Volume 1, Episode 19
“Yip.”
“Grrr.”
The hounds that had been closing in with such ferocious momentum all came to an abrupt halt.
The wolves’ ears flattened back against their heads, and fear washed into their eyes. Instinct had told them, in an instant, that they were facing something they must never provoke. No magical species could bare its teeth before a dragon and hope to keep them.
Sniff, sniff.
The hounds only twitched their noses as they circled Seherbian in a wide ring. Their hostility drained away so quickly that their tails, once stiff with aggression, began to wag hesitantly. And that was before Seherbian had even opened his power in earnest. It was the overwhelming pressure of a dragon’s innate superior magic that pressed them down, and the hounds gradually began to lower themselves into a submissive posture.
“Daisy, Thunderbolt!”
With a crack, a golden spark split the air and struck straight down between the hounds. Hot wind surged outward, and the smell of scorched fur hit him all at once.
「Meow!」
Then a familiar yellow cat sprang down to Seherbian’s side. Bright enough to make the eyes ache, the cat’s yellow fur crackled nonstop with tiny sparks.
It was the spirit of lightning.
“Priest! Are you all right?”
“...Ren.”
Seherbian turned with a strange expression and looked back.
There, in the tangle of narrow old alleys, Ren came running up, panting hard. He had summoned his spirit in a hurry, but because it consumed so much mental energy, he rarely borrowed a spirit’s power directly like this. That was why spirit knights with low mental stamina usually relied on their spirits only as buffs in everyday use.
“Why did you follow me?”
“Obviously because it looked dangerous!”
Ren barked the words, clutching his head as the aftereffects of that sudden drain on his mental energy made the world spin.
“Priests can’t protect themselves, you know! You didn’t have any guards, and it was getting dark, and the place felt all wrong, so I followed you, and then—”
He took a breath, drew his sword, and the lightning spirit Daisy leaped lightly onto the blade, where it perched with its tail held high, looking distinctly proud.
“How about it? Pretty useful companion, right?”
Ren grinned as he leveled his sword at the surrounding pack of hounds.
At the same time, Seherbian let out a sigh.
It was considerate of him, but...
He glanced over and saw that the hounds, which had been becoming noticeably calmer only a moment ago, had suddenly bristled and bared their teeth again.
Of all things, lightning just ended up making the wolves more excited.
Hatti, the shadow wolves, were sensitive to light. They lived hidden in shadows, only beginning to move once the sun went down, and the more they were exposed to light, the more damage they suffered. A young pup, or one whose body had grown weak, could even die if forced to stare into light too long.
So to the hounds, the radiance of the lightning spirit had become a signal of mortal threat.
“Shadow wolves, Hatti. So the fake spirit that appeared at Rosaria Lake was really these things?”
“You know about Hatti?”
“I am a knight. This much basic knowledge is expected.”
The sword hilt in Ren’s hand was engraved with an ice crystal, the emblem of winter.
“They’re stealthy little bastards, and they’ve got that mysterious habit of moving through shadows, so it makes sense ordinary people mistook them for spirits.”
Grrrrr.
Grrrr.
Feeling the pack’s growing savagery, Ren swallowed dryly. They had identified the culprit behind the rumors, but the situation was not exactly improving.
“But normally you only see these things deep in the forest. Why are they in a city like this...?”
He had barely voiced the question when a black shadow emerged from the darkness draped over the alley lined with abandoned houses. It was a shadow wolf, Hatti, blended entirely into the dark.
Cutting through air with no light at all to guide it, the hound darted at Airen and went straight for his throat.
But the attempt was stopped by a hair’s breadth. Sensing its approach, Ren had already spun around and struck first.
“Yelp!”
The Hatti, its face slashed cleanly, hit the ground with a pained cry and sprawled there with a wet thud.
Hearing the scream of one of their own, the other hounds came snarling all at once, baring their teeth as they rushed him from every side. Three wolves tried to pin down their prey from three different directions. But none of them could sink their teeth into Ren.
Crackle!
Even in the dark, the pale yellow current wrapped around his sword in a clearly visible spiral, spitting sparks.
Oh, so that’s how he uses his spirit. It’s more efficient than a typical spirit mage.
Seherbian watched the fight silently, and a hint of interest crept into his eyes.
He knew the basics of spirit knights, but this was his first time actually seeing one fight.
Unlike a spirit mage, who remained rooted in place and expended mental energy at an extreme rate while focusing solely on commanding a spirit, a spirit knight fought with his own body. Close-range weapons like swords or axes were common, though very occasionally some would use wind spirits to fire arrows or hurl javelins.
Ren was a textbook spirit knight. He moved with disciplined training, swinging his sword in clean, efficient arcs, while the lightning spirit wrapped around it amplified his strength and turned the battle in his favor.
Against Hatti, which was an entity of shadow, the sheer brilliance of the light alone slowed their movements, making it even more effective.
And yet.
“Daisy! Protect the priest.”
「Meow?」
Even after hearing the command, the yellow cat hesitated, flicking an ear once in uncertainty. Ren shouted again at the spirit, which had settled on his sword blade.
“I’m fine, so hurry up!”
With a little hop, Daisy finally sprang from the sword’s tip and landed beside Seherbian.
Ren, a spirit knight, had voluntarily given up his own advantage.
Seherbian stared down at the bright yellow cat now sitting neatly at his feet, utterly dumbfounded.
