1078. Figure out the rest yourself.
The club held in the hand of the brass-horned monster struck the floor.
bang!
Had the ground split open? Anyone unfamiliar with the scene would likely have felt that way.
The earth trembled violently, sending clouds of dust soaring into the air.
Just before the creature swung its club, Seiki gathered a beam of light in both hands to form a barrier-like barrier, while Finn and the Ragged Saint—the blind old man and Audin’s adoptive father—dodged by rolling backward.
Ultimately, Seiki, Finn, and the Ragged Saint were all unharmed.
The ground had not split. A single knight who had blocked the club had averted both catastrophe and tragedy.
Holding a slender sword in one hand and aiming it forward, she blocked the path of the three. The creature swinging the stone club blinked. He had clearly intended to crush all three of them, yet suddenly a distance had formed between them.
This was because Aesia had intervened. She instantly identified the spot where the monster’s club would land, attempted to meet it, but then stepped back to induce a miss. Should one call it a deceptive step?
The opponent, the monster, mistook the distance. It was a new skill Aisia had acquired since becoming a knight.
Ku-er.
The man could not contain his anger. He raised the club again and swung it horizontally. The knight raised his sword and brought it against the approaching stone club.
Pagagagak!
Instead of sparks, stone dust flew in all directions. Aisia turned her head slightly to the right to dodge the flying stone dust, twisted her sword with rotational force using her whole body to deflect the club to the side, and aimed forward.
The monster let out repeated roars, as if enraged by the whole situation.
K-u-uh-uh!
The shout he let out after taking a deep breath was an intimidating force united with murderous intent, malice, and hostility.
It’s noisy.
With a single cry, Aisia slashed her sword from top to bottom.
Her strike severed the intimidation. The manifestation of intimidation had been her specialty since she was a Junior Knight.
In fact, the way she defeated Will and became a Knight was precisely by repeating what she had previously mastered.
Will seethed. Aisia judged that the monster standing before her was not an easy opponent, but she did not consider it a difficult one either.
With three fork strokes.
From the moment she held Will within her, she transcended her limits.
The monster’s shadow cast a shadow over her face, and amidst the pitch-black darkness, two glowing points emerged. Her eyes shone brilliantly. The orange stars stared directly at the monster. Facing the
monster with eyes filled with Will, Aisia raised her imprinted weapon.
The leather glove that fit her hand perfectly, and the rapier gripping it, stood upright, perpendicular to the ground.
Holding the sword close to her face, Aisia glared forward before pushing off the ground.
She charged directly at the monster, unleashing the Sword of Restraint. Using intimidation as her foundation, she bound the monster’s limbs.
To this, she added the Sword of Deception. How? With an intimidation akin to an illusion.
Koor!
The monster resisted. It lunged forward, tearing through the intimidation.
At the end of the battle, Aisia punched six holes in the monster’s head and severed its neck halfway.
She took a blow to her left arm, but it was not a serious injury. She brushed it off the moment she was struck, so it likely only resulted in a bruise.
Still, it was a truly formidable monster. Considering that the impact was felt even though she was wearing a cloak woven from the threads of the Sun Tree, chainmail woven from precious true silver inside, and a spell-infused gambeson inside that, it was not just a monster with monstrous strength, but one that was simply terrifyingly skilled in combat.
“Whoa!”
She turned around with a yell, leaving the dead monster behind.
It seems there are no other monsters.
Aisia spoke. Literally, no other presence could be felt. The sky was still red, and when he wondered why, it turned out that the sky ahead had deepened into purple and the color had spread all the way over here.
He had witnessed an amazing fight, but was it okay for his mind to freeze up here, lost in admiration? No.
Seiki nodded, and at the same time, a question arose in his heart.
Wasn’t I the goal?
No, to begin with, is this operation a success or a failure?
It is something she cannot know. For this operation, the Holy Knights of the Legion were dispatched to protect her. They maintained a certain distance and eliminated all monsters and beasts approaching from the surroundings.
The only monster they missed was a giant monster with brass horns, but
the knight standing right in front of them killed it.
In other words, they had even called upon the knight who was guarding Naurilia to join the Holy Knights.
Is this all?
No, this isn’t right.
I had heard the outline of the operation. I was told they would use me as bait to hunt the demon. I was told to back out if I felt it was too dangerous.
But just how far along was this calculation? Even though the enemy was pressing hard, I didn’t feel particularly threatened.
Seiki was fairly sharp-witted, but he couldn’t fully grasp the full extent of the plan Crys had orchestrated.
I really don’t know.
Seiki muttered.
“Thank you, Lord Asia. We are on standby. I told you to step back or stand by if anything happens.”
