Explosions began in earnest as the army of Shadowed soldiers stepped into the modified path. Not only were there barbs and other sharp objects placed irregularly into the messed-up road, the Moonlit soldiers that were following Dia earlier had buried explosives and other things underneath.

All these were plans that had been brought back by Schwarz after visiting Claud, although he didn’t make it explicit about which plans were whose. This aside, however, Dia could see that the rate of advance had visibly slowed, which was why this outpost had lots of ammunition…and an entire army joining them.

“We haven’t used much mana yet,” Dia muttered, cranking the repeating crossbow and letting loose a torrent of arrows. Around her were nineteen other Moonlit soldiers, who were also operating similar devices and pouring fire down happily.

Rocks flew past their head every so often, but the poster boy for hurling rocks was no other than Nero, who was making happy noises as he hurled one rock with one twirl each. It was…a comical sight, to put it nicely, but for all that firepower, the Dark was responding remarkably well.

Instead of forging onwards foolishly, the unending sea of troops had simply responded by blasting the ground in front of them. Not only did this have the effect of flattening the terrain, it also helped to detonate the buried explosives. Sure, it didn’t reduce the numbers directly, but this hostile terrain meant that the enemies had to withstand the combined assault of a siege army while demolishing the path in front of them.

After around five minutes, someone within the Dark’s army had enough of the bombardment, and a blue screen rippled into existence. Rocks shattered and arrows bounced off the defence, which lasted for three seconds before three piercing lances of mana hammered into the screen, shattering it entirely. The existence between the barrier, however, simply conjured another, and for a time, the tug of war between erecting a barrier and destroying it continued back and forth.

“Ah, I see why we’re using indirect weapons now,” Dia muttered. The lance of light wouldn’t have been able to hit the enemy army directly, since they were still below the horizon, but the weapons here allowed them to pepper the enemy with attacks without any risk of retaliation.

“It’s useful, yes,” Risti replied. “It’s hard to make mana projectiles that do the same thing, because mana itself doesn’t seem to obey gravity or something. If they do, the effect gravity has on mana itself seems to be very weak, so much so that it’s completely useless.”

Dia, who had learned something new about mana today, nodded like a little chick pecking on grains. “So there’s still a use for normal weapons.”

“Essentially.” Risti’s eyes flickered. “Normal people aren’t completely useless in a war like this, and more cannon fodder is always welcome.”

“…What’s wrong?” Dia asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Risti asked. “Now that the Moons have seen the effectiveness of mortal weapons, they’ll just conscript the normal people in Istrel. As for the issues that may arise from that, go figure it out yourself. However, once all this is over and the enemy is beaten back, I bet they’ll start pulling in normal people.”

“As cannon fodder.”

“Yeah. The Moons are brilliant beings. While otherworldly in thought and cognition, they are no fools,” Risti replied. “They’ll definitely think of getting normal people to do the less strenuous things like operating war engines.”

Dia nodded. “Makes sense.”

Her arm continued to crank the damn thing over and over again, and another drum popped out after running dry. Before she could reach out for a new drum of arrows, the Moonlit soldier behind her had fitted another in — everyone doing the firing had their own assistant.

Which begged the question of why the Seekers of Life had to do this even in the final few outposts, but Dia wasn’t going to complain much. After all, this meant that they needed to do less when the enemies finally came in range, and—

“Oh, I’m out again.”

Explosions rang out over and over again, but this time, they had some odd cadence to it. From the rapid rhythm, Dia could roughly tell that the enemy had adopted some rotation system to make clearing the path a lot faster. Unfortunately, the Dark’s construction of barriers meant that there were lower windows of opportunity to actually do damage, even though they were taken down almost immediately.

“We should retreat in full order instead,” Nero suggested. “Dismantle the outposts, bring back the weapons and place them in the depths of the camp. We’ll be able to reuse these ones if we act now.”

