediately kill the old woman, but it had been able to cut off part of her body. However, while laughing even more because of that, the old woman kept sending punches.
However, this would also not last for long either. The left hand had also reached its limits. The left arm, which had destroyed tens of iron giants, had crumbled down with a loud noise in a similar way to the right hand, losing its form.
“Ha, this is still unsettled.”
While spitting blood, the old woman spoke. Her vision was covered in red. Her whole body was hot and painful. She was close to her death.
However, the old woman didn´t stop. Kicking off the seat of the pilot at the hatch that had already been broken and tearing to pieces the part of her body that had become stuck at the wreckage of the collision of the sword of the black giant and the golden giant, she left her now already cut off right arm behind and went outside the giant one-armed. The chain of the necklace that she had been using until now was torn, and its jewel broke and scattered into pieces like the twinkling of the stars. However, the old woman didn´t stop.
Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!
Holding onto her disappearing consciousness for the sake of this single objective, she looked at her sole target.
“It´s my winnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!”
Raising a war hammer of the same shape of its giant counterpart, she was about to break the hatch and hit the defenseless emperor Jinnheh.
But her whole body was pierced by tens of arrows.
The old woman looked at her body. With the thin sticks piercing her, her body became wet, dyed in darkish red.
However, the old woman laughed. While showing a laugh that showed she was still conscious, she mustered her last strength, and when she was about to raise her war hammer…
As the finishing blow, an arrow pierced her forehead..
Then, the blood covered war hammer slowly dropped from her hands, and just like that, the old woman fell from the giant and was thrown to the land.
However, the last words uttered by the old woman just before she fell to the ground reached the ears of the emperor.
“How regrettable” She spoke…
All that was left there was the wreckage of the two giants. The ones nearby were only a few of the empire soldiers. It had been only a slight disparity. All that had happened was simply that those few soldiers there had stolen the victory from the old woman.
This was something that happened very often at the battlefield. It couldn´t be said to be unreasonable. One would put everything forward in wars, and so this could only be expected. Now, the old woman, who became a corpse, could definitely not speak of her victory anymore.
With that, the last battle of the Rowen empire, who had moved with the intent to conquer the whole southern part of the Ishtaria continent, Veezen, and the Doubah alliance, who had reunited to resist it, was marked at the end with the victory of the empire´s army. However, the losses of both sides were worse than expected, and the empire now had no more strength to keep moving forward, thus, ultimately only being capable of spreading their territory slightly.
And time pa.s.sed.
Many countries challenged the empire for another war, and many countries fought against one another, with the intention to demand compensations for the last war from each other. There were even soldiers from razed countries that tried to revolt or became bandits as well. Because of the fall of military power, demons and huge beasts started to appear even at villages, and in place of the military, the existence of mercenaries started to stand out.
In this chaotic era, at a town of a certain country, a girl was walking at the street.
This girl had dark brown skin and a beautiful golden hair. Although she was wearing tattered clothes, the glint on her eyes were sharp, and these pair of eyes possessed a shine of intelligence.
And the girl carried her baggage. While carrying her war hammer at her back and holding a brown sack over her shoulder, the girl walked, dragging the sack on the ground.
This was an era that wasn´t rare to see something like a war orphan. For her to walk in the middle of the city with that appearance, it was obvious anyone would gaze at her and guess her situation. To say nothing more, her face was above average. By her appearance, it wouldn´t be weird if some criminal captured her and had her sold as a slave, or perhaps, if she would get caught by a lecherous pervert.
Rather, in fact, there were people that would approach her with these intents, but once they noticed the smell the girl was giving off, all of them would stop their feet.
The girl´s stinking smell being because she didn´t wash herself… was not the case. The smell came from the sack she was carrying and also from the liquid dripping from it.
Dragging the sack, a red stain would be left in where the it pa.s.sed through. If looking at the sack from a close distance, it was possible to notice that there were round things inside the sack. Rather, several round things.
The outlaws knew. The people that were also carrying similar things to the building right ahead of them also knew. However, something such as a little girl calmly carrying those things was something they didn´t understand. They had never seen it.
“I´m coming in.”
And then, without hesitations, the girl opened the door and entered in the building.
“What is it, ojou-chan? This isn´t a place for children to come in.”
A man who worked as the gatekeeper stopped the girl. This was a place rowdy people would gather. They weren´t fond of unnecessary problems. The man hadn´t said those words for the girl´s sake, but more because he didn´t like troublesome things. However, the girl laughed.
“Is here the mercenary a.s.sociation? If so, then there are no problems.”
Saying that, she dropped her sack to the ground.
And then, she took one of the round things inside the sack and showed it to the man.
“Hyahyahya, I´ve just got a good looking harvest. I was thinking about buying a few things, but… Maybe you don´t do this kind of thing here?”
The man who had seen what the girl took out became lost for words, but he was able to understand her question, thus, shaking his head in response to it. Nodding at the reaction of the man, the girl put the thing back and dragged her sack, heading to where the receptionist was.
Of course, because that man worked in that place, the thing the girl took out was something he had already become used to seeing. Therefore, he had lost all the reasons to stop the girl.
However, he still looked at the back of the girl that had just pa.s.sed by him with a face that couldn´t believe what he had seen. As expected, he couldn´t imagine that the girl was the one who did those in. However, the one who brought those was that girl, and she was also carrying that much of an amount with her. Looking at the figure of the girl carrying the sack free of care, the man unconsciously frowned. He felt the world was growing insane.
And then, at that day, at the mercenary a.s.sociation of the city of Yarke, right at the moment the notice that the Varuhallua pirate group was destroyed came in, the name of the girl that got the reward for their heads became well-known.
The name of the girl was Bela Heirou. It was the name of the girl that from that day onwards was going to fight many wars piloting her machiini. At this instant, it was the first time her name was spread to the world.