41. The Blood Knight (1)
It was a first.
Going to a bar alone. Drinking soju alone. Drinking four bottles of soju alone.
Sniffling like a wreck, I sorted through my photo album. The world spun round and round, and in it pairs of eyes whirled like eddies — the ones pitying me, the ones despising me, the ones laughing at me. I dredged them all out of the blur.
The rowdy bar had gone quiet.
Around the time I was laying down my fifth — no, sixth? — bottle of soju, someone sat down across from me.
"Oppa."
Few people in this world call me that. And of those, only one is this beautiful.
"So-ha? Hey. Jung So-ha?"
"Yes."
"You came? How'd, how'd you get here?"
"I took a taxi."
"No, no, no — not that."
I dragged a hand down my face, blinking hard.
"Mm. I mean — what are you doing here."
"Ah."
So-ha offered up words as pretty as her lips.
"...You called me, oppa."
"Me? To you? I, called you?"
"Yes."
"Me? Uh. No way, I did."
I flipped my smartphone over and tapped at the screen.
"Hold on. Let me just check my call log..."
No matter how many times I tapped, the black screen refused to light up.
"Goddammit. Piece of, shit, seriously."
"Stop this and come home. I'll take you there."
"Ah, get off. Don't you dare touch me."
My torso swayed, and the world spun again. Cradled in her arms, I begged and pleaded for a long while.
"Don't, get married, goddammit."
"You just had to, wait a little, you rotten bitch."
"Oppa."
"You, fuck, you didn't even wait for me to get out of the army."
"Oppa. Get up."
"And you. Why're you being, so damn rude?"
"......Whew."
"One lousy DM and it's over? Why'd you change your number?"
Her crimson lips murmured something. I couldn't hear it, but I could tell it was something terrible.
"Huh? What did you say?"
"I said I can't stand to watch this. I just can't."
"Huhh?"
My vision went dark.
A very, very long blackout.
The world flashed blinding white.
KRAKOOM!
As the thunderclap cracked overhead, those standing on the hilltop dropped flat on their bellies in utter shock.
"Ghhk—"
Utekwai, thick arms raised to shield his eyes, staggered with a twisted grimace. His muscles were contracting and relaxing of their own accord — the current racing along the ground had shocked him.
Fidhos (shit)!
Cursing, Utekwai gave his head a couple of hard shakes. The moment he'd gathered his wits, he checked how the battle stood.
"The blood-soaked swordsman is down!"
At one mercenary's shout he whipped his head around — Phoinix lay face-down on the ground, smoke rising off him. He had taken the lightning bolt dead-on and wasn't moving at all.
A short distance away, Amias's squad lay rolling on the earth, their bodies shuddering.
"Grrglk—"
"Oh, d-damn it."
They flailed their limbs, struggling to push themselves up. They hadn't taken the bolt head-on, at least.
Utekwai broke into a run straight for Phoinix — because a young man in a black cloak was closing in on him, longsword drawn.
Aqun (you bastard)—!
At Utekwai's savage roar, Tobias bit down hard on his lower lip. He had no faith in his ability to handle a barbarian warrior charging like an enraged bear. He hastily fell back to the rear and started barking at the mercenaries mired in confusion.
"We must reform the line! Ready yourselves for battle!"
"Shut the fuck up — we're pulling out!"
Norman, one of the mercenary captains, snarled from below the slope.
"Don't even think about climbing up, whelp. Taking on the Fire Witch here would be insanity!"
The young bounty hunter swept a quick gaze over the mercenaries. More than seventy had been hiding below the hill, but the sudden baptism of fireballs had killed or crippled over half of them.
The one mercy was that the survivors were veterans to a man, and none of them had spiraled into panic. Better yet, Norman and Machi — ranked second and third in the band's hierarchy after Randal — had lived, so things hadn't slipped beyond control.
Assessment done, Tobias raised his voice.
"The blood-soaked swordsman is neutralized, and we have a mage who commands lightning! Finish the contract and claim your gold and silver!"
"Gold and silver? You dog of a bastard, half my men are charcoal briquettes now!"
At the roar of Machi, the captain whose sideburns had burned away entirely, Tobias shot back with icy venom.
"Then fight all the harder — unless you'd rather lose the other half too!"
"What was that?"
"You think retreating now would save you? You'd eat a bolt from our own mage or be devoured by the witch's flames!"
To the pale-faced mercenaries, Tobias shouted once more.
"You have exactly one choice!"
SHING!
His longsword swept up to point at the hilltop.
Where the tip pointed, Utekwai was pouring a potion between Phoinix's lips while Amias's squad staggered upright.
"Kill every last one of them! That is all!"
The instant Phoinix fell to the lightning, Ellen lost her reason for a moment.
