On My Way to See You
Late in the evening, the pink-haired knight Millia slipped out of the village hall dressed in light travel clothes.
She had just concluded an exhaustive conversation with the Hero. Ever since their reunion, he had spent nearly all of his time with the elf Silvina—flirting, disappearing into the woods with her at odd hours, and never dining apart. Toward the other party members, his approach had remained cautious and calculated.
Tonight, however, he had finally reached out to Millia.
The Hero's proposition was simple: cooperate without resistance, and he would personally guarantee the safety and restoration of her family. For Millia, nothing was more urgent, nor more fragile.
He had laid out a remarkably plausible plan, subtly invoking the humiliating treatment her noble house currently endured before dangling an enticing escape hatch.
"There's a noble house I made use of during my nominee trading schemes," he had told her smoothly. "If we leverage their connections, we can engineer a way out... Just trust me one more time."
She had not swallowed every word, but by the end of the meeting, she had nodded. In truth, the party's dynamic was structured so that the Hero held all the leverage anyway.
And now, he was busy striking another deal with the Saintess and the mage.
"Haaah..."
Millia let out a long sigh, taking in the crisp night air. It cleared her head, if only slightly.
Just then, the sound of raised voices drifted from the village hall. The Saintess and the mage were vehemently demanding ironclad guarantees, while the Hero tried to soothe and coax them.
"If this isn't agreed upon, I refuse to follow you another step...!"
"I'll factor it in, but please, try to understand my position as well—"
"...Hero. Me too."
"Fine, fine! Do I need to swear on a Geas Scroll or something?!"
Judging by the ferocious atmosphere, they sounded ready to draw up a contract thick enough to rival the founding chronicles of the Empire. She wondered how completely devoid of mutual trust a group had to be to reach such a state.
Unwilling to listen any longer, Millia walked beyond the wooden palisade and drew in a deep breath of the damp forest air.
Should I just run away right now?
The thought flashed through her mind on pure impulse.
As a member of the Hero's party, she was undeniably out of her depth, but she was still skilled enough to earn her bread with a blade. While the Empire held sway over eighty percent of humanity, there were still sovereign minor kingdoms beyond its reach.
Could she not carve out a quiet living as a mercenary in another realm? Simply dyeing her conspicuous pink hair would reduce the chances of being tracked down tenfold. If she begged the Hero and pleaded, "Just consider me dead," he might reluctantly play along.
If she then instructed her kin to spread the rumor that Millia died a miserable death in the Demonic Realm, her remains lost forever, perhaps the Naze family line could quietly endure.
Yet her fantasy was cut short.
"Millia. We're all done here. Come back inside."
Having finally brought his companions to heel, the Hero called out to her from the doorway.
Returning to the hall, Millia saw the mage, Yuni, clutching a Geas Scroll like a sacred treasure, while the Saintess looked visibly appeased.
Whatever their private grievances, the Hero had reasserted control.
The moment Millia stepped across the threshold, the Hero announced in a firm, commanding voice that they would depart the settlement well before dawn.
In the end, Millia shelved her hastily concocted escape plan and offered a quiet nod.
At that exact moment, in the dense woodlands roughly two hours' march from the village where the Hero's party was encamped...
A war party of nearly fifty beastfolk moved silently beneath the canopy.
Their numbers were imposing, but their composition was even more extraordinary: exactly half were lizardmen, and the other half were hound-kin.
Reptilian and mammalian beastkin rarely saw eye to eye. Even hound-kin and feline beastfolk were perpetually at each other's throats, so the divide between furred folk and cold-blooded reptiles was typically an unbridgeable gulf. Lizardmen, claiming dragon blood, were notorious for scorning anything covered in fur.
Yet among this cohort, there was not the faintest hint of friction.
This unity was not merely born of having a common enemy in humanity; it stemmed from something far deeper.
They possessed a supreme leader who enjoyed the absolute, unshakable devotion of every tribe, brushing aside all differences in appearance and instinct.
Beast King Leoneo.
Though he had first risen to renown through terrifying personal might, his legendary rescue of the beastfolk army in the Rancart Margraviate—orchestrated while bearing near-fatal wounds—had elevated him into an object of veneration across every species. He was a warlord truly worthy of the title Beast King.
"Where is Leoneo?"
"In the Demonic Realm."
At the mere mention of his whereabouts, guttural growls of reverence and canine barks of awe rippled through the ranks.
For all they knew, the Beast King might have simply been taking his ease within the Demon King's Castle, yet every beastman firmly believed he was engaged in some transcendent, monumental crusade. It was a stark illustration of Leoneo's peerless stature.
Buried deep within the heart of every beastman was the conviction that, so long as they marched beneath the Beast King, crunching the bones of the despised humans and reclaiming their fertile lands and food was entirely within their grasp.
Anchored by that faith, the tribes cooperated, protected one another, and forged a genuine camaraderie even without Leoneo's direct oversight.
It was that very solidarity that had brought them together in the dead of night. A collective grievance demanded blood.
"Over here."
Before long, the warriors gathered around the mangled, rotting remains of two adult lizardmen.
