Settlement
Settlement
The sound of rain had lulled them into a deep sleep, but what woke them was the voice of a private soldier running through every corner of the mansion, shouting at the top of his lungs as if heralding the end of the world.
"Under attack! Move to the main building immediately! This is not a drill! We're under attack!"
Though he was one of the household's private soldiers, the situation was urgent enough that he simply shouted without honorifics. It was an extraordinary scene that no one living in the mansion had ever experienced.
Perhaps because of that, the knights staying at the mansion didn't grab the desperately running soldiers to scold them. Instead, they quickly donned their armor and sprinted toward the direction the soldier indicated.
Five knights ran in formation, and more than ten hired fighters equipped to a similar standard headed in the same direction. The sight was thick with tension.
"Yaaawn. Just what kind of bloodthirsty lunatics raid a capital noble's mansion on a rainy day, anyway?"
Amid the sudden emergency in the downpour where all forces were frantically scrambling, one knight was uniquely sluggish. He yawned lazily as he slowly gathered his armor, emerging from his quarters late and casually grabbing any nearby soldier to ask a question.
"Hey. What's going on here?"
"I-it's an enemy raid! The main gate's been destroyed, and the soldiers dispatched to suppress them were literally butchered!"
The knight read the terror in the soldier's eyes, who gave a fairly detailed account as if he'd witnessed the scene firsthand. He felt his interest pique instantly.
It wasn't the wary reaction to a typical raid. It was the despair of someone who'd seen an opponent they could never defeat, swirling in that soldier's eyes.
"Butchered? How many came?"
"O-one."
"Ooone?"
The knight didn't get angry or dumbfounded. Such obvious reactions weren't needed; the pandemonium, as if a war had broken out, explained far too much.
This was definitely something interesting. The knight's instincts screamed it.
"Once this is sorted out, we'll have to gather the troops and redo their training from scratch. They should've led with that!"
A single person had attacked a count's mansion in the middle of the capital. How could they leave out a fact that important and just run around shouting 'Attack!'? His drowsiness vanished completely, and with excitement steadily building, the knight left the soldier behind and sprinted toward the mansion's main building.
It was a fairly large residence for a count's mansion, so even though he used aura to enhance his body and ran, the main building was still some distance away. Because of that, the knight had to pass by reactions that kept amplifying his anticipation on his way there.
But the highlight among them was the command faintly heard from afar.
"Knights! Bring the knights! Soldiers fall back! We can't win!"
"Ha, seriously. This is getting my hopes up. I'm going in! Everyone get the fuck out!!"
The sound of clashing weapons wasn't even clearly audible yet, but the knight already felt like he knew who the opponent was.
The moment he heard that absurd story of a solo raid, the figure who came to mind was that topic of rumors, a person whose truth and gossip had tangled together and been inflated into a giant monster.
Someone he'd desperately wanted to see at least once, yet had been forced to avoid. The man who'd cut down Rudra's renowned Young Lion and even defeated the Hero.
Most knights and old men underestimated and scorned the skills of young heroes, but this knight, who belonged to the ranks of those young heroes himself, had never taken these rumors lightly. He had always been waiting.
And when he finally arrived at the main building, the knight firmly believed that God had rewarded his patience.
Because the protagonist of the rumors was right there, casually dismantling a coordinated assault by three knights—attacks launched at nearly the exact same moment—and beheading them one by one.
"Guillotine of Levien. Eldmia Ega!"
"Eldmia Ega is right, but what the hell is that nickname in front?"
Unlike the thuggish, slouching expression reminiscent of a street punk, the trained body and posture were of a caliber no mere thug could imitate. The visible aura was faint, but that was no longer any basis for judgment.
He had to judge by the countless sword marks, corpses, and destruction sown all the way from the distant main gate to the mansion's main building.
"Not much interest in your own rumors, I see?"
"I'm interested as fuck. But they just never reach my ears in a normal way, for some reason. It's getting genuinely baffling how I'm the only one who doesn't know."
Five knights and more than ten hired fighters of comparable ability were dead.
Yet the enemy's breathing wasn't the slightest bit disturbed. The knight felt a thrill at the sight.
Yes, sword fights are best enjoyed against people.
"You're pretty good, aren't you? Felt a lot of scurrying around, and things got quiet around here for a bit once you showed up."
Unlike the knight's heightened emotions, Eldmia just tilted his head, his face looking full of nothing but complaints and dissatisfaction.
"Ah, I just don't like having distractions around when I'm fighting."
"And you still called your men off against the bastard who wrecked the mansion like this? Were you the strongest one here?"
A smile kept creeping up until it felt like the corners of his mouth would reach his ears, but the knight maintained his composure as much as possible and answered.
"Right. I was the strongest..."
Then, mid-sentence, he caught the oddity and frowned, asking back.
"...Why the past tense?"
"Why the past tense, asking the obvious."
