Encounter
Encounter
I didn't bother giving my name to these bastards.
There wasn't anyone left to warn not to mess with me, so why bother giving my name? If those fuckers could leave behind their souls and warn the living, I'd gladly tell every single one of them my name, but reality didn't work that way, so I had no desire to make extra work for myself.
I'd planned to do the same this time. That was, until I saw the armor the mercenaries were wearing through the telescope Gies handed me, and the burning village.
"That armor is exactly like the one Delt wore."
There was nothing to debate. That same armor Delt had worn back then, plain yet somehow formal in its own right, was right there. Even the design of the cloak they wore was identical. I'd seen plenty of armor since then, but I hadn't even found anything similar, so those bastards were definitely a mercenary company raised no differently than Count Bosha's private soldiers.
And, most fucking obnoxiously, after burning the village to the ground, they were brazenly camped out right in front of the Pantheon.
Just like the Demon King's Army that had attacked my village.
I handed the telescope back to Gies and asked.
"Gies. How low do you think you can get this thing?"
I could tell Asilie, huddled in my arms, was looking at me with a strange expression, but time was pressing, so I answered by squeezing her hand tightly instead. It wasn't as if I made a habit of jumping to the ground every time I rode a wyvern like some lunatic, nor was I suicidal, so did she really think I'd just leap without a plan?
I only tried it because it was doable. With a bit of nerve, it wasn't hard.
"When you get near the ruins, for just a moment, I can drop to about second-floor height."
"How brief?"
"Uh... about the time it takes to skip a stone...?"
"Understood. I'll handle the timing of my jump. After I drop, take Asilie and set her down somewhere safe in the direction we came from."
I worried that Asilie might keep holding onto my hand, but fortunately she seemed to have decided to trust me.
Asilie asked, watching me rise to my feet to prepare for the jump.
"You're sure this is safe, Eldi?"
"Totally safe!"
She couldn't completely erase her unease, and I might not be able to erase it for her, but what I'd said was the plain truth.
I'd already completely grasped the limits of what my body, enhanced by Magic Power, could endure and how it could move. At the height Gies mentioned, I could probably land and launch forward without any delay.
With all preparations done, I shouted at the burning ruins with all my might.
"Nice to meet you, you sons of bitches!!"
It was a shout containing nothing but the truth.
In the sense that I'd properly found Count Bosha's mercenary company, those bastards were indeed something to be happy about. And in the sense that they'd set fire to and looted a good, civilian village that had even built a Pantheon out of wood, they were indeed sons of bitches.
And even the fact that—though they likely hadn't intended it—that scene had properly flipped my berserk switch, that was also true.
Because of that last reason.
Because they were bastards who'd created a situation much like the past, when I'd lost everything helplessly.
Even if that wasn't their intention, I couldn't help but shout.
"I am Eldmia Ega!"
Hoping they would remember my name even in hell.
I jumped from the diving wyvern.
◈
No one was off guard.
The suddenly approaching wyvern's movement had already been reported by the sentries and quickly spread, and every single resting soldier had snatched up their weapons and fully prepared to face the unidentified situation.
So when a string of curses echoed toward them, they could laugh.
It wasn't even a wyvern knight, just some 'hero' riding behind the pilot, and he seemed seriously pissed off; they didn't pay it much mind even as the wyvern dove. Because if he wasn't a wyvern knight, there was no way for him to attack them from up there.
It was nothing more than a simple threat.
If anything, by revealing himself so stupidly, he had essentially thrown away even the advantage of surprise. Besides the pilot, there could've been at most two more riding. He was nothing but a fool who picked the wrong target for his reckless bravado.
Because they had acted with such 'common sense,' they couldn't react even as they watched the comrade at the very front get smashed by something unknown and torn apart like a rag.
It was only after three more heads were severed that they realized that unknown something was a person.
"It's a knight!"
Frankly, no one had thought the attacker would be a knight. After all, no knight started by slinging curses like that. But the cry's meaning was clear, so they decided to just treat him as a knight.
An aura user. A knight-class variable. That shout moments ago had simply encompassed all those meanings.
"Form up around your squad leaders! Don't try to take him alive! He's not an opponent we can beat by holding back!"
Eldmia Ega?
The commander barked orders while frantically racking his brain to recall who that was, but he couldn't figure it out.
An adventurer? Or really a knight? Even after rifling through every memory, no figure came to mind. And so the commander indulged in the luxury of deliberation in this urgent moment.
