Kill or Be Killed (2)
I had to think fast.
With our chieftain dead, this was no time for wounded pride.
“Rearguard! Request reinforcements from the other parties immediately! Treat the target's threat level as completely unpredictable!”
“...Understood.”
Even in the midst of this disaster, the scout scowled in distaste before turning away to carry out the order. I suppose they couldn't see what I saw from up here.
They couldn't see those eyes—gleefully amused, even as a dozen taut bows aimed squarely at her heart. She showed not a shred of terror before those razor-sharp arrowheads. Did pain simply mean nothing to her?
I swallowed dryly. The hollows of my knees began to tremble. Even the most depraved lunatics bred in the gutter of the slums, perpetrators of unspeakable atrocities, had never harbored murderous intent like this. Her madness was... exquisitely refined, pure and distilled. And that made her all the more terrifying.
“Aaaargh!”
“Damn it! Open the distance! Scatter and engage!”
Arrow or no arrow, she paid them no mind, plunging straight in to drive her dagger through an archer's throat. She was far too fast. A warrior blessed with such monstrous durability and defense was moving with greater agility than most master assassins. Worse still, she had barely taken any hits this time around.
Something was fundamentally wrong.
“So that's how it works?”
The woman plucked the arrows lodged in her shoulder as casually as weeds, smiling in genuine delight. Seizing that exact split second, I loosed another shot. The shaft, carved from windwood, bent unnaturally along the shifting air currents. Coupled with blistering velocity, its trajectory drew a lethal arc beyond human reaction.
Naturally, the arrow struck home.
Yet the shot I had aimed dead at her throat was embedded firmly in her forearm. Impossible. A human... read the currents of the wind?
She swung her bleeding arm in a wide, sweeping arc. At once, my comrades perched in the branches scattered in panic. Her blood was saturated with lethal venom. The chieftain's corpse, charred black as soot, was proof enough of just how hideous that poison was.
In the fleeting moment that breach created, another comrade fell dead. Now only three remained on our front line.
And yet, by sheer fortune, the three of us formed a tight triangle with the target trapped dead in the center. From this angle, we could kill her.
Head. Throat. Heart.
A single exchange of glances was all it took to divide the vitals among us. We had fought together for twenty years at the very least; basic coordination like this required no words.
Thwip!
With a crisp resonance, three arrows took flight upon the gale, blending into a single overlapping hum. Flawless timing. Sometimes, the moment an arrow leaves the string, you know with absolute certainty that it will hit. This was unavoidable. Whichever direction she tried to dodge, at least one vital point would be impaled.
Phew...
A wave of relief washed through me, uncoiling my tensed muscles. Tears pricked my eyes. However perilous an uncharted dimension was said to be, who could have fathomed a native like this existed?
“...Huh?”
Right then, an impossible anomaly occurred.
The wind whipping through the canopy snapped dead in an instant. Our arrows went wildly astray, tumbling harmlessly into the underbrush below.
What just happened? Even in minor measure, commanding the wind was an authority granted solely to high elves like our chieftain. Baffled by this cascade of impossibilities, my mind spun into chaos.
Move, first. Put distance between us.
The woman was already bearing down on me. I abandoned my bow, drawing the dagger at my hip to parry her incoming strike.
My wrist shattered on impact.
Before her follow-up could decapitate me, my comrades snapped out of their stupor and provided covering fire, allowing me to barely scramble clear. Cold sweat drenched the back of my neck. My vision pitched violently, forcing me to slump onto a thick bough. I watched my comrades dying in my place.
In truth, I was already dying as well.
I thought I had successfully deflected her blade, but in that fleeting instant, the human had flicked her own blood across my face. A microscopic trace inhaled into my lungs was steadily dragging me toward death.
Whew. I didn't become a mercenary to die in a dump like this.
In the end, before reinforcements could arrive, the woman succeeded in wiping out the entire front line. Not a single scratch remained on her. From the very beginning, the difference in our calibers was insurmountable. We should never have accepted this commission.
I blinked. By the time I opened my eyes, she was butchering the goblins, virtually feeding them into a meat grinder. Lightning, fire, frost, wind—she unleashed multiple elements in wide swathes of devastation, while the goblins' venom proved completely useless against her.
Of course it wouldn't work. She walked around with lethal toxins coursing through her own veins.
Strangely, despite the venom's potency, the pain wasn't severe. It seemed to carry a paralytic component. My numbed senses meant I couldn't draw a bow, but I could at least stagger about until death claimed me. Hauling myself unsteadily to my feet, I tracked her movements.
By the time half the goblin party had been wiped out, the humans and orcs finally arrived.
The truly laughable part was that even after seeing the carpet of corpses and the blood-soaked monster before them, the humans hesitated to attack. Instead, they tried to negotiate.
