That Which Falls Has No Wings
That Which Falls Has No Wings
The composure that had nestled on the face of the female Demonfolk—whose bellicose grin and bull horns suited each other so well, giving off a sort of Yekaterina 0.5 vibe—vanished the moment she witnessed the axe blade flying toward her.
But she didn't fall into panic. That alone meant she was no mere grunt. Even with an ally's arm bursting apart right by her ear, immediately assuming a defensive stance couldn't have been as easy as it sounded. Judging by appearances, she clearly possessed an unusual mental fortitude, and there was a high probability she was a skilled fighter.
And so, I swung the axe with every intention of splitting at least one part of the female Demonfolk member's body, even if it meant falling like this. The thick mace and sword crossed, but I figured I could split through them just fine.
It was a miscalculation.
-Clang!
"Goddamn Magic-Armament Alloy!"
I didn't even have the time to feel what a truly fucked-up piece of shit it was to face as an enemy's weapon when it had been so wonderful as my own sword. Instead, I had the rare experience of my body stopping dead in mid-air.
Yeah, like I'd slammed into a wall. The Demonfolk warrior woman had tanked my strike—the one I'd thrown my whole body into—using nothing but her upper body strength while riding a wyvern!
"Graaah!"
Even the flying wyvern staggered and let out a pain-filled shriek. Amid this, with a battle cry close to a scream, the warrior woman's shoulder muscles bulged. At the same time, a strange recoil, like the elastic force of a spring, traveled from the tips of her fingers gripping the axe. Fortunately, my brain didn't stop working, and I quickly understood what the situation was.
This bitch was planning to shove me right off.
"Crazy!"
This time, instinct passed judgment faster than the chills crawling over my entire body.
Case and all, I moved the needles at my waist, forcibly twisting my body to get into position and land on the wyvern. The moment I dug into my thighs and locked my body in place, the warrior woman's arms crossed into an X and swung out explosively. Even though I'd braced myself hard to keep from being pushed away, a BOOM! sound rang out along with an incredible shock. My arms were forced backward, and the axe very nearly flew from my grip.
That strike left my upper body wide open, but the same was true for my opponent. Fortunately, neither of us had the slack to think about a follow-up attack, so no one exploited those openings.
In that hair-trigger situation, even though the shock that made my shoulders sting chilled my guts, my mouth moved on its own.
"Aren't you just a goddamn monster?!"
It was nothing but curses mixed with admiration and horror, but I absolutely couldn't hold it in.
Even without my armor and gear, I weighed at least 90. Add the axe, sword, armor, and everything else, and I was easily over 100 kg. If I could face an enemy who not only endured a blow carrying that much falling weight and reinforced with Magic Power, but then tried to shove me back through pure strength, without cursing my head off, that'd be stranger. Was she even human?
At the unfiltered shout—one anyone could tell was sincere—the warrior woman's face twisted in rage.
"You're one to talk?! You're not even small!!"
And at the same time, her sword, which had dropped low, came swinging back up.
For a moment, a retort—'Is that really what's important right now?'—nearly escaped me, but there was no slack for that. A slashing attack coming from low to high relatively loses power, but after experiencing that strike a moment ago, I was dead certain that if that hit me, it wouldn't just cut flesh; it would shear right through bone. And as if that alone wasn't overwhelming enough, she was also preparing to swing her mace at the same time.
Once the attack starts, it'll be too late. I had to swing first. The moment that judgment was passed, my axe was already in motion.
-Crash!
The strike I swung with all my strength and focus to split her skull was, fortunately, faster than the warrior woman's attack, but it wasn't faster than her transition from offense to defense.
Fortunately, because she had to hastily switch between offense and defense, neither her reaction nor her defense was perfect. An expression of chagrin rose on the face of the warrior woman, who was probably feeling a similar numbness to what I'd experienced.
"A member of the Human Race... how?!"
Well, that's a problem I still haven't gotten an answer for myself, so I couldn't reply. Even if I knew, I wouldn't have answered.
My sharply tensed nerves used that brief opening to take in the surrounding situation, and through it, I saw two wyverns flying in from behind her.
Unlike the wyvern I'd suddenly climbed onto, which was wandering around unable to get its bearings, two Demonfolk were paired up and riding the wyverns flying in dead straight and honest. They'd closed the distance so fast I wondered how the hell they'd gotten that close already, and I could even see the tense expressions on their faces clearly.
Since I had no way of knowing what kind of attack methods they possessed, I needed to thin the numbers.
"One down."
And so, relying on a sensation that had become familiar by now, I aimed for the brow ridge of one wyvern flying straight toward me and hurled the axe.
◈
The axe vanished from the bastard's hand.
Since Mash had been sharply tensed, preparing for the follow-up attack, this time she didn't lose track of the axe's trajectory. Actually, she would have noticed naturally even if she had missed it. The axe that kicked up immense wind pressure and grazed past her left shoulder had too much presence to just disappear suddenly.
Unlike the first engagement, she had no choice but to look back this time. What entered her eyes, as she desperately craned her neck until it nearly snapped, was a wyvern on the verge of plummeting, its wingbeats stopped like a marionette whose strings had been cut, a massive two-handed axe embedded in its brow ridge, and the sight of her subordinates despairing at the coming future.
