Gnoll Warrior (2)
The forest let out a miserable scream.
A wolfish howl rang through his ears with a piercing, high-pitched whine.
This was no time to be clutching at his head.
They’d said a Gnoll Warrior’s howl drew other gnolls to the sound.
He had to take the bastard down before the others arrived.
Lawrence grimaced and cast his spell.
“Water Ball.”
There was no time to boost its power.
The Gnoll Warrior began charging at him like an enraged bull.
Lawrence retreated and hurled the Water Ball.
The axe never even came down in a swing.
The Gnoll Warrior kept running straight through the impact.
Its feet never slowed.
It was fair to say the hit had done nothing at all.
A few Water Balls fired off in a panic weren’t enough to stop it, not even for a second.
For an instant, hesitation flickered in Lawrence’s eyes.
If Water Ball couldn’t pin it down, he would have no choice but to use another spell.
Bind was out of the question.
At that speed and strength, it was already beyond the level he could restrain with Bind.
If he used anything, it would have to be Fire Tail. Or Shadow Spear.
But once he brought those out, he would have to give up the pelt.
Either spell would leave the Gnoll Warrior in a hideous state all the same.
His hesitation didn’t last long.
No—there was never really anything to hesitate over in the first place.
“Shadow Spear.”
No matter how good the money was, it was not worth more than his life.
He didn’t have the luxury of making a rope and handling it with care.
The moment Shadow Spear finished forming, it shot forward.
The Gnoll Warrior still didn’t stop.
Just as the orc had done before, the beast raised its axe and brought it down against the shadow spear.
It exploded.
The burst of Shadow Spear erased the creature from view as well.
Lawrence readied Fire Tail in case something unexpected happened.
If it burst out of the dust, he meant to react instantly.
He waited a heartbeat, almost nothing at all.
Then the Gnoll Warrior appeared through the settling dust.
“……”
The creature, drenched in blood, was a wreck.
Both of its arms were gone without a trace.
Its axe was nowhere to be seen.
The price of having taken Shadow Spear head-on.
Had it thought it could endure it?
Or perhaps it had believed it could block it.
Maybe it had known there was no way to dodge and had chosen to collide with it anyway.
The beast somehow still had breath left in its lungs, and it growled low in its throat.
Was refusing to kneel its last scrap of pride?
Lawrence whipped Fire Tail through the air.
The Gnoll Warrior, now missing its head, could move no more.
He looked around.
A fair bit of time had passed since the howl, but there was still no sign of more gnolls nearby.
Thinking it over, he realized why.
This area had already been stripped clean of them.
Lawrence checked the Gnoll Warrior’s corpse.
The creature, exposed to the explosion, was covered in blood from head to toe.
Its armor had long since been blown apart beyond recognition.
Burned, charred-looking wounds covered its body in patches.
The only place left relatively intact was its back, where the blast hadn’t struck directly.
Lawrence took out his skinning knife.
It was fortunate he wouldn’t be going back empty-handed.
A faint smile touched his lips as he separated the hide from the back.
…
……
Thanks to the mercenaries’ efforts, the extermination request was finally completed.
People said monsters would eventually return if enough time passed.
Still, it wasn’t wrong to say they had found a temporary peace for the moment.
Ordinarily, gnolls were the main threat in jobs like this. Sometimes goblins or Under Wolves settled in instead, though not rarely enough to be surprising.
It was enough to remind him of the practical experience he’d nearly forgotten.
He had also learned that Water Ball did, in fact, work against monsters.
His fine control was on a completely different level from before.
Perhaps it was because, while learning Unlock, he had imagined dozens and then hundreds of spaces in his mind; whatever lay beyond sight became much easier to picture now.
That was why he’d been able to pierce the Gnoll Warrior’s head so precisely with Water Ball.
The Gnoll Warrior’s hide was considered a high-grade material.
There were a few minor scratches on the back pelt, but even so, it fetched as much as ten silver.
There was another unexpected gain as well.
Its armor.
The brigandine reinforced with steel plates reacted sharply to the cold.
He’d noticed the same thing when he came from the Magic Tower to Mistra.
