Thrashing (1)
All winter long, I didn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes for even a moment, I dreamed.
All winter long, I didn't leave my room.
I had no strength left to go searching for the autumn I'd lost.
All winter long, I didn't turn on my phone.
Every call, every message brought news I didn't want to hear.
All winter long, I didn't open the window.
Visitors came one after another — Director Mun, Ji-won, Babpool, Soha, Hui-won, and then even my birth father and my step-grandfather.
All winter long, I didn't change my clothes.
The hospital gown I'd brought back from the ward stayed spotless, without a single stain.
And the spring that finally arrived,
was colder than the winter.
"...Agh."
I shook the dirt out of my grimy hair and pushed myself up off the ground, then fumbled blindly across the mud until my fingers closed around Hrunting.
Ugh, my skull is ringing. Feels like my head's about to split open. How long was I out, anyway?
"You... you monster."
I turned toward the voice and found the stag-horned knight backing away, step by faltering step.
Hm. Looks like I was out for what, five seconds or so?
I kneaded the back of my neck and sized him up. Behind the knight with one broken antler stood another knight and a handful of heavily armored soldiers.
The rest were, of course, sprawled dead all over the place. Since I'd fought while standing my ground in a cramped space against enemies closing in from every side, a low hill of corpses had risen up across the farmland where the battle had taken place.
...I don't think I even killed sixty or seventy of them, but piled up like this it looks like a lot more.
Well, considering more than half of them were heavily armed regulars, it's no small number. Even my monstrous body is screaming bloody murder at every bone.
I spat the dirt out of my mouth and strode toward the stag-horned knight. He flinched violently, twisted halfway around, and scrambled backward in a panic.
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
The sight of him made irritation flare up in me like a slap, so I bent down and scooped up an axe tumbling at my feet. A war axe that felt like it weighed a good three or four kilos.
I hurled the hunk of iron with everything I had. A vicious whistle of air — and then,
CRACK!
The axe wasn't a weapon I was particularly practiced with, so I missed the stag-horned knight entirely.
Instead, the heavily armored soldier beside him went tumbling backward with the axe blade buried in his skull. His head split open so suddenly that he didn't even have time to scream.
Hm. That felt pretty damn good too.
Of course, it wasn't enough. It fell far short of quelling the heat smoldering in my gut, the one stoked by battle and slaughter...
"O-----"
Aw, come on. Not again.
Some filthy, savage urge was surging up on its own, a lingering aftereffect of blacking out for a moment there.
"Haaah— hoo."
I stood frozen in place and took a long, deep breath.
The coppery stench of blood flooding my nose made my mouth water, but I forced my heart to quiet down. Slowly, my mind sharpened again.
With my eyes half-lidded, I watched the stag-horned knight and his dwindling remnant flee.
They weren't the only ones running.
The main body of the Multingham army, having clambered over the wreckage of the palisade and the gate, was sprinting helter-skelter toward their camp to the west. The way they circled wide around me, watching me with wary, guarded eyes, made them look exactly like hedgehogs bristling with spines.
I stared at them for a while, then simply sat down where I was. The heat had drained out of me, and I no longer felt like fighting anyone.
But wait a second. Why was it that I passed out again?
Oh, right. I'd barely managed to finish off the knights clinging to me like leeches, and then a pillar of light came flying in from somewhere and knocked me flying like a bowling pin.
...Huh? A pillar of light?
I jerked my head up, and sure enough — a pale shaft of light came charging toward me from the western sky. A Lance of Force.
"Oh, you've got to be—"
I rolled out of the way, but the lance bent in midair as if it had eyes and came swinging down at me anyway.
BOOM!
"Ungh."
In the game, Lance of Force had been a short-range, single-hit knockback spell. The damage was so obscene that players treated it as a nuke-tier skill.
But you're telling me they extended its range with a magic circle? And stacked Guided on top of that?
Isn't this just flat-out cheating? Do the Destruction Mages of Multingham have no conscience at all?
"Now! Fire—!"
At the distant roar of the command, I swallowed a cough and hit the ground rolling.
By sheer luck, my hand closed around a decent-sized heater shield. I hefted it up and shielded my vitals.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—
"Ugh. Fuck this, seriously."
The rain of arrows went on and on. Peering out from under the shield, I saw no infantry pressing in.
They're trying to pin my feet so I can't pursue them, huh...
"Just crawl away nice and quietly! I'm not chasing you!" I roared, but the arrows kept coming. Right. Like any enemy worth the name would take orders from me.
And then, to make matters worse, a violet orb came drifting out of the west. An Orb of Destruction.
They were flinging spells at me from at least three hundred meters out — there was no way in hell I could counterattack.
