Master of Brawling
Master of Brawling
It wasn't exactly a revelation, but this world had no automobiles.
Some sailing ships that plied the seas used blue iron to generate motive power, but no overland transport had anything comparable.
The reason was simple enough.
Sailing ships carried large crews—one or two mages among them caused no problems—and blue iron powerplants delivered efficient motion from modest amounts of mana.
Overland travel was different.
A wagon fitted with blue iron wheels would cost a fortune just in maintenance. Blue iron was a specialty good of the Southern Continent, imported in small quantities to the north—expensive, finicky, and it still required a pair of mages among the passengers. An inconvenience in every respect.
Road travel also imposed hard limits on size, and wheels demanded a continuous feed of mana to keep the powerplant stable.
So no blue iron automobiles roared across the continent's roads. The closest thing in existence was a four-seater blue iron carriage that needed two accomplished mages for every trip. Overland, horses and broken monsters still pulled the wagons.
That was why Aslan could endure the current absurdity. Could bear the mass crushing his shoulder without a word of complaint.
The carriage jolted as a wheel struck a stone.
"Urgh... nngh, graaah...."
A groan steeped in misery. Its owner sat hunched, a vast body folded inward, thick drool spilling onto the carriage floor.
Tiyamal—dragon-kin, Master of the Bow, the party's stalwart elder—was drooling and groaning in equal measure, and the carriage he rode in was no ordinary wagon.
It was a huge vehicle, built to carry up to eight.
A bizarre beast hitched to the front—something between horse and dragon—pulled it along, and three pairs of wheels set abreast kept the enormous body stable despite its size.
The interior was finely appointed. A craftsman's careful work ensured that even on rough roads the passengers felt only a steady, subdued trembling.
An ordinary person would have no cause for motion sickness.
Tiyamal was not an ordinary person.
The carriage was divided into two compartments. In the forward section, the Duke sat with his personal knights and glanced back with open concern.
If the forward compartment belonged to the Duke and his escort, the rear belonged to Aslan's party.
Two long benches faced each other there. Aslan occupied one corner of the rear bench—crammed against the wall, with Tiyamal leaned against him, crushing him under dragon-kin bulk. Aslan, looking distinctly rumpled, had surrendered his lap to Fay.
Though Fay, for her part, had her feet propped on Tiyamal's broad thighs and was using Aslan's lap as a pillow to squish right back.
Aslan gazed at the Duke with the mournful eyes of a cornered animal. The Duke found the sight pitiable—and also helpless.
A kind man who was being physically compressed from above and from the side and still couldn't bring himself to object.
That was simply who Aslan was.
The Duke's gaze slid sideways. A colorful row of crowns met it.
Angie, Rumel, Ereta—seated across from Aslan.
He couldn't read their expressions with their faces hidden, but the flat, unbothered postures said enough.
Perhaps he should call a halt and have them rearrange themselves. Surely being squashed by an elf or a small woman would be better than being crushed under a heavy dragon-kin's weight—rumpled or not.
The Duke opened his mouth, meaning to be considerate.
"Are you all right? You don't look well. Perhaps we should stop the carriage and—"
"No, it's fine. Better to move as quickly as we can."
Aslan answered at once. Caught off guard, the Duke shifted his gaze—and met Tiyamal's eyes as the dragon-kin groaned out a plea.
"Kill me...."
"...I'll, ah, see to it we take the fastest and smoothest road available. Bear with it just a little longer...."
The Duke's flustered reply trailed off as he turned away. Fay, lying across the bench, grimaced in discomfort and grabbed Aslan's hand.
"Aslan... rub my tummy... Fay hurts...."
She tugged the captured hand onto her belly—soft elven skin, yielding even through the cloth. Aslan managed a pained smile under the weight and began stroking gently.
"Just a little longer. We'll be there soon."
How soon was anyone's guess.
Tiyamal heaved a limp arm upward, let it fall, and spoke.
"Boy... Aslan... me too... my belly too...."
"Couldn't you rub it yourself? A grown elder asking for belly rubs is a little unsettling...."
Tiyamal ended up rubbing his own belly with an expression of forlorn sorrow. The three across from them watched the whole spectacle with varying faces.
Angie looked like she found it funny. The faint giggling confirmed she was thoroughly enjoying herself.
Ereta wore something closer to resentment—entirely, it seemed, because the tender scolding Aslan was giving out wasn't directed at her. The resentment soon shifted into jealous envy, aimed at the belly-rubs Fay was receiving.
Rumel, meanwhile, was staring at Aslan's large hand moving over Fay's stomach, her face steadily reddening.
Her mind was full of sudden inspiration and daydreams—daydreams devoted to sketching out a future with Aslan.
A romantic dinner beneath the moonlight, and the passionate conversation that would follow.
She only stopped fantasizing when she noticed someone watching her.
"Thinking strange thoughts again?"
The gaze belonged to Ereta.
"N-no. I wasn't thinking anything. I was merely—"
"If you weren't thinking anything, why does your face turn so red?"
Rumel's hand flew to her own cheek before she could stop it. Ereta giggled.
"Ah, caught you. You were thinking something, weren't you? I can tell."
The white-haired woman stretched her words deliberately, almost a whisper. Rumel bit her lip and threw her a sidelong glare.
Ereta's sly smile curved with knowing softness, and Rumel wrenched her gaze away, pulling out a book for cover. She added an excuse for good measure.
"I assure you I was not. I was simply organizing a few techniques and—in any case! I need to read, so...."
Ignoring the woman's crescent-eyed smile, Rumel opened the book and forced her eyes over letters that refused to register.
A desperate attempt to keep the daydreams from being exposed.
Once Rumel started her forced reading, Ereta shrugged as if the fun had gone out of it and looked back toward Aslan.
