[Complete] Ch 14.3 The World of Otome Game is a Second Chance for Broken Swords (Patreon)

The World of Otome Game

 is a Second Chance for Broken Swords

Story Starts

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Chapter 14.3 -

The School Trip

From the shrine steps, Leon could already hear the screams rising from the town below. Realisation spread through the festival streets—one voice, then a dozen, then thousands, the morning’s cheer collapsing into a chorused dawning horror. Down near the harbour, stall awnings shook as people abandoned them. A bell began ringing somewhere, urgent and uneven.

“Luxion.”

The terminal hovered at his right shoulder, single red eye fixed on the swarm above.

“How far is the Partner?”

“Thirty minutes at full speed, master. I pre-empted your order. The Partner has been en route since my first scan.”

“Good.”

Leon had learnt from the pirate incident. Keeping aces hidden still held value, but he would never again weigh the lives of those he cared about against it. Not after what had happened to Olivia.

He felt Olivia’s eyes on him.

Leon met her gaze. Her brows lifted a fraction—not fear, a question. Her eyes flicked upward, to the swarm, then back to him. This isn’t supposed to happen yet. You see it too?

He gave a minute shake of his head. Not now. Later.

Her mouth thinned, but she nodded once and turned back to the sky. Between them, Angelica noticed none of it. That was the point.

In the game, the monster siege with the Principality occurred during their final year at the academy. Not here. Not on a school trip, on a neutral island, with the entire student body gathered in one convenient place.

And that siege was where one of Angelica Rapha Redgrave’s permanent endings played out.

Three major consequences had branched from Angelica’s challenge of the prince. The first two were disownment and execution.

Both he and Olivia had always thought execution was particularly harsh for what amounted to jealousy between young adults barely out of their teens. But the game’s writers hadn’t cared much for nuance.

Those two endings simply stopped at that beat. You never heard another reference to the young duke’s daughter afterwards. And despite the family sacrificing their child to appease the outraged nobility, House Redgrave never recovered. They were cast into irrelevance.

According to the forums, there were vague allusions to the Redgrave patriarch drowning himself in alcohol over his anguish at sacrificing his daughter. The details existed only in random item descriptions with no gameplay value—discovered by pure chance when someone’s sister was browsing the UI whilst her brother stepped out to relieve himself.

The third path was marriage. Angelica would be wed to an influential noble more than twice her age, someone whose support allowed the Redgraves to retain some relevance in the political sphere.

Two branches split from that route. In one, Angelica dropped out of school and went straight to providing her husband an heir. In the other, she remained at the academy—shunned, despised, sometimes abused. And when the Principality’s siege came, she died in it: offered up as a sacrifice because she technically held the highest rank among the students after the prince.

The game hadn’t even let her die quietly. Callously handed over, she killed herself in a fit of rage—and with the hostage gone, everything devolved into open war.

Leon’s jaw tightened.

None of those endings would happen. Not whilst he still drew breath.

“Master, I have more bad news,” Luxion said. “Initial scans from the Partner have detected several floating islands bearing dungeons. They were not present in previous surveys of this region.”

“Brought here deliberately, then. That’s probably the source of the monsters surrounding us.”

“That would be the logical conclusion.”

“Either way, we need to survive this.” Leon watched the swarm hanging motionless above the island. The monsters weren’t attacking. That was atypical. Monsters didn’t hover in formation and wait—they descended and killed. “The fact they’re holding position means someone’s controlling them. Find the source.”

“Yes, master.”

Below, the first of the academy’s teachers had begun shouting the students back towards the harbour, voices thin against the panic. Noble children who had never once queued in their lives were learning quickly.

Surely, they wouldn't leave this island and its occupants to their fate?

Leon looked at the two beside him, then back at the sky.

‘Thirty minutes.’

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Despite the sheer number of monsters floating above them, Angelica didn’t feel afraid.

She should have. Logic demanded it. Thousands of creatures hung in the sky, blotting out the morning sun with their massed bodies, their shadows falling across the island in a patchwork of darkness. The air itself seemed heavier, thick with the promise of violence. Below, the town she had found so beautiful last night was screaming.

But fear wouldn’t come.

She had stood in a hall full of wolves and held her face still whilst they tried to pick her apart. She had watched the sky burn over Folkvangr. Both times, the same two people had been within arm’s reach of her—and both times, the world had failed to end.

Perhaps that was it. Perhaps she had simply stopped believing it could, so long as they were standing there.

‘What a foolish thing to think.’

She thought it anyway.

“!!!”

Angelica’s eyes widened.

Both her hands were grasped at once, from either side.

She looked left. Olivia’s fingers had threaded through hers, grip firm and warm, as though they’d done this a hundred times.

She looked right. Leon’s hand engulfed her own, calloused palm pressing against her skin. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were still on the swarm, measuring it. But his hand had found hers without searching.

