The army waited.
Nobody spoke.
Thousands of soldiers stood beneath the shadow of the colossal Flugel Tree, their formations stretching across the Lifaus Highway like a living wall of steel.
The cold night wind swept across the plains.
Ground dragons shifted restlessly.
Armor rattled.
Weapons gleamed beneath the moonlight.
And I stood beside the rear command carriage staring at a pocket watch.
A very expensive pocket watch.
Because apparently if you wanted to dramatically predict the arrival of an ancient flying whale, you needed proper timing equipment.
9:58 PM.
Nothing.
The highway remained silent.
9:59 PM.
Still nothing.
The soldiers waited.
The commanders waited.
The entire coalition army waited.
And, most importantly...
They were all waiting because of me.
No pressure.
The second hand continued moving.
10:00 PM.
Nothing happened.
...
Interesting.
Very interesting.
A thousand professional soldiers had gathered because a random Japanese teenager claimed a flying whale would appear.
This would be an extremely embarrassing way to die.
A cold sweat rolled down my neck.
Maybe the anime got the time wrong.
Maybe the timeline shifted.
Maybe I accidentally created a butterfly effect.
Maybe I was about to become the first military strategist in history to get executed for spreading whale misinformation.
Then the wind changed.
A distant howl echoed across the plains.
The temperature dropped.
And from the darkness ahead...
Fog appeared.
Not normal fog.
Not natural fog.
A dense white wall rolled across the highway like a living thing.
The front ranks immediately tightened formation.
The soldiers didn't panic.
Good.
The training worked.
The mist continued advancing.
Closer.
Closer.
Then a sound erupted from within it.
A deep, thunderous cry.
The earth trembled.
Ground dragons recoiled.
Several soldiers visibly flinched.
And through the fog...
Something moved.
A massive silhouette emerged from the darkness.
Mountain-sized.
Ancient.
Monstrous.
The White Whale had arrived.
YES!
IT SPAWNED!
I'M NOT A FRAUD!
The sheer relief nearly made my knees buckle.
Fortunately, nobody could see my internal celebration.
The battlefield exploded into motion.
"ATTACK!"
Crusch's voice cut through the night.
Wind mana surged.
The air itself screamed.
A colossal blade of compressed wind erupted from her position and tore through the fog.
Hundreds of meters of mist vanished instantly.
The White Whale was exposed.
The battle began.
Magic circles illuminated the darkness.
Light stones activated across the formation.
The carefully prepared anti-fog measures came online.
Anchors were driven into the earth.
Signal teams relayed orders.
Squads maintained formation exactly as instructed.
The Whale released another booming roar.
Its contaminated mist rolled across the battlefield.
Several soldiers staggered.
A few visibly trembled.
But nobody broke formation.
Nobody fled.
Nobody became isolated.
The rehearsals worked.
Corporate training saves lives.
Then the Whale dove.
The colossal beast plunged directly into the front lines like a falling mountain.
The impact was catastrophic.
Soldiers were thrown through the air like ragdolls.
Ground dragons tumbled across the dirt.
Entire formations bent under the force of the collision.
Yet somehow the lines held.
The preparations held.
The army held.
Then a blur shot into the sky.
Wilhelm van Astrea.
The old butler vanished.
The Sword Demon appeared.
He landed on the Whale's hide and immediately carved a massive wound across its body.
Blood erupted into the night.
The White Whale shrieked.
Wilhelm moved again.
And again.
And again.
Each strike opened another enormous wound.
Fourteen years of grief transformed into pure violence.
It was honestly terrifying.
The battle raged.
Magic artillery hammered the Whale from below.
Knights launched coordinated assaults.
Mercenaries fired volleys into the sky.
The massive beast continued taking damage.
Then it screamed.
The sound shook the heavens.
And suddenly—
The Whale split.
One became three.
Three colossal shadows filled the night sky.
The battlefield descended into chaos.
"What?!"
"There are three of them!"
"Which one is real?!"
The commanders maintained discipline.
The soldiers did not.
Entire formations began shouting contradictory reports.
Exactly as expected.
Here we go.
The multiplication glitch.
The part everybody always forgot.
I turned toward the signal mage waiting beside the command carriage.
Please work.
Please tell me I remembered this correctly.
Please don't let my retirement plan die tonight.
I climbed onto the roof of the command carriage.
The battlefield spread beneath me.
Three White Whales dominated the sky.
The fake bodies descended.
The true body remained higher.
Almost hidden among the clouds.
Exactly where it should be.
I raised my arm.
"Signal!"
The mage nodded immediately.
A moment later, a brilliant sphere of red fire shot upward into the night sky.
The magical projectile climbed high above the battlefield before bursting into a blazing crimson bloom.