His words were directed at a motionless Moon Emissary, who glanced at them once. This particular Emissary was apparently the caretaker of this short-lived fortress, but Dia did not know what other purposes he served. Whatever the case, though, this Emissary was more than capable of communicating with the Moons, and after a while, he said, “Pack up and retreat.”

Nero grinned. “Been waiting to hear that.”

His left leg gleamed with blue light as he stamped onto the ground, and rocks flew. Whirling on the spot, he kicked the airborne rocks with a roundhouse kick, turning them into deadly fragments that flew in a near-vertical arc.

“…Uh, did you miss?” Schwarz asked. “Dude, you suck.”

“Give it a moment…” Nero watched as the Moonlit soldiers dismantled the outpost. “Give it a moment…”

After one minute or so, piercing whistles filled the air. Dia, who was uprooting a particularly tenacious repeating crossbow, glanced upwards. There, in the sky, were numerous flaming streaks that were plunging down in the general direction of the great Dark’s armies.

Crossing the distance in an instance, they plunged into some place beyond the horizon, and dust clouds burst out in unprecedented volume. Nero, who had a refreshed expression, said, “See? Aren’t they great?”

“That sure took quite some time, though,” Schwarz muttered.

“I’m a genius, and don’t you ever forget it.” Nero picked up his catapult and lifted it above his head. “Come on, let’s go back to the base.”

As the Moonlit troops retreated with the Seekers of Life and a few other mercenaries, the first hints of enemy troops appeared on the horizon. Immediately afterwards, jets of blue light surged forward, closing in on Dia and the others with an alarming speed.

Before Dia could brace for impact, thick barriers had popped up, blocking the opening salvo of mana. At the same time, Dia felt her body become lighter, and everyone’s ability to flee stylishly shot up. With a solid wall of blue light behind them, they fled into the distance, and before long, the enemy forces had vanished underneath the horizon again.

There was only so many times they could do that, though.

“Scratch that, it’s the last one,” Dia muttered.

“What’s the last one?” Risti asked.

“Just talking to myself, don’t mind me.” Dia looked at the welcoming walls of the base camp. The harassment action had been very successful, in her opinion, but the enemy numbers were too high. Still, if there were so many enemies, Absolute Terror probably wasn’t in the crowd, right?

Otherwise, there would be a lot of friendlies dead upon activation. In other words, the Moons could definitely act personally and take out the army here.

That had its own dangers, of course, but…

“What do we do now?” Dia asked, looking around the camp. The Moonlit soldiers had all scurried away, and the Moon Emissary that had been presiding over their outpost had vanished. She could see the five other mercenary groups that had late or joined the Moons after the expedition began do the same thing, but no one was familiar enough with the other teams that they could—

“Where are you going?” Farah asked.

“Spotted some familiar faces,” Schwarz replied.

“You can peddle your drinks later.” Farah let out a sigh. “And gather intelligence after this. For now, it’s best if we stick together. The Moons will remember us in a moment or so, and we’ll be doing something agai—”

Thunderous roars cut off her words, and Dia covered her ears as black waves of energy tore through the path that she had spent a few hours to wreck. Tri-coloured light responded a heartbeat later, evaporating the river of shadow, but the damage had been done.

The terrain between the Moons’ base and the Dark’s army had been completely covered over by what seemed to be solid stone. Dia, however, could tell that the black wave’s purpose was to change loose, uneven and booby-trapped soil into a straight, seamless path to facilitate a direct charge.

Ground began to shake as that thought flickered through her mind, and the black tide that had gathered around the horizon began to move forward at unprecedented speeds.

“Oh dear.” Schwarz looked around. “Still no orders yet?”

“None. We should prepare to flee,” Farah muttered. “I don’t feel like dying here.”

“We should be careful, I suppose.” Nero narrowed his eyes. “But destiny is destiny…”

Dia tilted her head at those words, but the Holy Son of the Black God didn’t elaborate.