Chapter 737: A Stench Tinged with Human Cunning
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 737: A Stench Tinged with Human Cunning
Two spotted leopard demonic beasts scattered, bolting to the left and right.
Red tendons rippled over the powerful muscles of their hind legs. As they kicked off the ground, they moved with such explosive speed that they left afterimages in their wake.
Still, it wasn't a speed he couldn't match.
He could just barely close the gap. Encrid braced himself, channeling his Will into the skill Strong Legs. It was time to abandon stealth in favor of raw velocity.
His accelerated thoughts partitioned, perceiving the world in fractured instants.
Crack, screeech!
The gravel beneath Encrid’s feet shattered into dust. The branches underfoot didn't just snap; they were driven deep into the earth.
His foot dug so deep into the soil that it was half-buried. The ground itself compacted and hardened instantly to withstand the sheer force of his stride.
Just as his right foot sank halfway into the earth and his left foot—toes clenched tight for leverage—was on the verge of springing forward...
All he had to do was chase them down and strike. Even if the unexpected occurred, he would at least sever the tail of one of the two.
Their tails, which had taken on a metallic texture, glinted under the moonlight even in the darkness. At a glance, they were weapons as sharp as any blade.
Cutting just that would be half the battle won.
‘That tail is likely one of the leopard's primary means of attack...’
...but it also served as a counterbalance.
If the tail were severed, the beast's balance would falter and its movements would grow sluggish. After that, capturing it would be child's play.
He had already realized it through instinct and intuition. The tail was not a threat. Even if the two fleeing demonic beasts became ten, they would still pose no danger.
He was confident he could crush them even if they led him into a trap. If things went truly awry, he could simply withdraw.
A Knight was a calamity—and that didn't mean they were a calamity only to humans.
A Knight was a calamity to anyone who dared cross blades with them.
In this case, they were a disaster for anything that bared claws, nails, or fangs in their presence.
In short, mere demonic beasts could not withstand Encrid's sword.
Yet, he felt strangely held back. Pure intuition snagged Encrid by the ankles.
The shackle of unease weighed down his movements.
Tighten.
His calf muscles bunched hard, then relaxed.
Letting his hands hang loose, he looked ahead. The two leopard demonic beasts that had been fleeing stopped and looked back. Standing in the shadows, their eyes glowed a predatory red.
The moment he suppressed his momentum, they had stopped immediately. Had they felt the vibrations in the air? Or had they sensed him through some unique instinct?
Whatever the case, they could not be called ordinary demonic beasts.
‘Special specimens.’
Encrid turned around. Once a decision was made, there was no room for hesitation.
Time passed does not return. Even if there are many paths, a man can only walk one.
That was why, once a choice was made, regret was unnecessary.
Of course, if someone were to ask why he had stopped, he could only say he felt uneasy.
Encrid spun on his heel, turning his back to them. There was no sign of another demonic beast attacking.
He headed straight back toward the village. When he arrived, he saw Harkvent standing there blankly, gripping his spear, seemingly lost for words.
"Clean this up, or the stench will become unbearable."
Encrid lightly kicked the corpse of the bear demonic beast with the toe of his boot.
Harkvent looked at Encrid with an extremely anxious gaze. He had realized anew that while the demonic beasts were dangerous, the man before him was just as perilous.
Encrid stared intently at Harkvent.
‘His mind is a mess.’
Though he couldn't fully guess Harkvent's thoughts, he could read the general atmosphere. Not that he had anything particular to say to comfort him.
No matter what he said, he wouldn't be able to wash away that man's anxiety.
The best thing to do here was...
‘...to wipe out the demonic beasts as quickly as possible and leave.’
Yet, if he had truly wanted to achieve that goal, he should have chased down and killed those two leopards earlier. But Encrid had chosen not to.
"Is there water to wash with?"
"Of course."
Harkvent had drawn water from the source below the village and stored it. Without worrying about whether it was meant for drinking, he offered most of it to Encrid.
No matter what the man hid in his heart, Encrid was the savior of the village. Showing this much hospitality was only natural.
He was also walking on eggshells. What if the man flew into a rage because there was no water?
Harkvent’s stomach practically ached with anxiety. The survival of the village depended entirely on this man's mood. He felt it would be better for his mental health if the man just left, even if it meant the villagers had to fight the demonic beasts for survival on their own.
"Well then."
Encrid washed up roughly, maintained a calm demeanor toward Harkvent, and went inside to sleep.
