Auspicious Slumber

“...So that’s how you all managed to hold out for so long.”

“Gotta admit, it scared the shit out of us when it first happened, ma’am.” A soldier said as he approached Medrauta. The silver-haired knight stood on a bloodless battlefield, the only pools of crimson long consumed by earth itself. All around her were living corpses, silent and slumbering as her sword plunged again and again into the defenseless creatures.

“Why? I would’ve been relieved.” Medrauta replied as she continued slaying beast after beast relentlessly despite their inability to fight back. There was no honor to spare for such accursed creatures, after all. The sound of squelching echoed around the knight, informing her that Viviane was taking the opportunity to thin out the herd as well.

The sudden onset of dormancy that the witchspawn suffered had come as a surprise to Medrauta, but it was certainly a welcome reprieve from the pitched battles she had thrust herself into mere hours ago. As far as Medrauta knew, such beasts should have been active throughout all hours, but the unexpected development certainly helped explain some things.

While she wasn’t entirely sure what purpose the spire in the capital actually served, Medrauta was fairly certain that Amelia was using it to amplify her abilities significantly. However, she was still a budding witch and by no means powerful enough to maintain an infinite army of constantly regenerating witchspawn, especially considering she had to pay attention to all the other plots she had apparently fueled throughout the rest of the empire.

But why would she choose nighttime for the creatures to go dormant? That’s when witchspawn are most powerful. Unless... Medrauta frowned, her gaze inadvertently shooting upward as it was drawn toward the tip of the spire. Perhaps Medrauta’s desire to confirm her own speculations warped her perception, but it almost seemed as though the light of the full moon was being drawn into the spire. If that was true, then there was no doubt that Amelia required the moon’s power to maintain her army, forcing her to charge up a reservoir before the monsters could become active once more.

“Well... I guess we just weren’t expecting it,” the soldier finally answered, turning his head to the side in an attempt to hide his embarrassment. He wished he could’ve given a better answer, but he didn’t want to lie to the knight either. “Didn’t really make much of a difference, though. Asleep or not, they still kept regenerating.”

Medrauta nodded. “Let’s see if we can fix that, then. I’m pretty sure there’s a way to kill these things even with mundane means, but I don’t exactly remember how.”

“...Is that why you’re covered in black goop?” Viviane asked as she approached her knight, stepping carefully around the pools of black liquid that Medrauta left behind. The knight had been so engrossed in dissecting the slumbering witchspawn that she’d failed to hear Viviane approach.

“Oh, uh...” Medrauta looked down at her black-stained sword and gauntlets. Though the liquid normally evaporated rapidly and returned to its natural state as mana, Medrauta had been slaying and dissecting the slumbering beasts so quickly that she was actually accumulating goop faster than it could essentialize. “...Yeah.”

Viviane stopped next to her knight, inspecting the rapidly dissolving corpse of the freshly dissected beast. From a cursory inspection, there wasn’t really anything special about it. The creature took on the form of a misshapen four-legged canine with various spines sticking out of its eerily undulating body. Despite it being cut apart, there was nothing outstanding about its insides either. As a creature birthed from pure mana, there was no need for it to have internal organs or anything of the sort, leaving it as just one giant mass of black-red matter.

As the creature finished dissolving into a pool of shivering fluid that quickly began evaporating back into the air as mana, Medrauta sighed and shook her head before moving on to the next dormant witchspawn. The black goop on her gauntlets and sword had already begun essentializing, but her blade was soon stained yet again.

Viviane crossed her arms, watching her knight very unceremoniously hack away at yet another creature. She’d spent her fair share of time firing arrows into the mass of slumbering beasts. In fact, the only reason why she’d stopped was due to the garrison’s arrow stockpile running low thanks to her rapid shooting. During that time, Viviane had plenty of opportunities to watch her knight run around cutting open every witchspawn she slew, and Medrauta had cut open every one just to find nothing.

“Surely there’s a better way to do this, Medrauta.” Viviane said, wincing instinctively as she watched the silver-haired knight thrust her hands into the creature’s corpse and start digging through it. “You’ve killed more than a hundred of these things over the past few hours and haven’t found anything. Don’t you think you should try something else?”

Medrauta shrugged, stopping in her mad quest to make something out of nothing for just a brief moment. “Like what? I feel like I’m supposed to know this, but my mind is just going... blank, I guess. For starters, I don’t even know where these memories come from, but I feel like if I keep doing this, I’ll either hit a trigger that brings ‘em back or go insane. Hopefully not the latter.”

“Well...” Vivane bit her lip, not really knowing what to say to that. After all, she wasn’t sure where Medrauta’s knowledge on witches came from either, and she had been wary of accidentally triggering another one of Medrauta’s episodes ever since the incident in the carriage. Nonetheless, she still wanted to lend her knight a hand despite her lack of ideas. “...Perhaps we might be better served inspecting a live specimen? Otherwise you’re just going to be wasting time looking for nothing.”

“I’m not looking for...” Medrauta suddenly froze, her eyes widening as she stared at Viviane with realization dawning in her eyes. “...Nothing. V-Vivi! You’re a genius! You’re actually a genius! I remember now!”

“T-That’s great, Medrauta, but can you stop shaking me now!?” Viviane said as Medrauta gripped her by the shoulders and shook her fervently as the knight lost herself in excitement. Despite Viviane’s enhanced constitution, Medrauta’s strength was no joke, and the constant jerking motion quickly disoriented the poor noblewoman.

