The First Snow of the Northern Empire
The First Snow of the Northern Empire
A translucent screen, invisible to Rumel, displayed her current state.
[Rumel van Holne]
[Level: 5]
[Remaining Ability Points: 12]
[Strength 1] [Agility 2] [Health 1]
[Magic Power 1] [Fighting Spirit 2] [Luck 5]
Judging by those numbers, Rumel's abilities were far from impressive.
At best, she barely scraped the level of a hero—not a kingdom's hero, but maybe a single city's worth.
Her stats were lower than those of Tormule, the mercenary and Master of the Spear she had killed.
But that reality twisted in an instant.
Divinity coiled and spun around her body. A power unprecedented, one she herself could not feel, flickered before the eyes of everyone present.
"Rumel...."
Fay's voice was barely a whisper. As if in answer, Rumel let the crossed spear and sword hang loose.
Twelve bonus ability points. A law above laws that shattered the ceiling of potential growth.
Rumel could not interfere. Only one person could touch that growth—the original owner of the system window.
That owner, Aslan, stared at the window's appearance in utter bewilderment. But he regained his composure quickly, acting with calm despite his surprise.
He had no way of knowing Rumel's exact situation, no way to guess what she needed.
Yet the judgment honed through twelve years of struggle allowed no hesitation. With a small movement of his fingers, the twelve points of divinity enveloping Rumel seeped into her flesh.
[Agility 5] [Health 3]
Agility and Health. Only the necessary minimum. In response to the divine power, Rumel's body became tougher, her reflexes sharper.
All remaining points were poured into Strength.
[Rumel van Holne]
[Level: 5]
[Strength 8] [Agility 5] [Health 3]
[Magic Power 1] [Fighting Spirit 2] [Luck 5]
She felt the surge—her physical might swelling like a snowball rolling down a high hill, except the swelling was inside her own body.
A current of power threatening to burst free. Rumel exhaled, closing her eyes. Her misting breath coiled into the air.
"Sigurd! We haven't got time to stand around!"
Sensing the wrongness, the creeping danger, the Monster of Kravrig hesitated. The Knight of Lelanda judged the moment without delay.
He knew by instinct: if they didn't kill her now, they might lose. That instinct drove his four legs forward with brutal acceleration.
Boom!
In the instant of acceleration, the Knight of Lelanda vanished. His black mane sliced the wind as he shot forward, his pale lance aimed squarely at her heart.
Rumel slowly opened her hazel eyes and looked at him.
Their gazes met. She moved.
She drove her right foot into the ground, forcing her wound-ravaged body to obey.
She leveled Verdict at the incoming lance and thrust.
Kwa-ooom!
Thunder roared. Her spearhead, accelerated by heightened strength and agility, left a trail of golden afterglow. White and gold collided.
A sharp, ringing clang split the air.
The lance was deflected, spinning away from the impact.
"...What?!"
The Knight of Lelanda gaped. He remembered the woman failing to properly receive his lance moments earlier. And now?
She had taken the attack without a flinch. More than taken it—she had batted it aside. A full-force charge.
It was an impossibility. The knight tried to pull back, but Rumel was faster.
Clank!
Before the lance's trajectory fully bypassed her, she trapped it between Verdict and the Emperor's Sword. Using the shaft as a fulcrum, she pressed down with the Sword.
Crk-crk-clank!
And she pulled.
The four-legged knight tried to brace, but his legs couldn't endure the force. He was ripped from the ground, pivoting over his own lance and crashing down headfirst.
At the end of it, Rumel withdrew the Emperor's Sword and gave the spear a short thrust.
A spiraling spearhead drove precisely into his flank. The Knight of Lelanda flew backward like a ragdoll.
Iron rang out as he carved a furrow through the earth.
"Arne!"
The Monster of Kravrig bellowed at the sight, lunging for Rumel. She gave him no opening.
