A Knight Remembers and Repays (2)

"—My god?"

Ninshubur felt the air drop all at once, a cold exhalation against the skin, and shock broke across his face before he could master it.

But these were not opponents a man could afford to slight. To let his guard fall while he faced two knights was the same as offering them the blow. The impact landed. Ninshubur's body tumbled in a wretched sprawl and went flying, and the knight who had struck him felt nothing so much as awkward.

"What kind of trick is this?"

Suspicion followed at once. Had the man taken that hit on purpose? Was there some reason for it?

And yet blood ran.

"M-my god..."

Even with a mortal wound on him, Ninshubur called for his god, like a lamb that had lost the path.

"......"

"This is..."

At that reaction a foreboding climbed in the knights, and their faces hardened. They were a step behind Ninshubur, yes. Even so, a darkness of cold breathed over them and bit at their toes.

"...What is that?"

The first to sense the crisis and turn were the horses.

Warhorses that had stood brave even before hundreds of thousands of monsters wheeled and fled in desperate haste, and the knights on their backs could only stare, bewildered, wondering what had come over their partners. The cold reached the knights soon enough. They looked back, and then—

"Wh-what?!"

"Everyone, fall back! Fall back!"

They showed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a panic no different from the horses'—no, fiercer still—and drove their partners on. A few of the Black Iron Lions simply scooped their mounts up and ran.

"Endure it! What am I supposed to do when you're slower than we are!"

"I told you to lose some weight, you lump! Why are you so damn heavy!!"

The warriors of the North, brave beyond all measure, had taken fright ahead of anyone and were fleeing with their horses in tow. It was a sight no one would have believed. But the Black Iron Lions were brave men, not men who had thrown away every scrap of fear, and they were not without common sense either.

Which was why—

"They said the capital was peaceful! Then what the hell is that thing?!"

Running from the enormous turbulence that had manifested upon the earth was, without question, the sensible thing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to do.

A vast vortex of the sort that belonged to the sea descended without warning onto dry land and, in a single instant, stirred a tremendous current of air. It howled.

"Are you insane?! That really is a vortex!!"

A knight of Galahad, a man with more than a little cause to go to sea, screamed as if the cry were torn out of him and howled before that colossal whirl.

Seafarers said that the day you met a vortex, you were to consider your life already finished. Why? Because you could not get out. It was a calamity of irresistible force, beyond any human resistance, and because it swallowed ships whole it ranked among the very first of the disasters known to those who lived by the water.

Fortunately, this was not the sea. It was land, soil and stone. A man was not dragged in with the same helpless certainty as upon the waves. Even so—

"The suction on this is tremendous..."

The pull, at least, was monstrous. Had their judgment lagged by even a little, had they been a moment slower to flee, they might have died and had no one to blame but themselves. There ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was no current of water here. In its place, the resistance of the air was every bit as fierce as any sea, and cold sweat broke on the knights of its own accord.

But unlike those who had barely slipped clear of the vortex, the monsters that had failed to run began to be drawn in. The smaller ones vanished in a single breath. Mid-sized and large ones were swallowed often enough as well, without managing anything that could be called resistance. No—it was as if resistance itself were not permitted. Something about the sight felt wrong.

And the wrongness was only beginning.

From inside the vortex came a sound. Crunch. Crunch, crunch. Crack, crack. It was familiar enough, and yet it was not a sound that belonged to a moment like this, so the recognition would not come—until someone muttered, low.

"...Chewing?"

Ah. A breath of agreement rose on its own, and people nodded. Yes. More precisely, the sound of something being chewed and eaten. Could a vortex chew? Could it eat? The question came unbidden, but a vortex had already appeared on land. There was no leisure left for common sense.

And sure enough, the crunching grew savage.

"......"

"...The Royal Capital is no place to dismiss. It's a more maddening hell than the North. Completely."

Things that broke common sense kept happening. Every time the vortex chewed a monster, wings and mouths began to sprout from the earth. Wings and mouths, though, were only the start. With a wet, grinding crack the vortex began to take on a shape. The more monsters it inhaled, the more hugely it swelled, changing into a spherical mass of flesh, and still it did not stop. It went on eating them, crunching monsters as if they were crackers.

"Urk!"

A knight who had never once thought his stomach weak dry-heaved, and no one mocked him for it. Honestly, the strange one would have been whoever looked at that and did not.

