Nightmare
The Scout looked up at Black Sheep in the tree and slowly drew a short dagger from inside his clothes. The blade was barely a handspan long — a worthless little thing, meant for cutting vines, not for facing a monster. And his opponent was the creature who had turned the entire white forest into a field of corpses.
Even so, he reset his grip. The report was already waiting where he had promised to leave it. Even if he never made it back, someone would find it. That left only one thing to do: thrash for all he was worth.
Watching from above, Black Sheep's skull mask twitched, as if she were smiling. As if nothing delighted her more than prey backed into a corner that bared its teeth instead of running.
Just as I thought. A Play-Type...
Cold sweat slid down his spine.
In that instant Black Sheep dropped straight toward him. He ground his teeth and swung the dagger overhead with everything he had — an optimal blow, the falling line and the moment of contact read to perfection. The edge cut nothing but air.
Black Sheep was already standing at his back. Strangely, there was not even the sound of a foot on grass.
He spun and cut again. Breath held, he threw slash after slash. However many times he repeated it, he could not so much as brush the tip of a hair. It was like fighting a phantom that seemed about to touch him and never did.
Only then did he understand. Black Sheep had not even drawn her claws, as if he were not worth the trouble of facing.
His breath climbed all the way to his throat. Black Sheep, by contrast, looked quietly up at him without a single breath out of place. The mask that had been twitching with glee had gone dead still. In its place, the skull's empty eye sockets tipped to the right, then to the left.
Is she going easy on me?
If she were playing with her prey, he could have understood that. This tilt of the head was wrong somehow.
No. More than that... is she deliberating?
Whether to kill him, or how?
What in the world is she turning over?
Each time he wrung out what strength he had left and swung, Black Sheep slipped aside at a leisurely pace, as if indulging him.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Then she muttered, low, from inside the mask.
"Total newbie. Touch him and he'll probably just die."
The blade froze where it hung in the air. He had heard words a person would use. They were a little muffled, echoing inside the skull, but there was no way he had misheard.
Newbie. A meaningless word he had never heard in his life. Right now, though, the meaning mattered less than the fact that Black Sheep had spoken at all. A talking monster could not exist. Black Sheep was human.
In that moment the oddities began to register — feet as pale as any person's, the look in the eyes beyond the skull. Proof so plain he could not believe he was only noticing it now.
"If you die, you can't come back, can you?"
This time it was closer to talking to herself than to a question. The dead do not live again. That was obvious. And yet, strangely, the obvious sentence sounded almost regretful in his ears.
As the words ended, a cold wind passed over the nape of his neck. No — a sword stroke so uncanny he mistook it for wind grazed him and was gone. He did not even feel that he had been cut. The world simply tilted, slow, and the man's head flew high into the sky.
The ground fell away. White leaves, then the sky beyond them, swept across his eyes in turn. Far below he saw a familiar headless body standing blank, the dagger still in its hand.
Whirl.
Each time the head turned once, the scenery changed at speed. Familiar faces were pushing through the grass — scouts, come looking because he had not returned. They found the headless corpse and swallowed their screams, then drew their weapons and charged the clump of black fur standing beside it.
No. Run!
He tried to shout. A severed head has no voice. The ones charging collapsed still in the shape of the step they had been taking. Arms and legs, hacked off in different directions, scattered across the grass.
Whirl.
Somehow his vision was showing the heart of the village. He was certain he had died in the middle of the forest, and yet even the thought that this was strange failed to come. There was the rampart that had held monsters off for generations, broken and mended, broken and mended again — and Black Sheep climbing it. Those pale, slender legs kicked the face of the wall lightly, only a few times. That alone was enough for the clump of black fur to run up the vertical surface as if it were level ground.
Someone shouted, urgent. The top of the rampart grew loud.
Whirl.
The noise had already ceased, because there was no longer anyone standing on the rampart. Spilled blood drew a long line down the wall, and Black Sheep stood in the middle of it. The skull mask gazed quietly down at the village, at the roofs crammed tight together, as if choosing the next prey.
Whirl.