Come back to our dimension with us. A primitive realm like this is no place for a human to survive. It's impossible right now, but I promise I will come back for you.
Lowering his voice into a sultry, greasy purr, the man spoke as though mistaking her for some delicate, captive princess. Did someone gather every idiot and degenerate in the guild into one squad? A dry chuckle escaped my throat. I know I gave them the threat rating.
“—Yeah. I really hope you do.”
Naturally, the woman began with the man who spoke and slaughtered all five humans in the blink of an eye. Chillingly concise.
“Waaaargh!”
The moment the remaining humans recoiled in horror, the orcs—who had been sizing up the situation—bellowed war cries and charged. Clad in full plate mail beneath heavy helms, these orcs were C-ranks, the highest-rated combatants among us. A sliver of hope sparked within me. Defeating her was out of the question, but they could buy time. If the rearguard could plant blades and arrows into her back while she was occupied... just maybe.
Squelch—
Yet the moment the woman vaulted onto the lead orc's shoulders, her hand ignited in brilliant, stark-white radiance. Every calculation crumbled to dust.
What followed was sheer butchery. She tore through the heavy iron plate with her bare hands and drove her dagger straight through the orc's heart. Using the dead orc as a meat shield, she swung the massive carcass aside to reset her stance.
I hadn't caught the details, but that glow was unmistakably Aura.
Aura—the undisputed hallmark of a Master-class powerhouse. By mercenary standards, it was a pedigree worthy of an immediate A-rank promotion. I thought her physical might was the danger, but the truly terrifying truth was her realm of mastery. It made no sense. This was supposed to be a C-rank commission. A blatant, criminal fraud.
Someone needed to get back to the Guild and report this right this instant. But the woman clearly had no intention of leaving survivors. Ripping her hand from the orc's chest and stomping atop the corpse, she flashed a radiant, joyous grin that removed any doubt.
“—Not coming?”
Even so, a chance remained. In terms of raw numbers, we still held the advantage. Compared to her supreme realm, her physical attributes peaked at upper C-rank at best. Our attacks weren't entirely ineffective either. While she could wield Aura, her underlying strength and speed weren't quite enough to sustain it flawlessly.
So all they had to do was swarm her.
If someone possessed the courage to be the first to die.
If someone was willing to sacrifice their life as a stepping stone just to complete a measly C-rank commission.
Throwing one's life away was all it would take.
A bitter laugh rose in my throat at my own ridiculous musings. As thick battle aura and bloodlust sent electric shivers through the air, I realized my borrowed time had finally expired. Through blurring eyes, I watched the mercenaries fall one by one, before vomiting up the blood I had been choking down.
It was a truly invaluable experience. Real combat with life on the line was perilous, but it yielded massive returns in skill progression.
I learned to calculate the surrounding wind to dodge the elves' arrows. For a fleeting instant, I had even triggered my authority to bring the wind itself to a dead stop. I grasped the knack of cloaking my body in Aura. I figured out how to weave lethal poison into the intervals between my strikes. Better yet, by analyzing the traits of various races and testing tactics against each one, my observational acuity felt sharper than ever.
After squeezing every scrap of intel out of the last surviving human, I ended him without hesitation.
“So he wasn't entirely lying. About coming to fetch me.”
[Technically speaking, it is possible.]
I recalled that human who had hit on me, speaking in that absurdly theatrical cadence. He had offered to take me back to his dimension. From what I gathered, interdimensional travel required a warp device. It was a singular relic of which only one existed per dimension, monopolized back in their world by an organization called the Guild. How in the world had he planned to drag something like that here? It had to be empty bravado.
I felt a prick of irritation at myself for harboring even a momentary flicker of hope.
Even so, I managed to pinpoint the coordinates of the dimension where that voice entity resided. I also discovered the defining traits of the race known as Watchers. On the surface, they appeared no different from ordinary humans, but they were actually cosmic overseers governing entire dimensions. If you inspected them closely, they bore an eye mark somewhere on their bodies.
Right?
[...That is correct.]
Okay. If I ever break out of here, I'll track you down no matter what. Still, it's far. A painfully long road ahead.
After reviewing my noticeably boosted stats and newly acquired skills, I turned on my heel and headed back toward The Academy grounds. I intended to let the kids out, but remembered I was caked in blood from head to toe.
I immersed myself in the flowing river, lying back comfortably as I contemplated my next moves. With such an overwhelming influx of information, I wasn't quite sure what to prioritize. But one fact stood absolute:
Bastards like that could intrude upon this dimension at any time.
Which meant there was no time to rest. Even if an enemy overwhelmingly stronger than me showed up, I had to forge weapons capable of slaughtering them. And I had to discover it—the means to overturn the entire board before they ever took me down. The method to make it happen.