Back then, he’d been too occupied practicing Warm to pay it much mind, but once he had to deal with it in real combat, he realized it was not something he could afford to ignore.
The brigandine’s efficiency dropped far too much when exposed to the cold.
Where the Warm spell on his robe lasted for hours at a time, the brigandine was lucky to hold for thirty minutes.
To be blunt, even calling that a long time would be generous.
Of course, right now it was fine.
Thirty minutes was annoying, but manageable.
Still, he couldn’t be sure it would be enough even in the North.
The North’s cold was in a different league from Mistra’s.
He had heard again and again that snow fell there every day and that the place was bitterly cold beyond description.
He hated the cold.
No matter how much he prepared for it, it would never feel like enough.
When he reached the North, he would have to change his armor too.
It looked like he might have more expenses than he’d expected.
Lawrence carefully tucked the coin pouch against his chest.
* * *
By now, even the road to the library felt familiar.
He had passed along it countless times with Angela.
After exchanging greetings with the nuns as if he knew nothing, Lawrence soon sensed that the convent was unusually noisy.
“…Is that really true?”
“I’m telling you it is. Maybe some young lord from a good family?”
The nuns’ voices carried an excited edge.
As the shrill laughter faded into the distance, Lawrence spoke up.
“The convent seems a little loud today.”
“It’s nothing serious. It looks like someone came by, that’s all.”
“At this hour?”
“Why are you so surprised? You’re here right now too, Lawrence.”
As if she found it nothing unusual at all, Angela went on.
“Remember what I told you? Sometimes the nuns bring men in here.”
“Wouldn’t the disturbance be too large for that?”
“I know it sounds like a lie. But what am I supposed to do about the fact that it’s true? From what I hear, they managed to bring in a rather handsome man, so everyone’s been worked up.”
“……”
Lawrence wasn’t exactly in a position to judge.
The convent was a place where men were forbidden.
He hadn’t come here with any such intent, of course.
Still, simply being here could be enough to put a man at fault.
“Did Angela see him too?”
“What kind of dreadful joke is that? Why would I go out of my way to see some man sneaking into the convent? I’d rather use that time to see our lovely sister one more time.”
Angela snorted.
“Only some of the nuns do things worse than ignorant country girls with no sense of chastity. Even if they act depraved, they don’t manage to stain the family name.”
Her cynical tone suddenly called up an image in his mind.
Her figure, speaking with a suspicious man.
“Now that I think about it, I don’t remember ever hearing about your family, Angela. I’m pretty sure you said it was Valentina, right…?”
“Why do you know our family name?”
“Francois told me.”
More precisely, he had heard it the first time they met.
Francois had introduced herself with both her given name and surname.
“…If my sister told you, then I have nothing to say.”
“Is there some problem?”
“If there had been a problem, it would have shown up already. The fact that Lawrence can know our family name and still act so calmly means you don’t understand it.”
A small sigh followed.
“It’s not something worth bringing up outside either. Our family has fallen. We siblings, as blood relatives of the house, are what you’d call fallen nobility. It’s easier if you just think of it that way.”
As though she didn’t want to say any more, Angela cut herself off there.
Fallen nobility.
Even if one was noble, that didn’t mean one could live in comfort forever.
Lawrence recalled the story Francois had once told him.
“If you look closely, nobles aren’t really any different. Families at the center of power tend to keep building their strength, but the ones on the fringes are like crops slowly drying out. Power is easy to swell when you already have it, but climbing from nothing to the view at the top is, in truth, almost impossible.”
Nobles had their own burdens.
They could be pushed aside in politics. They could be harried by rivals.
He had heard that their limits were clearly defined by the rank they held.
That, supposedly, was why provincial nobles could never really gain a foothold in the capital. To be honest, Lawrence barely understood even half of what Francois said.
But he did understand fallen nobility.
A house so diminished it could no longer even be called noble.
A fallen noble was one who had lost everything and crashed all the way to the bottom.
At the library door, she lowered her voice.
“Don’t tell my sister.”
“It wasn’t really worth bringing up in the first place.”
Even if they were fallen nobles, nothing changed.
The Valentina sisters had helped him, after all.
