Moths to the Flame
Boom. Bone crunched. A monstrous roar tore through the air, answered by a frenzy of barking as two colossal forces slammed into each other head-on, and the battlefield dissolved into chaos.
"Whoa... whoaaa..."
"Nnh..."
Ha Yoo-jin marveled at the sheer scale of the collision, and Nam Eun-ju let out a faint sound. Neither of them had ever witnessed a clash of this magnitude. It was no wonder they were stunned. The rest of the party was no different — every one of them had their eyes locked on that tremendous battle, unable to look away.
I kept a careful watch on our surroundings in their place. Not that I had turned my back on their so-called war. I was just as invested in how it would end. And I still had one thing I was waiting for.
"I-I'm sorry, Shin-hoo."
Joo Ha-yeon, noticing a beat too late that I had been keeping watch even while following the fight, apologized in a fluster.
"No, it's fine. Watching a battle of this scale is useful in its own right. I can handle the perimeter on my own."
The others, catching on from her words, apologized one by one and began carefully scanning the surroundings. Na-yeon summoned her spirit, and I could feel mana stirring from Nam Eun-ju and Na Seoyun — they seemed to be heightening their senses, little by little. Even so, none of them looked away from the battle. Ha Yoo-jin in particular checked the perimeter less and less frequently, sinking back into the fight.
Joo Ha-yeon was never much help with a watch like this. Not that she was doing nothing — she simply wasn't as useful for it. This was a habit they needed to build.
She had drifted to my side without my noticing, and she asked quietly,
"...How do you think this battle will go?"
"Curious who's going to win?"
"...Yes."
I looked out over the savage field. After the opening charge had produced staggering casualties, the rushes had all but stopped. Now each side held its ground as territory, swinging weapons, tearing with teeth, lunging in — a fight whose only purpose was to kill. A few pulled back and charged again like cavalry, but that had its limits. The battle was slowly turning into a melee. On a scale that could almost be called a war.
Watching it unfold, I said,
"I expect the Golden Gnolls will have the upper hand."
They had far greater numbers. The Brown Gnolls were in the tens of thousands themselves, but they were clearly outmatched compared to the Golden Gnolls. Plenty of Golden Gnolls were exhausted from the forced march, true — but the Brown Gnolls had pursued four thousand Golden Gnolls just the same. Even so, the Brown Gnolls were generally in better condition. That alone was nowhere near enough to offset the raw gap in numbers.
And the enemy was a force led by the Worshipping Golden Gnoll Tribe — the central tribe. The quality of their troops was better as well. You couldn't bet a victory on stamina alone.
"...You're right. They really are getting pushed back, little by little."
Dust clouds swallowed the field. Even so, it wasn't as if we couldn't see. A golden wave was slowly shoving the brown one back, encroaching, folding around it. The Brown Gnolls were being driven steadily rearward. They weren't fleeing, though. They seemed to know that running meant death, so they would fight to the last.
Keong! Keang!
In the distance, what looked like the Brown Gnoll leader was barking and gesturing this way and that. The air around him said they would fight until they dropped. He almost certainly knew they couldn't win. They would recognize that banner as belonging to the central tribe. They simply seemed determined to inflict as much damage as they could before the end.
"They'll still fight to the end, though."
Joo Ha-yeon had read the same atmosphere. That didn't mean none of them would run, however. The Brown Gnoll leader, seeming half-drunk on the fever of the battlefield even as he kept barking orders to the last, would deal as much damage as possible — and then the elites would slip away. They knew this was the main force. Deal a fatal blow here, carry the news back to the Brown Gnoll stronghold, and that leader would have earned enormous merit. He could start a second golden age, and the Brown Gnolls could seize a vast stretch of Golden Gnoll territory.
Using his own forces as little more than chess pieces. Efficient, though. You couldn't deny that.
There was just one thing that bastard didn't know.
Without taking my eyes off the battle, I went on.
"If they fight to the end, that works out well for us."
I smirked. My gaze was fixed on the far horizon. At the edge of my vision, a thin dust cloud had begun to rise across a wide stretch of ground.
Black Gnolls. They were coming in fast.
As I watched that direction with a slight smile, Joo Ha-yeon followed my gaze, puzzled. She narrowed her eyes at the horizon. Her physical abilities weren't enough to catch it at once, but she soon understood the meaning of my smile.
"Black Gnolls!"