At Seiki’s muttering, Pin expressed his gratitude first and spoke as if in response to Seiki.
“……hmm.”
The Ragged Saint narrowed his eyebrows in anxiety. It was just a hunch. It felt as though he had been defeated by an enemy.
Can a trap be used in reverse?
Does a demon really use its head that much? Maybe.
But then, who is the one getting taken down? At least not us. The monster the size of a house was killed by a Knight of Nauril.
What is the enemy after? The Ragged Saint recalled the words of a guy who had been caught long ago while attempting an assassination disguised as a circus performer.
“People become the dumbest when they think they’ve won. They act like the biggest idiots when they think they’ve seen right through their superiority.”
The assassin spoke only just before dying, after shooting the poison dart hidden in his mouth. Fortunately, no one died, but yes, I had let my guard down at that moment.
Could it be that I am still doing that now? Based on the unease I felt through my sixth sense, such a suspicion suddenly arose in me.
* * *
“Why is Chiba here? Isn’t he someone who shouldn’t be here?”
Such questions should have come to mind first, but there was no need for them.
Encreed lightly grabbed his wrist.
“What are you?”
And he asked. The resolve in his blue eyes, revealed through his black hair, was unwavering.
He would not be flustered even if an acquaintance approached him and stabbed him with a knife
. Moreover, it was something Dunbakel had done first not long ago. Hadn’t he stabbed him abruptly in the Beastmen’s Sanctuary?
Besides, compared to Dunbakel, this couldn’t even be considered a proper swordsmanship.
“Hey, I did that first.”
Dunbakel muttered. I thought he had no memory, but he knew what he had done.
It’s not Chiba.
Rem approached and spoke. He looked into the eyes of the drooling woman, his wrist still being held.
Her pupils were dilated and out of focus. Her mind must be a mess.
He had made her look like Ziva at first glance.
It is a welcome spell.
Esther spread her palm and placed it on the woman’s forehead. As she dissipated the intense heat, the approaching woman’s eyes closed.
Looking again, it was certainly not Jiva’s face.
Even if spell-killing was her specialty, it would be impossible to see through an illusion spell like this.
It was simply that a sixth sense, transcending the five senses, signaled the ominousness and she reacted.
In fact, the tip of her blade merely touched Encred’s cloak and stopped there. Her wrist had been grabbed immediately. Even though
only her wrist was grabbed, her pulse was abnormal. Encred sensed something was wrong right then.
Ragnar and Sinar did not even look back at the woman, staring only straight ahead. I wonder
when it started, but several monsters began to emerge from beyond the boundary of the demonic mirror ahead.
Their skin varied from green to blue and red, and they walked on two legs; many of them were monsters I had never seen before.
Some had large ears and snub noses with bodies like children, while others were as large as Audin.
They emerged in small numbers from deep within the forest, and their numbers continued to grow. Roughly speaking, there were over a hundred of them.
From then on, large creatures also barged their heads.
A giant wolf called a Dire Wolf emerged, drooling yellow, and a troll with fangs sticking out rode on its back.
Ogres were also visible, but they all looked slightly different from typical monsters.
For instance, one ogre had hands like black lumps of iron instead of fingers.
They would have been perfectly suited to be used as hammers.
Is it a variation of a gremlin?
Rem muttered as he looked ahead. He was speaking to the ones who had crouched low enough to touch the ground with their bellies.
They clutched skewer-like blades in their hands, making squeaking sounds as they rolled their eyes.
If you were to create a monster out of the word “vile,” wouldn’t it look exactly like that?
“Ah, are you going to ignore it even if you have a hostage?”
In the midst of this, a creature in bright yellow armor emerged from the center of the monsters and spoke.
“What is that again? Is it a human?” At first glance, it did look like one. However, its face was covered in pockmarks and was so bumpy that, judging solely by its appearance, it looked like some beast pretending to be human.
For one thing, its pupils were distinctly different from those of a human. With vertically slit eyes and bright yellow irises, it was closer to a beast than a human.
It is not a welcome.
Esther spoke as if giving a definitive answer. She remained calm, regardless of how many monsters were appearing. The others were the same, too.
What unfolded afterward was a little—no, quite concerning.
Behind a horde of over a hundred hulking monsters, some held wooden pole crosses, and people were tied to them. They
were mostly humans, but fairies and dwarves were visible here and there. The distinguishing feature was that they all looked more like ordinary people than warriors.
Do I recognize any of them? No.
Now, if you do it like this.
A man clad in a dull yellow—so yellow that it would be fair to call it urine-colored armor—wobbled his finger and raised his arm to the side.
At that gesture, the figures hanging on the cross appeared as familiar faces. No, they had changed.
