The Rider Who Calls Death (2)
I hurled my spear at the black half-man, half-beast while shouting at the woman. —Fwoooooosh!!
The spear, thrown with Gertur’s technique, streaked toward the half-beast in an instant. That was when it happened. The rider’s human-like neck twisted 180 degrees like an owl’s and locked onto me.
“Ras! Turtsu ha──!!”
The half-man, half-horse let out a grotesque cry, slammed on the brakes, and reversed. —Shhhhhhhk!!
Actually, could you even call that reversing? The horse’s four legs ignored inertia while galloping at full speed and simply changed direction backward at the same velocity. Because of the relative speed difference with the carriage, it looked to me as if the enemy had leapt backward at double speed. Naturally, my spear missed and buried itself deep in the ground.
“That goddamn son of a bitch! It’s not even a mosquito!”
The rider who had retreated across the grassland now charged straight toward us. I had already felt that bastard’s movements were strangely off, like footage projected by a beam projector, but since these kinds of creatures weren’t exactly rare, I could keep my thoughts cold and rational.
“Victuar! I’m going to smash the carriage!”
“Goddamn it, fuck!! I don’t want to die either!! Just do it!!”
Victuar, a traveling merchant who regularly crossed dangerous zones, had excellent judgment. While I fired freezing beams in rapid succession to block the half-man, half-horse’s approach, I shouted.
“Franc!!”
“Yeah!!”
—BOOM!!
The merchant’s carriage shattered under a full-power hammer swing and spilled across the grassland. The hammer Franc swung was a magic item left behind by the former president of the Toustas Trading Company. More precisely, she had removed the wooden handle—the core component—from that hammer and attached a new metal head. Unlike the mithril magic-reflecting shield, the metal parts of the hammer had never been enchanted. Still, because it was valuable metal, she had the handle repainted and asked Clara to recast the metal portion into a different shape, preserving the original enchantment while only changing the appearance.
—Rustle, rustle.
Fragments of the carriage scattered in the wind.
“Life is fucking bullshit!!”
Victuar spat curses with tears welling in his eyes. Franc threw knives without hesitation. The rider tried to dodge again, but the knives changed trajectory midair and struck true. Franc had deliberately aimed for the horse’s broad torso, so every knife buried itself in its body.
“RRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrras!!!”
The wounded rider howled even more savagely. Despite skin that looked like it should be tormented by inflammation, the rider’s hide barely yielded to Franc’s thrown knives.
“Larilura! Barrage!”
“Yes!”
At my command, Larilura hurled the doll she had been holding onto the carriage floor. The wild clown doll that flipped through the air transformed into a familiar marionette—Ringling No. 4, the one with a miniaturization function added via rune magic. Unlike living creatures that had to process breathing, heartbeat, and the five senses with mana, transforming an object consumed far less mana. Once the mana for the transformation was spent, nothing more was drained.
“If you want to be loved by me, come back wearing clothes first☆!”
Larilura pulled on threads of mana. Ringling No. 4 spewed Magic Missile from all ten fingers like a downpour.
“SIiiiiiiiiiiiyyy!!!”
A rain of arrows poured across the grassland! But the rider displayed an astonishing evasion technique. With jaw-dropping control, the rider deflected and dodged the magical barrage while closing in. It was horsemanship worthy of the nomadic tribes that had tormented our ancestors—or perhaps it was more accurate to call it body control, a martial art.
“Ssslsliiiiiiiiiii!!”
The half-man, half-horse rider swung the scythe that had been deflecting the barrage. The woman pressing on her wound from behind screamed.
“Watch out!! It’s going to attack!!”
“Thiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!”
—Fwoooosh!!
Red mana overflowing from the scythe drew a half-moon arc and flew toward us. I started to intercept it, then lowered my hand. My spear was barely keeping up with the carriage’s speed; if I missed now, I might not be able to retrieve it. More importantly, the tank of our party wasn’t me.
“You bastard!! Don’t make me pay for more repairs!!”
Dana climbed up through the broken roof of the carriage, grabbed the shattered canopy, and deployed her shield. The red half-moon slammed into it, shook it violently, and stopped. It had been an incredibly powerful long-range attack.
‘But not strong enough to break it.’
