Slaughtered Knights, A Grave Disparity
Terepion’s hands began to tremble violently. Here was a man who had stepped onto countless battlefields—an elite by any measure, and then some.
He had fought for his life amid storms of clashing blades, and he had always believed that his courage was an unchanging value, independent of circumstance or odds. That was his pride. His dignity. The unyielding bravery that refused to yield in any situation—that was the reason he lived.
But for the first time, fear took root in the eyes of that brave man.
“This… this isn’t right…”
The reason one could still be brave even in the face of death was because the fight still felt winnable. Whether it was ten men holding against more than a hundred, or fighting one-armed after a devastating ambush, or watching their formation shredded by long-range intercept artifacts—Terepion had never been afraid. In the end, the ones attacking him were only human. As long as there was even a sliver of a chance he could win, he had never despaired.
If there was even one percent hope, he refused to break. Which meant, right now, that one percent did not exist.
“Gyaaaaaaaah!”
While Terepion’s hands shook, another knight had his throat ripped out by the mantis-type monster—Liard. The knight beside him thrashed desperately to escape, only to have his heart pierced by overwhelming speed.
A body over three meters tall. Strength so absolute that a casual swing could shatter a human frame. Mobility that closed several meters in the blink of an eye. Liard was simply not a being that human flesh could withstand.
Terepion stared at Liard and muttered,
“Th-that originless worm Leos… even he managed to kill this thing… I’m a great knight. You think I’ll give up here?!”
He forced his trembling hands still, gripped his sword, and swung at the mantis-type mutant monster Liard. Sword aura bloomed along the blade, slicing the air as it charged toward the creature.
“Die!”
The instant Terepion roared and brought his sword down—
Clang!
A clear, ringing note—and his blade was stopped cold by Liard’s scythe-arm. Not even a scratch marred the monster’s edge.
“Ah… s-spare…”
He tried to beg for his life, but the opponent was not a creature that could speak like a human. He had dismissed it as a mindless beast, yet before its overwhelming power and pure instinct, intelligence itself became a trivial factor. A foe that would never accept surrender. Crushing terror and the raw fear of death flooded in.
From the start… I… I was never going to win against this… I should have run…
But the realization came far too late.
Shunk!
Terepion’s upper body was skewered clean through by Liard.
The knights around him panicked and fled, but the monster began picking them off one by one as if sitting down to a meal, then carved the rest apart with its blades.
A single monster that had emerged from a mutant Red Gate. That one creature butchered thirty-four of the thirty-five knights.
“Sssssssss!”
It screeched toward the sky as if sending some kind of signal. Before long—ironically—the only living thing left on the field was Terepion, the first one whose torso had been punched through by the mutant. Every knight was dead. And even left alone, survival instinct overrode any thought of avenging his comrades.
Bleeding from every part of his body, Terepion still clung to the faintest hope of living. He dropped his sword and surrendered.
“S-spare me… ghhh…”
In a body that could barely form the words of a plea, he coughed up a massive mouthful of blood. Begging for one’s life was the filthiest act a knight could commit. Begging a monster that wasn’t even human was the ultimate humiliation.
Even so, Terepion smashed his head into the dirt and screamed,
“I surrender… I’ll surrender, just spare my life…!”
“Sssssss!”
Liard flashed right up to Terepion’s face. Tears welled in the man’s eyes. One swing of that arm-blade and his head would fly.
The mantis-type mutant monster Liard looked down at him as if amused, let out a bone-chilling laugh-like sound, then spread its wings and soared into the sky.
Barely alive, Terepion clutched his abdomen and collapsed to the ground in agony.
“It… understood me and toyed with me… A monster… understood speech…?”
The creature’s attitude was far too alien to dismiss as coincidence. The look in its eyes, the way it acted—like it was mercifully sparing a crawling insect—could not be written off as chance.
“This is bad…”
He had believed that because they were mindless, stupid monsters, no matter how strong they were, he could eventually find a way to win. That had been pure delusion. Mutant monsters clearly possessed intelligence—enough intelligence to understand human speech and toy with a life.
“Dam…n it…”
Pushing the shame aside, Terepion dug his fingers into the earth and began dragging his body, inch by inch, toward the Imperial Palace.
I have to get word through no matter what. Leos… that man is the only one who…
Every mutant species that had ever appeared in the Empire had been handled by Leos alone. Back then, because he was a man of unknown origin, even watching him kill massive monsters hadn’t left much of an impression. People had simply thought of him as someone who took care of troublesome work. Not anymore.
