A Knight's Valor Knows No Recklessness (11)
"…This bastard fights like a son of a bitch."
Lee Han had just paid his enemy the highest compliment he knew. Running, fleeing, a flat-out bolt—call it whatever you liked, any knight who prized honor would have spat on it and called it contemptible. Lee Han had none of a knight's sentiments. To him that retreat landed like a perfect counter, and it did nothing but make him burn. He had been had. That was the feeling of it.
So even if it was only the heat driving him, he meant to run the bastard down no matter what—
The impact detonated. Something shrieked, a grinding metallic cry.
"…I should have smashed it to pieces."
The man was no amateur. He had not dropped his guard even against a mere human. The Bull of Heaven—the great evil spirit's Mystery, hurled at Lee Han only moments before—now stood in his way. The frame that had towered over a building was gone. It had taken the exact shape of a real bull.
The ground groaned under it. Yet the pressure pouring off the thing made the truth plain: it had only compressed its body without limit. It did not feel weaker in the slightest. Staying enormous would only have gotten it beaten down. It must have known that, and shrunk.
"I've never even been in a bullfight. Damn it…."
If he was honest, it felt harder to handle than it had a moment ago. Its presence was something else.
Kigigik.
"You even know how to put out killing intent?"
Kigik.
"……."
Every time the thing snorted, the ground shuddered. No—space itself shuddered. A colossal strength was rattling the earth and the air around it alike. It was almost offensive. If the so-called god of war had been freakishly gifted in martial skill and speed, this one was freakishly devoted to nothing but destruction and raw force. Every last one of them was a miserable style to fight.
But Lee Han—
I'll finish it in three minutes.
He was not especially rattled. There was no reason anywhere in the world to lose to a beast that had nothing but strength, and so he was confident he could pulp this pathetic bullfight inside of three minutes.
…Except.
A thud. A heavier thud. Then a crash.
"…They really do fight filthy."
From underground, from the air, from behind him, high-grade monsters that seemed to serve the bull closed in, rank on rank. Trolls and ogres, of course, and even the rarities a man almost never saw: twin-headed ogres, gargoyles, three-headed serpents, flesh golems. Serpent-monsters the size of houses, kinds he was seeing for the first time, and insect-shaped horrors came swarming in a mass. Innumerable monsters packed themselves tight around Lee Han and breathed out a savage presence. It was as good as every elite among two hundred thousand monsters gathered in a single place.
Looking at it, Lee Han still thought it was too much.
"This is ridiculous. Seriously. All this, just to catch one frail little human like me?"
Kigigik!
"The hell are you saying."
Somewhere in their eyes—the bull's included—he thought he saw wariness. They were only facing a single human, and yet a host of thirty thousand feared him. It was a deeply alien sight.
"Hah!"
His brow furrowed. With the tip of his foot he popped the hand axe lying on the ground into the air like a ball, snatched it in his left hand, and drew his sword with the right.
"—Go straight, and something'll give."
He looked upon thirty thousand elite monsters and the Bull of Heaven without shrinking in the slightest, spirit burning bold. If you were already losing in numbers, you could not afford to lose in spirit as well. More than that, wiping out all thirty thousand was not what mattered. What mattered was punching through them and cracking the enemy commander's skull.
And so—
I'm breaking that evil bastard's head open. No matter what.
The goal set, he burned with the will to fight and looked only straight ahead. To catch the prey that had fled. Endlessly. Relentlessly.
A rush of air.
"…A vicious man."
Ninshubur, fleeing at speed, half-opened his eyes at the fierce presence pressing from behind. A frightening, relentless man. To think that murderous spirit still reached him from so far away. It felt as if a beast might open its jaws at his back at any moment and tear out his throat.
But Ninshubur shut the feeling off at once. However formidable that man was, breaking a host of thirty thousand made of nothing but the Bull of Heaven and high-grade monsters would take a considerable time. And by the time he came through the monster host—
Victory will belong to my god.
He might lose the fight. He would not lose the war. All of it was for his god.
"Of course, my god. What happened three hundred years ago will not happen again."
Three hundred years ago, when they first took their place in this land, his master had been weakened to the extreme. At the same time, as if to bless the new seat she had claimed, she scattered the miracle of abundance without stinting. His god had been drained as far as she could be drained—and the natives living on this land had dared to attack her.
"Ignorant wretches, who do not know how holy and how merciful a god's mercy is."
In Ninshubur's mind something seemed to grind, and he felt Inanna's fury surging up. The humiliation she herself had suffered, and three hundred years of resentment at being shut away in this place, were what drove her to rage.
And so.
"I will take it to heart."
Little by little, Inanna spoke less. Like a spectator lounging in the stands to watch a play, she simply waited for Ninshubur to hand her the victory of this war. As he always had.
The earth heaved.
The medium and large monsters that had done nothing but watch until a moment ago suddenly mingled with the small ones and advanced, and the charge of that appalling number raised an artificial earthquake.