I narrowed my eyes. Cracks had formed on the shield, but it hadn’t shattered. That meant the enemy’s skill wasn’t overwhelmingly superior to our party’s. Franc’s knives were still embedded in its body. Both the rider’s offensive and defensive power were at a level we could handle!
The real problem was the speed generated by the four legs of the mount. I could probably keep up with an ordinary horse. But the woman’s horse wasn’t ordinary either. At a glance, it looked faster than a car on a highway. Even if its instantaneous speed was manageable, the stamina to maintain that speed over long distances and the ability to change direction without inertia were nothing short of terrifying.
“Veronica! Magic!”
【──I am the red guardian of wealth and joy (wyrtrumun underwreþyd, wyn on eþle)!! I am ready!!】
“Knock it down!!”
—Rumble, rumble!!
Thud!!
An earthen wall erupted from the ground and blocked the rider’s path. When the rider turned its head, Franc and Larilura focused their attacks. If it tried to jump over, they planned to shoot it down midair. But I couldn’t believe that bastard was stupid enough to do something so obvious.
I pulled the mask from my pocket. The rider swung its scythe twice in a cross pattern. The earthen wall crumbled, and the grotesque horse’s head vanished behind a cloud of dust.
“SaaaaaaaAAA── A?”
The rider, about to launch another ambush on the carriage, froze. I had disappeared from the roof. I had taken the moment the rider hid in the dust to press the mask to my face and leap down to the driver’s seat. Impression Camouflage took effect for a brief instant. It was the perfect stealth technique. I had dropped into the carriage’s shadow, so even Victuar, busy whipping his horse, hadn’t noticed. The rider, whose attention was elsewhere, had no chance of spotting me.
I seized that opening and forced mana upward. It was the same spell formula I had used earlier for the freezing beam.
‘Add the ᚨ (Ansuz) rune here to increase output.’
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a true spell combination. Real high-difficulty spell combinations were brutally hard. It gave me the same sense of despair I’d felt the first time the letter χ appeared in middle-school math. So I used a shortcut. I had realized that applying magic to the runes carved into the mithril spearhead would produce a similar result.
“YAaaau──!! Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiid!!”
The rider noticed me.
‘Took you long enough, you dull bastard.’
I leapt from the driver’s seat and thrust the spearhead brimming with extreme cold.
“Crescent Moon Heavenly Thrust.”
Compressed freezing vapor erupted like bullets.
—Crack, crack, crack!!
Crunch!!
The attack that had once made Franc gasp in the courtyard and earned me a joint lock from Dana struck the half-man, half-horse rider squarely. With no angle to dodge, the rider froze solid. Yet it did not die. Even with its arm holding the scythe and the connection between its human torso and the horse’s back encased in ice, it roared as if burning with fighting spirit.
“AAs, Swwwwww…… Tyaaa?!”
—Thunk!
As if slowed legs no longer mattered, a thrown spear pierced the horse’s head that the rider had been pulling the scythe toward.
“If you get hit by freezing, you should pull back, you idiot.”
I snorted, shaking the arm that had thrown the spear. My throwing technique, honed to mastery, produced an astonishing result against the sturdy neck muscles and bones of the horse. The horse’s head, now a kebab, was ripped clean off, still impaled on the spear.
“Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!”
—Fwoosh!!
—Crash, crash, crash!!
With its head gone, the rider’s legs tangled and it tumbled across the grassland. The humanoid body, unable to fall properly, rolled across the ground before standing upright like a decapitated criminal, only for Larilura’s magic arrow to turn what remained of its head into pulp. Even a monster couldn’t survive with both heads destroyed.
I retrieved my spear and muttered.
“Rest in peace, you kill-stealing bastard.”
“Aaaah, shit, you scared me!! When did you get down?!”
Victuar’s dumbfounded scream at my muttering signaled the end of the fight.
Goddamn it. It’s been a while since we ran into monsters while traveling.
***
We stopped the carriage and treated the injured first.
“Th-thank you.”
“……U-um. Yes.”
While treating the haggard woman, Dana kept glancing at her face.
What’s going on? Did our big sis suddenly awaken to same-sex attraction?
Feeling slightly worried, I stayed on guard against another ambush. There could be other monsters besides the unidentified half-man, half-horse.
“Go, Pin Fannel!”
—Whirrrrrr!
