“Claire!” Ophelia shouted. “There’s a short wooden bridge right in front of the main gate. The instant I cross it, you shoot!”
The main gate lay just ahead.
The heavy knights who should have been guarding it were already gone.
Only a handful of black-clad soldiers remained, hurriedly drawing their guns.
The knight order had never imagined they would loop back to the front gate.
The little bridge was right in front of them.
Ophelia stomped the accelerator again, pulling distance from Iris and the motorcycle pack.
“Shoot!” Ophelia roared.
At that instant the rear wheels of the small combat vehicle had just left the bridge surface.
Claire closed her eyes.
Her ability unfolded in an instant.
The howling mountain wind cut off.
Even the deadly bullets hung motionless in mid-air.
She carefully shifted Liz’s head off her lap and gently pushed the door open.
The muzzle of the Can Opener lined up steadily on the short bridge that spanned the ravine.
She pulled the trigger twice.
Then she quickly shut the door and gently supported Liz again.
To the motorcycle riders, two dazzling muzzle flashes suddenly bloomed from the side of the small combat vehicle.
Bullets powerful enough to pierce orichalcum punched through the bridge deck and instantly snapped the arched beams below.
At the critical instant before the pursuers arrived, the entire bridge crashed down, carrying a cloud of dust into the bottomless valley.
“Nicely done!”
The small combat vehicle traced a clean arc and completed the turn smoothly.
The pursuers slammed on their brakes at the broken edge, staring into the abyss below, forced to stop.
Claire remained completely focused on supporting Liz, doing everything she could to lessen the jolts against the wound, terrified that the slightest carelessness would make it worse.
Iris, however, was not finished.
The motorcycle riders wordlessly cleared a path for it.
Claire had just been about to check Liz’s breathing and heartbeat when she heard Ophelia’s frustrated voice.
“They really won’t give up!”
Ophelia glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Iris taking a long running start.
It was actually trying to jump the broken bridge!
Iris’s four-legged stride opened wide.
Parts shed from its body as it ran.
By discarding every external attachment it lightened itself, leaping in its most mobile state.
The four-legged steel warhorse soared high and cleared the unbridged ravine in a single bound, landing on the far side with a thunderous boom.
Iris slowly straightened.
It took a few tentative steps to check for damage.
The mechanical heart in its chest let out a deep rumble.
Rain was rapidly cooling the frame; soon it would return to perfect condition.
The searchlight mounted on its head stayed locked on the small combat vehicle.
Ophelia’s rearview mirror was a sheet of blinding white.
Yet before those warhorse legs could charge again, Iris halted.
A scroll radiating fierce firelight suddenly drifted in front of it!
Even Claire, a complete magic idiot, could clearly feel a surging torrent of mana racing and howling through the valley, turning the air around them scalding and restless.
In an instant the floating scroll burst into flame.
Raging fire swallowed it in the blink of an eye.
The flames churned and twisted wildly, slowly outlining a humanoid shape.
Then a giant formed of pure fire stepped out of the blaze, its strides shaking the earth.
It was a spell scroll inscribed with a fourth-rank summoning formula.
Once triggered, the fire elements of the valley gathered and compressed under its command like a tide, finally shaping the violent entity now standing before them.
Torn forcibly from the mana leyline, it burned with surging hatred.
A pair of giant eyes blazing with fire locked onto the target.
Without hesitation it swung a massive fist at the four-legged Steam Knight, trailing a line of scorching fire that instantly vaporized the rain wherever it passed.
The iron fist, carrying world-ending force, smashed toward Iris.
The instant it struck the armor, it was as if it had hit an invisible, resilient wall.
It burst into a shower of sparks that drifted down.
Clearly the anti-demon metal covering Iris’s surface had projected an unbreakable force field that easily dissipated the blow.
Iris, which had been on full guard, realized the attack was useless and immediately went all out.
Its two thick forelegs rose high, bringing a whoosh of wind, and came down like twin giant hammers on the fire giant.
Boom.
Two terrifying holes appeared in the fire giant’s chest and abdomen.
Before Iris could even fully retract its legs, the scattered flames rushed back to the wounds, coalescing and healing in the blink of an eye, good as new.
The mage who had summoned it was continuously channeling mana from afar, sustaining the “life” of this fiery enforcer.
The knight inside Iris grew furious and drove the armor into an even more ferocious barrage.
The steel legs sent water spraying from the ground.
The forelegs rose and fell again and again, every blow landing precisely on the fire giant.
Yet it was like slashing a campfire with a blade: the instant the edge parted the flames it looked like victory, only for the fire to flare up and swallow the cut once more.
It was obvious the mage who summoned the fire giant had never expected it to defeat Iris.
The only goal was to buy Claire and the others time to escape.
And that was exactly what happened.
By now the small combat vehicle had already raced nearly a kilometer down the slick mountain road.
Water sprayed high on both sides of the wheels, throwing glittering arcs against the gloomy sky.
The knight inside Iris could only watch the vehicle’s silhouette grow smaller in the distance.
Dense steam rose from the highest peak near the testing ground.
A massive figure stood within the steam, shouldering an enormous firearm.
The thing had the shape of a rifle, yet it stretched an astonishing two meters.
Twisted copper pipes wound across its surface.
The bullets it fired were twenty centimeters long, as thick as an ordinary person’s forearm.
Jeanne Canossa was piloting Bird-of-Paradise, using a precision mount to fix her custom firearm—Gungnir—onto the rock.
It was the longest-ranged gun in the world, capable of reaching beyond five kilometers, just as the mythic spear it was named after had been the herald of death.
At that moment the small combat vehicle racing along the mountain road appeared in her scope.
The instant she heard that Cornflower had fallen, she had slung Gungnir onto her back and raced for the summit.
She was the most cautious knight under Phine.
She would be the final guarantee on the invaders’ escape route.
She slowly worked the bolt.
Current surged through Gungnir.
Component after component unlocked.
The white steam rising from the gun was even thicker than that produced by the armor itself.
Just as she was about to squeeze the trigger that would fire fate itself, a pair of white iron hands settled on the barrel.
“Stand down, Jeanne.”
Phine’s weary voice sounded beside her ear.
She wore no helmet; her soaked golden hair spilled across the white armor.
Jeanne noticed that the right-hand armor of Holy Comet Orchid was shattered.
Flickering circuits and seeping blood showed through the broken white plate.
“Your Highness, you’re wounded!” Jeanne cried.
She immediately set Gungnir aside and rose to support Phine.
Phine did not look at her.
Jeanne followed her gaze to the small combat vehicle on the mountain road.
“…Why let them go?” Jeanne asked softly.
Phine did not answer.
She only stared at the black vehicle, watching it recede into the distance.
The tiger-like blue eyes of old were dim now.
She looked so sad.