Sudden Attack
“Demonic beasts! More demonic beasts!”
The retainer leading the group from the front shouted.
“Fuck, how many times is this!”
“Enough, hurry and bring up the shields!”
The conscript soldiers spat out curses and hurriedly pulled out their shields.
Joseph’s retainers also naturally formed a circle around Joseph, who had just disembarked from the carriage as if protecting him.
“What is it this time!”
“Kobolds!”
At the same time as the retainer’s shout, several kobolds burst out from the right bushes.
They were foaming at the mouth and rushed madly towards the carriage.
“Block them!”
Now that they had repeated this several times, the conscript soldiers easily repelled the demonic beasts.
They rolled on the ground a few times, got up, and tried to leap again, but faster than them, wooden spears flew.
Thud! Thud!
The kobolds had thinner skin than wild dog demonic beasts, so their chests were pierced straight through. The foam in their mouths turned red instantly, they flailed their claws in the air, and then collapsed.
“Another one infected with frenzy.”
Auger clicked his tongue.
How many times had this happened? As they got closer to Malešov, the number of demonic beasts infected with frenzy was noticeably increasing.
Originally, it should have been a distance that could be reached in three days, but because demonic beasts would pop out from somewhere screaming whenever there was a gap, the column’s pace was sluggish.
“Were there really so many demonic beasts around here originally?”
Joseph asked the scout who had relieved him before departure.
They had gone back and forth on this road many times.
But he shook his head with a look of surprise.
“No. When I came, I didn’t see any demonic beasts….”
In fact, Joseph thought the scout’s words were correct.
If they had, they would have been attacked by the demonic beasts first.
The last relief of the scout was ten days ago, meaning that somewhere in between, more demonic beasts had appeared.
“Could the shaman have blocked the road with some trick?”
“It’s possible. But… it feels a bit off.”
The demonic beasts they encountered on the way were all running amok due to frenzy.
It felt somewhere crude compared to the actions of someone trying to control the demonic beasts with artifacts.
Kobolds are intelligent beings at the level of children, but they are not necessarily physically superior demonic beasts.
It was overly inefficient to cause frenzy in such creatures to make them rampage.
Could it be that the shaman didn’t intend that…
They just gathered them here, and the control had already been lost.
The artifact Auger found was noticeably cruder than the one found in the northern demonic beast cave.
Perhaps the problem was caused by the artifact being crude.
“…”
Joseph glanced at Manir standing among the retainers.
He also shook his head as if he didn’t know.
After all, Manir said he didn’t know much about the shaman of Malešov.
“Hmm…”
While Joseph was lost in thought, Auger spoke up.
“Whatever the cause, it’s decided that they have to be captured and killed.”
Their mission was to exterminate the demonic beasts and bandits south of the territory.
No matter the state of the demonic beasts, the task was set.
The retainers nodded at his words.
“If all the demonic beasts in Malešov are like this, it might even be easier.”
Demonic beasts infected with frenzy were undoubtedly threatening.
Their skin was much thicker than ordinary beasts, and they had physical strength incomparable to humans.
Even if their left arm was torn off, they showed tenacity by swinging their right claws.
Thinking normally, it wasn’t easy for soldiers to deal with such creatures.
But because they were infected with frenzy, there was something to try.
The reason humans became the apex of all things was intelligence.
In reality, the conscript soldiers had become capable of handling ordinary demonic beasts on their own.
“Ah, I hope they don’t come out anymore.”
“So! We’re sick of demonic beast meat too.”
To soldiers who had fought demonic beasts several times and won victories, kobolds were no longer a fearful existence.
The appearance of trembling in fear at the mere mention of demonic beasts when they were first conscripted could no longer be found.
If we meet an ogre like this, it would be a big problem…
Joseph thought to himself, but he didn’t say anything to dampen morale.
It was better to be confident like this than to be scared.
Auger seemed to have the same thought, he just scanned the soldiers and didn’t say much.
After moving another half day like that, the carriage of Joseph, which had been left with the scouts in the distance, came into view.
As they got closer, the carriage door opened wide.
“You’ve arrived!”
Two of Auger’s retainers and the last scouts hurried over.
“You’re safe.”
Auger let out a sigh of relief.
In fact, Joseph and Auger didn’t try to bring up the topic of the scouts.
Since they had encountered demonic beasts several times, they had some idea of what might have happened to them.
So, in the worst case, they had thought to recover the corpses, but unexpectedly, they looked fine.
“It’s safe! We really almost died!”
But they pointed to one side with a very aggrieved expression.
A forest a bit away from the carriage.
Upon closer look, the corpses of torn apart demonic beasts were rolling around below.
“What the hell happened to that?”
The scouts explained the situation step by step to Auger’s question.
Two days after relieving the scouts and this one.
Suddenly, three kobolds roaming Malešov started rampaging around.
They seemed to have lost their minds, rampaging here and there, and suddenly disappeared into the forest.
And the next day.
This time, a wild dog demonic beast appeared in the village and rampaged around here and there at some point, then disappeared somewhere.
