Mesugaki! (3)
At Forsell's declaration, the Intimidation released its grip, and the orc pitched forward—then caught its balance at the very last instant.
It swiveled its head this way and that, surveying its surroundings, until at last its gaze settled on me.
The orc's feral eyes met mine, and it exhaled—a breath so hot that white steam curled from its maw despite the autumn air.
In that moment, I understood. The orc had judged me the weaker one.
It would charge at me to make its escape.
The instant I realized it, I raised my shield.
I watched the orc. I watched the muscles of its wilderness-forged legs coil and flex. I watched the creature bound toward me at the speed of a wild boar.
Simple. But that very simplicity was its strength. That headlong charge, stripped of every flourish, trusting nothing but its own body—precisely because it held no tricks, it was genuinely, lethally sharp.
I knew that a straightforward rush like this could be dodged, plain and simple. I'd spent the past few days being drilled into the dirt by Forsell, and he'd taught me exactly how.
And yet my body wouldn't move. Was real combat always this nerve-racking?
That moment of hesitation proved fatal. Before I knew it, the distance between us had closed to nothing.
There was no choosing to evade now. Any clumsy sidestep would only drag me into the path of its charge. No—so what I had to do was simple.
If I can't dodge it, I block it. I'm a tank with a shield, after all.
Iron Wall counsels me: Raise your shield. Plant your legs. Clamp your jaw. Your opponent's force travels in a straight line—use it, and stopping him won't be hard.
I obeyed Iron Wall's counsel. Watching the gap shrink, I measured the timing.
Three. Two. One.
Now.
A heartbeat before the orc struck my shield, I stepped forward, driving into its body, and angled the shield diagonally to receive the impact.
BOOM!
The shock stole the breath from my lungs for an instant. If my legs gave out now, I'd be flattened beneath the orc. So I had to hold.
I clenched my teeth and locked my hips. I wasn't resisting with my legs alone—I was nailing my whole body into the earth, becoming a single rooted tree. The orc, having charged in without a thought for what came after, could not arrest its own momentum. It crashed into the slanted shield, failed utterly to control itself, and sailed clean past me, tumbling backward.
My shield arm throbbed with numbness, but this was no time to worry about that. The fight wasn't over.
Watching the orc stagger upright in the distance, I charged. That last collision had told me everything—its body wasn't nearly as solid as it looked. It was nothing like those monsters that shrugged off full-power mace swings from Carl or Forsell without so much as a scratch. This orc was an ordinary living thing that felt pain when you hit it.
Though hearing me say it that way, I honestly couldn't tell which of us was the monster.
The orc scrambled to its feet and swung a fist at my charging form in desperation—a brutish punch powered by the raw strength unique to monsters.
No reason to take it. No reason to block it either. Something like that just gets dodged.
I ducked my head, and the orc's fist grazed past my hair. I slipped inside its guard—but the head was beyond my reach. The height difference between us was simply too great.
It didn't matter, though. The belly, full of organs, was a perfectly fine vital point in its own right.
I tightened my grip on the mace and slammed it into the orc's abdomen.
CRUNCH!
A mace tipped with iron flanges was no mere blunt instrument. It was a weapon designed to bite into flesh and tear. Blood sprayed, and the orc's scream rang in my ears.
Now's my opening. When the enemy is gripped by fear, you press the attack all the harder.
I brought the mace down again, and the orc reeled backward, retreating in a stumble. Drunk on the heat of battle, I gulped down air and stared ahead.
Fear had crept into the orc's eyes. The creature that had judged me the weak one now stood before me as the weak one itself.
"What are you doing? Gonna run, worthless orc?"
"Grrk."
"Come at me, you disgusting piece of trash♡"
The taunts that worked on monsters worse than monsters—on Carl, even on Forsell—there was no way they'd fail on a pathetic orc like this.
As if forgetting the terror that had gripped it moments before, the orc shrieked and bolted toward me. It had been senseless from the start, and now, ruled entirely by its own rage, it simply ran.
And riding on that fury, power surged through my body. The buff from the Mesugaki Skill washed over me, and I felt that peculiar rush—that intoxicating sense of omnipotence—as I raised the mace once more.
No need for the shield. Iron Wall was silent.
I had one job: bury the mace in the face of the orc charging at me.
An orc that had lost its mind to rage was nothing but a moving target. Aiming for it was almost insultingly easy.
The iron flanges shattered the orc's face. Even the sturdiest of orcs, it seemed, couldn't endure a blow that rattled the skull—the creature collapsed mid-charge, crumpling exactly as it had been running.
The fallen orc did not so much as twitch. The only movement left in it was a tiny, failing breath.
"Your first real battle, and this! Magnificent work, my lady. I confess I'm in awe!"
...Is that so?
"Ha. Of course it is."
"Now—finish it."
Finish it?
The moment those words reached me, reality came crashing back—the reality I'd forgotten in the fever of the fight.
I had just swung a weapon at a living, breathing creature. Swung it desperately, wishing for its death. And now, here at the end, I was expected to deliver the finishing stroke to a dying orc.
"My lady."
I know. So—
"I know. So just watch, idiot."
Slaying monsters is a good thing. That's common sense in this world. Monsters are born to harm humans, so a human killing one is nothing more than the desperate struggle to survive. Self-defense, in other words.
I've done it until I was sick of it in games, too. Just counting the monsters I've killed would run to the millions.
And it wasn't only monsters. Was there anything I hadn't killed in-game? People. Dragons. Spirits. Fairies. Gods.