Screams burst from every side. Black Sheep cut down whatever caught her eye, whatever came to hand. Not one person in the village managed a real fight against her.
It was a bizarre sight. Wherever the claws passed, someone's neck happened — of all things — to be waiting. Where a body twisted to dodge. Where an arm rose to block. The claws lay there as if they had been waiting from the start. It looked so easy that cutting down a scarecrow would have seemed harder. A scarecrow, at least, does not leap onto the blade of its own accord.
Whirl.
With the last turn, in the moment the head dropped toward the ground—
"Aaaaaagh!"
The man woke screaming.
He groped at his own neck with a trembling hand. There was no mark of a cut. Even so, a chill still lingered at the nape.
"Hah— hah—"
His rough breathing would not settle. Only after he threw off the sweat-soaked blanket did he realize he was on his familiar bed.
That dream again. Ever since the day he met Black Sheep, he had been having the same nightmare every night — his head flying off, and the village slaughtered inside that spinning vision. Of course the massacre in the dream had never actually happened. The scouts, the village guard, the people of the village, all of them would be living a day no different from any other. Everything after If you die, you can't come back, can you? had existed only inside the nightmare.
Since then, the only thing Black Sheep had actually done was ask to be fed. A demand so deflating it embarrassed the man who had prepared himself to die.
Even so, he had decided the nightmare had grounds of its own. Because he believed Black Sheep was an Inspection Knight sent by the Central. Those rumored Inspection Knights who appeared in any village or city that broke the Central's rules and slaughtered every human in a district without leaving a single witness!
The evidence was plentiful.
First, the thick killing intent clinging to her body.
How many people do you have to cut down to end up like that?
Even an outlaw who went around plundering villages could not have piled up killing intent of that order. Dozens, hundreds — nowhere near enough. An Inspection Knight. One who had massacred tens of thousands, without a doubt.
Second, her swordsmanship. He had confirmed this with his own two eyes, when Black Sheep showed the village children a few moves. An extremely efficient, beautiful line. The children had cheered without understanding any of it, and he himself could not look away the whole time he watched. But there was a problem. Her swordsmanship was aimed thoroughly, and only, at human beings. Wherever the tip of the sword came to rest, he could almost see the person who would be standing there. A killing sword, meant for nothing but murder.
The moment he realized it, his breath caught short.
There is only one place you can learn a thing like that.
No one but an Inspection Knight could possibly master it. On this land, the reason people took up weapons had always been monsters, then and now. Outlaws who had been village hunters and turned bandit? The martial arts they learned were nothing but offshoots grown out of monster-hunting techniques — swordsmanship that, however you hid it or refined it, still carried the habit of killing monsters straight through. Her swordsmanship bore not a trace of that. It was as if the whole of it had been built, from the first stroke to the last, only to kill people. If such swordsmanship existed, it would be in a place that had fought human beings for a very long time. As far as he knew, that place was the Central alone.
And there were far too many other suspicious points besides.
That usual listless, guileless look must be a disguise too.
The listlessness of sprawling anywhere the moment there was a gap. The guilelessness of blinking in ignorance of things even a child knew. All of it would be an act, meant to make the other party drop their guard. For a power of that level to go so far as to act — the Central's reach was truly frightening.
Squeeee!
At the familiar squeal of a pig, he looked out past the window. One of the village's pigs was ambling down the middle of the road at its leisure, and on its back Black Sheep lay sprawled like a wilted vegetable. Her great mane of black hair spilled all the way down the pig's flank, so that from a distance the animal seemed to be wearing a black cloak. The thin limbs sticking out beneath it swayed limply in time with the pig's steps. She was touring the village in exactly that posture.
A villager who had opened a stall saw her and offered a greeting without a second thought. Black Sheep, mounted on the pig, did not even lift her head. Instead of answering, she only flapped a hand. A thoroughly peaceful scene. But the back of the man who knew the truth was already soaked with cold sweat.
Does that person even know who they're greeting?
He shot up from where he sat and ran for Black Sheep — to earn even a slightly better mark in the inspection, and to win the village's survival.
