Kornil Ashuld
Kornil Ashuld
While Kornil Ashuld watched with barely contained tension, Harod Claw emerged from the same gnarled tree where he had been concealed.
He carried a battered but solid-looking steel shield and a club that might once have formed part of a spear shaft.
A red-scaled dragon-kin standing close to two meters tall, fully armed, was not a sight to dismiss lightly. A few heads turned toward Harod.
They did not stay turned for long. The soldiers' gazes snapped back to Aslan and locked there.
Watching this, Aslan tilted his blade slightly.
'They know exactly who I am.'
He had expected a soldier or two to remain focused on Harod. Instead, every soldier, every mage, even the knights kept their attention fixed solely on him.
They were clearly well aware that Aslan was the Master of Combat.
He'd assumed at least a handful of clueless outsiders would be mixed in among them. That did not appear to be the case.
"And what are you lot supposed to be?"
Even when Angie spat the words, the soldiers did not so much as glance at her.
Aslan read the situation instantly — they lacked the ability to identify a last descendant of the Ancient God. Feeling the weight of their stares, he closed the distance to Kornil.
"Urk."
"Imperial Investigator. What do you want?"
Kornil went rigid at Aslan's words and approach, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
To Kornil Ashuld, the situation must have felt like a bolt from the blue.
He could not possibly have anticipated the Master of Combat's appearance here.
He stared at Aslan with his mouth shut, as though trying to piece together what was happening, then spoke.
"...I would appreciate your cooperation with the investigation."
An unexpected reply. Aslan's brow furrowed, displeasure flickering across his face.
He had already caught on that Kornil was doggedly working an angle to betray them.
'Is he insane?'
Either he was confident his scheme wouldn't be uncovered, or something else was at play.
Unable to decide which, Aslan slid the hand he had rested on his pommel down to grip his sword. A heavy sensation settled against his fingers.
Prepared to draw at any moment, Aslan predicted what Kornil Ashuld would say next.
'I am merely carrying out my lawful duties as an Imperial Investigator. I only wish to take a reference statement — there is no need for hostility.'
The words that came out of Kornil's mouth differed little from that expectation.
"As you know, I am an Imperial Investigator. Investigating anomalies within the Empire is my duty. But I am not here to interrogate any of you. I only wish to take a reference statement. There is no need for hostility."
Kornil Ashuld's words were nearly identical to his game dialogue. Aslan answered flatly.
"A reference statement. About what?"
"That, I... cannot answer here. I must maintain a degree of confidentiality."
"Fine. Let's say you can't answer here. Where exactly would we have to go?"
Aslan's tone was sullen, and Angie, picking up on his mood, rested a hand on her weapon while watching for signals.
Harod rolled his eyes, trying to track the context of the exchange.
Even those two, who didn't know Kornil well, could see it plainly — Kornil Ashuld was flustered and cornered.
After a moment of visible deliberation, Ashuld answered.
"I am now certain that you, Lord Aslan, are deeply entangled in this... anomaly. I would like you to accompany us to the Ashuld Viscounty."
Aslan answered with a scornful laugh.
"Not 'come with us to the Imperial Capital'?"
Kornil flinched visibly at the remark. Behind him, the knights and soldiers bristled, their alertness spiking as weapons rose into ready positions.
Aslan watched them with unhurried calm and tightened his grip on his sword hilt.
At the same time, Kornil studied Aslan and thought.
'This bastard — how does he know everything?'
'Do I strike now?'
Kornil Ashuld was a mage — a practitioner of the Manifestation School with a fair measure of confidence in his abilities.
He was certain that with a well-prepared spell, he could dispatch even a dragon-kin in a single strike.
But the Master of Combat?
A party that included a last descendant of the Ancient God?
Kornil Ashuld could not guarantee his own survival. He swallowed and began drawing up mana — and then Aslan's cold gaze landed on him.
"Urk..."
Those piercing eyes held a faint but unmistakable murderous intent. A skin-crawling chill.
Kornil Ashuld swallowed dryly. In that instant, Aslan's expression relaxed.
"Don't worry. I'll come along."
"...Excuse me?"
Kornil's eyes went wide and his mouth fell open.
He couldn't read the intent at all.
Aslan had seemed to catch on to Kornil Ashuld's scheme — and now, out of nowhere, he was agreeing to come. That made even less sense.
'Unless... he didn't actually figure it out?'
Maybe he had no idea what Kornil was after, why he was acting this way, and had simply started with a threat.
'If that's true, then I'm lucky. I can still string him along—'
Kornil Ashuld's face began to ease. Then—
"The last descendant of the Ancient God you've been searching for."
Aslan's next words and his continued approach froze Kornil's expression solid.
"That's me."
He was right in front of Kornil now, looming over him.
Kornil Ashuld's breathing turned ragged at the word Aslan had spoken.
"You... know everything..."
Aslan did not answer. He simply tilted his blade, ready to draw and cut at any moment.
The mage who had just entered middle age writhed under Aslan's cold stare, then squeezed his eyes shut.
"I-I understand. Let us be on our way."
Only then did Aslan step back.
Kornil Ashuld clutched at his throat and gasped for breath.
*
Aslan had decided to join the column on his own authority, and Harod offered no complaint.
If anything, he fell in willingly, as though it had been his own desire all along.
Angie was the problem — if it could be called that. She didn't seem to grasp the reasoning behind the decision.
But she didn't ask.
Her expression radiated bewilderment, and she clearly wanted to know, but she held her tongue.
Aslan appeared to know the man who seemed to be in charge, and the soldiers clearly feared him. That alone was enough to keep her questions contained. She would get an explanation sooner or later. Aslan intended to give her one.
The party walked, hemmed in by soldiers.
