The Perfect Stage
A scarlet dusk was sinking out of the sky, but the forest beneath it seemed in a desperate hurry—already laying a deep, heavy shadow over itself.
Under that dim canopy, countless footsteps swept past like the wind. Beastkin tore through the brush, kicked off the trunks of massive trees, and at times bounded low and long, almost gliding. They were running toward a battlefield, and yet not a weapon hung in any of their hands. Born already bearing the spirits of the forest, they took pride in the knowledge that a spirit's fangs and claws could outmatch any ordinary arm.
"Hah—!"
I chased their backs and forced the rough breath out of my lungs. The beastkin made no particular effort to stop me from joining. With the demonkin as the enemy before them, they had no pretext for barring a member of the ducal house—and no time to waste on a meaningless quarrel besides.
The price of forcing my way into a fight of their making, however, was nothing small. The battle proper had not even begun, and merely keeping pace with their march across the forest was already far from easy.
"Huff... huff... Y-Young Master...! Go on ahead!"
Greg called it out as he slipped, little by little, behind. The beastkin's mobility outstripped even a knight's body reinforced with aura. I could match their speed well enough, thanks to the stat elixir still at work in me, but for Greg—only just risen to a two-star knight—keeping up was simply beyond him. I left him with nothing but a word not to rush, and drove on.
How long I ran, I could not say. Then a bleak note cut through the wind shaking the leaves, and the acrid stench of something burning struck me full in the face. Faint screams came with it, and the unpleasant cries peculiar to demonkind. Before long a village swallowed in flame came into view, and enemies standing upon the ash.
"...Trolls."
What had overrun the beastkin village were trolls—monsters that looked as though the rock itself had learned to move. Gray hide hardened like stone, and a regeneration that seemed to have no end. Each one stood well over three meters tall, and they were judged a full rank—no, two—more dangerous than orcs.
Even so, the beastkin did not slow.
"Take them!"
The bear-formed beastkin at the very front roared it, and those who had run with him hurled themselves at the trolls as if they meant to ram them headlong. Ser was among them. Anxious for her sister, she was flaying a troll's hide with claws stretched long as a spirit-body's.
"Kiaaaa!"
The troll howled. I drew my sword and took in the field.
Spoken coldly, the battle that met my eyes did not look favorable. The beastkin were plenty strong, but too few. The trolls, by contrast, were strangely numerous, and still very much intact. A host of that size would surely have a commander as well. Weighing the whole of their strength, I could not even be certain of victory if I stepped in to help.
Which was precisely why—
"Good. This is perfect."
I threw myself gladly into that fight. If I wanted the beastkin for friends, I first had to become their comrade in arms—but a mere comrade would not do. It had to be a savage battle with lives on the line. Not a field where victory was assured, but one where sacrifice was already written in and annihilation flickered at the edge of sight. Only by distinguishing myself in a fight like that could I finally earn their recognition. This place was exactly the stage I needed.
Perhaps that was why.
Emergency Quest!
A quest had appeared as well. I did not need to look to know what it asked.
Dark-crimson aura erupted from the Screaming Sword. Riding that heat, I charged the troll before my eyes.
"Kkeueok!"
With a sickening noise—the sound, quite literally, of a troll's throat being opened—a massive gray monster crashed to the earth. Three deep gashes remained across its neck. Even that had not been enough.
Crack!
Ser, the beastkin who had opened those wounds, slashed the fallen troll's throat once more. Translucent claws, grown from her fingers to nearly seventy centimeters, crushed through the neck-bone and took the head. Only then did the tenacious monster's breath finally snap.
"Where are you...!"
There was no victor's ease on the face of the one who had felled it. Night had settled completely through the forest, and the fires the trolls had set rolled and surged, throwing Ser's sight into chaos. She was searching for her elder sister, Sar. By the word of the messenger who had barely carried news as far as the village, Sar was holding the line here against the monsters, together with this village's beastkin.
But—
"Gaaaaah!"
Every direction showed her nothing but trolls. Nowhere was there any sign of the survivors who were supposed to be standing against them.
Had they come too late after all?
"...No!"
Forcing the grim picture from her mind, Ser pushed deeper in. At the heart of the village the trolls were thicker still—dozens, among those she could see alone. Her face went briefly pale. Then she hardened her resolve and surged into them.
"Grrrrgh!"
Once more her claws split troll after troll without rest. Blood sprayed on every side, and screams chased it, but the monsters' numbers did not fall easily. Their hides were the reason, and their regeneration. Stone skin turned aside even beastkin claws and fangs, sharper than a knight's sword, and even when that hide was at last ripped open, all but the worst wounds closed in a heartbeat. Unless the neck came clean off, they did not die well.