The reason Leos had soloed the mutant monsters of Red Gates was because he alone knew he was the only one who could kill them.
I… the entire Empire has been making a catastrophic misjudgment until now.
People had a tendency to belittle and underrate anything they had never experienced themselves. Not just the Empire—Terepion himself had watched Leos slaughter mutants so easily that he assumed any properly trained knight could do the same. Meeting a mutant in person had shattered that assumption.
Knights, armies, any artifact—none of it meant anything. They needed Leos. The monster who had single-handedly smashed hundreds of Red Gates. That man surely possessed some trait, ability, or information that let him fight mutants.
He had to tell His Majesty the Emperor. To prevent the Empire’s destruction, Leos was absolutely necessary.
“Keep up. If the monsters spot us for no reason, it’ll just get annoying.”
“Yes! I’ll stick as close as I can!”
I had stuffed every last piece of the ridiculous load Herisia had been hauling into my inventory. Lightened of her burdens, she loosened up and talked as she moved.
“So do we just break through where the monsters are now?”
“Don’t be insane. We’re going around.”
“Huh?”
Herisia gave me a puzzled look. I explained briefly.
“If we can avoid meeting monsters at all, that’s always best. Mutant types especially—each one has enough overwhelming force to wipe out dozens of knights. If we’re unlucky enough to run into two or three at once, even I would have a hard time fighting while protecting you.”
“If fighting while protecting me is hard… does that mean when you’re alone you can kill two or three of those mutant things?”
“I can. I’ve done it a few times before.”
Whenever a Red Gate produced mutants, I had gone on the subjugation alone. The reason was simple: other people only got in the way. Mutants were hypersensitive creatures. Clearing them allowed zero margin for error. So when it came to hunting mutants specifically, companions were nothing but baggage.
Of course, that’s only when there are two or three. One is never a problem.
I pulled daggers and other weapons from my inventory and tucked them into my clothes. Leaving them in the inventory was fine for later use, but drawing something out and waiting for it to fully materialize created a short delay. Hiding weapons all over my body let me deploy them instantly in the middle of a fight—far more efficient.
In combat where a split second decided victory or death, relying blindly on the inventory was a shortcut to the grave.
After walking for quite a while, Herisia spoke up.
“Leos-nim, I checked the location you mentioned with the Distance. Bendict-nim seems to be in that cave over there. But… there’s a problem…”
I turned my gaze to where she was looking. The cave where Bendict was supposedly holed up—blocked by a massive monster.
“It looks well over three meters… How about waiting until that monster leaves and going in later?”
I ignored her and walked forward at a steady pace.
“I’ll kill it. Wait here.”
I scanned the target. A mantis-type mutant. Name: Liard. I couldn’t not know it. I was the one who had first subjugated the thing and given it that name.
Blood on the blades.
The scythe-arms of the mantis-type monster Liard were caked with what looked like human blood. Uneasy, I checked my Distance, half-afraid that idiot Bendict might have already gotten himself killed and turned into dinner.
“Leos-nim! It’s dangerous! Even you can’t just go kill a monster like that alone…!”
“Quiet. It’ll be over in a moment.”
I broke into a run straight at Liard. Its gaze snapped toward me in an instant.
“Shiiiiisss!”
It let out a grotesque cry and sprayed its bodily fluids. I didn’t dodge. I kept running.
Sizzle—
The fluid hit my body and began to melt flesh, but that level of pain meant nothing. If I had tried to avoid it, the creature would have used its ridiculous reach to tear me apart at leisure.
When I closed in without flinching from the acid, it seemed flustered and raised a scythe-arm to strike.
Whoosh!
The hardness of that blade was comparable to steel—blocking it would have been stupid. I slipped inside its guard, twisted my body, kicked off the ground, and moved straight to its abdomen.
Shunk…
I struck the single weak point on Liard’s body. It shrieked and tried to launch into the sky. I immediately fired a long-range intercept artifact into the base of its wing joint.
Psssh-sh-shak!
Mana rounds punched precisely into the wing roots. The creature lost balance and crashed to the earth.
Boom!
It hit the ground under the full force of gravity and its own weight, reeling from the impact. With an expressionless face I looked down at Liard crawling on the dirt and raised a dagger.
“Low-grade even among mutants. Pathetically weak.”