Not Twin Heads
As the torch's orange beams peeled back the veil of darkness, the creature's grotesque true form stood fully exposed. It was nothing like the "underdeveloped head" the leader had described. Three perfectly independent heads rose from its shoulders, each one seemingly steeped in a different emotion.
The head on the left had rotting lips and flicked its tongue endlessly like a sly, malicious old man, dripping thick strands of viscous fluid. The right head bulged with eyes that looked ready to burst, baring yellow teeth in a raging curse against the world. And at the center, atop the thickest neck, the largest head stared down at us with the flat, emotionless gaze of a corpse.
Not a Twin Head Ogre, but a Triple Head Ogre. Its skin had hardened like granite, layered with filth and dried blood until it was discolored and cracked. Thick, worm-like veins pulsed through every fissure, venting dark red vapor. Whenever the three necks twisted and writhed above its abnormally developed trapezius muscles, the tough tendons threatening to tear through its hide tightened like heavy ropes and scraped together with a sickening sound.
I swept my gaze indifferently over its unreal majesty and muttered, "…Good thing I brought plenty of wagons."
A single wagon already struggled to carry one Twin Head Ogre. To load this thing intact, we would probably have to split the upper and lower body—and even then, lifting it would be no easy task. At my calm assessment, Elina’s shoulders twitched. She seemed stunned that, even in front of a monster of such hopeless size, her master’s mind went straight to cargo capacity.
BOOM—!
Every time the creature took a step, the already shattered stone dust and bone fragments screamed as they were crushed beneath its massive foot. What it held was no crude bone club. It was a gigantic dead tree it had apparently dragged all the way from the forest, roots and all. Clumps of dirt and rock fragments still clung to the dried roots. When the beast casually tossed the hideous club to the floor, the entire cave rang with a heavy groan.
"…That thing…?" Elina’s voice trembled faintly. The dead tree was so thick that five or six grown men linking arms could barely encircle it, yet the monster gripped it lightly in one hand as if it were a mere twig.
"Number Three, Number Four! Guard the retreat! Elina, don’t take your eyes off that thing!" The moment my orders echoed hollowly off the cave walls, all three of the creature’s mouths opened at once.
"GRRRRAAAAAHHH—!!"
The roar, woven from three different tones, amplified along the walls and hammered our eardrums. Before the vibration had even faded, shadows that had been hiding in every dark crevice of the cave poured out all at once. The beast was not alone. Overwhelmed by the variant’s majesty, I had momentarily forgotten—this was a vast colony inhabited by nearly thirty ogres.
Gigantic figures crammed into every narrow passage, encircling us. The most dangerous spot was the wide, plaza-like path leading back to the wagons. If that route were breached—wide enough for four ordinary ogres to charge shoulder-to-shoulder—our retreat would be completely cut off. Being trapped here meant annihilation.
"Three, Four. Take the right side path. Read their stride and target only the ankles. You two can hold them." I gave the order because I judged it possible. The combat slaves immediately brandished their weapons and pressed themselves against the right-hand rock wall. Their morale seemed to have soared; they slashed at the ogres’ ankles without hesitation.
I turned my gaze to Elina, who was taut with tension. "Elina, you handle the variant. Avoid a head-on fight. Slip into its blind spots and keep its attention. That’s all I need—just a moment."
I drew the sword at my waist. "That’s an order. Move."
I immediately hurled myself toward the front passage where four ogres were charging in. Their crude tree-trunk clubs tore through the air as they rained down toward my head. The instant the ground shattered—CRACK!—I twisted my body fluidly and slipped between the lead ogre’s legs. A single slash. The tendon behind its knee snapped helplessly.
"GROOOAAH!" Using the falling ogre’s skull as a stepping stone, I vaulted onto the next one’s shoulder. I drove the tip of my blade deep into the eye of the creature flailing its arms in panic. SPLURCH—! A fountain of brain matter and blood sprayed across my cheek. Before its massive body could collapse, I kicked off and slashed the third ogre’s throat.
The speed and trajectory were impossible for human strength. Faced with my swordplay that sought only vital points, the giant monsters were swiftly reduced to lumps of meat blocking the passage.
Elina barely dodged the variant’s destructive but simple attacks, yet she kept stealing glances at the unbelievable slaughter unfolding behind her. I drove my sword into the fourth ogre’s chest and shouted coldly, "Three, Four! Seal the side path completely. Don’t let a single one through!"
At my fierce command the combat slaves swung their weapons with everything they had. I buried my blade in the heart of another ogre charging toward me and turned my head. CRACK! A massive tree club smashed the ground and hurtled toward Elina.
She had read the blunt arc and leaped aside, but the variant’s attack pattern suddenly changed. The instant the rage-filled right head screamed, the emotionless central head twisted grotesquely and forcibly altered the club’s trajectory. A perfect feint.
