Blood Knight (3)
I was retching the moment consciousness returned to me. No—perhaps it would be more accurate to say I woke up mid-retch.
“Hurk—whuuegh—”
“Phoenix, sir!”
As I lay face-down spouting black blood in a steady stream, Steedman and Mira came scrambling over. I managed to push my upper body up and stretched out a hand first.
“Ugh, water. Gimme water.”
Only after I'd drained every last drop from the waterskin Mira handed me did the burning thirst begin to fade.……
So… what the hell happened here?
It was utter carnage in every direction. Fires raged and vomited black smoke, and the corpses of mercenaries and hounds lay scattered in droves across the low hills.
Our own party, too, was picking itself up, nursing wounds here and there.
Close by, Amias—his hand lying severed on the ground—was tending to Jenesser, a crossbow bolt buried in her chest. The mage Ciren had a bandage wrapped around her calf and was leaning on her sister Eaden for support. Simos pressed a cloth against his side, where blood was already seeping through.
“Uuungh.”
I shook my swimming head a couple of times and got to my feet.
“Ah—are you all right, sir?”
I waved off Steedman's attempt to support me and scooped up Hrunting, which lay fallen nearby.
“Where are Utekwai and Ellen?”
“Lord Hatanka is over there, but Lady Ellen… I couldn't say.”
Where he pointed, Utekwai was tearing a man's head clean off. Judging by the absence of any mercenaries still standing around him, that must have been the last one.
As if on cue, the mage Ciren murmured something. A golem near Utekwai groaned and collapsed, its cracked, blood-spattered stone form crumbling into a mound of dirt.
“Ahh, uuu—”
Utekwai's body was carved with severe wounds from head to toe. The backs of his knees, his chest, his forearms—so deep that pale bone glinted beneath the flesh at a glance.
He flung away the head he'd been holding and raked open the chest of a convulsing corpse. He peeled away chain and cloth, tore through flesh and bone, and pulled out the heart. It was a hideous sight.……
“Uhh, uuuuuh!”
The black light in his eyes flickered.
As if in answer, the white bone ring on his right hand gave off a faint trickle of mana. That huge, rough hand trembled violently.
“Athar, iya.”
He muttered something with a face utterly contorted, then let the heart he'd raised to his mouth drop with a soft plop, and pitched forward.
“Oh, no.”
Watching it happen, I immediately sprinted to Utekwai's side.
After laying him flat on his back, I patted down my belt—but no matter how I searched, there wasn't a single potion. Ellen had gotten two bottles from Master Castlight, and I'd stashed one away for myself, too.
“If you're looking for the potion, sir, it was already used on you. Lord Hatanka used it.”
“He used it on me?”
“Yes. You were struck by lightning, after all.”
“Lightning? …Ah.”
Now I remembered.
I'd been talking to some fellow named Tobias or whatever when we hit him with a fireball first, and he'd fired a crossbow bolt rigged with some kind of magic tool that forced a lightning strike down on me.
On a sudden whim, I pulled off my left gauntlet—sure enough, something like a jagged marking ran from the tips of my fingers, across the back of my hand, and up beneath my sleeve.
A red scar etched in the shape of tree branches or blood vessels……. Probably the track the lightning had burned through me.
My blood was busily washing the shape away, draining the color from it, but it looked like the scar would take quite a while to disappear completely.
Well. That wasn't the important thing right now.
For the moment, I staunched Utekwai's wounds with whatever was in reach while glancing toward the cliff.
“Then where's the mage? That lightning was definitely a spell.”
“Until a moment ago there was light flashing all over, bolts striking, fireballs flying—but it's gone quiet now, sir.”
“Hmm.……”
At Steedman's words, I studied the cliff face, but it was too far away to make out anything clearly.
Fireballs. Is Ellen all right?
And where's Mungchi? I told her that if anything went wrong, she was to assassinate the most dangerous enemy first. Did she do as I said?
