At the End of Hell (6)
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The little bell shook itself as if screaming, and the camp—jolted from deep sleep—burst into frantic motion.
"Gather together! The fiends are attacking!"
"Move the civilians back! Get them somewhere safe!"
"Lord Lionheart! Where is Lord Lionheart?!"
Kiiiieeeek!
"Spider-type fiends! Everyone, watch yourselves!"
BOOM!
The camp was chaos itself under the sudden assault. From every direction, fiends poured in like a flood, surrounding the camp on all sides.
Adapted to the bitter cold, their shells were so thick that ordinary people could scarcely scratch them. With those sturdy carapaces and massive bodies, the spider fiends charged like battering rams built to smash through castle gates. And yet—
Slash!
—before Leon, they split in half like paper.
"Hup!"
Halberd in hand, Leon cut a path across the camp, bisecting every spider that lunged at him. Their thick shells meant nothing—they came apart in two pieces, spraying blood.
"Th-thank you for saving me! Thank you!"
"This area is dangerous. Hurry to where the paladins have gathered."
"Yes, sir! Thank you!"
Having dispatched the spider that had been lunging at the man in an instant, Leon surveyed his surroundings.
Clang! Clash!!
Thud!
"Hold the line! Don't panic—don't fall back! Thrust together!"
"Ha!!"
Slash!
The paladins gathered in one corner of the camp had formed an iron wall, weathering the fiends' assault. The giant spiders slammed into their formation with the full weight of their bulk.
Behind the paladins stood the farmers—trembling, crying out to the gods.
"Where is Lord Lionheart?! And where the hell has that idiot Leon gone now?!"
"Stay calm! Lord Lionheart will be here soon! As for Leon… he's probably managing fine on his own! So focus, all of you!"
The paladins' cries for their master made Leon's heart race. His master would have gone to save the young version of himself who'd charged off toward the nest. And by now, that younger self would be fighting for his life.
The spiders themselves were no problem. He could carve through a hundred of them, a thousand—it made no difference. What the young him hadn't anticipated, what even his master who'd scouted the nest by day hadn't known—
Mutants…
Fiends were the general term for magical beasts that had mutated under demonic influence. Their individual traits could fill volumes, but they shared one common quality:
Their rate of mutation was absurdly fast. Their survival instinct—evolving to suit their environment—was terrifying, and the directions that evolution took were endlessly varied.
There was even a time a bear with a tail came bursting out near a swamp.
The nest established in this area held a massive number of dormant mutants. Creatures that had burrowed underground, suppressed their metabolism to the extreme, and entered hibernation…
Because they gave off no presence, we were ambushed.
That day, he had paid for his arrogance with an eye.
And everyone else had paid with their lives.
His grip tightened.
I have to stop it!
Slash—!
He cut horizontally through a spider that came at him with jaws wide open. Another shoved its fangs into the gap—he brought the spear down from above.
Kiheeeek!
Severing cut!
In the heart of the swarm, he danced with his halberd. The spiders flung themselves at Leon like moths to a flame, and were shredded to pieces that scattered uselessly through the air.
He cut, he cleaved, he butchered the endless tide of spiders. And still their momentum did not flag in the slightest. If anything, the paladins were being pressed back, step by step.
"Guh! Need support over here!"
"Aaagh!! They're pushing through!"
"Just hold on! I'm coming!"
"Ugh! Watch their venom! It paralyzes holy power!"
If it had been only the paladins, they could have broken free with ease. If the wounded civilians hadn't been behind them.
"It hurts… it hurts, Father…"
"C-cold… so cold and sleepy… Mama. I want to… sleep…"
"The venom is blocking holy power…! Damn it, I can't heal them! You must not sleep! Stay with me! O Five Gods, by the eternal light—"
Cunningly, the spiders had targeted the civilians in their opening strike. Their aim was to kill—or to inflict wounds severe enough to immobilize.
They knew that casualties made a human group sluggish. Countless hunts of mankind had taught them that much.
Kiiiieeeek!
The spiders gradually forced the paladins onto the defensive. Bound to hold the line to protect the civilians behind them, the paladins could do nothing but endure.
"Grrh!! Lion—Lord Lionheart—!"
"Hyaaah! I don't know either…!! Just kill these bastards first!"
"O Five Gods, grant me strength!"
The holy power the paladins poured forth lit one corner of the battlefield bright—like a torch burning back the dark.
And the spider swarm hurled itself at that fire like moths.
A stab of pain.
"Guh…"
A sudden headache made Leon clutch his head. His heart prickled as if pierced by a needle; the veins in his skull pounded as though they would burst.
This landscape. This sight. This smell.
It still came to him in nightmares.
Dmitri had died with his belly torn open, his guts eaten out. Muliang, desperately pouring holy power into the fallen, had died with his arms and legs severed. Elemier had died with his eyes gouged out and his body carved to pieces.