"Ah…!" THUD—! The house-sized log slammed straight into Elina’s defenseless flank while she was still airborne. "Kuhk!" With a short cry, her body was hurled like a cannonball. She slammed into the cave wall and crumpled limply to the floor. Dark red blood gushed from between her lips.
Her vision must have been shaking from the impact. She staggered, trying to pick up her sword again, but her body betrayed her and sank back down. Creak. The variant’s enormous frame turned toward her with a bizarre sound of joints popping. The sly left head was first—tongue lolling, cackling between moss-covered yellow teeth. Foul saliva dripped onto Elina’s head. Then the enraged right head let out a tearing roar, its bloodshot eyes looking ready to explode. The ammonia stench in its hot breath clamped down on her entire body.
Finally, the central emotionless face began to move. It tore its mouth into an unnatural grin that stretched ear to ear, drawing a smile no human could produce. A massive hand covered in rock-hard calluses descended with terrifying speed to crush Elina.
She desperately tried to rise, but the pain from her crushed flank broke her will. The hand she had braced on the floor trembled helplessly. In the moment her eyes flickered with faint resignation and despair, sensing death—
"I gave you an order. Don’t overdo it."
THUD—! My body sliced through the darkness and soared onto the creature’s shoulder. I put my full weight behind the blade and drove it deep into the crown of the sly, cackling left head.
"Guuuuh…!" The left head’s expression collapsed in an instant without even a final cry. Its mouth went slack, its rolling eyes lost focus and turned cloudy like those of the dead, then drooped downward. Sticky brain matter and dark blood erupted from the wound, flowing across the entire face to create a mask-like shape that remained grotesquely twisted even in death.
I have to do what I have to do.
Using the recoil from pulling out the blade, I snatched a handful of coagulation powder from my belt pouch. I scattered the white powder indifferently over the gaping wound, the writhing brain and blood. Hsssss—! The powder reacted to the beast’s boiling body heat and flared with a screaming sound. The gushing blood froze midair, encasing the dead head’s entire face in a hard shell of gore. It was a brutally thorough sealing—not a single drop was allowed to fall.
"KWAAAAAAGH—!!" The right head, witnessing its companion’s death and the humiliating seal, began to rampage in fury. It swung the giant tree club wildly to shake me off its shoulder, not even caring about its own body, thrashing in mad frenzy.
In the distance along the side path, slaves Three and Four were still carving through the ogre pack, turning the passage into a sea of blood. The sound of their blades slicing bone mixed with the variant’s insane roars until the cave truly became a living hell.
"…Haa…" Elina, crumpled like trash against the rock wall, watched the scene through fading consciousness. Even amid the metallic stench of blood filling her lungs and the pain crushing her side, her gaze remained fixed on a single man. Even before the final desperate struggle of a beast facing death and its mountain-like pressure, her master’s back did not waver in the slightest.
…Is he not even afraid?
Elina shuddered. That man might be a being from whom the emotion of fear had been surgically removed. In this hellish landscape vibrating with the death cries of monsters and the variant’s horrific stench, only her master maintained a cold, alien silence.
"GRROOOOAAH—!" The right head suddenly stopped roaring and slammed the giant club into the floor. It was not a simple attack. It deliberately struck below its line of sight to kick up dust and debris, then reached for my waist with its hidden left arm—the same cunning, vile feint it had used to disable Elina.
But I had already read the minute contraction of its muscles. It was an attack that would have been difficult to dodge even if Elina had not let her guard down. "How monotonous."
The instant before its grasp closed, I launched my body into the air by a hair’s breadth. The enraged head’s eyes shook left and right in panic, vomiting shock. The moment it realized its confident move had missed, fear appeared in its eyes for the first time.
SPLURCH—! Riding the acceleration of my fall, I drove my sword deep into the right eye socket that had been filled with rage. The wet sensation of piercing the eyeball and scrambling the brain traveled up my wrist. I yanked the blade free and simultaneously shoved the proper amount of powder into the bursting socket.
Hsssss! White flames erupted from inside the creature’s skull, and the blood that had been about to pour out hardened into solid strands within the veins. Now only two dangling "blood fossils" and one remaining head sat on its shoulders.
The central, emotionless head. At that moment, the air inside the cave twisted strangely. The blood of the two dead heads flowed backward into the central neck and began to swell. Once the sly cackling and reckless fury disappeared, the creature’s true nature was finally revealed.
As if the two heads I had forcibly coagulated with powder had been shackles suppressing the central head’s magic power, the central head’s muscles swelled abnormally. "…Intruder."
With the two heads sealed, the compressed magic power rushed to the center, and the creature’s eyes began to emit a mechanical glow. "…Intruder. Hungry. Kill."
I adjusted my grip on the sword and narrowed my eyes. The variant could speak? Its intelligence was no higher than a four-year-old child’s, yet its presence—now stripped of emotion—was on an entirely different level from before. It did not move first. It was a restrained motion that read the tiniest tremors in my muscles, waiting only for the optimal moment to counter.
