EP.15 Field Battle -3
EP.15 Field Battle -3
After concluding the Bicorn Contract, everything from the tactical meeting to possible contingencies proceeded without a hitch.
All that remained now was the main event.
On paper, the operation had been laid out flawlessly, but a verbal simulation and live combat were two entirely different things.
There was no telling what variables might arise.
Yata had probably predicted even those variables, but she couldn't tell me every single future.
That meant we couldn't act recklessly, relying solely on Yata's plan.
We had to proceed with caution, stay composed, and defeat the Divine Beast.
Even more so in the current situation.
Crunch, crunch.
A massive monster was chewing up three wild wolves.
Through the green display of the night-vision scope, the creature's true form was sharply visible.
Perhaps it didn't know I was in the tree behind it.
The half-man, half-goat monster was wholly absorbed in its meal.
A golden opportunity had rolled right in, and missing it would be the height of stupidity.
I reversed my grip on the sword and aimed its tip at Taotie's throat.
The tension started to build. This ambush Yata had told me about might be my one and only chance.
So with this attack, I had to either kill the thing or at least inflict a fatal wound.
Could I do it? Me?
I was uneasy. I took a deep breath to shake off the anxiety.
I had to do this anyway...
I leapt from the tree.
The target was the back of Taotie's neck. My plan was to stab all the way through in one go and slice it clean in two.
But the hesitation of jumping from a height momentarily snared my ankles.
The blade drove down into its shoulder blade instead of its nape. A miscalculation of leap distance and direction.
—Kkigeek!!
The sensation was jarringly wrong: stabbing rock, not flesh.
I'd heard its hide was harder than diamond, and it seemed that was true.
Though I was even more astonished by the sword that pierced even that hide so easily, and by the strength of Fatal Light.
"Hmph!!"
"G-Gaah...?!"
Enough admiration. From now on, my only thought was killing the thing.
So, belatedly, I sought to deal even greater damage.
With the blade already buried inside, I sliced outward, cutting through its inner flesh.
Then I tried to pull the sword free and behead the creature I'd failed to hit squarely, but...
As expected, the thing didn't just sit there and take it.
Taotie violently shook its upper body, trying to fling me off.
I fought to hold on, but a vibration that rattled my very entrails sent me flying off Taotie's body.
My body hung in the air. If gravity took hold and I crashed down, I'd be lucky to escape serious injury.
But thankfully, Yata caught me midair, and that crisis never came.
"Sorry. You went to the trouble of setting up a perfect opportunity, and I blew it."
"It's fine, husband. People rarely succeed on the first try."
Yata carefully lowered me to the ground, then swiftly soared back into the air and away.
The tactical meeting had already concluded, and Yata had accounted for the case where the initial ambush failed, so I didn't need further help.
That was why I didn't need to exchange more words with her.
"Human...? A mere insect dares disturb my meal?"
"Yeah. No personal grudge, but I have to kill you for the sake of the future that's coming."
"Ha! Look at this madman! A creature that would burst from one kick of mine suddenly appears and claims he'll kill me? Are you in your right mind?"
"Funnily enough, I am."
The sound of hooves approached.
At this, the creature's face began to twist.
It realized the newly arrived presence and my words were sincere.
Regardless, I lightly mounted the black horse and took hold of the reins.
"What is this? A foal of the lake, why would you aid a human?"
"Between a nuisance who makes the whole night reek of blood and someone who can grant what I want... isn't it up to me to choose whom to help?"
"Have you both gone mad together? Do you mean to break the Divine Beast Rules? Huh?"
"We made a temporary contract. I'm merely carrying a human as I run, so it violates no rules."
"You rotten little foal b*tch...!!"
The rule forbidding attacks between Divine Beasts still applied.
So neither Taotie nor Bicorn could attack the other.
That single fact made the tide of this battle overwhelmingly favorable for me.
All I had to do was attack Taotie from atop the running Bicorn. Meanwhile, it couldn't harm Bicorn and had to target only me.
"Finished talking yet?"
"Don't push it, human!"
"Shut the hell up and come at me, you monster bastard."
A single-round match with life on the line. The fight to determine who died — me, or the monster — had begun.
***
"Husband, before we fight, there's one thing I must ask of you."
"Huh? Didn't we just finish the tactical meeting?"
"We did. But this is something I wanted to tell you personally in advance."
"What is it?"
"If something should happen to me, please don't worry about it."
"...Why?"
"I can't tell you that. Just trust me and prioritize your own life."
"Even so, that's a bit..."
"I know it's hard to accept. But I'm begging you, please follow my words."
"...Fine."
