Puppet Beasts (2)
It could not quite be called ideal, but the ambush had succeeded.
Or so the dark mage leading the beastfolk thought.
Through a crow's eyes, he had confirmed that reinforcements were coming to the Baron. It was the sort of thing a skilled priest or a mage of 3-Star or higher would have spotted immediately — but there was no chance talent of that caliber existed in a backwater like this.
There was one priest among them, true enough, but he was nothing special.
He could not allow those reinforcements to join up.
His original plan had been to let them push a little deeper into the forest, then unleash the werewolf he had hidden in the shadows right into the heart of their formation. For some reason, they had stopped midway. Still, they had come far enough to be surrounded, so he had sent every last one of his subordinates pouring out of the gloom and forced the attack.
Beastfolk were simple-minded and stupid. But they possessed endurance beyond any human's, and hides thick with fur. The Baron's men had the numbers, but not by enough to overturn that gap. He had expected them to flounder against the beastfolk and then be butchered one by one by the werewolf.
Instead, there turned out to be two unexpectedly powerful warriors among them — strong enough to pin the werewolf down. One of them had red hair. The Baron's son, perhaps?
Eliminate those two, and the scales would tip completely in his favor.
While everyone else was absorbed in the enemy directly in front of them, the dark mage who had remained hidden in the shadows until the very end finally revealed himself. He stretched a hand toward the two warriors and drew up his mana.
Then something flashed past in an instant, briefly blotting out his vision.
"…What. What just went by?"
One of the beastfolk, maybe? But he was not so green a mage that a momentary distraction would scatter his mana.
And yet, strangely, the spell would not form.
"Why won't the magic— huh…?"
The dark mage tilted his head and looked down at his own hand.
No matter how hard he stared, he could not see it. All that met his eyes was a fountain of blood spraying into the air.
"Uh… uuh… uaaaaaaaaaagh!"
His arm had been severed. The agony crashed over him a beat too late. On the verge of blacking out, the dark mage barely managed to cling to consciousness.
— Gurrrrrk.
A grotesque sound, like organs writhing and churning. He turned his head toward it.
Where his gaze landed, there was a creature like a mass of black flesh. Its appearance defied belief that it belonged to this world at all. Tentacles for legs. A vast maw. Hundreds of fangs packed tight inside that mouth. Dozens of eyes.
What the hell is that.
— Gurrk. Gurrk.
It was chewing something, grinding it between its teeth. His own arm.
He could tell that the abomination was the product of some dark rite. But he could not begin to guess which. It felt composite — something no single curse could have produced alone.
In any case, it was certain there was another dark mage on the other side.
Looking at the creature filled him with dread. Its appearance was hideous, yes, but that was not the whole of it. Simply holding it in his sight seemed to inject terror straight into him. It was the same sensation as being struck by the Curse of Illusion.
But that thing was no illusion, no matter how he looked at it. It was unmistakably real.
— Gurrrrrk!
The abomination lunged at the dark mage, jaws splitting wide, hundreds of teeth writhing.
"Hiiik!"
He hastily cast an earth spell. A wall of black stone erupted between him and the creature. The sound of those fangs grinding through rock — crunch, craaack — sent a chill racing down his spine.
He followed immediately with a sky spell, pouring every ounce of power he could muster into it. With a roar that tore the air apart, black lightning crashed down upon the abomination. The bolt shattered the grotesque thing and, at the same time, shook the earth and left a fissure behind. A handful of the Baron's men and beastfolk caught in the blast were reduced to ash.
As a World Mage he was only 3-Star — but by amplifying his power through dark magic, he could unleash destructive force that surpassed even a 4-Star.
"Khrrrgh…"
Vertigo washed over him. He had already lost far too much blood, and the urgency of the moment had driven him to burn through an excessive amount of mana. The battle was nowhere near overwhelmingly in his favor, and there was no guarantee he could defeat an unknown dark mage in this condition.
If he stayed, he was going to die.
"Fall back! Fall back, now!"
— Retreat order!
— Boss says fall back!
— Retreat! Everyone run!
— Grrrrrr…!
The werewolf swept its sword in a great arc, flinging the two warriors it had been fighting far aside. Then it spun and raced toward the dark mage. He scrambled onto its back, and in an instant the werewolf vanished deeper into the forest. The beastfolk abandoned the fight as one and fled in the same direction.
The moment I confirmed the beastfolk were retreating, I shoved open the carriage door and stumbled out. I could not endure the nauseating sensation of my insides turning inside out any longer.
"Urgh… uweeegh…"
It was always like this when I used my Altering ability. This time I had drawn on a new and complicated power, so it hit harder than before.
"Young Master! Are you all right?!"
"Don't worry about… urgh…"
Sophie climbed down from the carriage as well and rubbed my back. My body refused to settle. If it was going to be like this every time, that was going to be a problem.
— The furry bastards are running!
— After them!
— Kill every last one!
With the enemy falling back first, the men's blood was up, and they surged after the beastfolk. But I had to stop them.
"Sophie… get back in the carriage…"
"What? But…"
"Brother…! You mustn't pursue them!"
"What is it this time?!"
"Monsters are coming!"
"Damn it!"
Cain spat a curse, but he issued orders without hesitation. The men fell into formation at his command.
