Outside the World, Outer Land (4)
As he hauled on the chain stake, Najin thought to himself that it was a damn effective strategy. Fitting for a unit that made its living hunting wyverns, the tactics they had devised were ruthlessly good at the job.
As monsters that carried even a thin thread of dragon blood, wyverns possessed high resistance along with razor-sharp natural senses. Hitting one with magic while it read the flow of mana and banked through the air was no ordinary feat.
The same went for the bolts from the great ballistae. They were a nightmare to land, and even a hit rarely did meaningful damage. A marksman who had reached the rank of Sword Seeker might manage it, but such shooters were hardly common; it could never be a standard answer.
So the strategy they chose was…
Close combat with chain stakes.
Whether they ran along the web of chains already strung like spider silk or sprinted and leapt to hurl the stakes, the goal was the same: close the distance as much as possible, then drive a stake home.
The targets were the unscaled belly hide or the membrane of the wings. Once a stake sank true, the rebound of the chain launched the hunter skyward, right onto the wyvern’s back.
It was a hair-raising job that demanded serious skill.
But once you were up there, once the beast entered the reach of the blade in your hand… from that point on it belonged to the swordsmen and warriors.
Thud.
Najin, who had coiled up the chain, seized the stake buried in the wyvern’s belly. He had no need to watch the rest of the wyvern-hunting unit to know what came next. Every battle he had ever fought already told him exactly how to move.
Using the recoil of his body, he shifted his stance. Like a bat hanging from a cave ceiling, he gripped the stake with one hand and planted both feet against the belly hide.
The posture was unstable, but that did not matter. He was about to fix his balance. One hand held the stake. What, then, would the free hand do? Najin was a swordsman. And a swordsman had only one job.
Shunk.
He drove the reverse-gripped sword into the wyvern’s belly. Unarmored hide. Aura-wrapped steel sank deep with almost insulting ease.
———————!
The wyvern’s scream tore the air as blood sprayed.
But it was shallow. The hide was thick, and the blade was too short to churn the organs within. Stabbing the belly until the beast died would take far too long, and clinging for that long to a thrashing, bleeding wyvern was no easy task.
Above all, it was inefficient.
Dozens of wyverns still filled the sky; fighting like this would never end. Najin had no intention of being dragged into a war of attrition. The buried sword was only for balance.
Blood flew. The wyvern began to thrash.
Unfazed, Najin ran across its belly. More precisely, it was a continuous series of leaps. He wrenched the sword free, drove it in again, and repeated the motion, climbing the living mountain of flesh.
Thud.
The moment his foot found the scales beyond the belly, it was over. The rough, uneven plates needed no more blades for purchase. Stepping into the gaps between scales, Najin was on the wyvern’s back in an instant.
“······!”
His eyes met those of the orc rider gripping the reins. The orc’s eyes went wide; one hand still clenched the reins while the other yanked an axe from its back—but it was already too late.
Slash.
Najin’s sword flashed, and the orc’s head toppled free. He kicked the corpse off into open air and let out a short breath. The rider was gone, yet the wyvern still bucked like a mad thing, belly thoroughly stabbed.
Next…
Najin studied the scales.
Sure enough, the glossy plates carried a resistance that scattered aura. Monster hide always had some resistance, but a wyvern’s scales far exceeded anything he had imagined.
Ordinary cuts would never open deep wounds. Having fought humans for most of his life, Najin had no ready answer for how to deal with a monster of this size.
He did not need long to think. The clue was close at hand. Not far away another soldier was already astride a wyvern, blade flashing. Najin watched how the man worked his weapon.
Relentlessly worry one spot, peel the scales free, pry the wound open, then finish with a blow that severs bone. Having watched the entire sequence in silence, Najin adjusted his grip.
Ka-krrrrk!
Aura laced with the power of his constellations flared.
A crimson line ran from the ridge of the spine all the way to the nape; blood fountained. The wyvern’s thrashing grew wilder still. It twisted and rolled, desperate to throw him—
Thunk!
