Chapter 431: The Coughing Wind

He began to call out the Virtuoso's honorific name.

"He who stands at the pinnacle of the clouds, one with the wind."

The mooring ropes of the row of barges on the canal west of Ypres snapped taut all at once, stretching into a harp no one could play.

Further south in Franc, the horses of an entire cavalry brigade raised their heads, all facing north.

"...He who once formed deep valleys with a single breath."

Further away, along the snowline of the Rhine Valley, the snow that had gathered all winter long began to move on its own.

Over in Dover, the barometers plummeted and spiked, then plummeted and spiked again, all within fifteen minutes.

The gentleman manning the instruments replaced the recording paper twice. By the time he needed to change it a third time, he simply set his pen down and told his colleagues to relax—it was just an ordinary change in the weather.

"He whose lungs have departed, whose bones have become a flute, with only his breath remaining in the world."

As the third line rang out, every man across the entire frontline drew a sharp breath at the exact same moment.

From the coast to the inland supply stations, hundreds of thousands of chests swelled in the exact same breath.

In a field hospital at the rear, a wounded soldier drinking soup choked, inhaling the broth straight into his windpipe;

Two stretcher-bearers simultaneously lost their grip, dropping their load onto the frozen earth;

A priest halfway through a litany sucked in a breath and forgot how to exhale.

That was exactly the breath the entity borrowed.

Its true body remained in the New Continent, separated by an entire ocean. Only its breath could cross over.

So it borrowed the collective inhalation of hundreds of thousands of men, riding that single breath across the sea.

"Halt!"

The order echoed from the very front to thirty miles away. By the time it came back, it had become, "No one goes down."

Eight thousand feet in the air, the endless procession reined in.

They halted sharply. Tens of thousands of mounts in the vanguard pulled back their hooves all at once, the resulting thunder rolling across the clouds for half a mile.

This was completely different from that minor scuffle at the Unresponsive Pit. This time, the Gale Virtuoso was serious.

When it arrived, something echoed beneath the clouds, playing a very long, drawn-out tune.

It was blown from a flute made of bone—a flute so long that the other end was lost from sight.

The sprawling wall of yellow-green toxic gas was entirely swept up by this melody.

Swept up to ten thousand feet, the tornado continued to draw upward, spinning thinner and thinner.

The shadow planted the Caduceus in front of itself, watching the towering tornado in the distance.

At that moment, a man appeared beside it.

The man wore a robe washed pale; its hem was frayed bare, and the cuffs were stained with ink.

"I was a man of learning in life, too," the man said.

"Which field?"

The man thought for a long time.

"...I can't remember the name of the discipline. But I remember the bibliography, every single book."

Just then, the first muffled thud from the ground below drifted up to them.

Five thousand seven hundred and thirty reserve valves were wrenched open across an eight-kilometer front. The sounds chased each other, merging into a thin line that raced from west to east.

Down in the cellars, everyone opened their mouths simultaneously. The engineer captain spoke, the judge advocate spoke, and the nineteen-year-old orderly sitting on the stone steps spoke, too.

"He who lurks in the windless hollow, breathing with stagnant air."

The first line of the honorific name was formed. The moment he finished reciting it, the engineer captain leaned against the stone steps and vomited.

The judge advocate was the only Minor Adept on the field aside from that half-Virtuoso.

He didn't throw up. Instead, he did what he had done every day of his life:

He took out his fountain pen and recorded that line word for word in his notebook.

He even appended the time, the location, and the number of people present.

Only after he finished writing did the fear set in.

He looked down at what he had written and found he couldn't recognize his own handwriting.

The hurricane lamp in the cellar had been trembling all night.

Now, its flame stood dead straight. Its color faded, draining into a shade of gray that no one could name.

Hohenheim stood up.

In front of him sat a palm-sized brass crucible that was slowly dissolving.

His hands, which had remained spotless for his entire life, also began to melt away.

"He whose body is entirely sacrificed, whose bones have become an urn, with only his toxic gas forever sinking into the world."

This was the "sacrifice" he—or rather, it—had prepared for itself.

High in the sky over Flanders, the upward draft of the tornado came to a halt as it reached a certain altitude.

Then, another scent laced itself into the melody.

It was a sickly, rotting sweetness.

A sweet scent began to permeate the tune of the Gale Virtuoso's Bone Flute.

"It's seeped in," the Scholar said.

"Something filthy has gotten into the flute."

"Just spit it out and be done with it," the axe-wielding young man said beside him.

"Aren't you clever. A Virtuoso doesn't have a mouth." The Scholar shot the young man a sidelong glance.

"It removed its lungs and turned its bones into a flute. All that's left is breath."

"Right now, it's borrowing the lungs of others."

"It crossed the sea on a single borrowed breath, and it must repay it in a single breath."

The melody skipped a beat, resumed, and then skipped again.

The Virtuoso began to cough.

When the sound of that cough fell from the clouds, everyone across the entire frontline coughed with it.

Down in the trenches, inside the bunkers, and all the way back in the rear stables, hundreds of thousands of men doubled over in the exact same breath. None of them knew why they were coughing.

The towering tornado unraveled, dropping back down and spreading out even wider than before.

"The toxic gas the Gale Virtuoso drew up is now pouring back down."

The old Scholar spoke very softly, "Pouring straight back into its flute."

Richard understood.

It seemed the blanket of yellow-green toxic gas was no longer just an artificially released chemical or Spell Formula medium. That toxic cloud had now become the Virtuoso itself.

Albeit a newly ascended Virtuoso that had yet to even find its footing.

"Toxic gas can pollute the wind," the shadow said.

The old Scholar turned to look at it.

"...You're a bit sharper than the last one."

