The bizarre objects that the general called giant soldiers were running towards Adelaide.
Before Adelaide could ask anything, the general said, “Be careful! Their target is you! The best way to take down an enemy giant soldier is to defeat them one by one! Damn it, we should have been more thorough with our border patrols and reconnaissance to prevent this situation! What on earth is the border unit doing!?”
The general continued with various complaints after that, but Adelaide didn’t have the leisure to listen.
The giant soldiers had already come right up to her.
Adelaide shouted, “Please wait a moment! I don’t want to fight!”
Instead of an answer, what came back was a sharp thrust.
Avoiding the spear strike that seemed to aim to pierce right through the center of her chest, Adelaide retreated two steps.
She still didn’t want to get involved in a fight between people she didn’t know well, but the other side didn’t seem interested in listening.
However, she couldn’t run away either, as there was a ship under construction right behind her.
Adelaide couldn’t retreat even to protect the ship.
The other two giant soldiers, who had arrived at some point, also glared at Adelaide. While avoiding their attacks, Adelaide observed their appearance.
Due to the bizarre objet d’art-like armor, she couldn’t properly see the opponent’s face or eyes.
All the giant soldiers were holding spears, but their shape was quite bizarre.
While the long shaft and spearhead were ordinary, the opposite end of the spearhead was like a broom.
And it wasn’t made of dry grass or broom, but looked like a tangle of metal wires with blades attached.
Imagining the scene of “sweeping” the small people on the ground with that broom, Adelaide unconsciously frowned.
Adelaide’s sword cut through the air.
It was a sharp slash aiming for a gap in the attack, but Adelaide’s sword didn’t cut through the enemy’s armor and was deflected.
Seeing the golden light that burst forth at the moment of impact, Adelaide realized that the opponent’s armor wasn’t just bizarre in appearance, but was magic armor imbued with special power.
This was quite troublesome.
Adelaide had almost no mana left to use sword energy.
She had fought continuously in the Witch of the West’s castle, and even after coming to the small people’s country, she had been running around non-stop to fulfill the king’s requests.
While she still had some physical strength left as she had done much worse before, mana was a different story.
Therefore, Adelaide decided to change tactics.
Avoiding the attacks pouring in from the front and right by rotating her body, Adelaide then swung her sword upwards with that momentum.
The third spear that was about to strike her at that moment collided with Adelaide’s sword and, unable to overcome the power contained in it, was deflected upwards.
Adelaide then dove into the giant soldier’s embrace as its posture crumbled, and kicked its leg with all her might.
The objet d’art armor once again emitted golden light and blocked the attack, but it was impossible to completely negate the giant strength emitted by the Belt of Amaryllis.
The giant soldier’s body spun sideways, reversing the positions of its head and legs.
Leaving behind the giant soldier that fell head-first to the ground with a thud, Adelaide grasped the shaft of the second giant soldier’s spear.
The giant soldier exerted force with both hands to try to pull out the spear, but that was a mistake.
Adelaide raised the spear shaft high before bringing it down upon the ground with immense force.
The giant soldier holding the spear was driven into the ground without even having time to let go.
The last giant soldier didn’t even need any special technique.
Regardless of whether slashes worked or not, she just kept hitting its head with her two-handed sword, and the staggering giant soldier simply collapsed.
Seeing the three giant soldiers fallen on the ground, General Redresal shouted loudly, “Now’s the time! Subdue them!”
Some of the workers mobilized for shipbuilding were excellent soldiers.
They rushed to the back of the heads of the twitching giant soldiers.
The back of the head part of the armor was bulging out as if there was a lump, and when the soldiers forcibly opened it, small people popped out from inside.
And as soon as all the small people were dragged out, the giant soldiers also went limp.
Adelaide could tell they were soldiers from the neighboring country as their attire was different from the Lilliput soldiers from the start.
However, she couldn’t understand why they were popping out from such places.
After waiting for General Redresal to finish the cleanup work of restraining the captured small people or sending messengers elsewhere, Adelaide asked him, “Excuse me, what exactly was that?”
At Adelaide’s question, the general made a face as if he felt strangely guilty.
“…I wanted to send you off without you knowing till the end if possible, but it can’t be helped.”
The general sighed and then continued, “The power of giants is formidable. While it’s not impossible to subdue them temporarily, there are many risks in using them as soldiers. We never know when they might turn their violence towards allies. The armor worn by the giant soldiers is an item to prevent such rampages.”
“Prevent rampages, how?”
“By operating the device in the back of the head where they ride, it’s possible to inflict pain on the giants. We can strangle their necks or stab their bodies with something like thorns. There’s even a function to completely stop their movements in case the giants try to reach back and remove the riding seat.”
Adelaide opened her mouth wide at the answer that exceeded imagination.
“No, no, no!” the general denied it while breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Some retainers did suggest such opinions, but the first punishment for giants who commit illegal entry is labor punishment! After diligently completing one year of labor, you can gain freedom afterwards! Sentencing to giant soldier form is a measure taken only for evil people who don’t properly carry out their labor punishment or commit crimes! We don’t unconditionally make giant soldiers like those Blefuscu bastards!”
It wasn’t particularly trustworthy talk.
