The Canyon Battle (2)
The Canyon Battle (2)
When I said I would scout the canyon, the Count assigned his own son to guide me.
I thought he was trying to straighten out his rebellious son's attitude, but that wasn't the case.
There was no one better suited than Glan to guide me through the canyon.
"Since I was a child, this canyon has been my playground, so there isn't a single spot I don't know."
Thanks to Glan's inherited ability—a kind of Invisibility Ability—he had been able to roam this dangerous canyon as he pleased.
But while that ability was excellent for scouting and infiltration, it wasn't suited for combat.
That was probably why he and his father, the Count, bickered so much.
Even so, Glan had looked incredibly excited when he heard the Count tell him to guide me.
Yet now, that same Glan was leading the way through a shortcut, his face filled with terror.
He kept adjusting the backpack on his back as though it were heavy.
Glan's guidance had also allowed me to wipe out two campsites without being detected by the Empire's knights.
If I'd moved alone, I surely would have been caught.
To show my gratitude for his help and ease his tension, I asked Glan a question.
"Is this your first time seeing a corpse?"
"A-Ah, no. I've seen monster carcasses, and I've seen dead people before."
Which meant he had never actually seen someone get killed. It was only natural for him to be scared.
It seemed I'd asked the wrong question.
Seeing him grow even more tense made me feel a little sorry, but it seemed easier to keep him around this way.
Still, perhaps thanks to my question, Glan spoke up.
"I've heard rumors about you, Senior, but I never heard that you were this... extreme."
"What kind of rumors?"
"Some say you're an Unprecedented Casanova. Others say you're the owner of a demonic sword..."
I shouldn't have asked. The farther he went, the more ridiculous the rumors became.
I raised my hand to stop him.
"Ah, I'm sorry."
Glan realized what he'd just said and apologized to me.
With rumors like that already going around, I had nothing to say.
As we walked in silence once again, Glan spoke up.
It seemed he just couldn't contain his curiosity.
"But... can you see me when I'm hiding?"
Since I'd found him every single time he hid, it was only natural that he wondered.
I pointed out the weaknesses of the Invisibility Ability he'd shown me, one by one.
"You can't hide everything, you know. The wind bends around you, and you leave traces on the ground."
His sounds were muffled along with his figure, but even that could give him away.
"The sound of the wind and other noises quiet down when they pass through where you are."
Finding him that way was incredibly difficult, of course.
On a night like this, even I would have a hard time finding him.
In reality, I could find him because of his mana.
To me, someone who could see and feel mana, his Invisibility Ability was no different from a basic stealth skill.
His mana was plain as day to me.
But I couldn't tell him that.
After my explanation, Glan stared at me even more as though I were a monster.
There was nothing strange about his gaze.
Even if I were in his place, if someone could find Glan on a night like this with only that kind of information, I would confidently look at them like they were a monster too.
Perhaps feeling a little less afraid now, Glan asked again.
"But... is it really okay to kill them all like this? No, I don't mean that killing the Empire's knights is wrong. But if you kill them like this, international relations will..."
Glan's words became tangled as his reasoning tripped over itself midway.
But I knew exactly what he meant.
The Empire was the strongest power on this continent.
He was saying we didn't know what they might do, using this incident as an excuse.
Though Glan was a boy in his turbulent teenage years, he understood politics and international relations properly, like a true noble.
Just as Glan said, if the Empire found out about this, there was no way they would stay quiet.
Even though the Empire had thought nothing of carrying out kidnappings, murders, experiments, and terrorist bombings in our kingdom, if they found out their own knight order had been wiped out by a knight from our kingdom, they might marshal their forces and march right into it.
'Hand over the head of the one who killed our knights!'
They would probably shout slogans like that.
It was a classic case of double standards and self-serving logic, but even looking back at my past life, it was exactly the kind of thing a superpower would do.
"If they know, sure. But if they don't, then that's that."
The Empire would throw a fit even on mere suspicion, but if they had no grounds to suspect us, they would have no other recourse.
I pointed at the backpack, and Glan glanced at it on his back before terror overcame him once again.
Inside were all the corpses of the knights I'd killed so far.
Every single knight killed at the first and second campsites, the apprentice knights who'd been on guard duty, and even the messengers and rangers—all of them were packed into that bag.
Now, not a single corpse of those I'd killed remained in this canyon.
With no corpses left, and the monsters set to sweep through the canyon tomorrow, people would have no choice but to believe that monsters had killed the knights.
No one would ever think that a student sent out by the academy on a class assignment had wiped out an entire knight order.
If they'd been ordinary enemies, I wouldn't have gone this far.
But my opponent was the Tsar Empire.
I owed the Tsar Empire a great deal.
A significant portion of my suffering had been because of the Tsar Empire, and it wasn't just once or twice that I'd died because of them.
Since the opportunity had come, I intended to pay them back in full.
In the distance, the knight order's last remaining campsite came into view.
Perhaps because we'd walked slowly, the darkness was gradually receding.
It was still dark inside the canyon, but dawn was breaking over the distant mountain range.
The knights were all fully armed, keeping a vigilant watch on their surroundings.
While the knights themselves were properly armed, their surroundings were not.
Tents lay broken and scattered on the ground, and the horses, seemingly set loose, wandered around.
The state of the area clearly showed just how hastily the knight order had moved.
The knights were still diligently scanning their surroundings, but even from afar, I could see their tension beginning to fray.
Even for a knight who possessed mana, standing guard all night was difficult.
It was bound to be even harder when they believed an invisible attacker was lurking around them.
After confirming the knight order's position, I gave Glan his instructions.
"Stay hidden until I call you."
"Understood."