I sent out a smoke clone to check the rider’s condition. I poked it, but it didn’t look like it would revive. To come back here, it would need something like Erna’s recovery clone.
“Senior~. What are you going to do with this scythe~?”
Larilura brought over the scythe the rider had used. It didn’t look like anything worth keeping. The blade, rusted and caked in blood, looked like it would cause tetanus if it so much as scratched you. Suddenly I felt concerned for the middle-aged woman receiving treatment over there.
‘Well, Dana will handle the treatment.’
It wasn’t my place to offer unsolicited advice to an expert. Especially when respecting my wife’s area of expertise was a duty for a harmonious married life. In that spirit, I decided to toss the scythe to the expert in this field for an appraisal.
“Franc. What do you think?”
“Hmm……. Just a moment. I need to scrape off the rust first.”
Franc knelt and began stripping the scythe with a knife.
—Scrape, scrape.
—Scraaape.
The unpleasant sound made even Franc frown as she worked. After touching the revealed metal and poking it with the knife, she tilted her head.
“It’s so corroded I can’t be sure, but I think it might be sea iron.”
“Sea iron?”
“Yeah. Iron found beneath the sea surface. It’s hard to obtain, so it’s extremely expensive. It’s treated almost like a precious metal, right? I remember it fetches more than the same weight in silver.”
“Seriously?”
The one who took the bait was Victuar. When I looked at him, he scratched the back of his head sheepishly.
“I mean, you did save my life, so I can’t really ask for anything else, but… I could still help a little with selling it. Hehehe.”
“Haha. I’ll keep it in mind.”
We planned to get off the carriage before reaching Romania, so selling it to this guy would probably be difficult. Franc touched the moss-covered wood, then simply snapped it off.
“The handle is just sturdy wood. It’s soaked up so much water that I can’t sell it.”
Victuar picked that up too. The merchant’s instinct was strong.
“Wow. Look at you sweating buckets. Hot, right? Want some water?”
“Hihih!”
Larilura was already giving water to the middle-aged woman’s horse. Maybe because it had galloped so fiercely in this cold? Steam rose from the horse’s body. It looked like someone who had taken a hot shower on a cold day and stepped out onto the veranda.
“Larilura. Did you charm another animal?”
“My name is Priscilla, remember?”
“That’s quite the unexpected identity.”
As I laughed, Veronica approached. She engaged in a staring contest with the masked horse before whispering to me.
“……My lord. Have you noticed?”
“Yeah. That thing’s no ordinary horse, is it?”
I hadn’t been able to tell from a distance, but up close it was obvious. It had no horn, and the spot where a horn should have been was covered by a blindfold-like mask, so I hadn’t recognized it. Still, horses that possessed rune mana were uncommon. Veronica nodded silently.
“It is not one of our clan. It is probably a unicorn.”
“……Think it’s a bad bastard?”
“I do not know. But at least from the mana I sense, it does not appear to have learned wicked magic.”
Of course, that alone wasn’t enough to be certain. Even without openly acting like a bastard like a unicorn dark mage, plenty of evil deeds were still possible. I stared at it warily.
The virgin-obsessed bastard was glancing at us while drinking water from Larilura. It seemed to have noticed Veronica’s true identity too.
What the hell are you staring at, you bastard. Want me to smack you?
“Senior? This one looks really hot. Can’t you cool it down with your cold extremities magic?”
“Ah! P-please don’t! You might get hurt…… Urgh!”
The middle-aged woman, startled by Larilura’s words, tried to stop us but groaned as her wound throbbed. It made sense. If I approached like I had with Veronica, I’d probably get kicked.
“D-don’t push yourself! Your injury is on your arm, so it’s fortunate you can get treatment quickly, but a wound like that could easily decide life or death! What would you do if you lost the use of your arm?!”
Dana was so surprised she even stopped her healing magic and supported the woman. I blinked at our big sis’s unusually polite demeanor. Of course, our wife was well-mannered enough to be accepted as a bride by a gentleman from the Eastern Kingdom of Courtesy, but this felt different somehow.
“Ah…… Th-thank you. I’m late with my greetings, aren’t I?”
Having finally regained enough strength to speak, the middle-aged woman with deep wrinkles around her eyes bowed humbly.
“I am Serzanne Heiromain. I am an archaeology professor.”