I once ran an experiment to see what would happen if I killed every last NPC in a game—frankly, I was nothing short of a butcher.
So this much shouldn't warrant hesitating. I've slaughtered hundreds, thousands, millions of orcs—and now, of all times, I'm getting cold feet?
I raised the mace overhead.
In that instant, the orc's eyes met mine. A pitiful gaze, anger and terror tangled together.
I bit my lip lightly, and repeated the motion I had practiced ten thousand times before.
So—what comes to mind when you think of transportation in a fantasy world?
Carriages, of course!
A horse-drawn carriage is a staple of any medieval-style fantasy, and the world of Soul Academy proved no exception. Having never once ridden one in either of my lives, I'd gotten my hopes up when I learned we'd be traveling to Evans by carriage.
The clip-clop of hooves while I lounged and watched the scenery roll past—now that was romance!
Heart fluttering, I climbed aboard with the greatest of enthusiasm.
Several hours later, my illusions lay in ruins.
Carriages are the worst.
The miserable ride leaving my hips and lower back aching was one thing—I could have lived with that. The real problem was that there was absolutely nothing to do.
Carriage travel is boring.
Looking out the window is fun for about the first minute. But when the same stretch of forest repeats itself for hour after hour, the only thought left is: ugh, more trees?
Chattering with my maid ran dry quickly too—there's only so long two people who live together can keep a conversation going—and so I spent long stretches staring blankly into space.
That was the fatal mistake: mentioning, during a rest stop, how bored I was.
Forsell, the Aln family's foremost training addict, seized on my offhand complaint without mercy.
You find the carriage dull, my lady? Then you shall train with the knights as we travel!
The training Forsell proposed turned out to be running alongside the horses.
I wondered what the point of preparing a carriage even was at that point, but I figured it beat sitting inside staring at nothing, so I accepted his offer.
And here's what I learned: horses are absurdly, infuriatingly fast.
I'd never noticed from inside the carriage. From within, the horses had seemed to trot along at a leisurely pace. But chasing down that speed from outside, I felt every bit of it in my bones.
A horse's trotting pace was roughly equal to my full sprint.
Moving my legs to keep up with it was work so grueling it made me want to curse out loud. About ten minutes in, I was already thinking, I'm going to fall behind at this rate—but Forsell, the Bald Knight, and the rest of the knights were having none of it.
They shoved at my back, half-forcing me along until I'd caught up with the carriage. Thanks to them, I had no choice but to chase that carriage until I collapsed from exhaustion.
And Forsell wasn't the only training demon in the family. The men who'd survived under him all these years were cut from exactly the same cloth.
Resting in the carriage, recovering, then dismounting to run again—the cycle repeated until, at some point, evening had fallen.
Having run myself ragged all day, I was famished, yet the meat on my plate refused to interest me. I could manage the vegetables, the soup—but the meat, I couldn't bring myself to touch.
It had started yesterday. To be precise, the evening of the day I'd caved in an orc's skull with my own hands.
Why am I so weak-stomached? Every other transmigrator hunts monsters without a shred of hesitation. Is it because I'm a coward who used to tremble at the sight of a cockroach?
I was poking at the meat with my spoon when I felt someone behind me and turned my head. It was Carl.
"My lady. Is the meal not to your liking?"
He settled into the seat beside me as he asked.
No.
"No. Not really."
"Then why aren't you eating?"
I couldn't answer. I couldn't very well say, Ever since I killed that orc yesterday, the sight keeps playing over and over in my head.
For a knight like Carl, hunting monsters was routine, something done until it wore smooth. How laughable must it look, from where he stood, watching me agonize over every little thing like this?
"Is it the orc you killed with your own hands yesterday?"
Despite my silence, Carl put his finger on the problem with perfect precision. When I flinched at how squarely he'd hit the mark, he smiled.
"So my lady has a soft heart after all."
Shut up.
"Shut it, useless Carl."
Even my razor-sharp retort didn't faze him in the slightest. Before the oath, he'd at least pretended to be offended—now not even that.
Was he holding back, or had he simply gotten used to it?
"You needn't let it trouble you, my lady. What you're feeling is perfectly normal."
Normal?
"Everyone is like this at first. Monsters or not, they're living creatures. We all agonize, hesitate, lose our way. I was the same."
Then...
"Then how am I supposed to get over it?"
"Time handles that on its own. As the years pass, it wears dull, the way rust creeps over iron."
Ha. Seriously?
So what you're telling me is there's no way to overcome it at all.
Useless, good-for-nothing knight. I thought he was about to say something profound, and it turns out he can't help me one bit.
When I shot him a glare, Carl leaned back and spread his hands apologetically.
"Carl!"
I was midway through plotting my next round of provocation when Forsell barked his name.
"What do you think you're doing here!"
"Commander, I was just—"
"Your confinement isn't over yet! If you've finished your meal, go run a lap around the forest!"
"What?"
"Do you have complaints?!"
"None, sir!"
"Then go!"
"Yes, sir!"
At the order, Carl sprinted off into the distance, and Forsell's expression flipped completely—a warm, gentle smile spreading across his scarred face as he looked at me.
"Finish your meal and get some rest. You must take good care of your body until we enter the dungeon."
Understood.
"Got it."
After even Forsell had gone, I stared at the meat for a long moment, then finally took a bite.
Blegh. What is this? Tough, smelly, and salty.
Is all camp food like this? This is genuinely horrifying.