Omens (4)
Roberto’s question had come a few nights earlier, during a night camp in the No Man’s Land.
Maxim, Roberto, and Paola were spending their brief rest as they always did—chatting among the three of them. When Paola shot Roberto a look that clearly asked why he would bring up such a topic, Roberto simply shrugged.
“Isn’t he the enemy we’ll be fighting soon anyway?”
Paola sighed and tossed a loose pebble into the campfire. “It was fifteen years ago. My memory might not be accurate.”
“You’ve been telling us stories just fine until now. Are you really going to back out now and claim you don’t remember?” Roberto teased.
Paola looked less irritated than troubled. Maxim tilted his head, equally puzzled.
“Roberto’s right. Since we’ll end up fighting it anyway… wouldn’t it be better to know at least a little beforehand?”
Paola picked up another pebble from the ground and hurled it into the flames. Maxim and Roberto watched the series of actions in silence; they looked like a child’s idle game, yet also carried the weight of some private ritual.
Paola narrowed his eyes at the flickering fire.
“Because it’s the enemy we’ll soon face, I’m reluctant to speak of it.”
“What do you mean by that?” Roberto asked.
Paola scratched his head awkwardly. “If I tell you the truth, you probably won’t believe me. But if I speak plainly without exaggeration, I’m afraid you’ll underestimate the Behemoth.”
“Underestimate?” Roberto pressed.
“Exactly. It’s not an existence that can be taken lightly.”
“We get it, old man. Just tell us already.”
Paola grumbled that he never should have mentioned encountering the Behemoth fifteen years ago. “You just don’t want to remember it, do you?”
“…To be honest, that’s part of it.”
Paola admitted it more readily than expected. The moment he did, Roberto shut his mouth. Everyone knew that beneath the talkative old knight’s usual demeanor lay the heart of a battle-hardened veteran who feared nothing.
In the suddenly heavy atmosphere, Paola finally spoke.
“What do you two know about the Behemoth?”
Maxim and Roberto exchanged glances, then frowned in thought.
“I know it’s a legendary monster… that’s about it,” Roberto said with a shrug. “In the old myths, they call it the progenitor of all monsters. I don’t know how true that is. Even if it isn’t the parent of every monster, it must at least be an incredibly ancient one.”
Paola nodded quietly.
“I used to think it was just a creature from fairy tales. But once I actually went to the No Man’s Land, everyone there feared the Behemoth’s existence.” Maxim added.
Paola gave a small smile. “Well… no matter what you imagine, the Behemoth exists far beyond it.”
He gestured with his hands as if words alone could not suffice. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if I should call it a monster. The first time it revealed itself beyond the horizon of the wasteland, several soldiers froze in terror and stumbled backward. They had only seen its silhouette, yet veteran soldiers and knights who had fought monsters for days and nights trembled in pure fear.”
Roberto shook his head, unable to understand. “Isn’t it natural to be afraid when a powerful monster appears? Especially if it’s a creature from myth…”
“You wouldn’t say that if you had seen the people gathered there at the time.” Paola clicked his tongue in regret. “What did the Behemoth look like?” Maxim asked.
“…I’ve seen countless monsters in my life, but I had never seen anything like it. If the word ‘beast’ were to take concrete form and descend upon the world, I imagine it would look something like that.”
Though he had only witnessed it twice, the Behemoth’s appearance had been seared into Paola’s memory as an indelible nightmare. Standing tall behind an army of countless monsters like a king of the wasteland, it had been a hazy, oppressive dream.
“It resembled no other monster. I thought it looked less like a living thing and more like a mountain of rock. Its entire body jutted out sharply as if wrapped in obsidian, and every time it moved, the ground shook slightly.”
When Paola saw that the two young knights listening so attentively still wore completely lost expressions, he let out a short sigh. I knew it would be like this.
“Well, I only saw it twice myself.”
“Was there a battle?”
At the question, Paola’s face darkened. Maxim wondered if he had asked something he shouldn’t have, but Paola continued in a calm tone.
“Of the knights who participated fifteen years ago… eighty percent of the casualties occurred in that single battle against the Behemoth.”
Paola tossed another pebble into the fire.
“I was lucky enough to survive the first time. I’m not sure I could manage it a second.”
The commander continued racing back and forth along the ramparts, encouraging the soldiers or cutting down monsters that tried to scale the walls, issuing orders without pause. Less than thirty minutes after the battle began, the top of the wall was already soaked with the blood of both monsters and men.
The aerial assault today was especially fierce. Far more monsters were crossing the ramparts than usual. The commander prayed desperately that today was an anomaly—that tomorrow the tide of monsters would finally ebb.
Boiling oil from the cauldrons poured down onto the monsters’ faces. Several creatures that had clung to the wall writhed in agony before tumbling back down. Those that stubbornly ignored the pain and continued climbing slipped on the slick stone and met the same fate as those who had fallen before them.
“Pour it! Even without my order, keep pouring as soon as it’s ready! Don’t let any more climb up!”
The commander slammed the empty cauldron with his scabbard and shouted. Soldiers scrambled to grab the pots and run.
“Huh?”
“No…!”
A pitch-black shadow surged over the rampart. The leaping monster was falling straight toward the soldiers carrying the cauldron. The commander recognized the shadow cast over his head instantly and twisted his face in horror.
