I write an Isekai about communist revolution until an anime is made out of it

Lost and Found

As adrenaline slowed its course, I pulled myself from the trench atop numb legs, leaving my rifle to rest atop dented sandbags. I joined a growing congregation of fighters fumbling down the hillside to where the Butcher lay in irrecoverably small pieces, leaving only her equipment. Her attire was well and truly a plate-"armor" bikini, forming the impression of an indecently-shaped hole in the ground with their coloration of what I can best describe as vantablack. Far bigger and more interesting was the scythe, which lay a good thirty meters from her "body", and which I found by its circle of onlookers. They all cut the cursed object a wide berth, which, never passing up an opportunity to make an ass of myself, I dismissed as superstition until I was within a few feet of it and the realization that I knew nothing about what it did and didn't do other than that it had just been used to slice through thin air finally clicked.

It was only then that I turned back to the shredded slopes, for the casualties: light to my strategy-gaming mindset, but atrocious to all involved. There were many with damaged equipment, severed fingers, severed hands, severed arms, even a few with severed scalps, along with one who somehow lost his nose. Then there were the instantly deceased: shock plastered on their cooling faces, the clean creases sliced through them obscured by displaced blood and guts. Simple sheets shrouded gore at the foot of the hill as the crowd which had gathered to watch from the border trickled over: friends, families, and many looking for quick cash had gathered among the fighters by the time Hadlon made another speech from atop a wagon.

"As we now count was was lost, rest assured assured that this is no mere tragedy that befalls us. It is thanks to this that the Butcher now lies in pieces. All who have stood with me are the victors of this combat, and we must now look to our just due."

Feo left to share what was gained and what was lost with those at the city, and Hadlon gathered volunteers to press forward, to the Butcher's vacant home. It wasn't even an hour at a greedy gallop until our prize came into view. Encased in walls not unlike those I'd left that morning was a mess of buildings and their wreckages, split by a river bending through the circular plot. Beside all of this was a hill shorter but wider than the one we'd fought on crowned with a palace riddled with spines fit for an antagonist.

"I remember this place. I visited once, two lifetimes ago now, and it was beautiful. Figures that we must now restore what was defiled."

Through the cold ruins and up to the grand entrance, I'd nearly cast off the drenching weight of a sprint that didn't seem to bother Honse by the time Hadlon, having left the machine-gun he wielded before dangling from the side of his own mount in favor of a snub-nosed shotgun, heaved aside the front doors to reveal a handful of warm bodies, all with the scar and some with the plating of the black rider I'd seen days before.

"Of course her rats would claw each-other apart. Come then, their colleagues will be long-gone by now, and anything of true value will have been left out of reach of those fools."

Past the corpses was a wide gothic hall, as riddled with spines as the exterior and with a lone throne at the other end. Without another word, Hadlon marched across to a spot along the wall right behind the throne, with a trail of soldiers and myself sulking behind him. There, a vertical gash had cracked the stone around what was once a cleverly-hidden door, now capped with an exposed lock. My train of thought raced alongside Hadlon's, and I'd managed to raise thumbs over my ears before he blasted the lock without a word.

The fighters barely has time to wince from the bang echoing across the hall by the time Hadlon had shoulder-bashed into the door, swinging it wide open and stumbling a few steps past it. There lay the spoils: Gold, silver, gemstones, all manner of trinkets and some oddly-colored metals it wasn't worth asking about, all shimmering in the pale white light pouring from some disk mounted in the center of it all. The one thing that caught my eye, though, stood opposite the entrance and behind that "impossible" light: a circular door, adorned with a spiraling storm, and with gilding that still shone past the countless hair-thin streaks cut into it and the cracked wall along its edges.

"It seems that we are only the last of the Butcher's defeats."

Sure does, buddy - is, wait what is that a power socket, right there along the decoration? Yeah, at least it's a hole lined with copper, and - shit, there's two. You know what just might be worth trying?

While Hadlon and a growing number of fighters pouring into the vault admired their spoils, I dug into my pockets to retrieve the cable I'd been using to charge my phone. Twin strands of copper wire, sheathed in probably-rubber, with frayed ends which  I squeezed between my already-gloved fingers into the first socket, and I'd barely grazed the second socket before the whole door began sinking down with the grating rumble of stone on stone. I made a few quick steps backwards into the hushed murmurs of a growing crowd before my internal monologue could catch up with what I'd done.

The door descended until its top was at floor-level, revealing a similarly-circular room cluttered with piles upon piles of books, some in comically-high stacks towards a domed roof, capped with a disk similar to the one in the room before. This one, though, shone a spotlight on a chair worthy of being called a throne in the center of the room, and a stand in front of it evidently made for books.

"I should have guessed. The old lords would have known what was worth more than gold. You are the architect of this victory, offworlder; this should belong to you."

Reading, really? What is this, an actual just due for being indirectly entirely responsible for them getting here? Is he shrugging off responsibility to me to risk reading a curse or something else terrible? Is it both, or could it actually just be a really convoluted assassination plot? You know what, anything in here can't be worse than what they're probably going to find in the rest of this place. I'll take it.