They stopped only when the sun began to deepen toward dusk.
"Lord Aslan, I intend to set camp here... if that is acceptable?"
Kornil Ashuld had come all the way back from the head of the column to ask him. Aslan nodded and gave a dry answer.
"These soldiers serve under the Imperial Investigator, not me. There's no need to ask my opinion."
Kornil Ashuld's face twisted for a moment as though he'd bitten into something sour. Then the expression vanished and he withdrew.
Aslan took in the rising moon and the scattered tropical trees dotting the landscape, and determined their location — somewhere near the Kandlibur Viscounty.
Kandlibur was one of two viscounties in the southern reaches of Count Sholukund's domain.
Compared to the Liril Viscounty, its southern neighbor, where high taxes ground the populace into poverty and Northern Empire raiders struck constantly, Kandlibur was at least livable.
It still had slums and its lord was an insignificant noble with a poor strategic position — little different in that regard — but it was a fief with just enough breathing room to host guests.
And yet they were making camp rather than resting inside the city of Kandlibur. Aslan read the subtext there: even within the Empire, even among fellow devotees of the War God, there were factional rivalries and elbows being thrown.
The Imperial Investigator didn't want anyone knowing he had a last descendant of the Ancient God in his custody.
It wasn't strange. People split into factions even when they shared the same goals — that was human nature.
None of that bothered Aslan in the slightest.
What did bother him was where they made camp.
The site was tucked among several hills, with tropical forest to the south.
Sea winds swept over the treetops, rattling leaves and gusting through the camp.
The wind carried the sharp tang of salt.
And woven into that wind, faint but unmistakable, was another scent.
Aslan's auxiliary skill, Hunting, honed to its limit, told him exactly whose scent it was.
He waited until the moment was just right, then roused the dozing Angie and Harod and slipped away.
No one noticed that the Master of Combat and the girl had vanished.
Not because he was making any particular effort to conceal their presence.
Because all hell broke loose.
A soldier standing watch with his weapon at the ready suddenly crumpled.
"Eh? What the — the hell's wrong with you?"
The soldier beside him bent down to haul his comrade up. As he did, a strange sensation washed through his skull, like something was stirring inside his brain.
"The hell is this..."
He collapsed.
Two soldiers went down, and then every soldier in the camp began dropping — one after another, sometimes in clusters, sometimes in sequence.
Against the backdrop of falling bodies, something appeared at the camp entrance.
A monster.
Its spine was sharply hunched, vertebrae standing out stark and gaunt, but its belly and chest bulged grotesquely, like a drowned corpse. Its face resembled a kindly grandmother's — if someone had tried to carve it by forcing an insect's features into the mold. Compound eyes clustered between the wrinkles.
Its splayed arms were cadaverous, but the nails curved like sickles, a horror to look at.
One of the creatures snatched up a fallen soldier near the entrance. Its maw split open and a long, slender tongue unspooled.
Even from a distance, Kornil Ashuld could guess its purpose.
A tongue meant to pierce the skull and lap at the brain.
"Ah... aahh... s-stop..."
The soldier, raked by those sharp claws, regained consciousness bleeding and sobbing in terror at the sight of the questing tongue. More of the creatures were advancing into the camp, or lifting other soldiers off the ground.
Just as the soldier's face crumpled into a mask of despair—
A wet crack.
The tongue and neck of the creature that had been stretching toward him, smiling face and all, split in two.
The severed head lifted lightly, dropped, and rolled across the ground. The soldier who had been held fast crashed face-first into the dirt along with the toppling monster.
A crunch of splitting flesh.
The soldier, his face mashed into the mud, heard the sounds of fighting erupt beside him.
The heavy chop of blades cleaving flesh, the crunch of something being battered to pulp. A chaotic chorus of violence.
The sounds repeated four more times, then stopped — replaced by the frantic noise of something fleeing.
The soldier writhed, trying to grasp what had happened. Someone spoke to him.
"Are you all right?"
The voice hauled him upright and brushed the mud from his face.
It was Aslan.
The Master of Combat. The man called Emperor-slayer within the Kallus Empire.
Black-haired and teal-eyed, he propped the soldier against a tree.
The soldier felt something being spread across his wound and his frozen lips twitched.
"I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner. Apply this to the injured area."
The soldier's clamped mouth wobbled open.
"Th... thank..."
Aslan answered with a brief smile and straightened up. Just then, someone came sprinting from inside the camp.
Kornil Ashuld, having finally grasped what had happened, rushed toward them.
Aslan watched him running and flicked a glance at the two beside him.
"Lord Aslan, what in the...?"
"Hags. A fair number of them attacked — there must be a nest nearby. I'll take my companions and track their retreat. We'll find the nest. Imperial Investigator, you will handle first aid for the wounded and a mana-sweep."
Kornil stiffened at the instructions that had come before any explanation. Aslan gave a slight smile.
It was work Kornil would have done regardless, but with Aslan issuing the order, it now looked as though the Imperial Investigator was following commands for a task that should already have been his.
Kornil's expression soured as he registered both the fact and Aslan's expression. Aslan turned and headed in the direction the hags had fled.
The knights might be a different story, but the soldiers almost certainly were not of noble birth.
Commoners, most of them. Kornil Ashuld was not a man of any great charisma, so the soldiers under him were likely motivated by pay rather than loyalty or political calculation.
That was exactly what Aslan was aiming for.
Laying the groundwork before Kornil Ashuld could attempt betrayal.
Earn the soldiers' goodwill. Tilt their sympathies toward his side.
He'd been wondering how to crack that door open. The hag attack was perfectly timed.
Aslan stepped into the forest to finish the job, and Angie and Harod followed.
The blood-trails of the dismembered creatures glistened in the falling moonlight.