“Goddamn it—!”
It was too late. The wolf-like monster bared its fangs in what looked like a hideous grin. At the tips of its spread paws, obsidian claws gleamed sharply. If that thing began slaughtering soldiers atop the wall, the entire defense would collapse in moments.
The commander roared and hurled his sword to buy even a second’s delay, but the throw missed pathetically. A massive arm like a guillotine slammed down toward the soldiers.
In that instant, the commander squeezed his eyes shut.
It’s over.
He felt his heart drop to the floor.
Schunk.
The sound of a blade slicing through flesh rang out.
When the commander opened his eyes, teeth clenched, the wolf monster was rolling across the ground with its head severed. Even though its head had been cut off and its body had fallen onto the rampart, the torso continued to twitch its limbs as if it hadn’t yet realized it was dead.
“Sir Knight!”
“You saved us!”
The commander stared in a daze at the pale-faced, golden-eyed knight holding the wolf monster’s severed head.
“Th… thank you…”
“Return to command. The situation is urgent.” Maxim replied in a cold voice.
Flustered, the commander searched for his sword, but he had already thrown it at the wolf monster long ago. He looked ashamed to have shown such a disgraceful sight to Maxim—the knight he had once dismissed as nothing more than a rumor of a washed-up failure. Yet Maxim himself seemed not to remember any of that; he kindly picked up the sword lying carelessly on the ground and placed it back in the commander’s hand.
“Give the soldiers their orders.”
At Maxim’s words, the commander could only bow his head without answering. He watched Maxim turn and walk away for a moment, then raised his sword high once more.
“Carry the cauldrons again! Even in that short pause, the monsters are still climbing!”
The soldiers resumed hauling the pots at his shout. Maxim, who had been watching the scene, let out a sigh of relief. That section should hold for a while.
The wolf monster had clearly targeted the soldiers carrying the cauldrons when it leaped. Maxim had thought their only purpose and instinct was simply to cross the wall, but more and more monsters were beginning to display intelligence and coordinated behavior.
“The cause…”
Maxim looked beyond the ramparts. Countless monsters filled the endless wasteland, and beyond them the sunset burned a deep, bloody red as it sank. The changes in the monsters were likely a sign that the Behemoth was drawing near.
Maxim gripped his sword hilt tightly and sliced open the belly of a monster that had just climbed the wall, spilling its entrails. At that moment, he heard Paola’s voice calling as he ran toward him.
“Maxim! Damn it, you fool. Don’t stray too far.”
Paola shouted while swinging his mace.
“You know it couldn’t be helped.”
When Maxim looked at him with clear displeasure, Paola sighed.
“It’s the vice-commander’s order, you know that. It’s not that I want to keep you on a leash. And besides,” Paola narrowed his eyes as he studied Maxim, “you look exhausted at a glance. You’re forcing yourself to stand there with a sword, aren’t you? Your eyes are unfocused and there’s no strength in your legs.”
Maxim shook his head at Paola. In order to close in on the werewolves, he had unintentionally used a bit of mana. He pretended not to feel the burning pain from his scars.
“I’m fine. It’s just accumulated fatigue.”
Paola let out a dry laugh. “Lately that ‘simple fatigue’ seems to pile up quite often, Maxim. You showed the same signs during the last training session too.”
Unable to reply, Maxim cut down another monster that leaped above his head. Paola shook his head as he watched Maxim’s precarious, staggering movements.
“I’ve always had far too many soldiers and subordinates around me who push themselves like that.”
Paola lightly swung his mace and crushed the head of a monster leaping toward Maxim.
“I kept asking them if they had a death wish, why they threw their lives away like old rags. Do you know what happened to all of them?”
Paola swung his mace again, killing another monster. Blood and guts splattered, releasing a sickening fishy stench.
“Most of them really did die exactly as I warned—just not while I was there to watch.”
Somehow, Paola sounded almost angry.
“I know you’re skilled, but I’d rather you didn’t end up like them, Maxim. If you really want to push yourself, at least do it where I can see you.”
“Understood.”
“Roberto is annoyingly good at preserving his own life. Why don’t you learn a thing or two from him?”
Paola said this while slinging his mace over his shoulder. Though his tone was joking, the words did not sound like a joke at all.
Paola scanned the ramparts stretching left and right, then frowned.
“…Looks like the worst of the aerial assault has passed. For now, we should head back to the center and assist wherever help is needed.”
“Ah, Senior Paola… now that I think about it,”
“What is it?”
Maxim recalled the monsters that had begun acting with increasing intelligence.
“The monsters are…”
Thud.
The vibration rang out at that exact moment.
The wall trembled. It was not a violent shake, but a deep, heavy resonance. It felt like the most primal vibration rising from the deepest part of the earth. With a single pulse, the entire world fell into instant silence.
The instinctive terror carried by that vibration seized the minds of both monsters and humans alike. The monsters lowered their voices and whimpered, wary of their ruler. Humans, overwhelmed by an unidentifiable presence, turned their heads frantically in terror, searching for the source.
Maxim saw Paola’s face harden in an instant. Paola knew exactly what this vibration was—and what presence now filled the world.
“Goddamn it.”
The words fell from Paola’s lips. At the same time, a roar that seemed to proclaim the end of the world swallowed everything.