Polar Night (3)
"Hoo- hoo-"
Five hours had passed.
I'd hoped the sun might finally rise, but the brilliantly glowing full moon still hung defiantly in the night sky.
That the monsters' assault hadn't stopped was only natural.
Tatataatatang!
"There are too many of them!"
"Don't fall back!"
At first, the packs of monsters had come at fairly wide intervals.
But as the attacks grew more and more frequent, the number of them trying to push through the baptism of gunfire and clamber over the palisade only increased.
The mercenary squad had stepped in to help, but even they couldn't hold everything back.
Which meant the ones who slipped through were ours to stop.
"Hiyaaaahp!"
Kwadeuk—!
Ivan's colossal axe cleaved a green-skinned monster halfway through the waist as it was clambering over the palisade.
It was closer to tearing than cutting — a sign that his mana reserves were running low — but for Ivan, it was the best he could do.
"Aaaagh!"
"Head down!"
Tadada—
Seogeok, seogeok!
I moved without pause, guarding the palisade with everything I had.
By now I'd pulled dozens of people back from the brink of death.
Right in front of me, a young man drenched in a monster's hot blood — no longer even startled by it — mechanically reloaded his empty rifle.
I wanted to encourage him, but I was so winded myself that I couldn't force out a single word.
It's getting hard to keep this up...
Roughly wiping the monster blood from my face, I scanned our surroundings.
The palisade, fused with steel plates and hardened to an almost absurd degree, was holding up well — the people, however, were not.
I could feel my concentration slipping by the minute.
"Ugh... kuh!"
"Isaac! No!"
While I paused for a moment to catch my breath, one of the caravan merchants had the top of his head seized by the claws of some unidentifiable monster and was dragged out over the palisade.
Considering what would happen to him next, dying then and there might have been the kinder fate.
It was already the fifth time it had happened.
Kwaaaaang—!
"Ugh!"
"Help!"
"A giant!"
Damn it all.
A giant whose entire body was encased in something like tree bark smashed through a section of the sturdy palisade and barged into the village.
Nearly four meters tall.
Wielding a club that was massive even by its own standards, it lumbered toward the people atop the wall.
It looked fearsomely strong — but every second I hesitated meant more people dying!
"Hmph!"
I charged in without even pausing to gauge the beast's strength.
My limiter, loosened by the prolonged battle, compressed my aura to its very limit in an instant and drew out a blade of sword-qi.
Whirrr!
Pakeok!
Spinning my body like a top, I split through the brute's massive club, then used the momentum of that same slash to leap skyward and drive my blade into its neck.
Fortunately, I proved the stronger; my sword buried itself deep into that thick throat.
Doom-doom!
The pounding torrent of its blood surging through the blade transmitted into my hand.
But as it stood, the sword might as well have been a toothpick stuck in its neck.
I needed a follow-up strike.
"Iyaaaahp!"
As the battle wore on, my Inner Heart generated aura hotter and faster than ever.
An overwhelming reserve of aura that never ran dry, no matter how much I spent.
Now that my body had developed enough to shoulder the strain of channeling it, the Inner Heart was revealing its true capabilities without a single filter.
Urdeudeudeuk... Wagueojak!
I twisted the blade lodged in the giant's throat and heaved sideways with all my strength.
It seemed to be a higher-grade monster — it resisted my sword-qi to some degree — but there was nothing it could do about an attack from within, and in the end its neck tore apart.
Pshhhhh—
"Graaaaagh—"
The giant howled in agony, clutching at its ruined throat with crude, massive hands.
But an enormous volume of blood gushed out regardless, and the light faded from its clouded eyes. It swayed drunkenly, on the verge of toppling over.
"Ee-cha!"
Kung!
Lovrick appeared out of nowhere and smashed into the giant's ankle and knee.
The giant staggered with what little strength it had left, toppled backward through the very hole it had smashed in the palisade, slumped down — and breathed its last.
Crude, but it had effectively become part of the palisade itself.
"Truly impressive. The Wood Giant is one of the most powerful Rank 7 monsters, and you felled it like it was nothing? You're a man who'll go far. Let's stay on good terms, you and I."
"...I'm dead on my feet. Besides, that was incredible on your part too, Mister Lovrick. Using that thing as part of the wall..."
True to his veteran status, Lovrick greeted me with perfect composure even after hours of relentless combat.
I could only reply wearily as I tried to cool my overheated, steaming body.
My body, which such vast amounts of aura had passed through in such a short span, was complaining loudly.
"That much is just a party trick for me. Get some rest while you can. That giant killed half the other monsters on its way in, so we've bought ourselves some breathing room."
"Then I'll rest for a bit..."
...
"Keheheh! Sounds like you've had your hands full!"
"Mister Alta..."
"This fella here took down a Wood Giant, even. Genuinely shocked me, it did."
"What did I tell you? I said he was something special."
"The muscle-bound fella did well too, for a first-timer. He's more than earned his size."
Even after the Wood Giant fell, small-scale assaults came in intermittent waves.
But just as nothing in this world lasts forever, even those died out after repeating a handful of times.
The plains surrounding the village were now carpeted with nothing but monster corpses.
Monsters, as a rule, are creatures obsessed with the smell of blood — and if they still hadn't appeared even with the battlefield this soaked in it, then the area had, for all intents and purposes, been cleared.
Thanks to that, we finally had time to let our exhausted bodies rest.
"Haah... haah... Is it finally over?"
"Mm... not yet. Look at the moon hanging up there. It's not over."