Right at that moment, a seal descended from the far side of the clouds.

The seal clamped over one of the holes on the Bone Flute, and the melody was instantly severed.

It was cut utterly clean. One second the tune was flowing, and the next, there was absolutely nothing.

"The second," the old Scholar noted.

"Another one?" The young man tightened his grip on his axe.

"It's one they called in."

This appeared to be another Virtuoso on Germania's side, part of a premeditated strike.

Across the entire frontline, those hundreds of thousands of men exhaled simultaneously.

It was an unwilling exhalation, as if the breath had been violently wrenched straight from their throats.

In that single breath, from here all the way to the Rhine, everything that was supposed to open simply refused to budge.

The ship locks on the Ypres canal jammed. The winches refused to turn, and even when the lockkeepers pried at them with iron crowbars, the gates wouldn't yield a single inch.

From Crater 27 all the way down to the communication trench in the south, tens of thousands of men whose lungs were filled with that toxic rot suddenly found they couldn't cough at all.

Those who needed to cough couldn't cough; those who needed to vomit couldn't throw up.

Once the sealing wax is stamped, nothing is permitted to open.

When one hole on a flute is clamped shut, the rest become mere decorations.

The Virtuoso of the Gale Tradition staggered back.

As it retreated, it shattered half the cloud cover, sending chunks of whatever lay hidden within the clouds tumbling out of the sky.

The mass of yellow-green gathered once more.

"Who is this one?" Richard asked the highly knowledgeable old Scholar beside him.

"I cannot speak its honorific name," the Scholar replied, "but I can tell you its domain is 'just a little further down'."

The Scholar mimed pressing something downward in mid-air.

"It isn't adept at creating wounds, but it excels at making them fester."

"Of course, this 'festering' operates on a purely esoteric level.

For example, if someone trips on a slope, they would normally just get up, dust themselves off, and move on.

But this entity would nudge the rock right by your hand. That rock would dislodge a second, the second would take down a third... and eventually, half the hillside would come crashing down on you."

"That's why the Virtuoso of the Gale Tradition suffered such a massive setback."

"It was caught off guard by the newly ascended Virtuoso's toxic gas, and then this second Virtuoso capitalized on the vulnerability, dropping stones down the well."

"Two of Germania's Virtuosos teaming up completely shattered the Empire's countermeasures."

Sitting in his rattan chair hundreds of miles away, Richard committed this entire analysis to memory word-for-word using Erudition.

This endless procession had been gathered up one by one by the lord of the hunt from all over the world across centuries.

Anyone too foolish or too weak wouldn't have been recruited, and even if they had been, they wouldn't have survived their first winter.

Thus, anyone capable of speaking up here tonight had likely been far from ordinary in life.

Take this Scholar, for example, who could analyze a clash between Virtuosos with such flawless logic. In life, he had to have been at least a Minor Adept, and perhaps even a Major Adept.

"Sir," Richard asked, "are you saying Germania orchestrated all of this in advance?"

"Indeed. They are far more unified than Albion," the Scholar said.

"The one who intervened today couldn't be a more perfect fit. It doesn't even need to manifest its true form on the battlefield.

It simply waits for you to slip up, then gives you a little push."

Among the hunting procession, arguments and discussions about the clash between the three Virtuosos rippled through the ranks:

"The Gale Virtuoso took a beating."

"A massive beating."

Someone chuckled from the rear. The laughter passed back, rank by rank, echoing away until it was out of earshot, yet still carrying on.

"How about we pitch this guy over the side, too?" the axe-wielding young man suddenly suggested.

He was referring to the shadow.

"He dragged us all the way out here, and the sky is full of things we can't even afford to look at."

"Yeah. All this prey sitting right here, and we just have to sit on our hands and watch."

"Don't touch it. It's an emissary, and its position was granted by the lord of the hunt."

Before Richard could speak up, the old Scholar beside him intervened on his behalf.

"The lord of the hunt isn't here."

Upon hearing that, silence fell over the clouds for a moment.

"What was decreed in the court cannot be overturned after the court adjourns," the old Scholar said darkly.

"That was in the court. This isn't the court."

"Then convene the court again."

"Holding court means stopping. If we stop, we won't reap a single thing tonight."

"Then we don't convene."

"If you don't convene, on what grounds do you overturn the decree?"

Dozens of rope-gripping figures exchanged glances. None of them were willing to be the first to let go.

Sitting in his rattan chair, Richard let his fingers relax slightly.

When the lord of the hunt was present, these tens of thousands of men acted as a single, braided rope;

But with the lord of the hunt gone, they immediately frayed into dozens of loose threads, all bickering among themselves.

Nobody had the authority to give orders, and nobody was genuinely willing to come to blows over a few words.

"Scatter," the figure at the very front gripping the reins ordered.

"Keep your distance from those entities. Nobody is permitted to approach the center."

"Then what do we do tonight?"

"We watch."

"Watch?"

"We watch. And we reap whatever falls within reach around the edges as we go."

He wrapped the reins tightly around his wrist one more time.

"When Virtuosos clash, the victor always has to pause to catch its breath.

While it catches its breath, a few scraps are bound to fall. We scavenge what falls."

That directive rippled all the way to the back of the procession. Nobody objected.

The procession splintered into dozens of smaller detachments, each one diving down into a different trench.

For signals, they swapped their horns for the short barks of hounds: one bark to advance, two to halt, and three long barks meant another squad had already swept the area.

As they scattered, not a single one of them dared to approach the three titanic entities thrashing in the center of the clouds.

"Why is the lord of the hunt absent tonight?" Richard asked.

"Most likely waiting somewhere."

"Waiting for what?"

No one answered.