Vanessa, who built the library; the child who dreams of being a herbalist; Allen, the innkeeper; Juri, who makes marmalade; and so on.
From people met at the Border Guard to Ziva, it was as if a new one had appeared.
Rem’s eyebrows twitched. It was because one of the people hanging on the cross looked like his wife.
Ragnar felt the same way. He saw several members of the Anne and Zaun families.
Thump!
Esther snapped her fingers. Then the people tied to the crosses returned to their previous state.
“There is something I want to ask.”
The guy in the urine armor opened his mouth. He didn’t seem to be bothered by things like illusion spells.
“Even if I kill them all, you’ll still resist, won’t you? May I make a proposal? If just one of you dies, I’ll spare all of them. Oh, and if they all die this time, I’ll bring in the ones I showed you just a moment ago next time.”
A fight, a battle, began with shattering the opponent’s composure.
In that sense, the enemy’s tactics were effective. Encrid found it difficult to turn a blind eye to them—people he could protect, or didn’t have to protect.
So, if asked what he did, he simply left them alone.
After all, there was one person who had been missing for a while.
“What are you?”
Rem asked.
“You guys came targeting our master, didn’t you?”
Instead of answering, the guy smiled, showing his gold-plated teeth. How should I put it? He was a guy with truly bizarre hobbies.
He looked around at everyone for a moment, starting with Rem, then spoke.
“Master is the Lord of the Demon Realm. Naturally, wouldn’t there be people who serve Him?”
Why does he drag out the end of his sentences? It was unpleasant to listen to.
Encreed realized that all of that was the other person’s ploy. So this is how he tries to sway my feelings.
Encreed watched silently for a moment, then opened his mouth as if nothing were wrong.
I see.
That wasn’t the answer to what he was saying. Conversation is meant to be with people. That guy isn’t human. That was my judgment.
“Hey, I can hear you guys racking your brains all the way from here. Listen to me quietly and kill one of you. Otherwise, I’ll kill all of them. What, you said you’d protect everyone’s backs? Aren’t you going to protect these guys?”
Rem couldn’t hold back and spoke.
“First off, I need to cut off that bastard’s tongue.”
Ragnar accepted those words.
“Let’s just cut off his head.”
The owner of the urine armor raised his left hand. At that gesture, a small green monster hopped up a cross, crawling on its hands and feet as if crawling on the ground. A
strong ogre or troll was holding the pole, and the monster had climbed it and was on the verge of stabbing the hostage—a unconscious middle-aged woman—in the neck with its sword. With her neck snapped and hanging limply, it looked as though she would die on her own if simply left hanging like that for a few days. It was the gremlin who couldn’t stand it and thrust its blade forward.
pop!
The bastard’s head exploded. No, his chest exploded as well, scattering blood, flesh, and bone fragments in a radial pattern. At the same time, a rumbling sound echoed in the air.
Encred shook his hands. How many daggers were left now?
Was it eight?
It was something Eitri had diligently crafted. And from now on, it was no longer a horn, but a thunder dagger. Thanks to
the center of gravity being balanced with black metal and the blade sharpened with pure iron, it had become a heavy dagger that produced a loud, clanging sound.
“……Hey, this is a warning. If you stop me one more time, you’re all going to die at the same time. If I kill all of them, what will you do, huh? Are you happy? Should I kill them all? Mmm?”
The bastard in the urine armor spoke, his lips trembling. Was he furious?
Yet, I was truly curious about the face of the man serving such a scumbag. No matter how I looked at him, he certainly wasn’t normal.
But perhaps it was precisely because he was that kind of bastard that he came to the Demon Realm and served a demon as his lord.
Encred quietly estimated the number of hostages.
It was less than fifty, but over forty. Counting them precisely one by one was difficult because of the urine armor’s mental state.
How many could be saved if they attacked at once?
‘three.’
All I have to do is throw the daggers to both sides and have one of them rush in to finish them off.
If there are three of us, the others will be able to do at least that much.
I wonder if Esther has another way.
After racking my brain, I grasped the scabbard with my left thumb and index finger, pretending to compose myself, and raised my remaining three fingers toward the back.
I am three.
It was a simple signal, but everyone understood it perfectly.
“me too.”
Rem answered.
“two.”
Ragnar has no weapon to throw.
“four.”
Sinardo also answered.
I have two, too.
Dunbakel rolls his eyes and speaks.
“heat.”
And then Esther answered as well. Clearly, the witch has other means.
Is it twenty-four in total?
If I push myself a little, I’ll probably get one more.
Encred raised his head and spoke while thinking.
“Figure out the rest yourself.”
I spoke without specifically addressing the listener, but those who were meant to listen must have understood well on their own.