The conversation I'd had with Yata before ambushing Taotie.
I still didn't know why she'd said such a thing.
It was almost as if something was going to happen to her...
"Master! Incoming from upper right!"
"Ah...!!"
I swiftly ducked forward to dodge the approaching attack.
A massive fist split the air, uprooting and sending an ancient tree flying from in front of us.
If I'd taken a direct hit, would my body be soaring through the sky like that too?
"Master? I don't know what you're thinking, but please focus solely on the fight right now!"
"S-sorry!"
Baina was right.
I had to focus entirely on the battle. I couldn't dwell on Yata's words.
I shook my head vigorously, scattered all the stray thoughts, and then poured strength into the right hand gripping my sword.
The current situation was a mounted battle unfolding in the forest.
Everything around us blurred and vanished in an instant; it was a blistering, high-speed fight.
"I'll make a U-turn at the tree ahead! Prepare yourself!"
"Got it!"
In the blink of an eye, Bicorn reached the target, pivoted sharply around the tree, and spun her body back.
Then she kicked off the ground hard with her hind legs and lunged forward at speed.
Thanks to Bicorn's brilliant turn, I was finally able to face Taotie, who had been chasing us from behind.
At last, the chance to counterattack had come.
The fleeting moment when Taotie's position and mine intersected — that was my only window to attack.
"Shall I close in a bit more toward Taotie?"
"No, this is enough. And getting closer than necessary could be dangerous. Let's not."
"Understood."
We were smoothly approaching the intersection point, but the problem was that I wasn't getting close to Taotie.
Even if I stretched my arm to the limit, the tip of the blade wouldn't reach its body.
My only means of attack was about to become meaningless.
...Of course, if it had been an ordinary sword.
"Can you lower the speed a bit now?"
"Do you intend to use that function?"
"Yeah. Saving it would just be a waste."
The sword Yata had made for me actually incorporated not only future materials but future technology as well.
A feature of the blade that Yata had guaranteed would shock the past version of herself.
And I was about to use the feature that had, in fact, considerably shocked me when I saw it in the report.
Pshuuush!!
A sound like gas venting from the hilt began to hiss out.
That was the sound of the sword's hidden mechanism activating, so I immediately aimed the tip at Taotie. Otherwise, it would be a disaster.
Soon, with a bang, the blade separated into segments and launched out, driving toward Taotie's abdomen.
"Keuheok?!"
Taotie let out a groan as its abdomen was pierced by the unexpected ranged attack.
It didn't end there: the blade segments pulled back out, continuously tearing into its abdomen.
The wire-linked blade fragments ripped flesh and sent blood gushing in waves.
Using a weapon that had transformed from a solid sword into a metal lash, I carved wounds into its body.
A Segmented Whip Sword (蛇腹劍).
A blade that, by applying a special mechanism to an ordinary longsword, could extend the blade into a long, chain-like whip.
The wires connecting the blade edges had transformed the sword into a whip, and the blade had been fired out like a shot using a special gas device mounted on the pommel.
I didn't know the principles well. I wasn't the one who made the sword, and only Yata knew how its functions worked.
All I knew was: press the button on the cross guard, and the blade segments would shoot out and extend.
And if I pressed it one more time, they would retract and return to the form of a longsword.
In any case, this solved the fundamental problem of the sword's short reach.
"Pathetic little tricks...!!"
Taotie batted the whipping blade segments aside, but unfortunately, not only the blade but the wires themselves were also made of Fatal Light.
Trying to strike back against a weapon crafted from a mineral harder and sharper than anything else in the world only caused more wounds.
"Wh-what?! What the hell is this weapon to pierce my skin?"
I had no obligation, nor any intention, to tell it.
I just silently swung the Segmented Whip Sword, scoring the creature's hide.
Perhaps it realized at last that it had no way of dealing with the sword itself. Taotie suddenly grabbed hold of one of the whipping blade segments.
Its plan was likely to yank the sword and pull me off Bicorn.
Before that could happen, I pressed the mechanism button and hastily retracted the blades.
With the familiar gas sound, the blade fragments began returning one by one.
One of them was slick with blood, leaving me certain that it had torn through the creature's palm as it came back.
As befitted future technology, the strength of the mechanism installed in the sword was greater than Taotie's grip strength.
Click.
The scattered blade fragments perfectly reassembled, and the sword resumed the form of a longsword.
Having used the function once, I needed to reload.
I opened the cap at the end of the hilt, removed the empty capsule, and inserted a fresh compressed-gas capsule from my pouch.
Because the gas needed to operate the function had to be manually refilled, I had no choice but to do the tedious work myself.
