The Hand That Lurks on the Island (6)
The People of the Summit had taken up positions across the island wherever the sandy shore was clearly visible.
There were two targets. One was a ship vast and imposing as the great whales that sometimes surged up from the sea; the other was smaller, though still enormous in its own right.
Each of the Summit folk gripped a stone in either hand and another with their tail, waiting for Chester's signal.
And then, a moment later, Chester stepped boldly from the undergrowth and revealed himself on the shore.
Hup!
The People of the Summit began hurling their stones, putting to use the human throwing technique Chester had drilled into them in a crash course.
Unlike the Summit folk, who threw with overwhelming power from clumsy stances, this was a technique developed so that a weaker body could throw farther, faster, and harder.
And now that technique was being unleashed from the hands of monsters who already possessed the overwhelming physiques of the Summit people.
Its power was—
A sailor rinsing his mouth with seawater for a quick brush of his teeth saw them.
Four objects suddenly streaking toward them from the Floating Island.
"……?"
By the time he dimly registered that the objects were rocks, and began to wonder why rocks would be flying this way—
KRA-KOOM!!
A rock skimmed the deck with perfect precision, carving a long furrow of destruction straight across it and sweeping the tooth-brushing sailor away with it.
Another stone struck the rear mast dead center. The mast, built sturdy enough to weather the violent swells of a storm without snapping, broke clean through without mercy and crashed down.
The third stone hit the nearby sea. The instant it struck, a powerful shockwave sent a towering column of water skyward, rocking the ship hard.
The fourth stone slammed into the ship behind them. It punched through the midsection and smashed into the gunpowder stored inside. Crates shattered, powder spilled everywhere, and cannonballs went tumbling wildly until metal scraped against metal and sparks flew.
Those sparks touched the powder—
KABOOOOOM!!
—and a massive explosion erupted.
"What the hell?! What is this?!"
"Aaaargh!!"
The People of the Summit did not stop.
They shifted the stone in their other hand and threw it. They transferred the stone held in their tail and threw that too. Between throws, their tails snatched up fresh stones, pressed them into empty hands, then gripped new ones again. The stones in their hands were passed to the throwing hand and launched once more…
And they repeated it.
Throws lethal enough that a single hit was devastating — and with their tails serving as a third hand to pick up new stones without a gap, they kept going, over and over and over.
Decks struck by stones shattered to pieces, fragments flying in every direction. A sailor nearby was run clean through the gut by a massive shard.
Another sailor took a falling stone full-on and was reduced to a formless lump of meat, driven down through the ship along with the rock.
A snapped mast plunged straight down and speared through the hull. A sailor sprinting in a panic dropped through a hole torn in the deck and broke his neck.
"C-cannons! The cannons! Fire! Fire, damn you! Fire the cannons!"
Someone, without waiting for Rotin's orders, drove the crew to ready the guns — but before they could finish, the rain of stones obliterated the gun positions and sent the cannons plunging into the depths below.
Somehow they still managed to load and fire a few shots.
But they had no idea where the Summit people were throwing from.
Cannons fired without proper aim either buried themselves uselessly in the sand, smashed an innocent stretch of rocky ground, or destroyed the beach villa Chester and Monia had built.
"……!"
When the villa was blown apart, Chester's eyes went wide — then he turned back toward the sailors and ground his teeth.
How long had the Summit people been throwing? Three minutes? Four? Not long at all.
And yet already two ships lay before Chester's eyes, reduced to tattered wrecks with nothing left intact, waiting only to sink.
Terrifying.
It was frightening.
No loading time like a cannon. No risk of powder cooking off by accident. Accuracy? They were throwing with their own arms. The precision put aiming a cannon or catapult to shame.
Overwhelming in every respect.
By the time the enemy had barely managed a single cannon volley, their ships were already on the brink of going under.
I never expected it to be this one-sided.
Of course, the advantage of surprise had played a part.
From the receiving end, facing stones that flew in silence without the crack of exploding powder, it must have seemed as though their ships had simply started coming apart out of nowhere.
If they had been properly dug in — if they had been fighting from a fortress or behind castle walls instead of from ships — things might have been different.
But such hypotheticals were pointless.
All that remained before his eyes was the result: a one-sided slaughter.
The island kept moving. Unlike the island, which pressed steadily onward, the ships that could no longer advance began to sink by degrees.
Crates flung skyward by the force of the explosions crashed down onto the rocky flats, or rode the current in to land on the sandy beach.
Good.