"Goddammit!"
She couldn't save them.
Yawel was the only one who could use flight magic. And Yawel had already fallen first; his corpse couldn't even be found.
Even turning her head to witness her subordinates' end was a life-or-death risk, so Mash quickly corrected her posture. Sure enough, within that brief interval, the monster before her had already drawn the sword at his waist and was attempting an attack.
The motion was disgustingly swift. She would have applauded if he weren't an enemy.
-Clang!
She desperately blocked the sword that flew in precisely aimed at her throat. The weight of the attack couldn't compare to the axe, but the problem was that, unlike the axe which had ended as a single attack, this attack continued.
It was chillingly fast and accurate. There was a reason he had thrown that massive axe like a mere throwing weapon.
With no time to be surprised by movements she'd normally only experience on the battlefield, she couldn't even switch to an offensive. He was such a skilled warrior that simply defending kept her hands full.
Or rather, that was exactly why the question arose. The projectile that had blown Yawel's arm off in a surprise attack, the axe, and the swordsmanship were all dangerous, but in the end they were forms of physical force. Physical force alone couldn't kill that has-been who had lived on under a curse, unable to die.
This bizarre human still had some hidden trick up his sleeve.
But Mash had no confidence she could figure out what that was in this fight. And so she gave the order to her subordinates.
"Run away!!"
"C-Captain?!"
Even in a situation where their enemies could actually decrease, Eldmia's eyes grew sharper as his gaze flicked past Mash's shoulder to her subordinates. Even as she judged this situation to be completely fucked, Mash was certain that her judgment hadn't been wrong.
This bastard intended to kill them all. And he could actually pull it off.
She couldn't let that happen. Mash drove her Magic Power into overdrive to reinforce her body and forced her way inside Eldmia's attacks, unleashing a barrage of her own. A huge wound opened in her shoulder in the process, but she didn't care.
He wasn't an opponent she could beat without injury anyway. And if she didn't do this, dying was the same outcome.
"Mission failure! Capture impossible! Kill impossible! Run without looking back! Return the moment you reach the rendezvous point! The unit must be informed! Target skill: at least hundred-man-commander level! Upper limit unmeasurable! Uses a Magic Organ!"
"Where do you think you're going?!"
The projectiles that had shattered Yawel's arm flew out from Eldmia's waist, but this time she could definitely see them. It was truly fucked-up that she'd had no idea there would be ten of them, but grateful that this time she wouldn't be standing by in a daze, Mash stretched out her right arm and blocked the projectiles' paths.
A scream tore from her at the horrific sharp pain, but Mash was able to block all the projectiles with her own arm.
"You crazy son of a..."
Had he not expected them to be blocked, or had he not known she'd go this far? Whatever it was, the fact that Eldmia was taken aback was a good sign for her. Although her right arm was wrecked, just that was enough to make Mash smile.
"You're staying here. I'll stop you even if it costs me my life."
Piercing through the sound of the rough, gusting wind, the sound of the wyverns her subordinates were riding turning and flying away was clearly audible. Each time, Mash's smile deepened. In contrast, Eldmia's face twisted further.
"Goddamn Demon King's Army bastards. When it comes to a sense of mission, every single one of you is heroic."
At the unexpected words from his mouth—twisted crooked with dissatisfaction—Mash burst out laughing. Heroic, he said. When inside the Demon King's Army, it was routine for them to be mocked as rat bastards who just gnawed at the enemies' assholes. To think she'd hear those words here.
In any case, it didn't feel bad.
"Ha, of course. What do you think we're fighting for?"
"How the fuck would I know that? What are you fighting for?"
It was so crudely blurted out that she wondered if he was being sarcastic, but his expression was that of someone who genuinely didn't know. Since her goal in the first place was to buy time for her subordinates to escape, Mash—even now holding back the projectiles trying to burst from her right arm with pure strength—spat out her answer like a curse.
"Freedom."
"...Haah, ridiculous."
It was a reaction closer to empty disbelief than mockery. When Eldmia, glaring at Mash from atop the wyvern that had lost its course and was flying erratically, opened his mouth again, what came out was a question whose meaning she couldn't grasp.
"What the hell does the destruction of a small village that didn't even have a name, near Ogwen in western Itisel, have to do with Demonfolk's freedom?"
What was he talking about?
The moment she sensed that the question had unintentionally shown on her face, Eldmia exhaled a deep sigh.
"Wrong one."
And then he gripped his sword in a reverse hold. Without a shred of hesitation, he stabbed the wyvern in the back.
It didn't take long to understand what that sword meant—sinking in deep with no resistance until the cross-guard touched the scales. But even though she saw it with her eyes and understood it with her head, she simply couldn't believe it, and could only look back and forth, several times, between the sword embedded in the wyvern's back and the apathetic expression on Eldmia's face.
"You crazy son of a...!"
Faster than the sentence bursting from her mouth could be completed, the wyvern, its vitals properly pierced, trembled its wings once and then began to plummet.