For a brief moment...
Nothing happened.
Then Julius moved.
The Spirit Knight raised his hand.
His quasi-spirits surged into the sky like stars breaking free from the earth.
Dozens of glowing lights ascended through the darkness.
Past the clones.
Past the descending mist.
Past the confusion.
Straight toward the highest Whale.
The true body.
The lights gathered around it.
Illuminating it.
Marking it.
Exposing it.
The real target had been found.
Below, Ricardo's eyes widened.
A savage grin spread across his face.
"There ye are."
The Iron Fang shifted their artillery.
Magic cannons turned.
Mages redirected their aim.
Every long-range weapon on the battlefield focused on the glowing leviathan above.
The true White Whale.
Target locked.
Meanwhile, the two decoys folded their wings.
And dove.
Straight toward the ground forces.
Straight toward the army.
Straight toward us.
The pressurized mist gathered around their bodies.
The highway trembled beneath the approaching impact.
I gripped the railing of the carriage.
The entire battlefield held its breath.
The signal flare vanished into the clouds.
Julius's quasi-spirits answered immediately.
Tiny lights streaked upward like shooting stars, piercing through the darkness above the battlefield.
For a brief moment, nothing happened.
Then the highest Whale glowed.
Not one of the diving monsters.
Not one of the decoys.
The real one.
The original.
The one hiding safely in the clouds while its copies bled and died below.
Found you.
A grin nearly escaped me.
Please tell me I remembered that correctly.
Below, Julius raised his sword.
"Target identified!"
The Spirit Knight's voice echoed across the battlefield.
"The highest body is the original!"
Relief visibly spread through the commanders.
Confusion vanished.
Panic vanished.
The script resumed.
Exactly as planned.
Then Julius vanished.
A burst of mana exploded beneath his feet as he launched himself skyward.
The quasi-spirits followed in a trail of light.
For a moment he looked like a shooting star ascending toward the heavens.
The White Whale noticed him.
Its enormous eye rotated downward.
Too slow.
Julius crossed the distance in an instant.
His sword flashed.
A brilliant arc of mana carved through the darkness.
The Whale screamed.
One of its massive eyes burst apart.
Blood and vitreous fluid rained from the sky.
The battlefield froze.
Then Julius struck again.
A second flash.
A second scream.
The other eye ruptured beneath the Spirit Knight's blade.
The White Whale thrashed violently.
Blind.
Disoriented.
Its massive body twisted through the clouds as it desperately searched for an enemy it could no longer see.
Julius landed atop its hide.
His spirits swarmed around him like a constellation.
"Now!"
The command echoed across the battlefield.
"The Whale is blinded!"
A roar of approval erupted from the coalition army.
Ricardo laughed.
Crusch immediately seized the opportunity.
Every artillery piece adjusted its aim.
Every mage unleashed their prepared spells.
The true White Whale had nowhere left to hide.
"IRON FANG!"
Ricardo's roar shook the battlefield.
"FIRE!"
The night exploded.
[ ─── ❖ ─── ─── ❖ ─── ─── ❖ ─── ]
Magic artillery erupted from every direction.
Brilliant streaks of mana crossed the sky.
The illuminated Whale tried to retreat.
Too late.
One blast struck its side.
Another shattered across its underbelly.
A third detonated directly beneath its massive body.
The sky itself seemed to scream.
The White Whale released a deafening cry.
The sound rolled across the Lifaus Highway like thunder.
Then the decoys attacked.
One descended toward the Karsten formation.
Its mouth opened.
White mist exploded outward.
A squad vanished into the cloud.
My stomach dropped.
Here it comes.
The worst part.
Crusch reacted instantly.
"HEADCOUNT!"
Her voice cut through the battlefield.
Every officer repeated the command.
"HEADCOUNT!"
"HEADCOUNT!"
"HEADCOUNT!"
The squads immediately began counting.
A captain stared at his formation.
Then counted again.
And again.
His expression slowly changed.
Not grief.
Not horror.
Confusion.
Pure confusion.
"Commander..."
His voice trembled.
"We have twelve men."
Silence.
The squad should have contained twenty.
Exactly twenty.
Everyone knew that.
The records said twenty.
The assignments said twenty.
The roster said twenty.
Yet nobody could remember the missing eight.
No names.
No faces.
No voices.
Nothing.
The captain looked around his formation.
Searching.
Trying desperately to find something that wasn't there.
"We have twelve men," he repeated.
As if saying it again would somehow fix reality.
The surviving soldiers exchanged uneasy glances.
Nobody cried.
Nobody mourned.
Nobody remembered enough to mourn.
And somehow that was infinitely worse.
The White Whale hadn't simply killed eight men.