I was loafing on the back of an enormous pig. Sunlight settled warm across my eyelids. Body heat rose from beneath my back, and every time the pig took a step I swayed, slow and easy. Whatever care this pig was getting, it was just the right size, soft to the touch, and it even smelled of something properly dried in the sun. So I had made it my portable bed.
Peaceful...
Honestly, it was a little unexpected. A village sitting in a forest this vicious — I had been sure that the moment I arrived, events would come hammering down. A full five days, and nothing had happened. No raid, no incident, not even anyone picking a fight!
Five days might be nothing to someone else, but to me it was an enormous stretch of time. Back on Earth, aside from the flight I took to America, I had never once rested from Einherjar for more than four hours. Those dozen or so hours on the plane had been the longest gap since I started Einherjar. Which meant I was currently breaking my own record day after day.
Even so, I was not bored. Eyes closed, the surroundings still drew themselves perfectly clear — footsteps on dirt, voices haggling at the stalls, even the slow beat of the pig's heart under my back. Each one was sharp enough to take in my hand. Footsteps alone sketched a stride and a center of balance. Breathing alone showed which way they would move next. So what would happen if I reached a sword into that? In my head I cut them down over and over, corrected it, and cut them down again. Just fitting this sense, grown several times keener, together with my swordsmanship was enough to make the time pass well. Proficiency rising while I did nothing but lie there. It truly felt as if I grew stronger with every breath.
"Lady Black Sheep. Hello. A fine morning to you!"
The man I had first met in the forest ran up and greeted me with extreme courtesy. I did not even open my eyes. I only flapped a hand, vaguely. He must have seen the greeting, and still he kept his waist bowed until I was completely out of range. He did that every time. Was there some reason? It was so excessively polite that it felt a little strange.
In truth he was only the extreme end of it. The villagers were all scrupulously respectful toward me. From what I had heard, the class called Hunter — those who could hunt monsters — was held in considerable regard. There was no formal caste, but it felt a little like one. The people who killed monsters guarded the village and fed it. The village held those people up. If that hardened across generations... I almost wondered whether this was how nobles came to be.
Anyway. Black Sheep, is it.
That Black Sheep was a name fitted to the culture of the people here, and no wonder. Their own names ran along the lines of Swift Snail. In a place like that, neither my name from Earth nor my ID from Einherjar suited anything. Besides, everyone in Einherjar had called me Black Sheep too, so I was used to it. It was this fluffy hair. Whenever a match was set, the first thing out of an opponent's mouth was always, Gah, it's Black Sheep!
Personally, I would have liked them to call me by my ID, The Only Sane Person in Einherjar... What a good ID that was. Honest and clean, the sort that let you see at a glance what kind of person I was. And yet no one ever called me by it, which was a little disappointing. Now that Einherjar had gone under, it was also a dream I would never get to see come true.
"Black Sheep Unnie!"
This time a voice calling me came from behind, and with it light, quick footsteps. I had known even before she called. It was the footstep I had heard most across these five days. Still lying on the pig, I turned only my head a little. A small girl with white hair and blue eyes was running toward me.
Her name was White Wolf. She was currently in charge of looking after my daily life — a good kid, who cooked well and saw to this and that with care. Even when I lived on Earth I had never been able to do anything properly except Einherjar, so having a child like that attached to me was a very good thing.
Why couldn't I do a thing? Spend hundreds of years doing nothing but swinging a sword until you become a ranker in Einherjar, and forgetting all of modern life is normal. I had forgotten even how to use chopsticks. There was no way I would know how to start a fire and cook. So this was an entirely normal phenomenon, exactly what you would expect from a normal person.
White Wolf caught up beside the pig and, before she had even caught her breath, held out the clothes she had been carrying.
"Please wear some clothes when you go out."
Why did she keep telling me to put clothes on? Honestly, wasn't underwear enough? You could not see anything past the hair anyway. A mane lush enough to cover my whole body and still have some left over — at that point, wasn't it practically the same as walking around in a full set of clothes?