Sword still buried, Najin began to run along the creature’s back. Scales tore free; blood sprayed in every direction. When he twisted the blade the wound yawned open and bone showed. Ah. So that’s how it’s done.
The bone that ran from spine to nape—the equivalent of a human’s backbone—Najin swung at it. With a wet crack the bone parted, and with it the thick cords of vessel and sinew. In that instant the wyvern’s motion cut off as if severed by a knife.
The beast plummeted. Najin leapt clear of the falling body and spun the chain stake in a tight circle. His next target was close; no need to throw far.
He had the feel of it now. Najin began to tear through the sky.
2.
The commander of the wyvern-hunting unit, Gillette Reginpert, stared skyward with a slack-jawed expression. Up there a single swordsman was making his presence known in the most spectacular way possible.
———————!
A wyvern’s scream rolled across the battlefield.
Agonized cries. Blood raining down.
A soldier who brought down even one wyvern earned praise for doing his full share. That swordsman had already dropped three and showed no sign of stopping; he was already hunting for a fourth.
What the hell is that kid?
The youngest Sword Seeker, Najin.
The boy called by that name had felled three wyverns and, far from tiring, only grew faster. He hurled a chain stake, mounted a wyvern as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and butchered it in heartbeats.
As if he had simply gotten the hang of it.
A single slash shredded one wing; a sprint along the spine ended with the neck cleanly severed. The first kill had been a spinal cut; from the third onward he simply took the head in one blow.
It’s not supposed to be that easy to cut.
Even for a Sword Seeker, punching through wyvern scales and beheading the beast in a single stroke was no simple feat. Gillette himself was a Sword Seeker, and unless luck was extraordinary he never managed a one-blow kill.
Only when the blade slipped perfectly into a gap between scales, and only when the aura was at its peak.
Watching the boy do it as if it were nothing, Gillette gave a hollow laugh. He felt something from that youth—something only a man who had spent long years on the battlefield could recognize.
Live long enough on the field…
Stay on the front lines long enough and every so often, very rarely, bastards like that appear. Ones who carry something that the word “talent” cannot quite explain. Ones born with an instinct for fighting itself.
Ones who pick the optimal move in every situation. Ones who sense the right answer by pure gut even when no one has taught them. Ones whose single flash of intuition outstrips the technique and judgment ordinary men hone for years.
The ones who survive longest on the battlefield are usually those, and Gillette had known a few. With a wry smile he muttered,
“Way to make a man feel small…”
Hard to teach. Get in the way and I’ll kick you out.
He had said all that with such gravity, yet the advice had been completely pointless. Of course it had. The boy was the once-in-a-generation genius who had shattered even that monstrous Sword Saint’s records.
An absurd monster had dropped into their lap.
Thinking that, Gillette looked up. Already the wyvern force was in full retreat.
3.
“Good work.”
When the fighting died down and Najin returned to the tents, he found Gillette waiting for him. Looking faintly embarrassed, the commander scratched the back of his neck and held out a hand.
“Thanks to you our casualties dropped, and the wyvern force pulled back earlier than usual. That helped us hold the line. We owe you.”
Najin took the offered hand.
After a firm shake, Gillette gave a bitter smile.
“Never taught you a thing and you were already flying around like you owned the sky. First battle and five wyverns down—you’re the only one who’s ever managed that. The men were left speechless.”
Najin had even pursued the retreating force and dropped one more for good measure. Watching the wyverns flee with their tails between their legs, the soldiers had broken into open laughter.
“How long did you say you’d stay?”
“About ten days.”
“Right. Ten days. Honestly I’d love to snatch you for our own forces somehow… but a talent even the Sword Masters couldn’t claim isn’t something our unit is going to hold onto.”
Gillette shrugged.
“I’m Gillette Reginpert. Looking forward to working with you these next ten days.”
“Najin. The pleasure is mine.”
The look Gillette gave him had turned openly friendly. Najin had proven his worth in the previous fight, and a capable fighter was always welcome with both arms open from a commander’s point of view.
Even if he was only a mercenary passing through the front for a short while, that fact did not change.
