King Kong and the Hybrid Clash (4)

In the central square of the village built inside the tunnels, a strange spectacle unfolded. A priest in clerical robes appeared and launched into a lengthy address, spinning out a miraculous chain of logic: anyone born a noble was a criminal; they themselves suffered only because they lacked power; therefore they had to seize that power, and every last person who called himself a noble had to be beaten to death.

The scene was too frenzied for the word frenzy. The two of them reeled for only a moment before Lee Han spoke.

"Oh. An assassin order?"

"Yeah. Pretty sure they're the kids I used to know."

Lee Han told the boy Taechang a piece of his past. If anyone was fit to hear it, it was this one—not some stranger, but a man from the same homeland, carrying a secret of his own. The others had scattered, fortunately, so the moment was as good as any for a conversation like this.

And when he heard the confession—Lee Han coming out as a former cultist, or something that might as well have been one—Derek went quiet.

"......"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Ah, no. I just... realized all over again that your life hasn't exactly been a smooth one, Instructor."

He wore the expression of a man who had, in his own way, made his peace with it. Taechang muttered that it was no wonder there were so many Traits, and Lee Han ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠snorted. Typical of the kid.

Then, all at once, Taechang went on.

"Mm. From where I'm standing, I don't think you need to take it that seriously. Anyone who looks at a man who was kidnapped and forced into an assassin order and declares that he's a criminal too—that person is the abnormal one."

"Hm. You think so?"

"...Well, the Royal Capital is full of lunatics who say abnormal things. But you don't really worry about that sort of thing, do you, Instructor?"

"...You've learned far too much about me."

"Haha."

The kid was right. Lee Han honestly didn't much care whether the organization he had belonged to was a cult or anything else. There was a shock, of course, but only at first. Once he cooled a little, it wasn't such a great matter.

I didn't kill anyone. I didn't go around recruiting for them either.

He had been kidnapped by the Black Moon and spent years on nothing but training and brainwashing. The order collapsed before he ever carried out a first mission. After that he was a free man, so there was nothing to feel guilty about.

...If, as Taechang said, his old profession came to light, there would still be no shortage of people looking for a pretext. The world was crawling with those who wanted a knight's weakness to use. But if such people appeared—

"I'll smash every one of them and run. Cross over to the East, or the North."

"You're planning to take the exile route?"

"Doesn't sound bad."

"Mmm. Give me a hint before you go. I'll come with you."

"Why would you?"

"Because without you, Instructor, the kingdom's going to fall anyway."

"Cut it out. You rate me too high. The kingdom turns just fine without a guy like me, kid."

"I wonder..."

His eyes said he didn't think so, and Lee Han was at a loss. Nothing in the world frightened him, and yet praise this high sometimes weighed on him. Maybe, whether he liked it or not, he was still a small man.

"—A-anyway, I don't think you need to worry too much. Even if it comes out, there are quite a few people who'll stand behind you, aren't there?"

"Mm. People who'll stand behind me... Not a one of them I can trust."

A few faces came to mind who might help, but he couldn't bring himself to rely on them. There were more who would use him than who would help him.

"Haha... Still, there are people like Sir Jake and Sir Jord. They'll believe in you to the end."

"Those two? Mm. They're loyal enough. What am I supposed to expect out of them?"

"Plenty. Sir Jord is a man who'll rise all the way to knight-order captain someday, and Sir Jake has the talent to become a general in the army."

"...?"

"I mean they're people who are absolutely going to rise. Your connections, Instructor—every so often I look, and there are an awful lot of future big names among them."

"Hah..."

Lee Han was genuinely astonished. He had never dreamed his friend and his junior would become figures on that scale. He couldn't picture it now, but—

A person's future really is unknowable.

He was still turning that surprise over when Taechang's next words carried something even more shocking.

"And another thing. Even if the experiments done on you come to light, it won't really be a problem. You're not a demon person."

"You checked that with a skill too?"

"Yes. If you were a demon person or a half-fiend, it would show in the race name. Yours comes up as a question mark. So at the very least, you're not a demon person."

"That sounds even more unsettling."

...My race isn't human?!

The greatest shock of the day. Lee Han went dizzy. The kid pressed on anyway, trying to reassure him.

"Th-the important part is that you're not a demon person. M-maybe there's mystery-race blood mixed in! S-so please, d-don't worry..."

"...Somehow that makes me worry more."

The moment Lee Han's eyes said he didn't trust a word of this—

"A-and! If the n-nobles have any conscience at all, they have no right to pick at you for having monster factors transplanted into you! They're the ones who ought to be condemned most of all."

"...?"

"You don't know? ...Ah, right. You've never learned a fighting art. Of course..."

"What is it?"

A different sort of information had surfaced, and Lee Han blinked, wondering what on earth this was. The words that followed told him at once why Derek had brought up a noble's conscience. And well they might.

"...The reason the fighting arts the nobles learn—the so-called methods of the great houses—are classified as High Internal Art is that they work by ingesting monster cores."

