Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

“Right, Little Gwen had always been very decisive, she was super reliable!”

“Yeah, she was always expressionless, super cool. When would I ever be able to be like her?”

“If you could stop being such a chatterbox, that would do.”

“We’re counting on you, Little Gwen!”

The tall girl lifted a hand and swept her long hair aside; the white hair flowed like glacial water cascading down from an icefield.

She raised a hand and pointed in a direction: “Over there.”

Gwen and her friends instantly fell silent. After a moment, several transparent figures drifted out from the fortifications, craning their necks as they looked in the direction she pointed.

There was nothing over there.

“Little Gwen, why over there? How did you know!”

“Could she have just guessed blindly?”

Even Gwen showed a doubtful expression.

Yet the girl did not answer. She looked straight at Gwen, white eyes meeting white eyes: “Gwen, you should look for that thread.”

Gwen froze for a moment, then slowly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the noisy friends before her were all gone, replaced only by strands of threads.

“This one was Zoe’s, these two belonged to those two big brothers, this one… hm, this one was Lord Hughes’, and this one—”

Gwen stared blankly as she held the thread in her hand. A warm, familiar feeling rose into her chest. She followed the direction in which the thread stretched; its other end seemed to be not far away.

“This is… the other Gwen’s?”

No one answered her. At this moment, there were no friends beside her. She was alone.

Gwen hesitated, unaccustomed to the solitude, then stood up. When she looked again in that direction, her gaze had become much firmer.

“Let’s go take a look first… does the other Gwen really exist?”

Gwen held her longsword, moving mechanically in slashes and blocks.

This time she did not even have the time to feel tired or to think.

This was the longest battle she had ever fought.

Everyone in the Resistance—regardless of age or gender—picked up a weapon. Even Grisha staggered forward on his wooden prosthetic leg, raising his tiny bow.

They stepped onto the battlefield, facing the enemy; whatever object they held in their hands, they swung it toward the skulls of those in front of them.

The moment the two sides clashed, it became a desperate fight to the death.

There were no tactics, no layered assault to break the opponent’s morale. The Resistance fighters shouted the name of the White Raven as they smashed fiercely into the red-eyed troops of the Dragonfang.

Both sides fought without retreat. The Grand Duke Dragonfang’s troops marched forward without a word, and the Resistance had no route of escape left.

The heavy machine guns roared nonstop. One officer after another fell, yet the enemy seemed mad, charging forward without pause to continue the slaughter.

A young member of the Resistance thrust his spear into an enemy’s body. Before he could pull it back out, an arrow struck his neck. He roared, threw away the spear, and hurled himself at another enemy, rolling together with him. Then both were trampled to pulp by the soldiers surging up behind them.

Gwen continued to charge and kill through the battlefield. She no longer knew anything else. Isaac’s heavy machine gun still had not gone silent, but its rhythm was far sparser than in the beginning.

Whether they would win, what lay ahead, how many enemies remained to defeat… she no longer had any mental space left to think about such things.

Huge explosions often sounded alongside sharp curses—the voice of Granny’s Dragon’s Breath Cannon. She seemed to be fighting a Transcendent as well. Every time the Dragon’s Breath Cannon fired, the sky brightened for an instant, like a blazing sun rising abruptly in the night.

Yet this was clearly daytime.

Gwen did not know how long she had been fighting. She only felt her entire body gradually growing numb. There were fewer and fewer Resistance fighters around her, yet the enemy surged endlessly like a tide, never cut down completely.

The heavy machine gun finally stopped.

Gwen’s numb eyes cleared for a fleeting moment. Instinctively she knew something was wrong. Even with the machine gun’s suppression, the Resistance could only barely hold the line. If they lost that support—

Sure enough, the Resistance’s formation nearly collapsed at once, visibly on the verge of breaking.

“Hold the line! Hold it!” Gwen shouted. She wanted to say that reinforcements would arrive soon, but when she saw the hopeless eyes of those around her, she could not force the words out.

Would reinforcements really come?

Instinctively she wanted to pray. But to whom?

They were children of the White Raven, yet the White Raven had perished in the White Calamity. They were believers of the Silent Sanctum, yet the Silent Sanctum had abandoned them.

They looked about in despair and found no one they could rely on, so they stood up and resisted by themselves.

To whom could she pray now?

Despair slowly clenched around her young heart.

The enemy surged like a tide. Gwen’s sword arm grew unbearably heavy. If this were a story in the Holy Text, someone would appear at this moment to save them. But that was nothing more than fantasy.

Who would save them?

The Bone-White Raven had been abandoned by all, forgotten by all. The Silent Sanctum was likewise a sanctum of forgetting. They were about to meet their destined end.

Gwen slowly loosened her fingers.

If there truly was a God, please save us.

The enemy soldier rushing toward her raised his blade high.

Boom!

The soldier was blasted away. Gwen opened her eyes in delighted shock.

There really was a God?

But before Gwen stood neither the divine figure of fantasy nor reinforcements she had never seen.

Instead, there was someone battered and miserable—neither holy nor strong. The thick armor on her body had been shattered into scraps, with only broken plates clinging to her frame.

Yet she still dragged that ruined body here, slamming the flail in her hand into an enemy’s skull.

“Lady Nora…”

Gwen widened her eyes, staring at Nora before her.

In Gwen’s memories, Nora was forever reliable and powerful. She wore solid ice-field heavy armor, raised a massive tower shield, and stood alone like an iron fortress.

With her there, even if abandoned by all, there was no fear.

Gwen had once imagined joining the Silent Sanctum, donning that ice-field armor, becoming the Northlanders’ pillar of support.

Perhaps, by putting on that armor, she would no longer fear, no longer feel weak.

Even when Nora’s head had been cut off, her headless body still shielded the Resistance. Whenever the Resistance needed her, she stepped onto the battlefield with her flail in hand.

Now, in the moment of the Resistance’s despair, when even Gwen began to pray, the one who responded to them was not a God—but Nora.

Only Nora lifted her flail and stood before Gwen.

Nora’s body was covered in old and new wounds. The flesh around her wounds had curled into pale edges. Her skin was ghostly white; she had lost all her blood.

Her hand no longer held a tower shield. Her body no longer wore armor. Yet she still stood before Gwen, gripping the flail as she faced the tide of enemies.

A thick, rumbling sound rose in Gwen’s throat—like it was blocked with blood, and like it was filled with roaring fury.