Commendation
Commendation
The third wyvern pilot of my life was a rather cheerful fellow.
"Nobody wants to deal with wyverns in this kind of winter, no matter how fast they are, but you seem to be in quite the hurry, sir!"
He was lively enough to try striking up a conversation up on the wyvern, with the freezing blade of the wind slapping at our ears, like some good-natured taxi driver. Since the distance to the next city was a matter of hours anyway, I decided to play along.
"Not so busy I need to throw money into thin air! It's just that things have kept getting tangled up lately! I figure if I rush a bit, I might have room to breathe even if the next job goes sideways!"
"Ah! We all have those times when things just keep going wrong! Still, you've paid your dues this winter, so the rest of the year's bound to bring you nothing but good fortune!"
A well-wish, no less, how kindhearted. The problem was I suspected the trouble was only beginning, but there was no need to tell him that, so I just thanked him and let it pass.
We hadn't exactly exchanged names, but the talkative wyvern pilot wasn't the type to care about such things, just launching into this story and that. It was honestly impressive how he could chatter away like that while taking the full brunt of the wind head-on, unlike me riding in the back. He had a real talent for spinning recent experiences—strange sightings, frightening incidents, anxieties about the kingdom's chaos—into thoroughly entertaining tales.
His gift of gab was such that I half wondered if he and Bisquente, locked in a room together, could talk nonstop for a solid week. Eventually he even started in on the history of how wyverns came to be domesticated, and the story was so absolutely absurd that even I, who had up to that point mostly just listened and offered only enough replies to keep the conversation from getting awkward, couldn't hold back a question.
"You're telling me it started because someone didn't set out to ride a wyvern but just ended up on one by accident?"
"That's right! It's a story not many people know! A warrior who wanted to stop a wyvern that was raiding his village just up and jumped onto it! Problem was, the damn thing took off with him on it, and his desperate struggle to survive was the very beginning of wyvern piloting!"
Clearly he must have been an absolute madman! Hahaha! The laughter and shouting that followed led into an even more ridiculous account. Obviously, since it was the first ride, there could never have been any systematic training or riding methods. And with no saddle like we had now, the fact that he stubbornly survived to tell the tale was, well, rather expected in a way.
"And it was only possible because the warrior was skilled enough! It helped that the wyvern was scrawny enough for him to brace on it with both legs like riding a horse! Because the ones that aren't that small don't bother raiding human livestock pens for pigs. They take people!"
And so, with no reins or anything else, the warrior who had somehow braced himself on the wyvern's back chose to use his fists. Since bringing his weapon down on it would've killed the wyvern for sure, which meant he'd fall to his own death alongside it.
If it tried to go the wrong way, he'd just slug the wyvern in the neck to deter it. After nearly a full day of this, he managed to get safely back to the ground, and that was said to be the origin of the human race's wyvern piloting. Finding the possibility of the unknown in that distance traveled, the warrior captured the utterly exhausted, half-collapsed wyvern alive instead of killing it. After all manner of trial and error, he proved its utility and left his name in history.
"Actually, even now if a wyvern's being too foul-tempered during training, they still use that brute-force method. Just haul off and smack it in the face! Of course, if some halfwits tried it on a whim they'd fail to handle it properly and get themselves killed, so it's a technique only seasoned trainers can pull off! Or if you're just disgustingly strong!"
Looking at the wyvern pilot cracking up with boisterous laughter, I figured the rest of the journey wouldn't be dull at all.
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"He's shown up."
As if responding to the man's low murmur, the party behind him, who had seemed to be quietly sleeping, simultaneously kicked off their spots and rose. At the sudden movement, beasts positioned in the farthest corner bristled and let out low growls, but no one paid such minor reactions any mind.
"You certain?"
"Unless some lunatic Demonfolk is hiding its appearance with magic among the humans, or a member of the Dragon Race is flying around on a wyvern. I'm sure of it. It's the one who entered the city yesterday. That bastard is 'Little Eldmia.'"
Meaning the target. At the same time, it meant this maddening infiltration operation was over. It was unmistakably the moment everyone had been waiting for, but those hidden inside the cave felt a crossfire of emotions beyond mere relief or joy.
"He really showed up...?"
"The rumors might actually be true..."
Unlike bodies moving as trained, someone wrestling with their tangled thoughts voiced a concern, and similar opinions followed. Cases where long-dismissed tall tales turned out to be true were more common than one might think, but this was different.