Dogs caked in their own filth had no business insulting a dog with a little bran caught in its fur. Except—

Whoa. That's not a hornet's nest. That's a dragon's reverse scale.

Lee Han understood why High Internal Art was kept secret, and why not a single commoner knew of it.

......Because anyone who knew was already no longer of this world.

Sometimes there were secrets it was better not to know.

The small talk had run long, but it wasn't as if Lee Han and Derek were neglecting the work in front of them to trade jokes.

"Heheh. You've worked hard, brother."

"Not at all. How could one call it labor, when it is done to deliver the word of God? Heheh."

"True enough. Haha!"

They were tailing the priest in secret.

These bastards really do know the layout like it's their own house.

Priest, agitator, or specialist in brainwashing—whatever he was, the man left the village and strode without hesitation through tunnels that were no different from a maze. Even a dead end was no trouble to him, and strangely, no worms appeared anywhere he passed.

So it was true. The reverse cross puts out something that drives monsters off.

Figures.

What Roy Bant had been carrying came to five things in all: three elixirs, a reverse cross, and a torn scrap of paper. The elixirs were sorted between one made from a monster's flesh and others that held drugs and the like, and there was no telling what the torn paper was for. As for the reverse cross...

It emits a wavelength monsters hate. The information was accurate...

He couldn't say about mid-grade monsters, but a reverse cross could drive off anything up to a low-grade one. They hadn't made the tunnels their hideout simply because they wanted to die. And when they finally saw where the priest was bound—

"??"

He was genuinely shocked.

"G-good heavens... hup—!"

Lee Han was not the only one startled. Derek blurted his horror out loud, realized what he had done, and clapped a hand over his mouth in a panic. Lee Han wanted to tell him there was no need. Because—

......That thing. Nothing would be heard over a sandworm's cry. A sandworm boasting a length of one hundred and ten meters lay curled in on itself.

When a person sees something they cannot believe, the brain sometimes fails to catch up—the way a living creature's feet lock at the sight of a building, or a beast, that is simply too vast.

......This was that moment.

The sandworms of the South—I thought thirty meters was their limit...

A sandworm native to the desert could, once fully grown, reach ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠eighty or even a hundred meters. Even in the desert that was rare, and one past a hundred meters was something a man might see once in a century, if he saw it at all. The South's sandworms were different. They had been brought to the southern continent and bred to produce fertilizer, so they had been improved upon, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the environment was poorly suited to growing their bodies. However large they became, they did not pass thirty meters.

Thirty meters was still a size to turn a man pale, of course, but up to that point mages and knights could bring one down if they did their work. Compared with the desert breed, these were endlessly slow and weak.

...But that thing was different.

Slow and weak it might be, and yet its size... There was a vastness there that the word colossal itself failed to cover. If that creature rampaged underground, the ground would collapse, and they would be buried in earth and take their leave of the world before they could so much as lift a hand.

Cold sweat trickled. It was the sort of imagining that chilled the spine just to picture, and Derek was pouring with it.

This was it. This is the means they're after...!

Only now did Derek understand how they meant to shove the Royal Capital into chaos. He didn't know what method they had used, but they had succeeded in raising a gigantic sandworm. And the moment that sandworm rampaged—

The tunnels come down.

The fall of the kingdom's—no, the southern continent's—greatest fertilizer works would strike at food. Things would be fine for the moment, but set against farming that had depended on fertilizer, the crops would suffer an enormous loss. As time passed the damage would only grow, until it became a crisis of food. And those who suffered most when food ran short were the people who held this country up. The thing that would follow was obvious.

...A peasant uprising.

It might have been an excessive prediction. If it came to pass, though, the kingdom would crumble from within and from without.

Vicious bastards...!

Derek had to admit it. They had truly drawn up a scheme to starve everyone to death in order to bring the kingdom down. Even so, he couldn't stay rattled forever. He unfolded the skill Crisis Sense and measured the danger the sandworm carried.

"...It's two levels below the Ghost King. The bulk is huge, but if it's you, Instructor, you can take it down well enough."

"......"

"B-but you have to kill it in a single blow. If you don't, that thing will rampage, and if it does, the tunnels..."

"......"

"Ah, or even now, if we called for reinforcements..."

"Taechang."

"...Yes?"

"I'd like to call for reinforcements. I think it's already too late."

"......"

"...Want to get out first? At least you."

"...!!!"

Derek understood a beat too late.

"—Filthy little rats. Caught you at last."

Just as they had been hunting those people, those people had already known they were there. Countless figures in black had surrounded them before they noticed.

The presence pouring off the black-clad figures was no ordinary thing. That this many people—practitioners of that caliber—had hidden their killing intent and stayed concealed until now was itself as good as a measure of their skill. Thirty in all. And the skill of each one could not be compared with the rabble that had filled the Silver Lions.

On top of that—

"Surround them!!"

"Heaven-damned wretches!"

"A cursed knight of Pendragon...!! Kill him!"

Prisoners gathered, little by little. Was this what they called a human-wave tactic? It was a spectacle among spectacles—all this manpower, mobilized to catch a mere two men. Watching the numbers mass—

"...Hm. How did they know? I tailed them quietly enough, in my own way."