They had ventured out on a long hunt to feed the tribe and failed to return. The moment the faint stench of decay had reached sensitive nostrils, dozens of warriors had assembled to track them down.
"This is the work of a human."
A burly hound-kin dropped onto all fours, carefully sniffing and inspecting the gashes, mirrored by several lizardmen. Two full-grown lizardman warriors were not prey that common human hunters or village levies could ever hope to butcher; extreme caution was required.
Though simple of intellect, their predatory senses were razor-sharp, and they arrived at a consensus in moments.
"A single human. Exceptionally strong."
"Strong, yes. But not invincible."
More than killable. Reaching an accord, the beastfolk exchanged low, throaty rumbles.
After all, fifty battle-tested adults stood gathered here. The lizardmen in particular were formidable combatants, each capable of tearing through multiple human soldiers in the span of a single breath.
Those humans whose blades blazed with radiant light were troublesome, but...
"With our numbers, we will crush him."
Sniffing the air, the beastfolk surged forward, picking up the faint scent trail left behind by the reckless culprit—a fool who had marched openly down the road while still drenched in the bodily fluids of their fallen kin.
Forward. Avenge our brothers.
Just as they moved out with grim resolve, an unfamiliar presence registered on their senses.
Roughly ten individuals. The sharp stench of refined steel. And the pungent reek of alchemical potions unique to humans.
Deciding to annihilate these newcomers first, the beastfolk snapped into an ambush formation. Several vanished into the dense undergrowth, while others leaped silently into the high branches.
Yet the approaching humans did not seem bothered in the least.
"Eric-sunbae, there's a foul beastly stench coming from up ahead."
"I know. Professor Weber? You're up."
⟨ Cry of the Earth ⟩
A crisp, resonant chant cut through the pitch-black woods.
Instantly, with a deafening roar, the forest floor convulsed. Chunks of rock and packed earth erupted into the air, and massive tree roots burst from the soil like wooden spikes, brutally impaling the beastfolks' paws and feet.
Thwack! Crack!
The spell was not potent enough to kill the sturdy beastfolk outright, but the sudden wide-area upheaval was more than sufficient to throw their ambush into utter chaos.
While the battered pack panicked and stumbled, the next assault struck with terrifying precision.
"Out of my way!!"
"Wh-Whuff?!"
A blinding sheen of aura—an energy reserved only for humanity's elite warriors—swept through the darkness. With overwhelming cutting power, it tore through the torsos of over a dozen beastfolk in an instant.
Blood sprayed in crimson sheets. Severed limbs, shattered weapons, and bisected torsos collapsed onto the churned dirt.
"Now we have wild beasts crawling out of the woods. Don't tell me these mongrels are trying to compete for the bounty too."
"Let's butcher them quickly and keep moving."
The surviving beastfolk lunged from every shadow in a desperate bid to turn the tide, but their fury was meaningless.
Wielding blades coated in cold, lethal precision, the humans unleashed a coordinated slaughter, cutting down every charge as though they had anticipated each trajectory.
"Die!"
It was an unmitigated massacre. Agonized yelps and guttural death rattles filled the forest.
One terrified hound-kin tried to scramble away with its tail between its legs, but an invisible arrow of compressed mana drilled through its skull, killing it instantly.
The entire skirmish had lasted barely two minutes.
Yet the aftermath was gruesome beyond description. Fifty beastfolk warriors lay strewn across the blood-soaked earth in butchered pieces.
The lone survivor, mortally wounded, could only twitch feebly as its life ebbed away into the dirt.
Meanwhile, the humans who had unleashed this devastation did not bear a single scratch. Even the few who appeared slightly winded were promptly bathed in radiant healing light, their vitality fully restored in seconds.
...This makes no sense. It's completely absurd...
Clinging to the fading remnants of consciousness, the dying lizardman warrior could only harbor that bewildered thought. For dozens of full-grown warriors to be wiped out without landing a single blow defied all reality.
Yet the humans paid no heed to the dying creature, conversing casually among themselves.
"Baron Wellesley. Do you think the commotion from this fight alerted the Hero? Could he have posted guards?"
"Look at those rotting carcasses over there. The Hero is almost certainly the one who slaughtered them. Millia doesn't have the swordplay to leave cuts like that. Do you really believe a man who butchers beastfolk and doesn't even bother to conceal the bodies would think to set a perimeter? If he's still in that village, he's probably fast asleep with his arms wrapped around one of his party members."
"Then shall we charge straight in?"
"No. Cardin—ahem, Elder Priest. If we want to round them all up in one sweep, we can't just barge in blindly. If they catch sight of us and make a desperate dash toward the Demonic Realm, we might only manage to capture the mage and the Saintess. We need to lay the groundwork first."
"I know little of your tactics, but explain your plan."
"First, Katie and I will..."
Whispering in low, practiced tones, the humans moved briskly into the shadows. The dying beastman watched their retreating silhouettes with glassy eyes as darkness swallowed his vision.
"I can hardly wait to see him."
That quiet murmur was the final sound that grazed the dying warrior's ears.