They squeezed at the same time.

The tightness that had lived under her ribs for days gave way all at once.

A smile touched her lips despite everything. Thousands of monsters overhead, a town in panic below, and she was smiling.

She squeezed back.

Neither of them let go.

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“Are you just going to leave us?!”

“Please, I have a son and a daughter!”

“Get out of the way!”

“I say we take the ship!”

“And what? Most of these ships don’t even have cannons to defend themselves. We’ll die all the same.”

Countless cries, angry expletives, a crazed mob—that was what greeted Leon, Olivia, and Angelica as they approached the docks.

The harbour stretched before them in chaos. Hundreds of townsfolk pressed against the wooden barriers separating the civilian walkways from the mooring platforms. Academy students in their pressed uniforms clustered near the passenger liner, some shouting orders, others frozen in place. Merchant sailors scrambled across their decks, hauling anchor chains and unfurling sails whilst their captains screamed contradicting commands.

“Master, the Partner is fifteen minutes away,” Luxion’s voice crackled through the comm device. “However, there’s what appears to be a colossal whale-like creature at the centre of a large mass of monsters. They’re also escorted by a fleet.”

Leon’s jaw tightened. Monsters of that size never escaped a dungeon—getting one out would mean cracking its containment entirely.

Dungeons, according to most known literature, were gateways to subspace or perhaps a different dimension. Or maybe, like his reality marble, a contained reality within a set boundary. Which explained why a dungeon no larger than the floating island it occupied could still hold vast spaces within. Case in point: the Celestial Dungeon in his territory. Several floors held square kilometres of space inside an island perhaps a fifth of its internal size.

Something had broken that containment. Someone had.

“Will they be able to see the Partner?” Leon asked through the comm.

“No, Master. We’ve been approaching through the troposphere. Currently several kilometres beneath them.”

“Good. Hold your position. Ask Durga and Art to remain with the Partner. The rest should use the airbikes to approach the island. Assist them with navigation.”

“Yes, Master.”

The other day, House Atlee had gifted his household several airbikes as thanks—for what exactly, he wasn’t certain. The thank-you note had been vague, and Clarice was nowhere to be seen at the time. Admittedly, he’d been quite distracted with Olivia.

Leon fought down a blush at the memory of the morning Angelica had walked in on them.

He still couldn’t understand why Olivia had requested that particular arrangement. She’d wanted to watch him take Illya whilst she sat in a—

“Professor Renard.” Angelica stepped forward, interrupting Leon’s spiralling thoughts.

‘Focus.’

The professor looked both stressed and irritated, but despite Angelica’s fall in position, she remained a duke’s daughter. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What’s happening?”

“The citizens are demanding to board our vessel. Well, not only ours—the various merchant vessels docked here as well.” Professor Renard gestured towards the pressing crowd. “We’re at an impasse. Our vessel has minor weaponry, but it wouldn’t survive this swarm.”

Leon’s gaze swept across the harbour. The academy liner sat low against its moorings, polished hull gleaming beside the weathered merchant ships. Armed sailors stood at the gangplanks, pikes levelled at the crowd. A woman clutched a crying infant to her chest whilst her husband argued with a dockhand. Two elderly men supported each other near the edge of the platform, their faces grey.

Above them all, the monster swarm hung motionless. Waiting.

Then a collective gasp rippled through the crowd.

One of the merchant vessels broke away from the dock.

Several desperate citizens leapt from the platform, abandoning reason as they latched onto the vessel’s hull. Three weren’t so fortunate—their fingers scraped uselessly against wood before they tumbled through the gaps in the dock, plummeting towards open sky.

“Storch Ritter!”

The panicked pushing stopped as several of Olivia’s bird familiars materialised—constructs woven from the nanothreads she and Luxion had developed. The pale shapes dove past the dock’s edge, plucking the falling citizens from the air before they could drop beyond reach.

The birds deposited the three in a heap on the planks—shaking, weeping, alive. The crowd stared at them, then at Olivia.

Two more of the birds made passes before the crowd, forcing them back several paces. One stampede, one surge of panic, and hundreds more would follow those three over the edge.

Meanwhile, the merchant vessel continued to peel away from the island at full speed, trying to slip beneath the mass of monsters.

RAWWWRGH!!!!

Everyone clutched their heads, covering their ears against the chorused roar from above.

Luxion countered the sound through Leon’s earpiece, but the noise still reverberated through his bones. He gritted his teeth and watched the merchant vessel—

The flying monsters descended.

Grotesque deep-fish things, all bulging eyes and needle teeth, as if dredged from some lightless abyss. Whatever spell had held them in formation broke, and they dove towards the fleeing airship in a writhing mass.

From this distance, Leon could see the citizens who’d leapt onto the ship’s hull. They clung to railings, to portholes, to rope ladders dangling from the stern. One man had nearly reached the deck when a monster’s jaws closed around his torso and tore him away.