"Hah...!"
Ser fought them in a blur. The only thought in her head was finding her sister, and so she never noticed when it began.
"...!"
All at once she realized there was nothing around her but trolls. The other beastkin had not vanished. She alone had gone too deep into their formation. They had lured her, deftly, far inside.
"Damn it...!"
Only then did her thoughts go cold. Trolls were closing in from every side. In that instant she knew that to stay was to die.
"Aaaaaaaagh!"
A scream tore the air—neither beastkin nor troll, horrible enough to raise the skin. The noise was unpleasant past any easy word for it.
"Keeek!"
And yet the trolls who heard it twisted their faces and clamped their hands over their ears. An opening she had never expected.
Ser did not waste it. She slipped free of them—and a human came into view. The uninvited guest who had come so suddenly looking for their village. One of those who had needlessly egged Sar on until she said things that did not need saying.
"Gaaaaah!"
The trolls, halted for a breath, began to move again. The scream must have grated on them that badly, for they did not come for Ser. They went for the man.
"Look out—"
She meant to shout that he was in danger. Before the words could finish—
Shwaak!
The sword that had looked so viciously ill-omened cut the trolls down with fluid grace. Ser knew little of swordsmanship, but even to her eyes the movement was beautiful.
"Urgh..."
Trolls opened by that blade toppled backward in a line. It was uncanny. These were creatures that, for all their ferocious hold on life, would still swing a club with a carotid split or a belly torn wide. Before that dark-crimson sword they dropped in a heap, like sick chickens.
"......"
Having cleared a whole pack in an instant, the man met Ser's eyes. She inclined her head to him, lightly. She still thought him suspicious for thrusting himself into this battle unasked—but he had pulled her out of the danger just now, and that much was fact, so she offered her thanks.
He said nothing. His gaze turned toward the center of the village, where a troll of no ordinary bearing was only just showing itself: a necklace of strung skulls at its throat, a crude wooden staff in its hand.
"A shaman...!"
A troll shaman. A heavy stillness passed through Ser, and through the other beastkin as well. The shamanism of the demonkin was a power set against the spirits, and those wicked arts interfered with a spirit's manifestation, which made them an exceedingly troublesome foe. There were still far too many trolls besides. If that shaman took the line in earnest and the trolls moved to shield it, it would be no exaggeration to say the beastkin, as they stood, had no hope of victory.
Ser's face twisted. At this rate she might have to fall back before she ever found Sar.
But then—
"What—"
The human with the dark-crimson sword charged the troll shaman in a straight line. It was reckless. That shaman's art was not limited to hindering spirits. It could strengthen the trolls and heal them, of course, and it could pour out offensive spells without rest. To rush a thing like that alone—she was certain he would die at once beneath a strengthened troll's blow. And if not that, then the baptism of fire and ice would leave not even a corpse.
And yet—
"...!"
That was not what happened. Trolls strengthened by shamanism swarmed in from every side. The man raised a blood-red aura before them and, with a single stroke, flung dozens aside. Before the red trajectory cut through the air, a troll was nothing but meat, collapsing as blood and flesh poured out.
The shaman, suddenly desperate, spilled its incantations. Flame surged up. Lightning fell. The man sprinted through the magic, and not a single spell touched his body. As if he were reading the flow of mana itself—as if the magic circles hanging in empty air had already told him each spell's nature and its path—he slipped past every one.
"How...!"
One of the beastkin breathed it in pure astonishment. Not even a beastkin could move like that, not even in the forest. It was a feat the eyes refused to believe.
In the space of a blink he reached the shaman and brought it down in a single breath. The neck of that tree-thick shaman, skull necklace and all, was swallowed in dark-crimson flame and crashed to the ground.
"......"
Trolls and beastkin alike could only stare, blank. It was an overwhelming fight—one they could neither stop nor aid.
And then, immediately—
"What are you all doing!"
The man shouted, and it landed like a rebuke for beastkin standing dazed while the battle had not yet ended.
Only then did their eyes fly open. Ser shook her head as well. He was right. The fight was not over. Trolls still carpeted every direction—and Sar still had to be found. She let out a short breath and charged them at once. The other beastkin did the same, and battle broke open again.
Their hides were still hard, and they still did not die easily, but—whether because they had lost their chief—the trolls' momentum was no longer what it had been. Hope kindled in Ser's eyes as she finally caught the turn of the fight.