And no wonder, since the rumor was that the Demon King himself could see the future.
The rumor that this generation's Demon King possessed a power close to precognition, though not perfectly, circulated even within the Demon King's Army only among a very select few. At first they dismissed it as the kind of legend that springs up around an exceptionally brilliant leader, but...
Obtaining information that could never be known, at a time it could never possibly be discovered—that already transcended the realm of mere competence.
That was why the six Demonfolk carrying out the mission under command orders—more precisely, members of a Demon King's Army special forces unit—all swallowed dryly without anyone needing to say a word. It should have been an immensely reassuring ability for their side, yet a strange unease lingered. The first to shatter that mood was the female Demonfolk who had been sitting silently deepest inside.
"Stop muttering nonsense and bring the wyverns outside. Do you think we've got the leisure to waste on shit like that right now? Even if the Demon King can foresee the future, it's neither precise nor specific. If it were, we wouldn't have been put through this hell of hiding out for weeks dodging that crazy bitch who's sniffing for our trail here."
The female Demonfolk serving as squad leader was telling the truth. Remembering all the time they'd spent struggling to obey vague instructions like 'you'll know when the time comes' and 'there will be a sign,' the Demonfolk began moving with greater urgency.
When the one among them most versed in magic chanted a spell, the cave entrance that had barely allowed a single head to poke through gradually widened until three huge bears could pass abreast. Once he confirmed that the other Demonfolk were leading the three wyverns—staggering as if still half asleep—outside, he carefully dispelled the illusion magic cast over the wyverns.
At that, the eyes of the wyverns, which had been dazed as if intoxicated, cleared, and their docile attitudes vanished without a trace as they began thrashing wildly. In no time at all, two of the wyverns quickly adjusted and became compliant again, but one in particular bared its fangs and refused the Demonfolk's touch.
This wasn't exactly unusual. The beasts were nothing more than experimental subjects trained in-house by the Demon King's Army after years of suffering at the hands of Itisel's wyvern knights. They'd reached a point of being somewhat usable, but they were barely domesticated, so such incidents were commonplace.
Even so, the reason they'd dragged them along was because of the command's vague orders.
Seize the bastard who travels by wyvern. If absolutely impossible, kill him. However superior Demonfolk might be, there were vanishingly few ways to chase down a wyvern in flight, so they'd had no choice but to ride these. Of course, it was only possible because they were combat operatives who could be considered the closest thing to wyvern experts within the Demon King's Army.
The female Demonfolk had snapped at her subordinates, but she was just as unhappy with command's orders. She vented her frustration with an operation where nothing was clear as though it were irritation at the resisting wyvern, strode up to the beast, and without the slightest hesitation planted a fist into the side of its head.
The wyvern was already larger than the others, but the female Demonfolk member's own build was far from small, which made the act possible. Even so, the wyvern, its reins seized by the other two Demonfolk, bared its fangs and tried to lunge. The female Demonfolk gave it no opening and slammed her fist in again.
The harder punch had a clear effect. The wyvern, its spirit broken by the second blow, visibly lowered its head and tail. She confirmed this, gave a derisive snort, snatched the reins, and climbed onto its back.
"I'll use this one. Yawel! Get on behind me! We'll take the lead!"
The Demonfolk called Yawel checked that the other wyverns showed no abnormal symptoms and climbed on behind her as ordered. In a sense, it was the most dangerous role, but he showed no sign of complaint.
Demonfolk used a single power called Magic Power for both magic and physical reinforcement, but magic itself was still a properly systematized field of study, so there was inevitably a gap between those who had studied it and those who hadn't. Of the group, Yawel had studied magic the longest. Naturally, he was also the best at tracking Magic Power, so it had been decided from the start that he would take the lead. For that reason, he was actually relieved to be riding with the strongest member of the group, the squad leader.
After all, their opponent was a monster who had killed a mage who had once risen to the rank of legion commander candidate.
The fact that he wasn't flying the wyvern by himself suggested he wasn't especially skilled at wyvern-to-wyvern combat. But there was no telling what tricks a human who had broken through even the Curse of Immortality to kill that mage might pull.
"Even if this mission is fucking awful, once we make it back alive, it's medals! We'll shove aside every bastard who looked down on us as nothing but behind-the-scenes schemers! If you've gone to war, you ought to experience an investiture at least once, shouldn't you?!"
At the squad leader's shout to fire them up, they dropped the now-unnecessary Magic Power-concealing barrier, and the wyverns immediately took flight.