At my words, Glan vanished with the backpack still on his back. The sight of him seemingly melting into thin air was fascinating.
Though I knew he was still there through his mana, I couldn't find him by any other means.
It seemed he'd already corrected his flaws based on the few words I'd given him on the way.
Once Glan was hidden, I checked my equipment.
I held the greatsword in my hand, and the Divine Sword was strapped to my waist.
An artifact ring was on my finger, and an artifact necklace hung around my neck.
This was more than enough.
Though this wasn't a surprise attack like the ones at the previous two campsites, the weapons I had with me were sufficient to deal with them.
Raiding the two campsites had given me confidence in my abilities.
I was much stronger than I'd thought.
Because I was always fighting the Kingdom's top-tier powerhouses, I hadn't fully realized it. But objectively speaking, I was an incredibly strong knight and inherited ability user.
Ordinary knights couldn't stop me.
Crunch, crunch.
Holding my greatsword, I walked toward the knights who had formed their ranks.
Although the Divine Sword at my waist was a far superior artifact, I preferred this greatsword.
It was just a sturdy greatsword with no special abilities, but it felt much better suited to unleashing my swordsmanship.
"Who goes there!"
A shout echoed from the center of the gathered knights.
The voice had a different accent. In my past life, I would have called it a dialect.
Their language had branched off from Ancient Imperial Language, and after hundreds of years apart, their accents were bound to differ.
Perhaps, as more time passed, they would develop into entirely different languages, just as had happened in Europe in my past life.
In any case, I could understand what they were saying, which made things much easier.
"What's it to you?"
I shouted back.
My accent was slightly different from the one I'd just heard.
It was the accent of the Epirus Kingdom, distinct from the standard dialect of the Carlos Kingdom.
I was called a genius in my own right. Mimicking the accent of a neighboring country was easily within my capabilities.
Just in case someone from the knight order managed to survive.
It was better to have another country to pin the blame on.
Did he sense something in my words?
The knight who had shouted first gave orders to the order.
"Assume he is a formidable foe and form a perimeter! Do not let him escape!"
The opponent seemed to have sensed something, but his conclusion was different from what I'd expected.
It seemed he'd misjudged my strength.
That was something I could be grateful for.
Crunch, crunch.
I kept moving forward at exactly the same pace.
Following his command, the knights spread out into a wide formation—a modified semicircle.
I walked right into that formation.
As I willingly stepped inside, the knights surrounded me. I was completely encircled by the knight order.
The middle-aged knight who'd shouted stepped forward.
He questioned me.
"I am Viscount Rolf, the commander of this knight order. Are you the bastard who harmed our knights in the night?"
A sigh escaped me at his words.
It was a pointless question.
It wasn't as if he'd believe me if I said I wasn't the enemy, and if I was, the question itself was meaningless.
He'd probably said it to boost the morale of his exhausted knights, but I had no reason to play along.
I raised my greatsword and traced a large circle through the air.
A circle drawn with a blade that hadn't even reached the enemy.
Everyone was bewildered, but one of them realized what was happening.
"D-Dodge!"
The commander rolled on the ground as he screamed, but the other knights couldn't dodge.
Blood sprayed, and the front rank collapsed.
"Attack! Attack!"
Drenched in the spraying blood, the commander roared, and the knights in the back row rushed forward. But the first strike was mine.
I launched myself forward. My sword flashed, and another head flew off.
Glan watched the fight blankly.
He was so dazed that he didn't even realize his ability had deactivated, revealing him.
"This is impossible..."
It was a battle of dozens against one.
And that one person was completely overwhelming the dozens.
Those whose necks were being severed over there were no ordinary mercenaries or soldiers.
They were the Empire's knights, whom his father had always struggled against.
Wiping out the other two campsites had been shocking, but at least it had felt somewhat plausible.
It was a midnight raid, and if someone possessed something like an assassination ability, it seemed like a plausible fight.
But this wasn't even a surprise attack; it was a battle he'd willingly entered while surrounded.
And yet, here he was, witnessing a sight like this.
The front line had collapsed, and the knights were losing their lives one by one.
Very few knights had actually managed to cross swords with him.
They all swung their swords far too late, thrusting their blades into the empty space where their senior had already passed.
They paid for those delayed attacks with their lives.
Even the knights who did clash swords with him were brought to their knees in absurd ways.
Some had their swords wrenched away, while others were split in half along with their weapons by the greatsword as it crashed down with a force completely disproportionate to his size.
After blinking just a few times, the knight order's encirclement had already collapsed.
"Stop!"
With a desperate shout, the middle-aged knight threw himself forward.
He'd said he was the commander of the knight order.
Was he the Viscount who had fought Glan's father multiple times?
But he didn't look like the formidable knight his father, the Count, had spoken of.
"Are you a demon!"
Seeing him die after failing to withstand even a few clashes of the sword, leaving those as his final words, Glan saw that he was no different from the other knights.
Still, looking at the daggers slicing through the air, Glan couldn't help agreeing with those final words to some extent.
With the formation shattered and the commander dead, the apprentice knights in the rear could no longer hold their ground and turned their backs to flee.
While not a single full-fledged knight fled, the apprentice knights had not yet overcome their fear of death.
But not a single apprentice knight managed to escape.
Daggers flew toward the fleeing apprentice knights.
Just how many daggers did his senior have hidden in his coat?
The daggers poured out endlessly.
As the very last fleeing apprentice knight collapsed, Senior Alex was the only one left standing.
Glan trembled.
He couldn't tell if his body was shaking from fear or from a thrill.
Yet the sight of a knight holding a sword, bathed in the rising sunlight amidst a canyon filled with corpses, was more than enough to make anyone shudder.