Chapter 22: The Siege
Boom!
A thunderous roar echoed as cannonballs were unleashed from the fortress walls, tearing through the air with a deafening clamor.
“Bring down that monster! Do not let it reach His Majesty!”
The fortress, a critical stronghold of the Ninth Empire and its last bastion, was desperately firing its artillery. Known as the “Fortress of Destruction,” it boasted an absurd number of cannons, making it an impregnable citadel even the revolutionaries dared not challenge.
Boom, boom!
Endless cannonballs and black powder rained down on the grotesque giant. The shots targeted its legs, igniting the magical powder for a secondary explosion.
“It’s working! It’s starting to fall!”
“Fire! Ignite the powder! If this place falls, it opens the path to the Emperor!”
Desperation fueled their cries, clinging to hope and imbuing their struggle with meaning, even though their true enemy was not the golem of flesh and steel they faced.
As if defeating that monster would ensure their victory.
But then, it happened.
Ssshhh!
“What…?”
One of the artillerymen on the wall saw something slithering up the fortress.
“Tentacles…?”
He realized too late that the tentacles extended from the loathsome creature’s feet to where he stood.
A tentacle shot towards his throat.
“Gah, urgh…!”
It wasn’t a simple death. The tentacle burrowed into his body, taking root. His flesh grotesquely swelled, writhing like thousands of worms, until it exploded.
The explosion scattered what seemed like countless wriggling worms, but they were not worms.
They were young tentacles.
Parasitic tentacles that burrowed into hosts, rapidly multiplying.
An incomprehensible biological weapon beyond this world’s understanding.
“What are these things?!”
“Ahhh! Help me!”
One infected soldier spawned thousands of parasitic tentacles, which began consuming the fortress’s defenders. Swords were useless against them. The tentacles intertwined, growing massive enough to blot out the sky.
The bombardment ceased as the grotesque giant reached the fortress. Dale looked down at the scene below.
The entire fortress, once the pride of the Empire, was now ensnared by the proliferating tentacles. People, too, were ensnared, neither alive nor dead, becoming part of the fortress and the tentacles.
Black tar-like mucus dripped from their features.
The grotesque giant extended its arm toward the fortress. Tentacles erupted from its body, merging with those enveloping the fortress, beginning to consume it whole.
Walls, inner defenses, and countless cannons and artillery.
Not just people or weapons, but the entire fortress itself.
The capital of the Ninth Empire.
Before it stood a grotesque entity of flesh, blood, bone, and steel.
But that was not all.
The monstrous giant, devouring and merging with fortresses and strongholds, consuming everything in its path, was there. Human masses, grotesquely swollen, were fused into its body.
Victims, stitched into the giant’s flesh with tentacles, their screams forming a haunting harmony. Black tar endlessly flowed from their features.
Tentacles writhed along the giant’s body, crudely stitching together fortresses, bones, and armor, barely holding its form.
The monster, now many times larger than when it first rose, was devouring the world.
The Empire’s predator.
“What on earth is that thing?!”
“We don’t know! As we reported, it’s a monster devouring everything in its path…”
No matter how much the scouts reported and explained its grotesqueness, witnessing it was an entirely different matter.
In a world advancing with cannons and muskets, black powder was becoming commonplace. Yet, the barrage of cannon fire was meaningless against it.
Boom!
In fact, it was the “grotesque giant” firing the cannons. Tentacles writhed through its body, extracting cannons and artillery, unleashing bombardments like the Fortress of Destruction once did.
And there was no need to question where it had consumed those cannons.
“Are we supposed to stop that…? Ha, ha… what a joke.”
For Marquis Rozet, the commander tasked with defending the capital, there was no other option. Even a hollow laugh escaped him.
The incompetent Emperor, who claimed the title of Shadow Lord and ruled the Ninth Empire, had long since fled. Yet, he had issued absurd orders to defend the capital with their lives, leading to this end.
“I will issue orders to all my forces.”
Thus, Marquis Rozet spoke.
“Abandon the capital and flee.”