When the young Leon had returned, dragging his dead master's body, the camp was already nothing but death.
Corpses. Blood.
The bodies of those who had been his comrades rolled through the filthy mire. Familiar arms, torsos, faces—stripped of their owners, tumbling across the ground, screaming soundlessly.
A mother who had died shielding her son. The limbs of a little girl. The head of an old farmer.
Their faces, their empty eyes, turned toward him. And they whispered.
That it was all his fault.
That the price of his arrogance had been paid in their blood.
He collapsed.
"Hhh—hrrk…!"
Leon sank to the ground where he stood, gasping for breath. His heart hammered wildly, demanding oxygen—but his constricted throat, as if craving death, refused to grant it.
I… I have to go… I have to stop…
Was this how it ended—so hollowly? A Paladin, of all people, choking to death on a mere nightmare?
You do not understand the duty that comes with power.
Responsibility.
And duty.
The duty of power.
He had thought he was beginning to understand. There had been so much he wanted to say to his master.
That he was sorry. That he was grateful.
There were so many stories he wanted to share, so many things he wanted to hear. The years he had lived, the things he had seen and endured—they were far too long to end on his knees before a mere nightmare.
Thrust!
"Huu…!"
He turned the blade of his halberd and drove it deep into his own thigh. Pain hauled his drowning mind back to the surface; his body woke.
He roughly stanched the blood streaming from his thigh and levered himself upright against the halberd. He might have gone deep enough to hit bone—but that much didn't matter.
"The camp first."
Pain had cooled his head; it sorted the situation with ruthless speed.
His master could afford a little delay. This was the man who had fought all night protecting the young Leon and still held on. He would be holding on now.
Unlike his chilled mind, his frantic heart screamed at him to run to the nest at once—but he had to judge coldly. Right now, the camp was critically short of absolute fighting power.
He sprang!
Slash—!
He leapt high and swept the halberd in a wide arc. Spiders died along the path of the blade. The old lion's claws were still wickedly sharp.
Crunch! Slash!
With every pass of the spearhead, dozens of spiders scattered through the air. Leon swung his weapon in a state beyond thought.
"Who is that man…?"
"I heard the Captain brought him yesterday."
"Does that matter right now?! This is our chance! Push them back, all of you!!"
Leon’s rampage gave the hard-pressed paladins room to breathe. They re-formed their lines and surged forward in force.
"Forward! Advance! In the name of the Six Gods—I, Leon, will take the lead!!"
Slash—!!
At the head of the paladins stood Leon.
Holy power flashed along the edge of his halberd, and that light became a colossal wedge driving through the dark.
Leon fought like a madman at the very front. At the tip of the line he killed spiders, and killed them again. Even if this was nothing more than a phantom—even if it was a mirage that would vanish like dew—
Call it base self-satisfaction if you like.
If this was how he could atone to them, even a little—
Then Leon would gladly stand at the front and fight.
Yes. This was Leon's atonement. His penance.
Kiiiieeeek!
"Insolent fiend!"
He snatched up a fallen dagger, stabbed a spider through the eye, and cut. He tore open the jaws of another that came at him from the side with his bare hands, then split its body with a hand-axe rolling on the ground.
What was he cutting? What was he stabbing?
Fiends? Or his own nightmare?
Leon could not tell. He only knew that he had to kill a little more—and so he moved his body in faithful service to that knowledge.
BOOOOM!
A sudden, massive explosion jolted him out of his trance. His mind snapped clear.
Looking around, he found the ground thick and slick with green ichor, littered with the corpses of spiders whose limbs had been sheared away.
Skitter-skitter-skitter.
The remaining swarm was frantically working its legs, retreating toward the nest. The brood mother had called them home.
"That is…"
Far off, at the fiends' nest, a colossal explosion of light erupted. Even from the camp, the pillar of holy power was clearly visible—rising toward the sky before slowly fading.
Leon knew who had done it. There were not many people capable of something that outrageous.
"Master."
His master was fighting at the nest. By now, the young version of himself had likely lost an eye and collapsed in an undignified heap.
And his master would be fighting to protect that fallen self.
It was time to go.
To put an end to regret.
To deliver a final farewell.
It took me a long time, didn't it.
I'm sorry. And thank you.
For want of those few short words, he had wandered for so very long.
Now it was time to draw the final line.
Thud.
Using the halberd as a staff, he planted it against the earth and walked forward.
"…I am going to the nest. The rest of you, withdraw with the civilians. There's no telling when those things will return—so move as quickly as you can."
"What? Going alone is reckless—"
He left Elemier's words behind and set off. His walk quickened, then became a run.
Toward the nest. Toward the fiends' nest.
To deliver a final farewell.