An outsider, yet for the next ten days Najin was accepted as one of the wyvern-hunting unit. The soldiers treated him warmly and, whenever there was a spare moment, taught him the little tricks of the chain stake.
“Grab the middle of the chain like this. You don’t even have to sink the stake. Just get the feeling of wrapping it around…”
“Like this?”
“Uh… uh?”
Watching Najin master a technique after seeing it only once or twice left some wide-eyed and others laughing in disbelief. He repaid them by putting every scrap of that knowledge to work on the next battlefield.
And so the days passed.
By the time he had grown used to the front and several days had slipped by, Najin spoke to Merlin out of the blue.
It’s not as different here as I expected.
When he first set foot in the Outer Land he had felt as though he had entered a demon realm where every kind of monster ran wild… yet after a few days it did not seem so different from the outside world.
Aside from the constant gaze of the constellations, and the fact that battlefields were scattered everywhere and fighting broke out almost daily, of course.
-This is only the outer fringe.
Merlin answered the quiet murmur shortly.
-Push a little farther in and the whole feel changes. Still, better not go there yet. Without a star of your own, it’s more than you can handle.
Let’s just get a feel for things here and head back.
Merlin’s muttered advice did not quite land with Najin. Hunting the infamous wyvern force had not been especially hard, and he had yet to meet any truly formidable foe worthy of the Outer Land’s dark reputation.
-Well, that’s just you being lucky.
Merlin sighed at his private thoughts.
-Variables have a habit of dropping in out of nowhere.
And her ominous prophecy struck true.
On the seventh day of his stay, Najin stepped onto the battlefield as usual and immediately sensed that something was off. Both the enemy numbers and the size of the wyvern force felt wrong.
Fewer than usual.
Only the bare minimum had appeared.
It did not take the soldiers long to understand why. The enemy had brought less than a tenth of their normal strength, yet they stood without a trace of fear, brimming with confidence.
The reason was simple enough.
Among them walked a being who more than made up for the missing numbers—a being who alone surpassed an army. From the midst of the scattered wyvern force a woman appeared.
Long flame-red hair cascading down her back.
Eyes like smoldering coals.
Not astride a wyvern but floating on a staff, she drifted through the air. Behind her seven scarlet rings bloomed into existence. The moment the soldiers recognized them as the circles mages called rings, the battlefield erupted.
“Retreat! Fall back!”
“Pull away! Magic corps, magic corps!”
“U-uaaaaah!”
“Kirchhoff! Call Sir Kirchhoff! Signal him at once! We need him here!”
“Witch! It’s a witch! The witch has come!”
Chaos swallowed the field in an instant.
Commanders ordered retreat; soldiers and knights forgot even to hold formation as they fled. They had no choice. The woman who had appeared was a living nightmare burned into every soldier’s memory.
One who had joined hands with demons and thrown herself into the Demon King’s army solely to burn humanity.
The demons called her Flickering.
Humanity called her Witch.
-The Flickering Witch.
Merlin’s voice rang in Najin’s ear.
-The Flickering Witch, Ermina.
The moment the witch appeared, the battlefield flipped. A single individual seized control of the field and twisted its flow. While his allies fled, Najin watched.
Whoosh.
The seven circles at her back burned as if set aflame. The rings spun wreathed in fire, looking for all the world like hoops of pure flame. The moment those fire-wrapped circles painted the sky blood-red, the witch flicked her fingers.
At her fingertips flame flickered and flared.
7-Circle Spell: Flame Demon.
A colossal wall of fire swallowed the battlefield. The blaze consumed friend and foe alike without distinction; where it passed only ash remained. Dozens of humans and monsters withered to cinders in a single breath.
Ash drifted on the wind.
The landscape shimmered in the heat.
Through that haze the witch and Najin locked eyes. Her swirling crimson gaze fixed unerringly on his sunset-colored ones.
“Ah, shit.”
Gillette, standing beside Najin, clenched his teeth.
“Looks like the discharge I’ve been putting off for twenty years is happening today.”