"Heheh. My own spine went cold. Truly, I didn't feel so much as a trace of presence."

When Lee Han asked, the priest, of all people, offered a kindly answer. Ease poured off him.

"Hoh. You made one mistake. You—didn't you see a paper like this?"

"That..."

What the priest produced was a single blank sheet, very much like Roy Bant's torn scrap. The priest smiled thinly.

"The principle is that it tears the moment something goes wrong with one of our people's safety. You probably thought you'd caught one of ours and scored a result, but... there is no foolishness like it. Do we look that sloppy to you? Heheh."

"So you knew everything from the start. That's what you're saying."

"It's late to realize it now, but yes. That is what I am saying. Anyway, the things that call themselves knights of the kingdom are stupid beyond belief. Ahahaha!"

The priest looked delighted. Part of it was having surrounded a man who appeared to be a knight of Pendragon. Part of it was that his own overwhelming advantage seemed endlessly satisfying. He seemed to feed some appetite by trampling another person.

"Surrender even now. Do that, and I'll send you off without pain."

"Not let us live?"

"Why would I let you live? Ah, you certainly look skilled. The child beside you, though, and your comrades, will certainly die. We—no. I will make certain of it."

"......"

They already knew about the other three as well, not only the two of them.

"I-Instructor..."

Beset on every side, Derek's face sank as he grasped how overwhelmingly the situation favored the enemy.

I-I should have been more careful.... Damn it!

What was the point of having a skill if he walked into a trap this obvious? Guilt washed over him, and Derek prepared to draw the dagger from inside his coat. The job was ruined, but shouldn't he at least save the person who could still be saved?

"R-run, Instructor. I-I'll hold them somehow! I-if it's Falling Flowers of Ten Thousand, I can take at least half of them with me!"

"Cut it out. Can you even spill blood against people?"

"Th-that's..."

Right. Until now, even when Derek killed, it had been limited to monsters. He had never killed a person. He had never steeled himself for it, and that was probably the proof that he was still a modern man.

......Even so.

"Wh-when it has to be done, I think it has to be done. ...And that time is now."

"...Kid. You've grown a little after all."

Pat, pat.

"...Instructor?"

Lee Han patted his back as if he were proud of him, and Derek wondered what kind of praise this was supposed to be. For a moment he thought the man had given up. So far as he knew, though, Lee Han was never that sort of person.

"Step aside a moment. I'll show you how I handle a situation like this."

"??"

Lee Han stepped forward as if he meant to teach something, and the killing intent pouring from the priest and the black-clad figures thickened.

"A foolish choice."

The priest sneered at him. The idiot knight seemed, in the end, intent on fighting them; he was reaching into his coat as if to draw a weapon. The priest raised a hand to give the order to attack—

......The priest and the figures in black froze mid-motion.

"...What?"

The priest wondered if his ears had failed him. What nonsense was this man spouting? But—

"Don't believe me? Well, who would, from words alone. Fine. I'll show you the first one simply."

What Lee Han drew from his coat was not a weapon. It was a pouch of beads shaped like grapes. And suddenly, one bead—

Crack.

He burst it with ease. The next instant—

BOOOOOOM!!

......A searing blast swallowed the underground and shook the tunnels. A low roar rolled through the dark. Rubble pattered down.

"......"

The priest and the black-clad figures were stunned. Watching an earthquake in the tunnels that was anything but ordinary, they learned properly what it was to be struck dumb. Lee Han looked at them even then.

"Still don't believe me? Then this time, a bigger blast..."

"S-stoooop!!"

The priest screamed as if it were his death cry. Staring at the kernel in that hand, ready to burst, he had reacted on instinct.

"I-I believe you! I believe you, so stop this instant!"

"......"

"A-are you trying to kill everyone?! You vicious fiend of all the world...!"

"—Why are you talking down to me?"

"...?"

"Am I your friend?"

"??"

"You sick bastard. Who do you think you're giving orders to?"

Crack.

Another bead burst in Lee Han's hand, and at once—

BOOOOOOM!!

Once more a tremendous blast covered the world underground. Rubble rattled down, harder than before. The quake and the sound of cracking had grown. Dirt sifted from above. Everything strained to fly apart, and at last—

The priest's face went corpse-pale.

"Uh. Uhhh.... Uh...?"

His mind locked up, as if it could not adapt to the reality in front of him. Lee Han ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠looked straight at him.

"I can set off another one. Watch your mouth."

"H-how could this..."

"Hhh!!"

"......"

"Don't you know how to speak properly, you uneducated little shit? Where do you get off, you little brat...!"

"......"

"Don't just stand there. Get on your knees. Unless you want everybody dead."

"......"

...An unprecedented state of affairs, in which the terrorist bent on bringing down the kingdom was the one being threatened. It was a scene too alien even to be called absurd. And the priest—

Thud.

He was already on his knees.

"Tsk. Should've done that from the start."

"......"

Before true madness, a counterfeit madness could not so much as offer its card. That was simply the settled order of things.