This situation repeated several times over several days.
Then, one wild dog demonic beast climbed up to where the scouts were hiding.
They hurriedly jumped into the carriage and hid.
In the midst of that, another demonic beast approached the carriage, and soon they started fighting madly.
After a while, one survived, and it also disappeared without a trace.
The scouts were terrified and hid in the carriage waiting for the column to arrive.
“So the ones we encountered on the way are the ones that escaped from the village.”
“Yes, I don’t know the reason yet, but it seems certain.”
Auger pondered for a moment and decided to set up camp around.
Since he didn’t know where the frenzy-infected demonic beasts would pop out from, he didn’t spread the tents.
“It’s no good to drag things out for too long.”
Auger ordered the soldiers to prepare for entry.
As planned, while the soldiers advanced into the village from the front to draw the attention of the demonic beasts, Joseph would turn around and enter the forest to ambush the shaman.
“Leave the carriage here! Move as fast as possible!”
On Auger’s command, the soldiers got off the carriage, checked their weapons, and formed the formation.
And in that time, Joseph led his retainers a bit further up the hill behind.
Then found the tallest tree there.
“Joseph! It’s dangerous!”
Ignoring the concerns of the retainers, he climbed the tree without hesitation.
After climbing to a certain height, he swept away the branches around with mana orbs to widen the view.
Then, the view of Malešov finally came into sight.
Due to the rampaging demonic beasts for the past few days, many walls and fences were collapsed.
Because of that, the structure looked a bit different from the map the last scout had drawn.
There.
Then, demonic beasts wandering around the village came into view.
Unlike the ones they had encountered on the way, they were calmly patrolling the village.
The fastest way…
Joseph felt his way with his eyes to find the path to the forest.
“Eh?”
At that moment.
Beyond Malešov. Something moving in the forest came into view.
Crack-
Even from a glance, a monster larger than several times a person, a kobold, no, a huge monster, was destroying a tree like removing bugs and appeared.
The large sound stopped the movement of the soldiers preparing to enter Malešov.
“What… is that?”
Joseph thought for a moment that it was an ogre, but upon closer look, it looked a bit different.
It had fur all over its body like a primate.
But it was larger in size than an ogre, and had long fangs that stood out even from a distance.
Most importantly, its long, large hands reached below the knees, so it was clearly different from an ogre.
“…”
Joseph’s mouth was shut.
Even from a glance, it felt like it was not an ordinary one.
Intuitively, he knew. It was a more dangerous one than an ogre.
Joseph immediately got down from the tree and tried to rejoin Auger.
“Eh?”
At that moment, someone appeared from the forest following the monster.
A figure with a dark brown robe and leaning on a crooked dry staff.
“That guy…!”
At a glance, it was a mage, no, a shaman-like appearance.
While Joseph was surprised, the shaman who was walking as if looking at the floor moved his head.
He looked up at the sky once and slowly raised his arm to point to a certain place.
“What…!”
The place his gaze reached was the hill where the scout was hiding.
A place where soldiers were gathering preparing for entry.
“!!!”
The unidentified monster let out a cry.
It immediately started running across the village towards the hill.
“Shit!”
Joseph hurriedly got down from the tree and ran towards the carriage.
The retainers followed Joseph without asking anything.
When they arrived at the carriage, the soldiers were also surprised that they had heard the cry a moment ago.
“What the hell is that sound!”
Auger shouted, but as expected, no one knew what was happening.
“Battle preparation! Battle preparation!”
As Joseph jumped up and shouted, the soldiers who had been resting immediately formed the formation.
It was not that they knew something, but their bodies reacted first due to repeated training.
“What’s suddenly happening!”
“It’s a shaman! He struck first!”
And at the same time as Joseph’s words, the soldier who had gone to check the hill shouted.
“Something like a monster is coming up from below!”
“Monster?”
“It looks a bit like a human but has a size of a basket, and has very long arms!”
“What?!”
At that, Manir in the midst of Auger’s retainers was shocked.
His face turned pale in an instant.
Manir immediately approached Auger.
“Hey, you stay there!”
“Move!”
Auger’s soldier trying to stop him was knocked down in an instant and said to Auger.
“It’s a troll! It’s a troll!”
“Troll?!”
“It’s not an ordinary monster. We can’t win with this formation!”
Manir shouted like that and ran to the carriage to start rummaging through the luggage.
“It’s coming!”
Someone shouted.
And at that time, a large monster jumped up from below the hill in an instant.
“!!!”
“What the hell is that!”
The monster looked down at the soldiers and let out a creepy cry again.
The soldiers were looking up at the grotesque appearance with half their minds blank.
They didn’t scream and run away from that spot because their bodies were frozen.
And in the meantime,
The monster tilted its body backward.
Then swung its arms with all its might.
Whoosh!
The sound of the giant arm cutting through the wind echoed as it swung towards the closest soldiers.
“Get out of the way!”
Joseph shouted urgently, but before that, the troll’s arm swept the soldiers.
Bang!
The conscript soldiers who reflexively raised their shields were all swept away in one hit.