"...I think I'm going to be sick."

Thousands. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. More than a hundred thousand living monsters were eaten at a stroke, and the corpses of those the knights had already slain were chewed up with them. The stink of thick blood and rotting flesh spread in every direction. Strong stomach or not, it was enough to turn a man inside out. And yet the dreadful voice that mass of flesh spat out was something else entirely—something they simply could not endure.

"!!!"

What had been an unstable sphere squirmed, slowly lifting its body into the air to show them its form. It stretched only once, as if merely loosening itself aloft, and the surroundings rang like a struck drum. Even at that distance the size was plain. If one had to guess—

"Sixty-six feet, at a minimum."

"Sperm-whale class?"

"We'd be lucky if it stopped there. It might be kraken class..."

"......"

For a moment, people found the comparison apt.

The kraken, great monster of the sea. A vast creature like an octopus and a squid fused together, a demon of the waters, with skin like steel and countless tentacles like whips. A legendary monster that could swallow a ship with ease, said to be so loathsome in its shape that fear took root of its own accord in whoever looked upon it.

And yet a knight of Galahad who had once faced a kraken would have sworn that this was a living thing several times more dangerous. Because of its tremendous size? Because of the hundreds of mouths still working, still chewing monsters? All of that was true. What made it more horrible still was something else.

A flash.

Those eyes—vast, ominous, occupying something like a third of that enormous body—were the true height of the horror.

Not even the sound of a swallow rose. Of course not. A human, and not only a human, any living thing, would lock rigid the moment they faced it and feel the blood dry in the veins. The horses, in fact, were shaking where they stood.

Eight wings spread with a rush of air. They called an angel's wings to mind, but this was never an angel. It was not holy in the least, and it could be nothing that a living creature would be glad to meet. Look. Was everything spread beneath it not drying out, perishing where it lay?

A demon. A demon born when ruin arrived. It had to be.

The voice was thick with displeasure. Not one of them had called it a demon aloud, and yet it seemed to read what lay in their hearts and speak it back.

"...Do not look at that thing. Do not look at it for long."

"C-C-Captain?"

"...Madness will come surging up. Damn it. This is why we need priests."

The captain of Galahad, a man who had once stood against demons, said that this was grave. The thing claimed it was no demon. It was a demon. Merely meeting its gaze made thousands of ants seem to crawl over the body and in through mouth, nose, and ears, a revulsion so deep that at some point one even wanted to drive a sword into one's own flesh. Those seeing a demon for the first time might endure it, to a degree. The more often one had faced them, the more violent the fit became.

Poison and plague granted resistance the more a man overcame them. The aura a demon breathed did the opposite. The more one met it, the more it corrupted, and the more it drove a person mad.

The proof—

"Guhk!"

"Captain!"

"D-damn it! Get my sword off me! As far from my body as you can!!"

"Grandmaster!!"

The old knights who had met demons again and again in the Martial God's era were seizing, every one of them. Dangerous. One misstep, and allies would cut one another down until nothing was left.

I wasted my years. In the old days, bringing a priest along was simple common sense...

Perhaps it was the changing of the times. Demons had been common enough once. They were not now. But who could have imagined that a demon would be in a place like this—and a greater demon, no less? No one had expected it. And so this was a crisis. So long as the greater demon that named itself a god kept pouring out demonic energy, the knights had no means of resisting those around them.

They stood ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at a crossroads bleak beyond words.

The demon laughed with a sneer on its lips, as if to say they ought simply to have died at the beginning—rather than resisting, rather than fouling even the taste—only to end looking like this.

Dong. Dooong.

Dong. Dooong.

Midway through, the demon's words caught, and the trembling of the people stopped.

To put it more precisely—

"The demonic energy... is scattering?"

The demonic energy pouring from the demon thinned. The old knights, madness climbing in them, heard the irregular toll of a bell, and their heads began to clear. And so, before a prayer they had never heard in all their lives, they found a quiet in the heart.

So I recited whatever I happened to know...

This worked too?

Lee Han rang the bell and recited the Heart Sutra, the better to draw out a little more of the power the bell held—the power held by a Sacred Relic.

In another sense, he was glad of it.

Good thing I went with Buddhism during those religious activities in the army.

There had been a point to learning it.

A clear note rang.