Chaos in the Wilderness (4)
"W-why are you doing that all of a sudden?"
"..."
Robinson, who had been standing at his side, was just as rattled by the abrupt move. But the armored knight said nothing; he only stared at the rooftop where the bird, struck by the arrow, had fallen.
Rival Competitor (1)
At the same time, a newly surfaced quest appeared before his eyes.
A strange, never-before-reported group of monsters had suddenly emerged. Just as he’d predicted, he’d found them.
"This may not be easy."
"Pardon?"
"But if we win, we’ll be able to claim a greater reward."
He spoke to Robinson in that same flat, impassive voice of his. Robinson flinched in surprise, but the words greater reward made his eyes shift.
They weren’t following him for nothing. Neither he nor the other mercenaries who had fallen under his command could ever go against him.
"Yes, sir, Captain. They’re just disgusting monsters, after all."
Grinning, Robinson nodded. The strangely lingering unease in his chest was gone, washed away by those words that stirred the desire buried deep inside him.
Morale among wavering units restored successfully.
He watched Robinson’s back as the man steadied himself once more, staring blankly. The intent behind his choice had worked out rather nicely.
"Their base is in that forest. We need to wipe them out."
"Ahem. What exactly is the plan?"
"We’ve heard there are at least several hundred of them. It’d be best not to scatter ourselves pointlessly and instead stay grouped together."
To lead the knights and soldiers they’d gathered in place of the broken, sacrificed city leadership, Knight Captain Dyke, dispatched from the capital, planned to launch a preemptive strike into the forest with Robinson’s mercenaries.
According to the information they’d collected, the monsters’ base was definitely somewhere in the woods beside the city.
"The beasts, monsters, and human-looking ones... eyewitnesses say their bodies are covered in black veins like they’ve been infected by parasites, warped and twisted into grotesque shapes. And apparently they can carry around disgusting black tentacles inside their bodies and use them however they want."
"...I’ve also heard there’s one especially unusual monster. It has a human face, and it can speak like a person."
Robinson asked Dyke whether the rumors he’d heard were true. The knight’s expression immediately darkened at the question.
"It’s true. That monster with the face of a young girl can clearly speak human language and hold a conversation. And... it’s strong enough to beat most knights. It’s probably their leader."
"Understood."
So this is all a bunch of provincial knight trash...
Having heard the information about Lena, Robinson snorted inwardly. Dyke was wary of Lena because she had killed numerous local knights, but Robinson, on the other hand, was ridiculing Dyke and the rest of the knights entirely.
"So if that bitch shows up, we’ll handle her carefully with a pincer attack."
Dyke planned to use the mercenaries and the knights together to take down Lena. Robinson, if anything, was lukewarm toward that pincer plan.
"We’ll look for a chance to take their leader for ourselves."
And, just as Robinson had expected, when he heard the report about the meeting, he muttered those words inside his helmet after a brief moment of thought.
I need a bigger reward.
The intent was clear. He wanted to seize Lena, the leader of the pack whom they mistook for the opposing player’s avatar, and end the battle in one stroke with a larger reward.
Of course, thanks to that mistaken assumption, their attention toward the "slightly big spider" waving its tentacles around had almost been buried entirely. Monsters like those were common enough among the minions, after all.
"They’re being way too obvious about it. What kind of reward do you even get for capturing an opposing player?"
"You seem more tense than I expected. That doesn’t suit the Lord of Greed and Chaos. No matter who appears, you should devour them all. In the end, they’re nothing more than your competitors."
"Shut up."
Are they watching me too?
Using the eyes of my scouts, I watched the army leave the city and head for the forest while I paced back and forth through the living room with my phone in hand for no real reason.
And through all of that, Agares kept spouting nonsense instead of answering the question, which only made my temper flare.
"I’m serious. There’ll of course be a reward, but your opponent saw something even more essential than that. He decided that killing you would be the real profit."
"Why?"
