The Village at the Foot of the Mountain (4)
"I keep telling you, no matter how I look at it, that's not the Sacred Tree."
The bear, it seemed, had started guzzling the sap the moment it arrived here before anyone else.
Its muzzle was a smeared mess of black sap, and scattered carelessly around lay the black-furred carcasses of other beasts — perhaps animals that had been drinking the sap before the bear got there and were swatted aside to claim it.
"Whether it's the Sacred Tree or not stopped mattering a while ago."
"Yeah, fair point."
Yona pulled her hand away from James's shoulder.
His arm was fully reattached now. The height difference between them meant she'd been holding her arm up the whole time, and as she stretched out the ache, Alec quietly began kneading her shoulders.
"So what are we supposed to do about that thing now?"
Kayak must have fought it hard before they arrived, because the bear had taken its fair share of wounds. But whether it had recovered by drinking the sap first, the bear now looked perfectly fine.
Worse than that—
"Its eyes look even more murderous than before."
The moment Alec spoke, the bear let out a roar and charged. Its sprint was aimed straight at Kayak, who threw himself sideways out of the path just before the bear could crash into him.
—Thwaaack.
A tearing, splitting crack rang out, like hide being ripped apart.
That was all it was, though.
"Its hide got tougher!"
Just as Kayak shouted, the bear emerged without so much as a scratch. Every swing of the axe that had once landed steady, wounding blows — the hallmark of a Silver Rank warrior — now seemed to do nothing at all.
"James, aim for its eyes or something!"
"Already on it!"
James had drawn back just far enough to track the bear's movements with the naked eye, five arrows nocked and waiting on his bowstring. Only one was properly drawn; the other four were held at the ready, clearly meant to cut his reload time down to the barest minimum.
"Isn't there some trick we can pull here?"
Alec pulled a round shield from the clip inside his own shield and handed it to Yona. As she took it and strapped it to her left arm, she swallowed hard.
"Hey, Alec. Want to try that thing again, like before?"
"No."
Alec shook his head.
Meanwhile, the bear seemed to have identified Kayak as its greatest threat and was raining attacks down on him — hardly the moment for Alec to step in.
"Why not?"
"You're planning to jam your holy power into it directly again, like with the goat-headed bastard, aren't you?"
"...Maybe."
Alec shook his head even harder.
"We're out of spare Holy Shrouds. And that bear's build is way smaller than the goat-head's. It'd only take a few swipes of its forepaw to peel you off. Besides, while it's thrashing around like this, the risk of—"
"Alec! Cover me!"
At Kayak's shout, Alec cut himself off mid-sentence and broke into a run. Yona ran after him.
Alec dove in and deflected the forepaw swinging down at Kayak, knocking it aside at an angle. With a bang, the paw was flung upward, and it skimmed just barely past Yona's face — she recoiled with a yelp and stumbled back a step.
"You son of a—!"
Kayak bared his teeth, dropped low, and drove in. His target was the legs. Cripple the legs, and he could bring the thing down one way or another.
His axe, swung with every ounce of strength he had, buried itself around the bear's knee with a dull thud.
—Graaaaaagh!
"Nice!"
With James's shout, an arrow flew in and struck the ridge of the bear's brow — only to bounce off without penetrating.
"James, you bastard! You retired from adventuring and stopped maintaining your gear, didn't you!"
"Too busy maintaining my wife!"
James fired back at Kayak's snarl, then melted away into the shade of the trees once more. In response, the bear flew into an even wilder frenzy, swinging its forepaws wildly in every direction and stomping the ground again and again, sending tremors rippling outward.
"Wh—whoa...!"
The shaking threw Yona off balance. She misstepped and staggered.
Alec was standing in front of her, but her stumbling opened up a gap between them.
—Uwooooooh!
The bear shrieked and swung a forepaw. The instant Alec batted it away, the bear — as if it had been waiting for exactly that — slashed its other forepaw across Alec's side.
"Kgh—!"
Alec hurriedly raised his shield, but he couldn't fully deflect or push the blow aside, taking the full force of it. It was an impact no mere human — not a demi-human like Kayak or James — could have withstood, and Alec was flung backward several paces.
