The First Snow of the Northern Empire
The First Snow of the Northern Empire
Monster of Kravrig.
Knight of Lelanda.
Rumel knew little of those names.
But the rumors that passed among warriors whispered in her mind.
Scraps of information whose truth was hard to swallow, born from the imagination of men who could only guess at reality.
She recalled those rumors and set her stance as the two priests approached, but the Knight of Lelanda was already in motion.
With a surge of speed, his lance—fashioned to resemble a unicorn's horn—aimed straight at her.
The moment his body accelerated, lancing forward to skewer her, his form blurred like an afterimage.
Far too fast for the eye to track.
For Rumel, whose agility was only slightly above an ordinary human's, it was a thrust she could never perceive in time.
What saved her was her skill, honed to its extreme.
Survival instinct and technique made her spear leap forward.
Horn met spear-tip.
Cling!
A metallic ring exploded outward, and pain shot through Rumel's wrist as if it would snap.
The lance was supposedly carved from a beast's horn, but the cry of metal it gave off proved her opponent was a priest.
A strike that instinct alone had deflected.
Rumel steadied her buckling wrist and swallowed a curse, planning to twist the lance away, but—
Scrape!
The Knight of Lelanda moved the instant she pushed back. He tracked her motion, striking the ground with a hoof to shift his weight, accelerate, and shatter the balance of power. With the recoil, he redirected force and torqued the spear.
Sparks flew wildly, and through them came an exquisite display of technique.
Modulating strength, repositioning; a masterful blend of center-of-gravity manipulation and sheer speed born from four legs.
Everything meshed in perfect harmony, and Rumel's counter-thrust was batted away, useless.
Crash!
"Ngh...!"
Her wrist felt fractured. No—if not for the dress Anton had made, it would have shattered long ago.
Rumel barely managed to right her staggering stance and glared at the knight before her.
Legs like a horse or a deer from the waist down, a human torso above. His handsome face was hidden by a bone helm, the same material as his horn-like lance, and each of his four feet ended in sharp claws.
The Knight of Lelanda: a master of the lance said to leap the Lelanda Valley and impale any intruder who dared invade.
The rumors claimed he didn't just ride a horse well—he was more horse than man. Now, face to face with him, Rumel understood how literal those words were.
If Aslan were here, he'd call it perfect horse-and-rider unity. That kind of technical acceleration.
In a heartbeat, a sound like galloping hooves brushed past her, and the Knight of Lelanda vanished from her sight, only to reappear inches away.
A storm of thrusts followed.
A rain of lance-tips, invisible to the naked eye, fell upon Rumel. She leveled Verdict to meet it.
Any ordinary person would be dead already, skull and heart pierced.
Even a split-second delay in parrying would mean being run through.
Attacks too fast to even perceive.
'I can't see them.'
But Rumel read them through instinct.
'But if it's me...'
She twisted the spear shaft, corrected her aim, and thrust.
Clang!
The blade barely knocked the lance aside.
'Strike now.'
She deflected attacks she couldn't consciously register, reading the knight's psychology with every fiber of her being as she worked her spear.
Kang-kang-kang-kang-kang!
A thrust aimed at her heart. She slammed Verdict into its path to deflect it. An overhead chop she could not see. She twisted its trajectory by stabbing into its arc.
Movements that skirted the very edge of human limits.
Her heightened instincts let her parry, but that was all she could do. She couldn't find a single move to overturn the fight.
Each block made her stumble, forcing her back.
A few exchanges. Only a few exchanges, and Rumel's legs were trembling so violently she had to grit her teeth and steady her spear.
Keep this up and she was dead. She had to try something else.
'I'll exploit the gap created by having four legs.'
Resolved, she tightened her grip on Verdict. A golden current ran up the shaft, flickering at the blade, and the instant the knight's front and hind legs crossed—
She thrust upward, convinced he had no room to dodge.
Crack. Boom!
The lightning-charged spearhead thundered—and missed by a mile.
Even though the knight had been right there, crossing his legs to regain his footing—leaving him a sitting duck. He was simply not there.
The moment she realized that opening had been a deliberate trap, punishment was already falling upon her for her reckless attack.
"Die, Holne."
The words fell in a low murmur.
The Knight of Lelanda had pivoted his entire body on his front legs. His hind legs lashed out in a kick that called to mind a spooked stallion.
Boom!
Rumel just barely intercepted it with Verdict, but the force was enough to bodily throw her. She went tumbling across the ground.
A kick so powerful it sent a human rolling for a full five seconds.
By the time she recovered her senses from the impact, an even larger shadow was falling over her.
The Monster of Kravrig.
A priest said to have physically devoured every village along the coast.