Honestly, I couldn’t make sense of it. Even in a normal game, I didn’t like indiscriminate PVP. And this wasn’t even a normal game. We had no personal grudge, yet the moment they heard about us, they came charging in. It was almost insulting.
"You really don’t know?"
"...Is the other side similar to me? Chaos? Greed? Or maybe tyranny?"
I changed the subject at Agares’s amused little laugh. For now, the enemy faction looked like ordinary locals. If that was true, then it meant their nature could blend in with the people of this world.
Which meant I was now up against two factions at once.
"What kind of person is he?"
Just like them, who were diligently preparing for battle, I stood there murmurably blank, getting my own forces ready as well.
In the end, the player behind those enemies was just an ordinary civilian like me. If he was willing to play this game because he wanted something out of it, then the fact that he’d chosen not to avoid us and instead come straight at us the moment he heard the rumors meant he must want it badly.
"Are you going to lose? Is that all your desire amounts to?"
Agares’s words needled me for no good reason. So I shook my head. My desire still hadn’t even been realized by ten percent.
"We’re at a disadvantage this time, but the battlefield is on our side. Besides, there’s no reason to insist on a head-on fight in a forest like this."
3. Guerrilla Warfare in the Woods
I chose the option that would widen the battlefield as much as possible. I still didn’t know what strength the enemy possessed, but even if it turned into a war of attrition, I believed we’d win.
And on the screen, following the Great Lord’s command, our forces spread out and waited for the approaching enemy. Lena was the same, and so was Karin, who had emerged from her cocoon just moments earlier.
The calm before the storm was eerie. I’d long since grown used to leaving the game on while I did other things, but now I was too tense to focus on anything else, clutching my phone as I fidgeted restlessly.
"Even if you’re devising your own strategy, the same goes for your opponent. They should be spreading their troops out to search, and yet they’re never separating. They’re moving as a single mass."
"...At this rate, we’ll get pushed back."
The enemy’s intent was working. The plan had been for our allies to strike from every direction the moment the other side loosened its formation, tearing through the opening in their ranks. But the enemy wasn’t making any rash moves; they were calmly making use of their numerical advantage instead.
"Then change your choice. Are you going to just sit there and take the hit?"
Agares asked whether I wanted to pick a different option before it was too late. In the end, I reversed my choice there.
"Let’s treat it as reconnaissance."
And when they finally reached right in front of our nest, I gave the order for our waiting forces to break formation and attack.
"In a way, this is the first real war you’ve ever waged. See for yourself whether your faction deserves to win it."
Agares’s voice rang out clearly even as the screen grew chaotic. At his words, I stared at the battlefield.
The units that had received my command surrounded the approaching enemy through the Great Lord’s coordination and slammed into them at once.
On the screen, the enemy screamed and shouted in panic, desperately trying to push back the allies closing in from all sides.
At least up to this point, it was no different from the battles we’d had so far. The soldiers were frightened by allies they’d never seen before, and even the knights seemed unable to maintain their composure.
"It seems that’s the opposing player’s power."
But there were also those who fought back properly against our side.
The mercenary band, which by all conventional logic should have been weaker than the soldiers and knights and less tightly unified.
"Fight! That is our strength!"
A mercenary who had brought up words of encouragement in a speech bubble raised a hand, and the mark carved into it began to glow.
And it wasn’t just one. Most of the mercenaries bore that mark, and once it started shining, it seemed to strengthen their bodies as if granting them some sort of buff.
You could see their movements changing with the naked eye.
"Avatar..."
And at the front of them all stood a huge armored knight. He wore armor like a knight, yet he wasn’t a knight at all—the strongest warrior in that mercenary band.
Looking at the way he swung a massive greatsword in both hands and cut down one of my minions charging him in a single stroke, I was certain that if that mercenary band was a faction, then this was the player’s avatar.
"If you’ve found the opposing player’s avatar, how would you respond?"
Agares asked me for my countermeasure.
If the avatar died, the player was out. Logically, putting the avatar on the front line was a foolish move, but this was still the early game. Neither I nor that player could afford to pull our strongest combatants off the battlefield.