He had no idea what was inside them, but every last one would become precious supplies. Chester prayed that as much material as possible would remain on the island — and then he looked at the two men who had swum ashore and climbed up onto the beach.
"Cough! Guh! Damn it! What the hell hit us?"
"I don't know. ……But I can tell who started the attack."
"Huh?"
Still coughing up seawater, Rotin spotted Chester standing alone on the beach.
"……."
The first time he saw him, Rotin did not recognize who it was.
The figure before him was simply too far removed from the "butler" he knew.
A brown-haired man with glowing blue tattoos, darkly tanned skin, and thick, solid muscle.
That was no butler. He looked far more like a warrior from some barbarian tribe.
"So you survived."
But when Urgo spoke those words, Rotin finally understood who stood before them.
"I have no idea how you healed those wounds."
Urgo drew his two-pronged sword as he spoke.
"Your build has changed, too… and what is that tattoo?"
"Don't worry about it. I don't really know myself."
As he answered, Chester drew the machete hanging at his hip.
Compared to the two-pronged sword in Urgo's hands it was small and slight — but the way the blade gleamed and vibrated fiercely made it plain that this was no ordinary weapon.
"True enough. How you survived isn't what matters. What matters is that you did."
"Right. But isn't there something more important than that?"
"This time, I will kill you."
"Hahaha. ……You never consider the possibility that you'll be the one who dies?"
"Your frame has grown larger and your muscle denser, it seems — but the gap in ability between you and me remains vast."
Urgo stated the truth calmly.
Even with the Grace of the Summit restoring his body to its optimal state and making him stronger, Chester's physical ability still fell short of Urgo's.
But there was a more fundamental difference than that.
"You are a hunter. If you had vanished from sight and tried to 'hunt' me, I would have died at your hands."
Even if Chester were weaker now than before, Urgo could never have beaten a Chester hunting him through the forest.
A hero was, at the end of the day, only a strong human being — never an invincible one.
There were those who shrugged off sword wounds only to die beneath a rain of arrows from a castle wall. Heroes who could face a hundred men alone, seduced by a woman and assassinated. Men who slipped in the bath at home, struck their heads on the floor at a bad angle, and died absurdly.
Dying to Chester hunting in the forest would have been an ordinary enough death.
But not in this situation.
Chester had stepped out onto a beach with nowhere to hide, exposing his body in the open.
"I am a warrior."
Urgo gave his two-pronged sword a light swing, and his body coiled with menace.
"If you face me head-on, even a warrior of lesser ability than mine could defeat you. That is a difference that cannot be changed, no matter what."
Warriors of the steppe trained their bodies and honed their techniques to fight the warriors of other tribes.
They were not hunters of beasts. They were professional killers, raised from the moment they took their first steps with the sole purpose of ending human lives.
The difference born of that. The way ability shifted depending on the battlefield.
Chester could kill Urgo in the forest. But if he had to meet him without preparation, he would simply be slaughtered.
"What preparations have you made?"
"I made some."
"What are they?"
"Guts and spite."
If the situation demanded it, he could force a ruined leg back into place, twist it until it worked, and move again.
Just think of it as facing a bigger, much stronger bear.
Chester grinned as he answered, and Urgo smiled back as though he liked what he heard.
Behind them, Rotin watched Chester with a dissatisfied look — but since Urgo had stepped forward first, he held his peace.
And then the two men swung their blades at each other.
Even after opening her eyes, Monia could not find her grip on reality for a long while. She rolled her gaze blankly around the room.
A house built of bamboo. The walls covered in all kinds of drawings. Everyday tools fashioned from materials easily gathered in nature. A bed of moss.
Staring at the familiar scene, Monia finally came back to herself and looked around.
"Chester…?"
Chester, who should have been sleeping right beside her, was nowhere to be seen.
As she found that strange, the memory of what had happened before she collapsed into sleep came flooding back — and she sat up with a jolt of alarm.
"Ugh!"
Her body, exhausted from crying so long and praying for Chester, could not bear the sudden movement and buckled beneath her.
Sprawled briefly on the floor, Monia moved carefully and managed, bit by bit, to get to her feet.
"Where's Chester?"
Her last memory.
The memory of Chester holding her, blue tattoos winding across his skin.
Clinging to that hazy recollection, Monia searched for him — only to realize at last that she and Ant were the only ones here, and she sank back down.
Ant padded over and carefully licked her thigh.
Monia pulled the little creature into her arms. Then it came to her: if Chester was gone, where would he have gone?
What rose in her mind was Chester on the day he had gone to hunt the bear.
"The beach."
Having found his location by pure instinct, Monia left the house to find him.