Chapter 23
Chapter 23
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 23
Chapter Title: Harvest Festival (4)
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Good luck.
Palato picked up a javelin he had been saving and aimed it at the grotesque magic beast before his eyes.
It wasn’t his usual magic-enhanced javelin, nor was it in his dominant hand, but that didn’t matter.
He was a knight trained to hurl a javelin skillfully even with his left hand, which he couldn’t wield a sword with as deftly.
“Hah!”
Palato’s javelin pierced through the writhing magic beast’s tentacle and burrowed inside.
For a brief moment, it drove in with tremendous force, but then, after twitching a few times, the javelin stopped penetrating and was slowly sucked into the tentacle.
Before he could even grasp what that meant, something shot out from the exact hole where the javelin had struck.
“Gaaahhh!”
The flying object embedded itself in a soldier standing right next to Palato.
It was hard to recognize it as a fragment of the half-melted javelin, now blackened and discolored.
Starting from where the fragment lodged, the soldier’s veins turned black, and he writhed in agony.
“It hurts... it hurts so much... please, save me...”
Reaching out toward Palato beside him, begging for life, the soldier’s body soon went limp and collapsed.
‘So it counters ranged weapons by infusing them with poison!’
If he threw a proper magic javelin while mounted on Jin, it might be different, but in the current situation, he calculated that ranged weapons wouldn’t deal decisive damage.
Palato immediately readjusted his grip on his sword and deflected a few incoming javelin fragments.
As it fired the fragments, the vine magic beast closed in, finally reaching the base of the barricade and beginning to crawl up it slowly.
Whenever the corpses of magic beasts that had fallen dead at the barricade’s base touched the black tentacles, they melted away with a hissing sound.
“Don’t get close to that thing! It’s poisonous!”
At that moment, a squire nearby grabbed a torch and hurled it at the crawling magic beast.
It was a desperate hope that light and fire would be the nemesis of an enemy shaped like it was forged from darkness, but contrary to that wish, the torch was futilely swallowed between the tentacles and vanished.
Far from cowering the magic beast, the flames seemed to provoke it, as the tentacles thrashed even more ferociously.
The brave squire who had thrown the torch was impaled through the torso by a tentacle attack, flung about wildly, and sent flying far away.
The speed of the tentacles thrusting in was vicious, no less than a skilled knight’s strike.
Unwittingly stepping back a few paces at the sight, Palato heard another squire cry out in alarm from beside him.
“Sir Palato! The barricade is melting!”
Looking where he pointed, he saw the vine magic beast’s body slowly sinking downward.
The magic beast wasn’t climbing the barricade—it was melting the entire thing to cross over.
‘This won’t do.’
Palato ground his teeth and scanned the surroundings.
A magic beast so powerful that it would take several fully armed knights attacking in concert to handle, and other magic beasts following through the gap it had torn in the barricade.
They could no longer hold this section of the barricade.
He had no choice but to order a retreat.
Drawing a deep breath to issue a full retreat order,
“R-Reinforcements! Reinforcements are here!”
Turning at the shout, he saw fully armored squires and soldiers rushing over.
And far off, a knight mounted on Jin kicked off several rooftops in succession before landing in front of Palato.
It was Arsen, who had raced from one end of the barricade to the other.
Arsen held out Palato’s personal bundle of javelins and his sword.
“Sir Palato, here you are.”
“You’ve done well.”
Taking the javelins, Palato readjusted them so he could draw them with his left hand.
“On the way, I delivered weapons to the other knights as well. Plus, wagons carrying the knights’ armor and Jins are coming down separately, so the situation should improve soon.”
“Good. Then now...”
Palato’s gaze fixed on the black shape that had completely melted the barricade and was now crawling toward the village.
The other squires and soldiers nearby, intimidated by its overwhelming presence, hesitated to charge, allowing the vine magic beast to advance slowly without resistance, unhindered.
“The problem is how to deal with that thing.”
* * *
“Come out now!”
“The magic beast is heading this way—get out immediately!”
“Just a moment! Let me grab this...”
“Shut up and get out!”
