While Venom was exploding with irritation and anger, Barik was inwardly startled by the fact that he hadn't managed to put so much as a scratch on the opponent in two tries.
It was skill beyond absurd. In truth, it was something he couldn't even understand. What in the world did you have to be born with, and how did you have to train, to be able to pull off things like that?
Between the bewilderment, curiosity rose. The opponent had shown astonishing technique. But that didn't mean anything changed because of it.
To break something, understanding wasn't required. You could collapse a fortress wall with sheer force without knowing anything about its structure.
Rrrrkkk.
Fangs sprouted at the corners of Barik's mouth. Bristly, wire-like fur thrust up all over his face. Between the hairs that broke through the skin, beads of blood formed.
Crunch-crunch-crack.
The bones of his whole body shook and his skeleton shifted, and the armor draped over his body settled into its place. It was armor worn from the start with transformation in mind.
Barik was a bear beastman. Because he carried cursed blood and form, he was a beastman who had been cast out.
You could say he was in similar straits to Dunbakel.
Of course, no one could know that backstory. And Barik himself had long since forgotten that past.
'I am the commander of the Mud Order of Knights.'
Whoever he fought, he was someone people often called an opponent you hated to face. He had not forgotten his identity. He had forgotten the past and focused on the present.
This time was no different. He fought for the High Pontiff. He laid his own hand atop the High Pontiff's will and wish and moved forward. Advancing that way, he would receive a world of his own and land of his own.
Grrrrrk.
A mane like thorns sprouted all over his body and blended with the armor. The knife was still in his hand, but now the knife in his grip was no more than auxiliary equipment. Soon enough, even that knife vanished, covered by the fur inside his wrist.
Leaving aside fingernails and toenails, the spikes that covered his entire body took the place of his engraved weapon. Their hardness was the same as the knife in his hand. The material for the knife he had made into his engraved weapon had been his own hide and fur. In short, he was an eccentric who had made his entire body into an engraved weapon.
"Krhaaaugh!"
The bear beastman's roar shook the air. Just hearing it made the nape prickle and the fine hairs stand on end. It poked at the fear rooted in instinct.
Of course, none of that applied to Enkrid. This was someone who had endured even Balrog's pressure.
"An actual bear beastman, huh."
He was unruffled. He really would have to make sure to tell this story to Audin. Which meant he had to make it out alive.
"It's swordsmanship focused on defense. Just press him and that's it."
Pustis spoke. His insight was unusual. He had read the traits of the opponent's swordsmanship in no time. Longarm, with mobility diminished thanks to the hole in the thigh, had stepped back a pace. From the holed leg, blood trickled in drops. It was because of the overexertion just before.
'Use your feet as little as possible.'
If he saw an opening, he would drive his sword into it. He still had a secret art left that twisted and snapped the muscles of his trained arms. He used both arms like whips. He had technique that made it plenty possible to put on speed without using his feet.
Barod slid his face between his two shields. Chin tucked in, neck hunched. It was the ready stance for a technique called turtle charge. It was skill that bounced back all but the most extreme blades.
Barod favored tactics of offense and defense as one. Blocking and blocking again while ramming through and crushing the opponent was his specialty. The stance he had taken now was the concentrated essence of that specialty.
Enkrid held Dawn Tempering in his right hand, letting it hang. To someone who didn't know, it would look like a terribly slack stance.
'A posture where everything is already in place to shoot forward and strike at any time.'
When Barik transformed, his reason thinned. Instinct raised its head and asserted itself. Its root was destruction and slaughter.
Hot steam flowed from his mouth. The hot breath went up and the drool fell down to the ground.
Pustis watched the situation with a blank face. Eyes watching, ears listening, mind repeatedly turning over thoughts.
'We are four.'
Losing made no sense. That bastard Jaxon of the Mad Order of Knights had been impressive, but to be precise, even when three of them had been facing Jaxon, it wasn't as if they had actually been pushed back.
If one had gone down there, would the remaining two have just stood and watched?
With more time, who knew how victory and defeat would have gone. No, the winning side would have been theirs. Even if the commander and Barod had not joined in, that would have been the case.
'Even if Barod hadn't blocked.'
If the dagger aimed at his head had not been blocked, would Pustis really have failed to avoid it somehow? If he had reacted the instant it made contact, his head would not have been pierced.