An immortal warrior who could smash the sturdiest fortress walls with a swipe of his forepaws and endure any attack thrown at him.
Rumel knew the secret behind that durability as the clawed forepaw came crashing down toward her.
More precisely, it was the crystallized bone mantle covering him from head and upper torso down to those very paws.
She reflexively raised Verdict to block.
Crash!
"Ngh...!"
She groaned under the crushing mass that pushed down on the spear, trying to grind her into paste.
"Leave Rumel alone!"
Boom!
She would have been crushed to death right then and there had Fay not arrived and slammed a flying kick into the monster's face.
Rumel angled Verdict and let the claws slide off. Fay, pointing her crimson longsword at the utterly unshaken Monster of Kravrig, shouted back.
"Rumel, run!"
Before Rumel could even react, Fay collided with the beast.
A red bolt shot forward, and the monster met it head-on.
Screech, clang!
A sharp exchange of blows, too fast for the eye to follow.
Too fast for Rumel to understand what she was seeing—but one clear sign bled through the chaos.
"Tch...!"
Fay's attacks weren't landing.
Kicking off the empty air to accelerate, spinning into kicks, raining sword strikes without ever touching the ground—every single one was blocked.
Not by active defense, but by the monster simply standing firm and letting the bone mantle covering its body take the hits.
Whoosh. Clang!
Flames billowed along the length of the red longsword and struck home, but the monster merely tilted its body or extended a forepaw to stop them cold.
It looked like a brawler clad in plate armor. As if someone had taught a brute beast martial arts.
When a pair of precisely aimed forepaws tore through the air, grazing Fay's hair, both she and Rumel understood.
This monster was no simple brute. It possessed the polished skills of a warrior.
To pierce that armor-like exoskeleton, they needed a heavy, decisive blow.
"Tch!"
Fay clicked her tongue, ready to unleash that heavy strike, but—
"Groooar!"
The monsterized soldiers charged Fay all at once.
They moved as a single body, bearing spears and axes, swords and shields, an ugly mob swarming a elf far smaller than themselves.
Yet the killing intent laced through them was chilling. Fay aborted her attack and kicked off the air, widening the gap between herself and the Monster of Kravrig.
Crack!
Using the gained momentum, she slashed a soldier's head clean off his shoulders.
Fay slipped through the soldiers like a ghost, her sword flashing, and the soldiers desperately tried to catch and kill her.
Mutual murderousness. Shouts and pain-wracked screams. Watching that clash of death, Rumel grasped Fay's logic.
A cold judgment.
Rumel had no way to fend off all these soldiers. So Fay would do it.
Having discerned Fay's decision, Rumel realized she now had to deal with these two priests on her own, for as long as Fay held the soldiers back.
It was a distant, nearly impossible task, but she knew she still had to do it.
Gnashing her teeth, Rumel met the gaze of the two priests.
As she let out a war cry and charged to meet them, a thought flickered through her mind, wondering how everything had come to this.
The truth was, she knew perfectly well why.
She was the most useless person in the group.
What could she do well? Wield a spear and act. That was it.
She wasn't powerful like Angie or Tiyamal. She wasn't fast like Fay. Ereta even possessed divinity—a being beyond comparison.
Richard, the most human of them all, still had a physique superior to hers and mana tattoos. Even without that, he had irreplaceable skills and knowledge. Compared to any of them, her own situation seemed pitiful.
Rumel believed she was the least useful member of the party.
Clang!
Under a howling rain of lance strikes that sang like screaming metal, that fact rooted itself deeper into her heart.
What she could do, the others could do. What they could do, she could not.
Screech, rip!
"Ugh...!"
The monster's forepaw surged in. She blocked with her spear shaft, but the hem of her dress and the breastplate over her chest shredded like paper and scattered.
Watching the metal fragments flutter, she thought: if anyone else in the party were standing here instead of her, they might have already teamed up with Fay and taken these priests down.
It had come to this because it was her.
Screech, crash!
Her thoughts halted the moment her desperate counterattack was batted away, powerless.
The Knight of Lelanda angled his lance and deflected the spear-thrust. The force scattered along the lance's shaft, twisting Rumel's stance. Without a moment's hesitation, he thrust his lance home.
Crunch!
"Ngh—ah, aaaagh!"
A scream tore from Rumel as the lance bit into her side. The Knight of Lelanda hefted the weapon high and hurled her aside.
Whoosh. Boom!
Rumel's body slammed into the ground and rolled. She could feel the dress Anton had made draining the last of its magic, reverting to normal cloth. Blood surged from her mouth and spilled out, spreading from the puncture in her side to stain the earth below.