The soldiers dragged out all the villagers from houses in the path of the approaching vine magic beast and herded them toward the estate lord’s manor.
Some tried to grab belongings or stall for time, but a few rough shoves from the soldiers quelled them.
Having already lost many comrades, the soldiers had no patience left.
“It’s coming! Fall back!”
Entering the residential area, the vine magic beast extended tentacles in all directions.
The protruding tentacles began corrupting every building they touched, whether made of wood or stone.
A foul stench that turned the stomach with just one breath spread as the buildings started to corrode.
Palato, mounted on his Jin brought by soldiers on a cart, stood with another knight on a rooftop overlooking the magic beast.
“I’ve never seen anything so horrific in my life.”
“What’s its weakness? It looks vulnerable to fire.”
“No. We just tried that—the torch was devoured like nothing. It only provoked it.”
“Javelins?”
“It catches them and shoots them back laced with poison. A magic weapon might be different, but...”
“Tricky opponent.”
The knight who answered tapped his helmet in frustration.
“If we fight it head-on, my gut says I can’t handle it alone.”
The man speaking with Palato was Ramun Knight, considered the estate’s finest knight.
He was on duty guarding the estate lord tonight, but given the emergency, he had come down to the village just moments ago on orders.
Even for him, this was a magic beast he had never seen before, and no clear strategy came to mind.
“If even you say it’s tough, that means one or two won’t cut it.”
Unable to dismiss Ramun’s instincts as mere hunch, Palato furrowed his brow and let out a troubled groan.
Even now, the vine magic beast was eroding every building it passed with some unidentified corrosive poison as it advanced.
Not only was the estate lord’s manor likely in its path, but in the Belluan territory where building materials weren’t abundant, the loss of structures would be devastating.
“Since it melts metal, chaining it won’t work either. Tricky.”
“We’ll have to attack by chipping away at the edges.”
“Then let’s start right away. Knights!”
At Ramun’s loud call, the knights atop nearby rooftops all turned to him.
Armored and mounted on Jins brought directly by the reinforcements on carts, they brimmed with courage and confidence unlike the powerless state moments before.
“Surround and attack! Don’t burrow in—sever the tentacles!”
At Ramun’s command, the knights spurred their Jins and swarmed the vine magic beast.
Though the magic beast had no visible eyes or ears, it seemed to sense the approaching knights, extending its tentacles sharply to stab at them.
But unlike the squires and soldiers who had fallen helplessly, knights were beings who could perceive such attacks and counter them.
With slicing sounds, tentacles began to be lopped off from all sides.
Regrettably, losing tentacles didn’t seem fatal to the vine magic beast—new ones kept emerging from within, regenerating.
Moreover, the unidentified fluid spraying from the severed tentacles—blood or something else—was laden with potent poison, forcing the knights to dodge in alarm.
Fortunately, this poison wasn’t lethal enough to penetrate knights’ armor.
Amid it all, Ramun lived up to his reputation as the estate’s top knight, confronting the magic beast head-on at its most dangerous front.
Pushed back gradually by its overwhelming mass, he still deftly deflected and severed every incoming tentacle as if peering ahead.
Not every knight could match the magic beast so skillfully, however.
Just moments ago, a careless knight had been struck by a tentacle and sent flying far off.
‘Ugh!’
The instant Arsen sliced off a tentacle, fluid splashed toward his face, so he ducked his head just in time to avoid it entering his eyes.
Armor might block it, but poison strong enough to corrode buildings could blind even a knight if it got in his eyes.
Trading blows with tentacles launching strikes on par with skilled knights was a deadly circus where death could come at any moment.
As Arsen ducked, he caught sight of something odd.
‘What’s that?’
A severed tentacle that had fallen was wriggling and melting upon contact with a dark purple liquid.
Tracing back to the source, he saw a wooden barrel tipped over, oozing the liquid.
“...Wine!”
Arsen quickly righted the barrel to stem the flow, then climbed onto the roof of the building right beside it.
From the rooftop, he hurled the wine barrel at the magic beast’s head with all his might.
The moment the magic beast swatted the unidentified object flying at it with a tentacle, the barrel shattered, drenching its tentacles in wine.