"N-no..."
Reflected in Yona's eyes was the bear, its forepaw raised high overhead. The moment that paw came crashing down, she would be flattened into a lump of meat.
"You slow piece of—!"
The instant Kayak's roar reached her from behind, Yona flung herself out of the way.
If there was an enemy she could kill for certain, that was where her attention needed to go. That was the judgment Yona made at the exact moment her foot slipped and her balance broke.
And on the other side stood Kayak.
The instant Yona dove clear, Kayak's axe came crashing down into the very center of the bear's skull. A perfect strike, exploiting an opening. However savage it was, the bear was nothing more than a mountain beast — it couldn't possibly withstand this crushing blow of Kayak's—
—Uwoooooooargh!
"What—!?"
Despite the axe biting deep into the back of its skull, the bear seemed utterly unaffected. Instead, it whipped around the moment the blow landed and slammed into Kayak full-force.
"Gyaaaagh!"
Kayak let out a hideous scream as he was launched into the brush on the far side and slammed into the ground.
"Kayak!"
Yona screamed and sprinted toward him.
"Alec, cover us!"
"On it!"
Shield raised, Alec ran at her side, his eyes never leaving the savagely howling bear.
The sight of Kayak crumpled in the bushes stopped Yona's breath. The long gashes raked across his flank were no shallow wound. Three parallel claw-marks, and blood was pouring freely from them. Without a moment's hesitation, Yona pressed her hands straight onto the wounds.
"Y-Yona...!"
"Shut it, lizard! Alec's got our backs, so you're fine!"
Even now the lizardman was snickering, and Yona smacked his snout with her palm, grimacing.
"Quiet, you damn lizard."
Alec planted his feet in front of them, standing guard over Yona and Kayak, shield braced upright. He hooked the hammer in his other hand onto the inside of the shield — he clearly meant not to budge from this spot.
—Fwoop!
Just then, an arrow came flying in, and this time it sank dead into the bear's eyeball. From the eye where a baleful red glow had been smoldering, blood now streamed out in place of that light.
"Kayak! Seems this guy's got no wife to keep him in fighting shape either!"
James had slipped close while the bear writhed in agony from the arrow lodged in its eye, and he called out as he looked down at Kayak where he lay.
"H-hilarious, you orc..."
"Cracking jokes means you're still hurting, I'd wager. Yona, how's Kayak looking?"
"He'll be fine!"
Only after confirming that the bleeding from Kayak's wounds had stopped and fresh skin was knitting over them did Yona stand and turn around.
Blood was streaming down from one of the bear's eyes.
"What... what is that thing doing?"
The bear was backing away unsteadily, watching them with its one remaining eye. Where it retreated stood the thing that had once been the Sacred Tree, its sap still gushing forth in overflowing torrents.
"Wait — isn't that stuff supposed to heal wounds!?"
As if to prove Alec's point, the bear kept its eyes fixed on them and began ravenously lapping up the sap. The arrow popped out of its bleeding eye and clattered to the ground. The bleeding stopped, and the baleful glow began to smolder once more.
"...Isn't that stuff basically a potion? Do we get stronger if we drink it too?"
"I'd rather not get stronger in ways that make me less human."
"Then we're safe enough. We're not human to begin with."
The jokes passed back and forth, but every one of them felt keenly aware that the situation was growing dire.
Either they had to stop the bear from drinking any more of that stuff, or else...
'...What do we do?'
The party's greatest asset right now was Kayak. But Kayak's strength was Silver Rank, and Yona figured the bear was at least that or higher.
'Should we run?'
"James."
James, who had been counting his remaining arrows, turned to look at her.
"If we run for it — what are our odds of making it?"
"None. We'd be picked apart one by one in the attempt, I'd say."
Flight was out of the question.
What now, then.
"Hold on — everyone, hold on."
Kayak raised a hand. He had seen it: the bear's baleful light dimming for an instant, then flaring red again. Then dimming, guttering as if about to go out — and flaring once more. And around its muzzle, bright-red froth was boiling up and slavering down.
"...That — maybe that's it."
