Crossed Paths, or Perhaps Not (3)
Clint Newman, a knight of No Man's Land, stood watching the scattered corpses of Hexapeds lying in heaps. At the center of the carnage, the one swinging his blade and spreading death like a plague was a knight from the Raven Knight Order—the very order Clint had once dismissed.
The Raven Knight Order knight pulled his sword free from the crown of a Hexaped's skull. With a wet shluck, blood poured out in thick streams. The wind carried the metallic stench of blood, spreading it wide. Riding that scent, the knight approached. Monster blood dripped from his blade onto the ground.
“Still only interested in talking?”
Was that mockery? No. It wasn’t. Clint Newman thought as he looked at Maxim. Before departing on this investigation, he had received a word from the Margrave. There was one knight among the Raven Knight Order who didn’t belong—keep an eye on him. Clint had immediately known who that referred to.
At first, he had planned to slowly provoke the man from the side and watch him self-destruct. Maybe the fool would lose his temper and charge. But Maxim never got angry. He didn’t even show the slightest flicker of emotion. He simply regarded Clint with eyes layered in indifference.
The curiosity Clint harbored soon twisted into irritation. Had this man, a knight, truly cast aside even his last shred of pride? While Clint had spent fifteen grueling years patrolling the frontier and fighting monsters until he was sick of it, had the capital truly been raising things like this and calling them knights?
And now, Clint was forced to completely retract every assumption he had made. The aura radiating from the knight named Maxim Apparte standing before him, that sword—after all his years serving in No Man's Land, Clint had no choice but to admit that the Margrave’s judgment had been wrong.
Former Vice Commander of the Raven Knight Order. Possesses unnatural skill despite his demotion. Observe closely. Do not underestimate.
Maxim sheathed his sword and gazed toward the slope where the swarm of Hexapeds had poured down from. Swinging his blade with unnecessarily excessive emotion had left a sour aftertaste. Clint and his troops were sifting through the pile of corpses, cross-referencing the Hexapeds’ movement patterns and usual characteristics in their heads. The mockery they had shown Maxim earlier was gone. They were now fully focused, as knights of No Man's Land, on finding clues about the abnormal phenomenon.
“Didn’t you say these incidents used to happen far more frequently?” Maxim asked Clint.
Clint rummaged through the bisected torso of a Hexaped without so much as flinching. “At least ten times a day. As many as twenty on bad days. They’d reach the walls that often.”
With a wet thud, the Hexaped’s lower half dropped to the ground. Clint narrowed his eyes and nudged the remains aside with his foot.
“Thanks to you slicing these bastards up so cleanly, it’s a lot easier to check for clues. I appreciate it.”
Maxim neatly ignored Clint’s subtle praise. “What can you learn by investigating them?”
Clint prodded a corpse with the sheathed tip of his sword. “The monsters that live in No Man's Land almost always carry wounds, big or small. They fight other monsters, get bitten, clawed, slashed—that sort of thing.”
He raised his blade and pointed beyond the hill. “What do you think the monsters living beneath the cliff at the edge over there eat? In that demonic wasteland where not a single bug or patch of moss grows?”
Maxim watched Clint, whose brow was deeply furrowed. “The only way they survive is by eating each other. They tear into another monster’s flesh and greedily drink its blood. No matter how powerful a monster is, there are no exceptions. These creatures have had the natural instinct to avoid fighting stronger opponents completely stripped away. If they can’t rip apart the flesh dangling in front of them, they’ll die anyway.”
But then Clint flipped the Hexaped carcass over with a sharp motion. “These ones have clean bodies. No matter how young or small they are, it’s rare to see monsters this pristine this far into No Man's Land. And on top of that…”
Clint stabbed repeatedly into the Hexaped’s belly. Thick hide compressed, and blood gushed from the cut surfaces.
“These bastards are practically starving. That’s why they charged so ferociously without a second thought. In short, there was nothing left for them to eat. If things had gone on a little longer, they would’ve started devouring each other.”
“So what’s the conclusion?” Maxim asked.
Clint scratched his head awkwardly, then pointed at the hill again. “Something is definitely happening beneath the cliff at the edge. I don’t think the monster population has decreased, but… we’ll probably need to get closer to the cliff to know for sure.”
Maxim mentally retraced the Hexapeds’ path of movement. “Do they normally travel in packs like this? I’ve never encountered a Hexaped before.”
At Maxim’s words, Clint’s mouth fell open stupidly, as if he had lost the ability to speak. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No… you’ve never faced one before, yet you slaughtered an entire horde of them this easily? And without even using an Aura Blade?”
Maxim shrugged indifferently. “So what?”
“…Never mind. It’s nothing.”
Clint shook his head slowly. He had once again realized just how wrong his judgment of Maxim had been.
“Right, we were talking about Hexapeds… Honestly, trying to discuss the ecology of monsters in No Man's Land is pointless. Their behavior is so different it’s like someone deliberately twisted it.”
“What about in other regions?” Maxim asked.
Clint scratched his chin as he answered. “These things don’t normally live in groups. They’re most commonly found in the sea of trees. As far as I know, they hunt and live alone. They only gather with their own kind during breeding season.”
Maxim frowned. “Either way, there’s no point in staring at these corpses here any longer.”