It was not that my senses were sharper than anyone else's present. I had simply seen them — shapes cloaked in shadow, pouring through the undergrowth.
Monsters were beasts that had been cursed. Just like the cursed themselves, illusions layered over them in my sight. Aggressive as monsters were, a pack launching a sudden coordinated assault like this was anything but natural.
"A monster tamer…?"
Among the arts of death magic, there was a rite for taming monsters. A curse that could control beings of low intelligence who were already under a curse.
"The Curse of the Puppet."
Apparently the dark mage had summoned the monsters as he fled. That would also explain why the werewolf had been armed. Wearing armor and swinging a sword? A werewolf was still human at its core, but once transformed, its intellect plummeted. It was nowhere near capable of fighting while equipped.
In Luke's Biography, I had never seen a werewolf bound by the Curse of the Puppet on top of everything else, so the possibility had not even crossed my mind. I had simply assumed it was the dark mage's companion.
— Kuaaaaah!
— Krrrrrk!
The monsters burst from the brush, tearing it aside. A pack of wild dogs, each the size of a bear.
The Manfred Barony was land crawling with monsters. For that dark mage, it meant no shortage of puppets to command — a considerable advantage. But the Baron's men had lived on this land their whole lives. They were veterans of monster hunting.
— Don't flinch! Stand and fight!
— You sons of bitches!
— You know how many of you we've killed already?!
Brenden and the men expertly slashed at the wild dogs' leg joints. Cain, thrashing more like a beast than the monsters themselves, vaulted onto the off-balance dogs and took their heads with his battle-axe. It was the spitting image of Father's technique — the one that had earned him the name of butcher.
— Waaaaaah!
A young lion with a crimson mane, his whole body painted in beast blood. I watched him roar from atop a wild dog's corpse, the man who had carried the fight to victory. His men echoed the cry.
No further work required of me, then.
Holding on to consciousness was becoming difficult. I had been forced to use mana in this frail body, and on top of that I had wrung residual thoughts dry to birth that illusory monster — only for the dark mage to destroy it in the end. The drain on my mind had been far too severe.
A little rest and I would be fine.
My vision blurred. My eyes met Cain's. He leapt down from the corpse and came running toward me.
"Shhhhit… khhrrgh… my… beloved… sooon~~!! Khhrrgh…"
What dragged my consciousness back was someone's drunken rambling. I knew at once it was Baron Manfred.
"Are you with us?"
A dark room. I was lying in a bed. The man beside me was Priest Thomas — the clergyman the Lumenic Church had dispatched to the Manfred Barony.
"Where… is this…?"
"Muranan Village."
"So we… made it safely…"
"I've heard the story. You ran into beastfolk deserters on the way here. It sounds as though things nearly went very badly."
"They did…"
"Rest. I'll bring you something to eat."
"Thank you…"
Priest Thomas opened the door and left. He looked strangely drained. Exhausted from the battle with the dark mage, perhaps. I had expected him to start talking up Lumenic Church support this time for sure. Then again, he might already have said plenty of that to the Baron — and received nothing but alcohol-soaked curses in return.
Through the open window, sounds drifted in from outside. Mostly the Baron's drunken ranting.
"Would you quit making such a fuss. The boy just dozed off 'cause he was tired, that's all."
"What the hell… would you… know~~!! A father… when his kid… so much as… snores…"
"Yeah, yeah. Fine. You can barely talk straight."
Brenden's grumbling went on for a while, then cut off after a dull thud of impact.
"Hey! What's your name!"
"S-S-Sophie, sir! Baron! I'm the maid assigned to Young Master Karl!"
I could hear the Baron carefully enunciating so his tongue would not tangle. Why did he have Sophie cornered?
"Who told you to do that!"
"Th-the… the B-Baroness…!"
"That's my wife for you! She's got an eye for people! Hm? And through all that chaos, she even brought the liquor cask without breaking it!"
"Th-thank you, sir!"
Ah. So it was about the liquor cask. Good to know Sophie's effort hugging that thing inside the lurching carriage had paid off.
"Father! I'm the one who snuck it out without Mother knowing!"
"Ah! Of course I'm proud of my boy!"
"More importantly — if it hadn't been for Karl, we really would have been in trouble. The ambush, the monsters coming… without him, we would have been sitting ducks."
"Khrrgh… that… fragile… little… child… has come so faaar~~!!"
"Augh. My eardrums. Give it a rest already."
The sound of the Baron — tongue tangled again — bickering with Brenden went on for some time. Eventually, whether they had offended each other or simply worn themselves out, the argument died down. That was when Cain spoke carefully.
"Father… some of the men say they spotted a strange monster during the fight."
"A strange monster?"
A strange monster. I had only seen the wild dog monsters. Had something else appeared after I collapsed?
"They said it had eyes all over and a huge snout."
…That would be my masterpiece they were talking about. It had appeared before I collapsed, not after.
"The ones who saw it are still holed up in their tents, shaking. It's… a lot like Karl when he was little."
"Damn it all. As if a werewolf weren't enough, they brought some freak along too? Whatever it is, I'll thrash the lot of them!"
I had not particularly intended to hide my ability. Still, it seemed I would need to refrain from using it too freely for a while.