Why couldn't he recognize a swordsman who, right after dropping from what looked like a three-story height, had killed four men—and except for the first, all of them exactly by slitting their throats? And he wasn't even an unremarkable figure?
They were sensitive to information. They had to be if they wanted to operate secretly to overthrow the royal family. And that was why he made the mistake of thinking.
"Second unit, fall back! Get bows! You lot... shit!"
The price of pointless deliberation was heavy. The enemy didn't miss the sluggish movements of those who couldn't use aura, and he displayed the absurd technique of beheading all three who had only clumsily gathered and hadn't even managed to finish forming up, in a single stroke.
"M-monster!"
"That's you bastards!"
Despite having committed a feat that any swordsman would marvel at, the attacker, as if it were the most natural thing, instantly closed the distance again and cut down another second-unit soldier.
It was a painful loss, but instead of escaping reality, the commander resolved to accept that he couldn't save everyone.
But regardless, once you'd witnessed the enemy's skill, there was nothing you could do about it.
It wasn't a feat achievable by a merely enhanced body. That strike was something you could only display after thousands—no, tens of thousands of repetitions, after brutalizing your body and ingraining the act of cutting into your very being.
Simply a cut engraved through endless repetition. Not even something you could call a technique. Yet a level of completion that, were he not an enemy, would've made them lay down their swords and applaud.
Because they had witnessed it. And because they had understood it.
The mercenaries who had a certain level of skill but still couldn't use aura all fell into terror.
It was no secret art or anything. So whether they let him attack first or attacked first themselves, it wasn't hard to guess what move was coming.
But that was all.
If they gave him the first move, they'd be cut faster than they could block. If they struck first, they'd be cut by a textbook counter.
Knowing it, they couldn't block, couldn't dodge.
"Where the hell did something like this...!"
Those who had awakened aura, the ones who'd built enough experience in the mercenary company to be called veterans, at least showed better reactions. That was because they were at the level to notice how faint the enemy's aura was.
They couldn't tell how such a meager aura could be used so skillfully to enable those movements, but judging that his aura was similar to theirs at best and certainly not superior, they decided to trust the training and real combat they had experienced.
But the officers who assessed the situation while facing the enemy with that courage despaired—not because of the enemy's strength, but because it was certain they would suffer unexpected damage in this fight.
Someone who had reached the most realistic answer spoke with difficulty.
"Commander. Order the second unit to flee..."
"I know what you're thinking. But that's a rash judgment."
Just from the aura I sense, he cannot possibly move like that. No matter how good your knack, a single person can't lift a boulder that would take ten people. That being is fundamentally different.
Just like the enemy right in front of us.
Understanding that the officer hadn't spoken for his own safety but to minimize damage to the other mercenaries classified as the second unit, the commander didn't get angry at him.
"He's strong, but it's just one man. We'll strike as one, taking advantage of his distraction with the second unit."
Whether he was someone connected to these slash-and-burn farmers, or someone who had already figured out their identity, figuring that out could wait. Even if he himself didn't know, one of the nobles backing them would know the name Eldmia Ega... no, with that skill, being unknown was impossible.
"This was a matter for 'us.'"
The man who was the commander had once faced the Ten Swords of the Kingdom directly. Compared to that, this attacker was utterly shabby. There was none of the pressure he had felt from the aura they exuded.
His technique might be perfect, but he was clearly weaker than them.
"Let's go!"
Trusting in the countless hours they'd spent coordinating to defeat those clearly stronger than themselves, they charged without hesitation, forming up into a tight formation. To cut down this attacker, who didn't properly grasp the level of those he faced, along with his arrogance, and to settle this unplanned chaos.
"Second unit, fall into formation—"
Just as he was about to order the soldiers so they wouldn't interfere, the attacker, who had seemed wholly uninterested in them, suddenly turned his head and locked eyes with the commander.
"Found you."
He hadn't heard a voice. His nerves, stretched to their limit, had relied on the flickering torchlight to read the attacker's lip movements. But the commander felt as if he'd heard a voice.
And the moment he understood what that meant, a chill ran down his whole body and he sensed the danger—but it was already too late.
By the time he realized the attacker had closed in at a speed easily double what he had shown so far, penetrating to the very center of the officers who had spread out to encircle him and right up to the commander's nose, the sword was already swinging at his throat.
"So you're the leader."
Without knowing whether his throat had been cut first or he'd heard the voice first, the commander's head soared into the sky.