“But, Marquis! His Majesty…”
“The Emperor can go to hell.”
Marquis Rozet muttered as if it were someone else’s problem, and the soldiers’ faces turned pale.
“I will lead my knights back to my domain and join the revolutionaries. But I will not force my decision on all the capital’s nobles. Inform all subordinate nobles of this.”
With that, Marquis Rozet turned away without hesitation, followed by his knights.
At that moment, the tentacles crawling up to the fortress’s edge halted.
Boom!
When the grotesque giant finally reached the Empire’s capital, it was a ghost town, devoid of even a single fly. No, there were people—those with nowhere to flee, waiting quietly for death.
But there were no knights or nobles with swords, no one to resist.
When the Empire was first established, this city must have shone gloriously, as did all nine empires. But no trace of past glory remained.
“An Emperor who abandoned the Empire and fled…”
From atop the giant’s shoulder, a man muttered quietly.
Ssshhh!
The tentacles stitching the giant’s body unraveled. As the forced seams came undone, the giant’s body crumbled.
Flesh, blood, and bone covered the land, and the fortresses and strongholds it had devoured collapsed.
The human masses within finally found rest.
The Emperor had abandoned the Empire and fled. And with no one left to protect it, Dale walked toward the deserted capital.
No towering walls or drawbridges could block his path.
As he stepped into the empty air, tentacles rose beneath his feet, intertwining to form a path. Walking along the path woven by the endless tentacles, Dale crossed into the capital.
Cries of fear and despair from those unable to flee echoed around him. Yet, Dale continued his steady march.
Toward the faded and fallen palace of the Ninth Empire.
He walked alone, his footsteps echoing against the marble tiles in the silence.
So solitary, so serene.
The Empire of Solitude.
Dale crossed the black marble tiles, raising his gaze toward the throne at the end.
”…”
And there, he found an unexpected presence, a shadow of curiosity beneath his hood.
A man sat on the obsidian throne.
To think someone still remained in the Ninth Empire with the will to oppose him. And audaciously, he sat on the throne meant for the Emperor.
“Didn’t the Emperor abandon the Empire and flee?”
“He did.”
The man replied, his voice familiar.
──A knight clad in red and white armor.
“Swathed in red and white, do you serve the Shadow Lord?”
“The Shadow Lord, you say.”
The knight chuckled, amused.
“How could that fool dare claim the title of the true King of Shadows and the Shadow Empire?”
“Indeed. Then who are you, speaking such words?”
“A demon.”
”…”
“And I am the son of Lady Scarlet.”
At the mention of that name, Dale caught his breath.
“Was there another child of the Yuriss siblings besides Ray Yuriss?”
“Oh, no. The Marquess of Yuriss, the Crimson Duke, is not my father. My mother conceived me on her own.”
With that, Dale finally understood.
In the era of the Fourth Empire, a cult had conducted experiments to summon a ‘demon’ to this world. Among them, there was one demon who succeeded, the last one who survived, whose existence even Dale had forgotten.
The Demon of Evolution, the ultimate being.
“When my mother gave birth to me, I appeared as a hero.”
”…So that was my true opponent.”
“But in the end, I was defeated by you. Yet, the strength of the ultimate being does not lie in the power of the individual.”
There stood a knight clad in armor of red and white.
“The value of life is in passing on its genetic material. As the ultimate being, it is to preserve and perpetuate ‘information’ that never breaks in history.”
The knight removed his armor, revealing a face that was all too familiar.
The Apostle of Fire and Light, Michael Lancaster.
“I have no need to become a king or to rule the world. Simply existing without extinction is my sole purpose.”
“Then why reveal yourself to me?” Dale asked, unable to comprehend.
“Do you not realize that this is tantamount to inviting your own death?”
“But I have a mission to fulfill, separate from the function of life.”
The Demon of Evolution, the son of Lady Scarlet, and the being wearing Michael Lancaster’s skin drew his sword.
“Revenge for my mother.”
It was a reason that seemed far too human for a demon.