Exhaling, Rumel dropped her stance and charged straight at the monster. He saw her coming, saw her raise the spear, and prepared to block with his exoskeleton, factoring in her enhanced strength.
She was out of reach. If anything, she would have to step deeper—she was aiming for the throat. The monster thrust out a forelimb thick with exoskeleton to obstruct the thrust's path. But Rumel halted mid-lunge, spear poised to stab.
A distance a spear couldn't reach. Even if she stretched fully, it might touch, but with so little power he could block easily.
The monster hesitated, guarding his nape. In that bewildered pause, Rumel swung the spear.
And let the shaft slip through her fingers.
It flowed out as if she would lose it entirely—like she was swinging a sword. Spears weren't swung weapons. The monster knew that. He didn't guard against it.
A mistake.
At the last instant, she caught the spear before it left her hand. Gripping the butt-end, Rumel drove it at his nape.
Bzzt!
The spear lanced forward, shedding current. The monster thrust his wrist into the path too late. The wrist was sheared off.
"Gah...!"
The severed wrist fell to the ground, still sparking. The monster staggered, glaring at the woman.
'Her entire technique has changed!'
He needed to adapt—fast. But then she pressed the Emperor's Sword against the spear shaft to arrest its momentum. Sparks erupted as the shaft stopped dead. A simple redirection, and she thrust again.
A spear strike plunging from above, like a scorpion's tail. He had no time to block.
Crunch. A wet crack.
The spear slammed into his skull. Half his head disintegrated, and condensed lightning burst outward, scattering flesh and exoskeleton shards.
Boom, boom, crash!
His massive body slammed into the piled snow, powder blooming like a dust cloud.
Rumel stood amidst it, sword and spear angled downward.
"...Aslan?"
Fay had been watching alongside the monsterized soldiers. For a fleeting moment, the Elf girl saw Aslan's shadow overlaying Rumel's figure.
The monsterized soldiers felt something similar. They stared at Rumel with fear and confusion. She was not the same woman who had been losing moments before.
By the time the thrown monster had regenerated his head and hauled himself upright, the Knight of Lelanda had also finished regenerating. The two of them took in the sight of the woman standing straight-backed, watching them.
"You wretch...."
The monster rasped. Rumel didn't react.
She simply held her stance, expression aloof. The same lofty expression that, in Fay's eyes, called Aslan to mind.
That aloofness made the Knight of Lelanda and the monster exchange a glance—then charge. Straight at Rumel.
She met them without moving.
Both weapons lowered. Center aimed forward, body straight. A stance used by Aslan and Fay alike—the Budongong stance, designed to engage enemies while moving as little as possible, or not at all. The root of the stance was stillness.
Rumel had grasped its fundamentals through imitation of Aslan and put it into practice.
The Monster of Kravrig was the first to reach her. Heavy forelimbs, grotesque exoskeleton, strength comparable to diamond. Rumel read his attack and evaded simply by switching her left and right foot half a beat early.
Boom!
A smashing impact shook the earth. A cloud of snow erupted—and through it, the Knight of Lelanda plunged.
"Die, Holne!"
His signature equestrian charge. Rumel thrust her spear straight at his lance.
Her thrust came a beat late, lacking the power to meet him squarely. She should have been overwhelmed on contact. Yet she extended her arm to its limit and slammed Verdict against the lance.
Crk. The rotation nearly knocked the spear aside. At that last instant, the spearheads meshed like intertwining snakes—adjusted through subtle wrist rotation, knee work, forced alignment. She caught the lance and deflected it.
The knight staggered amid ringing steel. His stance wavered, but he turned and launched a back kick.
Rumel saw the faint afterimage of the kick and leaned back as if she'd expected it. 'An attack I've already seen once.'
She wouldn't be hit by it twice.
She had leaned back while retracting her spear, then planted the butt-end in the ground and unleashed lightning.
Boom!
She used that lightning to accelerate. The spear, racing along a ground-bound current, pierced the Knight of Lelanda through.