Wow, this is enough to drive a man completely insane...
Gritting my teeth, I shuffled along in a crouch behind the shield, blocking the arrows as I went. I snatched up a long spear I'd been keeping my eye on and stomped its shaft, snapping it in half.
Then, in the brief lull when the arrows stopped, I hurled the shortened spear toward the sky. It shrieked past my ear and streaked away, burying itself dead center in the slowly drifting Orb of Destruction.
KWA-BOOM!
The flash bloomed in the air and bleached my vision white, and the detonation hammered my eardrums.
Shrugging off the shockwave, I began scooping up the weapons scattered across the ground and hurling them at the archers.
"Urk!"
The first thing I threw — a falchion — luckily lodged itself in the shoulder of the sergeant commanding the archers. Then maces, longswords, spears, axes — every manner of weapon came flying, and the archers scrambled and swore as they dove out of the way.
Part of me ached to charge right into their midst and rampage like a madman, but there were far too many shield-bearers and heavy infantry.
Besides, the Multingham army's discipline was holding together remarkably well even in retreat. It had the feel of, if I ran at them pretending to be berserk, they'd come at me pretending to be berserk right back.
And I had no spare attention to give them — because another Lance of Force came howling in.
I threw away the shield bristling with a dozen-odd arrows and picked up a round buckler just big enough to cover my torso. Then I reached out and pulled at the blood flowing everywhere around me.
Maybe my mana's grown considerably stronger.
Several branching streams of blood climbed against gravity and flooded over the buckler. The moment my shield of blood was complete, I planted my stance.
"Hah—"
CLANG!
I tilted the shield as I sucked in a breath, and the light pillar glanced off at an angle and shot up into the sky.
For an instant I could make out the startled faces of the Destruction Mages several hundred meters away. Unlike the ones I'd dealt with earlier, every last one of them was a sharp-eyed old man, faces wrinkled with age.
Their surprise lasted only a moment before all three began readying spells again.
Oh, right. A bunch of old codgers want to have an endurance contest with me?
No — contest, my ass. I'm the one getting one-sidedly hammered into the dirt, damn it. I was cursing inwardly when something strange caught my eye.
"...What the hell is that?"
The Destruction Mages had drawn their magic circles atop a small knoll. It was prime ground — open sightlines all around, soft grass underfoot.
Beneath that knoll, a patch of grass was quivering in a way the rest wasn't. As if the earth itself were moving...
I was just narrowing my eyes at the oddity when—
"Huh? Wha—!"
A figure burst up from the ground onto the knoll!
A short cloak bristling with grass, a bobbed crop of hair swaying at shoulder height, a tiny face and long, slender limbs...
"Mungchi?"
Yes — it was Mungchi.
The instant she vaulted onto the knoll, she thrust her arm out toward the Destruction Mages. A palm-sized crossbow bolt spat from her sleeve, and the old man with the long flowing beard clutched his chest and crumpled.
"Ambush!"
"Protect the masters—!"
The stunned guards bellowed, but Mungchi didn't spare the soldiers so much as a glance. Kicking off empty air, she launched herself straight at the Destruction Mages.
Body movement light as a swallow. She was chaining the martial art skills Swallow (Pound) and Thrust (Push) in rapid succession.
A blade sank into the back of one old man trying to flee, and a heel smashed into the mouth of another trying to chant. The assassin art Ambush (Attack), followed by the body skill Crush (Pound).
"An assassin!"
"Master Acto's down!"
As the guards charged at her with fire in their eyes, Mungchi rolled between their legs, cartwheeled overhead, and bolted southward.
Even mid-flight she flung daggers and showered some kind of powder behind her, shaking off the soldiers in pursuit.
"Catch her—!"
"She's running! Cut her off!"
Blades reaching in from every direction shredded Mungchi's clothes in several places, and she took more than a few cuts deeper than scratches — but at last she slipped free of the soldiers' encirclement.
And then she melted, unhurried and unhindered, into the gaps between the supply merchants manning the baggage train...
"...Haah."
The moment Mungchi vanished from my sight, I let out the breath I'd been holding through that whole spectacle.
Infiltrating an army, killing its hidden mages, and walking out alive. That girl really is completely insane.
Setting aside her stealth and her footwork, where in the world did she get that kind of guts?
Well, either way, when she comes back I'll have to bury her in praise. No — praise alone won't cut it.
Hmm... maybe I'll give her a little belly-rub...?
By the time those useless thoughts had run their course, the Multingham army had already fallen back well out of reach. Even from here I could tell their numbers had been cut roughly in half, and their fighting spirit had evaporated entirely.
