Master of the Sword
Master of the Sword
"Dmitri..."
"Ah, hell. Look at you. You should've just rested."
Dmitri drew the longsword from his belt. The motion was economical, silent as flowing water. The blade came free and plunged straight down, piercing the bandit's heart. The man's eyes flew wide, his mouth gaped open, and he went slack.
"Wh— what the hell..."
Angie recoiled and tugged at Aslan's sleeve, but Aslan made no move to stop him.
If Dmitri hadn't done it, he would have.
Bodies littered the ground — some already dead, some still dying. The chill of death clung to the skin. The mist-hung gorge forest was cold.
When Angie saw Aslan watching Dmitri without comment, she let go of his sleeve and stepped toward the corpse.
She hadn't been sure the man needed killing, but if Aslan allowed it, there was a reason.
That left only one matter to attend to.
She meant to bury the dead.
As Aslan had taught her.
"Huh? Why—"
But Aslan's arm barred her way before she could reach the body. Angie stopped, blinking up at him. He shook his head.
"Don't go near it. Dangerous."
Dangerous — not a word she expected to apply to a corpse. As Angie's brow furrowed, Dmitri pulled his blade from the bandit's heart and agreed.
"He's right. Best not to touch those bastards."
While Angie tilted her head, Ereta drew her mace and, as if to demonstrate, brought it down on the corpse.
Crunch.
A soft, seething hiss.
The mace crushed the skull precisely. Where gray matter should have sprayed, a mass of worms spilled out along with a clump of flesh.
Each worm was about the length of a knuckle. They poured from the wound and the exposed cross-section in a writhing cascade.
"Bloodworms," Ereta said.
"What's a bloodworm?"
Ereta shook the mace clean, and the crushed worms clinging to it dropped to the ground. Angie stared at them, her face tightening with disgust.
Aslan answered.
"In short, a parasite that nests in the heart and replaces all the blood in the body with worms. Originating from Henna's Isolated Wasteland. The wild mage Henna's handiwork."
A monster crafted by one of the few wild mages in existence.
Angie looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps.
"The infected lose their eyes first," Aslan added. "The sockets fill with worms in their place. Just like the ones coming at us now."
He jerked his chin. Only then did Angie notice what was wrong with the figures drawing near.
Worms packed their eye sockets and spilled down their faces like tears, dropping to the earth. Behind the unearthly keening of the bloodworms on the ground, the only sound was the squelch of footsteps crossing the damp soil.
All around, bodies and bandits rose as one. Worms streamed from their eyes.
A tide of bloodworm hosts closing in. Aslan watched them come and worked a flail free from his belt.
'The plan's gone sideways.'
If it were just an ordinary monster prowling the area, the plan would have held. Bloodworms changed everything.
First, he needed to break the current situation. Aslan spun the flail in a light circle.
"Angie, aim for the heart. With your strength, you won't have a problem. Ereta, do everything you can. Fall back if it's too much."
"Yes."
Angie pulled her two-handed axe from her back without a word, and Ereta drew a mace and axe from either hip.
Aslan glanced at his companion as she readied herself and spoke to Dmitri.
"I'll lead and create openings. You finish."
"Fine by me. Been a while since we worked together."
The sound of Aslan's flail spinning sliced through the stillness — and then the infected hosts lunged. There was nothing resembling human reason left in their eyes.
Rasp. Crunch.
The flail's spinning stopped and struck out. It flew and smashed the jaw of the first host, snapping its head around. The creature staggered, and Dmitri drove his red blade cleanly through its heart.
"That's one!"
Dmitri called out and pulled free. Another host lunged for the opening, and Aslan met it head-on. The flail's four heads wrapped around its throat like a noose.
"Hup—"
Crack.
He yanked the flail and drove a knee upward. The precise strike snapped the host's head back and sent it tumbling. Aslan whipped the flail in a compact arc at the sprawling body.
Crunch.
The four iron heads smashed the heart. Worms trying to crawl free convulsed and shriveled against the venom laced into the metal, dying in writhing heaps.