The wine began melting the tentacles with fierce intensity.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■---!
Until now, it had seemed incapable of sound, advancing and killing mechanically, but the vine magic beast shrieked for the first time, twisting its tentacles wildly in all directions.
Rubbing against a nearby building as if trying to wipe off the wine, it thrashed so violently that it collapsed the structure—anyone could tell it was in tremendous pain.
“What was that just now!?”
“What happened!?”
“Wine is its weakness! Bring wine and splash it!”
“What? Wine? No, that can’t...”
The knights stared at Arsen in bewilderment, as if he’d spouted nonsense.
Magic beasts had all sorts of weaknesses, but none of these veterans had ever heard of alcohol being one.
“You saw it yourselves! That thing’s weak to...”
“Squires and soldiers, gather wine barrels quickly! Hurry!”
Palato, who trusted Arsen fully, immediately ordered the nearby soldiers.
Since it had been a festival site, untouched wine barrels were scattered everywhere.
The knights, half-doubting, took the barrels onto the rooftops and hurled them at the vine magic beast.
Squires and soldiers lacked the strength to throw full barrels from afar, and getting close meant certain tentacle strikes, so only the knights could deliver them.
It didn’t take long to prove this absurd method devastatingly effective against the magic beast.
An intelligent being might recognize the harmful liquid spilling each time it swatted incoming objects, but the magic beast instinctively kept batting them away, repeatedly dousing itself in wine.
Screaming, roaring, wailing—emitting shrieks beyond interpretation—it madly slammed and rubbed against nearby buildings.
Several structures collapsed amid the chaos, with occasional screams from those who hadn’t evacuated, but the knights, convinced of the method’s efficacy, threw the barrels without hesitation.
By the time they thought they’d used every nearby barrel, the magic beast finally let out a dying groan and slumped onto the ground.
“We got it!”
“Finish it off!”
Knights who had brought 4-meter lances for slaying large magic beasts thrust them deep into the melted, mushy tentacles.
After hacking away the motionless tentacles with swords and axes, they revealed a massive brain-like core inside, oozing grayish-white fluid and half-dissolved.
For a magic beast that had rampaged through the territory unstoppable until doused in wine, its end was pathetically ignoble.
Standing atop the dead magic beast’s corpse, two knights grumbled.
“Gods, I’ve never seen such a horrific monster in my life.”
“Thank goodness we fought it in the territory. If we’d met it outside, running would’ve been our only option.”
“How’s the barricade side?”
“That ended a while ago. This side was the problem.”
Perhaps because he’d thrown the barrels most enthusiastically, Arsen felt utterly drained, slumped over Jin like he was clinging to it.
Another knight rode up on his Jin and addressed him.
Removing his helmet revealed a man in his thirties with narrow eyes and a hooked nose.
It was Ramun.
“Most creative thinking, Sir Arsen.”
Arsen barely lifted his exhausted body and bowed in greeting at Ramun’s stiff, utterly dry praise.
Normally he’d show more courtesy, but he was on the verge of collapse.
Fortunately, Ramun wasn’t one to fuss over formalities and didn’t call him out.
“In battle, raw strength is trivial. True power lies in those who, like you, always strike foes with novel, effective methods.”
The tone sounded nothing like praise, but anyone who knew Ramun would be shocked—it was extravagant commendation.
Ramun was infamous for his stinginess with praise.
Arsen swallowed dryly to moisten his parched throat and spoke.
“...Thank you, Sir Ramun.”
“I’ll keep an eye on you.”
Leaving those meaningful words laced with something beyond mere goodwill, Ramun departed. Others then spoke to Arsen.
The knights and squires hadn’t forgotten who first suggested the method.
“Truly impressive! You might as well say you slew this magic beast half on your own!”
“My respects, Sir Arsen.”
Amid the flood of praise and cheers, Arsen faintly smiled and gazed at the sky.
Over the mountains, the faint light of dawn was rising.
In the ruined village heart, paeans to the “Wine Barrel Knight” who pierced the mighty magic beast’s weakness echoed.