When Kayak flashed a hand signal, James nodded and smoothly melted into the tree shade. Before long, an arrow came flying from somewhere and cracked against the bear's skull. It didn't penetrate, but it was more than enough to aggravate the beast.
"Alec!"
"Oraaah!"
Alec roared and charged.
"H-hey, wait, I'm coming too, you bald lunatic!"
Yona scrambled after him in a fluster. Keeping a bit of distance from them, Kayak broke into a run as well.
Hammer in hand, Alec hammered away relentlessly at the bear's knees and legs. Yona held back at a slight remove, keeping both Alec and Kayak in her field of vision, ready to react at any moment. Kayak did the same.
The party's main force, axe whirling, poured attack after attack into the bear.
—Bwa-waaaack!
The bloody froth dribbling from the bear's jaws grew hotter and thicker. Steam practically rising off it, the scalding froth ran down in rivulets as the bear swung its forepaws like a thing possessed, hurling itself at them.
"Just a little more — a little more!"
With Kayak's cry, another arrow flew in and burst the bear's remaining eye.
"No more arrows!"
"Good! Leave the rest to us!"
James shouted, Kayak answered, and his axe swung once more.
Shoving the forepaw aside with his shield, Alec shot Yona a quick sidelong glance. She was keeping a fair distance back — relatively safe, at least for now.
"You damn beheemoth!"
With Kayak's roar, his axe buried itself deep in the bear's knee. Unlike every strike before it, the blade sank in clean, and blood burst forth in a single moment.
—GraaAAAARGH!
With the bear's shriek of agony, Kayak threw up the retreat signal. Alec hastily fell back, and Yona rushed to check Alec over for wounds.
"Now let's see how this plays out."
Just as Kayak said, the bear was convulsing. The bloody froth at its jaws wasn't merely dribbling anymore — it was pouring out in streams, and of the eyes that had once burned with baleful light, the one that had burst showed no sign of regenerating.
"Wait — is that thing going to go drink more sap again?"
It was exactly as Alec said. The bear buried its muzzle into the trunk of what had been the Sacred Tree and gulped down the gushing sap without pause.
"No, hold on. Just wait."
Kayak raised a hand. And then, in an instant, the bear went still. The moment a vivid crimson seemed to spread over its black-furred hide—
—Squelch. Squelch...
With a horrifying sound, the hide and the flesh beneath it began to melt away. Skin and muscle turned to something like pulp, leaving nothing behind but black stains, dissolving into sap that merged with the torrents overflowing from the erstwhile Sacred Tree and spilled away together.
"...Well, I am a priestess, technically. Even if only half of one."
"Right."
"Tell Kayak and James to turn around. It's an arm I'd rather not show them."
At Yona's word, Alec told Kayak and James to turn their backs for a moment — and he turned away as well, not watching.
Only after confirming that Alec, Kayak, and James had all turned did Yona begin unwinding the Holy Shroud from her arm.
She had no idea what that sap really was, but it was certainly nothing good. Judging by the energy she could feel, it was demonic miasma beyond doubt — and for a living creature to gulp down that much of it, its body breaking down was entirely plausible.
It was a mindless beast, so it had acted without thought — but if this place were left as it was, and if some ill-intentioned human were to drink this sap and try to control it...
That, too, would be a massacre.
'It's not like I'm some paragon of justice or anything, but still...'
Yona unwound the Holy Shroud completely, folded it neatly, and tossed it to Alec. He caught it over his head, tucked it away carefully, and stowed it in his sling bag.
'Well — if I hadn't seen it, I could claim ignorance. But now that I have, there's no way around it, is there?'
The breeze brushed over her arm with its inky-black tattoo for the first time in a while, and a chill crept across it. Idly clenching and unclenching her fist, Yona approached the thing that had once been the Sacred Tree.
The sap was still overflowing even now — and, as if reacting to the holiness rising from Yona's right arm, it began to bend and flow in strange, twisting shapes.
"Back to the bottomless pit with you, O twisted and profane..."
Reciting a passage of the prayer, Yona pushed her right arm deep into the pit of sap.
Holiness blazed forth from her, spreading out into the black depths.