Rumel caught the motion from the corner of her eye and remembered anew: Ereta was a rival.
She recalled the sticky-sweet looks Ereta sent Aslan's way and her brow tightened faintly.
They had nearly fought over him before, after all. Rumel was wary of Ereta—wary, specifically, of that seductive quality of hers.
Not knowing Aslan's tastes, Rumel worried that Ereta's advantages might outweigh her own.
Of course, Rumel had confessed her feelings to Aslan, and she had declared she would keep loving him in silence until she was ready. His response had been achingly tender. She thought she still held the lead. But a lead like that could always vanish in an instant.
While Rumel pondered how to widen the gap, Angie—quiet until then—glanced at the book in Rumel's hands.
"...Hey."
And poked her in the side. The sudden jab made Rumel flinch violently, and every eye in the compartment turned to her.
"Eep—ah, yes? Lady Angie, wh-what is it?"
Rumel hunched under the sudden attention. Angie thought she looked like a dog about to piss itself, and smiled.
"Oh, nothing, just... you looked really absorbed in that. Wondered if it's any good."
Angie's finger pointed, and everyone's eyes followed it to the book.
A novel full of adventure, a dash of lewdness, and romance.
A particular favorite of Rumel's—and an expensive one, printed entirely on paper.
As much as she loved it, she was also embarrassed by it.
She reflexively hid the book against her chest. When the gazes shifted to her chest, she panicked and moved the book back in front of it.
That was a losing move.
Now she had stares on both book and chest, and her face burned.
Her head drooped low.
"Yes. Interesting. It's an interesting book."
"Really? Then... can you read it to me?"
Angie's follow-up was as innocent as it was merciless—so much so that Rumel looked at her with suddenly damp eyes.
Understandably baffling to Angie, who had no idea what was going on.
"I—must I read it aloud? Could you not read it yourself...?"
"I can't read. If it's that good, read it to me. Looks like we've still got time before we arrive."
Rumel, a baron's daughter, was accustomed to goodwill rather than malice, and the girl's innocent cruelty frightened her.
"You were at a fun part, I think. Just a little? Please? I'm asking nicely."
Expectant golden eyes sparkled. Rumel met them with a near-tearful expression and remembered the passage she had just been reading.
She had no idea why the book had fallen open to that scene of all things, but the section she'd reached was a knight and a lady's lovemaking.
And now she was being asked to read it aloud in front of everyone.
A merciless request.
Rumel hid her eyes behind her braid without thinking and shook her head.
"Don't—please don't do this... don't do this to me...."
"Come on, just once. Please? It won't wear out."
A conversation that lent itself to entirely different interpretations.
Aslan had been listening with a faint smile, but when the carriage began to slow he shifted his eyes to the outside.
"Halt! Halt for a moment!"
A voice called out, and the carriage stopped. Aslan leaned his head out.
Soldiers stood there—men bearing the Duke of Hilsinger's crest on their shields, their surcoats, their cloaks.
House soldiers of the Duchy of Hilsinger.
"Ah, Your Grace! Forgive us! We did not recognize—!"
"No need. I'm the one riding a Kallus Empire carriage. Hardly strange you didn't know."
The Duke praised their diligence instead, and the soldier shuffled, looking honored.
Behind the dazzled, admiring soldiers, several figures sat bound on the ground.
Some lay there trembling. Some babbled strange, unintelligible words. Froth bubbled from one man's mouth.
They defied easy description, but Aslan had no trouble guessing they were bandits.
The Duke noticed them a moment later and nodded toward them.
"And what are those?"
"Ah, bandits, Your Grace. We caught them moving south near the Bandit Forest."
"Bandits, you say."
The Duke studied the ragged figures, a note of puzzlement in his voice.
"They seem remarkably docile for bandits... not even begging for mercy."
"Truth be told... they've been like that since we seized them. No resistance, no counterattack—just surrendered meekly. They've stayed this way since capture, so we're holding them for now."
"There have been reports that the numbers emerging from the Bandit Forest have dropped lately. Could be related."
"Yes, we were considering the same possibility...."
While reports and replies stretched on, Aslan watched the mouth of a bandit sprawled on the ground.
The mouth opened and closed in a fixed, repetitive pattern.
'Hornet.'
The lips shaped the word over and over. Aslan's brow tightened faintly.
Something unpleasant was unfolding.
In the black-darkened forest, a man walked among ancient trees, eyes fixed on the ground.
The movement might have been mistaken for dejection, but the man's face held none of that. He was studying the traces left on the earth with a grave expression.
His dark skin was well-complemented by a deep-blue robe. He had been scanning the trail for some time when he lifted his head at the sound of approaching footsteps.
"Master."
The young man who addressed the solemn figure as "Master" was striking in his own unusual way—taller than most full-grown men, brown-haired, with mana tattoos that bled a somber crimson light across his face.
The older man smiled gently at him.
"Did you find anything?"
"Yes. Footprints no wild animal could make."
"...I see. They are coming, then."
The dark-skinned man—a rarity in the Northern Empire—was named Itar.
He was a Master of Combat, a man who also bore the epithet "the Weakest Master." He had turned sixty not long ago yet showed no sign of it, looking no older than a man in his forties.
The martial artist let out a sigh, leaned on his staff, and his face settled into a flat, sad expression—the face of a man who dreaded the calamity approaching.
He spoke as if afraid of what he already foresaw.
"I would give anything for the village to be spared... but I doubt it will be so easy."
His disciple, the young man, gave a brooding nod of agreement. The old man shook his head, raised his eyes, and looked toward the trail stretching long before the forest's edge.
Countless footprints and claw-marks—superficially like animal tracks, but not a thing any animal could have left.
These were the marks of Warrior Monks.
An experienced old man could read numbers from such traces.
There were twenty of them.