I was using Blood Craft to stop Utekwai's bleeding while Steedman assisted me by holding the cloth in place, but he kept glancing backward before he spoke.
“Jenesser's wound is grave. She won't last long.”
Jenesser had been making a wet, gurgling sound, blood bubbling from her lips. Her lung had been torn and was filling with blood—she needed treatment as fast as humanly possible.
“……Ah, damn it.”
What am I supposed to do about this? Maybe it was because I'd only just woken up, but my head wasn't turning over properly.
“Phoenix, sir, over there!” Just then the archer Cole called out from the brush. Draped over his shoulder was a long sheet of golden hair.
“Ellen?”
Cole carried the unconscious Ellen on his back. I rushed to meet him, took her into my arms, and looked her over. Blood droplets were spattered across the left side of his face.……
“Ellen!”
“Nothing serious, *hah—hah*—just a scratch. Like she got grazed by a *whew*—a piece of wood.”
Despite catching his breath in heaves, Cole's voice was remarkably level.
Looking her over again, the skin above her ear had indeed been cut somewhat deep, but it was hardly a grave wound.
“What in the—”
“She was hit by a spell while fighting the mages. The mages were dealt with by a lady called Mungchi.”
“The mages—plural?”
“There were three more besides the one who wielded lightning. And a man with them—I couldn't tell if he was a mercenary or a bodyguard.”
I scrunched my face up hard as I tended to Ellen's wound.
“……Four mages?”
“Yes.”
Bounty hunters tracking Ellen, and mages capable of calling down lightning.
La-Palais Palace pursuers. Without a doubt.
“Don't tell me you killed those mages?”
“I didn't see it clearly myself, but at least two of them are dead. A lightning mage and a wind mage, respectively.”
“Ha. This is insane.”
They'd gone and killed the palace's own mages.
Granted, there'd probably been no other choice—but I couldn't even guess how badly this would tangle things up.
“That's not what matters right now.”
Cole wiped the sweat from his brow and pressed on quickly.
“Mister Zanavas went to look for Mungchi.”
“……What's that supposed to mean?”
“Mungchi was hit by a crossbow bolt while finishing off the mages and fell somewhere into the brush. So Mister Zanavas entrusted Lady Ellen to me and went searching for her.” Cole's face had gone rigid as he added, “Mister Zanavas said he could feel an ominous mana.”
“Ominous mana?”
“Yes. He said it was mana that cannot exist in the Middle Realm—that we needed to flee, and fast.”
……Ha. What in the hell is all this.
I shelved the questions for the moment and got the party sorted. There were too many wounded—we'd send everyone down to Longville, and I'd take only Cole and Simos to search for Mungchi.
The problem was Utekwai.
The man stood around 220 centimeters tall, and he weighed roughly twice what I did. That monstrous bulk was now sprawled unconscious on the ground.
On top of that, his injuries were too severe to simply lash him to a rope and drag him along. Even the golem Ciren had summoned by wringing out the last of her mana couldn't properly lift him.
In the end, we had the golem carry Jenesser, put Ellen on Mira's back, and lashed together a makeshift litter for Utekwai. Only with Amias, Steedman, Cole, and Simos all gripping the poles did the thing become barely movable.
Just as we finished readying the party to send off, a tide of mana came washing out of the brush.
“So this is it.”
I understood exactly why Zanavas had called it 'ominous.' Even someone like me, hardly attuned to mana, could feel it—a vague but unmistakable air of darkness and despair.……
I glanced back, and sure enough, the Lao siblings had gone ghost-pale. When their eyes met mine, I gave a small shake of my head.
The others, Amias included, merely wore puzzled expressions.
“……Phoenix, sir?”
“It's nothing. Go. Right now.”
“Mm. Understood.”
Doubt lingering on his face, Amias nonetheless led the party down the road.
Only after confirming they were gone did I walk slowly toward the brush.
A shapeless dread brushed against my mind.
