As though on cue, he saw Quagoa slowly emerge from beside the black suits of armor.
Did they escape? Or did they betray us? No, that’s not—
Yozu’s eyes went wide.
One of the Quagoa he saw was missing its head.
He squinted, and saw that several Quagoa were trailing their innards behind them, while others seemed to be shambling in an uncoordinated manner, the left and right halves of their bodies moving out of sync, as though they had been cut in half.
Beings that moved even when they could not be alive were —
Magic! Magic that controls the dead!
“Is that the Dwarves’ secret weapon?”
Yozu agreed with what his subordinate had said.
Did they have an ace in the hole besides lightning-enchanted weaponry?
“…Are they Golems?”
It was said that when the Dragon took possession of the Royal Palace, it had fought monsters with those names. Apparently, they looked like armored statues.
“Are those the Dwarves called Golems?”
Yozu shook his head at his subordinate’s question.
“No, Golems are monsters. The Dwarves probably raised those.”
“Like the Nuks[6] we tamed, then?”
These Nuks were magical beasts.
Their males were 3.5 meters long and weighed 1200 kg. They were shaggy four-legged herbivores who could survive on even a little bit of algae. They were tough enough to survive in heavy snowfalls, so many monsters in the Azellisia Mountain Range fed on them.
In any event, there was no telling how well those black Golems could fight, but given the fleeing Quagoa and the assault teams’ diminished numbers… no, more than that, Yozu’s goosebumps and his cold sweat told him everything.
Beating them would not be easy, but fortunately, they only seemed to be watching them from afar and not trying to cross the bridge.
“It, it seems they came to take back the fortress.”
“Y-yes, that’s right. Alright, form up again while they’re still stopped. At the same time, we’ll prepare to — they’re moving!”
The black suits of armor broke into a run, charging at the suspension bridge.
“Who was that! Who said that they were there to take back the fortress?!”
“Commander! Now’s not the time for that! What should we do!?”
The Quagoa which Yozu had sent out bared their claws, ready for battle.
The black suits of armor braced their shields and blew through the Quagoa where they made contact.
Sent flying by overwhelming power, many Quagoa fell from the suspension bridge. The black suits of armor did not stop. Though they slowed down a little, they continued their charge forward with shields raised, like rampaging walls.
If this kept up, they would soon cross the bridge completely and reach this place.
And then, when that happened… what would happen? Realizing the mortal danger which awaited him, Yozu shouted.
“Cut, cut the bridge!”
If they destroyed the bridge, the main force would only be able to use the flanking route, and that would waste a lot of time. The Dwarves would probably strengthen their defense in the interim. Thus, one could consider their first objective of taking the fortress to be a failure.
After the loss of manpower and resources during this operation, failure would not be a matter that could be simply excused by a rebuke. However, all that paled in comparison to the danger of letting those black suits of armor cross the bridge.
If they reached this place, everybody here would die. The black suits of armor were such beings.
“Didn’t I tell you to cut the bridge?!”
The Quagoa could not help but watch the black suits of armor smash their men away with their unimaginable might. At the second cry, they finally managed to move. However, almost all the Quagoa who had been sent out from the rear were had been sent flying into the abyss, and there were only a few Quagoa left on the bridge to face the black suits of armor.
All of those Quagoa desperately bit and clawed at the steel suspension cables of the bridge.
“Have one of the assault teams stall their advance!”
Being told to stop the Golems right after hearing the command to destroy the bridge was no different from a suicide mission. Even so, a suicide squad immediately assembled and bravely went forth.
As expected, the suicide squad bounced off the shields, but some of them managed to get past and hurled themselves upon the black suits of armor. However, the black suits of armor paid them no heed. Being bitten did not seem to hurt them, and they continued their advance.
The bridge had not yet fallen.
If this kept up, the black suits of armor would make it all the way across.
As Yozu realized this, his body began moving on its own. He leapt down from his command post high above, and used the force of his landing and the sharpness of his claws to deliver a hit to the steel cables of the bridge.
A great ping tore through the air.
The suspension bridge rose and fell like a gigantic wave, and broke.
Yozu could not withstand the serpentine thrashing of the suspension bridge and was thrown into the air. However, he managed to grab a dancing cable before he was swallowed up by the yawning darkness beneath him. Since Yozu could not control his movements in mid-air, it was an unimaginable stroke of luck for him. He pulled himself along the cable as his body swayed in mid-air, and managed to make contact with the edge of the cliff.
However, he did not even have the time to catch his breath. A malevolent cold filled his body. Yozu listened to his instincts and threw himself prone.
In that instant, a screaming object swept past the fur on Yozu’s back. Unbelievably enough, that object was a flying Quagoa. Under these dire circumstances, the black suit of armor had managed to throw one of the suicide squad members at Yozu with its ridiculous arm strength.
The thrown Quagoa hit one of Yozu’s men, who was still frozen in shock. The two of them disintegrated into chunks of gory meat with a brief, agonized cry of “Pigya!”
However, that was all, because the suicide squad and the black suits of armor vanished into the Great Rift.
Silence filled the air.
Yozu slowly peered into the darkness of the Great Rift. He was not the only one to do so; all the survivors looked into the darkness that had swallowed everything. All of them knew that there was no surviving that drop; even so, they could not erase their fear that the black suits of armor would come clambering up the sides of the chasm.
After what seemed like forever, Yozu finally sighed in relief.
They did not look like they would be coming back.
Looking around, he saw that there were precious few of his men who had survived.
Even so, the fact that they had survived against those black suits of armor was worthy of praise.
“We’re pulling back!”
If they did not report those Golems to the people on top, things would be very bad for them.
If those were being mass-produced, it was the Quagoa who would be annihilated instead. Yozu did not feel that there were only two of them.
“…How fearsome those Dwarves are.”
Yozu deeply regretted underestimating the Dwarves. To think they knew how to produce such monsters—
“In any case, we need to inform the main body about this. Messengers!”
The people who ran over in response to Yozu’s call were the Quagoa Riders, who far exceeded the average Quagoa in mobility. They possessed a special ability which made them immune to the fatigue caused by extended sprinting.
The reason why he had called this many of them over was because moving in small numbers ran the risk of the entire group being wiped out by a monster ambush. That was not to say that moving in force guaranteed safety, but that it did not matter how many died as long as one of them survived to pass their message on to headquarters.