Ivan, soaked through with sweat, asked Lovrick with desperate hope in his voice, but Lovrick — busy stretching his limbs this way and that — shook his head.
I mean, even if we couldn't see any monsters, the moon was still hanging up there like that...
"That moon — it must have something to do with the monsters appearing like this, right?"
"Probably. It feels like everything that normally lives out in the Unexplored Lands has come crawling out at once. Even Wood Giants live deep in the forests... I can't fathom how they made it all the way here."
"Huh? Doesn't the moon look a little red to you?"
"What kind of nonsense is that n—... it actually does?"
When Ivan pointed blankly at the moon with his finger, Alta opened his mouth to rebuke him.
But squinting up at it, he too sensed that something was off.
The center of the moon, which had shone pure silver until now, was tinged with just the faintest hint of red.
Whether it was my imagination or not, that red region seemed to writhe and slowly spread.
"...Let's rest while we can. The moon is beyond anything we can do about it."
"Agreed. We've wiped out all the monsters nearby anyway, so we should be safe for a while. Then again... if we just survive this, the profits are going to be no joke. This is the most monsters I've ever killed since the last large-scale subjugation."
"You don't have to nag — your share will be more than covered."
"Heheh. Busted, huh."
...
Three days of hell had passed.
By now, everyone's stamina was scraping the bottom of the barrel.
The people who had once eagerly harvested magic stones and materials from the monster corpses now spent every scrap of rest time sleeping like the dead.
And to us, who had endured those brutal days, one piece of good news and one piece of bad news came walking along hand in hand.
"That last wave, we held on by the skin of our teeth. If the monsters had come one more time..."
"Mm. The shelter might have been overrun. But now that the repairs are more or less finished, we can hold off a few more attacks without trouble."
The good news first.
We'd succeeded in restoring almost perfectly the various facilities that had barely withstood the monsters' assault.
For some reason, the monsters' advances had abruptly cut off at a certain point, and in that window Gunter had rushed to repair the palisade and everything else.
True, its durability was weaker than before — nothing to be done about that — but even this much deserved gratitude.
And the combat-capable personnel had gotten to rest during the repairs. That was a bonus.
And the bad news was...
"...That damn moon's gone a strange color. Bathing in this light nonstop puts me in a filthy mood."
"It's turned completely red now. What in the world is about to happen..."
"The flow of mana in the atmosphere is off, I tell you. How do I put it... it feels like the moment right before an explosion?"
Even after a full day, the full moon still hung in the sky.
Worse, the moon that had been reddening so gradually was now dyed a full, vivid crimson.
With that eerie red light raining down from above, it felt as if we'd wandered into a novel about supernatural catastrophes.
"...That's chilling."
"Is this how it all ends? I haven't even gotten married yet..."
"Did you see that bastard Isaac's body? Nothing left above the waist. If it weren't for the scar on his calf, I wouldn't have recognized him."
"Damn it, I never should have followed everyone out to some frontier village like this..."
"Hey! You've got time to spout that garbage, you've got time to sleep!"
Red lighting, they say, has a way of putting people on edge — or firing them up.
Perhaps because of the moon's unrelenting crimson glow, people's words and actions were growing steadily coarser.
Then again, in a situation like this, maybe being wound that tight was only normal.
"Hey, Lovrick. How are the monsters looking?"
"Nothing bad, from our standpoint. The majority are heading south at the moment. Most likely toward Bolston. That city has high walls and Guild elites stationed there, so it should hold up well enough. Though with that many monsters swarming toward one place, I can't help but worry."
"I'm more worried about the other villages. There were a few small settlements nearby we traded with."
"...They probably haven't seen a good end of it. Short of a fortified village like this one, nowhere is prepared for an assault like this. No — honestly, even most pioneer villages will have been swept away in this one."
"Hooo... I suppose so."
After sleeping through my exhaustion with one long sigh, I woke to find Alta and Lovrick smoking something cigarette-like and chatting idly.
Weren't those two ever tired?
It looked like they'd only managed a few brief naps, yet their faces bore only a faint trace of fatigue — they seemed mostly fine.
Not just Alta, either. Lovrick and his men were the same.
"Oh, you're up. You look pretty worn out, from the face of you."
"Yes..."
"That young lady who was with you has been helping out without a wink of sleep. Tough as she is strong, that one? Normally, groaning around like you'd be the standard."
Noah, for whom the concept of physical limits simply didn't exist, had been moving nonstop.
With Ivan collapsed as well, there had been plenty of problems only she could solve.
A considerable share of the village's rapid restoration had to be credited to her.
"Hm... seems you've got some time to spare. Mind if I offer some advice? It might be overstepping — don't take it as an old codger lecturing you."
"Ah! Of course not. I'm all ears."
Grinding out his cigarette against the ground, Lovrick glanced at Alta before approaching me.
Alta just nodded and said nothing.
They'd acknowledged each other's capabilities through the battle, then.
"Good. You're a well-mannered one, as I'd expect from someone who's been taught. Let's talk about mana management. The way you're moving right now is terribly inefficient."
"Inefficient?"
"That's right. Now, don't get me wrong — you're plenty strong. Frankly, stronger than me... no, if it came down to it, you'd beat every last one of us combined."
Lovrick pointed toward the four mercenaries smoking in the distance.
Every one of them a grizzled uncle with a thick, unruly beard.
Thanks to them, we'd been able to keep the monsters from slipping out through the other sections of the wall all this time.
"We've each got our fair share of veteran tricks up our sleeves, but you can't fight an overwhelming gap in power. But — look here, now. Watch the difference between you and us."