“O-Oh! Sorry, Vivi!” Medrauta released Viviane from her grasp, laughing sheepishly. “But seriously, you’re a genius! That was the key all along! Nothing!”

Viviane frowned in confusion. “‘Nothing’ is the key? Uh... Care to explain?”

Medrauta nodded vigorously as she began going over the basics of witchspawn physiology. While there were certainly more advanced forms of witchspawn, basic beasts like the ones they were pitted against were fairly simple. As they were made and sustained wholly from mana, the witchspawn had no internal structure to speak of. Instead, they were all essentially shaped masses of dark mana and required a constant supply of mana to fuel their existence. This was all information that Medrauta knew even before the revelation Viviane had given her.

What she had just remembered was the source of that fuel. Because it would be unrealistic and even dangerous for a witch to constantly busy themselves with fueling their minions, a solution known as a mana core was invented long ago. Their primary function was to act as a storage unit for mana, allowing it to efficiently provide fuel for witchspawn without the witch needing to actively pay attention to their minions. While most mana cores required the witch to recharge the stored mana from time to time, more advanced cores were capable of drawing in the ambient mana in the air to function as an almost perpetual fuel source.

“...Except none of these beasts have mana cores.” Medrauta said as she concluded her explanation. “But that’s fundamentally impossible, which means there must be a different way Amelia’s fueling her witchspawn and probably why they’re falling dormant during nighttime.”

“Do you think they’re being fueled by the spire itself? I get the feeling that it’s radiating some sort of sinister power, but I’m not entirely sure what it is.”

Medrauta shook her head. “It’d be more plausible if Amelia was an experienced witch with countless years of practice, but based on how much damage Dame Eirlys and I managed to do to her, I doubt she’s that strong. The spire might be amplifying her mana somehow, but I don’t think it’ll let her project her power over such a large distance.”

Viviane pursed her lips in thought. “...What if she’s got something like a supply unit? Maybe a network of mana cores that can fuel her beasts? If that’s even possible, I mean. I don’t really know much about witches after all, ahaha...”

“No... You might be onto something, Vivi.” Medrauta frowned, rubbing her chin as she fell deep into thought. “If the spire acts as a central headquarters that collects mana, then it makes sense if she’s got other structures set up to supply mana throughout the empire. That’s the only way she’d be able to execute an attack of this scale...”

“And probably why she chose to carry out her plans now. With three duchies in the palm of her hand and one tied up by Kaslavna, there was no one to stop her.” Viviane said.

“No one except us, that is.” Medrauta grinned. “This explains the massive ritual circle underneath Revelo Castle. Other than the spire, it was probably responsible for a great deal of other things we’ve yet to encounter, and I’m willing to bet Leticia and Rosette ran into a few circles themselves.”

“Think we’ll run into them on the way?” Viviane asked.

“...On the way to what?”

“Whatever do you mean, Medrauta? We’re going to look for Amelia’s ‘supply unit’ aren’t we?”

Medrauta stared at her lady. The position of the moon told her that there were still a good six more hours left of nighttime, but they had no idea if anything like a supply structure existed. Even if it did, the pair had no information on its location or its nature. Moreover, failing to return by morning would spell disaster for the soldiers who were already being pushed to the brink by the beasts.

“It’s just too risky, Viviane. We can’t abandon the soldiers here and we’ll never make it back in time on foot. Maybe it’d work if we had a bit more time to scout ahead, but for now, we’ll just have to hold out with the garrison until reinforcements arrive.”

Viviane shook her head adamantly. “Who knows when that’ll be? Three days? Four? The duchy just got out of a civil war and now we’re fighting witchspawned beasts. We’ll be lucky if the reinforcements arrive within the week, Medrauta.”

“Maybe so, but—”

“And remember, we’re the only ones who can kill these beasts. I know you’re strong, Medrauta, but we’ve already suffered casualties today. We... We can’t protect everyone like this, and the witchspawn we slew today will only return in greater numbers come daytime. Don’t you see? As risky as this may be, it’s our best chance to stop this once and for all, or move the front line closer to the spire, at the very least!”

Medrauta fell silent for a long while as she digested Viviane’s words. Part of her wanted to applaud Viviane’s bravery, but she also wanted to scold her lady’s recklessness. Much of Viviane’s words made sense and the plan would’ve been perfect if the witchspawn weren’t capable of regenerating, but as it stood, the garrison would be overwhelmed without the two of them there.

Slowly, Medrauta shook her head. “No. We can’t do this. Not without informing the garrison and figuring out a proper plan instead of rushing out there unprepared. I’m not saying we continue holding the line here, but let’s wait until tomorrow so we can figure things out first, alright?”

Viviane sighed. At first, it had been Medrauta who was overly excited after arriving at an answer, but the noblewoman now felt the same restlessness coursing through her body. She wanted to know whether their theories were true, and if they were, she wanted to liberate the duchy from these hellish waves of monsters as soon as possible.

“...Alright,” Viviane agreed reluctantly. “But we should take advantage of the time we have now. Why don’t we scale the border walls and see if we can spot anything in the distance?”

“That’s more like it. Race you to the top?” Medrauta grinned.

Viviane returned her knight’s smile.

“You’re on!”