Especially considering the attitude the general had shown when first meeting Adelaide.
If Dorothea were here, she would have snorted, and if Sophia were here, she might have asked, “So where did those who gained freedom go?” making the general break out in sweat, but unfortunately or rather fortunately, the one here was Adelaide.
She didn’t feel much doubt about the general’s somewhat sloppy explanation and asked something else, “Then, what will happen to those giant soldier people now?”
“They’ll die. No, we have to kill them.”
The general’s words were resolute.
Adelaide carefully objected, “But didn’t you just say that the enemy country uses even people without particular crimes as giant soldiers?”
“That’s only before they become giant soldiers. After becoming giant soldiers, they would have brutally killed our soldiers with those vicious weapons. We can’t tell our dead comrades, ‘They massacred you because they were threatened and had no choice, so please forgive them,’ can we?”
Hearing that, Adelaide, too, was left speechless.
While Adelaide was stronger than anyone here in terms of physical power, mind reading was a separate issue.
Whether feeling sympathy for the dejected Adelaide, or thinking it would be troublesome if she went on a rampage after upsetting her mood, the general added words bit by bit, “I know the existence of giant soldiers might feel unpleasant to you. But originally, the one who spread the giant soldier armor was a giant like you, that is, Lady Elphaba. We’re just using what we received.”
“The one who made the armor was the Witch of the West?”
“Yes. She kindly gave us the user manual and even taught us the technique to adjust the armor for giant soldiers of different physiques. The problem is that she didn’t just give it to us, but also to those Blefuscu bastards.”
The general continued to say things like, “Even if it’s a trade item, giving it to hostile countries is too much,” but Adelaide didn’t listen to those words very attentively.
This was because her keen hearing had caught a mumbling so small that others couldn’t hear.
The source of the sound was the giants inside the armor.
Suffocating… can’t breathe.
Adelaide hesitated for a while, but soon her eyes were filled with determination.
She approached the giant soldiers.
She heard the general shouting something in panic, but Adelaide didn’t stop.
She scraped together what little mana she had left to create sword energy, then struck down on the helmet part.
Unlike the Tin Knight, Adelaide’s skills weren’t enough for the finesse of cleanly cutting only the armor, but she could at least create a large dent.
Adelaide firmly grasped both sides of the helmet, then applied force centered on the dent.
The resistance was only momentary. Unable to withstand the intense grip and arm strength, the helmet split in two.
Adelaide held her breath at the face revealed inside.
Protruding cheekbones. Sunken eyes and cheeks. Even white, faded hair.
An old man who looked like he should be sitting in an armchair based on his appearance was there.
The old man widened his eyes for a moment, then trembled and cried, “Thank you, really, really, thank you…!”
Adelaide pondered how to respond, then simply bowed her head briefly and raised her sword once more.
Repeating the process of carefully making dents in the armor and dismantling it with her hands, the old man was able to completely come out.
The fully revealed body of the old man was in a serious condition.
He was extremely emaciated, and his skin was full of all sorts of wounds and inflammations.
General Redresal, who seemed to be seeing the inside of the armor for the first time as well, spoke in a somewhat surprised voice, “Amazing. No matter how I look at it, it doesn’t seem like he could run so vigorously or swing weapons. Is this also one of the effects of the armor?”
Adelaide silently repeated the same process for the other two giant soldiers.
While the condition of the giant soldiers was somewhat better than the first ones that appeared, they too were equally weakened to the point of being unable to move on their own.
It wasn’t that all the giant soldiers were elderly.
No, she soon realized that even the first giant soldier wasn’t actually an old man.
Various types of nails protruding from inside the armor.
Those nails, which were hollow and structured to be able to extract something from what they pierced, were driven into the bodies of the giant soldiers like stakes.
Not by theory, but by intuition, Adelaide realized the bizarre strength of the armor, its movements—all of these were powers created at the cost of burning the lives of those inside.
The old man hadn’t aged, but had his vitality drained by the armor.
“Why on earth such armor…?”
Adelaide felt malice.
From the armor said to have been made by the Witch of the West, she felt a terrible malicious intent on tormenting humans.
It was then, as Adelaide shivered with an emotion she couldn’t tell was a chill or anger.
The general’s scream-like shout echoed in Adelaide’s ears.
Adelaide reflexively moved her body from where she was sitting.
Right after. Something fell from the sky and struck down where Adelaide had been.
Wings. Golden fur. Monkey.
The Witch of the West’s familiar was staring at Adelaide as if it had finally found her.
Adelaide swung her two-handed sword.
With a crack, rather than being cut by the sword, the monkey’s left arm flew off as if it had been chopped by an axe.
The monkey let out a pain-filled scream and tried to scratch Adelaide with its remaining hand.
Adelaide calmly blocked the attack.
While Adelaide was adjusting her posture and preparing for the next attack, the monkey, for some reason, made an annoyed expression but didn’t attack her and flew up into the sky.
Adelaide turned her gaze upwards, following the monkey and was momentarily dumbfounded.
Dozens of golden monkeys were looking down at Adelaide with their respective gazes.
The monkeys, their numbers reduced by half compared to when they first appeared, began to cross the sea.
In their hands was a limp little lion they had captured.
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