Since he didn't wear a helmet, hadn't he always wound his Will overly thick above the neck and been more mindful of it? If the iron shell formed by gathering Will and toughening the skin held out just a little, it would have bought more time. Then he might have lost an eye, but he wouldn't die.
The situation was clear. Their side was favored; the enemy's was not.
So why this anxiety? Pustis's gaze swept left and right. One of the things behind that unease was just now turning into reality.
His insight sent a warning. His gaze naturally stopped in one place. Where it stopped was on the bastard named Jaxon. The one who had been on the verge of death opened his mouth.
"One."
As he spoke, he threw a dagger. As if they had agreed to match that timing, the commander charged in and Pustis swung the flail.
The one leading the attack was the commander, Barik.
Barik stamped his foot. Thud! A roar rang out. As if an earthquake had struck the spot his foot hit, the ground shook.
It was vibration enough to throw off balance. And yet the opponent was unfazed. Enkrid swung a sword filled with a faint bluish light and smacked the commander's claws. Just before the commander could charge in, the opponent rushed in first.
Boom!
A roar and shock wave spread. The opponent slipped right past Barik and turned. In that moment, Barik raised his knee in an upward strike and slashed the elbow on a diagonal. The bastard spun the sword in hand, reversed the grip, blocked the knee with the sword tip, and caught the elbow with the guard. It was astonishing skill.
Thock, tong, loud noises bounced back and forth between the two, and the commander's spiked hide covering the knee went clang and knocked the blade away. The opponent even used that force to deflect the elbow slash aside with the guard.
It was flowing blade-forms at an astonishing level. And while it wasn't quite close enough for their breaths to touch, it was a distance where it was far more comfortable to use elbows and knees than to use fists.
Without being thoroughly versed in close combat, you could never pull things like that off.
Because of the thigh wound, Longarm was unable to break in, and Barod, who had been about to match the commander's movement and take the enemy's back, had to pull out again when the commander and the target suddenly swapped positions.
Pustis alone had flung the flail with full force. The three iron maces spread out without colliding with one another.
The plan had been to block the route the bastard would take and smash him as he came through. He meant to block simply and then catch the sword with the three maces and knock it aside. The opponent showed behavior outside his expectations. Enkrid drew a second sword and thrust.
If the attack had continued as it was, there would have been a hole in Pustis's throat. Pustis ended up unable to follow through with the flail and pulled back.
Clatter-clatter! Tong! Tong!
The three maces crashed into one another, making noise.
"Guh."
And when that single exchange was over, Venom was dead. Just as his insight had warned earlier.
It was the work of the bastard who had been reeking of ill omen.
Jaxon had slit the throat of the unfortunate mixed-blood fairy who had spent over a hundred years honing assassination skill. The dwarf fairy with a second mouth opened in the neck toppled to the ground, dragging blood. Grrk—gkkrk—frothing blood spurted from the mouth, and the words that came out of it were hard to make out.
It was a hand, flailing at the air while the body lay collapsed on the ground. Unless a celestial god descended, there was no way to live.
If, by some misfortune or good fortune, Venom wanted to live, he would now have to live as the slave of a necromancer who had mastered death magic.
Fortunately or unfortunately, there was no celestial god here, and no necromancer who had mastered death magic.
Blood gushed in thick pulses from Venom's neck and soaked the ground. Victory and defeat were plain, and the outcome was clear.
The reason things had turned out this way was simple. There had been an obvious difference in skill between those two.
From the beginning, Jaxon had intended to kill Venom first. He hadn't struck up a conversation and drawn his attention for no reason.
If the dagger thrown at Pustis's head had failed to pierce his skull, then in that opening, Venom would have targeted Jaxon. Jaxon had taken that into account as well.
Jaxon had drawn up a tactic of giving flesh to take bone. If there had been no variables when the three had struck earlier, this was the outcome that would have come.
Whatever it is, you only know once you try. A road you have never walked is something you can never know forever.
So he simply did his best not for yesterday that had passed, but for today and the tomorrow that was coming. Jaxon had simply done that.
'What I learned from the captain.'
You could say he had done exactly as he had learned.
He had left four knights to his captain and killed the dwarf fairy who ought to have been dead already, leaving that captain. At some point, his left arm had been wrapped thickly in something like a bandage.
