The Pack Joins the Hunt
—They're coming.
Gideon warned Logan once more. Logan had barely managed to steady himself again, but each breath was growing harder to draw than the last.
Innocent!
Bayul hastily called for Innocent and thought of water arrows. Quinn, being of the merfolk, could only command water that was already there — but Innocent was different. The water spirit was water itself.
—You're all dead!
In a heartbeat, Innocent conjured four water arrows and hurled them.
Ssshaaaang!
The sudden volley caught the masked men off guard, but when it came to agility, they were second to none. Each of them broke off his attack, dodging the incoming arrows or deflecting them with his blade.
Kkaang!
"What the...? Water?"
They had clearly felt the impact of striking something hard — had even heard the sound of it. Yet no arrow was anywhere to be seen, and only water glistened wetly on their daggers. The damp, clinging sensation stirred an oddly uneasy feeling.
"Tch, damn beastfolk brat, is it?"
The masked men shot Quinn a wary glance, but dealing with the enemy in front of them came first. Setting Quinn as their next target, they resumed their assault.
"Bayul!"
At that moment, Quinn — who had been fuming at having nothing to contribute — had a gleam flash across her eyes.
How had she never thought of this before? It was the first time she'd ever felt so hopelessly slow-witted. A wry smile bloomed on Quinn's face, her composure returning in full.
"Quinn...?"
Bayul turned to look at her, puzzled as to why she was calling his name in the middle of such a desperate scuffle.
"Water."
"...Huh?"
"Ask Innocent to dump a downpour on us."
That was the sort of thing one usually only saw when Innocent was playing pranks. Bayul didn't quite understand why she would want that now, but he didn't waste time asking.
—Boo, was that too weak?
Innocent, could you send some rain down on us?
—Huh? A downpour? Yay! A downpour it is!
Innocent, who had been grumbling, shot up into the air with a burst of excitement, shrieking with delight.
Shaaaaaa!
A considerable volume of water came pouring down from the sky.
"...!"
Contrary to expectation, however, the water did not fall upon the masked men. Instead, it hung suspended in midair, balling itself into a round sphere like a cloud.
This was Quinn's power at work. As Quinn flung both hands wide, the mass of water split into hundreds of droplets.
"How dare you lay hands on me and my friends."
Under Quinn's fury, the finely scattered droplets sharpened into needles of ice-cold menace, like hidden blades.
Ah, that's it!
Only then did Bayul grasp her intent. Quinn needed water, and Bayul could give it to her. The perfect combination.
"Go!"
At Quinn's single word, the droplets-turned-hidden-blades streaked toward the beleaguered Aidan.
"Grrr, old man! You're incredibly persistent, you know that?!"
"You squirrel-darting little brat!"
Aidan's wooden staff had long since been split in half. He was barely holding on, making up for a gaping gap in strength with lightning-quick movements. In a word, the boy was doing nothing but running, scraping by on sheer evasion.
"Whoa? What's that?"
Aidan pointed past the man with a startled expression.
"I'm not falling for that anymore!"
As if to say he'd tear Aidan apart the moment he caught him, the man didn't even glance back — only picked up speed.
"This time it's real!"
Aidan's eyes went as wide as lanterns. By some stroke of misfortune he'd drifted quite far from his friends, and as the object drew nearer, he began to make out what it was. Imagining the scene about to unfold, he couldn't help but grimace.
Whudududuk!
"Kraaaagh!"
Hundreds of water droplets crashed into the masked man's back. Small they may have been, but they were every bit as sharp as any blade. With a single scream, the man collapsed, shuddering as though he were being torn apart. Before anyone knew it, his back was drenched in dark red.
Innocent! Shame!
At that moment, Bayul assigned Innocent and Shame to Eli and Logan respectively.
—Boo, I don't like Eli!
Though her lips jutted out in a pout, a water spear was already taking shape above Innocent's head.
"D-don't kill them!"
It was her usual habit to shout that she'd kill someone whenever she got angry. Naturally, such a thing couldn't actually be allowed to happen — they needed to capture these men and find out who had set them on this rampage, and why.
—Tch, fine!
The water spear hurtling toward the masked man at blistering speed bent its trajectory ever so slightly at Bayul's words.
Thuk!
"Ughk!"
He had kept his senses razor-sharp against another possible volley of arrows, but it was useless. The water spear Innocent fired with full intent to redeem her earlier failure(?) was beyond all comparison with mere arrows.
The man let out a groan and rolled across the ground. Innocent's water spear had pierced clean through his calf and buried itself in the earth. Bright red blood welled up and spilled over — but the spear had already vanished without a trace.
Rrumble— Rrumble—
Tree roots burst up through the ground from deep below. A sprouting root whipped around and coiled itself around the ankle of one of the masked men pressing Logan.
"Wh-what the—!"
When his leg suddenly refused to move, the man ducked his head to look down. It was the opening Logan had been waiting for. He slashed Gideon across the man's sword-wielding wrist, then used the momentum to drive a spinning kick into him.