It had deleted them.
The only evidence they had ever existed was arithmetic and their bodies.
Cold.
Merciless.
Mathematics.
A knot formed in my stomach.
God, that's horrifying.
I knew it was horrifying.
But actually seeing it...?
The headcount doctrine worked perfectly.
And I hated it.
[ ─── ❖ ─── ─── ❖ ─── ─── ❖ ─── ]
"DO NOT BREAK FORMATION!"
Crusch roared.
"THE ORIGINAL IS FALLING!"
The battlefield erupted once more.
Ricardo's mercenaries unleashed another devastating volley.
Magic artillery hammered the illuminated target.
The Whale's movements became sluggish.
Unstable.
Desperate.
Blind.
A massive explosion erupted beneath its body.
The creature shrieked.
One of its enormous fins shattered.
Then another.
Its buoyancy failed.
The mountain-sized beast finally began to fall.
The sky itself seemed to collapse.
The original White Whale plummeted from the clouds.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Until—
BOOM.
The impact shook the world.
A shockwave raced across the plains.
Dust exploded outward.
Ground dragons screamed.
Soldiers nearly lost their footing.
The earth cracked beneath the Whale's colossal corpse.
The nightmare had finally fallen.
But it wasn't dead yet.
The giant body still writhed.
Still moved.
Still breathed.
A final twitch.
A final struggle.
Then a blur shot forward.
Wilhelm van Astrea.
The Sword Demon.
The old man sprinted up the Whale's side with impossible speed.
No hesitation.
No fear.
No uncertainty.
Only purpose.
Fourteen years of grief carried him upward.
Fourteen years of regret.
Fourteen years of mourning.
His sword rose.
Moonlight reflected across the blade.
For a brief moment, the battlefield became silent.
Then Wilhelm swung.
A single strike.
Clean.
Perfect.
Absolute.
The White Whale's final cry died before it could escape.
Silence followed.
True silence.
The kind that only arrives after a nightmare ends.
The body stopped moving.
The legendary White Whale was dead.
After four hundred years.
It was over.
[ ─── ❖ ─── ─── ❖ ─── ─── ❖ ─── ]
Cheers erupted across the battlefield.
Thousands of voices.
Thousands of weapons raised skyward.
Knights shouted.
Mercenaries celebrated.
Ground dragons roared.
History had just been rewritten.
Atop the corpse stood Wilhelm.
Victorious.
Alone.
The old swordsman lowered his blade.
Then quietly fell to one knee.
His shoulders trembled.
No triumphant speech came.
No victory cry.
Only tears.
Small.
Silent.
Private.
The tears of a man who had finally caught the ghost he'd been chasing for fourteen years.
Good job, old man.
You earned this one.
[ ─── ❖ ─── ─── ❖ ─── ─── ❖ ─── ]
The celebrations continued.
Unfortunately, my body had apparently decided now was the perfect time to begin dying.
I grabbed the side of the carriage.
Pain exploded through my chest.
"What the—"
I doubled over.
Black blood splattered onto the dirt.
My vision blurred.
The smell hit me next.
Rot.
Death.
Miasma.
The Whale's corpse was releasing an absurd amount of it.
Normally my old malware curse would've probably absorbed half of this nonsense.
Now?
My Gate was taking the full impact.
A sensation like broken glass spread through my body.
Fantastic.
Wonderful.
The Whale dies and now my internal hardware is catching fire.
I wiped my mouth.
Immediately regretted looking at the blood on my hand.
That was definitely not a healthy color.
A shadow appeared beside me.
"Subaru."
Julius.
His voice sounded wrong.
Alarmed.
I looked up.
The Spirit Knight was staring toward the eastern horizon.
His quasi-spirits circled frantically around him.
Panicked.
No.
Terrified.
"What is it?"
Julius didn't answer immediately.
"The spirits..."
His expression darkened.
"They've detected something."
My stomach sank.
"Something?"
The spirits weren't merely agitated.
They were fleeing.
Trying to flee.
Every instinct in their tiny bodies screamed danger.
Julius slowly turned toward me.
"I have never seen them react like this."
A cold chill ran down my spine.
No.
No.
No no no.
That wasn't supposed to happen yet.
The battle was over.
The script said the battle was over.
Team A was supposed to secure the head.
The convoy was supposed to leave.
Then the ambush happened.
Later.
Not now.
Not here.
Not—
The eastern horizon disappeared behind settling dust.
Somewhere beyond it.
Far away.
Something was moving.
Fast.
Very fast.
And every instinct I possessed suddenly screamed the same thing.
Run.
My blood turned to ice.
The Whale was dead.
But somewhere...
The real disaster had just noticed us.
To be continued...