Another host lunged from his flank. Aslan flicked his gaze sideways and, still crouched, extended his leg in a clean sweep.
Thud. Crunch.
The foot caught perfectly, and the host stumbled and fell. Before it could rise, Dmitri's blade flashed — a chill red gleam that drove from collarbone to heart and split it open.
Worms gushed from the collapsing host, a grotesque sight, but neither Aslan nor Dmitri so much as blinked. They withdrew.
Beyond the squirming, dying worms, more hosts were coming.
Aslan launched himself forward again without a backward glance, and Dmitri matched his tempo and laughed.
Angie, meanwhile, was flustered.
"Whoa, what the hell."
She was fine with aiming for the heart — Aslan had told her to — but she had no idea exactly where the heart was.
So she simply swung the axe and smashed hosts apart. The shattered bodies released floods of worms.
The worms swarmed up her legs, trying to burrow into her body and dig their jaws into her flesh to reach her heart.
"Agh, that stings!"
But Angie's skin was far beyond what a bloodworm could penetrate. She slapped at herself with both hands as if the pricks annoyed her. Each slap killed a handful of worms.
"Annoying little bastards, just die!"
Only when she crushed the heart under her heel with a wet crack did the worms stop their useless biting. Angie raised her axe and went hunting for the next host.
Aslan was at ease despite having only one arm. Angie, once she realized her skin couldn't be pierced, threw herself forward without fear, swinging her axe wildly, pulverizing bodies, stomping hearts out.
Different methods, but everyone in the party handled the bloodworms with ease.
Everyone except Ereta.
"Hah—"
Ereta was no longer a priest.
Her extraordinary strength had been gone for a long time. She had technique, but her physical ability was lacking.
And her weapons.
Neither was well-suited for targeting the heart.
'If only I had fire... that would be better.'
She grumbled to herself but worked diligently — crushing ribcages with the mace, hacking them open with the axe.
Yet, even diminished, a master remained a master. Ereta whittled the hosts down one by one.
Every time the four of them moved, hosts died.
It was a pastoral hunt, devoid of any real crisis. And at last, it ended.
Thwack.
Aslan swept the last host's legs and sent it crashing down. Dmitri pierced its heart. The forest fell silent again.
The only decoration left was the unnecessary number of bodies — hearts crushed, bodies broken into pieces.
"Phew, worked up a sweat. I'm hungry. Let's head back."
Dmitri surveyed the gruesome forest with satisfaction and urged the group along, leading them back toward the ruined village.
"Dmitri, you son of a bitch!"
Smack.
A sharp slap greeted Dmitri the moment he stepped into the ruined village. The bandit leader — who doubled as a slave trader — struck him across the face without hesitation, his own face flushed red. Dmitri's head snapped to the side. He wiped his lips.
"You were supposed to hold them off! Do you have any idea how much I paid to hire you?! You worthless piece of—"
Angie half-expected him to draw his sword. He didn't. Instead, he shrugged lightly.
"Yeah, sorry. Did my best."
The reaction struck Angie as strange — she didn't know Dmitri well.
This placid attitude was the complete opposite of the combative man she'd seen with Aslan. She tugged at Aslan's sleeve. He turned his head, and she whispered in his ear.
"Isn't he supposed to have a filthy temper? Why's he taking that? I'd have thrown a punch..."
Aslan's expression flickered with amusement. He murmured back.
"Dmitri's a mercenary who's meticulous about contracts and debts. The fat bastard knows that, and Dmitri has no intention of touching him. Dmitri never betrays an employer who acknowledges his skill and paid for his blade."
It was one of the reasons the ill-tempered mercenary had become a figure of renown.
Angie hunched her shoulders — his breath tickled her ear — and remembered something.
The threat to cut off the bandit leader's arm.
Now that she thought about it, she had her doubts about this "no betrayal" claim.
She leaned in to whisper the question, but Aslan answered before she could form the words.
"Losing an arm isn't dying. So it's not betrayal."
She didn't exactly find it convincing, but she let it go. She reached up to tug Aslan's earlobe and thank him—
"What are you doing?"
