Chimera
Henry.
The blond young man looked like he'd stepped straight out of a retired knight's autobiography, yet he turned out to be surprisingly pragmatic.
I'd half expected him to propose charging into the nearby forest—presumably the monster's lair—on the spot, and instead...
"...You want us to just wait here in the village?"
"Yes, sir. The creature has grown bold enough to raid homes in broad daylight, so it will likely return within days—possibly as early as tonight."
Henry kept layering on the honorifics like he was still addressing a superior officer, so I finally decided to let him.
Someone with a proper castle to his name was clearly at least a noble, though why he behaved this way was beyond me. Nothing in his manner, however, felt the least bit dishonest.
I'd simply have to accept that he was an odd one.
"Why not go after it instead?"
"I am a knight, sir, not a huntsman trained for pursuit! Unless, perhaps, my senior possesses clairvoyance?"
"Hmm... it's not like I have no way to track it, but your plan doesn't look bad either. Who's to say the thing won't wander into the village while we're off chasing it?"
Tracking the monster would have been easy enough if I could rely on senses beyond the limits of human perception—but Henry's logic held up well enough on its own.
The creature had grown so brazen that there was no telling when it might raid the village again. In the end, we decided to stay put for the time being and wait for it to come to us.
Which meant the villagers would probably have a thing or two to say about us just sitting around...
"I have already explained everything to them, sir!"
"Ah... so that's what you were doing, drinking with the locals earlier? Impressive."
"Close cooperation with the locals is of paramount importance! How could one hope to accomplish any great endeavor without even proper communication with one's allies?"
Mid-sentence, Henry sprang to his feet and struck a heroic pose.
Lena, who had been listening quietly beside us, apparently found it impressive enough to sneak a similar pose of her own.
Night fell before we knew it.
Oil-soaked torches had been hung throughout the village, securing plenty of visibility. I'd worried the monster might notice something was off, but apparently this had been standard procedure ever since the first attacks.
Not that it had ever done much good.
We passed the time chatting on a watchtower erected at the village's center, surveying our surroundings.
Talking in the chill midnight air reminded me so strongly of my days as a soldier that it was almost nostalgic.
"Should fate ever bring us together again, I would love to treat you to wine. My homeland has been famous for it since antiquity. Even the name [La Bornee] attached to my house was once used as a wine brand."
"...Was? Why the past tense?"
"Ah... that is... a rather complicated matter. In any case, the family cellars still hold a plentiful stock of La Bornee wine. Our main estate lies in Bolston Castle, so once my training is complete, I shall extend you a formal invitation."
I'd never heard of wine being grown at Bolston Castle, so his homeland presumably wasn't around here. But given that his family seat was in Bolston, he must have left home for reasons beyond his control.
Then again, anyone raised in wealth and comfort would have little reason to take up something as dangerous as knighthood.
"So this is your 'training,' huh? Going about it this way actually gets you knighted?"
He was the first person I'd met who stood anywhere near actual knighthood, and I had plenty of questions.
Unlike the modern era, this was a time when specialized knowledge never made it into books—so we were still stumbling around in the dark about most things.
"It varies by circumstance, sir. I serve under Count Risacher de la Bornee, who rules Bolston Castle, and so I have been assigned a quest to patrol the region and resolve the grievances of his subjects."
"For how long?"
"There is no time limit. I return when I believe I can honorably fill the role of a single knight. Of course, I imagine a trial of some sort awaits me upon my return."
No assigned duties, no deadline—an open-ended trial with no promised end. Romantic, but an awfully medieval sort of tradition.
Maybe growing up in a culture like this was what produced strange ones like Henry?
"It has already been two years since I set out. Many of my seniors in the knightly order warned me it was a fool's errand... but I have no regrets. Though my martial progress has fallen short of my hopes, I have witnessed many things I never could have learned within the order."
"That's impressive, honestly..."
"You flatter me. I had just been planning my return to Bolston, in fact—which is how I happened to stop through this village on the way back."
So even this stuffy old-fashioned training regimen wasn't the norm. He was the odd one out after all.
He didn't seem like a bad sort, though. I'd have to get along with him going forward.
"Mister... I'm sleepy..."
"You can doze off for a bit if you want."
Mid-conversation, the moon had already climbed past its zenith. Lena, accustomed to sleeping at the same hour every night thanks to training, could hold out no longer and her head drooped.
I draped a blanket over her, and she mumbled something incoherent before dropping off.
Henry regarded her with an admiring look.
"I heard this child was an orphan as well? I crossed weapons with her earlier—she has real skill."
"Would you believe me if I said she's only had a month of proper training?"
"Ho... is that the truth? Remarkable. So the one who discovered her... was it you, senior?"
"It was a chance meeting, but yes."
"As expected! Your eye for talent is—"
"Hold on."
The one who cut our conversation short was Noah, who had been scanning the area beyond the watchtower with unwavering focus.
My senses were sharp, admittedly, but they still couldn't match Noah's vision—free as it was from the limits of the human body and the tyranny of darkness.
Apparently she'd spotted something before I had.
Apologizing silently, I carefully roused the freshly sleeping Lena and whispered to Noah.
"...What do you see?"
"A monster has appeared near the palisade. To think no one has noticed it at that distance..."
"Let me see... ah, there it is."
Concentrating on where Noah pointed, I made out a dim silhouette in the shadow of a torch's reach.