"Urrgh-gr-grk!"
The spearhead skewered his stomach clean through and emerged from his back. Rumel pivoted and hurled the impaled knight at the monster charging toward her.
The knight tumbled through the air, four legs flailing. The monster caught his comrade, and as he lowered the body, the attack waiting for him was the strongest technique in Rumel's arsenal.
The Spiral Spear.
A strike infused with far greater rotational torque than before, its power elevated explosively by her increased strength and agility.
Screech-crunch, thud!
The monster threw out an arm to block. The arm was shredded. It shattered whole, bone fragments scattering in every direction. He hissed through clenched teeth.
"What kind of power...!"
Unfortunately for the monster, who had hoped to absorb the blow and counter, the attack didn't end with one strike. Rumel closed in again, cutting across the snowfield.
She drew the spear back and thrust. A golden flash erupted, spiraling.
Boom!
A Spiral Spear wreathed in lightning. The spear crushed his exoskeleton and upper arm, spraying gobbets of flesh and chitinous shards.
His massive body crashed down. He dropped to his knees, clutching his chest, gasping. Rumel drew the spear back once more and thrust.
A third Spiral Spear. He had no strength left to evade, and the spear pierced through. A grinding, flesh-tearing sound accompanied the blade as it bored through his chest. Gold stained crimson as it exited. The leopard-like beast hacked blood and sagged forward.
He knelt there, bleeding, head trembling faintly. Without expression, Rumel swung the Emperor's Sword down onto his skull.
Crack!
The Monster of Kravrig, who had plagued the Northern Empire's shadows for so long, breathed his last. The trembling stilled. His soul returned to its master without even the respite of oblivion.
"Sigurd!"
The Knight of Lelanda, first to have been thrown, screamed his comrade's name and surged forward.
But Rumel's gaze found him first.
Those cold eyes stopped his charge in its tracks.
She was visibly in bad shape. A puncture through her flank, blood loss and vomiting leaving her complexion ashen—a pallid, near-bloodless pallor.
Somehow, he felt he couldn't win.
Her poise—the way she stood, chest exposed, utterly composed—drove that sensation home. The Budongong stance had that effect.
It was designed to let one person face many, instilling fear in their opponents. A posture built around maintaining center and engaging multiple foes with minimal movement.
That was why the Knight of Lelanda faltered. Before Rumel could even guess the reason, she had already drawn back and thrown.
Shh-shh-shh-shaaak! Boom!
A golden javelin tore through his body. Rumel walked toward him.
Instinct took over. He thrust his lance at her head.
Rumel didn't process the attack consciously. She read it through blurry afterimages and a finely tuned empathy that told her, 'That's the thrust I would make here.'
Clang!
The lance caught between the Emperor's Sword's parrying hook and the cross-block. Iron resonated as the trapped weapon locked in place.
Clink, crk-crk, shing!
Rumel twisted the sword and snapped the lance in half.
Fragments scattered. Through the falling shards, the Knight of Lelanda met her eyes. Cold, settled hazel.
The moment he saw them, he knew his death.
The sword held low.
With swordsmanship that was not exceptional, Rumel mimicked a single strike of Aslan's—the sword strike she had watched so many times with such longing.
Shh-shh-shhak!
A left diagonal upward slash.
The severed head rose. The body collapsed. The head rolled across the ground.
Rumel pulled the spear from the knight's corpse and drove it through his head. Crackle, sizzle. The golden current charred it black.
A miserable end for one who had shown such power only moments ago.
When Rumel withdrew the spear, silence had fallen. At the center of that silence stood the soldiers.
Soldiers who now bore monstrous bodies. Soldiers who had once retreated, defeated, before the ancestor of House Holne.
In the silence, they stared at Rumel with dread. She slowly turned her head and looked back at them.
Her gaze carried tension. Their expressions held fear. Rumel studied them one by one, then let the words fall flat.
"Do you want to keep going?"
A deep stillness settled over the snow.