"I've already forgotten how to put clothes on."
"...Don't play around. Raise your arms."
But if it was White Wolf, who made delicious food, I had no choice. I obediently sat up, threw both arms straight overhead, and meekly accepted the dress being pulled down over my head. Five days had been enough for her hands to learn the work completely. There was no hitch in them. Once the clothes were on, I gathered up the hair I used for keeping the sun off, covered my face with it, and flopped back onto the pig. With the sunlight blocked, the world in front of my eyes darkened just the right amount.
"Unnie, today I'll show you the lake over that way."
White Wolf took the lead, and the pig obediently turned to follow. How wide the lake was. What lived along the water. What connection it had to the name of this village. Her clear, careful voice went on without stopping. I took it as background music and savored the map of the village I had newly arrived in.
The elder council chamber of Sleeping Lake Village. Three old men were speaking with grave faces. Presiding from the head seat was a wounded old man wrapped thick in bandages — the Bandaged Elder.
"The Season of White Leaves is dragging on far too long. Ordinarily it does not pass five days, yet this time it has continued for more than a week."
"There is a graver problem than that."
The Tall Elder took up the thread.
"In the recent incident, every active hunter died. There is a limit to how long we retired men can hold out alone."
"But during the Season of White Leaves, we cannot request that other hunters be sent, either."
The hunters had died, and the white leaves had come before anyone could so much as catch a breath — and far longer than usual.
Of all times.
A bitter taste filled the Bandaged Elder's mouth. In truth the recent incident had carried some suspicious circumstances, but the Season of White Leaves had begun at once, and the matter had more or less fizzled.
"It is fortunate, at least, that Hunter Black Sheep has joined the village this time."
In fact, throughout this Season of White Leaves the village had been unnaturally quiet. By now even the three elders knew the cause was the heap of corpses piled in the middle of the forest.
"But how long can she hold out alone..."
"Was there not a report that Hunter Black Sheep's level is Danger Level 4?"
A grade at which you could not be sure of a hunt even if an entire village threw itself in. If that report was right, it meant a hunter the equal of such a monster was staying in the village now.
"It was confirmed that she took down a great number of Danger Level 2 monsters, but nothing beyond that."
"The speed of the cleanup alone was impressive enough to call Danger Level 4. But looking at that build, and at the size of the weapon, would Danger Level 3 and above not be difficult?"
A body no bigger than a child's, and a small weapon to match. There would have been no trouble facing small monsters. Against a large one, though, it would not do. To cut through thick hide, a weapon had no choice but to grow larger.
"Further investigation outside is difficult as well. All we can do is pray the Season of White Leaves passes even a day sooner."
As if they had promised it, sighs slipped from the mouths of all three.
Boom!
The sound of something exploding rang out. The table shook, and dust pattered down from the ceiling. The direction was the village rampart sealing off the ravine. The three elders met one another's eyes, each snatched up a weapon, and hurried toward the rampart at a run.
When they reached it, a huge shadow showed through the thick dust — a bulk large enough to fill the gap in the collapsed rampart and still have room to spare. Every time the shadow took a step, the ground underfoot rumbled low.
"This..."
The elders despaired, and with good reason. What had appeared after smashing the rampart was a large Danger Level 3 monster. In their active days they could have hunted it well enough. Now, grown old, it was a grade they could not handle.
Is this as far as we go?
Even so, meaning to fight to the last, the Bandaged Elder gripped his weapon and shouted.
"All of you — get out through the passage on the far side of the village!"
The villagers who had been standing stunned came to their senses at last and began to run. Three old hunters would not hold for long. For that short while, though, the people could flee. A sufficient reason for an old hunter's end.
The Bandaged Elder stepped forward. He drew a breath deep into his chest, and in the instant he meant to shout at the monster with a grim resolve to die—
"Emergent event!"
A clump of black fur brushed past him like the wind. The battle cry that had climbed all the way to his throat lost anywhere to go. Shouting something incomprehensible, Black Sheep was running at the monster — with a truly delighted face. A face bright with open happiness, the sort she had never once shown in the village.