It was a bandage soaked in a hemostatic agent that promoted coagulation and a medicine that reduced pain, made with all of Anne's heart's blood. While facing Venom, he had even taken the leisure to wind that around his arm.
"Now we begin."
Madman Jaxon spoke and looked at Pustis. A dizzy sensation swept over Pustis. It was vertigo. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down. It was the backlash that came from failing in his insight-based gauging of the opponent.
"Pu-stis!"
Barik, the commander, shouted, snapping his mind awake.
"Two. We kill them and that's all."
Even with reason blurred under the flood of instinct, the commander spoke. No, he shouted. There was no wavering in the Will contained in the shout. Only Venom had died, nothing more. That was what the commander wanted to say.
"Yes, I know."
Pustis, who saw straight through that, answered. He regained composure in no time. He wasn't a member of the knight order for nothing.
"Longarm, don't let your guard down. Those ones are skilled in assassination technique."
He continued speaking. It was a duet of calm and composure.
Did they have some trick for deceiving a knight's senses? In that case, what about a target who had widened their field of view on purpose and was bracing to endure?
If you were prepared, it was enough to buy time to react. No matter how skilled someone was at assassination arts, that would be the case.
There was a reason beings like that were called calamities.
"Once we kill that swordsman, the situation is the same."
Barod spoke. What Barod said was true. Pustis steadied his breathing. In any case, the decision would happen in an instant. Once that was over, life and death would part.
So if you didn't want to die, you fought, and if you didn't want to die, you struggled frantically. Knowing that logic was how they had survived up to now.
Jaxon stepped back three paces slowly and regulated his breath. The breath he exhaled, thin and long, was heard by no one's ears. Regulating his breathing like that, he lifted his feet and began to walk.
His figure blurred like a mirage in empty air and vanished.
'What trick is that?'
Seeing it, Longarm spoke inwardly. Longarm focused without blinking once.
No matter how outstanding an assassin was, they couldn't secretly kill a knight who had deliberately braced for them. He repeated the thought he had just realized to himself once more. Then Longarm roused his senses.
'They'll come for me, the one who's off alone.'
Will gathered in his eyes. Determination became power and shone.
'I will survive again today.'
The Mud Order of Knights fought better in crisis. They were, in the first place, people who had made survival instinct into a weapon and lived.
When Barik transformed, his reason had become dim. The instinct to slaughter and the destructive urge to smash something ruled him.
'The limit of a cursed beastman.'
It would be a lie to say thoughts like that didn't come. And yet he had survived, smashed those limits, and reached the present. And now, Barik once again went beyond a limit.
'My vision is clear.'
When he transformed, things around him had always looked blackish red, but not today.
No, to be precise, it had been that way at first, but once he mixed it up with that swordsman once, his mind had come back. The heightened mind had awakened his reason. Crisis pushed him forward into a new stage.
'If I half-ass this, I die.'
He didn't want to die. He would make it through today as well. His body felt lighter than ever, and strength filled his hands and feet. The heightened mind even affected the body.
"Mad Order of Knights, I assume?"
Barik asked. The opponent had just changed from the posture of letting the sword hang to one with the sword raised beside the face. The blue eyes between the strands of black hair were striking. The color entered Barik's eyes vividly. The opponent barely dipped the chin, just enough to be almost unnoticeable, and opened the mouth. If the opponent suddenly cut off mid-sentence and attacked, it looked like preparation for responding to that. A thoroughly cautious bastard.
"Enkrid of the Mad Order of Knights."
"I'll remember that name."
Of course, Barik took the same posture. Even while opening his mouth and speaking, his breathing and stance did not waver. He had braced himself enough to react if the opponent charged.
The exchange was short. There was no time left to trade more words.
Barod, a master of shield arts, was conscious of the surroundings and wrapped Will around the whole body. It was skill he had created after seeing his commander transform. Based on the shield, he wrapped a shell around his entire body harder than iron armor.
'Silent Iron Armor.'
Will resonated with his shield and his whole body. To achieve this, he had even studied part of the giants' art.
He became a tank that ordinary sword strikes could not pierce. It was a technique developed by fighting monsters on par with real knights.
'Ogre.'
It had been a monster with a body even bigger than a giant's. What had that strength been like? A huge tree had snapped and been uprooted by the hand lazily swung by the towering monster. It was a monster that had used a tree ripped up roots and all as a club.
His armor was a technique that even a monster like that could not break with its strength.