“Agreed. We should head for the cliff first.”
Following Clint’s lead, Maxim’s group set off toward the cliff at the edge.
==
“It’s been a long time since I’ve gone directly to the cliff at the edge.”
One of the knights following behind Theodora spoke up. Theodora was looking down at the corpse of the basilisk she had just slain. The monsters had burst out as if to greet the investigation team while they worked. Theodora had taken the lead, cutting down the sporadically appearing monsters.
They felt distinctly different from the monsters she had faced in the north. The creatures inhabiting the mountainous region of Kips in the north were ferocious. Adapted to the harsh, cold northern environment, they required considerable effort even for regular knights to handle.
The monsters of No Man's Land were not as individually strong as those in Kips. But the ones they faced here were insane. There wasn’t a single trace of reason or consciousness in their eyes. That was what made fighting them so difficult.
They lacked the instinctive aversion to pain and fear of bodily harm that any living creature should possess. Even though severed limbs wouldn’t grow back like a lizard’s tail, they didn’t hesitate to sacrifice them if it meant they could escape.
“The monsters here are quite different from the ones we faced in the north, aren’t they?”
Theodora flicked her sword to shake off the clinging blood. “They certainly are. I suppose you could call them mindless.”
“They have no fear.”
It was exactly as the knight said. Among the monsters of Kips, some would sense Theodora’s presence and flee. But here, there were none like that. Still, simply labeling their behavior as fearless felt insufficient.
Theodora frowned as she looked at the basilisk’s severed head rolling across the ground. “It seems a little different from simply lacking fear.”
“Pardon?” the knight asked.
“They looked far too desperate to say they simply had no fear. It was as if they couldn’t afford to care about anything else…”
Theodora turned her gaze toward the cliff. The trail left by the crawling basilisk stretched across the ground like a scar.
“…It looked like they were running from something.”
The knight listening to Theodora let out a small, disbelieving chuckle. “Come now, Sir Theodora. That can’t be. Do you have any idea how starved for life these monsters are, how thoroughly they’ve lost all sense of fear? This is No Man's Land, where even a lowly devil bat will charge a fenrir to tear off a piece of its flesh.”
The knight declared with confidence that such a thing was impossible. His tone carried the self-assurance of someone who had served in this barren land for a long time. But Theodora did not take his words—meant to reassure her and the investigation team—at face value.
“We can make that judgment after we finish investigating the cliff at the edge. After all, you said this abnormal phenomenon is unprecedented.”
The knight let out a low groan at Theodora’s words, then nodded. “Understood. We’ll head straight for the cliff at the edge.”
And it was only when they reached the cliff that Theodora finally understood why it was called the cliff at the edge.
“This place…”
Theodora stared at the severed earth. The ash-gray plain vanished, forming a false horizon. Beyond where the land should have continued, there was only sky. It looked like someone had accidentally spilled blue paint over a painting of a world-ending wasteland.
The knights of the Raven Knight Order who were seeing the place where sky and earth seemed to split for the first time let out gasps of both awe and dismay.
“This is the cliff at the edge,” the knight beside Theodora said in a tense voice.
Theodora’s expression hardened at the eerie demonic energy she could feel directly on her skin. “Monsters are constantly appearing and disappearing beyond that point.”
She walked to the very edge of the cliff. “It’s dangerous. Please don’t get too close,” the knight said, following behind her.
Where the land had been cut off. Theodora lowered her head, following the ceaseless roars of the monsters that still echoed upward. There were so many of them. Below the cliff, monster corpses were piled up like a dam. Monsters trying to devour those corpses, monsters trying to hunt those monsters, and monsters desperately struggling just to climb the cliff.
“There used to be far more than this. Fifteen years ago, the slope formed by piled monster corpses would let new ones climb right up,” the knight explained beside her.
“…But looking down at this cliff now, I think I finally understand what you meant, Sir Theodora.”
The cliff was being carved away. The monsters were driving their teeth and claws into the wall, trying to crawl upward. The sight looked almost desperate.
“It’s a good thing we came to check the cliff at the edge. We nearly missed this.”
The monsters the knight saw with his own eyes clearly seemed to possess fear. But of what? Just what could have driven these monsters to such terror?
The knight clenched his fist at the question that rose in his mind. The silence of No Man's Land dug sharply into their thoughts.
==
“Goddamn it.”
That was the curse Maxim spat out. Clint, who heard it beside him, frowned. “Your language is rather crude.”
“Seems like a good time to be crude.”
A countless number of monsters had surrounded Maxim and Clint’s group while they were investigating the cliff at the edge. Behind the cliff, new monsters were crawling up, while ahead, those that had successfully scaled it were threatening Maxim and Clint’s party.
Maxim drew his sword and let out a sigh. “I thought you said not many get past the fortress these days.”
“That’s true, but it’s not like it never happens.”
Clint drew his own blade in response. Any doubts about Maxim’s skill had vanished. But could he maintain that level in a situation like this? As his contempt faded, other suspicions began to creep in.
“Take the front,” Clint said.
At the same time, he faced the monsters that had laboriously climbed the cliff. Maxim adjusted his grip on his sword and let out a deep sigh that seemed to empty his lungs. If I get noticeably hurt, I’ll never hear the end of it. He thought.