It stood around 1.8 meters tall—about the build of a strapping young man—and it was too far away to make out its features properly.
Except...
"Is that—don't tell me those are arms?"
"It has hands, so yes, they are arms. Six of them, in fact."
Amazingly, the creature was carrying six arms.
And they clearly weren't ornamental—it was seen putting them to practical use, bracing against walls and knocking out the night watch.
...It had been careful to maintain its usual appearance while on patrol, apparently. I hoped the guard hadn't been badly hurt.
Thud—!
With magnificent audacity, the creature ignored the sentry it had knocked out entirely and vaulted straight over the palisade into the village.
It moved without a moment's hesitation, as if its many prior visits had taught it the village's layout by heart.
Judging by its direction... the village chief's house was its target.
"Let's move—now!"
There was no time to wonder whether the thing even knew of the chief's status. We scrambled down from the watchtower.
"!"
Nothing about the creature's movements betrayed the slightest clumsiness.
We'd moved as fast as we could, but by the time we reached the chief's house, the thing already had the chief's granddaughter slung over one of its arms.
We had walked in on the monster and its hostage at the very doorstep.
Perhaps the chief's family hadn't yet registered that one of their own was gone—they simply stood there, silent and frozen.
Hoo—
Without a word spoken, everyone but me shifted into position and surrounded the creature. Smooth coordination.
Though up close, it looks even more grotesque... is this really a monster that occurred naturally(?)
With my sword drawn and leveled at the beast, I was privately reeling from its appearance.
Its whole body looked like nothing so much as a doll stitched together from rags. The patchwork of skin tones was so varied there had to be at least twenty different sources—
A Chimera?
The six arms hanging from its body bore designs so bizarre it was hard to believe they belonged to a single creature.
The upper pair ended in mantis-like sickles, razor sharp. The middle pair were shaggy with fur like a monkey's. And the lowest pair, tipped with dozens of fingers, served some purpose I couldn't begin to guess.
If the opponent had been human, I might have tried talking it out—but with a monster, such gestures were pointless.
Henry, who had taken up position at the rear, launched the first strike without even a battle cry.
Whish—! Clang!
"Why, you—"
To my astonishment, the monster used its hostage.
Just as the blade hurtled toward its neck with lethal momentum, the creature thrust the chief's young granddaughter into the sword's path.
Henry had no choice but to twist his blade aside—and it collided with one of the many arms.
The arm deflected the sword with a hard, metallic ring.
"Lena, Provocation!"
"On it!"
Provocation
"Huh?"
Lena's mana seized the unidentified monster's full attention. There—all I had to do now was—
BOOOOM!
"Guhk!"
The provoked beast exploded forward with a burst of speed it had never shown before, charging straight at Lena.
Luckily she reacted in time and caught the attack on her shield—but the price was the shield caving sharply inward.
Rustle!Thwack!Crunch!
Henry, Noah, and I all fell upon the creature in a brutal flurry. I took the arm clutching the hostage and smoothly disassembled it with Sawtooth Sword Aura, freeing the unconscious girl.
Henry went for the creature's remaining arms, but its flesh was no ordinary hardness—the sword bit barely halfway in.
Noah, well... no arm survived where her mace passed.
"GRAAAAGH—!"
Having lost five of its six arms in an instant, the thing roared furiously and leapt high, trying to break free of the encirclement.
There should still be time left on Provocation...
...Does it get dispelled by shock?
"Not so fast!"
An unexpected move—but leaping into the air meant surrendering your speed, no matter what. I practically tossed the rescued girl into Noah's arms, sprinted to where I predicted the creature would land, and sheared through it in a single stroke.
Its physical abilities and toughness had been on par with a Rank 7 monster—but against Sawtooth Sword Aura, that still made it no more than paper.
Splatter.
The monster, bisected at the waist, bled hot blood onto the cold snow as it died.
So it had been alive after all, despite looking for all the world like an undead.
Henry came up a beat later and let out an appreciative whistle.
"Superb sword aura! Even within the knightly order, Experts are not so common—"
"Skip the compliments. Look at this thing."
Waving off his praise, I used my sword to flip the halved carcass this way and that.
A monster of grotesque appearance I had never seen anywhere before. Even Noah—who had committed the appearance of every monster in the bestiaries to memory—said it was one she'd never encountered.
So this was no simple case of disappearances after all.
"No matter how I look at it... doesn't it seem artificially made to you?"
"That's the first I've heard such a thing was even possible... though I cannot say for certain that it isn't."
Fearless as ever, Henry crouched to examine the monster's severed arm with great interest.
Looking closer still, the arm even bore stitch marks. The skin that had looked like rags truly was sewn together like rags.
Don't tell me—had this thing been assembled from the flesh of other monsters?
"That's not the only thing bothering me, either. The creature used a hostage to block our attack, which means—"
CRASH!!
"KYAAAAH—!"
"AAAGH!"
Far from where we stood—nearly at the village's far edge—screams erupted from a house, followed by the sound of something shattering.
I immediately sprinted toward the noise, but before we could arrive, a black shape leapt the palisade carrying a person over its shoulder and vanished from sight.
In the moonlight, its silhouette glimmered dimly for just a moment—and no matter how I looked at it, it bore an unmistakable resemblance to the creature we'd just killed.
There was more than one of them??