"Eep."
She froze. Elves had approached.
A small cluster of them stood watching Angie and Aslan whispering to each other.
Ereta regarded the scene expressionlessly from a short distance, and behind her, the bandit leader was still venting his spleen at Dmitri.
The usual laughter was almost entirely absent from Ereta's face.
Angie, feeling inexplicably chilled by that expression, fumbled out a reply.
"N-nothing! Just had something to talk about privately! I-I've got to go! Hey, crazy woman!"
Her face scarlet, Angie babbled and fled toward Ereta, who greeted her with the same blank expression.
The elves left in front of Aslan studied him quietly. The six pairs of eyes that regarded him held something almost guileless.
One of them spoke up.
"Thank you for protecting us from the monsters!"
Then the elf hesitated, toying with the edge of a garment that was barely more than rags, and added falteringly,
"But... must you fight? Fighting is bad. Couldn't you talk to the monsters and solve it that way?"
The elf's shoulders drooped. Aslan felt a tug of familiarity at the sight.
Elves had always been like this.
A race that did not merely lack an instinct for struggle — they shunned and hated it. The god who had shaped them was the God of Nature and Creation, and acts akin to destruction were things they instinctively despised and avoided.
As a rule, such elves could not survive in Geladrion.
Among all their kind, only one — Fay, the broken elf — understood struggle.
Aslan felt the childish innocence of the elves and bent at the waist.
"Don't worry. I'll talk to the monsters and send them away. They lost to us, so now they'll listen. They might even think it's better not to fight us since we're so strong."
It was a lie. But elves could neither speak lies nor comprehend that lies existed. They laughed brightly, thanked him over and over, and left.
As Aslan watched the elves scamper cheerfully away, Dmitri approached.
"So. What about the duel? Are we doing it?"
"...Yeah."
Dmitri lifted his chin, waiting for more.
"If there weren't bloodworms, that is."
"Mm."
"Deal with the bloodworms, and I'll give you your duel. Killing you now gains me nothing."
A flicker of suspicion crossed Dmitri's face at Aslan's words.
"Well. Fair enough. Then... understood."
He seemed to have picked up on something based on that suspicion, but when Aslan said nothing more, he withdrew quietly. Aslan watched him go and exhaled.
A sigh not of relief, but of irritation.
Irritation at how badly the plan had gone off course.
Aslan couldn't find Fay. Locating Fay, hidden somewhere in this forest, was nearly impossible — even if he raised his Luck to 20.
So Aslan had intended to draw Fay out.
By weakening Fay's prey.
His original plan had been to neutralize Dmitri and sow chaos among the bandits, creating an opening Fay could exploit.
An opening that would be maximized by Fay revealing herself — and Fay would not miss such an opportunity.
But bloodworms made that impossible.
'I'd been wondering why Fay was sticking to such passive tactics against a bandit group this size... so this was why.'
If it were only bandits, without bloodworms, Fay would have killed Dmitri long ago and slaughtered the rest one by one. The fact that she hadn't was simply because she couldn't.
Bloodworms were not an enemy that could be dispatched by ambush, nor were they small enough in number to be dealt with using a single blade.
'If you're spotted, you're spotted by every bloodworm at once... I understand why Fay is being cautious. I'd do the same.'
On top of that, the situation inside Randy Gorge was effectively a three-way war.
Fay, the slave traders, and the bloodworms.
'It's gotten complicated.'
Unless someone intervened on one side, the situation wouldn't resolve itself. And intervening on just any side wouldn't necessarily steer things toward a good outcome.
If all he cared about was ending the situation, Fay wouldn't show herself.
So Aslan had to make use of two of the three forces — the bloodworms and the bandit gang — as far as possible.
There was one ideal condition.
To wear down both the bloodworms and the bandits until Fay made the calculation: 'If I step in now, I can end this.'
Then Fay would emerge.
Aslan was certain of it. He gestured to Angie and Ereta. When they came over, he quietly outlined the revised plan.
"...Eh?"
Angie didn't much like it. But in the end, she moved according to the plan.