It suddenly twisted its head to stare at Elina where she lay against the wall. Then it looked back at me, contorting its emotionless face grotesquely as it lifted the corners of its mouth. BOOM—! Its massive body exploded toward the defenseless Elina instead of me.
You cowardly bastard.
I instantly launched myself to block its path. In that instant, the body that had been rushing toward Elina twisted like a spring and swung a fist the size of an adult male’s torso at me. A high-level psychological ploy—pretending to change targets to draw me in.
Whoosh—! I ducked my head by a fraction to avoid the fist, then slashed at the passing wrist. Slice—! Tough hide burst open and half the wrist dangled loosely. But the creature seemed to feel no pain; it swung the severed wrist and tried to hammer its fist down on Elina’s head again. This time it was no feint—it was sincere.
"That’s far enough."
I concentrated blue mana along the blade. The air trembled faintly as the edge glowed with transparent blue light. Swoosh—! A single slash. The trail of magic power carved the creature’s entire forearm away. The severed giant arm fell heavily right in front of Elina’s nose.
Elina, clutching her injured side, watched the scene with eyes flooded by shock. It was no ordinary swordsmanship. It was a strike only someone who had long since surpassed the Expert stage—capable of manifesting mana as a physical entity—could produce. Her lips parted as if to speak, then pressed tightly shut again.
Her gaze toward me held both reverence and an unidentifiable terror. Where on earth had he learned such monstrous strength? Why would someone who had reached this realm choose to pose as a mere back-alley slave trader? Her furrowed brow and wide eyes poured out thousands of questions.
The creature clutched the stump of its dangling arm and, sensing instinctive fear, tried to retreat deeper into the cave. But I gave it no chance to turn its back. Swish—! I closed the distance in an instant and drove my sword deep into the last remaining convergence point of its hearts.
"Kuuuh… it hurts… I don’t like it…!" The three-headed monster let out a childlike scream and collapsed to the floor. I shook out my pouch and poured the last of the coagulation powder over its wounds. Hsssss—!! The white powder reacted with the blood and burned like flame.
I scanned the surroundings. Combat slaves Three and Four were still hacking away among a mountain of ogre corpses. I joined their melee and slit the throats of the last two ogres that were still struggling. Only then did true silence descend inside the cave.
I approached Elina, who was leaning against the wall and gasping for breath. "Can you move?"
"…Yes, Master. I’m fine." She gritted her teeth, braced herself against the wall, and stood. But willpower alone could not overcome the pain from her crushed flank. After only two staggering steps, her body crumpled helplessly to the floor.
Before she could hit the dirt, I caught her waist and the back of her knees and lifted her in one smooth motion. "Ah…!" Elina’s shoulders flinched noticeably. The moment she felt the firm, warm body heat, her sapphire eyes shook violently, unable to find focus. The female warrior once called the reaper of the battlefield now trembled like a fish freshly pulled from the water.
"The variant’s strength was certainly formidable, but this injury is clearly the result of carelessness. To think someone who once rolled across battlefields where a single lapse meant death would make such a mistake. Was slave life that comfortable?"
Faced with an irrefutable rebuke, she lowered her head. Even as she bit her lip in shame, a subtle, remorseful smile crept across her mouth—perhaps because the master’s embrace that held her felt strangely reassuring. Even in her hazy consciousness, the fact that she was in her master’s arms seemed to have disarmed her completely.
Once we returned to the wagons, I took out the mid-grade stamina potion I had received from Theo. "Drink."
After confirming that both Elina’s and the slaves’ complexions were gradually recovering, I looked at slave Number One. "Any anomalies?"
"It’s that fellow from earlier, sir. Other than maintaining a certain distance and scouting, there was nothing else."
"Leave him be. He still has his uses for now."
I turned my gaze back into the cave. The house-sized variant corpse was the problem. No matter how large the wagons were, they could not contain the entire giant intact. "Push the wagons deep inside the cave."
At my command the slaves dragged the heavy wagons into the cave’s depths. I stood atop the rapidly cooling variant corpse. Slice—! The mana-infused blade cut horizontally across the creature’s massive chest. I gripped the last remaining pouch of coagulation powder.
The blood that threatened to pour out like a waterfall from the halved corpse’s cross-section—I poured every last grain of powder onto it. Hsssss—!! The powder seemed to have been prepared for exactly this moment; it coated the two enormous cut surfaces perfectly and hardened. When I shook the empty pouch, the final speck of powder landed on the very edge of the cut surface, revealing the bare floor beneath.
"Load them onto two separate wagons. Be careful not to damage them."
The slaves pushed the two massive half-corpses onto the wagon beds. I crumpled the empty powder pouch and stared in the direction of the adventurer leader who was surely watching us from the darkness.