And yet—
"Fire! I don't care if the cannons blow apart—fire, I said!"
"Doesn't matter if the barrels melt! Spend every shell! Keep shooting!"
"Pour in every monster core if you have to, just don't stop! Keep dumping fire—!"
Among Mordred's soldiers, not one curled in on himself from fear, and not one sank into despair. They might have been afraid in their hearts. Even so, they looked as if they would not choose the option of turning to run, not by a hair. They fired until the barrels melted. They did not stop loading shells until the cannons had spent the last of their strength.
The flame cannons were no different. Weapons in which the essence of every art Mordred possessed had been gathered, they were judged, in the present age, impossible to make again—even the materials could no longer be secured. And now those weapons were melting, vanishing, as if to admit that however powerful a weapon might be, it still had a limit.
Even so, the roaring flame did not stop. It roared on as if they meant to burn even one more of the charging monsters, if only a little further. For Mordred's victory.
"Waaaaaah!!"
Their hands melted along with the barrels. Their flesh cooked under the heat the flames threw off. Even so, Mordred burst into a roar, showing the will to hold this place no matter what.
…But, contrary to that will, the limit arrived all at once.
With a splintering crack, the palisade—the fortress that had been Mordred's bulwark all this while—slowly began to show fractures. However they poured on the attack, monsters that had at last forced their way through opened gap after gap, and those slight gaps were finally bringing the fortress down.
"You goddamn gnoll bastards!"
"Why the hell are you blowing yourselves up!"
Had they lost their minds? Packs of gnolls and goblins took even the flames and the blasts with their whole bodies, charging in a chain as if they meant to detonate themselves. With the monsters that had already lost their reason opening a path, the rest gradually began to ram the fortress. It rocked, slowly, and the soldiers could barely keep their footing.
At this rate they would lose the fortress and be forced into close combat, and if it came to that, without a doubt—
It's over!
However excellent each of a force of six hundred might be, they could not face hundreds of thousands of monsters. They had endured this long only because they had the fortress and the firearms. Lose the fortress and fight hand to hand, and the ending left to them would, in the end—
Just as despair swept in, a barrier like a curtain of pure white unfurled in an instant around the fortress.
"Th-this is…?"
"Your Lordship?"
"It's our lord and the young masters…!"
Before anyone had noticed, the blood of Mordred had come down from the commander's post and each taken a place at one of the fortress's bearing points, manifesting their power. A secret art possible only for Mordred: a bloodline of spirit mediums who, over long ages, had contracted with countless souls, learned how to wield that power, and stored it.
It was Mordred's supreme secret art.
A choked shriek. A death-rattle. Then a wet burst. The monsters that had been detonating themselves died instead, bursting apart as if they had taken their own charging force turned straight back upon them. As the name Hundred Ghosts declared, the barrier of mysterious power stopped any attack, and returned any attack as well.
It could not have been a more astonishing ability. And yet—
Blood ran.
"Your Lordship! Stop this! You'll get yourself killed!"
"Not yet. Not yet. I'm still all right…."
Margrave Cain and his sons spilled a mouthful of blood from their lips. As tremendous as the power was, the risk was just as great. That was an unavoidable law of the world. In truth, raising this barrier meant Mordred had been driven to its limit. It was little different from the art successive heads of the house had used to buy time until their blood and their people could flee. For that reason the Hundred Ghost Shield was both their greatest secret and their last resort. One that demanded they be ready to die.
"…Don't mind me. While we still have even a little time, prepare for close combat."
"Your Lordship…!"
"Go."
"!?"
It was an order firm to the point of being absolute, and at it the margrave's adjutant ground his teeth. He could feel the man's heart in it: already worn to the bone, still trying to buy them even a little time.
And then—
"—Don't hold out. Surrender, Mordred. You have already lost."
…There was the sound of hope collapsing.
"You…!"
The great evil spirit. At some moment the bastard had come right up to the fortress's nose. Pacing near the Hundred Ghost Shield, he looked down at Cain, sunk to the ground.
"For the past three hundred years, you have kept an impious posture, oppressing my god and treating her with cold cruelty."
"……."
"But my god is merciful. She has deigned to accept impious ones such as you as slaves."
"……."
"You should be grateful. So bow your heads at once, and tremble with thanks. Only a mercy such as this…."
"Oh. Wondered who it was. A gnoll bastard who lost, and then ran hard enough to lose his tail."
"…Do not speak impi—"
"—Loser."
"……."
"Worse than a gnoll. No—worse than a Sandworm."
"You bastard!!!"
If the greatest insult in the South was to compare a man to a gnoll, the greatest curse in the West was to compare him to a Sandworm. A Sandworm fed on corpses, ate its own dung, and devoured even the parents that had borne it. That was the monster's nature.
"…Ha. That provocation landed better than I thought."
Even in a moment this desperate, Cain grinned. Just the sight of that twisted face was enough to clear his chest.
This was why learning mattered.