The only reason she hadn't soared up over the brush and unleashed spell after spell without pause was the pair of guards Phoinix had posted at her side.
"Look there, Lady Ellen. Hatanca is giving him a potion."
Cole the archer, who along with the druid Zanavas had been talking her down, pointed toward Phoinix.
"He is still alive. So you must stay calm."
Eyes spitting sapphire light tracked his pointing finger.
"......Whew."
With a small sigh, Ellen rapidly recovered her composure. Gathering the mana drawn from her crystal orb, she forced herself to read the battlefield.
'A lightning spell. A palace mage, without a doubt. The ones who chased me here, most likely.'
As the murderous gleam in her eyes dimmed, Ellen chanted a spell and summoned her Dancing Spirit.
'A Grand Master? No, those old men would never stir themselves. Then who could mimic even a lightning spell...'
By the time the breeze had gathered into a swirl, four names had come to her.
'Galnar wouldn't come in person. Aktupir isn't one to care about affairs like this. My aunt... no, surely not.'
Ellen whispered something to the wind that bore a will of its own. The dancing spirit carried out her order and vanished elsewhere.
'It's Widal. That bastard who could never handle more than one element, yet fawned his way into a Master's title from Galnar.'
He was no one to take lightly.
As far as Ellen knew, Widal had spent his youth as a wandering mercenary. Unlike the other mages entombed in the palace doing nothing but drill, that meant he carried a wealth of real experience.
'He'll be formidable in a fight, too.'
Ellen was not afraid.
In the four months since she had first set foot on the docks of Southharbor — no, in the seven months since she had come into this world — she had crossed the line between life and death more times than she could count. The experience piled up in that time was more than enough to turn a green seventeen-year-old brat into the Fire Witch.
"Zanavas. Turn into a wolf."
"...Pardon?"
"Turn into a wolf. Right now."
A blank expression and a voice like ice. At Ellen's abrupt change of mood, Zanavas swallowed dryly.
She was the girl who had once hurled frost hawks at Ethan and Simos without a moment's hesitation. The air around her then was exactly the air around her now.
"Hurry."
"Y-yes, ma'am."
Zanavas shifted straightaway into his grey wolf, and Ellen, mounting him, drew a rope from the pack she'd set on the ground. Then, as though fitting a bridle on a horse, she set the rope between the wolf's jaws and glanced back at Cole.
"You — go help your friends."
"But my duty is to guard you, Lady Ellen—"
"Go."
Leaving that single word behind, she drove the wolf off and vanished from sight.
"Uh..."
Cole stared blankly after her for a heartbeat, then bolted out of the brush.
"Hmmm."
From a cramped hollow halfway up the cliff face, he looked down on the hill, brow knotted as tight as it would go.
Whatever Tobias had cooked up to sway them, the surviving mercenaries were now creeping toward the hilltop in battle order.
"Loose the hounds—!"
At a man's gravelly bellow, the war dogs held in check among the mercenaries sprang forward as one.
There were barely ten of them, but they made for a genuinely menacing sight. Beasts large and vicious enough to pass for wolves, devouring the ground as they charged — there was no way they wouldn't be threatening.
WOOF! WOOF!
When the scar-muzzled one took the lead, barking like a demon, the rest raised a chorus of growls and accelerated, working themselves into a frenzy.
On the hilltop, eight figures had formed a small defensive ring around the fallen Phoinix.
GRUUUM.
From within it, two colossal stone figures over two meters tall rose to their feet — golems summoned by Siren, the Lao family's mage.
The moment he saw them, the barbarian warrior hurled himself forward, swinging his enormous stone maul.
"UWOOOOH—!"
Utekwai's monstrous cry rolled all the way to the cliff face. In the same breath, dogs smashed into bloody pulp went soaring into the sky.
But well-trained war dogs did not tuck tail at so little.
Under their alpha's lead, they swept past Utekwai and flung themselves at the square formation.
GRRRR!
The dogs kept their bodies low, snapping for ankles, thighs, and crotches — and the instant a counterblow seemed to be coming, they would twist away and fasten onto weapons or shields instead.
"Oh, damn it—"
Baldy Steedman's axe cleaved a brown war dog in two at a stroke. The long-muzzled dog behind it lunged in right after and clamped its teeth onto his shield, hanging on.
The dogs' assaults were undeniably irritating, but hardly enough to harm a heavily armored warrior.
Norman and Machi knew this well enough, and they hurried up the slope shouting orders.
"Now! Loose—!"
The mercenaries with bows and crossbows unleashed a hail of shafts at once, aiming for upper bodies and throats while the dogs dragged shields down and worried at ankles.
YIPE! YIPE-YIPE!
Three or four dogs tumbled away transfixed by stray arrows, but the mercenaries kept pouring their arrow-rain down without discrimination.