As if hearing the dumbest question, Eldmia gave a deflated reaction and wedged the blade he was holding between his right forearm and bicep.
For a moment, he wondered what move that was. But only when he saw his previously spotless white clothes—not a single drop of blood on them even after coming this far—become dyed red, did the knight understand the situation.
Oh, wiping blood off like that, that's a first.
"Right now, I'm here, aren't I?"
Having wiped the blood from his sword like that, Eldmia answered with a smile, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Whether it was confidence or provocation, he couldn't tell, but it was more than enough to delight the knight.
"Hahaha! Fun! Really fun! This is worth looking forward to!"
"I'm not expecting much, so let's finish this quick and move on. Ah, is that son of a bitch Envelde upstairs?"
"Haha!... Probably, wouldn't you say? Why?"
"Be pretty embarrassing if I slice you up, go upstairs, and find out he was on the first floor the whole time."
He could feel that the statement of not seeing him as a worthy opponent was sincere, and instantly, his cheerful mood plummeted. In that sullen moment, just as he was about to snap something back,
"I'm busy, so let's end this fast."
Eldmia, not caring at all about his feelings, closed the distance in an instant and lunged in without any warning whatsoever.
"Nice trick!"
Double acceleration. True, there's nothing like it for a surprise attack when there's distance. But that only held true when the skill gap was clear.
At a similar skill level, it just meant he had to move a bit more urgently, and it was perfectly manageable. Close-quarters blade exchange was even more chaotically fast anyway.
"Still, shouldn't we exchange names? You should at least know the name of the man who kills you."
"That's why you already know my name."
Eldmia's verbal sparring grated on him more than the textbook-standard exchange of blows. The knight nearly reacted late after spending a moment puzzling over what Eldmia meant, then shook his head in disbelief and tried to step back to create distance.
"Wow, you've really got a gift for..."
But Eldmia, catching the movement instantly, gave him no opening and clung back, swinging his sword. An attack, also textbook, that could be included in a manual. He'd seen countless textbook-taught knights on the battlefield, but this time he couldn't help but be shocked.
Wait, when this gets fast, you can't ignore it?
The basics of the basics. Precisely because of that, it was swordsmanship focused solely on cutting and thrusting at the enemy quickly and reliably rather than on fancy techniques or feints. Anyone could learn it and use it broadly, and he'd always assumed that was all there was to it. Now it felt as though he were watching that very technique reach the realm of mastery.
Even knowing it, the attacks that moved a half-beat faster were devastatingly fierce.
He'd heard the kid hadn't even had his coming-of-age ceremony yet, but with this level of polish, you'd almost believe a different soul had inhabited a child's body and done nothing but delve into swordsmanship for years.
"But... it's not really threatening!"
"Yeah, figures. Your weapon's pretty good, huh?"
True, he was using a sword worthy of being called a masterpiece, but it was such a random thing to say that the knight almost got bogged down in thought again.
Ironically, if Eldmia's sword hadn't suddenly flashed, he would've kept thinking and reacted too late. The bizarre sword accelerated irregularly in bursts of light, and that part, at least, was honestly threatening.
"Damn, so this is what they mean by a three-inch tongue killing a man? Can't you just let me do the talking? Your tongue's a bit dangerous."
A slight lapse in concentration normally wouldn't be an issue, but Eldmia's skill made it one.
There was nothing particularly outstanding visible, no surging aura felt, yet he didn't retreat an inch. Rather, the moment any gap showed, there was a tenacity that slipped right in, making it hard to keep any composure.
Because of this, the knight admitted he needed to get serious for the first time in a very long while.
"Let's take a breather for a sec!"
-Clang!
Since he swung blatantly to be blocked, he expected Eldmia to block it without difficulty. But the fact that he only flew back a little over half the intended five meters was unexpected.
And for some reason, Eldmia also looked surprised.
"You managed to make an opening for that kind of thing at this speed?"
"I'm getting used to it now. Told you, I'm strong."
Feeling the rare sting in his sword hand, the knight, filled with soaring excitement, finally offered his introduction.
"For what it's worth, the name's Demonfolk Butcher Gish Hwimir. There's not a soul on the front lines who doesn't know it. Fighters around your level are a dime a dozen there."
He was outstanding, no doubt.
Above all, an achievement like that at his age was hard to believe even when seeing it with his own eyes. But death doesn't come measuring years. The moment you jumped into real combat, Eldmia was just another warrior of that caliber. All the knights on the front lines who couldn't do that much had already become corpses.
Gish made up his mind to carve one final lesson into the boy who had overestimated his own ability and taken on a reckless challenge, with the boy's life as the price.
"Kid. Let me show you the skill of a knight who's fought Demonfolk and survived."
"...Demonfolk?"
But for some reason.
"You earned the title of Butcher fighting Demonfolk on the front lines?"
Even after hearing words that should have been a threat, Eldmia gave an ominous smile.