The Long Vacation - Hard Mode - (4)
Three massive clumps of blood charged at us, each taking the form of two humans and one dog. There was no technique to it—just raw, brainless assaults. But the speed that could overwhelm most knights and the heavy footfalls that made the ground tremble were threat enough on their own.
Even so, neither Fiore nor I slowed down. We didn’t need to.
Schunk!Swish!
The two blood clumps shaped like humans were sliced diagonally across their torsos, while the dog was cut clean from head to tail in one stroke. The severed pieces of blood writhed as if still alive, their color fading, but I immediately hurled an Ice Crystal at them.
The blood clumps froze solid under the burst of cold and stopped moving. We left them behind and kept running. I wasn’t sure if they were completely neutralized, but we didn’t have time to double-check.
The city was in complete chaos.
“Kyaaaaah!”
“Help! Is there no one around?!”
“S-stay back! You filthy monsters!”
The people still able to scream or shout were actually in relatively good shape. Most lay sprawled in the streets, unable to move, forced to watch the approaching blood monsters with wide, helpless eyes.
“This situation is seriously fucked,” I muttered.
I dealt with another blood clump blocking our path the same way as before, unable to hold back a curse. It took us only a few seconds at most to clear out a group. Yet in that short time, the blood clumps were committing every atrocity imaginable.
They crushed an old man’s skull underfoot as he trembled in fear. They kicked a man trying to crawl into a building, snapping his spine and killing him instantly. They twisted the neck of a silent, tearful girl who could only cry.
I don’t consider myself particularly sentimental or righteous. And it’s not like I’ve only seen blood a couple of times. But watching ordinary people die like insects, unable to even resist, made even me feel sick to my stomach.
If this was what was happening right in front of us, how much slaughter was unfolding across the entire city?
I wasn’t the only one shaken. Even Fiore, who was usually all smiles, was growing paler by the second.
After a brief moment of thought, I stopped running.
“Ligret! Clear the area!”
Ligret glanced at me, then wordlessly headed off to deal with the surrounding blood clumps. In the meantime, I pulled a potion with mental stabilization effects from Thoth’s Bag and had Fiore drink it.
After swallowing the potion, Fiore spoke.
“I’m sorry, Brother. I’m slowing you down…”
“It’s fine. We needed to organize things at some point anyway. Did you notice anything?”
Fiore placed a hand on her chest, steadied her breathing, then narrowed her eyes.
“What did you notice, Brother?”
“That those damn blood clumps are stealing some kind of energy from the people who got hit by that shitty rain earlier. The thicker the energy, the bigger and stronger they become. And that if that same rain falls again, it’ll be a total catastrophe.”
“It won’t rain again,” Fiore declared with absolute certainty.
“Even if it did, it would be quite a burden for the culprit. If the blood rain was a card they could use freely, there’s no way they would have limited it to just ten or so seconds.”
“What if it was to catch the people indoors off guard and lure them outside?”
“Then there would have been no need to summon the blood monster clumps. The soldiers and knights who would have to fight the monsters would have come out anyway to help civilians. And the regular people ended up hiding inside buildings because of the monsters.”
“More importantly,” Fiore added, frowning slightly, “if raining again wasn’t difficult, those monsters wouldn’t need to do this ‘cleanup’ work. The people who are already weakened to the limit would dry up and die completely if they got hit by it again.”
That would be far more efficient, she said. Her expression suggested she found the very idea distasteful.
I lightly patted her head twice, then stroked it.
“…Brother?”
“You did well. Now that we know the enemy can’t wipe everyone out in one go, we have plenty of time. The tower isn’t far. Let’s smash it quickly.”
Fiore looked momentarily stunned, then gave a faint smile. Right on cue, Ligret returned.
“I checked from high up. About half of those blood clumps are heading toward the arena.”
“Not sure if that’s good news or bad.”
The damage across the city might decrease, but if the enemy’s goal was to tie down the skilled fighters at the arena, then it was a success. I had sent word to Duke Mars, but I wasn’t sure how seriously he would take it.
“Anyway, let’s go. We need to hur—”
Just then, a cawing sound like a crow’s cry came from behind us.
“Hey, Chrome! Wait up!”
“Finally caught up… From the fact we didn’t run into any blood clumps on the way, it looks like you swept them all aside. Just how fast are you?”
“Crow? Akasha?”
What are you two doing here?
Crow smirked, the corners of his mouth curling up.
“Orders from the representative knight himself. He said it’ll take him time to get out of the arena, so he’s sending us instead. He’s yielding the main stage to us, so of course I snatched it up.”
“That’s one hell of a positive spin.”
That wasn’t yielding—it was dumping the dirty work on us. Still, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand his position.
Akasha gripped the massive greatsword on her back.
“The troops near the arena won’t be able to move for a while. External support is coming, but the affected area is so wide that response is delayed.”
“So we have to handle this ourselves. Good thing you came.”
Honestly, our forces had felt a little lacking to deal with those lunatics, but with these two joining us, we were in much better shape. The tower was almost within reach now.
Around the time Chrome’s group linked up with the other two, someone else was already climbing the tower one step ahead.
“—!”
“Even if the appearance is similar to a human, it seems it can’t speak properly.”
Two swords moved with dazzling grace. In the wake of their arcs, the blood clump blocking the swordsman’s path was sliced into pieces.
A cold-looking young man with black hair. It was Riven Bane, eldest son of the Bane family—a renowned swordsmanship house in the Nahat Grand Duchy. He looked down at the blood tendrils seeping into the ground with a frigid gaze.
Whether it’s a familiar or a monster, I still can’t tell. But I got lucky anyway.
He had been watching a match at a different location for personal reasons instead of the arena. He never expected it would turn out like this.
An earthquake, followed by the blood rain and the appearance of never-before-seen monsters. Believing the tower was the cause of this series of events, Riven had moved without hesitation. Since he had already been near the tower’s emergence point, he reached it quickly.
As he silently climbed higher, his mind was filled with rage toward the culprit behind this disaster, a sense of duty as a martial artist to save people, and… a faint sense of impatience.
That Crow bastard. To think he’s already grown this strong.
The sibling duel that had taken place not long ago. Riven had won without much difficulty, and those around him acknowledged his genius and skill. But the man himself couldn’t help feeling inwardly shocked.
One year.
That was all. It had only been a year since his youngest brother entered the academy. Yet when they met again, Crow was already a completely different person from the one Riven had known.
The sword strikes that had once chased only speed and flashiness now carried real substance. More than that, his ability to read the flow of battle and his courage had multiplied several times over. It was as if he had been engaged in fierce, daily real combat against opponents of a higher level.
I thought the academy was nothing more than the old emperor’s final amusement.
This time, Riven had still won. But what about in another year?
The impatience of possibly being overtaken by someone he had always looked down on. For someone who had been revered as a genius his entire life, it was a humiliation that was hard to endure—and it sparked a new emotion.
A burning sense of rivalry.
An incident of this scale. There’s no way it won’t become a topic of conversation.
At present, he was already considered one of the top three among the young generation of the Nahat Grand Duchy. But if he succeeded in subduing the culprit, even that reputation would become nothing more than a stepping stone of the past.
A hero who suppressed a crisis in the heart of the empire—in the heart of a ducal territory—and saved tens of thousands of lives.
As a swordsman who had walked the path of the blade his entire life, as a noble of the Grand Duchy who was treated a step below imperial nobles, and as an older brother, the urge not to miss this opportunity pushed him forward.