Amias's squad, the magic swordsman Simos, and the Lao siblings hid themselves as best they could behind the golems as a wall. The war dogs clung to them with maddening persistence.
"Gahk!"
"Jenesser!"
Jenesser, mid-swing with her spear shaft at the dog fastened to her ankle, took an arrow in the chest and went down.
"Hnnnnngh—"
The arrowhead must have pierced a lung; she twisted against the ground with a wet, airless wheeze.
As Amias jerked around toward Jenesser in alarm, the freckled Mira screamed into his face.
"You fucking idiot!"
Mira, who had ducked low to turn aside a crossbow bolt, slashed sideways with her arming sword. The war dog lunging at Amias caught the blade and clacked its jaws.
"Watch your front!"
"Damn it."
A gamey, musky stench hit him square in the face, and Amias clenched his teeth and re-gripped his shield.
Athar Marta (Mother Goddess)—!
Utekwai hurled himself at the arrow-raining mercenaries with a war cry.
The mercenaries weren't shooting at Utekwai. They had done their reconnaissance well enough to know that arrows were useless against him, thanks to the strange tattoos etched across his shoulders.
"Hold! Ready, ready—"
The mercenaries were veterans, no doubt of it. Proof was that not one of them wavered, even with a bulk two heads taller than any man there bearing down on them.
Norman, the mercenary captain with bloodshot eyes, let out a bellow that was half scream.
"NOW!"
At his cry, the men in front dropped into crouches and the rest covered their eyes with their hands. Then the mercenary mage, spell primed, thrust out his staff.
Skaiel'lyas (shine)!
Light burst from the crystal orb at its tip.
"Ugh,"
While Utekwai was blinded by the flash, five mercenaries cast their nets as though they'd been waiting for exactly this.
Practiced motions that called fishermen to mind. The nets billowed open in an instant and wrapped the massive frame five layers deep.
"That's it! We've got him!"
"Kill him!"
To the snarling of the mercenaries, Utekwai thrashed like a maddened beast.
"UAAAGH—!"
He exerted his monstrous strength, but the nets refused to part — for what bound Utekwai was no ordinary net.
A net of thick-braided rope, reinforced with an iron ring at every knot... gear devised to snare hippogriffs, wyverns, or the riding beasts of giants like trolls.
"Stab him!"
The mercenaries ringing Utekwai thrust in with their spearpoints.
FLASH!
"Ughk!"
Norman, first to lunge, was flung backward in sorry fashion — the tattoo inked across Utekwai's back had flared with light and hurled him away.
But the Blessing of the Night Sky tattoo fell silent as though its work were done, and the attacks that followed began shredding his reddened skin without the least resistance.
SHLUK—
"Khh,"
With the backs of his knees pierced by spearpoints, Utekwai groaned and staggered — and the mercenaries, surging with bloodlust, laid about him with their blades.
Utekwai's hide was far tougher than any common beast's, but not tough enough to turn aside weapons swung with full strength by seasoned killers.
The moment he crumpled, blood streaming from every inch of him, Norman — the man he'd hurled away — drew his sword with a triumphant grin.
"Move aside! I'll finish this!"
He crossed the nets, layered thick as a carpet, and strode up to Utekwai. Then he seized the head planted against the ground and heaved it up.
"Ha? The hell? A red bear?"
Long braided hair, a wrecked feathered ceremonial hat, and a fistful of net cord filled Norman's left hand. He rapped the blood-soaked Utekwai with the flat of his blade.
"Twitching like he's got the pox. Where does some barbarian whelp get off, getting lippy with—"
Norman's snickering died in his throat. Utekwai's eyes had snapped open — and they were spitting a pitch-black glare.
"Wha— fuck, that scared me. What the—"
"Grrrrh."
"......What?"
"GRRRAAAHK!"
Suddenly, the nets snapped taut.
CRASH!
Norman, slammed violently onto his back, screamed on pure instinct.
"Kill this bastard!"
But before the shout had even died, Utekwai rose. His blood-drenched muscles had swollen to twice their former size.
"UUUWAAARGH!"
The great warrior of the plains unleashed a roar even more savage and thunderous than the last.
Through all his battles, Utekwai had drawn closer still to his 'Mother'.
RRRIP—
As if to prove it, he was reborn a true berserker and tore the five layers of iron-cord net apart in a single motion.
"I told you to kill him, you dolts—khk—"
GRAB.
The berserker lunged at the still-shouting Norman, seized his face in one fist, and—
SPLURTCH!
—tore his head clean off.
"Haaaah."
Utekwai hoisted the head high above his own, its spinal cord trailing from it like a long tail.
Bright crimson blood cascaded over his face and shoulders. His blood-slick body hissed, venting steam.
"Ah, fucking hell..."
At someone's murmur, every mercenary face drained bone-white.