Ambush (2)
The morning sun was warm, and even the cold wind had, unusually, gone still — by winter's standards, a genuinely mild day.
Dew glittered like jewels in that sunlight atop the blades of grass—
"Female! Flee with the young—!"
The roar shattered them, scattering dewdrops that burst apart as they fell.
The Lizardmen each took up their weapons.
While the males charged forward with their well-maintained arms, the females clutched their children tight and ran for the shelter built into the hills at the back of Lizard Den.
The ambush that had begun that morning announced itself with Mermaidon surging in without a moment's breath to spare.
The Mermaidon, tridents clenched in their fists, shattered any notion that they were creatures bound to the water — clumsily, but on two legs all the same, they sprinted across the ground and descended upon Lizard Den.
Lizard Den had only one entrance.
More precisely, one entrance connected to the outside — and the route the Mermaidon were attacking now was, of all things, the path leading to the sanctuary.
Under ordinary circumstances, deploying a barrier at the entrance would have been enough to repel a raid, but an assault on the sanctuary itself was something no one had ever planned for.
As it happened, Yona, out on her morning stroll, had been caught up in the middle of it all.
She had only laid eyes on a monster called a Mermaidon for the first time yesterday, but a monster was a monster either way, and her role in all this didn't change. That realization let her collect herself quickly.
"Y-you'll be helping again, won't you!?"
"...Ah, yes."
Yona nodded.
She had no idea who this was, but figured he was probably one of the Lizardmen she'd treated yesterday. She gave a nod, then glanced around.
If the village was in this much of an uproar, Alec was bound to have noticed. Surely he'd be heading this way — and sure enough, there in the distance was a head gleaming conspicuously among the crowd.
"Alec! Over here, over heeere! Aleeeeec!!"
Yona thrust her hand up in the air and waved it wildly.
Alec spotted her, cutting his way through the throng of Lizardmen until he reached her side.
"Yona, what are you doing here?"
"What do you mean, what — we're under attack. You saw it too, didn't you?"
As if he'd said something obvious, Yona fired the question right back at him.
Alec silently nodded at that, then turned his back to her.
"First things first, let's find Kayak. That seems more urgent."
Yona rested her hand naturally on Alec's shoulder.
It had been a truly long time since she'd felt that.
Alec's shoulder, exactly the right height for her hand.
Her heart settled into calm.
Letting herself sink into that inexplicable peace, Yona matched his stride, and together they set off to find Kayak.
As the two of them searched for Kayak, the Lizardmen on the front line — the first to meet the Mermaidon — were standing their ground, fighting valiantly.
Each Mermaidon was bigger than a Lizardman, and with their tridents — forks, essentially — raised high, they shrieked and pressed the assault. But the Lizardmen did not yield an inch.
Their bodies, packed solid with muscle to match their frames, overflowed with a warrior's dignity, and the explosive speed bursting from those muscles — and the raw strength backing it — made them difficult opponents even for a Mermaidon.
Crang!
A trident came slashing down and collided head-on with a Lizardman's spear.
Sparks scattered with a sharp metallic shriek, and the Lizardman's spear, twisting cleverly against the impact, was more than enough to deflect the trident off to the side.
Another Lizardman seized the instant the Mermaidon's stance crumbled, lunging his spear forward and skewering it through the neck.
Dark blood ran down as the Mermaidon staggered, trident slipping from its grip — and a Lizardman didn't miss that opening either, charging in once more to seize its throat in one hand.
"Die, you wretch—!"
With that roar, a Lizardman began sawing through the Mermaidon's head with a hunting saw.
With its throat already pierced, the Mermaidon couldn't even manage a scream. It thrashed, desperate to shake off the Lizardman hacking at its neck like a rotten log, but its strength had long since drained away, and its hands only flailed uselessly — until at last the head came free, and the body toppled where it stood like felled timber.
The Lizardmen were fighting in groups of three or four against each Mermaidon.
Physically, the Mermaidon had the advantage, but they were relatively simple creatures, with nothing you could call strategy.
What was more, the Mermaidon — water-dwellers — had somehow sprouted legs, which was how this ambush had become possible in the first place. But there was no way the feel of moving on those legs could match the feel of moving through water, and so their movements lacked the fluidity they would have had in their element.
"Hold the line! They're nothing!"
Kayak roared, spear raised high.
Watching him, Yona and Alec felt oddly sheepish — almost embarrassed at having sprinted over in such a state of alarm.
"...So Kayak wasn't strong for no reason."
"Lizardmen are a naturally powerful race. But yeah, he really is something."
While the two of them traded remarks, the number of Mermaidon — more than twenty — had plummeted in geometric fashion.
Rather than advancing from the direction of the sanctuary, they had been stopped dead by the Lizardmen's resistance, barely managing to push forward at all, let alone inflict any real damage.
"Looks like we won't even need to step in."
"Seems like it."
Only then did Yona take her hand off Alec's shoulder and stretch.
As she stretched long and slow, her taut muscles lengthened, and her joints gave a satisfying series of pops.
Gazing up at the sky like that, Yona suddenly noticed something strange.
"...Alec, do you see that?"
"Hm?"
The moment Alec looked where her finger pointed, the thing hanging in the sky grew larger and larger until it finally revealed its shape.
A size utterly beyond comparison with the Mermaidon the Lizardmen were currently fighting.
Six arms. Countless tails.
And—
Legs.
"The M-Mermaidon... it's..."
As Yona murmured, the thing falling from the sky finally—
BOOOM!
—slammed into the ground.
Announcing itself by crushing three or four Lizardmen flat in a single blow, it was none other than the very same Mermaidon the Lizardmen had faced in the sanctuary yesterday.