And even now, he was still asking Francois to teach him.
Etiquette. Refinement.
Even if he had no immediate use for them now, Lawrence had no doubt they would be of great help later on.
But just then, Angela’s expression changed as she grasped the door handle.
“The door is open.”
“Maybe Francois forgot to lock it?”
“That’s impossible. I always lock it when I leave.”
That meant someone had gone into the library.
“We need to call someone— no. First we have to make sure my sister is safe….”
“Angela.”
“Lawrence, wait here. It might be a Sister.”
“No. I’m going with you.”
Lawrence shook his head.
The chance that it was actually a Sister was vanishingly small.
Angela’s face had gone so pale it was obvious something was seriously wrong.
“It’s too dangerous. If Sister finds out there’s a man in the convent, she won’t let it slide.”
“We don’t have time for this.”
It was a waste to stand here arguing.
Lawrence’s judgment was swift.
He opened the door soundlessly and checked inside.
The library beyond looked familiar.
Rows of bookshelves. Dust-covered volumes.
There were no obvious signs of an intruder.
Maybe a nun or a Sister had really entered after all.
“I’ll go first.”
Angela, who came in behind him, lit the lamp.
“Can I leave the back to you, Lawrence?”
When Lawrence nodded, a determined light entered her face.
Shaking off her hesitation, Angela stepped forward.
“Sis!”
Lawrence moved while keeping himself hidden behind the bookshelves.
The darkness did not trouble him.
He’d been coming to this library for more than a month now.
He already knew its layout by heart.
He followed the swaying lamp deeper inside.
“Angela!”
That was Francois’ voice.
Hearing her sister’s voice, half cracked with panic, Angela rushed forward.
“Who are you! Why are you in here!?”
“Wait, wait. I’m not a bad person, lady. Could you lower that hand first, and then we can talk?”
So there was someone here.
The calm voice belonged to a man.
And yet, for some reason, Lawrence found it strangely familiar.
No way….
No. That couldn’t be.
Why would that man be here?
This was a convent, a place men were forbidden to enter.
However much he liked women, he wasn’t so lacking in judgment that he’d stroll into a place like this.
Or at least, Lawrence wanted to believe he wasn’t.
Standing protectively in front of Francois, Angela held up the lamp.
Before her was a blond man standing with his back to the window.
“What talking? If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling someone!”
“Please calm down, lady. I’ll explain why I’m here. Have you perhaps heard this story? The moon cannot shine on its own without the sun. The reason I’ve come to find the ladies like this is because, as the moon in the night sky, I too cannot shine without a sun that is a lady.”
Where had he pulled it from?
The man produced a single rose and dropped to one knee.
“Would you grant me a single ray of light?”
“I told you not to come any closer!”
Angela smacked him on the head with the lamp.
“Ghk!”
A short cry rang out.
The man rolled across the floor until he bumped against the bookshelf where Lawrence was hiding.
A familiar face. Clothes he had seen somewhere before.
Even with blood streaming from his nose, he never lost his smile.
“A beautiful rose naturally has thorns. This, too, must be a trial blessed by our meeting. It’s fine. One, two, three—and all the painful memories will fly away.”
He sprang back to his feet and addressed the sisters.
“He really does seem like a strange one….”
“Don’t look, Sis. You might catch his stupidity.”
The tension broke.
Stepping out into the open, Lawrence finally spoke the man’s name.
“Cedric.”
“Hm? How do you know my name…?”
The man—Cedric—turned around, and his face stiffened.
“Why are you here, Lord Lawrence…?”
“I had a feeling something like this would happen eventually. Thankfully, it’s not too late yet. Before the sin grows any deeper, come with me to the guard station.”
“No, wait. J-just wait. The g-guard station? Could you at least give me time to explain myself?”
“I can guess without asking. You probably want to say the lady you like happens to be a nun, don’t you? Isn’t that right?”
“How did you know?”
Cedric asked blankly.
He really was just that kind of man.
And the fact that he looked exactly the same as always made Lawrence almost laugh.
“You know him, Lawrence?”
“Today, I’d very much like us not to be acquainted.”
At Francois’ question, Lawrence let out a long sigh.
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