The night passed quickly. Encrid woke at the crack of dawn and began to thoroughly search the surroundings. Finding traces of the demonic beasts wasn't difficult, but...
‘They're far.’
He had assumed they would be lurking nearby if they were targeting the village. But they weren't. To pursue them, he would have to go quite far from the village. He could easily do that, but he didn't feel like it.
Encrid followed the tracks at a steady, measured pace.
‘A gamey stench.’
The distinct, fishy odor of demonic beasts wafted through the air.
‘What did they call that fragrance?’
When he had first entered the semi-basement house, a pungent aroma had pricked his nose. When he asked about it, they told him it was a fruit that only grew nearby—a spice that completely eliminated the fishy odor of demonic meat when added to food.
He had heard that thanks to it, they could eat the meat of demonic beasts and monsters. Still, it wasn't exactly delicious, so they only ate it when they had no other choice.
When Brunhild had clung to him while holding her spear, a smart-looking boy among the other children had chattered away about it.
‘Though that smell was new to me...’
...the smell he was catching now was familiar.
An unpleasant stench was mixed between the fishy and gamey odors. It was a foul odor imbued with human cunning—something he never expected to smell from a beast.
It wasn't a physical smell, but he perceived it clearly.
Humans who used their brains incorporated tactics into their battles. To put it nicely, it was strategy. To put it harshly, it was a highly developed cunning designed to minimize casualties and secure victory.
In the tracks left by the pack, Encrid felt a cunning that should only belong to humans.
Encrid stopped in his tracks.
As if to prove his hypothesis, a pack of demonic beasts approached, suddenly releasing a heavy, gamey musk. Without so much as a growl, they kept low, blending into the grass and staring at him with blood-red eyes.
‘They used the headwind.’
They had used the wind direction to hide their scent, conceal their presence, and lay an ambush.
In other words, they had left tracks specifically to lure him out. They had intentionally left behind odors by shedding blood and leaving excrement. The image of a demonic beast clawing at its companion or its own leg to leave a trail came naturally to mind.
The ones appearing now were wolf demonic beasts. There were easily dozens of them. It was no longer surprising to see them forming a semi-circular encirclement.
An ambush and an encirclement were within his expectations.
‘Were the wild dogs just a prelude?’
Encrid knew the name of the tactic the demonic beasts were employing.
‘A diversion.’
Therefore, he also knew where he needed to be right now. He spun around and sprinted back. Because the shackle of unease had held him back earlier, he would be able to return in no time.
Bark!
As the wolf demonic beast in the center barked, they began to curve their formation into a full circle, attempting to block his retreat.
Encrid counted the number of beasts blocking his path.
‘Nine.’
The third one from the left was positioned the highest, while the second one from the right held the lowest stance, crouched on the verge of pouncing.
There was no sound of drawing Samcheol. He carried it bare, without a scabbard.
Encrid treated the heads of those nine beasts as points and drew a line through them in his mind.
From then on, he surrendered his body to instinct. His Will surged, accelerating his pace.
Encrid extended Samcheol to the left and slashed to the right. It was a sword path that moved in a jagged zigzag.
It was a variation of Flash, achieved through the optimization of thought.
A Consecutive Flash. His optimized thoughts told him exactly where to extend and slash his sword. The resulting form was a calamity of white light that surged in a lightning-fast zigzag.
‘Lightning.’
Crack-crack-crack-crack!
It was as if the heads of all nine demonic beasts split open simultaneously. There was a slight time difference between each strike, but the speed was indistinguishable to anyone who wasn't a Knight—and a high-ranking one at that.
It was a swordsmanship akin to acrobatics, achieved through the Explosion of Lines and the optimization of thought he had learned from Alexandra. On the surface, it looked like simple, rapid slashes, but a closer look would reveal that his method of utilizing Will was truly transcendent.
The nine demonic beasts died helplessly, their heads split open. Now, there was nothing left to block him.
Sprinting back at full speed, he saw a massive serpent capable of swallowing a child of Brunhild's size in a single bite.
Snap!
It wrapped its body around a large tree, snapping the trunk, and let out a deafening hiss. The sound carried a primal power designed to strike terror into its prey.
"I'll hold it off!"
It was the entrance of the village. Harkvent stood facing it alone, spear in hand. Blood dripped from his forearm, injured at some unknown point. A crimson liquid, distinctly different from the blood of demonic beasts, stained the soil beneath his feet.