The reversal of fortune took only an instant.
It had appeared by flattening both its would-be subordinates — Mermaidon and Lizardmen alike — and it beat its chest with thunderous bangs, letting out a long, bellowing roar.
KURURURUUAARGH—!
At that roar, not only the Lizardmen but even Yona and Alec clapped their hands over their ears without thinking.
"Everyone, fall back!"
The first to recover his senses was Kayak.
At his shout, the Lizardmen near the beast finally scrambled to retreat — but in that instant, the fins along the Mermaidon's back flared open with a violent rustle.
POPPOPPOPPOP!
With an almost comical sound, something came bursting out of those fins, shooting into the air.
And the things that flew forth arced through the sky like arrows, raining down upon the Lizardmen nearby.
"GAAAAAHK!"
"Guek!"
"Ughh...!"
Only then did they understand.
Each one was a razor-sharp spike.
The spikes were as large as any greatbow's arrow, and they came gliding down, skewering Lizardmen where they stood.
And one more — a spike flying straight for Kayak — was buried quivering in the shield of Alec, who had sprinted to his side just in time.
"Alec!"
"Kayak, what the hell is that thing?!"
"No idea. A monster that came out of the sanctuary!"
"Son of a bitch..."
Leaving Alec's curse behind her, Yona ran toward the Lizardmen.
The wounded Lizardmen had formed a desperate line, turning to face the Mermaidon, while others were carrying the spike-transfixed wounded to the rear.
'This is...'
Black ichor was seeping out from the spikes in thick rivulets.
From the wounds where the spikes had been drawn out, too, what flowed was not red blood but black ichor — and no matter how much holy power Yona poured into them, the wounds refused to close.
'What on earth...'
Wounds that the Heavenly God's holy power could not heal.
She had never seen anything like it.
"Get down—!"
One of the Lizardmen shoved Yona with all his might.
And before she could tumble backward, the Lizardman who had pushed her out of harm's way was staring down at the webbed hand of his own kinsman piercing his throat, his eyes unable to comprehend what he was seeing — and then he slowly crumpled.
"What... what is... this..."
The Lizardmen who had been impaled by the spikes were slowly rising to their feet.
Black ichor dripped from their mouths. Their eyes had rolled back white, every trace of reason gone.
'Corruption...?'
The black ichor that had run from the Lizardmen's wounds.
And the same black ichor now dripping from that Lizardman's mouth.
The corrupted Lizardman advanced on the fallen Yona.
It raised its hand — and where blunt claws should have been, sharp talons had somehow grown, catching the morning sun in a glitter — and drove them down at her.
"Whoa—!"
Yona rolled desperately out of the way.
Bouncing up off the ground with the momentum of her roll, she sprang to her feet — and whatever else could be said of her, her veteran instincts as an adventurer meant she wasn't about to just lie there and take it. She drew the hunting knife strapped to her left thigh.
The standoff between Yona, hunting knife drawn in her left hand, and the Lizardman did not last long.
The moment the Lizardman shrieked and charged at her, someone slammed into it from the side.
"You insane bastard!"
Alec, barreling into it, smashed his shield straight into its jaw.
The instant it staggered off balance, he seized its throat, and before the Lizardman could even raise its talons, he hefted his hammer in the other hand and brought it crashing down on its skull, again and again.
"Yona, you alright?"
"Uh, uh... yeah."
She had drawn her hunting knife, but never gotten the chance to use it. Yona nodded and slid the knife back into its sheath.
"Something's wrong. Healing didn't work at all."
"No need to wonder why. I've got a rough read on the situation. That's not what matters right now — that is."
Where Alec pointed, a fierce battle was already raging at full pitch.
The Lizardmen led by Kayak were mounting a ferocious offensive against the Mermaidon.
Meanwhile, other Lizardmen hurled jars of oil at the beast, then came running with thick ropes soaked in it and flung those as well.
And the moment the ropes caught hold, they set them alight.
Fire spread wherever the oil had splattered, and the flames roared up ferociously in seconds — but for all that, they dealt the Mermaidon hardly any damage at all.
GRURURUAARGH!
The Mermaidon swung its six arms with startling dexterity, driving the Lizardmen back.
With every sweep, one or two more Lizardmen went flying with a scream, shattering somewhere out of sight.
Yona couldn't bear to watch, and turned her head away.
"What do we do?"
"We fight. What else is there to do?"
Compensation and rewards weren't the issue anymore.
That was for extermination quests — and right now, they were the ones under attack. Before anyone could talk about pay, the question was simply staying alive.
"Oil — is there none left?!"
At Kayak's bellow, the other Lizardmen shook their heads.
They had already poured out nearly everything they had in storage.
Mostly, the monsters' weakness was fire — yet even in the flames, the Mermaidon seemed utterly unbothered.
GRURUUAARGH!
As the Mermaidon slammed an arm down, one Lizardman rolled sideways out of its path.
But the moment he evaded it, the beast's tail came crashing down on him.
Where the tail struck, flesh and bloodspread alike spread across the ground.
The Lizardman who hadn't dodged in time crashed backward into the wall of his own home, caving it in.
Another, seized in one of the beast's gripping hands, thrashed and struggled to break free — but with a wet crunch, blood ran down in streams.
The Lizardman who hadn't escaped the spikes fell — then, moments later, vomited up black ichor and rose smoothly to its feet, turning to attack its own kin.
As the Lizardmen seemingly pressed into the Mermaidon's service joined the assault, even the advantage of numbers was about to flip.
An overwhelming gulf — one no individual strength could ever hope to cross — was bearing down on the Lizardmen from all sides.