"Human, you brought quite an obnoxious toy, didn't you?"
"How did it feel, getting hit by that toy?"
"Felt absolutely shitty. Enough to make me want to chew your flesh to shreds!"
I could see signs of victory in Taotie's face, twisted in fury as it shouted.
It meant my attacks were clearly working on the Divine Beast, causing it pain.
However, even while continuously bleeding, it was still conversing with me like this.
That also meant the creature still had composure to spare. So I couldn't feel entirely good about it.
"Got time to chat? Shouldn't you stop the bleeding fast, or won't you die?"
"If attacks like these could bring me down, would I even be a Divine Beast? Idiot human."
"Good point."
The only option was to attack again and cause even more hemorrhaging.
Honestly, in my heart, I wanted to end the fight by striking Taotie's vitals in a single blow. But that would carry enormous risk, so it was out of the question.
Low risk, low return it might be, but whittling it down with wounds was the optimal approach for now.
"Huu... That stinging is certainly irritating, I'll give you that."
"Huh...?"
Taotie suddenly spun around and started moving away from us.
It had been talking as if it would charge in any second, but now it was turning its back on us and fleeing.
"Master! It's probably running off to consume something!!"
"Sh*t...!! We can't let it recover! Let's go!!"
"Yes!"
I lightly tapped the black horse's flank as the starting signal, and she immediately broke into a sprint.
The target was Taotie. Unlike before, we were the ones chasing it.
The creature was barreling somewhere in a hurry, snapping every surrounding tree in its path. I already fully grasped what it intended to do.
It would devour the wild animals living in the forest and convert them into its own flesh and blood.
It was no different from slapping a fresh hide over a wound to plug it. If all our efforts weren't to be in vain, we had to stop it, whatever it took.
"Can't we go any faster?"
"My apologies, but if I go any faster, I fear I'll rip up the surrounding trees along the way."
"Dammit...!"
We had deliberately brought no other Divine Beasts to avoid destroying the forest.
But if Bicorn's power wrecked the forest here, that would defeat the entire purpose.
Were we really forced to just stare at the thing's back like this...
"Master! A herd of wild boars dead ahead!!"
"Agh...! I have no choice but to extend the sword again...!!"
Taotie had finally spotted wild animals to consume, and I couldn't let it eat in peace.
The boars were on the right. I could expect it to grab one with its right hand.
I planned to fire out the sword the instant it tried to snatch a boar, preventing it from doing so.
I aimed the tip of the blade at Taotie's right arm, but...
"Oh no! There was an owl as well...!!"
"An owl?"
"There had been an owl in the tree Taotie trampled just now!!"
"What?!"
A completely unexpected situation.
Taotie seized the owl with its left hand, crunched it down raw on the spot, and bypassed the boar herd entirely.
Damn it. I'd been had. To think the answer was the left, not the right...!
"How much does one owl heal it?"
"At a bare minimum, I'd estimate it will recover about 30 percent of the wounds you inflicted, Master."
The extent of Taotie's recovery depended on the volume of the prey it consumed.
A boar would have healed more, but it had deliberately chosen the owl over the boars.
It seemed even the creature had been in its own kind of hurry. Anyway, 30 percent...
Not a huge recovery, but not something to dismiss, either.
Sure enough, the larger wounds on Taotie, which had just devoured the owl, were visibly shrinking.
If I could just re-inflict the wounds now...
"Master! Duck!!"
"Huh?"
After a long, rapid dash, Taotie stopped abruptly.
The recoil of the sudden halt should have hit it hard, but instead, Taotie used that momentum to swing its huge arm.
A blow amplified by momentum. Without my assistant's warning, I could only picture my head bursting open on the spot.
The surrounding area, utterly flattened in the sweep, testified to that fact.
A shudder ran through me. Fear hit me as I realized that if I had been one second slower, I might already be dead.
The thought that I could beat Taotie had been completely overturned.
The instinct, carved into my body, that a Divine Beast was unbeatable, crawled back out and paralyzed me.
I couldn't let this happen... I needed to snap out of it fast and face the thing...
But instinct wasn't something I could control, and I couldn't stop my body from trembling.
"Human, where's that bravado from all your lofty talk? Why so scared now?"
Perhaps sensing my terror, Taotie began to mock me.
Its voice, mixed with jeers and ridicule, made me feel just how pathetic a creature I was.
Having unintentionally lost my will to fight, my vision wavering, I barely managed to meet its eyes.
The massive monster wore a vulgar and wicked smirk, and without dropping its sneer, it opened its mouth.
"Now then, let's get Round 2 started, human!!"