The moment Encrid saw Harkvent, he understood the man's intention.
‘A trap.’
He intended to lure the serpent in.
Harkvent had said they were only caught off guard by the wild dogs because they had rushed them suddenly; normally, they could have dug traps and killed them all.
But not that serpent. That was not something that could be killed with a mere pit.
Encrid's feet did not hesitate for a single second. Filled with conviction, he stepped forward and swung his sword.
Without even looking back, the serpent swung a log gripped by the tip of its tail with a loud whoosh. Penna moved as if flowing from top to bottom, splitting the wood.
Slice.
In terms of pure cutting power, Penna was superior to Samcheol. The cross-section of the severed log was perfectly smooth. The sound it made was like slicing through soft meat.
Encrid lunged forward, diving between the two halves of the split log. He had already sheathed the swung Penna and was now gripping Samcheol with both hands.
The sword, brought down in one continuous motion as he lunged, struck the serpent's head.
Whoosh, crack.
The blade drew a line outside of human perception. The steel passed through the serpent's head before any sound could even register.
To Harkvent, who was watching from right in front, Encrid had simply appeared, the log had split, and a faint line of light had flashed.
The serpent's head, touched by that line, split wide open. Its hard skull parted, and the blackened brain within spilled out. He had swung his sword so quickly that there wasn't even the sound of a head being severed, nor did blood immediately seep from the cut.
It was a skill that went beyond clean—it transcended human limitations.
Encrid had reached the realm of a Knight, a level of power referred to as a calamity. Naturally, he was capable of swordsmanship that surpassed the limits of the human species. The overwhelming martial prowess that remained hidden when fighting fellow Knights was laid bare before the demonic beasts.
Tap. Thud.
Encrid, who had struck downward while suspended in midair, touched down on the ground first. Only then did the serpent's massive body collapse. The ground shook as if a minor earthquake had struck.
Encrid immediately raised his head, listening to the sounds and feeling the vibrations in the air. The serpent was not the end.
Several deer, with fangs protruding further than a wolf's, leaped into the village. Up in the trees, a fox demonic beast gleamed with red eyes.
"Damn it, Harkvent!" someone shouted.
Their traps consisted of pits dug into the ground with sharpened stakes at the bottom. These pits were all constructed at the front of the village. Yet, the pack of demonic beasts repeatedly bypassed them to infiltrate from the flanks.
‘They know the traps are there.’
The wild dogs executing a delaying action, the bear drawing attention and acting as a decoy...
‘They're trying to draw me out.’
Now he knew for certain. This pack of demonic beasts knew how to use their brains. They were clever and cunning enough to make a mockery of ordinary humans.
"En-ki!"
Amidst the chaos, Brunhild's voice rang out. It was likely instinct that made her call for him rather than her father. The only one who could resolve this crisis was the swordsman from the outside.
Encrid moved. Kicking off the ground, he ran up a tree and slashed the neck of a fanged deer that was baring its teeth. Wherever Samcheol passed, the heads of the demonic beasts were severed, flying into the air before crashing down.
Leaping down from the tree, he stabilized his stance, threw a javelin, leaped to the side, and threw the Horned Trumpet Dagger he had drawn at some point.
Tooooot!
A Knight's strength was monstrous. Imbued with that power, the dagger pierced straight through the deer's skull.
Splat!
The fanged deer's head exploded like a ripe pumpkin.
As he moved, Encrid spotted a white-furred, two-tailed fox. The beast was clever. Seeing Encrid dispatch several demonic beasts, it immediately widened the distance between them.
It perched atop a tree so tall and straight that its peak was barely visible. The fox's steps as it flitted across the branches were incredibly light.
As if even this was merely a test. It seemed to be demonstrating that it still had plenty of tricks up its sleeve.
Encrid looked away from the fox and moved his feet once more. If he paused to catch his breath for even a second, someone would die. He couldn't let that happen.
There were fewer than twenty demonic beasts that had entered the village, including the massive serpent.
‘But if I hadn't been here, someone would have died.’
Brunhild, catching her breath nearby, looked at him with a smile and raised her spear.
"I killed one."
In the midst of the chaos, this highly talented child had managed to impale a fox demonic beast with her spear. Consequently, the shaft of her spear was half-split.
"We need to hold a meeting," Harkvent said, looking around at the carnage.
No one had died, but that did nothing to quiet the anxiety in his heart.