Three intact Khaenri'ahn Heavy Units guarded the core zone: one at the military tents, one at the scholars' camp, and one central. The samurai crippled one with arrows, exploiting its reboot window to slaughter scholars.
But Khaenri'ah had more. Kagei Bama and Arakawa Jirou teamed up to disable another, though Kagei took a brutal internal injury.
"Urgh!" Kagei spat blood, his face ghostly. Dendro swirled, knitting his wounds. Blocking the Heavy Unit's charge with a thick wooden shield had shattered it, leaving him battered. The war machine's momentum was unstoppable.
Two Heavy Units were down, but the last barreled toward Commander Lorrel. Arakawa couldn't stop it in time.
At the core zone's rear, Lorrel's quarters were rubble.
"Cursed Inazumans!" Lorrel coughed, at his limit.
"Save your breath for last words," Gensei Jirou snapped, driving an ice spear through Lorrel's foot. Pain drove Lorrel mad, his fraying sanity snapping. Blood loss and frenzy took over.
He slammed a button on his armor.
"Argh!" Lorrel roared, scanning the fog that suddenly enveloped them. Bankaku Nisei, Gensei Jirou, Arakawa Jirou, and an unnamed samurai vanished within the Mistveil Technique and Stealth Barrier.
"Damn Inazumans, show yourselves!" Lorrel bellowed.
Before he could finish, heavy thuds echoed. His crazed mind chased the sound—straight into a charging Heavy Unit. Even his thrice-alchemized body couldn't withstand it. Lorrel became a smear under its treads in Tsurumi's fog.
"…"
"Move! Support the others!" a shrine maiden's voice rang from the void.
The Stealth Barrier held, but the maidens' grand barrier could still track them. Bankaku and Gensei's small-scale Stealth Barrier relied on their Visions, mere child's play to barrier-specialist maidens.
Snapping out of shock, Bankaku, Gensei, and Arakawa rushed to aid the others. Of the two samurai who failed to assassinate Lorrel, one was beyond saving; the other clung to life, treatable by maidens back on Narukami Island. Whether through Narukami Grass rituals or Reisen Riou's direct intervention, such wounds were manageable.
The battlefield was chaos. Desperate scholars, pushed to the brink, cobbled together two Tillers from the materials vault in under half an hour—machines that should've taken days to repair. But they fell, overwhelmed by elite samurai and two Vision-wielders.
Now, a berserk Heavy Unit rampaged. Seven or eight samurai lay wounded, blunt-force trauma from its blows untreatable by Narukami Grass. The maidens' healing arts could only stabilize them for Narukami's care. Two samurai were pulp, struck dead-on without defense.
Bankaku drew his bow from his Vision, loosing a Hydro-charged arrow. It pierced the Heavy Unit's core, paralyzing it. Samurai swarmed, dismantling it at the joints. Arakawa, ever eager, ripped out its Chaos Core.
The last Heavy Unit was tougher, costing several samurai severe injuries before they tore it apart. The Tillers? Long scrapped.
"Grab the loot and move! Another Heavy Unit's coming!" a maiden warned.
The team hastened, unwilling to face a pristine Heavy Unit. Khaenri'ah's machines were brutal. They vanished into the fog, taking their fallen comrades' bodies.
Moments later, the Heavy Unit that crushed Lorrel rolled in, alone in the desolate camp. Hilichurl squads and fiends crept in, some lured by the Brigade as cleanup, others drawn by the camp's upheaval.
The maidens treated the wounded at a safe spot, then took two days to return to their camp with the four Khaenri'ahn defectors. The knights couldn't stay—Tsurumi was too risky, and Inazuma didn't trust them yet. For appearances, they'd be "eliminated."
Having coordinated with headquarters, the Rock-Shadow-Thunderlight Brigade and defectors rested two days before a Seirai Island supply ship, reassigned to transport, arrived. If all went well, they'd reach Narukami Island in two weeks.
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