The approaching Black Gnolls. Those charging in didn't necessarily need to join this fight. They could wait until it was over and pick through the wreckage. But I had no doubt they would strike the Golden Gnolls from behind. The Black Gnolls harbored that much hatred for them.
It was also a chance to gut the Brown Gnoll faction. Their own forces had already been slashed to ribbons — they needed time to hold out. The Gnoll Hero's birth would take a long while yet, so in the short term they couldn't avoid their territory shrinking, which made them want every surrounding power even weaker. Especially the Brown Gnolls. With the Golden Gnolls diminished, there was a slim chance the two sides might actually meet — and if the Brown Gnolls weakened, the Golden Gnolls would last that much longer.
...Never mind that the Black Gnolls themselves were the reason the Golden Gnolls' power had been cut down in the first place.
On top of that, the others were standing still and fighting, while the Black Gnolls could hit them at a full charge. One clean, devastating strike. I figured there was no chance they would let that opportunity pass.
Our party members, hearing Joo Ha-yeon's cry, spotted the Black Gnolls' approach as well. Expectation lit their eyes. Having confirmed that no one in the area was hunting us, they turned even more of their attention to the field. I surveyed the battle with a hint of anticipation of my own.
The moment the Black Gnolls struck. When that happened, it would definitely appear. The central tribe of the Golden Gnolls would not end like this. If they were wiped out here, the Golden Gnolls might go extinct entirely. They wouldn't just stand by and watch that happen.
I swept the battlefield with my eyes, searching for my target. The Brown Gnolls were being driven back hard. Nearly half of them already lay on the ground, and more than half were surrounded. The ones who had been peeling away seemed to be making their preliminary preparations to retreat. At this rate, they would start pulling out once their numbers dropped below three thousand. More would die in droves then, and the survivors would number a little under two thousand, maybe?
Looking only at the result of the battle, it was a crushing defeat. Strategically, though, a victory. That seemed to be what they were after.
What they didn't know was that the Black Gnolls — who lived on the far side of Golden Gnoll territory — would cross that territory to raid this place.
...Though knowing that would have been even stranger.
The earth thundered once more. The head of the leader who had been rallying the Brown Gnolls snapped around.
Keng, keng!
An ordinary bark, but his body language carried a raw note of panic. Of course it did. He never imagined things would turn out like this.
Just as I had expected, the Black Gnolls did not stop. They picked up even more speed. Their target was right in front of them — the ones who had endlessly harassed them, raided them, killed them, eaten them, standing with their backs turned, locked in a fight with someone else.
Never mind that all of that had started as a setup.
GRAAAAAH!
The lead Black Gnoll's roar, and the rest of them accelerating even harder at that cry. The startled Golden Gnolls tried too late to form a block. The Brown Gnolls tried to pull back. Both were far too late.
A hopeless situation. In that gap, a black wave crashed over them.
"WHOAAA!"
Ha Yoo-jin's cry of wonder was in a different league from before. I smirked. And he wasn't the only one. None of the others could look away from the field either.
The black wave slammed into the golden formation like a thing gone mad. Golden Gnolls were shoved back and cut down in droves. And in the middle of a fight, it wasn't easy to simply disengage. The Brown Gnolls and Golden Gnolls both knew this was no time to be killing each other, but they couldn't easily stop the battle they were already in.
Meanwhile the Golden Gnolls' center split clean open, and the black formation punched all the way through to the brown one — a catastrophe. The Black Gnolls were startled by the sudden appearance of Brown Gnolls, but they didn't slow down. Seen from the front, the Brown Gnolls, half-encircled by Golden Gnolls, wouldn't have been easy to spot. They hadn't come running from slightly elevated ground the way we had, so it wasn't strange they hadn't noticed. Especially since their eyes would have been locked on the Golden Gnolls, who were practically their mortal enemies.
The pitiful Brown Gnolls took a fatal blow, their numbers shrinking even further. But perhaps because of the confusion, the Black Gnolls — who had nearly broken through — failed to punch cleanly through the Brown ranks, and the fight devolved into a messy, grinding melee. The Black Gnolls' casualties would probably be considerable too, more than they had imagined.
With the Black Gnolls joining in, as victory and defeat began to sort themselves out, the melee that had been shrinking actually swelled larger than it had been at the start. The combat range threatened to spread all the way to us. I even wondered if we would have to give up watching. Fortunately, it didn't go that far.