"So it's over, then..."
I'd had a hell of a time myself, butchering the young Destruction Mages, five knights, and dozens of soldiers — but the defenders of Longville must have had it just as rough.
With the gate and palisade in ruins, they'd been forced to fight at a disadvantage in both quality and numbers.
With the Multingham forces whittled down that badly, I couldn't even imagine how many of our own soldiers had died or been maimed.
Oh, and come to think of it — where's Atalante? Was it really her who brought down the gate?
I was mulling that over when the light suddenly dimmed, as though a cloud had rolled across the sun.
Rain coming, maybe? A downpour after a battle — that's the classic rule, after all.
I cast my mind back. It had been the same at Southharbor. Watching the filthy dust and sodden blood wash away in the rain was what finally made it sink in: ah, it's really over now.
Reminiscing, I looked up at the sky. And I blinked, dumbfounded.
"...Huh?"
What blotted out the sun was no cloud.
Only moments ago I'd been staring up at blue sky, but now a vast sheet of something dark red, like fabric, had draped itself over my head.
Only then did I feel the intense mana pressing down and whip my head around.
Tsststststs—
A woman stood atop the wreckage of the gate.
"Poi."
"You."
It was Heila.
I tightened my grip on Hrunting.
Above her shoulders, blood had spread out into an immense canopy. Because that blood hung all the way down over my head, it felt as if I were trapped inside a colossal curtain.
One glance was all I needed to recognize what this was.
"...The Realm of the Blood King?"
"So you do recognize it."
"How do you even know that technique?"
My mouth hung open in disbelief.
...What the hell. The Realm of the Blood King was never a skill players could use in the first place!
In the game, the limit had been a skill one tier below it — an inferior knock-off. The Bead of the Blood King, cast through the unique dagger Bloodletting, was that lesser version.
Still holding her reins, Heila stroked her black steed's mane a couple of times and sent it back behind her. Then she began descending slowly, stepping carefully through the tangle of wreckage.
Even as she moved, the Realm of the Blood King writhed without pause. It looked like a surface of water rippling — or like a banner snapping in the wind.
And within it, I spotted two women.
"...What the hell is this supposed to be?"
Heila blinked placidly down at me as I growled.
"Calm down."
Tsstststs—
Blood-threads spilled out of the rippling canopy like thread unwinding from a skein, and began coiling around Heila from her fingertips to her toes.
"No one has died yet."
Hanging from the canopy that draped her shoulders were Ellen and Atilia.
Atilia, whose gray hair had been stained a pale violet, hung unconscious and bleeding; Ellen was breathing raggedly, as though something were crushing her throat.
"Ha. Calm down? Cut the crap and let those two go."
"That I can't do."
Heila's hands and feet were swallowed by blood.
As her mana surged, the blood took on a lustrous sheen and hardened into gleaming, dark-red shards.
Clack.
The shards rose, lay down, and slotted together with a bright metallic ringing. In moments, Heila was sheathed in countless crimson scales, like a full suit of plate armor — like a dragon grown new skin.
It was the Blood Craft skill, Iron Blood Scale Armor.
"What do you want?"
"A trade."
The armor had spread up to her jawline, and there it stopped.
"A trade?"
"Yes. A simple one."
Heila was coming down through the wreckage, slowly. Every step was measured and careful, yet her eyes never left me.
"Let's go back to Aillant."
"Then nothing bad will happen. Not to the Fire Witch, not to the Nu-dein warrior woman."
"...Is that a threat?"
"Yes."
Her face was as expressionless as ever. It bordered on shameless.
"And if I refuse?"
"...First, I will kill these two."
Her feet — like crimson steel greaves and sabatons — came to an abrupt halt.
Heila stood atop a large boulder and looked down at me. We were close enough now that I could make out the fine length of her eyelashes.
"After that, I will kill the barbarian warrior and the cute little assassin. The mercenaries who follow you, the baroness and her retainers, Prince Ulkar's men — they come next."
The declaration continued, flat and uninflected.
"I will kill every person still breathing in Longville."
"And then I will take you back to Aillant."
"You're insane."
I spat the words through gritted teeth, but Heila remained perfectly serene.
I ground my jaw for a moment, then hurled the question at her.
"Why the hell are you this obsessed with me?"
"I told you. We are destiny."
"Destiny? Enough with the bullshit. Tell me the real reason."
The black eyes blinked slowly.
"I saw you crying."
"...What?"
"On the day Aila and Gadicx were married. I saw you weep."
"That is what I want. The very tears that will complete our house, our children — and me."
As I stood frozen solid, Heila murmured, almost in a whisper:
"That is what I want."