"Rumel!"
Rumel gasped. She trembled like a leaf, struggling to move. Fay, still fighting the soldiers, cried out.
"Get out of my way! Move!"
The elf girl wanted to help her, but the soldiers' interference kept her pinned. Her crimson blade hewed limbs from bodies and sent heads flying, but still the soldiers desperately barred her path, hoping their lord would finish off the last daughter of the Holne family. Thinking that without help, the Holne line would end today.
Even the Knight of Lelanda and the Monster of Kravrig thought so.
The two priests approached slowly. In their relaxed strides was the certainty that Rumel was already finished. Clutching her wounded side, she managed to raise her head and look up at them.
Everyone here knew she was useless. She knew it herself. If she ran, nobody would blame her. Fay had told her to run, hadn't she? Aslan had also told her to prioritize her life. He and Fay both understood from the start that this fight was impossible for her.
And yet.
When she recalled Aslan telling her to prioritize her life, other memories flooded back. The way he spoke those words but never spared his own body. The way he never backed down, no matter how grueling the fight. When she thought of Aslan, she knew one thing.
If she didn't fight here and now, if she retreated, she would always be the useless Rumel. The knowledge that she had fled—abandoning her comrades, betraying their expectations—would follow her for the rest of her life. And beyond even that, the consequences of fleeing forced her to her feet.
If she ran, Fay would fight alone and be gravely wounded or killed. Perhaps the enemy would even bypass Fay and head toward Aslan. If that happened, many more soldiers would die or be hurt. Aslan would be injured too.
'No... I don't want that.'
So Rumel rose.
Panting, blood staining her lips, clutching her pierced side. Leaning heavily on her spear, she forced herself upright. Snow had begun to fall, piling onto her shoulders and hair, and the cold seeped through the wound in her side like a dagger. Shivering from the chill, the young woman fixed her glare straight ahead.
Seeing her like that, the Monster of Kravrig snorted. "I'll finish this."
Death approached. Rumel watched the hulking monster stride toward her and thought. The spear techniques she'd gleaned by observing the strong over their shoulders: Tormule's Spiral Spear, the technical spearmanship of knights, the cunning tricks of bounty hunters, even the wild, undisciplined spear-work of monsters.
None of her existing tactics or skills could defeat this priest. All of them had already been shattered. She had to produce a new kind of spear art. Change her approach, use a stronger technique. The strongest spear she could muster.
And as far as she knew, there was only one spear stronger.
Only one spearman stronger than her.
What she had to emulate was that strongest spearman.
A man who, if he were not the Master of Combat, could have been a Master of the Sword, Master of Fist Fighting, Master of the Spear, Master of Blunt Weapons, Master of the Bow, or even Master of Magic. The true strongest.
"—."
Rumel muttered something. The voice was too quiet, unheard even by the Monster of Kravrig closing in on her. Ignoring the monster's puzzled expression, she closed her eyes and remembered.
A man's back. Those broad shoulders and his wistful eyes. The clear, pure fighting spirit lurking beneath his cold gaze fixed upon the enemy. That solitary, lofty expression that always seemed so precarious, so fragile. She mimicked it, slowly shifting her stance.
She took up the spear she had been leaning on. Following that fighting spirit that rose again and again, refusing to yield, no matter the adversity or foe. With his murmured words as her pillar.
Staggering, she followed the trajectory traced in the air. The spear held in both hands now shifted to one. Her stance squared to the front. Calming her ragged breath, the woman spoke.
"I am..."
Her instinct, honed to the superhuman level—an instinct unleashed only among humans—resonated as she copied Aslan. Her breath bloomed thick and white, scattering through the first snowfall.
Slowly, her eyes opened. Light brown eyes. Through those eyes, the woman looked at the monster.
The foe was colossal. Her own strength was meager. Life was frail. But still. Even so. If she didn't fight, she would regret it even in death. She would regret a loss born from not doing what she had to do. So she would fight.
Her hair fluttered in the wind. Through those strands, she recalled a man's voice and spoke.
"I am... Aslan."
"...What?"
The monster looked bewildered. She paid it no mind. Rumel reached for her waist and drew the Emperor's Sword.
Shink!
She gripped the Emperor's Sword in her left hand and thrust her chest out proudly. The same posture as Aslan. The stance of someone facing death and fear head-on. Crossing the lowered spear and sword blades, the woman let out a single breath.
Through the falling first snow, her fear bloomed white and then vanished. She finally reached past that fear and grasped what lay beyond.
[Rumel van Holne]
[Strength 1] [Agility 2] [Health 1]
[Mana 1] [Fighting Spirit 2] [Luck 5]
People called it courage.