Mana that could not exist in the Middle Realm. The Anuphads offered up as perfect sacrifices. The vanished herald of the Dark Sphere.……
Then the scene I'd watched on my computer monitor surfaced in my memory.
The screen gone pitch-black. The bandit count who'd sacrificed not just his hostages but his own men. The Guardian of the Sky, turned traitor.……
The premonition hardened into certainty in an instant.
Because a colossal figure was walking slowly out of the brush.
“……F-following-X swear.”
It was an Anuphad, larger even than an adult troll.
It wore a gray crown upon its head. That alone made its identity easy enough to deduce.
The boss of Chapter 3. Queen Ramashda.
“Smell.”
The monster mimicked a human voice. Its eyes, rippling with strange mana, stared down at me.
“Smell of blood.”
The otherworldly mana I'd only felt as an atmosphere now crystallized into concrete calamity. It spread along the ground like black smoke creeping outward from a fire.
“Kabilda. Undogu.”
The mana bound body and mind together. Just as my vision began to blur, I drew up my blood energy and fought it off.
“Ashiowun. Zarita.”
Ramashda droned on and on in a tongue I couldn't understand. It was an unpleasant voice, somehow on the verge of sobbing.
For a moment the eerie atmosphere almost had me wondering if it was casting a spell—then I caught a familiar word.
“Shitoog. Riuyama.”
……Shitoog? Was that Lieutenant Shitoog?
More words flowed past, and then another familiar one.
“Pushaki. Solwun.”
'Azure Pushaki.'
Only then did I understand what Ramashda was reciting.
“Shichigu. Udean.”
Names. The names of every Anuphad I had killed.
Ramashda came down the slope, tears streaming from its eyes. The closer it came, the more poisonous the ominous mana grew.
“Huh.”
The giant beast shaped like a hound was walking down on two legs, step by unsteady step, weeping with grief like a mother bereft of her children. A sight so chilling it belonged in nightmares.
“……Ha.”
Once I grasped the situation, a hollow laugh forced its way out of me.
The Blessing of Darkness.
That accursed thing which, in the game, had been poured into a single named mob—here in this shitty reality, it had taken root in a chapter boss.
“Ushitu's… ones.”
Ushitu.
God of ratmen and goblins, of orcs and ogres, of Anuphads and minotaurs.……
“Have to… go… together.”
At those words, I threw the javelin with everything I had.
“Hup.”
The power that began at my push-off foot whirled up through knee, hip, shoulder, and elbow in sequence, and poured itself into the throw.
Thwack!
“…Ah.”
The javelin pierced it squarely through the forehead.
Tears still streaming down its face, Ramashda kept coming, the javelin buried in its skull.
“What the hell is this.”
The moment gooseflesh crawled up my arms and I drew Hrunting, the monster's massive body came apart at the seams.
Crash.
The corpse rolled a few times down the slope before snagging on a jutting rock and stopping.
Then it didn't move at all.
What? No way.
“……Did I… get it?”
I'd muttered it without thinking, and startled myself into snapping my mouth shut.
But it was already too late—Ramashda's corpse began to twitch, violently.
“Haah.……” Slashing my palm and smearing blood over Hrunting, I watched the monster's belly split wide open.
Guoooo—!
An ominous cry.
No entrails spilled from the split belly—instead, a flood of black mana came gushing out. It was as if a pitch-black passage had been bored open.……
Pa-da-da-da-dak.
A sound, faint at first, grew steadily louder. A clamor like insects boiling out of a nest.……
“……Kim Phoenix, you absolute idiot.”
Barely had the words left my mouth before black shadows came pouring out of the passage torn in Ramashda's belly.
Guooooo!
The black beasts, upper torsos only, opened their maws in a chorus. Bodies the size of bulls, and voices to match—deafeningly loud.
The spawn of the evil god Ushitu—each one clawed the ground with both arms the instant it wriggled free of the passage, as if on cue, and charged straight for me.
“Aargh, screw this—!”
With a roar, I swung Hrunting into the oncoming beasts.