The fierce battle did not end easily. Black, gold, and brown corpses lay everywhere, and red blood ran in rivers — it was that desperate — but the tide was slowly turning in the Black Gnolls' favor. The Golden Gnolls, sandwiched and with their formation split in half, had been reduced to almost nothing. Of the Brown Gnolls who had started retreating too late, the survivors numbered not even two thousand. Closer to fewer than five hundred.
And as the battle was winding down, the scene I had been waiting for finally appeared.
In the distance, I spotted the chieftain of the Worshipping Golden Gnoll Tribe slipping away, using his own subordinates as bait.
I smirked.
"Everyone, follow me."
The party looked bewildered. Across that vast battlefield, their movement wasn't particularly conspicuous. In fact, once defeat became obvious, the Golden Gnolls had started retreating just like the Brown Gnolls. An orderly withdrawal was impossible. All you could see was them fleeing in every direction, so I was the only one who could pick the chieftain out of that many Golden Gnolls — I had been watching him from the start.
"Ah, are we heading back now?"
A voice that couldn't quite hide a hint of disappointment, or a note of relief. The battle was in its final stages, so there was regret at not seeing it through, mixed with the gladness of having seen enough and finally heading back to the village. Honestly, from a safety standpoint, withdrawing around now would have been best.
I shook my head at Joo Ha-yeon's question.
"There's still one thing left to do."
"...What is it?"
"I just found a pretty decent gift."
I pointed in one direction.
"The village chief is going to love this."
Joo Ha-yeon looked where I was pointing, spotted the chieftain, and her face went from shocked to a mix of incredulity and genuine admiration.
"...You kept your eyes on that chieftain through that entire melee?"
"Yes."
"...That's honestly incredible... I don't even know what to call it..."
A wry smile and a real one, tangled together. But she smiled softly at the same time.
"A gift like that would certainly be welcome. All right."
A faint pleasure touched Joo Ha-yeon's face as she said it. That bastard was the real culprit who had isolated us. Watching the Golden Gnolls get wrecked was satisfying from our perspective — but it wasn't as if we didn't want to get our own hands dirty.
I smiled, and the party smiled with me. They had given us a nice little present. Time to return the favor. And the opportunity had just presented itself.
The party and I set off after the chieftain at once. The Black Gnolls, scattered in every direction, were giving chase as well, but we showed no mercy to any of them that went after our prey. Anyone we encountered during the pursuit, we tore apart on the spot. At the same time, on my orders, only Ha Yoo-jin kept up the chase without stopping. Following the trail he left, we caught up to the chieftain without much trouble.
Whether they had latched on because they recognized this as the central tribe's chieftain and his entourage, or whether they had simply happened to join the chase, I didn't know. They were in the way, so we cleared them.
The pursuit didn't last long. The chieftain of the Worshipping Golden Gnoll Tribe, fleeing for all he was worth, couldn't get very far — his stamina was already spent. The Black Gnolls that had been chasing him had vanished at some point, so he had stopped, apparently thinking to recover for a moment.
We slowly revealed ourselves to them.
Keng, keng-keng-keng-keng-keng!
His reaction to seeing us was dramatic. Enormous rage, and at the same time a raw sense of welcome. The thrill that a last reversal might still be possible. I could feel all of it. But he seemed to grasp their situation a heartbeat later.
The ones gathered here numbered around three hundred. We were the ones who had crushed a force of two thousand with just six people. Their quality was higher, but they were exhausted from the battle they had just fought. There was no chance they could beat us.
They didn't give up, though. They intended to take us down somehow.
In front of them, I pulled out the Gnoll Hero's corpse that I had stored in my inventory. Of course, I didn't forget to cover the heart.
"...Wow. That's twisted."
Na-yeon realized my intent and looked aghast. Even so, she couldn't quite hide a note of satisfaction. Once I showed them this, they would never run. I immediately stepped forward, leaving the Gnoll Hero's corpse behind me.
"Hey!"
This was the chieftain of the central tribe, after all. He would understand. I said it with a bright, easy smile.
"You want this?"
Grrrrr....
"Then come and take it."
Srrrng.
I drew my weapon, sneering to the last.
"Not that you look like you could, in that state."
I smirked. I pointed my drawn sword forward and crooked a finger at the one destined to become the last chieftain of the Worshipping Golden Gnoll Tribe.
A light provocation.
The chieftain couldn't hold back any longer.
GRAAAAH!
And so they became moths to a flame, and charged toward us.