"Ugh!"
With his tendons severed, the man would find it difficult to hold a sword again. At last, Logan had the one-on-one fight he'd wanted.
"Shame, thank you."
Logan voiced his gratitude to Shame and turned his full attention to the remaining man.
"What in the world is this...!"
In the blink of an eye, the tide had turned completely. Three of their men were down. Loose-lipped though they might be, they had been capable fighters — veterans with plenty of scar tissue in this line of work.
And yet they were being pushed back by a mere handful of teenagers.
Did I make the mistake of underestimating them for being young?
The leader's gaze, cold and sunken, slid to Logan — who was fighting his underlings on even footing — and then to Quinn, who stood by with her arms crossed simply watching. It stopped there.
Those two were the problem. Prejudice about students had made him take them far too lightly.
He had expected some measure of resistance, given that a son of Count Seymour was among them, but this exceeded anything he had imagined.
The merfolk girl's command over water was nothing short of astonishing. Never in his wildest thoughts had he imagined she'd be slinging water arrows and spears in a place like this, where there wasn't a drop of water to be found for miles. Knowing nothing of spirits, the leader had chalked all of it up to Quinn alone.
It was his own glaring mistake, born of a botched investigation.
So it seems I'll have to step in myself.
Deal with the swordsman first, then handle the mermaid. Having made his decision in a flash, the leader brought thumb and forefinger to his lips and blew a long, piercing whistle.
"It seems I have need of your assistance."
Muttering those cryptic words, the leader walked briskly forward.
"Tsk tsk."
Until moments ago, this one had fought them evenly — and now he was barely managing to parry. There was no disgrace quite like it. Watching the man wheeze and struggle against a single boy, a surge of irritation rose up in him unbidden.
"Step aside."
As if they'd been waiting for the order, his underlings fell back.
Goooo—
Then the man deliberately, ostentatiously drew his mana up. There was not a shred of hesitation in him. Murderous intent exploding off his body, he swung his dagger straight at Logan's throat.
Kang!
It was a blow carrying considerable force, but Logan met it calmly, blocking the blade without a flicker of panic.
"Hah. Not bad at all."
In truth, it was not Logan's own skill but Gideon's ability at work — but the leader, unable to recognize an Ego Sword when he saw one, judged Logan to be far beyond his years.
Ah, the son of a martial house, as expected.
But even so, he was still no match for him. The man drove his knee up hard into Logan's lower abdomen.
Pak!
The speed and force were in a whole different league from anything before. Logan's body rocked and trembled from the impact.
"Kukukuku."
Raising his arm high, the man prepared to drive his dagger down into Logan's shoulder. That was when his friends moved.
"Shield!"
"Shame! Innocent!"
Eli wrapped Logan in shield magic, while Shame gathered up the stones around them and hurled them at the man. With the downpour Innocent lent her, Quinn formed another row of razor-sharp spears.
"Y-you brats!"
But he hadn't earned his position as leader for nothing. Spreading his mana evenly across his entire body, the man blocked every last attack. He'd picked up a few abrasions here and there, but he still had more than enough fight left in him. He threw himself at the children without mercy.
"...What is that?"
Just then, something strange caught Aidan's eye — he was, after all, the one farthest from the group. Something was approaching his friends. Half-hidden by the brush, the glimpsed shape of it looked, unmistakably, like a beast.
Wild dogs?
Aidan froze mid-stride, jolted by sudden shock as he ran toward his friends. His guess was half right, half wrong. The animals were indeed canines — but not wild dogs.
They were wolves. Five colossal wolves, monstrous in size, circled his friends like hunters closing in on prey.
"Wh-where did these things come from all of a sudden?!"
Flustered, his friends pressed back-to-back in a tight huddle. Bayul, naturally, and even Quinn and Logan showed signs of wavering. Only Eli scanned the situation with sharp, unblinking eyes.
"Grrrrr!"
"Grrr!"
Not one of the beasts was in its right mind. As if they'd gorged themselves on some euphoria-inducing grass, both eyes of every wolf burned blood-red, and foam boiled and bubbled from their jaws.
"Wh-what do I do?"
Aidan had been born with the gift of communing with animals — but he had never once tamed a wild beast. Aside from the livestock raised at home, the extent of his experience was with relatively docile creatures like Sebastiang and Ariane.
Granted, he was currently scraping by (somehow) as a work-scholarship student, but for a boy raised in a wealthy noble house like Aidan, encountering an enraged wild animal in his lifetime had always been a remote possibility at best.
"Hah, right on time."
The leader smirked, looking pleased. The wolves were creatures he himself had raised. That whistle from moments ago had been the signal summoning them.
"I'd meant to finish you all off first and then throw you to them as prey, but I've changed my mind."
They had dared to make a nuisance of themselves, so the price had to be paid in full.
"Tear every last one of them limb from limb!"
"Kraaaang!"
At their master's command, the wolves sprang into motion at once. Baring fangs sharper than awls, the five wolves hurled themselves at the children.
"N-no! Stop, stoooop!"