“... …”
「... ...」
Daisy had already realized that he was a dragon, so it only tilted its head at him where it sat. Its face seemed to ask, almost plaintively, Why am I supposed to protect a dragon? Seherbian, in turn, grew awkward for no reason at all.
Yip.
Yipe.
Hatti could read a dragon’s aura by instinct. The pack gave Seherbian a wide berth, never daring to come near him.
Ren, who had never imagined that the dragon priest he was escorting was in fact the dragon himself, kept glancing that way while evading attacks.
Seeing that Seherbian was safe, Ren only assumed the lightning spirit’s blessing was working well against the pack. Since all the attacks were focusing on him alone now, at least the battlefield’s movement had become predictable.
“Hah, now I can fight without worrying. Priest, stay put over there!”
Ren drew in a breath of relief and raised his sword again. Now that his companion’s safety was secured, it was time to counterattack.
Meanwhile, Seherbian did as he was told and sat down on the spot, hugging his staff in his arms.
Jingle!
「A spirit knight fighting a pack of Hatti alone is a tactical mismatch.」
As if it had been waiting for that moment, the branch of the World Tree rang out with a bell.
“And?”
「Do you not intend to help him?」
Seherbian leaned his head lightly against Mimir and watched the fight unfolding in the dark with a distant gaze.
“If I wait a bit, the sun will rise and the Hatti will disappear anyway.”
「There is approximately an 80 percent chance he will die before that happens.」
“I didn’t tell him to do this.”
「That is true, however...」
The branch of the World Tree trailed off in a way that was unusually hesitant. It seemed troubled by Winter Bell’s decision to stand by while a human was in danger before his eyes. Seherbian understood perfectly well what was bothering Mimir, but he merely answered with the indifference of someone watching someone else’s house burn.
“He chose this for himself. Leave him be.”
His sunset-colored eyes looked forward with complete detachment.
Stubbornly, even in the middle of danger, Ren never once called his spirit again.
* * *
Crash!
Ren parried an attack and was knocked backward by the force of the blow, skidding several steps across the ground as he gasped for air.
“Hah... haah... What is with these things... why won’t they stop...”
Just as Mimir had predicted, Ren’s situation was steadily worsening.
After sending his spirit to the priest’s side, he was fighting with nothing but his sword. It was far too much to handle, facing so many wolves alone in the dim darkness.
More than that, something felt off.
Hatti packs usually cap out at five, maybe eight at most, don’t they?
There were already twelve of them charging him. By Ren’s understanding, no matter how much this place was their habitat, it was hard to believe so many wolves could launch an attack all at once.
OOOOOOOOO!
OOOOOO!
“Damn it, again...!”
Ren’s expression darkened sharply.
Howling—the call wolves used to summon their kin. Once one of them threw back its head and howled like that, a new Hatti would soon emerge along the shadows.
Ren cut down the thirteenth Hatti and wiped the sweat that had run down the bridge of his nose with his forearm. At some point he’d been scratched, too; a stinging pain pricked his cheek, and blood smeared there as well.
The leader. I need to find the leader.
There was always an alpha in a wolf pack.
While subduing the wolves that kept lunging at him, Ren darted his eyes about frantically, searching for the leader. The area was so dark that the alpha wolf refused to show itself easily.
Snap.
The sharp click of teeth clamping together rang out with eerie clarity. A Hatti bit at the spot where Airen had been a moment before, then lifted its head with a low growl.
Odd eyes?
Unlike the others, this one had different colored eyes. One was red, the other black. Its gaze, each eye a different and unnerving color, fixed on him in cold silence.
From that strange calm, Ren could tell almost instinctively.
“...So you were there.”
That was the leader.
As soon as he realized it, a suffocating tension descended over the alley, so sharp he could barely blink.
The boss was different from an ordinary Hatti. It didn’t lunge mindlessly; its composed, calculating demeanor was even more chilling. If he let his attention slip for even a moment, he would have to hand over his throat to that thing.
If I kill the boss, the pack will scatter.
And judging by the strength he had left, he could not possibly cut down the whole pack one by one and still have enough left to target the boss.
Then there was only one way.
One strike, one kill!
He had been lucky enough to locate the leader before his stamina gave out, so he had to stake everything on this attack.
“Huu...”
Ren drew in a long breath and shifted his grip on the sword. Instead of a stance meant to hold the front line, he angled himself like a mounted lancer preparing to thrust.
Whooooosh!
Somewhere, green wind surged toward him and began shaping itself into something translucent along the blade. As if that weren’t enough, just having summoned Daisy had already driven his mental energy down sharply, and dizziness swam across his vision.
I can’t die here over something like this.
Ren gritted his teeth and endured. He felt he had reached his limit, but running away alone and leaving that young priest to die would be unthinkable. With that thought, he gave a sharp grin.
By then, the sword in his hand had become a spear of pale green wind, sharp and gleaming.
“All right, let’s make this count. Edelweiss!”
At the sound of the name, a gentle warm current of wind drifted in and curled around his fingers.
It was the power of Edelweiss, the second wind spirit bound to Airen Varzian’s soul.
“Grrrr...!”
The tension between them shattered the instant the leader Hatti sensed the change. It sprang upward like lightning.
At the same time, Ren hurled the spear with all his strength. The wind-forged weapon shot forward faster than an arrow, streaking toward its target.
Whoooooom!
Moments later, a tremendous roar exploded through the forest, and the ground itself seemed to tremble with the force of the impact. It was an incredible blast, nearly impossible to believe had been produced by nothing more than wind.