Others fell. A woman in a blue dress. A boy no older than fifteen. An old man who’d been halfway up a cargo net.

The distance was too far for Olivia to save them.

“I am the bone of my sword.”

Above them, the monsters began to break formation.

Leon’s mind raced through his options. At some point during his months at the academy, he’d seen most of the students’ weapons—training exercises, sparring matches, the tournaments Clarice had organised. Every blade, every rifle, every enchanted implement had passed through his vision at least once.

He traced them all.

Swords materialised in the air before him—dozens, then hundreds. They fell point-first into the dock’s wooden planks, embedding themselves in neat rows before the stunned crowd. Rapiers, sabres, longswords, daggers. The weapons of House Field, House Arclight, House Roseblade. Every noble family’s armaments he’d catalogued, now laid bare for anyone to grab.

Gasps rippled through the students. Professor Renard’s jaw went slack.

This island was a neutral zone. Weapons, power armour, guardian spirits—all forbidden during the school trip. A sensible rule for preventing noble disputes during a holiday.

A perfect vulnerability for an attacking force.

‘Why hadn’t they tried this before?’

The answer came as quickly as the question. They’d never had the ability to control monsters before. Whatever bound that swarm above them was new. Principality innovation, or something worse.

Leon traced his bow, the familiar weight settling into his grip. Between the fleeing merchant vessel and the diving monsters, he projected a wall of blades—suspended in the air like a fence of steel. He loosed sword after sword from his bowstring, each one screaming towards the descending mass.

The weapons struck home. Monsters recoiled, their charge slowing as steel bit into scaled flesh. But the blades weren’t enough to kill—only to wound, to delay.

“Quickly, someone signal that vessel to return!” Angelica commanded, her voice cutting through the chaos.

Professor Renard hesitated. Technically, he outranked her. Then he caught Leon’s gaze—flat, cold, promising consequences—and scrambled for the signal flags.

“My core is twisted in madness.”

Leon drew Caladbolg II to full extension, the spiral blade compressing into arrow form. Mana saturated the weapon until it glowed white-hot against his fingers.

He released.

The Noble Phantasm screamed across the sky, punching through the sound barrier with a crack that rattled windows across the harbour. It struck the densest cluster of monsters and detonated.

The blast erased the centre of the formation. Creatures caught in the core simply ceased to exist. Those at the edge tumbled away, trailing smoke and charred flesh. Chunks of monster rained into the sea below.

For one heartbeat, the harbour was silent. Then the crowd found its voice—not panic this time. Something closer to hope.

The merchant vessel received the signal. Its bow swung hard, banking back towards the island whilst Leon’s traced blades continued to harry the remaining beasts.

It wasn’t enough.

One monster broke through—a serpentine thing with too many fins and a mouth that split its head in three directions. It slipped past a gap in the wall of blades, folded its fins flat, and struck the vessel’s stern.

The crack of shattering floatstone echoed across the harbour.

The ship listed. The floatstone that kept it aloft tumbled away from the hull, severed clean by the creature’s strike.

Silence fell over the crowd as the vessel began its descent—not floating. Falling.

Leon was already reaching—for another blade, for a calculation, for anything—and found nothing. Too far for Olivia’s birds. Too far for any traced weapon to matter. The Partner was fifteen minutes away, and the ship had seconds.

He could count the figures still clinging to the hull.

The vessel dropped through the cloud layer and was gone.

Someone in the crowd began to wail. Others simply stared at the empty air where the ship had been, as if staring might undo it.

Leon’s hands curled into fists.

‘Later. Grieve later.’

“Everyone, arm yourselves!”

The students looked down at the weapons embedded before them. Some reached for familiar hilts. Others simply stared, paralysed. One boy—a second-year Leon vaguely recognised from the practice yards—wrenched a sabre free, and the motion seemed to wake the others. Hands closed around grips up and down the dock.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

The sound cut through the stunned silence.

“Excellent! What a show—news of your prowess, Viscount Bartfort, was no exaggeration.”

Every head turned upward.

A small airship descended through the monster swarm, which parted around it like water around a stone. Standing at its bow was a man dressed in garish red and gold, his goatee immaculately trimmed beneath a handlebar moustache that curled at both ends. He smiled down at them, unhurried, a man watching a play unfold exactly as he had scripted it.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” He swept into a theatrical bow. “My name is Earl Garrett, Commander of the Principality’s Fleet. I am here to negotiate in good faith on behalf of the Principality.”

The word rippled through the crowd. The Principality. Students who had grown up on border-war stories went pale. Somewhere behind Leon, a girl whispered it like a curse.

Above him, the monster swarm had frozen again—thousands of creatures hovering motionless, their grotesque bodies rising and falling with each breath, awaiting their next command.

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End

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